This Love

by Anna Bloom

  Remorse makes me flare into a blush. “Sorry,” I mumble.

  “Just get in the car and lets get out of here.” He swings open my door and I willingly sink into the worn seat. The moment the door shuts and separates me from the house, I start to relax. I don’t care where we are going because I just want to run away, even if it can only be for one night.

  Fifteen minutes later, we are pulling up in front of the old Bale and Son’s property. The battered sign advertising the company name is no longer there, it’s been replaced with a tasteful, smart update. I think I prefer the old one. The brandy burn has mixed with fresh air and the blood in my veins feels like it’s on fire, zapping around my body, spoiling for a fight or something more.

  “You brought me to work?”

  “Yes, Amber. That’s what I do in a crisis, I bring a girl to work.”

  “What girls?”

  He rolls his eyes and leans across into my space. “Loads, millions, every day.”

  “Hm.”

  “Are you going to come in with me?” His eyes dance, but for the life of me, I can’t think what he’s finding amusing.

  “Nope. Not if you’ve done this before with other girls.”

  Throwing his head back he lets out an exasperated sigh. “Don’t let me give you brandy again.”

  “Who says you get to decide what I can have?” Now I am getting pissed off. That’s the sort of shit I got from Elliot for four years.

  In a flash he is out the car and pulling on my door. “Amber, do be bloody quiet.” He grabs me again and hoists me up. I go from angry to turned on in approximately two seconds.

  Using one hand, Freddy lets us into the garage and flicks the lights. Instantly I am taken aback. This isn’t the garage at all, it’s a full out studio apartment all built into what was once the old garage.

  “What the hell?” I mutter in amazement.

  He laughs and places me on the floor. “Seemed silly paying for a flat and the garage all in one go, I decided to combine space.”

  Slowly I turn around. “It’s quite amazing.” I’m in shock for the second time in one day. This time it’s a better shock. Leather sofa’s scatter around, bookshelves line the walls and soft faded rugs make it look more homely than you’d think possible.

  “Fancy a drink?” He heads for a sideboard with bottles stood on one edge. Picking up a bottle, he pours himself what looks like a triple scotch and knocks it back. “Shit,” he exclaims, as he places his glass softly back on the antique wood. “That wasn’t how I was planning on tonight going.”

  “What were you planning?”

  He laughs a small sound. “Anything other than you being screamed at, assaulted and me unable to get to you.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” I reassure him. The brandy is telling me that it wasn’t that bad.

  “How long has she been like that for, Amber?”

  “She hasn’t, that was the first time — she’s, done that. I mean, she gets cross and frustrated, especially at night and she has nightmares a lot, I think it’s when she’s tired. But she’s never done that before.”

  In one step he’s across the room, his hands tight on my shoulders. “You know you can’t live like that, if that’s how she’s going to be then she needs to go into a home.”

  “She’s the reason I came back, Freddy, I have to look after her.”

  “Not like that.” Pulling me in tight, he encases me in his arms of steel. More memories from a previous life burst like fireworks in my head. Arms of steel.

  “And what about Isaac, are you going to let him see that?”

  This stops me in my tracks. Imagine if he’d been there tonight? I don’t say anything.

  Freddy continues anyway, “Where is Isaac, I thought this was your weekend?”

  I groan slightly and thump my head against his chest. “Elliot,” I start to say but Freddy cuts me off.

  “I bloody hate that bloke, I’m struggling to understand what you saw saw in him.”

  “You know what I saw in him.” Anger flashes across his face as he remembers my comment that the reason I settled for Elliot was because he wasn’t Freddy. I shouldn’t have said it now, but the brandy is still snapping in my veins. Maybe more of the fiery liquid would dissipate the anger I’m feeling? I reach a placating hand and slide it up the smooth skin of his forearm. “Shall we have a drink?” His easy smile flashes back. “Make it a stiff one, and I’ll try and make sense of it all for you.”

