just_1_word | 11.6. Hesitate
11.6. Hesitate
Co-written with agentsullivan
Ali felt her way blindly up the hall with her fingers pressed against her temples. She cracked an eye open to survey Andrew sitting on the sofa flipping through a magazine whilst surrounded by every baby item imaginable from diapers to Tickle-Me-Elmo. After crying almost non-stop for close to five hours, the little ray of Sunshine had finally fallen asleep and Ali felt a migraine from hell coming on. She set the baby monitor down on the table and pushed her messy hair off her face. “I need a drink. I think I’m going to have my first glass of wine in nine months. I also think after today, I earned it.” She held her hand out to Andrew. “Join me? No way can I tackle a bottle on my own.”
Andrew closed the magazine open and looked up at her. “No,” he murmured with a hesitant shake of his head. “But thank you.”
Ali pulled back. “Oh… okay then…” She frowned a little. “So, you’re heading home, then?” There was no hiding the disappointment in her voice and she couldn’t tell if he was bored or not. He had been patient all afternoon through Jamie’s wailing and had even taken the reigns for a good portion of it, something she was deeply grateful for because her daughter had her frayed to her very core with the colicky crying most days. Most of the time, she ended up sobbing with her. Things had seemed to be going nicely between them following their close moment in at the cemetery. After Andrew had broken down, he had been quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the day, but insisted he still wanted her to be with him for the day. They went back to his apartment and crawled in to bed to just be close and warm. He slept away the rest of the difficult day while she just held him and contemplated all the what ifs in her head, trying to make some sense of them.
Andrew set the magazine aside and sat forward. “No, Ali, it’s not that I don’t want to share a drink with you. It’s that I… I can’t. If you’ve got Coke or juice… anything non-alcoholic, I’ll take that,” he offered and then bit down on his lip.
Ali frowned and perched on the seat beside him. “Are you ill?” she asked in concern, mind automatically turning to James and his diabetes. He had always only been allowed limited amounts of alcohol and it often made him feel so crap he abstained anyway. Though with the amount of time Andrew had been in her company since they met, she had seen any other signs of an illness like that.
“No,” Andrew sighed and shook his head. “I’m an alcoholic… was an alcoholic. I haven’t had a drink in over nine months either.”
If Ali expected anything to come out of his mouth, it wasn’t that. “Nine months is a long time,” she said quietly. “How long before that did you have the problem?”
“Not long but long enough. I started to drink really heavily after my Dad died. Before that I was nothing but a social drinker. I couldn’t handle the guilt and the pain, so I would drink hard to the point I would write myself off whenever I wasn’t working. It was about a two month gap after I was discharged from hospital that is just a blur to me. I nearly lost my job, food was black label vodka and I isolated myself from everyone. Towards the end, I was throwing up blood and was too far gone to realise it was a problem. Luke found me out cold in my bathroom one day and had me rushed to hospital. It was a wake up call and after that I pulled myself back, making the decision to take a time out in London to get myself back on track… and to not drink again,” Andrew added. He pressed his lips together, trying to bite back the shame he had at admitting how bad and stupid he had let himself get.
Ali put her finger to his lips and shook her head. “Uh ah. No self-bashing allowed in the living room. The bloodshed will ruin the fancy décor,” she said with a faint smile. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Yeah? Besides me being in no position to judge considering I got pregnant after a one night stand with my married ex, this makes no difference, okay? I’ve dealt with a lot of crap things in my life. Finding you was not one of them. You have a blight in your past… we all do. I don’t disapprove, Andrew. The opposite. I think you’re amazing for getting through it and being the person you are sitting here with me now, because this person? Pretty special,” she told him with a smile.
Andrew felt a tension release inside him and he sighed in relief with a small laugh. “It was not my proudest moment. I regret the whole thing. But I just… prefer to steer clear of alcohol. It’s like any addiction, once you start, it’s hard to stop. Every next one will be your last… until the next one.”
“I can really understand that,” Ali murmured with a nod. “So, how about we go hot chocolate instead? I make a pretty mean hot chocolate with whipped cream.”
Andrew laughed. “Oh really? Then how can I possibly refuse?” He hesitated and played with her fingers for a moment. “I have another confession to make…”
Ali raised her eyebrows and curled her fingers in with his while he played with them. “If you tell me your name is Clark Kent, I’m going to have to cry. I could never quite come to the red and blue spandex,” she teased watching him closely. “You really are going to tell me you’re sick, aren’t you?”
“No, nothing like that. I promise,” Andrew assured her, shaking his head. He cleared his throat as a blush threatened in his cheeks again. “The other day when you thought I, uh, had diarrhoea and I let you believe that? I didn’t. I had another embarrassing problem I was trying to get rid of…”
Ali smirked at him. “More embarrassing than diarrhoea? I was worried that sandwich I made you poisoned you, you know,” she laughed. “Okay, so hit me with it. What was your other embar- oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhh,” she said as the realisation dawned on her. She couldn’t stop her eyes dipping down to his lap and then she looked up with a cheeky smile. “A not so little problem, I take it?”
