by Sabre Rose
And then there was the flipside. The wilder side. The side that told me to enjoy life, eat the chocolate, drink the wine, and to hell with waiting. Grasp life with both hands and screw the consequences. Live for the now. Fuck the Adonis of a boy lying next to me.
And, as I lay there and watched Gabe anxiously wait for my response, one side was speaking a lot louder than the other.
“You can stay,” I said.
Gabe leapt on top of me, pinning my hands to my sides and kissing me repeatedly, over my face, my neck, my shoulders, every inch that was exposed from the covers as I squirmed and laughed underneath him, revelling in his attention.
“You can’t tell anyone, though,” I said with mock severity.
Gabe shook his head and continued to kiss me. There was something so undeniably honest and open about him, so joyful and unabashed, I almost didn’t want to insist that he keep whatever we had a secret. But I also couldn’t bear the thought of wagging tongues.
“I’m serious, Gabe,” I said, wriggling my hands free and grabbing his face. “I don’t want people to know.”
He grinned and tried to kiss me again but I held onto his face. “Fine. Whatever you want, Ren,” he said and kissed my nose.
I shook my head and laughed as his feather-like kisses tickled me. “Don’t call me that. Only Peta and Shrek call me that.”
“Any other nicknames that I don’t know about?” He cocked one eyebrow.
“My sister calls me L, but I don’t really like that either. And Peta’s kids call me Stimpy.”
Gabe froze above me, looking confused. “Stimpy?”
“Yeah, like in the cartoon. Their eldest boy, Nicholas, has got this obsession with that old cartoon, Ren and Stimpy.”
Gabe’s forehead wrinkled. “Never heard of it.”
I gently whacked his arm. “Of course you wouldn’t. It was a ninety’s show. You were barely even born when it was on.”
“Well, what’s a kid his age doing watching it?”
I shrugged. “You Tube.”
Gabe grinned. “I know,” he said. “I’ll call you, Mrs Robinson.”
“You will not!” I exclaimed.
“It suits us. An older woman, a younger man? You can just call me Dustin.”
“He was called Benjamin in the movie and he wasn’t as young as they made out when he played the part. In reality, there was only six years difference in their ages.”
“Oh, was he? You seem to know an awful lot about this movie.”
“I have a talent for retaining useless information.” I squished his cheeks together and kissed his puckered lips. “And how come you know that movie but not Ren and Stimpy?”
“My mother is obsessed with old movies,” he said, his words mumbled by his squished cheeks. “She refuses to watch anything made in this century.” Pulling my hands away, he placed them around his neck. “Now,” he said with a slow sexy smile. “How about what I want?”
His eyes turned from playful to burning in an instant. He brought his mouth down to mine and kissed me deeply, cradling my shoulders with his hands, drawing me down the bed, closer to him. His tongue explored my mouth and his teeth nipped my lips, tugging and pulling. A well of desire rose within me, and I pulled his head closer, trying to remove the last breath of distance between us.
The doorbell rang and Gabe froze, his mouth still on mine. I cocked my head to the side and listened. The doorbell rang again.
“Just ignore it,” Gabe said.
“I can’t just ignore it.” I pulled myself from the bed and wrapped a dressing gown around me. “Wait here,” I instructed.
Gabe lay back with his hands folded under his head. “As you wish.” His eyes twinkled playfully. I shook my head and leaned over the bed to kiss him but he grabbed me and pulled me on top of him. Taking my face in his hands, he kissed me firmly before whacking my behind. “See? You just can’t keep your hands off me, Mrs Robinson.” He pushed me away playfully. “Go answer that damn doorbell, would you?”
I pursed my lips and left him laughing as I walked down the hallway, tightening my gown around my waist. I pulled open the door and found a battered and broken Derek on my doorstep.
The sensible side of me came rushing back in one fell swoop, and I felt ill after indulging on my Gabe-flavoured chocolate and wine. Gabe was in my bed and I hadn’t even properly broken up with Derek. I was a horrible, horrible woman.
