In Confidence

Note: This is a sequel to my earlier earlier sequence of stories, "An Apology in the Morning", "The Education of Mrs Jones", and "Demagnetisation". You don't have to read them all, or even read them in sequence, but things will probably make more sense that way.

*

She was waiting for him on a bench across the road at the end of his working day, and when she saw him emerge from the building's front door, she hurried across to intercept him. "Ed," she said, "we need to talk."

"Oh, hello, Becca," he replied, looking a little surprised. "I'd heard that you'd left the company. Weren't you going back to college?"

"Yeah -- I start next week. But that's not want I'm here about."

"Then what do you want to talk to me about? As I recall, the last thing that you said to me, outside of absolute unavoidable work conversation, was that you were sleeping with my son. And then you made it clear that you wanted no more to do with me."

"Yeah, well, it's about that, Mr Smug Bastard Friar. Did you set me up with your Nick?"

He looked at her for a moment. "What makes you think that I did?" he asked.

"I've only just put it all together," she said. "But it all fits. I was in that pub because of something you said, and Nick comes in and says he's seen me at the office -- though I've never seen him before, I'm sure. He chats me up, and tells me all about himself -- but he never mentions you, or his surname. I only guessed who he was because I remembered that picture that used to be on your desk. In fact, he never said anything about you, right up to when I dumped him. And you didn't look too worried when you saw me again."

"And that's your evidence?"

"Yeah. God, I feel stupid. I thought that I was messing with you, and all the time, you just wanted me off your neck, and your son was getting a good shag out of it."

"Okay, you got there in the end -- and okay, you have the right to a bit more of an explanation. But I'm too old and it's too cold to stand here having arguments in the street, so I suggest that we go down to the coffee shop down the road and talk about this. But there are two conditions."

"Yeah?"

"First, no shouting and no scenes, at least in the coffee shop. I want to be able to go back there, and I think we should both behave like adults. And second, I'm going to be completely honest with you, so I want you to promise to be honest with me about anything that's relevant."

Rebecca glowered, but then she nodded. "Okay," she said, "I'll play your little game, for now."

He smiled, and led off. At the coffee shop, he bought them both cappuccinos, and they found a free table with two seats.

"Okay," said Ed, "you're perfectly correct -- Nicholas and I did set things up rather. He has been in the office, but not for many years, and I wasn't expecting you to remember that picture; I put it away a while back, when I ... realised that it showed Nicholas as a child, which he isn't any longer. You must have craned round to my side of the desk to see much of it, or been round there when I was out, and it was smart of you to recognise him from it. He has changed quite a bit."

"Sod all that. You knew that I was interested in you, and you used that to pimp me to your son!"

"Actually, I'd say more that I pimped Nick to you. But it was his idea, mostly, and I admit that he didn't complain about it. Nor did you, at the time, from what you said."

"You bastard. You did all that to get me off your neck." Rebecca was still keeping her voice level, Ed was please to note; the coffee shop was filling up, with one new arrival sitting back to back with Rebecca.

"You were being very persistent, and I had to find some way of distracting you. I liked you, but I didn't fancy a messy office affair, and you're just eighteen..."

"Nineteen. It was my birthday last week."

"Oh, well, happy birthday. But anyway, I had the feeling that you were looking for a father figure. None of that stuff was my style."

"You could just have nicely told me to back off."

"I could, but I don't think you would have listened. And I thought that you needed something more than a disappointment; you needed, well, a positive alternative to me."

"Screw all that!"

"Quite." Ed couldn't resist the quiet verbal jab.

Rebecca paused for a second, and coloured. But she ploughed on with her original line of attack. "You were just being selfish, the pair of you -- thinking about yourselves."

"Actually," said Ed, "even if that's true, we weren't the only ones. I'm sorry, but you're pretty wrapped up in yourself sometimes. You'd locked onto me, but despite all the personal questions, you never asked me if I was attached. And, well, did you ever ask Nick that, on that evening you first met him?"

"He was chatting me up. Okay, I assumed not, but even if he was, he'd have lied."

"Actually, I doubt it. Nick is many things, but he's very truthful. And he is seeing someone regularly, by the way. If you'd asked him straight out, he'd probably have told you. Even though it would have made what he was doing much harder."