The blush returned in full force. “Not really,” he had to admit. “I was worried you would get the wrong idea or that you would think I was trying to push you into something you didn’t want. Then I worried that if I was too indifferent, you might think I don’t find you attractive when I do. God, do I.” He cleared his throat again and laughed bashfully. “This was going to go so much better when I rehearsed it in my head.”
“Let’s talk about sex, baby,” Ali laughed and teasingly messed his hair up. “You’ve got to understand, sweetheart, that I’m not backwards in coming forward. I’ll tell it like it is, it takes a lot to offend me and I can be a real snarky bitch when I want to be. You can’t say you haven’t seen that side of me. It’s not something I can hide if I’m firing on all cylinders. I’m also not shy in any way about sex, so I’m risking you keeling over with a heart attack here when I say this… I would give anything to have you fuck me into this sofa like there was no tomorrow. I just didn’t want to scare you away if I told you that. But I can’t have intercourse so soon after the birth. I can do other things though.”
Andrew wet his lips and couldn’t hide a smile. “A-Are you saying you want to do other things? With me?” he asked.
“Or we could just have hot chocolate,” Ali returned, smirking at him fondly. “And I think we have inadvertently stumbled into some new territory with where we go from here if we do those things. It’s maybe time to talk about that. Because really, I think my tendencies towards one nighters was well and truly been trampled when Sunshine was conceived.”
“Best one nighter you ever had, though. She’s wonderful,” Andrew told her, smiling. He took her hand and put it up to his lips to kiss it. “I don’t want just one night with you. I want many nights and I want many days with you and Jamie. In fact, uncontrollable embarrassing body issues aside, I think I might be falling in love with you.”
Ali broke into a smile and cupped his cheek with her hand. A rush of warmth spread through her quite unlike she had felt in a very long time and suddenly she wanted him wholly and completely. She had been feeling it for days but hadn’t let herself tip over that last hurdle of acceptance with it. She hadn’t thought she deserved it or could pull it off. She thought there was too much risk she would hurt him or that he would get sick of Jamie. But here, now, his words eased her overactive mind and it didn’t matter what might happen in a week, a month, a year. She knew she owed it to him, to herself, to Jamie, to try, and she knew that in doing so, she was taking that first sledge hammer hit to the brick wall she had built around herself to try and just get through all the horrible pain. It was time.
“You had me at hello, sweetheart,” Ali revealed and then with another nose-scrunched grin, pulled him into a hungry kiss quite unlike any they had shared so far.
agentfraser & notskywalker referenced with permission
Word Count | 1,670
Co-written with agentsullivan
Ali felt her way blindly up the hall with her fingers pressed against her temples. She cracked an eye open to survey Andrew sitting on the sofa flipping through a magazine whilst surrounded by every baby item imaginable from diapers to Tickle-Me-Elmo. After crying almost non-stop for close to five hours, the little ray of Sunshine had finally fallen asleep and Ali felt a migraine from hell coming on. She set the baby monitor down on the table and pushed her messy hair off her face. “I need a drink. I think I’m going to have my first glass of wine in nine months. I also think after today, I earned it.” She held her hand out to Andrew. “Join me? No way can I tackle a bottle on my own.”
Andrew closed the magazine open and looked up at her. “No,” he murmured with a hesitant shake of his head. “But thank you.”
Ali pulled back. “Oh… okay then…” She frowned a little. “So, you’re heading home, then?” There was no hiding the disappointment in her voice and she couldn’t tell if he was bored or not. He had been patient all afternoon through Jamie’s wailing and had even taken the reigns for a good portion of it, something she was deeply grateful for because her daughter had her frayed to her very core with the colicky crying most days. Most of the time, she ended up sobbing with her. Things had seemed to be going nicely between them following their close moment in at the cemetery. After Andrew had broken down, he had been quiet and withdrawn for the rest of the day, but insisted he still wanted her to be with him for the day. They went back to his apartment and crawled in to bed to just be close and warm. He slept away the rest of the difficult day while she just held him and contemplated all the what ifs in her head, trying to make some sense of them.
Andrew set the magazine aside and sat forward. “No, Ali, it’s not that I don’t want to share a drink with you. It’s that I… I can’t. If you’ve got Coke or juice… anything non-alcoholic, I’ll take that,” he offered and then bit down on his lip.
Ali frowned and perched on the seat beside him. “Are you ill?” she asked in concern, mind automatically turning to James and his diabetes. He had always only been allowed limited amounts of alcohol and it often made him feel so crap he abstained anyway. Though with the amount of time Andrew had been in her company since they met, she had seen any other signs of an illness like that.
“No,” Andrew sighed and shook his head. “I’m an alcoholic… was an alcoholic. I haven’t had a drink in over nine months either.”
If Ali expected anything to come out of his mouth, it wasn’t that. “Nine months is a long time,” she said quietly. “How long before that did you have the problem?”
