Shirley Valentine Goes to Vegas

by Michelle Betham

  ‘It’s really over, then?’ he whispered, pushing my messed-up hair away from my eyes, his hand resting against my cheek, his thumb stroking my skin. ‘Between you two?’

  I nodded, once more feeling that pull on my heart that was so hard to take. So hard to get used to. ‘I threw it away, Adam. By sleeping with you.’

  ‘You don’t belong here, Lana. You don’t belong with him.’

  ‘I belong with you, is that what you’re trying to say?’

  His hand was warm against my skin, and I had no desire to push him away or make him go, but I had to forget what had happened last night. Last night had been crazy and mixed up and incredible. But what he was doing here – he was making me believe that this was what I could have if I came back to him, and I wasn’t sure that was going to be the case because, right now, we were still inhabiting fantasy land. None of this was real. It was fucked-up, all over the place, and I had to see beyond what this was to know what the reality could be.

  ‘I’m coming home, Adam. I don’t have a lot of choice, and I can’t stay here, but… I’m not coming back to you. That would be a mistake. And I don’t want either of us to get hurt. Again. You don’t deserve that.’

  ‘Why not let me decide what I deserve, Lana.’

  ‘I just need to get my life back on track and I think, maybe, that’s what you need, too. Things happened here that changed me. They made me… made me realise I need to think about things a lot harder before I act. Because that was something neither of us did last night.’

  ‘You regret it?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  He leant back against the wall, his hands in his pockets. It was all I could do not to keep staring at him. He really was the most incredible-looking man and I’d just forgotten that, lost sight of it. When? Why? When had it all started to go wrong? Had we met too young? Married too soon? Taken each other for granted too early?

  ‘I’ll meet you downstairs in a couple of hours. Alright? We can go somewhere, because I think we really need to talk. Just talk.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll talk.’

  I turned to leave.

  ‘Lana?’

  I spun back around, my eyes once more meeting his.

  ‘I love you. Remember that.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to be here,’ I said, continuing to throw the rest of my things into the suitcase, looking up as Eddie walked into the room.

  ‘I’m meeting Nate.’

  ‘Something to do with what you were talking about last night?’

  He didn’t reply to that.

  ‘Eddie?’

  ‘Jesus, Lana, darlin’, what are you doing to me?’ he sighed, sliding a hand around the back of my neck, his fingers winding in my hair, his body pressing up against me, all hot and hard. ‘I really wanted the thought of you fucking another man to be some kind of twisted turn-on, you know?’

  ‘Don’t, Eddie.’ I stepped back, putting distance between us, even though the only place I wanted to be was close to him. ‘I just came to get my things. I didn’t think you were gonna be here.’

  He leant back against the wall, sighing again, a little heavier this time. ‘I’m sorry, Lana. For asking you to stay here, asking you to move in with me when… when I was obviously in no state to handle any of it. To handle the things you were making me feel.’

  ‘It’s done now, Eddie. I don’t want to stand here raking over everything again. It won’t change anything. We’re moving on now.’

  ‘Aye,’ he sighed, bowing his head. ‘Aye, we are.’

  ‘Eddie!’ Nate’s voice shouted up from downstairs, breaking the brief silence that had ensued.

  Eddie went straight over to the door, leaning out into the hallway. ‘Be there in a minute, Nate!’

  ‘Come on, brother! Time’s not on our side with this one, I need you now!’

  I frowned as Eddie turned back to face me. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked, a sudden wave of uneasiness sweeping over me. I just had no idea why.

  ‘Nothing,’ Eddie replied. But his body language told me otherwise. ‘Just a favour we promised to do for someone. Look, Lana, I’m… Jesus!’ He walked back over to me, his hand once more sliding around the back of my neck, his mouth lowering down onto mine in a kiss so hard and so deep; so beautiful it tore me apart. Because it was a final kiss. A goodbye kiss. ‘You take care of yourself, darlin’.’

  I watched him go, my fingers lightly touching my mouth, the feel of his kiss still tingling on my lips.