  The brandy I’ve already consumed has loosened my tongue enough that telling Freddy all about my disastrous marriage seems like the very best idea ever. I’ve told him snippets before. During our night together after our date, I shared snapshots of what my life was like when I wasn’t here. But I was concentrating more on the telling him what my life was like without him, Freddy, in it. I never told him the choices I made that made me married to the wrong man.

  An hour later we are curled up on one of the deep sofas and I’ve come to the end of my sorry tale. The one where I met a guy who looked like he loved me and would love my son, and I believed that I could make myself learn to love him, but when it came to it, couldn’t. I’ve told Freddy all about the guilt and shame I felt for the six months before I came back home, the six months when I knew my marriage was a sham and I couldn’t breathe in it anymore. The six months when I didn’t know what the hell to do.

  “When did you know you weren’t going to fall in love with him?” Freddy has his lips at my ear.

  I weigh up whether to tell him the whole truth. The truth that makes me look weak and pathetic, and someone who I don’t like.

  “The day he asked me to marry him and I said yes for Isaac, and not for myself.”

  “If I’d found you and asked you, would you have said yes for yourself, or for Isaac?”

  I struggle against him so I can sit up. “You didn’t.”

  “I know.” His eyes darken and his expression hardens. “I wish I had.”

  “The past is just the past.” I shrug.

  “You’ve never been a part of my past, Amber. You have always been my present, even when you weren’t here.” His mouth finds mine for the first time since our night together. The taste of him makes my body respond stronger than it’s ever done before. I can trace the hint of scotch on his lips and it tastes good in all the bad ways.

  The brandy rush spreads through me again, mixed with my two hefty measures of scotch and suddenly all my limbs feel like they’ve caught alight. I grab onto his hair, pulling him closer and closer, until our kiss is on the point of painful. He meets me with as much aggression. His fingers tug, and pull at my clothes, peeling them away from my skin, ripping them off me and abandoning them on the floor. Quickly, I slide my own hand under his shirt, revelling in the feel of his skin, hard and smooth all at once.

  “I can’t stay away from you, Amber.” He breathes into my mouth. “I’ve never been able to stay away.”

  “Don’t then.”

  "I said I’d give you space, take the pressure off so that idiot wouldn’t punish you for me, but I can’t. I just need to be with you.”

  Thoughts rush through my mind, my life up until this moment, my last week where the only glimmer of enjoyment I’ve had is at ten thirty when Freddy turns up to hold my hand. Flickering images of the life I’ve had and the one I could have had chase each other until they merge together, painting a picture of the words I want to say.

  “Lets be together.” I gush the words against his mouth. My pleasure at saying them outweighs any fear for the future.

  “And you’ll wait the five years if that’s what it takes?” He pulls back to ask, his serious eyes pulling me, begging me to drown in their depths.

  “I’ll wait forever.”

  “I’m talking burnt bacon, school runs, sharing parents and responsibilities. It has to be all or nothing.”

  I sit myself on his lap and he pushes off the sofa, striding for a room which I can’t see. Inside a closed room he flicks the lights onto
dim and I slide onto the floor. Looking around in amazement, I see all the pictures of Freddy and myself that were missing from my bedroom when I returned home weeks ago.

  “My pictures?” I walk up to them, not caring that I’m missing clothing. There’s the picture of us on my eighteenth when we danced under fairy lights in this very garage.

  “I took them from your room when it became clear you weren’t coming back.”

  “Why?”

  With gentle fingers he turns me towards him and I see something glinting in his fingers. The locket. He must have picked it up in my room the other day. He slides it around my neck and fastens the clasp. This is the exact same place he first gave it to me. “Because as I said earlier, you’ve only ever been my present. That’s all you ever would have been, whether or not you came back.”

  Tears spring down my cheeks as I look up at Freddy and find myself finally home.

  I know that this path we have put ourselves on isn’t going to be easy, too many things stand between us and ‘easy.’ But I know it will be okay because it’s Freddy and I, and this love of ours.