She gaped at him. "You set all that up -- Nick shagged me for two weeks -- and he had a girlfriend all along? You're sick, the pair of you!"

Ed just smiled. "Perhaps you need to meet Louise -- Nick's current girlfriend. She likes him a lot, but she has no illusions about him. Sex is a hobby for him, frankly, but he is very truthful, and actually not very selfish. If any woman actually asked fidelity from him, he'd very politely run a mile. And any woman who actually tries to get to know him soon understands that."

Rebecca deflated, still glowering at Ed. "Men!" she snarled.

"I know, love. Bastards the lot of 'em."

The comment came from the woman who had been sitting immediately behind Rebecca, in a position to hear much of what she'd said; Rebecca had never been shouting, but her anger meant that she hadn't been keeping her voice down either. The newcomer was now looking over Rebecca's shoulder, nodding with an expression of sympathy.

"Do you mind?" snapped Rebecca. "This is a private conversation."

"Sorry, love, but it was hard to miss some of it. Anyway, my advice is to use 'em up and dump 'em when they start to annoy you." The newcomer grinned and turned away, and Rebecca scowled.

"Which is something you did happily enough with Nick, I believe," Ed went on. "But tell me -- before you did drop him, did he ever tell you his theory about confidence?"

"What?"

Ed shook his head. "I'll tell you what he told me. Nick is very successful with women, you know, and like most other men who see someone like that in action, I began to wonder quite how he did it. But being his father, I was able simply to ask him. And he told me it was all about confidence.

"The way he tells it, all the other things -- good looks and charm, which he's got, though god knows he didn't get them from either of his parents -- good manners, money, all the rest of it -- they only get you so far if you don't have the confidence to use them, with the opposite sex or for anything else. Whereas, if you've got confidence, it can let you fake most of those things anyway."

"So he's a cocky bastard."

"Yes, he is, I'm afraid. But then I asked him where he got all the confidence from, and he just shrugged and that he got it from all the women. Success feeds on success, I said. But he said no, it wasn't being good at getting women into bed that made him confident, it was what they did there -- the actual sex, in fact."

"In other words, he's sex-mad as well as cocky."

"Maybe. But then I thought about, well, some things -- some experiences -- and I came to the conclusion that he might be onto something. You don't even have to be terribly good in bed -- just ready to give and take some pleasure, and doing it with someone who feels the same way."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure that he's wonderful. But what's that got to do with me getting screwed up by you two?"

Ed leaned forward. "You promised to be honest," he said, "so I'm going to ask you two questions, which are quite important. First -- in all your life before you met Nicholas, how many men had you slept with?"

Rebecca scowled, but played along. "One," she snapped.

"Uh-huh. And how many in the couple of months since you dropped him?"

There was a pause. "Three," Rebecca muttered eventually.

"And in the same time, you've quit your job and gone back to making something of your life. You also came right up to me and challenged me when you realised that you might have something to complain about, and by the way, you're looking better these days -- I like the new hairstyle." (Rebecca was wearing her dark hair in a simple but neat bob; her old plain shoulder-length cut and untidy fringe were gone.) "Annoying though Nick can be, I do think that his theory may have something to it."

"Oh, right," Rebecca glared. "So you and him were doing me a favour."

"By the looks of things -- maybe."

"I still say that you're both bastards."

"Oh, they are, love." The other woman had evidently not stopped eavesdropping the conversation, and once again she was craning over Rebecca's shoulder. "They'll just use you; I say that you should use 'em right back. Hi, Ed."

"Hello, Gina." Ed smiled. "Sorry, I've forgotten my manners. Becca, this is Gina, the person you didn't think to ask about when you were chasing me. Gina, this is Becca."

Rebecca gawped as Gina dragged a chair round to join them at their table and planted a kiss on Ed's cheek. Gina was a red-haired woman in her twenties, pale-skinned and dressed casually, who now smiled at them both. "Hi Becca. Sorry I didn't say hello earlier, but you two were deep in conversation, so I thought that I'd leave you to it for a while."

"But you eavesdropped!" Rebecca accused.

"Yeah, well, call me nosy, but this is a public place, and it's my man you're talking to. Anyway, you've only just got onto the good bit. Let's hear about these three men."

"None of your business!" Rebecca snapped.

