by Lesley Jones
“Never before in my life have I been jealous of a dog.” His eyes shine as he talks.
“Oh yeah, always wanted a cold wet nose, have you, Tiger?”
“If it gains me access to that tight little arse of yours, then fuck yeah, I can do cold and wet.”
There’s a moment of silence as we stare at each other. My heart hammering hard in my chest as I contemplate the conversation we need to have and the explanation I should offer.
Our relationship is based on total honesty, it always has been. Cameron King has never made me feel guilty for the thoughts, feelings, grief, or guilt I still carry for the death of my first husband.
He’s jealous and possessive, but he’s never ever done anything other than hold me tight and tell me to let it all out whenever I have a meltdown, which thankfully happens rarely these days.
I chew on the inside of my lip as his eyes rake over me from my head to my Racy Red shellac-coated toenails.
I try to organise my words before speaking. The last thing in the world I would ever want to do to this man is hurt him or make him feel as if he is anything less than the centre of my world.
The life we have, our children, the chaos that surrounds our hectic home life, the love we share, are all things I would sell my soul to keep. The man lying on our bed in front of me is responsible for it all, and I love him beyond any kind of measure. And yet, there’s Sean. There always has been Sean, and there always will be Sean.
I lick my dry lips and draw in a breath, preparing to offer my explanation, but he shocks the shit outta me by saying, “Come over here and talk to me, baby,” while patting the mattress next to him.
“Let me just put some clothes on,” I request.
“I prefer you naked.”
I stop in my tracks and tilt my head to the side and smile at him before starting up again and disappearing into our walk-in wardrobe. “Yeah, but we don’t get much talking done when clothes don’t factor into the equation and naked bodies do.”
My husband’s been gone for almost two weeks, so I’m more than ready to jump his bones again. First we need to talk, and then I need to organise the kids. I pull on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, not bothering with underwear.
Instead of sitting beside him, I straddle his lap so I can look him in the eyes. Which I do, while he pulls my hair out of the messy bun I had it in for my shower and lets it fall down my back.
He pulls me towards him and drags his nose up my neck and through my hair, before tucking it behind my ears.
“Fuck, I’ve missed you.”
“We’ve missed you too.” I rest my forehead against his as I speak.
“So, you bought Lulah some of your shampoo? Her hair smelled just like yours when I got a cuddle off her this morning.”
“Yeah, rather than keep arguing with her, I called Conner’s wife, Nina, and she got me some wholesale. It meant I had to buy twelve bottles but—”
“But anything to stop the screaming matches that go on between you two?” he interrupts.
“I scream because she takes it out of the shower. I wet my hair, and then I realise it’s missing. I don’t mind her using my stuff, as long as she puts it back where she finds it.” I let out a small huff before continuing. “We really need to have a word with her about her language, too. She’s a fourteen-year-old school girl, not a twenty-five-year-old brickie on a building site.”
He throws his head back and gives me one of his big Cameron King laughs.
It still does things to me, and my belly squirms.
“Oh my god, that’s funny! All these years, Kitten, all these years I’ve picked you up about your language, and now, your complaining that our daughter sounds just like you.”
“But I don’t swear around the kids, you dropped the F bomb more than once this morning when you were shouting at them.”
“We were shagging, they wouldn’t leave the room. Then the dogs tried to join the party. Of course I bloody swore.”
We’re both quiet for a few seconds. I assume, that like me, he’s reliving this morning’s embarrassing events in his head, which I know are going to lead him back to what he really wants to know.
“I opened that old crate, the one that’s labelled ‘Sean’s Stuff’.”
“I know, I saw.”
I nod my head and chew on my lip again for a few seconds.
“He would’ve been fifty this year, and Tom and Billy have agreed to play at the Triple M event to mark the occasion. Conner Reed is gonna play lead, like he did the other year, and Marley is gonna front the band.”
He brushes the back of his knuckles over my left cheek and lets out a long sigh.
