Some people are supposed to have it all, those blessed individuals plastered on the front pages of the newspapers. Filthy rich, fantastic job, to-kill-for looks and the charisma to charm the birds off the trees. And to have that one person they aren’t complete without in their arms to make the rest of it worth the hassle. After all, what’s the use of being able to hop on a plane to some far flung solitary corner of the globe and spend a week in plush surroundings of a five star hotel when there’s no-one meaningful sharing that king-size bed with you? What’s the point, if you have to go back to that lonely hotel room in yet another bleak city once again to sit in suffocating silence? All the money in the world won’t warm up the room I’m in right now like I know you could with just a simple smile to tell me you care.

I could have had it, the whole lot, if I hadn’t have refused it those years ago when the look in your eyes told me you loved me, told me the words you never spoke because you knew I wouldn’t say them back to you. Not because I didn’t feel the same but because at that moment I didn’t want love. I didn’t want its restrictive claws around me, and you know me better than most so you kept quiet regardless of your torment.

But for that one night I had that one special person lying beside me, sleeping in my embrace. So, what did I do? I ran and hid. Playing the coward, the cruel bastard as I always have.

I told myself and you that we were drunk, and yeah okay we had had a few together in the bars, savouring the nightlife in the crowded streets in some distant part of the world. Flitting from bar to bar, club to club, tired but restless, anxious for more, desperate to live the night as if it were the last ever and we were never going to get the chance again. And we talked, god we talked. Life, the universe and the ultimate goal. You never told me if you feared you would never make it, not get that break in F1 you sought after. Never achieve the ambition, rake in the fame and fortune and all the rest of the shit that goes with it. And I think I told you cockily that I was destined for it. You laughed at me, I remember. Slurred but ringing pleasantly through the air, telling me I was the most arrogant bastard you’d ever met.

And I told you, you were the most beautiful one that I’d ever laid eyes on.

I haven’t seen that smile since that night, curving on your lips, reaching your chocolate brown eyes and lighting up the whole of your face. Then we were just two people caught up in the moment, and when you leant over and kissed me, it wouldn’t have mattered if the entire world was watching. Doing that now, in a crowded bar, being what I am now, who we are now, would be foolish. The quickest way for you to lose your wife, to hurt your family and reputation and the hearts of the others involved.

I don’t know what made me say it then when I’d never really contemplated ever giving voice to my feelings for you. Something changed in that thick, smoky atmosphere and maybe it was the loosening of inhibitions from far too much drink but I had to have you then and there, claim you in my arms and fuck you senseless. And as an unwilling voice of reason, you had to disentangled us when our passion got the better of us. When our kisses ran the risk of becoming much more as my urgent hands tugged at your belt, sliding through the just opened zip to make contact with your hot, hard flesh, enjoying the sounds of your groans reaching my ears and your rough caress against the rising bulge in my jeans. Whereas the voyeur in me wanted the audience, wanted to rip off your clothes and fuck you so your screams of ecstasy tore through the noise of the bar.

How we made it back to the hotel, I still don’t know to this day but I can remember every kiss you planted on my lips in the elevator, the way my fingers tightened their grip, knotting in your soft dark hair when we slammed back against the wall, our groins moving together in acute desire, unable to keep our hands to ourselves until we could stumble into your room panting from breathless kisses and thirsting arousal. 

You let me drink my fill of your body, taking in every contour of your frame, learning its curves, its edges with exploratory caresses as discarded clothes, almost ripped off in frantic urgency, lay scattered around the bed. Hot flushed skin, gleaning with sweat, pressed tightly against the bed as my tongue followed the curve of your spine, lightly working its way up to your neck. You felt so right in my arms as I held you, your face buried in a pillow, masking your groans of pleasure, my own cries filling the room as I thrust deeper and harder in to your willing body, not fighting the rapid waves of climax which soon hit me, reducing me to a quivering mass collapsed on your back.

And I would kill to see that look upon your beautiful face again; the expression on your features when, conscious of my short-comings, I turned you on to your back and finished you another way, letting your orgasm hit you for six like mine did to me as you half-shouted, half-sobbed my name when you came down my throat.

For what seemed like hours, we lay there, my head resting against your abdomen and your legs wrapped around my waist as a mixture of drink and satiated lust lulled me into a welcome sleep. Yet still you managed to surprise me, wringing the last clouds of sleep from me when you hurled me on to my back, your face hovering inches from mine. An unexpected predatory smile as you pinned me down, you hardly gave me chance to fight back and a scream of a pleasure bordering dangerously on pain stuck in my throat when, without warning, you entered me suddenly. You got my submission, breaking down my normal need for control as you roughly kissed me, arousing me again with punishing thrusts and I had no desire to fight it. The pleasure was too intense, too raw. Any need to reassert my dominance simply vanished under the weight of your body on mine, teeth grating across sensitive nipples as you sucked and kissed them and the strength of my orgasm swiftly raging through me.