  ‘You and our sexy Scot definitely over, then?’ Kaley asked, walking into the room, her eyes going straight to my case.

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, I guess we are.’ Saying it out loud made it seem final, somehow, and another wave of sadness washed over me, engulfing me, but I shook it off. I’d killed our relationship before it had even started, so self-pity wasn’t something I was about to indulge in.

  Kaley looked at the case again, then back at me. ‘So, where are you staying? Because, if you need a place to crash…’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ve booked into a hotel for a couple of nights, then it’s back home. Back to the UK. Listen, Kaley, is… is everything alright? I mean, Eddie and Nate…?’

  ‘It’s just something they need to sort out. Something that should have been sorted a long time ago.’ Kayley leant back against the doorpost, folding her arms.

  ‘Like what?’

  She lit up a cigarette, her eyes fixed on me as she took a long drag. ‘Word of advice, honey – don’t ask too many questions. Okay?’

  My frown deepened, that uneasy feeling washing over me again. ‘I’d better go.’

  Kaley took another drag on her cigarette, watching me as I hauled the case off the bed. ‘You were good for him, Lana.’ She stubbed the cigarette out on the doorpost and walked over to the window, throwing the butt outside. ‘I think Eddie needs someone like you in his life.’

  There was a part of me that wished she hadn’t said that. And I wasn’t entirely sure Eddie Fletcher needed anyone, anyway. Not now. Not anymore.

  ‘I really should go now,’ I said, pulling the handle up on my case and wheeling it to the door.

  ‘You stay in touch, you hear?’ Kaley smiled, a genuinely warm smile, and I couldn’t help but return it.

  ‘Yeah. I will.’

  ‘And I meant what I said, Lana.’

  I looked at her, narrowing my eyes slightly.

  ‘Eddie needs someone like you.’

  22

  ‘I didn’t think places like this existed in Las Vegas,’ Adam said as we walked through Sunset Park, the sun beating down on us, the low hum of chatter and children playing filling the air. Just a short distance from the Strip, the huge and sprawling park was like an oasis away from all the glitz and bravado of Vegas, an almost never-ending expanse of grass and trees and a lake so big I couldn’t see where it ended. It was a place that seemed to usher in a feeling of calm that didn’t always exist back in the heart of this town.

  ‘Well, neither did I, to be honest.’ I sighed, shielding my eyes from the bright sunshine. ‘But I guess we all have our own, rather fixed views of Vegas. We assume it’s just what we see on TV or in holiday brochures – all the brashness and glitz. But I’ve realised there’s a lot more to it than that.’ I looked out ahead of me as we walked, slipping my sunglasses down over my eyes. ‘It’s a nice escape, away from the noise and the lights and the masses of people out there on the Strip.’

  A comfortable silence fell between us as we continued to walk, but then I noticed Adam’s head drop, his expression changing. ‘Did you love him, Lana?’

  I breathed in deep, turning my head away from him, even though the dark glasses were hiding my eyes. ‘A few weeks isn’t enough time to know if you love someone.’

  He stopped walking, turning to face me. ‘It was enough time for me to know I loved you.’

  Pushing my sunglasses up onto my head I looked right into his eyes. ‘Things are different here, Adam.’

  He sighed quietly, r
aking a hand through his hair. ‘This is crazy. All of this, it shouldn’t be happening. We should never have let it get this far, Lana.’

  ‘But we did. And there were reasons why it happened. We can’t just go back to how it was, Adam. That can never happen now, and I think you know that.’

  He leant back against a tree, his hands in his pockets, his head turned away from me slightly. I sat down on the wall opposite, looking down at my clasped hands.

  ‘How’s David?’ I’d never got on all that well with Adam’s older brother. He’d never really thought I was good enough for Adam, always thought his younger sibling could have done better than me. And he’d never been subtle in letting me know his true feelings. Once upon a time it had bothered me. I couldn’t have cared less what he thought now.

  Adam hung his head, scuffing the heel of his boot against the tree. ‘David’s fine. He’s doing a good job of looking after the business while I’m over here.’

