The Marriage Gap Year, page 9
Well, fuck me.
Chapter Thirteen
Emma twitched as she became aware of the chill spreading up her bare leg. She woke, groggy, and pulled her exposed limb back inside the nest of warm covers. Her eyes opened and took in the empty space beside her. She rolled onto her back and slowly rubbed her face and temples, at once disappointed and relieved to see Erik gone.
The muffled flush of the toilet in the other room came through the wall. She turned toward the closed bedroom door, listening for movement in the living room. She half expected to hear the clunk of the lock on the front door opening, almost wanted it to end that way. It would be easier if he just left. It would save them the awkwardness. She could pretend it never happened. It would also avoid the moment when he realized what she looked like in the sober light of day.
Then she heard footsteps and the rustling of a paper bag. She sat up and arranged some pillows behind her, smoothed out her hair. The footsteps drew closer until his shadow dimmed the light streaming in from the gap under the door. The door opened slowly, and Erik walked in, carrying a box of fresh pastries. Emma was slightly nauseated by their sweet, doughy aroma.
“Hey,” he said, putting the baked goods down on the bed. “Didn’t know what you liked, so I got a bunch of stuff.”
“Thanks,” she said, patting down the bed covers in front of her.
“And here’s your swipe card for the door.” He handed her the card. “It was on the counter. I didn’t want to wake you.”
She nodded and put the security card on her nightstand. He took off his shirt and tossed it on the floor. His skin, smooth and taut. Emma felt her eyes follow the pleasing outline of his torso, from the roundness of his muscular shoulders down to the narrowness of his waist. He undid his jeans, let them fall to the floor and lay down on the bed. It was an odd thing, presumptuous and intimate, as if he was already more comfortable around her than she was around him. How could he be so cool and collected? Was it habit?
“You want one of these?” He held out the box of pastries.
“Maybe in a minute. You go ahead.”
“Okay,” he said, and picked out a glazed doughnut from the box. How could he look like that and eat this stuff? She might as well staple that doughnut right onto her hips. She tore a small piece off the top of a blueberry muffin. The oily dough soothed her nausea. “Hmmm,” she said, more to make him happy than in appreciation of the muffin. She sucked the purple smudge of blueberry juice from her thumb, saving herself from having to wash the stain out of the sheets.
“Want to do something today?” he said through a mouth full of food. “It’s okay if you don’t.”
She wanted him gone. And she needed him to be less nice to make it easier to ask him to leave. This was sweet and everything, but she needed space to figure out how she felt about what had happened, without having to consider him and his needs. “What time is it?”
“About 9:30.” He stretched out on the bed.
She groaned.
“You okay?” he said earnestly.
She closed her eyes. “Feel like shit. You don’t?”
“Not really,” he yawned.
Emma glanced at him sideways. “Well, that sounds nice.” She flopped back on the bed, put her arm across her face to shield her from the flash of sunlight under the blind.
“I’ll get going.” He sat up, slowly. “Give you some space.”
“Sorry, I’m not –”
“It’s okay.” He smiled. “Honestly.” He fished around for his stuff, which was strewn on the floor: a sock over here, another over there. He took his time, as if he knew she was watching his round muscular butt with its fading tan lines as he bundled together the scattered clothes. “You mind if I have a quick shower though?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’ll make some coffee.”
“Oh, I don’t drink coffee.” He scooped up his jeans. “Got any matcha powder?”
She shook her head.
“No worries. I just need a shower and some sunlight.” He stretched and padded out of the room.
Emma rested her head on the pillows, looked up at the ceiling.
“Mind if I use your towel?” his voice echoed from the bathroom.
“There’s more in the cupboard in there.”
Some shuffling and the switching of lights. The whirring of the exhaust fan.
“What cupboard?”
She rolled her eyes. “The one behind the big mirror.” She listened for movement.
“Okay, got it.”
