by Tammy Bench
She looked so beautiful. Her hair was scooped up on her head and pinned messily. She wore a pair of blue jeans, a tight white t-shirt and a light grey cardigan over the top.
She looked back at him, her emerald eyes held his stare for a moment longer and she opened the door.
Tom stepped back. He watched her grab her tan leather bag from the passenger seat and join him on the pavement.
‘This doesn’t feel at all strange, does it?’ she asked him sarcastically.
‘Are you alright?’ he replied closing her door for her. She pressed the key fob, locking the car.
‘Yes, I think so. Let’s get inside.’
Alice started walking ahead of him. He lingered just long enough to recall the way she would walk into his classroom after a lunch break, gliding past his desk and her small fingers skimming its hard surface. Most days she had appeared confident yet shy. Open, but complicated. To him she was always the same heady cocktail of sexy and innocent… that was his Alice.
‘Is this okay with you… here I mean?’ she asked.
‘Definitely. It’s more than okay,’ he replied.
‘Did Neil mind too much?’ she said as they neared the front door.
‘He wasn’t impressed, but more with me and the situation than him actually having to go out.’
‘He worries about you?’ she looked up at him.
‘I think he worries about you.’
Alice laughed, ‘I guess he still sees me as a child.’
‘Yep, and me a weirdo,’ he joked, ‘after you,’ he held the door open as she stepped over the threshold.
‘I bet it’s as strange for you as it is for me… all this? Talking to each other and feeling like different people but with the same history,’ she cocked her head to one side, ‘I don’t even know what we’re doing here. Do you?’
Tom paused for a moment. He had so many things to say to her. But if he was being honest he had no idea what they were going to do either or why? All he knew was he had to be around her and if he couldn’t he felt like he would wither and die.
‘Go through. You know the way. Drink?’ he asked avoiding the question.
‘What’re you having?’
‘Beer,’ he replied.
She smiled, ‘same old Tom. I’ll have one too. You were right it does grow on you.’
Tom walked into the kitchen. He shook his head. The conversation they’d had the night they first made love. Alice had tried some of his beer and he had commented that it was an acquired taste, because the look on her face had told him what she had thought of it.
He removed the top from a second beer and carried his own back to the living room.
He was already feeling it, the pull. The insane attraction that had been alive in him since Saturday night had slowly built to this moment of absolute clarity.
I want her at any cost.
‘Grow the fuck up,’ he whispered under his breath before entering the room.
AFTER EIGHT
Monday 2nd August
Alice sat and waited.
Was she being sophisticated enough?
She thought she was. She prayed her emotions weren’t too obvious and her voice didn’t sound nervous.
How could she be here with him again?
Tom Chambers. She had missed this man for hundreds of nights, but only now did she understand how hollow that loss had left her. He was here and whatever he had taken from her all those years ago, he had kept safe and was now letting her see and touch it again. As if it were a toy she had loved as a child or a hairstyle she missed when it had gone out of fashion.
The door pushed open and he walked back in. She had perched herself on the edge of the large leather sofa opposite the fireplace.
Look at him…
He strolled confidently forwards and held out the chilled bottle.
‘Here you go.’
Look at him…
He was standing in front of her. She glanced up at him and took the drink he offered.
‘Thanks.’
He wore dark blue jeans with a fitted black shirt that was tucked in at the waist. The sleeves were rolled up to the elbow and she could see the light sprinkling of hair on his forearm. His thick brown hair was messy, but cropped a little shorter on the sides now. He still had the five o’ clock shadow so she guessed it was his new look.
It was hard to put into words the way he looked, smelt and moved – and what it did to her.
He was intoxicating.
His age was irrelevant. She thought it wouldn’t be, but it was. He must be nearly forty-five but would have still passed for mid-thirties. His face still harshly chiselled and with the bluest eyes she had ever seen.
‘Do you mind if I sit?’ Tom motioned to the other end of the sofa she was sat on.
‘Sure.’
‘Did you want me to get some rope?’ he grinned.
‘Rope, what for?’ she asked suddenly unsure of herself.
‘To tie me to the chair,’ he took a drink from his bottle.
Alice felt her face redden.
‘At the moment, no, but I’ll play it by ear if you don’t mind?’
‘Your call,’ he smiled, ‘but don’t say I didn’t give you the option.’
She looked around the room. She hadn’t seen it in the light before. This room was nicer than the hall. It felt warmer, more intimate. But you could still tell it was a man’s house by the hi-tech gadgetry and sound system that took up almost a whole wall and the random scattering of X-box games near the television.
‘Neil has a lovely home,’ she said awkwardly.
Tom looked at her and she looked down at her lap. Every time their eyes met she felt a reckless surge of lust take hold of her.
‘He has. Computer programmer by day and by night he still spends hours on these shoot ‘um ups,’ he gestured towards the games, ‘I’ve tried to get him to read a book… do you still read much?’
‘Yes I do. Do you still teach?’ she asked not making eye contact.
‘I do. I actually take over as Head when I get back after summer break.’
‘Wow that’s brilliant, well done,’ she sipped her beer again.