  ‘I’m surprised he isn’t begging you to come home. You know – quit while you’re ahead.’

  His eyes met mine, holding my gaze. ‘You know, when Finn came to see me, to tell me what you’d done… I’d accepted the fact you weren’t coming back. I’d started to move on, got used to you not being around, but, when he turned up… It brought it all home, Lana – how stupid we’d been, how we’d let so many things get in the way; how we’d ignored us. That’s why I came here. To Vegas. All of a sudden nothing made any sense – you walking out, me just letting you go without putting up any kind of fight…’

  ‘We didn’t talk, Adam. We never talked. And we should have done.’

  His eyes were still locked with mine, and I felt a sensation deep in the pit of my stomach, a feeling I’d thought was long gone as far as this man was concerned, but it was there now, it was back, twice as strong and taking me completely by surprise.

  ‘Would that have made a difference? If we’d talked?’

  I waited a couple of beats before replying, letting those ice-blue eyes of his penetrate deep into mine. ‘It might have done.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so unhappy, Lana. I had no idea.’

  ‘Like I said, Adam, we didn’t talk. So how could you have known?’

  ‘The last thing I ever wanted was for you to be unhappy. I just thought…’ He pushed a hand through his hair again, breaking the stare. ‘I thought everything was okay. I thought we were good, that we were just getting on with our life. I thought we were settled, thought we…’ He broke off, still staring out into the distance. ‘What did we do, Lana?’

  ‘We let go.We just let go.’I stood up, sliding a hand around the back of his neck, pulling him down so our mouths lightly touched, barely kissing him. All of a sudden I just needed to feel him close. In the space of a few, short minutes memories had returned, and feelings I’d thought were gone forever had been reignited. But it still didn’t change the situation. It didn’t suddenly make me want to jump straight back into his arms and sail off into the sunset towards some kind of happy-ever-after I wasn’t sure existed anymore. ‘We let go, baby,’ I whispered, moulding my body against his as his arm fell around my waist, pressing me against him.

  ‘Maybe if… if we’d found the time to have kids, be a proper family…’

  I shook my head, running my fingers over his beard, letting myself continue to grow used to the fact that he had one. And how different it made him look. ‘Who’s to say that wouldn’t have made things worse?’

  ‘But I know…’ His eyes hit me with a look that almost broke my heart, a faint pain crossing my tight chest as yet more memories of our confused past flooded my brain. ‘I know it was what you wanted, Lana. A family. And I didn’t even consider that at the time. How much it meant to you. I was selfish, thinking only of the business, of how I could build the company up… I was too busy to put us first…’

  ‘Adam, don’t. Please.’

  ‘We can fix what’s broken, darling. Start putting things right. And we aren’t too old to start that family…’

  ‘Things have changed.’ I looked down, realising my fingers were still stroking the back of his neck and I pulled them away, stepping back from him. ‘What I wanted then and what I want now – it’s all changed. And… and what it feels like here, in Vegas, how we feel here, everything that’s happened… and what it’s going to be like if we… They’re different things, Adam.’ My eyes met his again. ‘If we got back together, how could we be sure we wouldn’t just slip back into those old ways, make those same mistakes? How could we be sure we wouldn’t lose each other all over again? You really want to put yourself – put us – through all of that? Because I don’t. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to do that.’

  ‘You wouldn’t hurt me, Lana.’

  ‘I’ve already done it once. You’re saying you could really trust me not to do it again?’ I felt my stomach dip. Just talking about trust made me think of Eddie, and the way I’d hurt him. The way I’d thrown everything I’d ever dreamed of away just because I’d needed some kind of stress-release fuck. How old was I? Too old for some kind of teenage rebellion. But that’s how I’d acted. And now I had to live with the consequences.

  ‘Lana?’

  I looked up, momentarily losing my train of thought. What had I been talking about? Oh, yeah. Trust. ‘I made a huge decision when I walked out on us, Adam, and even though I spent months afterwards wondering if I’d done the right thing, I know now that I did. If I’d stayed… if we’d carried on the way we had been doing, it would have destroyed us. Both of us.’

