Breathe

by Ani San

  His hand woke me as it stroked the hair away from my face.

  ‘Good morning, sleepyhead.’ He was sitting on the side of the bed, fully dressed. His arm trailed from my face down my spine, removing the blanket as it went.

  ‘Are you sure it’s morning?’ I answered, to tired to respond to his touch.

  ‘It’s after ten,’ he laughed. ‘I’m going to make some coffee, and I expect you to be awake when I get back. We don’t have much time. Although I wish we had more, I can’t seem to get enough of you.’

  ‘Don’t blame me, I tried my best to satisfy you. Twice!’ I answered. Then his other words hit me, and I noticed the backpacked beside the door. The leather suit lay beside it.

  ‘Your leaving?’ my voice turned into a whisper. I had expected this from the moment he walked into my apartment, I got more time then I ever imagine. Still, it felt like a shock to my body.

  ‘Soon,’ he answered. ‘And as much as I like watching you sleep, I need to explain something to you before I leave. So get up and get dressed, and I will make coffee in the meantime.’

  I got up as soon as he left the room, cleaned myself up and put on a yellow sleeveless summer dress. I balled up my hair, not bothering to brush it. I didn’t want to waste a second of the remaining time.

  He was coming out of the kitchen as I emerged, and carried both the mugs over to the couch. I joined him, feeling a little awkward. We sat in silence for a while. I was waiting for the ‘thanks for this night, but I’m married’-kind of speech. Not that I had any experience with it, but I knew what was coming. I felt a little cheap. I didn’t usually have one-night-stands, in fact, I don’t think I ever had one before. But he was irresistible. He just snapped his fingers, and I spread my legs. I didn’t put up much of a fight. I blushed at my own thoughts, and of course he noticed.

  ‘What?’ he asked, scrutinizing me.

  ‘Nothing,’ I answer, trying to look inconspicuous. ‘Do you want some breakfast? Lord knows I have enough food.’

  ‘No, that’s ok. I have a lunch appointment in an hour. I tried to reschedule it, but it wasn’t possible.’

  ‘Oh!’ was all I was able to respond. Only one hour. And I had wasted how many hours sleeping?

  He put his mug down on the table and turned to me. ‘Listen, there is something I need to tell you…’

  Here comes ‘the speak’, I thought. I didn’t want to spend our precious time together listening to his apology, how this is a one-time-happening and so on. Instead I jumped on his lap and put my finger on his mouth. As soon as he stopped talking, I replaced the finger with my mouth, and grabbed the lining on his sweater to yank it off. It didn’t take him long to respond, soon we were both naked and on fire. Since this probably was going to be my last time with him, I wanted to make it count.

  It didn’t take long for me to climax this time, and he was right behind me. Afterwards, when we got dressed, he put on his motorcycle gear.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, as he put on his boots. ‘We really need to talk about this, I want to...’

  He never finished that sentence, because the intercom called just then. I was standing right beside it, waiting for Christopher to bale. It was an automatic gesture to answer. Or maybe I did it because I didn’t want to hear his cliché speech.

  ‘Yes?’ I answered, regretting it as soon as I spoke. Maybe the best thing now was not to be available.

  ‘Miss Nord: You have a visitor. Miss Garden is here.’

  Alice was downstairs? That can’t be good. She couldn’t come up and see Christopher here. I looked over at him with panic in my eyes. What the hell was I thinking answering the intercom?

  ‘Miss Nord, are you there?’

  Not good, not good, not good. I couldn’t send her away. I couldn’t let her come upstairs. Should I go down and meet her? She would know something was up if I appeared downstairs like this.

  ‘Miss Nord?’

  ‘Yes, Frank, I’m here. Is there any way you can stall her for like five minutes or something?’

  ‘Of course, miss Nord’

  I knew that despite his effort, Frank wouldn’t be able to hold her for long.

  ‘You need to leave. Like right now. Alice is coming up.’ I went into my bedroom and grabbed his backpack.

  ‘Now? Why did you tell her she could come upstairs?’

  ‘She is already here, and she knew I was home as soon as I answered.’ I tossed the backpack at him, steering him towards the door. ‘Never mind that, you need to leave now, or come up with an excuse as to why you’re here with a backpack, dressed like the person I left with two nights ago.’

  ‘But we didn’t get to talk. I wanted to explain...’ His hand was on the doorknob, hesitating. The other was holding the helmet.

