After he had watched me eat the feast of steamed broccoli, beans on toast topped with cheese, boiled new potatoes drizzled with olive oil, and a white nectarine with natural yogurt, he asked if he could listen to the baby.
“Sure,” I said and he climbed on all fours on the sofa, balancing himself between my legs, lifted my white T-shirt and pressed his ear against my skin.
I watched the top of his head, the blond curls that lay in a circular pattern. I had the urge to reach down and run my fingers through them. To gently stroke his hair like I wanted to do all those years I was in love with him. I wanted him to look up and our gazes to meet, for us to hold each other in a visual embrace. I longed for him to move up until we were face-to-face, for his fingers to start peeling off my clothes. I craved to start taking off his clothes. I wanted …
I threw my head back, started to take deep breaths to help veer my thoughts away from this. The hormones had done this. They’d made me incredibly horny. And, as I’d feared, they had unlocked and let loose in the world the feelings I’d shut away for so long. They hadn’t died, those feelings, they were just incarcerated in a deep dungeon in my heart because whatever I felt was—at the time they started—one-sided, and now moot, because we had both made choices we were happy with. Admittedly, Keith had left me because I’d agreed to have this baby for someone else, but before that I’d been happy with him. Mal was happy with the love of his life, too.
I inhaled again, holding the oxygen in my lungs to help it purge my impure feelings. I brought Stephanie to mind. My friend. His wife. The woman I was doing this for. The woman who would do anything to be able to do this. I could not betray her by allowing myself to fall back in love with her husband.
Thinking of her, putting her in the picture, would usually be enough to stop my emotions and physical urges running away with me. Mal took his head away and I thought it safe to look up. He smiled at my abdomen as though the baby had been telling him something wonderfully insightful. I loved the way his smiles softened his face and sparkled his eyes. Will the baby have his smile, his eyes, his nose? I wondered before I could stop myself.
“Love you, baby,” Mal whispered before he lowered his head again and gently crushed his lips below my belly button.
My heart stopped, it actually stopped beating. Everything around us seemed to stop at the same time, suspended in my disbelief.
Stephanie often talked to the baby, said to it that she loved it, but she had never kissed my belly. She never would, I hoped. I never wanted to be that intimate with her. Mal had never done that before, either—and I did not want to be that intimate with him. It was difficult enough protecting my heart at the moment, I could not do that if he was determined to create more intimacy between us. I could always remind myself that I was having a baby for someone else, I would always be able to cope because I was doing it for someone special. There were only two people in the world I would ever even think of doing this for—Cordy and Mal. No one else. But I could not do this if Mal would not remain a friend. I was constantly fighting my feelings for him, consigning them to hormones—if he was going to act like this, I would go mad. I would start to believe that maybe, possibly … and once that thought started to grow inside me I would be driven insane.
I started to breathe, slow and steady, trying to ignore the pain my heart, which had started beating again, was causing me by speeding in my chest. I had to find a way to tell him that he couldn’t do things like that to me, without revealing that it was emotionally difficult for me. I did not want him to say something to Stephanie and for her to take it the wrong way, for her to begin watching me from the corner of her eye, again; being suspicious of my every move and thinking I was in any way a rival. When she was like that before, she did not seem to understand that I had never been in her way, that he had come alive when he met her and I knew he would never love me or anyone else like he loved her.
Still staring at my stomach, Mal said, “You know what I wish sometimes?”
“No, Mal, I do not know what you wish sometimes, but I am sure you are going to tell me,” I said, wondering how soon I could ask him to get off me. He was far too close, and I couldn’t take much more of it, he was suffocating me just by being around me. I could feel myself slipping steadily down the slope of closeness into this moment with its quiet, soothing chat, this intimate pose, and if I did not change things, get him to leave, I would fall in, and lie back at the bottom of the slope and allow the feelings to consume me. I would forget about Stephanie, I would forget about telling him not to do this, I would start to indulge myself in him and I was scared of where that might lead. Not only with me starting to want Mal, but me not being able to distance myself from the baby.
He looked up at me, our gazes met as they often did in my hormone-induced fantasies, and he smiled, his mouth a crescent of wistful happiness.
“What?” I asked. “What are you looking at me like that for? And what do you wish sometimes?”
“That this was our baby, and we were doing this for real.”
I felt the physical punch as my heart exploded. I pushed my hand over my chest to ease the pain as the blood in my body ran cold in horror.
Mal immediately realized what he had done and scrambled back onto his haunches, cowering at the end of my sofa like a frightened, wide-eyed gargoyle on the edge of a church roof. “I didn’t mean that how it might have sounded. I, erm … You can never tell Steph that. Ever.” He spoke quickly, real fear in his voice, his hands raised in total surrender. “It’s really nothing to do with her. I promise. It’s just … It’s just, at one point I thought we’d be having a baby together, that’s all, and I shouldn’t have said it, I know. But there’s no one else on earth I could say it to. I’m sorry. Pretend I didn’t say anything.”
Slowly and carefully, I swung my feet onto the floor, just as precisely I stood up, having to take a few seconds to check I was steady before I turned to him.
