Page 91 of Still Me
We sat in silence, listening to the kitchen clock ticking, the air leaden. I felt crushed under the weight of the things unsaid between us.
Sam took a long swig of his tea. I wanted him to leave. I thought I might die if he did.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally. “About the other night. I never wanted to... Well, it was badly judged.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t speak anymore.
“I didn’t sleep with her. If you won’t hear anything else, I do need you to hear that.”
“You said—”
He looked up.
“You said... nobody would ever hurt me again. You said that. When you came to New York.” My voice emerged from somewhere in my chest. “I never thought for a moment you would be the one to do it.”
“Louisa—”
“I think I’d like you to go now.”
He stood heavily and hesitated, both hands on the table in front of him. I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t see the face I loved about to disappear from my life forever. He straightened up, let out an audible breath and turned away from me.
He pulled a package from his inside pocket and placed it on the table. “Merry Christmas,” he said. And then he walked to the door.
I followed him back down the corridor, eleven long steps, and then we were on the front porch. I couldn’t look at him or I would be lost. I would plead with him to stay, promise to give up my job, beg him to change his job, not to see Katie Ingram again. I would become pathetic, the kind of woman I pitied. The kind of woman he had never wanted.
I stood, my shoulders rigid, and I refused to look any farther than his stupid, oversized feet. A car pulled up. A door slammed somewhere down the street. Birds sang. And I stood, locked in my own private misery in a moment that stubbornly refused to end.
And then, abruptly, he stepped forward and his arms closed around me. He pulled me to him, and in that embrace I felt everything that we had meant to each other, the love and the pain and the bloody impossibility of it all. And my face, unseen by him, crumpled.
I don’t know how long we stood there. Probably only seconds. But time briefly stopped, stretched, disappeared. It was just him and me and this awful dead feeling creeping from my head to my feet, as if I were turning to stone.
“Don’t. Don’t touch me,” I said when I couldn’t bear it anymore. My voice was choked and unlike itself, and I pushed him back, away from me.
“Lou—”
Except it wasn’t his voice. It was my sister’s.
“Lou, could you just—sorry—get out of the way, please? I need to get past.”
I blinked, and turned my head. My sister, her hands raised, wastrying to edge past us from the narrow doorway to the path. “Sorry,” she said. “I just need to...”
Sam released me, quite abruptly, and walked away with long strides, his shoulders hunched and rigid, just pausing as the gate opened. He didn’t look back.
“Is that our Treena’s new bloke arriving?” said Mum, behind me. She was wrenching off her apron and straightening her hair in one fluid movement. “I thought he was coming at four. I haven’t even put my lippy on... Are you all right?”
Treena turned and, through the blur of my tears, I could just make out her face as she gave a small, hopeful smile. “Mum, Dad, this is Eddie,” she said.
And a slim black woman in a short flowery dress gave us a hesitant wave.
19
As it turns out, as a distraction from losing the second great love of your life, I can highly recommend your sister coming out on Christmas Day, especially with a young woman of color called Edwina.
Mum covered her initial shock with a flurry of overeffusive welcomes and the promise of tea making, shepherding Eddie and Treena into the living room, pausing momentarily to give me a look that, if my mother had been the type to swear, would have saidWTAFbefore she disappeared back down the corridor to the kitchen. Thom emerged from the living room, yelled, “Eddie!” gave our guest a huge hug, waited on jiggy feet to be handed his present and ripped it apart, then ran off with a new Lego set.
And Dad, utterly silenced, simply stared at what was unfolding before him, like someone dumped into a hallucinogenic dream. I saw Treena’s uncharacteristically anxious expression, felt the rising sense of panic in the air, and knew I had to act. I murmured at Dad to close his mouth, then stepped forward and held out my hand. “Eddie!” I said. “Hi! I’m Louisa. My sister will no doubt have told you all the bad stuff.”
“Actually,” Eddie said, “she’s only told me wonderful things. You live in New York, don’t you?”