I wish I had that innocent age back, those simplistic times when we could afford to be so blissfully naïve and I could make right the wrong decision I took so we could have more of those nights together. Now all I have are lingering memories of a time when we could have done whatever the hell we wanted but because of me we couldn’t. Memories resurfaced after all these years so that you are the last thing I think about before I drift off into a solace of sleep. But the knowledge is still there. That I wasted my chance to wake up wrapped in your arms like I did that morning when I denied that that night was anything more than drunken lust.

You can’t even begin to know how much every fibre of my being painfully aches now for just the softest of brushes from your teasing fingertips. For a replay of that night. Maybe you’d laugh if you knew how that night haunts my dreams, giving me an arousal I know I’ll never quench without you. How I lie in my empty bed thinking of you, wondering what you’re doing, who you’re with, how you’re feeling. And I contemplate picking up the cell phone beside my bed and dialling those few digits just to hear your voice. To tell you how I feel, how I’m sorry, how I’m lying in this bed desperate for your body to release this unbearable tension stored inside me.

I’ve never let myself need anyone as urgently as this before and not even my current plaything is enough to satisfy this burning hunger I know only you can fill. If anything, it makes it worse, increases my need for you, turns up the tension. She’s everything you’re not, all of them I’ve ever been with since were everything you weren’t. Christ, nothing since that night has come anywhere close to our night together. But I refused to accept that I had fallen for you. Refused to accept that I wanted a serious relationship rather than the meaningless flings I convinced myself were what I wanted.

Though not that it matters now. They’ve kicked you out of my life by unceremoniously booting out of your team. I could have really hurt him for what he did to you, the one time in my life when I had the desperate urge to lash out violently, consumed with irate helplessness. So, we all go through a bad patch, have our exhilarating highs to balance out the crushing blows. Still, he didn’t have to sink this low. Nothing you had done deserved your shoddy treatment.

Then again, does it matter whether you are here or not because, regardless, I would still be without you? I pleaded with you, without clumsy, stuttered words. Begged you with every gaze that brushed against your features to reconsider. I know you would have been happy here. If not here with me or for me, at least for the good of your career. If you had then I wouldn’t be here now, mourning the fact that I won’t see you this weekend.

But you were always the pragmatic one, the unshakeable loyalty. Look where that’s gotten you though.

I flinched when you finally spoke those haunting words, ‘I’m sorry,’ words echoing a strength on a par with being slapped harshly across the face. And you meant it, the sincerity painfully obvious. You avoided my anguished expression as I laid out my heart and soul to you, opening up in a way I never have done before.

I knew you didn’t know what you were apologising for, as if those words on their own could heal the steep divide between us. You thought, no you wanted to think, it was because I saw it as a personal snub, that the one person I can honestly say has been one of my only lasting friends doesn’t want to be in the same team as me. That’s what you want to believe.

Because it’s better than admitting the truth, isn’t it? That I’m spiralling hopelessly into something I can’t stop and it hurts you to see me longing for you, just the way you used to feel for me when I knocked you back. Truth is, I didn’t care if you were here in this damn team with me, if you decided to stay where you were, fuck, even if you decided to quit completely. And that’s still how I feel. So long as you are with me, that’s all that matters. We could fail, mess up or just end up irritating the fucking hell out of each other but at least we could say we tried.

And that’s all I want. Another chance.

I’m not getting one now though, am I. Those soft brown eyes were full of distance the last time we spoke, brimming with a sadness which still now makes my heart bleed. Though for all their soul, their pain at the grief they are causing me because I know it’s killing you to hurt me like this, I can read their rejection. No malice, no cursing questions, accusations or sharp defence. Just sadness.

But even that is preferable to the awful knowledge that I won’t see those eyes this weekend, despite their sorrow. That you have been ripped away from me like this removing that faint glimmer of hope I’m still holding on to that I can prove myself to you. I know I’ll cope, I always do. It’s not a question of trying to, I have no option but to carry on as if nothing has changed, to lock up my emotions for the media hoards and team bosses just as I do every race weekend.

This time though I’m doing it without you. And I’m left wondering whether you’ll be watching the race on the TV, daring to hope you might catch a glimpse of the guy who was once your lover slouching despondently in the garage, looking lost without you. Maybe you’ll smile when you think of our past, frown at our present. But what will you think about our future? Do we even have one or did I wreck that those years ago?

All I know is that you’re not apologising because you can’t reciprocate my feelings. I know you far too well for that. You are apologising because you know you shouldn’t feel for me because of what I did. You are scared that you feel the way you actually do and that you know deep down you can’t let yourself fall victim to this devouring longing again. And if I’m honest to myself I know I really don’t deserve you and that you’re better off without me.

I understand. Can I really blame you?

~The End.