"No, but I'm curious. I know how it is when you break up with Nick. Me, I moped around for a while, shagged one total loser, then sort of almost got Nick back except that he'd got Louise by then, and then I got Ed." She smiled happily. "Well, me and Louise got Ed. It was that sort of night. But I hung onto him."

Rebecca seemed stunned into total silence, so after a while, Gina continued. "And by the way, you owe me. It was my flat you were using when you were screwing Nick."

"Yours? I didn't know..." Rebecca almost squealed.

"I don't suppose that you ever asked," Ed murmured.

"I'll let you off," said Gina, "just so long as you do spill the beans on those three lucky guys."

"It's still none of your business," Rebecca muttered.

"No," said Ed to Gina, "it isn't. Anyway, I'm sure that Becca has got quite enough to think about, and we were supposed to be going out to dinner."

"Oh, no," said Gina, "you can't just run the poor girl through the mangle and then throw her away, even if that is what she did to Nick. We can get an extra seat at that restaurant, I'm sure."

Ed looked bemused, then turned to Rebecca. "Okay, your choice," he said.

"Yeah," Gina added. "You can go off and eat a whole tub of chocolate ice cream while sticking pins in dolls of Ed and Nick, or you can come along with us and make Ed feel guilty all the way through his dinner."

Rebecca scowled hard at her coffee for a long minute. Then she looked up. "Okay," she said, "I still don't believe you people, but I'll give you a chance to explain yourselves more."

"Attagirl," said Gina. "Men come and go, but you can rely on dinner. Ed, you call the place." She stood up and threw on a long coat. Ed shrugged and pulled out his mobile phone as the group straggled out of the coffee shop.

He hoped to speak to Gina on the way to the restaurant, but she fell deep into conversation with Rebecca, talking to her about local bands which he'd never heard of. In fact, he was largely left out of any discussion until they were seated at the restaurant, and had ordered their food and a bottle of wine. Only then did Rebecca turn to him.

"Okay," she said, "if this confidence thing is so great, what's it done for you?"

He looked at the third person present. "Well," he said, "I suppose you could say that it got me Gina."

"No," said Gina. "It let you keep me, maybe. But I gave it to you." She smiled mischievously. "So to speak."

"So how did you and Gina -- get together?" Rebecca asked.

"It's a long story," said Ed, "but I guess that you could say it was partly down to Nick."

"Still sounds like it mostly works for him, then," Gina commented.

Ed shook his head. "Actually, there's another thing I think it did, even without me trying. How long did we work together?"

"Bit less than a year, maybe."

"Right. And when did you notice me -- first start paying attention to me?"

Rebecca scowled. "Two or three months ago, I suppose."

"Right," said Ed.

"Yeah -- right," Gina agreed. "You decided that he was worth going after once I'd given him enough confidence to look cool."

Rebecca looked daggers at both of them. "But there were lots of things going on there. You two don't know anything about me or my life!"

"No," Gina allowed, "but, well, about that. You said that you'd had just one, well, one real boyfriend before Nick, but you've been doing a lot more in that line since. So what do you reckon changed?"

Rebecca scowled again. "Lots of things," she said. "Okay, I admit, what happened with Nick gave me some ideas. And at the same time, I was feeling angry with Ed -- he kept ignoring me, and yet his own son seemed to like me. God, I was stupid to think that..."

"No you weren't," Gina interrupted. "Nick liked you okay."

"He said so, did he?"

"Yeah -- but the fact is, Nick likes almost all women. It's part of his secret. I still don't know why you dumped him, if you hadn't worked out what we'd done yet."

"Because he was just a way to have fun when Ed was ignoring me! But I knew that he was Ed's son, so he felt like second best. And I wanted to get back at the whole family. Okay, okay -- I was a bit screwed up. And I did feel bad after I dropped him. That's why..." She paused.

"Yes?" Gina prompted.

"That's why I went out and grabbed someone else. I took my mind off it, and tried out this stuff about using men before they used me."

"Who was the, err, unlucky man?" Ed asked.

"Just some guy who was working lunchtimes at a bar in town on that Sunday. I was pissed off enough to dive straight in there for a drink, and he said something about drinking alone, and I almost told him where to get off. But then I saw he was quite cute, so I said thanks instead, and got talking to him -- asked him when he got off work..."