“Get out,” I said quietly and simply.
Mal closed his eyes in regret, shook his head and grimaced. “Nove, I didn’t—”
“I mean it, get out,” I said, talking over him. I was trembling, but my words came out firm and sure. “Get out and don’t ever come back here without your wife.”
Mal stood. I noticed he was shaking as he rolled down his shirtsleeves and buttoned up the cuffs. He reached down and picked up his discarded jacket, slipped it on. His lips were curled into his mouth as he chewed on them. I led the way out of my living room to the front door, my fingers bunched deep into the palms of my hands to hide how much I was shaking. I reached for the doorknob, and then realized that I couldn’t let this pass. I had been turning myself inside out to distance myself from him and he had …
I rounded on him. He took a step back as he saw the look on my face. “You never … You never wanted me. You’ve made it so clear over the years that you never wanted me, that you’ve never thought of me in that way, even though you knew how I felt. How could you be so cruel and say that to me now? Because I’m growing this for you? You think it’s all right to say something like that to me? And what am I supposed to say? What am I supposed to do when you and Stephanie are playing happy families? How am I supposed to feel?
“Do you have any idea how hard this is for me? How I have to keep reminding myself that this isn’t my baby?” I shook my head. “I don’t understand why you said that, Mal, why you would think saying something so cruel would be OK, but I can’t see you again without Stephanie, to make sure you can’t say anything like that to me ever again.”
I looked him over, trying to forget all the reasons why I loved him.
He stayed silent.
“Don’t come back without Stephanie, OK?”
Reluctantly, his lips mashed together, his gaze fixed somewhere to the side of me, he nodded. That day at the coach station the morning after he had rejected me and I had asked him without asking him to give me space, to let me get over him in peace, suddenly unfurled itself in my mind.
Vivid and clear. His reluctance then as he agreed. My relief that he was going to let me go, set me free.
I opened the door wider and walked away, not wanting to watch him leave.
In front of the sofa, I stood still as I stepped back in time and the pain from before resurfaced.
The sheer magnitude of it had engulfed me the moment I had locked the door of my room in halls. I had paced the floor with my coat still on, wringing my hands, feeling it all build up until I had to run to the sink and physically purge what I could by throwing up. In front of my bed, my knees buckled, and I had buried my face in the scratchy waffle blanket, dug my hands into it and begun to cry. I cried from humiliation. From knowing I’d never know love like that again. From wondering what would become of me if the one person on earth who was meant to love me didn’t, couldn’t.
In the present, I paced in front of the sofa, wringing my hands, feeling it all again. I didn’t think it could hurt like before, but his throwaway line, something said as though it was nothing important, brought it all back, brought it all home. How could someone who cared even a little for me say something like that when I was already fragile? It didn’t take a genius to see I was fragile, so why couldn’t he?
I heard the click of the front door, and my stomach dipped. I did not want to see him again. With or without Stephanie, I did not want to see him again. Like any friend, he did my head in sometimes, and he knew it, but now he had changed focus, now he was trying to do my heart in again. And I did not want to see him.
“What makes you think I never wanted you?” He made me jump twice: once because he was still here, then again because he sounded so angry.
I stopped my pacing and looked up at him. He was angry: it crisscrossed his features and burned in his eyes.
“What makes you think I never wanted you?” he repeated.
“You told me.”
“I told you?” Mal was genuinely confused. His eyes seemed to search through time, his memories, for when he uttered those words. “When did I tell you that?”
I blinked at him. Had I imagined it? Anyone seeing his confusion would think I had. “I came to visit you in my first year at Oxford, remember? We went out, and I tried to tell you how I felt, that I loved you, and you stopped me by saying you could never be interested in a woman who was your friend. Friends shouldn’t be anything else, you said. You shouldn’t think about sex and certainly not talk about love in any other terms. Remember?
“This was three weeks after you’d been up to visit me on your own for the first time and we almost … You touched me like that for the first time and then you changed your mind and couldn’t go through with it. Then you said that thing about not being interested in a woman who was your friend. So, yes, it was you, you made me think you never wanted me.”
“That was years ago,” he said. “I was eighteen, for God’s sake. I’d just started having sex. I was surrounded by girls who noticed me for the first time in my life, I was experimenting, I didn’t want to be experimenting with you when there was so much at risk.” He flopped his hands up and down. “But it was crazy because all I did was want you.
“Every time I went near a girl I would wonder afterwards if it would be better with you. It started to drive me out of my mind, because immediately after sex I’d start thinking about you even though you were only a friend. I couldn’t understand what was going on when I’d never thought of you in that way. And that weekend … I wanted to, God did I want to. I came to visit you without Cordy for that reason. When I saw you naked in the bathroom, something clicked in me and suddenly you were a girl, a woman to me. I understood why I’d been so confused. That’s when my obsession kicked in properly. I even called a couple of people I slept with Nova. So I came up to get it over with. To see if you were interested and to basically, well, I wanted you.