‘What do you do? Besides being a mother I mean, you know what I mean…’ he turned to face her, lifting one knee up onto the sofa, ‘not that being a mother isn’t job enough mind.’
‘We have an art gallery. We run it together.’
She didn’t know where to look now. Not at his face, and looking down meant looking at his strong and so familiar legs.
‘Well I would have never guessed at that. I always thought you would become a teacher too or a writer, something like that.’
‘I couldn’t take English at university.’
‘Couldn’t?’ he sounded confused?
‘It was still too raw for me.’
Why admit that?
Tom stared at her.
‘Fuck Alice, I’m so sorry… I never meant to screw up your education,’ he grabbed at his hair in frustration.
‘It doesn’t matter anyway. I was a young girl and took everything to heart then. I wallowed in my self-pity for too long. Then I met Stuart and things got better,’ she said honestly.
‘I’m glad.’
She watched him swig his beer a little more aggressively.
‘No, you’re not,’ she shook her head.
Tom laughed, ‘okay, I’m not. Do you really think I want to imagine the girl that I loved getting over me with another man?’
‘You did the same, Tom.’
‘I tried.’
‘You married and had children.’
Tom finished his beer.
‘Exactly – I tried. It didn’t work out in the long run, as it has for you. My marriage ended because I wasn’t over you.’
Silence.
‘Tom I…’ she started but stopped again abruptly.
‘Sorry. But I did warn you the other night. I’m going to push my luck,’ he smiled sheepishly.
‘Co
uld you get that rope now?’
Tom laughed, ‘I’ve got some handcuffs for taking you prisoner later – will they do?’
Alice felt her cheeks go red and a sharp spike of something dangerously close to sexual need rippled through her body.
‘It’s alright I was joking,’ he said looking at her face.
‘I know that,’ she smiled and sipped some more beer needing to distract herself, ‘this is so weird,’ she mumbled.
‘Thank you for coming,’ he turned his body towards her a little more.
‘I guess I had to come. I can’t say for sure why though?’
‘Because I was an absolute fool and you want to show me what I’m missing?’
‘Yes, that was it,’ she said smiling.
‘Don’t worry Alice I see it.’
‘Tom, don’t be an idiot it doesn’t suit you. You’re not missing anything,’ she said kindly.
‘That’s a matter of opinion,’ he laughed again, ‘another drink?’
Alice looked at her bottle. Had she nearly drunk it already?
‘Okay thanks. But I can’t get drunk, I’m driving remember.’
‘That’s a shame because I was banking on it,’ he got up and headed for the kitchen.
Alice rolled her eyes at him.
It was strange how quickly over a decade of vacant space can just kind of vanish between two people. Just sitting and chatting with him again felt like they were rapidly expunging the time that they had been separated.
He didn’t seem to want to talk about Stuart at all and that was fine. To be honest she didn’t want to talk about him either, because if she did it would just feel like an even bigger betrayal. He didn’t know where she was tonight. She had never lied to him like this before and she wasn’t comfortable with it. So he was better off left out of any conversation they may have this evening.
‘Am I permitted to tell you how beautiful you look?’
Tom was back. He placed another drink in front of her.
‘No, and you already did the other night.’
‘My bad,’ he grinned. It was the only time he looked anything but totally alpha male. His smile was his best feature. It made him look young and carefree. The dimples that appeared in his cheeks just added to the overall effect.
‘I searched for that song. You were right, it was the one you said,’ she had found and downloaded it the moment she had got back to her sister’s on Saturday.
Tom sat down on the floor near to her and rested his back against the sofa. His long legs stretched out in front of him, one folded over the other.
‘You don’t have to sound so surprised.’
‘No, it’s just that I didn’t expect you to remember. It’s not really a boy thing, is it?’
He looked up at her and shrugged, ‘maybe not.’
‘It’s not like it was your first time? It’s the kind of thing you don’t forget being a teenage girl…’ her words faded towards the end of the sentence.
‘It was my first time with you.’
Her stomach clenched and she fidgeted in her seat.
Why had she forgotten that about him? The way the smallest thing he would say could leave her head spinning.
‘Yes, it was. But we don’t need to talk about it…’ she was flustered.
‘You bought it up.’
‘Yes, I did. My bad. Let’s change the subject?’ she said taking another nervous sip.
‘I like the subject fine.’
‘Of course you do,’ she drank a little more.
‘It was one of the best nights of my life.’
Mine too.
‘Well it was certainly memorable,’ she tried to draw it to a close.
‘You could say that,’ he paused, ‘it’s the night I fell in love with you,’ Tom leaned his head back on to the seat and turned his face to her. His thick lashes made him look sleepy.
She didn’t know what to say to him? She didn’t want to stare back at him for this long but all his magnificent features screwed with her mind and let her think crazy things.
‘I know,’ she whispered.
She did know.
‘So, what was the best night of your life?’ he asked quietly. His accent playing havoc with her composure.
