sex.
The best bed I’ve slept on these last few months has been at Maine the two nights I stayed up there. Before that I’d been on the impossibly uncomfortable cot in the basement at Elmsbrook. Before that, the bedsit in my flat. And then, before all that, the apartment I shared with Quinn. I’m back there now, where I started. I guess I’ve been sleeping on the couch for years, on and off. I was no stranger to it at home. I’d say something stupidly insensitive and there I’d go, tossing and turning all night. That, in itself, was enough for me to be contrite the following day. It would take her a week to forgive me fully, but at least I’d be back in my bed. But I think that it wasn’t really my bed. She allowed me to use it like she allowed Wade to when it suited her. It turns out I was a guest in my own bed, my own house. But that was my fault. I should have seen things for what they were and done something, anything.
So I’m back on the couch again, but this time it’s for something that might save us, not pull us further apart.
I can’t wait until six. I’m down in the carpark at five thirty, sitting next to Quinn’s cream colored Jeep, counting down the minutes. I can’t wait any longer and I call her, take my bag to the elevator and head on up.
She’s nowhere to be seen when get up there. I call her name and she comes down from the bedroom. She’s still in her top and skirt from work and even after the end of the day she looks absolutely stunning.
I close my eyes for a moment to reset my mind. I’m not here for sex, even if that were possible. I’m here to reconnect, to be her friend.
“Hey,” she says. She walks slowly, like she’s pregnant and walked four blocks, which she has, and I want to take care of her, rub her neck, her shoulders, her feet.
“Work okay?” she asks me like she had so many times before. It’s like I never left and I’m feeling regret and sadness but I’m keeping it from my face. That story is over, I tell myself. I’m writing a new one. She’s wearing her ring, and I’m instantly glad. It was more than just an assignment to her.
“Good,” I say, and then berate myself for single word answers. Communicate damn it. But I don’t want to talk about work, about Wade, about any of that. But I do.
“I think we’re back on track,” I tell her. “I managed to get most of our money back into play.”
“That’s good. How about... are you two..?”
“We’re getting along, if that’s what you mean?”
She nods. “I have a taste for Pizza tonight. That okay?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Some wine?” she asks me and I nod. She pours out two glasses of white and hands one to me. We stand there, not drinking, looking at each other. It’s awkward like hell and I want to stay and I want to run like the devil himself is after me. Instead I clink my glass into hers.
“What are we toasting?” she asks quietly.
“Baby steps,” I say, and she smiles. We take a sip, and then I look down at her glass. “Should you be drinking that?” I ask her.
“Non-alcoholic,” she tells me and goes into the lounge room. She sits with her legs to the side, with her lovely calves exposed, smooth and toned. I sit opposite and try not to look at them.
“How are you going with your assignment?” she asks.
“Slowly. You?”
“It’s coming along. Any thoughts?”
“No cheating,” I say and she laughs.
I laugh too. Any chance I could to cheat on something like this I would take. Also there is an unintended dig at her infidelity that I’m sorry that I just made. She didn’t hear it, luckily.
We talk about her work for a while. She’s in sales and I’ve always said that with the way she looks she could sell anything. She’s wondering how long she can keep going, with her belly and her feet. I tell her she might need someone to take her to and from work as four blocks is too far. She’s become a little independent and resists the idea and it gives me another pang of regret.
We order pizza and eat it at our table. It’s painfully familiar to me. We watch television, sitting on the lounge without touching. Every two steps forward has a step back. She showers and changes into her pyjamas, then watches me struggle with spare sheets on the lounge.
“I’m glad you’re here,” she tells me when I’m done, breathless from fighting, sitting on the end.
“Me too,” I say. “Can I ask you something?”
She nods and sits next to me.
“Are you okay after Saturday? I know it must have been tough.”
She nods. “I feel better, I think. And thinking about our little boy was tough and I started grieving him again, but it’s different this time. I’m at peace with it.”
“I was worried that you’d be thinking about what happened and get stuck, you know.”
