212 Chapter one, 2016, rainy days: 4 (2/2)
From there on their meal got more awkward, and it was with a sense of relief Ulf rose and made the dishes.
When he returned with a small teapot and two mugs he noticed that, unlike the times he had visited Christina before, her futon didn't lay rolled up against the wall. That meant it probably lay neatly stacked in its cupboard, and from that thought Ulf gave her flat a closer look.
'She really did clean it up this time. Food and flat, hmm.' Ulf looked at Christina where she sat pretending to decorate a tray with cookies. 'I can't tell from your clothes or make-up, your skills are way beyond my awareness. But your desk is disorderly in just the right way for me.'
There were a few other signs Christina had spent more than the normal time preparing for his visit. Her small home had been thoroughly made to make him feel welcome, even to the point that he wouldn't want to leave. The suspicions he had on his way here grew stronger, and along with rising anticipation a feeling of discomfort spread through him.
'Won't it be unfair of me to sleep with her unless I tell her I love her?' But that was the thought of a teenager, and he wasn't really a teenager any more, was he? 'Shouldn't you decide what's unfair to you or not, the way I decide for myself?' And that was the thought of an adult. Each person was responsible for his or her actions and reactions. There was an academic construction, interpretative prerogative, which could be applied to a situation like this.
”Christina,” Ulf began, ”how close have we become?”
She looked up from her cookies and met his eyes. That was a question he wouldn't have dared to ask thirty years earlier, and one she couldn't have answered when she was that young.
”We're boyfriend and girlfriend,” she said. ”Still in the infatuation phase because we haven't had sex yet.”
'Yep, definitely two adults playing teenagers playing adults. Damn this is confusing!'
Ulf felt his body reacting to her words exactly the way she had known he would.
”And now is when you want us to take a step further?” he said in a rather failed attempt to play it cool. It didn't really matter. From here on he could only keep up his part of a script with an ending Christina had decided from the start.
”We're not kids.”
”That doctor said we still are, despite our subjective age.”
”I don't plan to take that doctor with me into the shower.”
'Damn, you sure know how to play this game.' She hadn't as much as loosened her clothes, but Ulf felt the heat rise just from her words.
”I could use a shower,” Ulf said in a last attempt to take control of the conversation with a poor joke.
He shared that shower with Christina, and after that he shared the night with her. In the end half a year's worth of pent up desires won, and his last remnants of reluctance evaporated when she clearly showed him that hers were half of them.
When they woke and spoke she told him that to her surprise there was a bit of pain. While she had the experience her body didn't.
He didn't go home until late morning.