Emma lightly banged the back of her head against the padded headboard. “Oh my god,” she groaned. He was sweet, and last night was a thrill, the softness of his touch and the hardness of him inside her. But this morning she just wanted to be alone, to figure out what this meant and what to do next. His being here made everything feel more involved and complicated than she wanted it to be.
The hiss and trickle of the shower came through the thin walls.
Would she tell Rob about this? She wanted to. Why was that? To hurt him? To absolve her guilt? Maybe both. But also because last night had been a new experience for her and she was used to sharing new experiences with Rob. She pulled the covers aside and swung her legs out of bed.
Sitting up, she squinted in the shaft of daylight shining through a gap in the blinds, which made this situation feel real, as in the things that happened in here had consequences out there.
She was shaking, a twitch in her hand, her legs. It wasn’t the booze. She hadn’t had that much. It was fear. There was no coming back from this. What had seemed fun and adventurous last night now felt reckless in the sharp light of day.
Emma was a bad person. She’d cheated on her husband and used Erik. Neither of them deserved to get pulled into the messiness of her life. She was a basket case. Dr Priya would disapprove of her behavior too.
Emma needed to talk to Kendry. She always had a way of putting things into perspective. She’d know what to do.
The bedroom door opened a crack and Erik stuck his head in. It was strange and intimate to recognize the floral waft of her own shampoo coming off him.
“Hey,” he smiled. “Mind if I use some of your deodorant?”
“It’s there,” she said, pointing to the dresser. He walked in, trousered, but shirtless.
God, he looked good.
Chapter Fourteen
Rob signed onto the register at the building site. He didn’t get to the beachside suburb of St Kilda much anymore. Even so, he had no idea this mansion existed, tucked away behind a high stone wall so close to Fitzroy Street where backpackers cruised all summer long.
The front of the house had that solid ornateness of a Federation trophy home. It was probably built from old gold rush money, yesterday’s bitcoin. Scaffolding spanned the width of the place where a couple of women were fixing the wooden fretwork.
Rob stopped a guy who was shouldering a thick beam of oak and asked where he could find Sareena Samad. He was pretty sure he mispronounced the last name.
“Inside,” said the guy, pointing to the archway of the main entrance. Was this some kind of trade school project? Everybody on this site seemed at least twenty years younger than Rob.
Inside the building were more women in hard hats, way more than he was used to seeing on a job site. It was oddly quiet in here too. There was a distant banging and buzzing coming from outside, but in here the screech of power tools was absent. Rob walked past a drop sheet where old-fashioned woodworking tools were neatly laid out: a hatchet, an awl, an assortment of wooden mallets, a leather roll of chiseling tools. At the end of the drop sheet, a young guy with a long beard hand-chiseled a wooden peg, thick as a rolling pin. Rob hadn’t seen a treenail in years. The bearded guy blew sawdust off his creation and turned the peg around in his fingers, holding it up to the light as if it were a rare jewel.
“Looking good, mate,” said Rob. The beard nodded gravely as Rob walked past. Without the hard hat and work boots, this guy would’ve looked at home in the 1800s with his collared shirt and woolen trousers with suspenders. A lot of people in here were dressed like that. Like craft beer people.
Over in the corner, he spotted Sareena, hunched over a trestle table, pinching her fingers to zoom in and out of whatever was on her tablet. She noticed him but kept talking to someone on her earbuds. She raised her index finger. How did she get all that hair to fit under a hard hat?
Rob walked over anyway, his eyes wandering over the woodwork on the ceiling. Nice details. Someone had a sore neck from laying all those timber planks. Long thin parallel lines, like the underbelly of a gray whale. Would’ve taken someone weeks.
Sareena’s conversation ended and Rob moved a little closer, his head still tilted up at the ceiling. “Hmm, stained pine for the ceiling beams?”
“They’re decorative,” she said. “Not load bearing.”
“Still, would’ve thought oak was better. Or cedar? Spiders don’t build webs on cedar wood.”