“Why’d you need to open the box?”
“Marley’s been trying to write a new song for the band to perform. I thought maybe there might be something amongst all of the stuff in there that might help him out. Marley’s great with the music, but it was nearly always Sean that wrote the lyrics.”
He puffs his cheeks and purses his lips, they roll together as he blows out air. He looks over my shoulder, either unable or unwilling to meet my gaze. My belly twists and turns in on itself. He’s not happy about this.
“Kitten …” he sighs out my name, and I get goose bumps across my skin. “I’ve always supported you. Every year, I’ve done whatever I can to help out with this event, and I will always do that. You’ve achieved great things and helped untold charities and I couldn’t be more proud of you, I really couldn’t.” I hold my breath as I wait for the “but”.
“But …” And here it comes. “You, are my priority. When I come home early from a business trip and find you curled in the foetal position on a cold hard floor, surrounded by empty wine bottles, alone and sobbing, well, that’s when I can’t help but think you need to take a step back.”
I close my eyes when I realise he had come home and seen me crying. I’d had my beats on, bluetoothing my music through them so I didn’t wake the kids, and obviously missed his arrival. I feel a combination of guilt and shame as I consider how he must have felt walking in on that scene.
“I’m sorry you came home to that,” I whisper, but he just shakes his head.
“Don’t be sorry, I’ve told you a million times never to be sorry for feeling what you do, that’s not the issue, Kitten, it never has been.”
He rubs the tips of his fingers up and down my bare arms, once again causing goose bumps to spread down my spine to my toes, despite the fact that I suddenly feel too hot.
“The issue is with you deliberately seeking out something that you know is going to upset you so badly. That, and the fact that I’m not overly impressed with you knocking back two bottles of wine when you’re here on your own with the kids.”
I remain silent as I fight the urge to jump in guns blazing to defend myself. I try to remain quiet and calm when I do speak.
“I didn’t drink two bottles, it was one and a bit, the first one was open and only had about a half glass worth in it. And I’m not deliberately seeking out things that are gonna upset me. I was looking for lyrics to pass on to Marley, and I decided that while I did that, I might as well go through everything that was in there. That bloody box has sat there long enough, it needs sorting through.”
“Why, why now?”
“Because it’s sat there taunting me for long enough. I should’ve done it years ago, I shouldn’t have left it this long.”
“Well, it’s because you’ve always known how fucking upset it would make you.” I shrug my shoulders.
“Regardless, it needs doing. It’s going to upset me no matter how long I wait, so I might as well just get it done. There could be something useful in there, something that Marls can work his magic on and raise money with.”
He slides one hand around the back of my neck and pulls me in for a long lazy kiss. He lets out another long sigh as he breaks away.
“All right, I understand all that. But you do it now while I’m around and not when you’re here all on your own. What the fuck
would the kids think if they saw you in that state?”
I nod my head in agreement. As usual, I’m wrong and he’s right. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done it while I was here by myself. I had a few wines for courage, but they just ended up making me feel even more emotional.”
“You all right now?” he asks, and for some reason, his concern touches me deeply and tears sting my eyes. He’s so good to me, so unbelievably good for me. The emotion of the moment suddenly overwhelms me. My face crumbles as I let out a sob, wailing, “I love you,” as I launch myself against his chest.
He holds me tight for a few long moments, running his big hands over my back, arms, and scalp.
“Thanks for putting up with all my shit, Cam. Don’t you ever get sick of it? You must. I get sick of myself sometimes.” I eventually look up at him and ask, “Don’t you ever think about trading me in for someone without a shit load of issues?”
His eyes dart all over my face. “You don’t have issues, babe. You just have a past. We all have one. Ours, yours and mine, is just a little more traumatic than most.” He gives a small smile and then a quick peck on the lips. “That’s why we work. That, and the fact that I love you. No one will ever love you like I do, and I’d never want anyone to love me like you do.”