  TIME

  Freddy and Isaac both push their food around their plate. I’m rinsing a pan under a tap before sitting down myself to join them. Mum’s already tucked up, it’s part of the new routine we started months back after she was diagnosed with Sundowners Syndrome, an illness that sits side by side with Alzheimer’s. She now gets put to bed early before she can become over stimulated or the dark takes her to that frightening place like it did back in September. It’s helped, things are manageable, but every day I lose a little bit more of the mother that I’ve never really known. I’m working out it’s one of the bittersweet ironies of life: to lose something you never had.

  There’s a lot of sniggering coming from the table but every time I turn my head to catch what’s going on they both duck down and concentrate on their food.

  Hm.

  I’m starving when I finally get to sit down in front of my plate of food. Freddy gives an outright snort of laughter and Isaac's shoulders shake. “Okay, what’s going on, guys?” I quiz, painting a frown on my face for good effect. The kitchen is no longer as dismal as it used to be. Freddy replaced the various tones of beige with a whitewash weeks ago, and the room is no longer as bleak as it once was.

  Neither of them meets my eyes so I set about organising the perfect forkful. Freddy laughs harder before cracking and just putting his head on the table, his plate pushed out of the way. He hasn’t eaten anything. Strange.

  “Come on, Freddy, eat up, it’s going to get cold.”

  In response, Freddy practically wails with laughter before pulling himself under control and lifting himself off the table. “Honestly, Isaac, I just don’t understand how you’ve survived?” He looks at Isaac with sympathy.

  “What?” Putting down my knife and fork, I fold my arms and look at the two of them jigging up and down with giggles. “Isaac?”

  “Seriously, Amber?” Freddy continues. “How’s it possible for you to be such a terrible cook? The fish fingers are still frozen but the chips are burnt. I don’t even understand how you managed that.”

  I inspect my plate, poking my fish finger. They’re right. The fish is still hard and cold in the middle. “Shit.”

  “Can we have pizza?” Isaac implores me with a hopeful look. Pizza is probably a good idea but I’m low on funds, what with my current inability to work on a new novel or market any of my current ones due to spending most of my time staring at Freddy. It’s time well spent as far as I’m concerned but it doesn’t pay the bills.

  “Sure, go and get the menu,” Freddy answers for me.

  Isaac dashes out of the room and I can hear him sliding the draws of the bureau in the hall. “You can’t keep bribing him with pizza,” I hiss at Freddy as soon as he’s out of earshot.

  It’s not just pizza, it’s the tree house now standing proud in the garden, and the tinkering with expensive cars that goes on at the weekend, well my weekends anyway. I’m still sharing my son with Elliot, but in my soul I can feel the tide changing. Having Freddy here, doing boys stuff is making Isaac want to spend more time at home.

  “Just one more pizza and then we will eat your frozen fish fingers forever more.” Freddy grins at me and gets up to relieve the fridge of two more cold beers. As he pops the lids, I know I’ve lost yet another evening of work.

  Moving fast, he manages to swoop in, plant a kiss on my lips, and be sitting in his seat by the time Isaac comes back into the kitchen with the takeaway menu in his hand.

  Freddy is a ‘friend.’ It’s been a slow process, but I’m so determined not to repeat my previous mistakes that it couldn’t have been any other process apart from a slow one. The day we came home from Freddy’s garage/apartment we put on a united front. Later the same day, Elliot knocked on the door, his face primed with smugness only to be replaced with surprise when we opened the door together. Once Isaac was safely home, Freddy left. He comes back every evening for dinner, strolling in after work, like we’ve always lived together. But he always leaves before the morning.

  Freddy and Isaac are building a fragile relationship of trust and respect, and every time I see them together it makes heart swell to the point of bursting. Isaac loves that Freddy doesn’t talk to him like a child, he explains everything to him as he would an adult, even when it comes to the internal mechanics of an engine. Mr. Bale Senior has even been around with tools for Isaac, all Freddy’s old ones which he kept.