  I broke him off. I didn’t need to hear it. ‘It’s ok, Christopher. I didn’t expect you to move in. I had a wonderful time.’ Then I stepped towards him and kissed him goodbye. It was painful to look into his eyes as I backed up to let him put his helmet on. I tried smiling, but I doubt it reached my eyes. I opened the door and almost pushed him towards the elevators. I desperately hoped he were able to get down to the basement without stopping on the first floor. He lifted his arm to me in a goodbye wave as he elevator door closed. I stood in the hallway watching the numbers descended from seven to one, and then one more without stopping. At least he got away without any questions asked. My feet dragged as I went back to the apartment. The space felt empty and cold. I missed him already. I wanted to go to bed and hide and cry and reminisce. Most of all, I wanted to be alone and pity myself. But I would have to save that for later. I was standing by the window watching him drive off when Alice’s knock came at the door. I opened the curtains before letting her in. She started speaking as soon as she came through the threshold.

  ‘Seriously, Sara: You have to do something about that doorman of yours. Do you know he had me filling out a visitors form? Me. Like I haven’t been here hundred of times. Stupid arse. It was a stupid form too, it had questions like how long do you plan to stay, what is your purpose… Did you just have sex?’ She finally stopped speaking, and was staring at me.

  ‘Really, they’d ask that? On the form?’ I knew the last one was aimed at me, but I tried to distract her so I could think. How the hell could she tell?

  ‘Never mind the form. Do you have company? Is he still here? Who is it?’ she asked and looked pointedly at my bedroom door.

  ‘There’s nobody here.’ I tried to avoid her question, and walked to the kitchen. ‘Do you want something to drink?’

  ‘Never mind that, who is it? Somebody I know? Is it that guy you left with on Friday?’

  ‘I have coffee, but I can make some tea if you prefer. Or a soda?’

  ‘Don’t you get all evasive with me, missy. There are two coffee mugs on the living room table, two wineglasses, and an empty wine bottle. Not to mention, you got the just-fucked-hairdo going on.’

  I gasped. ‘I do not! I just got up.’ My hands automatically started patting the back of my head.

  ‘Late night, eyh?’ She laughed when I blushed.

  ‘Ok, fine! At least tell me something. Is it serious?’

  ‘No, it was a one-time-only.’

  ‘For real? That doesn’t sound like you.’

  ‘I know. Can I get you anything?’ I started clearing the table, removing Christopher’s’ mug and the wine glasses from last night.

  ‘What? We’re not going to talk about this? This is big, Sara.’

  ‘No, it’s not. You hooking up with Kiro, now that’s big! How did that happen?’ I knew distracting her was my best option. I didn’t want to end up crying in her lap because my married lover left me.

  ‘We hit it off on Friday. You know I always found him kind of strange and eccentric, but he’s really not. He is actually really cute. And great in bed. He took me to the movies yesterday, we saw The making of good and bad. You have to see it, it was the best movie ever. And the actors were really good, it was that blon
d who played in Snow White, and that Norwegian dude, Alexander Skars-something.’

  ‘Skarsgård. He is Swedish, honey.’

  ‘Whatever. And you should have seen the scenography! God, it was fabulous. How I would have loved working on that set. Speaking of which, I have decided to take that assistant job. I hate to let go of the salary I make at Allen & Ovrey, but I have to think of my future, and I’m not going to be a lawyer.’

  We sat on the couch and Alice held the conversation going by talking about the new job, then the movie again, and the day she spent with Kiro and so on. It’s hard to get a word in when she starts. I tried to follow her words, but my mind flickered back to the sex I had in the same spot she sat in. After a while we ordered take-away pizza and rented a movie online. It turned out to be a snoozer, so we turned it off and spent the night talking instead. Alice didn’t seem to run dry of things to talk about. The new job didn’t start until August, so she wanted to go backpacking in Europe beforehand. She had already decided that I needed to come with. I did want to travel, but it felt kind of scary too. I remembered the pictures on Andrews phone, and would love to see Italy. But traveling in the summer months meant hordes of tourist everywhere, and line after line after line of waiting to see the attractions.

  ‘Oh, by the way,’ Alice said in the middle of discussing the must-see-museums in Spain. ‘Alfred called my father last night. He is coming over in a few weeks. Have you heard anything about that?’