“Hi,” Derek said, peering up at me anxiously. His left eye was swollen and beginning to darken at the edges. His lip was enlarged and there was a bruise spreading across his chin.
“Hi,” I said back, tightening my gown again.
“Can I come in?” He didn’t wait for an answer and instead, walked past me and into the lounge. I silently urged Gabe to stay hidden in the bedroom. I no longer felt angry at Derek. I no longer cared what he did, or didn’t do with Tracey. I just didn’t want him to find Gabe.
“I guess it’s over?” Derek said. It was a question, not a statement, and I couldn’t even look him in the eye as I nodded. “For what it’s worth, I love you, Lauren, and I know this horrid mess is all my fault.”
There was only one question I wanted to ask, as if, somehow, it would make my own transgressions feel a little less awful. “Did you stay with her the night?”
Derek swallowed. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down and he stared at the ground. “I was drunk.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
He nodded, and visibly braced himself for the onslaught that never came. Twisting the ring from my finger, I held it out to him. “Thanks for being honest.”
“I’m really sorry, Lauren.” He stood before me, hesitant to take the ring back.
“I am too.” I pushed the ring into his hand, opened the door and let Derek out of my life.
* * *
Gabe was waiting in the hallway, dressed in the same clothes from the night before. “You okay?” he asked. He took my hand and kissed the finger where Derek’s ring had been only moments before.
I sighed and looked up at him. “I feel like shit.”
“You shouldn’t. He cheated on you, not the other way around.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It can be, if you want.”
“I wish I could look at the world the way you do, Gabe.” I sighed again and leaned against the wall. “But it really isn’t that simple. I just broke up with my fiancé, again, while I had you, a man over ten years his junior, waiting in my bed. It’s going to take me a while to come to terms with that.”
“Tut, tut, Mrs Robinson.” Gabe grinned and took my hands in his. “Tomorrow?” he said hopefully.
“Maybe it’s too soon,” I said, already regretting how quickly I let Gabe back into my bed.
“Please? I just want one day where we’re not at work, a day with no ex-fiancé, or flatmates. Just you and me.”
“Fine,” I said, unable to resist his enthusiasm.
“I’ll pick you up at four. Bring your camera.”
“Where are we going?”
But all he did was tap his nose and plant a kiss on my cheek before walking out the door.
* * *
I felt strangely free wandering around my house that day. I didn’t ache for Derek, I didn’t long for Gabe. I turned the music up loud and started unpacking all the boxes that should have been unpacked long ago. Once that was done, I sat on the couch, feet curled under my legs and looked around the room triumphantly. It was still rather bare but with some books on the shelves and artwork on the walls, it looked a little more like someone loved it. I had three missed calls from Peta so I figured now was a good time to call her back. I needed to tell her about Derek but I wasn’t yet ready to come clean concerning Gabe.
“Got time to talk?” I asked as soon as she picked up.
“You have to fill me in,” she demanded. “I’ve been waiting for you to call all day. I’ve heard so much drama about last night and I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t.”
>
I squished down in the couch and settled in for a good old gossip session. I told Peta everything, well, almost everything. I told her about Derek and Tracey, about Simon pulling out of the fight and Mark organising Gabe to take his place. I told her it all, apart from the connection between Gabe and myself. I just couldn’t face it. I knew when it came down to it, she wouldn’t care, but I also knew she wouldn’t be able to keep the shock out of her tone. I just didn’t feel like being judged.
“I almost wish I was there,” Peta exclaimed when I was finally done. “So, that’s it for you and Derek?”
“Looks like it.”
“You sound surprisingly okay with it,” she said warily.
“I am. Today, anyway. Ask me again tomorrow and you might get a different answer.”
“You want to come over? Shrek’s cooking pasta for dinner.”
“Think I’ll just stay here tonight. Thanks though.”
“I’m here if you need me, okay?”