“Yeah, well, there’s always the dream and the budget. Even rich people get tight-assed about stuff like that.” Rob nodded. “So, what’s up, Rob? As you can see, I’m kinda busy.”
“Got a text from Syed.”
“Hmm.” Sareena kept looking down and zooming in and out of the architectural drawing on her iPad.
“Have a look at this.” She zoomed in. The building plans were old, hand-drawn and delicately shaded in green, purple and blue. Notations were written in calligraphy:
Front Elevation.
Section AB.
Back Elevation.
The penmanship was exquisite. The whole thing was a work of art, ready to put in a frame.
Sareena zoomed in on the base of the building. “Here,” she said, moving aside to let Rob position himself over the screen. “You see?” She scrolled between drawings of the front and back of the building. “It says the ground floor elevation on the front is six inches lower than it is in the back. Now why do you reckon that is?”
Rob leaned down for a closer look at the drawing on the iPad.
“It’s weird, right?” said Sareena. “A drainage thing, maybe?”
Rob looked up from the screen and around the open space he was standing in, getting his bearings. He pointed at a large brick wall in the distance. “This drawing is that bit over there, right?”
“Mmm hmm.” Sareena nodded.
Rob got out from behind the trestle table and walked over to the far wall. He ran his hands over the bricks, his fingers tracing the troughs of mortar between them. Sareena came up behind him. Rob kneeled on the floor. He rapped his knuckles on the bricks about shoulder height. “I reckon there’s a fireplace behind here.”
Sareena smiled. “Why do you think that?”
“Makes sense. I mean, six-inch elevation. Sounds about right for a hearth. Plus, you got some cracking in the mortar here. Probably moisture coming through from behind the wall. Chimney makes sense of that too.”
Sareena nodded. “Not bad, Rob. There’s no fireplace in the drawing though. And no chimney on the roof.”
Rob stood up, slowly, hand on the brick wall to hoist himself up, then dusted his knees. “Don’t know why that would be. Fireplace still makes sense.”
Sareena smiled. “It does. They used to leave them off the drawings sometimes, cuz each fireplace cost more in taxes. Once the drawings got approved, they’d whack in some more fireplaces. The balls, right? But the city guys eventually caught on to the six-inch elevation thing, realized it was as good as saying fireplace.” She laughed. “Cheeky, eh?”
Rob grinned. “Yeah.” He dusted the front of his fleece even though there was nothing there. “So, what was that, a test?”
“Maybe.”
“Did I pass?”
“Nah.” She smiled. “But you were right about the fireplace.”
Rob blushed. “Look…” He scanned the floor. “About the other day. I didn’t like how we left it.”
“Oh, are we a ‘we’ now?”
“Okay, how I left it, then.” He cleared his throat. “Not my best moment. But Syed’s keen on us both working together on that house.”
“Oh, Syed is.” She cocked her head. “And what about you, Rob? Are you okay with that?”
Rob looked around the place, the drop sheets with the old tools, the fine woodwork on the ceiling. “You got an impressive set up here, obviously know what you’re doing.”
“Thank you.” She smiled.
Rob shifted his weight. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a maybe.” Sareena put her hands on her hips. “I’ve got conditions.”
Rob raised his eyebrows. “Like what?”
“You get the permitting and materials ordered, but we use my crew.”
Rob grimaced. He looked over the construction site, the guy with the Ned Kelly beard still chiseling away over Sareena’s shoulder, making pegs for a wooden frame that wouldn’t have a single piece of metal in it. It’d outlast them all. Quality work.
“Fine.” He extended his hand. “But I’m not cheering for the Pies.” He smiled. “If that’s a condition, the deal’s off.”
She laughed and shook his hand.