****

She was waiting when he slipped out of the back entrance of the bar. "Hi," she said.

"Hello again," he said. "You're still free?"

"For a few hours."

"And not so angry with the guy that you want to get blind drunk?"

"No. That was just a first reaction, you know? I've got better ways to get him out of my system."

"That's good."

"Yeah, it is. Wanna help?"

"What have you got in mind?"

"Where do you live?"

He lived in a flat a few minutes away. The moment they were through the door, she pushed him against the wall and jammed her mouth against his while dragging at his shirt. He grabbed one of her buttocks in each hand, and half-walked, half-carried her to his bedroom. Once there, however, she pushed him onto the bed with a barked "Sit down!", and then stood back and began, very slowly at first, to remove her clothes. Once she was down to bra and knickers, however, he grabbed her by the hips and pulled her onto the bed, spoiling her attempts at imperious command. He pushed his own trousers and underpants half-way down his thighs, revealing a growing erection, then grabbed her and unfastened her bra. He clamped his mouth to her breasts as she let him pin her to the bed, then he pulled back, making space for himself to pull her knickers off her. Then he produced a condom from somewhere and quickly put it on his cock.

"Okay," she said, looking at him as she spread her legs wide, "all yours."

He knelt between her thighs and took his cock in one hand, then placed it at her cunt lips and pushed. She gasped and then smirked. "Okay," she said again, "that's right!"

As he thrust into her, she suddenly realised -- men could be different, in small but interesting ways, here just as elsewhere. She had already experienced two very different lovers, but she had seen the difference between those two as a matter of Nick simply being better, more considerate and less rushed than Graeme, her first. But this man was different again, different in the way he kissed her, in his timing and the feel of his chest against her breasts and the size and shape of his cock in her cunt. She clamped her legs around his, kicking at his trousers to move them further down as he pounded into her.

Later, she decided that he had been quite considerate, making sure to push her all the way to orgasm before he let go himself, but at the time, the fucking felt like a furious race -- and she was happy with that, as pulses of pleasure spread from her cunt and clitoris throughout her body. Her hips bucked and thrust against him, and they both began to grunt and groan animalistically. She did reach climax first, though, clawing at his back and moaning seconds before she felt him pulsing inside her. After that, he relaxed, but she clamped her arms and legs around him, rocking steadily under him until another orgasm built itself within her cunt and then flooded through her body like a wave. Only then did she release him, and he rolled off and lay beside her, fondling her breasts with a smile.

"Thanks," she said, "I needed that." And she realised that this was nothing other than the simple truth.

"I could tell," he said.

She threw her arms above her head and grinned at the ceiling. "Yeah," she said, "that does it!" She twisted round and kissed him briefly on the cheek -- and then she rolled away, sat up, and began gathering up her clothes.

He watched her, smiling wryly. "No hangover this way?" he asked.

"Nope," she said, "just a clear head."

She finished dressing and strolled with what she hoped was casual ease to the door, and then looked back at him. "That was nice," she said, "see you around, maybe."

****

"God, I was crazy there," Rebecca said. "Grabbing that guy for a quick screw... Pathetic, really."

"Wow," said Gina, "I don't know about pathetic -- you'd turned your ideas right around. Even if it was a bit crazy, it was still you seeing what you wanted and going out and getting it. Got Nick out of your system, like you said. No harm done."

"I was messing that guy around, though, wasn't I? I don't want to be as bad as you people."

"I wouldn't worry about him," Ed said. "A nice looking guy working in a bar -- he'll get plenty of offers. But he accepted yours. Confidence, Becca."

Then the starter arrived, and the three of them spent a few minutes eating. Ed, feeling that Gina was best at taking the lead here, sat back, pouring wine when it was wanted.

Eventually, they finished that course, and Gina turned back to Rebecca. "Anyway," she said, "it sounds like that's the only one you're at all worried about -- the only bollocks-to-all-men, get-things-out-of-your-system sort of fuck you've had. But you said that there were three in the last couple of months. So the other two must've been different, right?"

"Sort of," Rebecca answered, "but the second -- well, that was kind of revenge sex too, at least to begin with. It's just it was about hating someone else."

"Wow. Maybe you do have a few issues. Okay, who was that one about?"