  Alfred was the brother of Alice’ father. He usually stayed with them when he had business in town. I hadn’t heard from him in two months, but I was expecting him to show up someday the near future. After all, he had arranged this apartment for me because of the art school, and now that I was finished, it was probably time I found some other place. This wasn’t meant as a permanent deal, B&B couldn’t afford for me to stay here for free much longer. Besides, they had other clients who use it frequently, or at least did before I moved in. I wanted to stay in London, I think. Going back home was not an option. I had nothing there to go back to. Besides, my old home were rented out on a long-term lease. I had thought about selling it, but it was my only link to my mother, and I didn’t want to let that go yet. I still called it home.

  Alice jumped right back to the travel subject after her Alfred-comment, without even waiting for an answer. Somehow, our travel plans ended up in Australia and New Zealand. I had always wanted to go there, but it is so far away, it’s not like you can take a weekend off. Having the whole summer free would be a perfect opportunity. Of course, being without a job or to-do-plan made me free to travel after summer also, but I wanted the safety of Alice. Then we remembered that Australia had winter when it was summer here, so that put an end to that discussion. We weren’t wasting a trip down under when it’s too cold to sunbath.

  The TV was mute in the background, and neither of us paid attention at what was on. So it was a coincident that I looked up just as his face flashed the screen. The beautiful face I had kissed just hours before was now plastered over my entire TV screen. He was standing in front of a commercial wall. The camera captured his smile before it moved to a striking woman with flawless makeup and blond hair in a perfect bun. His wife. She was smiling just enough to seem gracious and happy, and she leaned towards the camera saying something and laughing. One hand was casually holding Christopher, the other one was fidgeting with a diamond necklace. I grabbed the remote controller and turned the sound on. I noticed Alice give me a side-glance, but she didn’t say anything for once.

  ‘So, who do you think is going to win?’ a man behind the camera asked the couple.

  ‘Well, my husband do have a favourite…’ the camera focused on her smile as she turned towards Christopher. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, the bright blue eyes seemed a little cold to me. ‘…but he keeps that a secret from me. You know I can’t name a favourite before I have seen the show, that would make me a horrible judge, wouldn’t it.’

  ‘It certainly would. Enjoy your evening.’ The camera changed from the perfect couple to an Asian looking guy in a tux.

  ‘That was the ever so lovely Julia von Berg and her husband Christopher Petrelli. As you heard, she is going to be one of the guest judges in the finale of Project Catwalk. Stay tuned, as we give you more live interviews here at Sumerset house in London.’

  I turned on the mute button again. Alice didn’t seem to notice that my heart had stopped.

  ‘Wow, did you see the gorgeous dress she was wearing, she is always so perfect. I still can’t believe that we actually got to meet them at the exhibition. You know Kiro actually knows them. Or he knows Christopher through his brother.’ Alice was on the roll again, and after a while the monolog switched back to traveling. I tried nodding and smiling and get a few words in, but my mind wasn’t into it anymore. It was a relief when Alice got a text from Kiro and then asked me if I minded if she left to meet him. I told her it was fine, I was tired anyway. That made her curious again as to whom I had met, but her eagerness to see Kiro prevented her to dig more.

  After I shut the door behind her, I went straight to bed. The clock wasn’t even nine, but I didn’t care. Of course I couldn’t sleep. Even though I had stayed awake most of this weekend, my mind wouldn’t relax enough to give me rest. The bed felt to big. I was twisting and turning, trying not to picture the perfect couple, trying not to feel guilty or jealous, trying not to miss him. I wasn’t angry at him for going on an event with his wife, that would be stupid. Or, maybe I was a little stupid. But I was mostly angry with myself. I was stupid enough to bring a married man home with me, and now I paid the price. I knew it was going to be hard to let him go. I should have saved myself the agony and stayed away from him. I tried to control my despair and get a grip on myself, but it was useless. What really drove me of the edge and had me sobbing myself to sleep was the scent of him on the pillow where he’d slept.

  Chapter 7

  «I dream my painting and I paint my dream.»