  We are being treated like family. I just need to explain to Isaac how things now stand with Freddy, hopefully then he won’t have to sneak off in the dark of night. Then finally we will be able to tell Isaac the truth and then, just maybe, and it’s a far reaching dream that I can barely allow myself to hope for, but then maybe our lives will be the way they always should have been.

  The time is nearly right. The anger that Isaac was walking around with before has dissipated, he finally told me that Elliot has been exaggerating the truth, telling him that I’d uprooted him and moved us here so I could be with Freddy.

  I explained that it was a lie, that I came here to look after Crazy Nanny Barb and that anything else happening was just fate.

  Fate and timing. I can’t help but think the two things are irrevocably connected. Ten years ago fate stepped in and made the timing not right, but this time it’s playing us a different hand. A better hand.

  Once the pizza’s been scoffed, I start the process of clearing up — again. I must say, the pizza was much better than fish fingers and chips. One of these days I need to learn to cook because it’s becoming embarrassing on my days in the kitchen that Freddy is far superior than me. Even Isaac groans now when he knows it’s a mum night and not a Freddy night.

  “Bath,” I instruct Isaac. He dutifully ignores me and picks up his iPad. “Bath,” I say again.

  “Later.” Isaac doesn’t take his eyes off his game, or whatever he’s looking at.

  ‘Now,” I warn him again with my elbows deep in washing up bubbles.

  “In a bit.” His tone is offhand.

  “Isaac.” Freddy even makes me jump. “Your Mum said now, so hop to it.”

  I stiffen at the sink. This is the first time Freddy has stepped in between us.

  Isaac scowls at Freddy, “You’re not my dad.” It’s a simple statement.

  Freddy doesn’t flinch and his face remains calm, serene almost. “Guess not, but I just bought you pizza so that owes me a bath.”

  Isaac just laughs. That’s right, he bloody laughs. I would be losing this battle of the bath and screaming by this point, but this is what Freddy does. He talks to him in such a way that he’s not actually telling him to do something he’s just suggesting it in such a way that Isaac doesn’t know how to say no. It’s a clever trick and one I wish I’d learnt years ago.

  “That’s true.” Isaac pushes back from the table and heads upstairs to the bathroom.

  Spinning, I flick bubbles everywhere. “How d
id you get him to do that, without any discussion, argument or face pulling?”

  “My answer was true. He did owe me a bath. How can he argue with that?” He comes towards me, wrapping his arms around my waist and I cover him in bubbles as I run my fingers through his hair.

  “You make things so easy,” I say, leaning in to kiss him. He hesitates for the shortest moment, but it’s enough, I can already tell he has something to say. “What is it?” Horror strikes me and I edge away. “Oh my God, you’re not going to tell me this is too easy again and break up with me?”

  He laughs and reels me back in. “Nope, don’t be so dramatic.” He drops a placating kiss on my lips.

  “Don’t kiss me if you’re going to dump me.”

  “Amber! I’m not going to dump you!”

  “What then?”

  “Okay, sit down.” He leads me back to the kitchen table around which most of our nights take place. ‘So, I need to ask something, and I know you're going to freak out.”

  “Well now I’m going to freak out.”

  A million different questions run through my head, the last one I’m expecting is the one he drops on me.

  “I’m thinking about racing again, what do you think?”

  I sit back in the chair with a thump. “You’re thinking of doing what?”

  “Racing, again, if you agree.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Pushing out of my chair, I back away and into the kitchen counter. Freddy watches me from under his hair, his eyes dark in the dim kitchen lighting.

  I don’t think I made my surprise clear enough. I reiterate just to make sure. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  Freddy looks as calm as the sea on a summer day. “Nope.”

  "What? So have you waited for me to come back to town, for us to form some sort of tentative relationship again and decided that right now would be the perfect time to restart the career that nearly killed you?” I come to a gasping stop, my blood rushing around my body, making me hot and flustered and not in the enjoyable way that Freddy usually creates.