He pulls his knees up, and I lean back on them and look over his face.
“I read a few of them,” he says matter-of-factly.
Shit!
“The letters?” I know what he’s on about, I’m just trying to work out how I feel about that. He nods his head slowly, eyes darting all over my face, assessing my reaction.
“Are you pissed off with me?”
I’m not, not at all. I’m just not sure how I feel about it.
“Cam, shaving and leaving your whiskers everywhere, leaving the milk out of the fridge, or not putting your seat belt on before you pull away are things that piss me off. You reading those letters doesn’t. It makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable though.”
That’s the only way I can think to explain how I feel on the subject, uncomfortable.
Cam has a small box of memories from his first marriage: wedding photos, birthday and Christmas cards he and Chantelle sent each other, her wedding and engagement rings. I’m a woman, so of course I’ve been through it. I’ve looked at the photos of the pair of them. She was beautiful. I know she’s dead and no threat to me, but I still had to look. I’m not sure if it’s a woman thing or just my warped little mind, but when I saw it in amongst his things when we first moved in together, I couldn’t help myself.
“Yeah, they made me a bit uncomfortable, too,” he admits.
“Then why’d you read more than one?” He shrugs his big shoulders.
“Morbid curiosity I suppose.” Ah, so it’s a human thing then, or is it just us two?
“Yeah, I get that. I’ve looked at the photos of you and Chantelle more than once.” His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. Oops, I assumed he knew this.
“It’s just human nature, babe. We’re wired to be curious,” he says after a moment.
We once again both quietly contemplate each other’s admissions.
“So?” I ask.
“So?” he repeats.
“You’re okay with it then? For me to keep going through this box?”
“Would there be any point in telling you no, Kitten?” I give him a big cheesy grin.
“Absolutely none, but I’ll only do it while you’re around, I promise.
Chapter Five
Georgia
I’ve got this thing about looking at the moon lately. It makes me feel connected to you. Because I know, with one hundred percent certainty, that during your lifetime, you’ve looked at that same moon. It’s all I’ve got right now, G. The moon, the stars, and the sun. Even the air that I breathe, I take in great gulps and wonder if there’s even a remote chance that it’s maybe air, that at some stage, you’ve breathed. Is that even scientifically possible I wonder?
I know I don’t bother to post these letters to you anymore, but still, I continue to write them. They help me sort shit out in my head. You could always help me sort shit out, you always gave me a different perspective, a different way of looking at things. I’m an over thinker, and I analyse everything. But you, G, just go with your gut. You react on your first instinct, all guns blazing. I hope that hasn’t changed. I hope you’re still the Gia that loved me so passionately. Is it loved or love? Do you think of me at all? I could ask your brothers and Jimmie but it still hurts so much G. I’ve tried to move on but there’s nothing there, there’s no connection, not like we had. It makes me panic sometimes, makes me doubt that the way I remember things is just my imagination prettying it up. Did we really love each other that intensely? We were so young, was it even possible to feel the way I think we did at such a young age?
I wish you were here to answer all of these questions. Perhaps if I had answers, it would give me some closure. It’s been almost three years. Are we different people now? Has too much time passed, has too much life happened to make what we had ever work again for us? Coz I do believe that, G. It will happen. I don’t know when or how, but I just know that our time will come. We will talk, we will work things out, and we will live, laugh, and love the way we used to. So, whatever tense you might be using, I’ll stick with the present. I love you, Gia, and until the day you come back to me, until then, I’ll keep looking at our moon and breathing in our air.
Sean and Georgia. Georgia and Sean. The way it’s meant to be.
I’m sitting on the floor of my office with a cup of tea in one hand and this letter from Sean in my other. I spent all of Saturday afternoon trying to organise everything into piles. I’ve worked out which are songs and poems, and I’ve messaged my brother to come over and look through them with me. There’s a pile of VCR tapes, but I’ve no clue what’s on them; some have labels and some don’t. It doesn’t matter because I don’t have anything to play them on anyway. There are some notebooks and diaries, a few photos, and then there are the letters.
