by A B Turner
“Carrie? Are you in here?” it was Kat, I quickly typed ‘see ya sweetheart’ to Skylar before answering,
“I’m here.”
“Well, unless you’re drowning in there, perhaps you could come and join the rest of us, lunch finished ten minutes ago and we have to go and see Jax,” she said with more than a hint of impatience. I was about to open the door when thankfully, just in time, I realised I still had my panties around my knees so I quickly pulled them up and tried to assume some kind of nonchalant air. Kat looked at me closely,
“You’re very flushed..if you’ll pardon the pun, are you alright?”
I assured her, I was fine and reminded her we should be going, hoping she wouldn’t ask anything else. As we walked out into the corridor, she looked at me again,
“Perhaps I should go back in there because if I didn’t know better, I would swear you’d just had sex.”
I tried to laugh but, despite my efforts, it sounded fake, so I opted for a different approach,
“Now just who would I be with? Perhaps Doris the cleaning lady, now she’s a lovely woman although, considering she’s been married for about thirty years to her husband, it seems a bit unlikely she would want me.”
Kat smiled,
“Seriously, you’re hilarious,” she replied with a considerable degree of sarcasm.
“I am serious,” I continued, trying not to laugh, “Perhaps the smell of that lavender bleach made her suddenly reckless and she took advantage of my innocence.”
Kat shook her head,
“If she’s looking for your innocence, sweetheart, she’s about twenty years too late.”
We both laughed again and walked to Jacquie’s office, as I followed Kat through the door, I couldn’t help but be thankful she had been quite easy to distract – at least for now – because even though we had joked, the warm wetness between my thighs was still there which meant Skylar was too and I wanted that more than I could begin to describe to anyone – even my dearest friend.
Chapter 10
The rest of the day seemed to crawl by as all I could think about was talking to Skylar. I had not felt this way for so long, in truth, after Vanessa, I hadn’t expected have this in my life again, to feel excited and sensual, scared and bold – all at the same time. Almost as soon as I arrived home, I quickly changed clothes and went straight to Facebook, just to see if he was around, but because of the time difference, there was no sign of him. I scrolled idly through the posts of friends, some seemed deliriously happy whereas others were bitter and angry, posting hate-filled memes about exes. I sat back and thought about Steve, my own ex, despite everything that had happened between us, I simply couldn’t imagine spending time finding a whole heap of insults to post about him. He was the past, a painful and sometimes awful past but not a part of my life now and I had meeting Vanessa to thank for being able to leave him behind. She had shown me, in so many ways, just what was possible and so, for me, Steve was gone. It had taken time but he belonged to a version of me which had now changed beyond recognition and so to make him somehow relevant again seemed pointless. I checked the world clock on my phone which, for the first time since I had owned one, now had a time zone logged in – Melbourne, Australia. I felt disappointed when I realised it was late morning there, Skylar would be out somewhere, maybe shopping or taking his son to school. I wondered if he would be thinking of me, this thought was enough to make me laugh at myself, I felt foolish but almost unashamedly so, but not for long after all, no harm, no foul. I was about to log off when I noticed a message pop up at the top of the screen, it was Skylar,
“Hey sweetheart, how are you?” he asked.
“Hi gorgeous, I’m okay, how are you?”
“I’m good, I’m so glad you’re there, I wanted to ask if you still felt like calling me some time.”
I smiled as I typed back,
“Absofuckinglutely.”
I waited as I could see he was typing a response, it seemed to take forever, as if he was writing and then deleting his reply. I felt the slight twinge of impatience mixed with anxiety, as I waited for his message to appear. I couldn’t help but wonder what was taking so long, but almost as soon as I could feel that thought take hold, the message appeared.
“Look, gorgeous, like I said before, I don’t really know what we are doing and I guess it could all end in tears, but what I do know, for damn sure, is I don’t want to stop.”
Without even pausing for breath, I typed back,
“I don’t want to stop either and I can’t wait to talk to you soon.”
He quickly replied he had to go but we would be able to have a real conversation very soon, before I could answer, he had gone. Within seconds, my phone started to ring and I nearly leaped out of my skin in shock, still shaking, I hit the answer button,
“Hi Mum, I saw you were online and I thought I would call you.”
On hearing Lainie’s voice, I tried to regain some semblance of composure,
“Hello, this is a lovely surprise,” I replied as casually as I could manage, but she must have heard something in my answer because she immediately asked if I was alright. After repeatedly reassuring her I was fine, I sat back and listened as she talked excitedly about her life with Damon and her studies. As she laughed and joked, it filled my heart to hear her sound so happy, it also made me realise just how much I missed her living with me. I glanced across the room and there was a picture of her, she was around four years old in her first school uniform. It didn’t seem so long ago,
“Those years had gone too quickly,’ I said quietly, feeling relatively sure Lainie hadn’t heard me, but her next question soon showed otherwise,
“What years, Mum?”