‘The night my daughter was born. I had an emergency C-section at about one in the morning. I was so out of it at the time I don’t actually remember much, just a lot of people in blue scrubs rushing in and out of theatre. Tubes were crudely sticking out of my hands. Machines were beeping and kind nurses talking to me like I was a child.’ Alice wiped the condensation from the side of her bottle and continued, ‘But I did remember the sun coming up hours later and realising my life was no longer just mine. Every decision I made from that moment on, I made for two of us. It was odd because suddenly everything mattered and nothing mattered. I never felt so scared and yet so fierce.’
‘I know that feeling I think,’ he smiled.
‘I’ve had a few good nights,’ she confirmed.
‘Any of them ‘us’ nights?’ he fished for information jokingly.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ she watched him smile again and continued, ‘aside from the night you and I…’ she paused and tried not to squirm.
‘Fucked?’ he offered cheekily.
‘Made love,’ she corrected him, ‘I remember that late night on the school trip when we walked through the woods in the pitch black dark, it was freezing,’ she hadn’t forgotten any of the nights they were together but didn’t want to tell him that, ‘I told you how I felt.’
‘Oh my God I forgot that was the start of it. Seriously after I kissed you in that shed I was so disgusted with myself. I had kissed a student. I couldn’t believe it. After I walked you back to the dorm I drank half a bottle of whiskey and passed out – and I was supposed to be supervising the damn trip. If anyone had caught me I would have been sacked for sure.’
‘That was more than a kiss.’
‘Thanks… I was trying to block out the shadier parts of that night.’
Alice grinned at him, ‘You know what I mean. It was a kiss that meant more.’
‘It certainly was,’ he nodded.
Alice pushed herself back onto the sofa a little more and dared to stare at him for a few seconds. He was looking down at his beer and deep in thought.
‘Does your husband know you’re with me tonight?’ he asked out of the blue.
‘No.’
‘Does he know about us, what happened, our relationship?’
‘Yes, some – not all. But he does know you were my teacher,’ she felt herself frown thinking about him.
‘Bet he thinks I’m a bastard?’
‘Yes.’
Tom laughed.
‘It figures. I’d feel the same.’
She watched him drink.
‘How long are you staying over here for?’ Alice asked.
‘Till Saturday night I think. Essie is dropping the kids off to me on Sunday afternoon for a few days. So I will have to be back by then.’
‘Uh huh,’ hearing him shorten his ex-wife’s name made her jealous. She didn’t want to imagine the years he had spent with her and his own children. She liked it like this, where he only wanted to be with her again. She didn’t want any other woman to even talk to him.
She knew how that sounded.
Insane.
There she was, married. No intention of changing that. Yet she wanted to keep Tom for herself. The more she thought about it the more jealous she felt.
‘People were talking about you the other night at the party. Saying how hot you were at school’ she grinned.
‘Really?’ Tom acted like he was interested, ‘was she pretty?’
Alice pulled a face at him.
‘I’m single and it seems you don’t want me so I’ll have to keep my options open,’ he joked.
‘I’ll get her number for you and then you can leave me alone,’ she laughed.
‘You’re not even going to give me a sporting chance
then?’
‘Sorry.’
‘We’ll see,’ he shrugged again, ‘want some music on?’
‘Setting a scene are we?’ her eyes narrowing.
‘Your seduction,’ he stated bluntly.
He was clearly joking but the words hit her like a potent aphrodisiac.
‘You know I’m here to say goodbye?’
‘I know why you’re here, Alice, yes.’
‘Good,’ she whispered.
Tom picked up the remote control from the coffee table and aimed it at the cluster of electronic equipment, instantly chilled out club music started playing a little too loudly. Tom made a discontented face at the music choice, ‘This is Neil’s.’
‘Its fine – I like it.’
They sat and listened to a couple of tracks. After Tom had adjusted the volume, the music felt much more relaxing and mellow. But the verbal silence that passed between them only heightened the feeling that they both wanted to talk, to fill the void. But talking might mean the evening ending sooner than either of them wanted. Would they stumble onto a subject that didn’t feel right? Would he say something too scary? Would she be forced to leave? She needed answers tonight too, she just didn’t know how to ask the questions.
Tom looked at her again, ‘Baby…’
‘Don’t call me that please its distracting.’
‘Is it?’ he smiled.
‘Yes. You shouldn’t call me anything like that and you know it,’ she scolded him.
‘Force of habit, even after all this time.’
‘It just reminds me of… everything,’ she bit her lip and looked down at her lap.
‘You remind me of everything.’
‘God, Tom I’m married, stop it,’ she sighed.
‘It’s hard.’
‘Try,’ she insisted. Why was she pretending that she wasn’t enjoying him? That everything he was saying wasn’t affecting her and pushing her further towards his attention.
‘I miss you,’ he turned his body and leaned against the side of the sofa.
‘And I missed you,’ she said.
‘Missed or still miss?’ he flashed his eyes at her playfully.
Miss.
‘I used to think about you lots. Where you were? If you were alive, happy? I missed not knowing those things,’ Alice replied.
‘Alice, did you ever think of what I did, what we did, as wrong in the years that followed? I always worried that I might have scarred you or damaged you? Did you ever feel taken advantage of?’ he reached up and brushed the sofa with has hand.