22
LAUREN
I felt stupid doing it, but I went shopping before my date with Gabe. Of course, I told myself that I wasn’t shopping because of him, I was merely shopping as I desperately needed some casual clothes that didn’t consist of worn sweatpants and stained t-shirts. But still, if it hadn’t been for Gabe, I would have been quite content lounging around the house dressed like a slob. I ended up buying several pairs of jeans and some printed tops and shirts, still casual, but a lot better than my usual comfortable clothes.
Gabe pulled up right on time. I felt that familiar flit of nervousness again, but as soon as I pulled open the car door and Gabe smiled at me, it vanished.
“Hey,” he said over the blare of the music before turning down the volume.
“Hey, yourself.” I settled into the seat and pulled on the seat belt. He reached out and ran his hand over my thigh and down to my knee, unable to contain his grin.
We drove out to the countryside and pulled up at the ruin of a dilapidated house standing proudly in the centre of a plantation of pine trees. Its desolate beauty hitched in my throat. I lifted my camera to my eye and began pressing the shutter, trying to capture the forlorn beauty. “It’s so beautiful, Gabe,” I exclaimed every time I came across a crumbled and rotten board, the new shoots of spring creeping over it.
“I hoped you would like it. It would be my dream to live somewhere like this.”
“Like this?” I laughed and gazed over the building where entire chunks were missing. “Something like this would have to be torn down, wouldn’t it?”
Gabe nudged the door and it groaned against the rotting floorboards before creaking open. “Not if I had anything to do with it. I’d love to somehow preserve its beauty and protect it from further decay, while making it livable again. Like somehow building a house around it with some of the walls made of glass so the old building was still visible.”
“Is that even possible?”
Gabe walked ahead of me, gingerly avoiding the holes of exposed dirt in the floor. “Careful,” he said, holding his hand out. I lifted my camera and took a photo of him, hand outstretched, the light streaming through an open doorway behind him, framed in ivy. “I’d like to think it’s possible,” Gabe continued once he had helped me over one particularly large hole. “That’s why I want to become an architect.”
“You do?” I asked.
He frowned. “You didn’t think I wanted to pour coffee for the rest of my life, did you?”
I shrugged as he led me down the hallway a little and into another room. “Why not?”
The room had a broken window facing out of the porch and an old, overstuffed chair sitting in front of the fireplace. A blanket had been laid over the leaf-strewn floor and a picnic basket rested on it.
Gabe grinned at me shyly. “Too much?”
I blinked. “It’s sweet,” I assured him.
“Sweet?” He groaned, flopped down on the chair and swung his leg over the side. “I just wanted to do something… you know, nice, to let you know that I like you and stuff.”
My mouth twitched and I bit my lip. “You like me and stuff?”
“You know what I mean,” he said wryly.
I sat down on the blanket and pulled the basket over. “Sweet isn’t a bad thing, Gabe.”
“It’s not?” He joined me on the blanket.
“Not at all. In fact, no one has ever made me a picnic before.”
“Well, if I’m honest, Peta made the picnic,” he said.
My eyes flew wide.
“I didn’t tell her who it was for or anything,” he said quickly. “I felt bad about pulling yet another sickie, so I went into work and explained that I needed the afternoon off so I could take this girl I was rather keen on out on a date. She was fine with it.”
I narrowed my eyes. “She was fine with it?”
“Fine might not be the right word, but she assured me I’d still have a job tomorrow and she made me up this basket.”
I opened the top flap of the basket and pulled out one of Mark’s famous buttermilk scones. I lifted it to my nose and inhaled. “He really is the best at these, isn’t he?”
Gabe stretched over and lifted one out of the basket. Leisurely, he lay on his side across the blanket, head propped on his hand and looked over at me. “I want to know about you,” he said. “Tell me about your family.”
I shrugged. “There’s not a lot to tell.”
“Well, I’ve told you about mine.”
“You haven’t told me much about your family at all,” I protested.