I sighed and explained I had been looking at her photograph while she talked, she groaned,
“Not that school one? I look so weird in that picture, why would you keep that one up?”
I laughed,
“Don’t you call my baby weird, she was adorable, with her little hair bunches and her apple cheeks .”
“Bleurgh,” was Lainie’s first response before making me promise, if she sent me a new picture, I would take the school one down and it would never see the light of day again. After much debate, I finally agreed and we said our goodbyes accompanied, as always, by her saying she loved me and me responding with,
“Love you more.”
After logging off from Facebook and switching off the phone, I looked again at the school picture, I knew I should probably put it away but the promise had been, to replace it with the new one Lainie was going to send. As I didn’t have that yet, I carefully wiped the frame with the corner of my sleeve and replaced it on the shelf. I switched off the lights and walked into my bedroom, as I undressed, I reflected on the day, my awkward conversation with Diana, the surge of sexual feeling with Sky and the return to motherhood role with Lainie. As I slid under the covers, despite having such a mixed day, I actually felt quite thankful, after all, for years I had lived in some kind of emotionally numb state and now, well now, feelings were running wild, in so many different directions.
Over the next few days, Skylar and I messaged each other throughout the day and quite often, long into the night. I was well aware, perhaps things were moving too fast in some ways, but I seemed to have come to some kind of subconscious decision to just enjoy every moment and let the future take care of itself. We were going to really talk, I would hear his voice and that thought alone meant despite the weather had turned chilly, my head was filled with almost joyous thoughts, so the slight bite of cold in the wind didn’t seem to really affect me at all. As I waved cheerily at the receptionist, I saw Kat standing by the lift, so I raced to catch her,
“Hello, you,” I gasped, she turned to face me with more than a hint of disapproval in her expression,
“I am not surprised you’re out of breath, you must be exhausted, staying up half the night, every night.”
For a moment, I felt slightly bemused, as I couldn’t im
agine how she could possibly know what I had been doing. She sighed,
“We are FB buddies, you fool, when you’re online, I can see you.”
I felt the stirrings of an embarrassed chuckle, but her face quickly put paid to any humour,
“Seriously, Carrie, you’re going to burn out if you keep this up, I’m guessing you’re talking to this Australian?”
I nodded, perhaps a little too enthusiastically and was about to speak, when she sighed again,
“For fuck sake, sweetheart, this is getting ridiculous,” she paused, “Tell me you haven’t sent any pictures of yourself, that’s just so dangerous, they can end up on any old pervert’s laptop, you do know that ?”
By now, her attitude was starting to seriously annoy me, as soon as we had entered the lift, I took her arm so she was forced to face me,
“Now I know you mean well, but what I do and who I do it with, is my business Kat, is that understood?”
She raised her hands in some kind of mock surrender,
“Okay, okay, no need to get your knickers in a knot, as long as you know what you’re doing,” she added.
“Of course I do,” I answered shortly, while silently hoping I could convince myself as well as I seemed to be convincing her. I felt Kat’s arm slip around my shoulder,
“I don’t want to fall out over this, sweetheart, it’s just I worry..and so does Matt.”
I patted her hand and thanked her, accepting – as always – she only had my best interests at heart. Before we could say any more, the doors opened to reveal a distinctly harassed Jax,
“Thank God you two are here, we’ve had a shed load of people calling in sick this morning, Diana is absolutely furious and keeps asking what’s going on..how the hell would I know?”
Kat and I glanced at each other, probably both wishing we could say something worth hearing to calm her down, but we had no chance to speak as she all but chased us down to the conference room.
“Diana will be here in minutes,” she said quietly, “And whatever you do, just agree with everything she says.”
Kat laughed,
“Who would be stupid enough to argue with her?”
The smallest hint of a smile crossed Jacquie’s face before the deep frown returned to darken her mood,
“Right, you two go in, while I rustle up the rest of the troops, hopefully some have thought about it and have turned up.”
Thankfully, after around ten more minutes, the room was almost half full, so when Diana appeared, things didn’t look quite as bad as she had obviously imagined. She tossed some papers on to the desk before scanning the room,
“Well, good morning people, good to see some of you have managed to avoid the Black Plague which seems to have decimated so many of your colleagues.”
I heard someone at the back stifle a laugh at this comment, but I could believe one look at Diana’s expression would have made that easy to do, she was clearly not happy,
“Anyway, without further delay, let’s get down to business,” she paused and looked at us again,
“I am assuming no-one is on the point of collapse?”
This time nobody even smiled, so she walked back behind the desk and began the meeting.