  ‘And you think I’m feeling good about everything now?’

  ‘Nobody said it was going to be easy.’

  ‘I love you, Lana. I love you so much.’

  I moved closer, laying my hand against his rough cheek, such a different feeling to the usually smooth, clean-shaven look he’d always sported before. ‘All of this…’ I ran my fingers lightly over his beard again. ‘This isn’t you. You hate all of this; you hate tattoos, hate bikers and rock music and everything I love, Adam. I know now that for most of my life I wanted to be somebody else, a different person to the one I became, but for most of my life I was weak and scared; too scared to do what I felt was right so I bowed to the pressure to conform, to stay in that comfortable, safe life we’d built…’

  ‘Is that how you thought of me? Safe?’

  I closed my eyes, resting my forehead against his. ‘No, Adam. Baby, I loved you, I really did love you. I loved you so much, and for those first few years we were amazing together. For those first few years you were all I wanted, everything I needed, but… It was a mess, in reality. When we look back at what happened to our marriage, at the way we ended up living our lives, almost separately, like strangers, it was a mess. And we couldn’t see that because, on the outside, everything seemed fine. Everyone was happy, or that’s the way it looked, anyway. That was the image we portrayed – the happy, successful couple. But it was a mess. And we just didn’t realise that until it was too late.’

  He sighed, a little heavier this time, throwing his head back, his arm still loose around my waist. ‘I had no idea, Lana. I just couldn’t see it. What the hell was going on all that time? What stopped us from seeing what was happening?’

  ‘Life,’ I whispered. ‘I guess we just let it pass us by because, on the surface, everything seemed okay. We seemed okay. But we weren’t. We weren’t okay.’

  ‘Why didn’t you talk to me?’ he asked, an almost desperate tone to his voice now. ‘When you started to feel like this. Why didn’t you talk to me?’

  ‘Because you were so busy. Because you were working away so much, you were hardly home. Because I didn’t want to bother you with something I saw only as my problem… Because I didn’t think you cared.’

  ‘Jesus…’

  ‘Everything I wanted, Adam… everything I wanted to do, everything I wanted to be, it was so far away from the things you wanted and I…’

  ‘I only wanted you, Lana. That was all I ev
er wanted.’

  ‘You didn’t know that at the time.’

  ‘I just thought… I thought you were going through some sort of mid-life crisis. I thought you just needed to get whatever it was out of your system and then when you asked for a divorce I just… I didn’t even fight it. I didn’t… Why didn’t we fight it?’

  I closed my eyes again, my thumb stroking his cheek, his arm pulling me just that little bit closer. ‘Maybe this was always meant to happen,’ I whispered.

  ‘When you left me, were you happy?’

  I nodded, breathing in deeply as he took my hand, clutching it tightly. ‘Eventually. I felt free, Adam. For the first time in so long. And I know you never meant to make me feel trapped or anything like that, but I did. Do you understand? I just didn’t like who I’d become. I knew that person wasn’t me, it wasn’t who I was supposed to be, who I wanted to be. That’s why getting the tattoos, dyeing my hair, changing the kind of clothes I wore…I needed that to happen. I needed a complete change. Because, doing all of that, that’s when I slowly started to become me. When I started to become someone I actually liked. Our marriage hadn’t been a bad one, it had never, ever been that. We’d just let it die, Adam. We hadn’t looked after it. We’d let it suck the life out of us. I lost who I was, lost all the confidence I’d had when we first met and I just needed to get that back. And Finn, he was great. Getting close to my brother again, that helped me so much, you have no idea. He brought me out of that shell I’d been hiding under for too long; he taught me how to live again. He didn’t ask questions and he didn’t judge me. So, yes, I was happy. But I was also sad that it had taken the breakdown of our marriage to make that happen.’

  He gave another sigh, his fingers gripping mine even tighter. ‘We got it so wrong, Lana.’