“I think that’s why they’ve got us writing the story we want.”
“That makes a lot of sense.”
“I just wonder if what you want is what I want.”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
“I guess we will.”
She places a hand on my knee. “I’m sorry I tried to get you to come to bed with me.”
“It’s fine.”
“I know. I just want you to know that I won’t try that again, at least until the time is right.”
“When will that be I wonder?”
“I don’t know. Soon I hope.”
“Really?”
“Judd...” she says quietly. “You know I miss you and this is driving me crazy.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“I know, but in a way it’s good. When the time is right, it will be so much better. Waiting for something good makes it that way.”
“Did Mary tell you that?”
“Not in so many words. You’ve been so much part of my life for so long that I can’t let you go, and I know there’s so much between us right now, but I still don’t want to lose what we had. What we had at the start.”
“I feel that way too.”
“I know. We know each other so well.” She leans in and kisses me, and I kiss her back, for several minutes. We hadn’t kissed for that long for a long time. I felt like a teenager making out on the backseat or in the last row of a movie. I am so deeply in love with this woman, more and more each day, but I am confused by the past and by memories, things that I cannot get beyond.
We pull apart breathless, like we had done in the street a month ago, and she smiles that wicked smile that a love.
“Something to think about later,” she says in a whisper. She stands and leaves me, walks down the hall. I’m watching her go, watching that beautiful backside disappear into the bedroom. Her light goes off and I’m alone. I take a deep breath, because I’m aware that I’ve been holding it. I switch off the light and lay back and remember what I have always known – that the couch is incredibly uncomfortable.
Thursday
I wake with lips on my forehead. The sun is up and he’s shining rays through the blinds. The city is awake below our apartment. Cars and busses and trucks slide noisily on the street. They were familiar, comforting sounds – sounds that I had missed in my flat – and I found myself settling right into the sleeping around them. I had laid awake for an hour, thinking about that kiss and then fell into slumber sometime after eleven.
She stands above me, staring down, smiling. “Hey, sleepy head,” she says, just like I had done the evening I returned to this place weeks ago.
“Hey,” I say dreamily, and I smile and stretch. “What time is it?” I wonder how long she’s been standing there, watching me.
“Seven,” she tells me. She says nothing else, she doesn’t need to. I know her, I know what she wants: get up, get dressed and get going. I go to work earlier than her and she has always said that I got under her feet.
So I do. I get up. I pack up my bed. I change.
“I’ll call you later?” I ask her, and I sound like I got lucky and I’m being ushered out like a one-night-stand and that I’m promising that I’ll call h
er and we both know I won’t. It’s not like that at all, of course. I didn’t get lucky - and that was my choice - and this was not our first night. And, most importantly, I will call her later.
She nods with toast in her mouth and waves me out. I’m not offended. This was how we parted most mornings. It was just one thing that added in to a whole lot of things that added up to a whole lot of problems. I stand there, waiting until the toast is gone, and move to her. She raises her brows as I stand there, looking into her eyes, her face. Then I kiss her, quickly and tenderly. I can taste the toast and jam on her lips. She hated kissing with food on her mouth but I never cared.
“I didn’t want to start my day without kissing you,” I tell her, and her brows have not gone down. Then they do and she smiles.
“Off you go,” she says and I turn. She slaps my backside playfully and sends me on my way.
Friday
I have to admit, it felt good being back in my home. I guess the flat was a transition place, a place between places. I could never have hoped that I would move back to the start, but then I wanted to be careful about having too much hope too soon.
I look at the paper that I plan to write my homework on. It’s blank and it’s Friday and I don’t know where to start. We’re meeting later after work. I called her like I promised and set up our afternoon coffee date. I’m going to have to tell her I’ve got nothing. She’s going to ask me. I head to work with the paper in my bag, trying to think what I want.
My inaction was confusing to me. I knew what I wanted - at least I have a vision of it. We’re back together, we’re happy. Our