Naked Hero - The Journey Away

part of it and then she notices me again.”
    “Do you do the same?” asked Lewis.
    “No! She is always in my life. But I am an author, not a tennis player.”
    “You soppy old mare!” Lewis exclaimed with a nudge. “She’s very lucky.”
    Marie accepted the compliment, returning the smile that came with the words. Then she linked her arm with Lewis’s. It was her turn now. “Thank you! But it is a strange question to have asked me, Lewis… without a reason. Have you met someone?”
    “No! Not really. It’s more of an infatuation that I need to kick into touch.”
    “An infatuation!” Marie exclaimed, her heart racing with excitement, because she didn’t need to ask the question she then did. “With whom? ...Sorry, it’s me now who is being, how do you say it, ‘nosey’, yes?”
    “Ha! Yes, that’s what we say,” answered Lewis. But that wasn’t enough – Marie was repeating the other question, this time with her eyes – empathetic eyes that Lewis felt inclined to oblige. “It’s silly, just someone I met at that party in Sydney last week.”
    “Oh, yes! The man who asked you the question,” Marie said with a knowing nod.
    Lewis pulled away from her, shocked that the full extent of his secret might be out of the bag. “How did you know?”
    “I saw him watching you. He watched you for most of the evening. And I could see your expression when he spoke to you. I’m a writer, Lewis, and I have learned to observe.”
    Relieved that only the tip of this particular iceberg had been uncover, Lewis continued, and unwittingly revealed more. “He’s a sort of writer as well, but not a proper one like you. He puts stuff on his website along with glamour shots of men and other similar stuff. Not quite the high brow work that you do, I’m afraid.”
    “And when did you discover this, Lewis... before or after you met him at the party?”
    “Well, if I’m honest, I had seen his website before - quite a few times as it happens.”
    “I see! And now you have met him in person. How intriguing! He is very handsome. A little bit older than you, but I think that’s what you like. I can understand why you’re so attracted to him.”
    “He’s the most stunning looking man I’ve ever seen,” Lewis admitted. “And yes – I do tend to go for older men... But as I say, he works on the fringe of the porn industry... Well perhaps that’s unfair, but you know what I mean – the press would call it porn, with shots of his bare ass available for all to see! And that’s not so clever for me really, is it?”
    “Perhaps not,” answered Marie, hiding her amusement at the deliciousness of the scenario and the potential that it offered. The man did sound highly inappropriate. But it was not in Marie’s nature to blindly cast aspersions - and Lewis still needed advice, so she continued with a degree of caution. “I don’t actually know him, Lewis, so it is difficult for me to judge. You do like his work, though, no? Just as Chantal liked my work? You probably don’t care for what I do as anywhere near as much as what he does, so what is the problem?”
    Lewis chuckled, and had to concede that she was right, but it was still a problem. “You can be too clever at times. That’s not the point, is it?”
    “If you like him, then try to accept him, and what he does. Why be so concerned about what other people might think. You need to accept yourself, Lewis - if not, then how can you expect other people to accept you? But the party was over a week ago, and you are still thinking about him. Have you spoken since, or met even?”
    “We did speak a couple of days ago. I just needed to chat to someone about something. I thought that he would understand the situation better than anyone else, so I called him. I shouldn’t have really.”
    “And did he understand? Did he help?”
    “Oh, yes. He understood alright. It’s scary the way he seems to understand me. And he probably helped at the time, with what was troubling me. But I’m not sure if it helped me in the wider sense… the call that is… Sorry, I’m not making any sense.”
    It was making a lot of sense to Marie, and she wanted to understand further. “I think there is more to this man than you’re prepared to admit,” she coaxed with a squeeze of his arm. “There are many beautiful people in the world, Lewis, but very few that we think about and call when we feel troubled. Do you want to see him again?”
    “Yes, very much so,” Lewis