Gabe lay back on the blanket and rested his hands under his head, staring up at the patch of sky visible through the ceiling.
“Ah, where to start? It’s a bit of a complicated story. My mother was Dad’s second wife, he’s got two older children with his first wife, and then Clark and me.”
We fell silent, thinking of the brother he no longer had. Gabe took a deep breath before continuing. “They split when we were young and Dad won custody, just like he did with his first two, though they had been sent to boarding school by that stage. I’m sure Hamish only won full custody because he had more money.”
He looked down at the blanket and traced the floral pattern with his finger while he talked. “Dad moved on and married some ditzy thing.” His eyes flicked back up to me. “I don’t see them that much, not after…”
He fell silent and I ate my scone, breaking pieces off and popping them into my mouth one by one.
Gabe cleared his throat. “Sorry, talking about my family isn’t exactly a happy affair. Your turn now.”
I swallowed the last piece of scone. “Well, my family is rather boring, I guess. Mother and Dad have been married forever, and I’ve only got one sister, Morgan. There’s a six year gap between us, I think that’s how long it took Mother to agree to do the ‘marriage act’ again.” I used imaginary quotation marks to emphasise my point and Gabe snorted.
“Marriage act?”
“That’s what she calls it.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I was. Mother believes that coupling should only be committed for the God-given reason of creating children. Anything more than that would just be a sinful desire of the flesh.”
“Your poor father.” Gabe shook his head and snickered. “And do you always call her Mother?”
“Anything else would be too casual and she isn’t a casual sort of person. Morgan calls her Mum, but they have a different relationship than Mother and I do. She’s always been Mother to me.”
I reached into the basket and pulled out a bunch of grapes. Gabe followed the grape with his eyes as I put it into my mouth.
“Morgan got married to a nice, sensible man and had a kid one year later. As for me, I was just a disappointment, the black sheep of the family. Well, sort of, I never really did anything to earn that title. It was more just that I didn’t do what they wanted.”
“So you’re saying you’re really a good girl and they have you pinned all wr
ong?” Gabe’s eyes flashed teasingly.
“Well, not according to them, but in my mind, all I did was live with a man instead of marrying him immediately, and then I got pregnant out of wedlock which was a big no-no. When we lost the baby, Mother assured me it was because I was unmarried. It was also a huge failure on my part when he left.” I let out a deep breath and rolled my eyes. “I’ve given up ever trying to please her.”
Gabe bit into an apple and the crunch was loud in the stillness of the old house. “Your family doesn’t sound boring. They sound a little crazy.”
“Oh, if she knew about you, she would be convinced you came from the devil himself. And as for me, well, I’d be branded a harlot.”
“Harlot?” Gabe questioned.
“The biblical term for a prostitute.”
“That’s ridiculous. I never paid you,” he said with an impish grin. Then he laughed nervously when I raised an eyebrow. “Best not go there, huh?” He looked around the room nonchalantly before his gaze rested back on me, the shadow of a grin remaining. “What about your dad, what’s he like?”
“Dad’s just Dad.” I reached out and plucked a stray leaf off the blanket, tossing it away. It got caught on a slight breeze and tripped over the doorway. “He just does his own thing while Mother rants and raves around him. Occasionally, she’ll stop and ask him to agree with her, and he always does, but you can tell he’s just keeping the peace.”
“And Derek was your first boyfriend?”
I looked up at him and squinted. The sun was setting through the open window behind him and the rays of the sun were setting his hair alight. I held my hand up to shield the glare. “I met him at high school. I was into art and he was into music.”
I thought of a young Derek sitting across from me on a bean bag in his room, his guitar propped across his legs, and strumming some god-awful sound. You couldn’t call it a tune, it was a noise. A screech. He had a thick flop of black hair, an unlit cigarette hanging out his mouth, and wore only a long white singlet over his jeans. He was so exciting to me then, so forbidden. He would have been five years younger than what Gabe was now, but it seemed like a lifetime ago. So much had happened. So much had been lost.