Page 46 of Spiralling Skywards
We dried ourselves off. I found a comb and a hair tie in my bag, rubbed face cream on my face, and pulled Liam’s T-shirt back over my head. He wore his boxers and his chunky cardigan. We ordered pizza from a number he had stored on his phone, luckily it was the place my brother used and was the best in town. I drank wine from a mug and Liam drank beer straight from the bottle as we sat on his bed and ate.
“You know I have a perfectly good sofa and a television just across the road, don’t you? My place is empty. We wouldn’t be disturbed.”
I watched him as he sucked pizza topping from his thumb, my internal muscles clenched so tightly that I had to fight not to roll my eyes at my very predictable self.
“Yeah, but that’s just it. Over the road isyourplace, this isours.”
His reply caused my heart to skip a beat and then pick up four.
“Ours,” I said it aloud, trying it on my tongue. I’d never had anything that was “ours”with a man before.
“Yeah,ours.”
“I’ve never done the ‘ours’thing before, have you?”
He visibly flinched and then looked away. The mouthful of pizza I’d just swallowed lodged like cardboard in my throat. I took a gulp of my wine to help force it down, where it then crashed and sat like a brick in my stomach.
Despitehimnot looking atme, I never took my eyes from his face. He threw the slice of pizza he’d been eating back into the box. He closed the lid and lent over the side of the bed to place it on the floor, retrieving his beer as he sat back up. He took a swig, before pushing himself back to lean against the headboard.
I watched a nerve tick in his jaw as he set the bottle down but didn’t look at me. My skin prickled. I had no clue if I was feeling hot, cold or numb.
“I have actually, yeah.” His eyes finally found mine as he spoke. “C’mere, I wanna talk to ya.” He tapped his legs, and I moved to straddle them, trying my hardest to ignore the acid boiling in my belly.
I sipped my wine, he cleared his throat.
“I was actually married at one time.”
Married.
Was.
My heart switched from a comfortable trot to a canter. He cleared his throat again, looked around the room and then looked back at me.
“It didn’t work out. It should never really have happened in the first place if I’m honest. It lasted a little over two years, but it was bad. From the very beginning, it was bad.”
I wanted to ask why. I wanted to ask what was bad. I wanted to ask around seven hundred and ninety-four questions, but I didn’t. I remained silent.
“We both fucked around. Neither of us were faithful, but she, she erm . . .” He reached up and around to the back of his neck. “I never got caught. She, on the other hand, took someone back to our apartment in Sydney. I came home from a meeting in Melbourne a day early, rather than go home to her, to our house in Perth where I thought she was waiting for me, I decided to have a night in Sydney on my own, or . . .” He trailed off again.
My heart couldn’t decide if it wanted to maintain the canter or break out into a full on gallop.
“Or maybe find some company. I walked into the apartment and she was there, fucking a business colleague of mine. I left. That was two years ago.”
And? There had to be more. And then what?
“You divorced her?”
“We’ve been separated since then. There were business interests that . . .”
White noise rushed through my ears, escaping through my pores and bouncing off my skin.
No. No. No. No. No.
“You’re still married?”
“On paper yes, but I filed a month ago, I’m just waiting on the signed paperwork to be returned.”
My heart. My heart. It skipped the gallop, threw its rider, bucked off the saddle, broke free from its reins, and bolted. The pain this pace caused in my chest took my breath away.
Married.
Heis married.
And I’m just like her.