Chapter Fifteen
Emma waved at Kendry from across the street. She was as tall and elegant as ever, wrapped in a sleek wool coat and a silk scarf. Her red hair tumbled past her shoulders like Boudica, the warrior queen. Emma took a step onto the road. A car honked and she stepped back onto the curb as it sped past. She looked both ways and crossed the road into Kendry’s outstretched arms.
“Oh, darling,” Kendry said, pulling Emma into the soft and fragrant bundle of material around her neck. “Don’t tell me things have got so bad you’re jumping into traffic.” She rubbed Emma’s back as they hugged. “It’s good to see you.”
“So good.” Emma let herself melt into Kendry’s embrace. “It’s been way too long.”
Kendry pulled back, but held Emma by the shoulders. “The only good thing about a crisis is that it brings people together.” Emma sniffed and dabbed at her nose with the sleeve of her coat. “Come on,” said Kendry, looping her arm in Emma’s. “Let’s go have some fun.” They walked down the fancy end of Collins Street, the cars swishing past in the damp streets after morning rain.
“It’s not a crisis,” said Emma.
“Okay, what do you want to call it?”
“I don’t know, it’s more like time out.”
“Hmmm.”
Emma looked up at her friend and frowned dramatically. “What do you mean, hmmm? Don’t give me hmmm.”
Kendry squeezed Emma’s arm and patted her hand. “Remember when I was with Alistair?”
“Oh god.”
“I know. But do you remember what you told me when everything was unraveling, after I found out about his trips to Palm Cove?” Emma shook her head. “You said – and I remember this clear as if it were yesterday – you said I was better off creating the future I wanted on my own than settling for a compromise with someone else.”
Emma frowned. “I said that?”
“You did.” Kendry brushed a strand of hair from her face. “And I remember thinking it sounded stupid, like the kind of thing someone puts on the back of a cereal box for adults, some self-help, high-fiber mush. And I was so mad at you when you said that.”
“I had no idea.” Emma squeezed Kendry’s arm. “You should have told me.”
“I couldn’t have. I was too pissed off. I thought it was an easy thing for you to say, what with your husband and family. I thought you were wrong, too. I thought I could fix things. If only I worked hard enough, got counseling, couples therapy, whatever it took. But – and it pains me to say this – you were right.”
“I was?”
“Yeah, turns out it’s not enough for one person to compromise, the other person has to as well. Who knew, right?” Kendry smiled and leaned her body into Emma’s. “I never understood that. Could have saved myself a stack of money, not to mention time.”
Their matched footsteps found a pleasant rhythm on the sidewalk. “You know,” Emma said, “all that stuff about compromise…I’m not sure I got that either.”
“Great,” said Kendry, smiling. “Neither of us know what we’re doing. We’re both fucked.”
They passed a building site where the machine-gun rattle of some massive drill interrupted their chat. “Where are we going?” Emma shouted.
“Trust me.”
That was Kendry’s catchphrase. She was the queen of out-of-the-way places, always knew that little restaurant no one had heard of yet, always befriended the owner, knew the head chef. She’d been that way since university and it was no surprise that she managed to turn her gregarious nature into a lucrative public relations career. Kendry never tired of openings, soirees and galas, and treated every event as a new opportunity to satisfy her genuine curiosity about what made people tick. She asked people questions and cared about their answers. Other people might assume Kendry was just a persona. They might dismiss her expensive clothes and elongated vowels as an affectation, an act, but it was all genuine, or had been so practiced as to become authentic.
When they got to the Louis Vuitton boutique, Emma stopped and peered into the display window of purses. Kendry joined her. “Do you think I’m a bully?” said Emma.
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“At work. Apparently, some people think I’m a bully. Not sure how I’m supposed to respond to that.”
Kendry turned her head and looked skywards, as if in deep contemplation.
“Shit, Kendry, if you have to think about it.”
“I’m giving it careful consideration.” Kendry took a deep breath. “Okay, the answer’s no,” she said decisively. “You speak your mind, there’s a difference. Bullies only hear their own voices, no one else’s.”