When I had this crate shipped to me in Australia, I put what I could in sequential order according to the post office date stamps. Somehow, they got messed up, so I had to just go through them as I got to them. Because most were never posted, there weren’t any date stamps, and if Sean hadn’t written the date, then I tried to work it out by the things he wrote about.
I’ve read five letters today, but this is the first to make me cry—the first to break me. I think the thing that did it was the similarities in our thought process. I would often look at the moon and think along the same lines. Were we ever looking into the sky at the same time and thinking of each other?
Cam puts his head around my office door, which I’ve kept closed as I don’t want the kids seeing me upset, especially over a man that’s not their dad. His warm smile is gone the instant he sees the tears on my face. He comes in and closes the door behind him.
“What happened?” he asks, while squatting down in front of where I’m sitting, legs crossed, Indian style.
“Words,” I reply.
He smooths some stray hair that’s escaped from my messy bun and tucks it behind my ear.
“Well, words were his thing, babe. He wrote songs for a living, bloody good ones.”
I sniff and nod my head. “I know. I know that …” I trail off and blow my nose on the tissue that Cam passes to me.
It’s all suddenly too overwhelming. Why the fuck am I doing this to myself? To us?
“I’m so sorry, Cam. I can’t imagine how this is making you feel.” He leans his back against the my pop art wall, stretches his long legs out in front of him, and then pulls me into his lap. He remains silent as he does this.
“Does it bother you? Be honest with me, does it bother you that I still cry for him after all these years?”
I turn and sit myself so I can see his face, his eyes dart all over mine and he lets out a long breath.
“Georgia, I’m only human, of course it b
others me to a certain extent, but at the same time, I’m one hundred percent certain of your love for me—”
“Good,” I interrupt him.
“What we have ... Shit, I don’t know how to explain this. Our relationship is unique. It probably wouldn’t work for a lot of people, but it works for us, and it’s worked for us for a lot of years now, baby. You were married to someone you loved deeply, that you’ll always love. He died, and well, here I am. I’ve every confidence that you love me just as much as you loved or love him. That’s just the way it is. I knew this when we got back together, and I’ve been fully aware of it throughout our marriage. It is what it is, Kitten. He’s dead, I’m here. What’s the point in me getting pissed off over your tears?”
I don’t really know how to respond to his answer. He actually sounds a little bit angry.
“So is that a yes or a no?”
“For fuck’s sake, Georgia, you’re my wife and I love you. Of course it fucking bothers me. He’s been dead for sixteen years, build a bridge and get the fuck over it. Is that what you wanna hear from me?”
I’m stunned into silence for a few seconds. Then I try to scramble to get out of his lap and away from him, but he holds me in place by my waist.
“You asked me a question; now listen to the answer.” I stare at him, wide eyed and still too shocked to speak or attempt to move again.
“Part of what makes you the person you are, the woman I’ve loved for so long, is your passion. If you didn’t still feel the way you do, or if you didn’t react to his words the way you are now, then it wouldn’t be you, not the version of you I love. I love you, and part of loving you is accepting that you still hurt deeply over the death of your first husband and the loss of your babies. I try not to feel jealous. I try really fucking hard, but I’m only human. So yeah, to some degree, it does bother me, but do you know what bothers me more?”
I shake my head, terrified of attempting speech in case I choke on the tears silently running down my cheeks.
“What bothers me more is seeing you so conflicted, watching you being eaten alive by the guilt you feel because you cry, because of how you feel. He was your husband, Kitten, and this is the first time you’ve seen these letters. Just like I’m human and feel jealous of a dead bloke, you’re human and can’t help but still being in love with that dead bloke. I accepted it and came to terms with it a very long time ago. You really do need to do the same, babe.”