“Not long but long enough. I started to drink really heavily after my Dad died. Before that I was nothing but a social drinker. I couldn’t handle the guilt and the pain, so I would drink hard to the point I would write myself off whenever I wasn’t working. It was about a two month gap after I was discharged from hospital that is just a blur to me. I nearly lost my job, food was black label vodka and I isolated myself from everyone. Towards the end, I was throwing up blood and was too far gone to realise it was a problem. Luke found me out cold in my bathroom one day and had me rushed to hospital. It was a wake up call and after that I pulled myself back, making the decision to take a time out in London to get myself back on track… and to not drink again,” Andrew added. He pressed his lips together, trying to bite back the shame he had at admitting how bad and stupid he had let himself get.
Ali put her finger to his lips and shook her head. “Uh ah. No self-bashing allowed in the living room. The bloodshed will ruin the fancy décor,” she said with a faint smile. “It’s okay, sweetheart. Yeah? Besides me being in no position to judge considering I got pregnant after a one night stand with my married ex, this makes no difference, okay? I’ve dealt with a lot of crap things in my life. Finding you was not one of them. You have a blight in your past… we all do. I don’t disapprove, Andrew. The opposite. I think you’re amazing for getting through it and being the person you are sitting here with me now, because this person? Pretty special,” she told him with a smile.
Andrew felt a tension release inside him and he sighed in relief with a small laugh. “It was not my proudest moment. I regret the whole thing. But I just… prefer to steer clear of alcohol. It’s like any addiction, once you start, it’s hard to stop. Every next one will be your last… until the next one.”
“I can really understand that,” Ali murmured with a nod. “So, how about we go hot chocolate instead? I make a pretty mean hot chocolate with whipped cream.”
Andrew laughed. “Oh really? Then how can I possibly refuse?” He hesitated and played with her fingers for a moment. “I have another confession to make…”
Ali raised her eyebrows and curled her fingers in with his while he played with them. “If you tell me your name is Clark Kent, I’m going to have to cry. I could never quite come to the red and blue spandex,” she teased watching him closely. “You really are going to tell me you’re sick, aren’t you?”
“No, nothing like that. I promise,” Andrew assured her, shaking his head. He cleared his throat as a blush threatened in his cheeks again. “The other day when you thought I, uh, had diarrhoea and I let you believe that? I didn’t. I had another embarrassing problem I was trying to get rid of…”
Ali smirked at him. “More embarrassing than diarrhoea? I was worried that sandwich I made you poisoned you, you know,” she laughed. “Okay, so hit me with it. What was your other embar- oh. Ohhhhhhhhhhh,” she said as the realisation dawned on her. She couldn’t stop her eyes dipping down to his lap and then she looked up with a cheeky smile. “A not so little problem, I take it?”
The blush returned in full force. “Not really,” he had to admit. “I was worried you would get the wrong idea or that you would think I was trying to push you into something you didn’t want. Then I worried that if I was too indifferent, you might think I don’t find you attractive when I do. God, do I.” He cleared his throat again and laughed bashfully. “This was going to go so much better when I rehearsed it in my head.”
“Let’s talk about sex, baby,” Ali laughed and teasingly messed his hair up. “You’ve got to understand, sweetheart, that I’m not backwards in coming forward. I’ll tell it like it is, it takes a lot to offend me and I can be a real snarky bitch when I want to be. You can’t say you haven’t seen that side of me. It’s not something I can hide if I’m firing on all cylinders. I’m also not shy in any way about sex, so I’m risking you keeling over with a heart attack here when I say this… I would give anything to have you fuck me into this sofa like there was no tomorrow. I just didn’t want to scare you away if I told you that. But I can’t have intercourse so soon after the birth. I can do other things though.”
Andrew wet his lips and couldn’t hide a smile. “A-Are you saying you want to do other things? With me?” he asked.
“Or we could just have hot chocolate,” Ali returned, smirking at him fondly. “And I think we have inadvertently stumbled into some new territory with where we go from here if we do those things. It’s maybe time to talk about that. Because really, I think my tendencies towards one nighters was well and truly been trampled when Sunshine was conceived.”
“Best one nighter you ever had, though. She’s wonderful,” Andrew told her, smiling. He took her hand and put it up to his lips to kiss it. “I don’t want just one night with you. I want many nights and I want many days with you and Jamie. In fact, uncontrollable embarrassing body issues aside, I think I might be falling in love with you.”
Ali broke into a smile and cupped his cheek with her hand. A rush of warmth spread through her quite unlike she had felt in a very long time and suddenly she wanted him wholly and completely. She had been feeling it for days but hadn’t let herself tip over that last hurdle of acceptance with it. She hadn’t thought she deserved it or could pull it off. She thought there was too much risk she would hurt him or that he would get sick of Jamie. But here, now, his words eased her overactive mind and it didn’t matter what might happen in a week, a month, a year. She knew she owed it to him, to herself, to Jamie, to try, and she knew that in doing so, she was taking that first sledge hammer hit to the brick wall she had built around herself to try and just get through all the horrible pain. It was time.
“You had me at hello, sweetheart,” Ali revealed and then with another nose-scrunched grin, pulled him into a hungry kiss quite unlike any they had shared so far.
agentfraser & notskywalker referenced with permission
Word Count | 1,670