“Now, the singularly most important feature of this week is the charity launch, it will be a case of nearly all hands on deck for this one, it’s a big occasion and nothing must go wrong. Obviously all the preparations are in place so it’s just a case of being there to answer questions, Jacquie has prepared a file for those who will be there, so take it home and learn it..”
She paused and looked straight at Jake,
“Before you make any jokes about homework, Jake, please try and take this seriously.”
He blushed slightly, quickly took a file and started studiously flipping through the pages, after several minutes, it seemed everyone seemed to have one except me, a fact Kat was quick to notice,
“Do you have any more, Diana? Carrie has been missed.”
“I don’t have one either,” said a voice, it was Tom, we had barely spoken for some time as when our paths had crossed,any kind of conversation had felt nothing less than awkward. Diana put her copy down and shook her head,
“That’s because you two will be somewhere else,” she answered shortly, before continuing to address the rest of the room. Kat and I exchanged worried glances, there was no question, Diana seemed almost angry with me, but I couldn’t really understand what I had done. After all, I had told her as much as I could about my involvement with Vanessa and she had seemed to understand. Anyway, I said nothing and listened to her briefing the others while occasionally looking at Kat’s open file, just in case there was some clue as to why I was obviously being excluded. Fortunately, only a matter of moments later, the reason was literally staring me in the face because as Kat turned another page, there was Vanessa’s picture. I heard Jake gasp slightly, he too must have reached the same page, Diana paused and glared at him,
“Problem?”
Once more, Jake looked slightly taken aback but managed to speak,
“She’s just so hot..” he began, immediately regretting his words as Diana threw down the file again,
“Well, thank you for that unbelievable insight, just what I need to know, that one of my staff cannot focus on their job for more than five minutes before their questionable attitude to women becomes all too apparent.”
Her words were heavily laced with a combination of sarcasm and simple irritation, I looked back at Jake, willing him to say something even slightly credible,
“You’re right, of course, Diana, I apologise.”
Whether it was down to the limited time frame for the meeting or the fact she looked tired, his words seemed to be enough to stop any further discussion between them. At that moment, the door slammed open and Jacquie burst in,
“I am sorry Diana, but Marcella Forbes is on the line..I tried to tell her to call later but she was very insistent.”
I saw a smile cross Diana’s face, as she told Jacquie not to worry and she followed her out of the room, pausing only to tell us to go nowhere until she returned. Once safely alone, everyone started talking about the charity launch and meeting Vanessa, even Kat was caught up in the general excitement,
“This is going to be so cool, everyone who is anyone is going to be there..” she suddenly stopped speaking and looked at me,
“Oh fuck, I’m sorry, Carrie, I forgot you’re not going, sometimes I am so tactless..”
I raised my eyebrows,
“Sometimes?”
She laughed before asking me if I wanted her to speak to Diana to see if she could have me included, I shook my head,
“She must have her reasons, Kat, it’s fine, really it is..you’re more of the Hollywood type any way.”
Kat unsurprisingly agreed before adding, the decision still didn’t seem very fair, but after I insisted I had faith in Diana’s judgement, thankfully, Kat didn’t persist any longer other than suggesting I speak to her myself.
“Maybe,” was all I could answer even though it was glaringly obvious to me why I wouldn’t be at the launch, just the mention of Marcella’s name was more than enough reason. For the first time since we had spoken, I was thankful I had told Diana at least some of what had happened, after all, if I hadn’t, I could be walking into that launch, not only risking being caught by the photographer but having to face Vanessa again. I had thought about us meeting again so many times, even rehearsed what I would say, but I had been forced to accept our time was over, we had said our goodbyes. As everyone around me continued to talk, my mind drifted back to when I had been with her, it was almost more of a daydream than reality now and perhaps that was for the best.
The next few days were a constant flurry of activity at work seemingly for everyone, I barely saw Kat and Jacquie was never without a bundle of files in her hand and a phone to her ear, which meant her only way of communicating was a nod and quick smile. I had no real idea what Tom and I would be doi
ng during all the excitement, we hadn’t really talked for months which was no real surprise, I just hoped when our paths did eventually cross, we would be able to be friendly. However, my mind was filled with other things, because much as I understood I was missing out on an amazing experience at the charity launch, I was actually quite relieved not to be a part of the whole experience as everyone was so preoccupied, it gave me time to message Skylar at work. Almost as soon as I was left alone in the office, I logged on to Facebook to see if he was there, as always I felt my heart race at just the anticipation of spending some time with him because although we were still yet to actually talk, our exchanges were becoming more and more addictive for me. When the now familiar,
‘Hello gorgeous’ appeared on my phone screen, I couldn’t help but smile as I wrote my reply,
‘Hey sweetheart, how are you?”