“But I had to stop because I knew it couldn’t be a one-night thing with you. If we did that, then we’d be together forever and I wasn’t ready for that. And I couldn’t let you tell me you loved me. I couldn’t lie to you and say I didn’t feel it back, but then I couldn’t say it back. Not right then. But none of that meant I’d never want you. Who knows what they want at eighteen? Who makes a forever decision at eighteen and sticks to it for the rest of their lives?”
“OK, Mal, that was all when we were eighteen. But what about since then? You’ve never once shown me that you’ve felt anything like that for me, that you want me. In, what, ten, eleven years, nothing. Not one sign that you were interested. You never even went out with anyone like me. Not once. Every single one of them was thinner or larger, shorter or taller, prettier or more unattractive, but no one was like me. I had to put up with them—and let’s not forget that all of them without fail hated me—even though they were reminders as to why you didn’t love me.
“And then you go and marry someone who couldn’t be anything less like me if she tried. We are such polar opposites it’s like you sought her out to spite me and to prove that you could never stand to be with anyone like me. So don’t rewrite history when it’s been clear from your actions what you truly felt.”
“Maria had your smile but not your eyes. Angeli had your eyes but not your nose. Julie had your turn of phrase but not your wit. Claire had your ambition but not your charm. Alice sort of had your scent but not your laugh. Jane had your hands but not your arms. Do you want me to go on? Because I can list every woman I went out with for how she was and wasn’t like you.
“And, yes, I married Steph because she’s nothing like you. It was an end to my torture. Finally. Finally, I had someone who didn’t remind me of you for all the ways she wasn’t you. I could start from scratch with her. I could learn what love was about without it all coming back to you.”
I said nothing because I was astounded and doubtful in equal measures. It sounded plausible, but then implausible. We spoke almost every day, so how could he have not let something slip in all that time if it was true? And why didn’t I sense it? Because I didn’t bother to try to read Mal anymore? He had been such a fixture in my life I always assumed I knew what he felt, so maybe I didn’t bother to do what I did with other people and try to experience him on every level.
“I came back early from traveling because it had started again. That obsession I had with you—I was meeting women, and wondering if it would be better with you. And I missed you. It drove me crazy but I knew it was because I was ready now. So I came back, ready to settle down. To get married, have children with you.
“I … I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this after all this time. I had a ring made, platinum, inlaid with diamonds and rose quartz. Someone told me that rose quartz was the stone of love and romance, and I knew you were into all that, so I had a ring made with it. That’s why I asked you to meet me at the airport. I was going to get down on one knee right there in the Arrivals area to ask you to marry me. When I saw you, I knew without a doubt it was what I wanted. I had the ring in my hand, my heart was in my throat, but I was ready. I was going to do it. And then, there he was—your boyfriend.”
I was suddenly back there in the airport: the sound of the Arrivals area, the heat, the excitement of people being reunited. I remembered the way he had held me so close, his lips lingering on my neck, the way he stared at me after he had kissed me on the mouth, the shock and horror that passed his face when he saw Keith. It was all clear: I understood it now. I’d always thought there was a vital piece missing from the jigsaw that was that memory; now I understood.
“Do you remember what I asked you when Keith went to pay for the parking ticket?” Mal asked.
We were back in the car park, standing beside Keith’s old black Audi. Mal, more muscular than when he left, gray from the jetlag, unshaven and disheveled; me, unable to contain my excitement because he was home.
“Do you remember what I asked you?” Mal repeated.
I nodded. I remembered. Of course I remembered.
Mal came closer, cupped his hand on my face, tipped my hea
d up to look into his eyes. “Do you remember what I asked you?” he asked for the third time.
“ ‘Is he what you really want?’ ” I said.
“And do you remember what you said to me?”
I nodded.
“What did you say?”
I didn’t want to repeat it. I didn’t want to repeat the words that ruined it.
“What did you say?” he insisted.
I took a deep breath. “ ‘I’d marry him tomorrow if he asked me,’ ” I whispered. I hadn’t meant it. Keith and I were back together and we were back in the first throes of giddy, giggly lust. If he had asked me, I would have dumped him. But I said it because I wanted Mal to accept Keith. I wanted him to be happy, and thinking I was happy would do that.
“I was stupid to think that you’d be waiting for me to get my act together. But when you said that, I knew it was over. You didn’t want me anymore.”
“I didn’t mean it. I thought you didn’t like Keith. I thought if you thought me and him were serious, then you would be happy for me. I thoug—” We messed up. We messed everything up. “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh,” I breathed.
The pressure of his hand on my face increased, and I moved my hands to his face as he lowered his head until we were a fraction away from each other. If one of us moved, even a little, our lips would meet. We’d kiss. It wouldn’t be a quick hello or goodbye, it wouldn’t be him larking about in front of our family, it would be a proper, love-filled kiss. I’d never wanted anyone to cover my lips with theirs as much as I wanted him to at that moment. I’d never wanted anyone to not kiss me as much as I didn’t want him to at that moment.
His eyes slipped shut as he rested his forehead on mine.
Nothing could happen. Nothing could ever happen. We’d made our choices and nothing could happen.
“God, Nova, God,” he whispered as I closed my eyes.
We stood, unable to let each other go, unable to come together, prisoners of our own dishonesty.