  - Vincent van Gogh

  I woke with a racing heart. I’ve been dreaming about three Siberian Huskies chasing me in a valley of snow and ice. The dogs were angry, they were growling and barking aggressively as they followed me down the path. I was running towards an opening in the mountain of ice. It was too far ahead, but I knew that if I could just make it through that point, everything was going to be all right. My feet were pounding the hard surface, running as fast as I could. But the opening got further and further away, like I was running backwards instead of forward. And the dogs closed in on me, one of them was almost at my side, and I could see straight into the cold blue eyes. At that point, my body jolted into consciousness, and I was back in my own bed. I lay there staring at the celling, afraid to go back to sleep. The time was only 5 a.m., too early to start the day. I didn’t want to think about the dream and what it might mean. But I knew the scariest part was those cold blue eyes, and I knew who they reminded me of. I forced my mind on something else, like the painting I was working on at the moment. Or the trip I wanted to take this summer. Or which part of the city I should start to look for an apartment. I couldn’t afford anything in this neighbourhood. Or, I probably could, but I wasn’t about to spend that much just on location. Alice had an apartment on Westbridge. Maybe I could find something there. I had no idea what the going rate was on apartments there, but it might be ok. I needed a two-bedroom. Not because of guests, I never have sleep-over guests. I need somewhere to paint. Or maybe I could get a smaller apartment, and rent a studio for painting. No, I liked being able to get up and go painting in my PJs. I liked this apartment. I was really going to miss the view, and my runs in the park. Thinking about running reminded me of the dream. Maybe I should go running now. I had given up trying to get to sleep again, so I might as well do something useful. Running would clear my mind. And I was already sweaty from my dream.

  Ten minutes later, I was heading down the stairs in my workout clothes; short black sweatpants, a red tank top and a black hoody. I had
n’t even checked the weather outside. Jeffrey was working today, holding the door up for me as I came outside. I preferred Frank, Jeffrey was always trying to make small talk even when you were in a hurry. I wasn’t in any hurry this time, but I kept my earplugs in place as I passed him and smiled.

  It wasn’t raining outside, but the clouds where dark and low. I kept a steady pace towards the entrance to Kensington Garden, and then turned right, following a path I knew led to Serpentine Bridge. It was to early for tourists, but there were plenty of morning joggers. I passed a group doing yoga on the grass, and several people going horseback riding. I loved horses, and had a few lessons when I was younger. Not many, my mom couldn’t afford the cost. She should have used the money my father provided. Not because I wanted more horse lessons, I was fine without them. But if she had spent some of the money, then she wouldn’t have had to work as much as she did. She could have spent that time on us. Now we were out of time. Now I was on my own. Which were fine, I could handle it, I was an adult. I didn’t, however, need to complicate things by involving myself with a married man. Not that we were involved. He never said anything about seeing each other again. And why should he? He got what he came for. I caved too easily. I didn’t want to think about it. I focused on my pace and counted my steps until I was back at the apartment an hour later.

  My stomach was growling as I came out of the shower. I remembered I had fridge full of groceries, thanks to Anna. I hadn’t paid for any of it. Christopher refused to check the amount with Anna, and hadn’t accepted the money I tried to give him, saying it was for him as well since he was staying with me all day. Like we could ever eat half of it in one day. I didn’t feel comfortable with the whole deal. It’s like I’m a hooker, and he paid me with bags filled with food. No, don’t go there, I chastised myself. Making myself feel bad was never a good way to go. I had to take care of myself, and that meant focus on the positive. And eat regular. Last night, I ate two slices of pizza, and that’s about it. I knew the danger signs, and I knew controlling my intake of food was just a way of dealing with other things. When I couldn’t control my feelings and emotion, I punished myself by ignoring hunger. If I weren’t careful, I would end up in therapy again. I remembered the last thing my doctor told me before I was released the last time; ‘You have control over your disease now, Sara, but that doesn’t mean you are cured. Your anorexia is always there under the surface, just waiting to flourish. It’s important to know the signs, and take a step back to find the cause when you feel like you’re loosing control. If you know why, then you hold the power, and not the disease. It is your body, and your choice to decide if you want to be healthy or sick.’ It was all a bunch of crap. But she did convince me to eat regular, making sure my body got what it needed. I did good in the last three years. Lately, not so much! But that didn’t mean I was sick again. I just had some stuff to deal with right now. I ignored the growling stomach and grabbed some coffee instead. Then I went into my studio. The painting I had made of Christopher was still on the easel. I turned it backside out, and went over to a wicker chair by the window. It had a soft sheepskin on it, and I cuddle into it with both my feet up. It was pouring outside, and the dripping sound was soothing. I sat there a while just listening and watching people running in the ally below. I had nowhere to be today, nothing I needed done. I had all the time in the world, and it made me gloomy. I needed a project. Maybe I should start on a new painting. I had all these feelings inside, and I needed to ventilate. And I knew what my inspiration was going to be. I was going to paint my nightmare so it couldn’t come back to haunt me. But first I needed to eat. It didn’t matter what, just as long as it was something. I wasn’t about to get sick again