Calling Me Back

by Louise Bay

  Luke’s name was flashing on the screen. Talk about timing.

  “Hey,” I said. Why was he was calling me?

  “Hi, I’m at the supermarket. What wine did Haven say I should bring on Sunday?” The noise of the shoppers echoed behind him.

  “Why would I know?” The shower began running in the bathroom, and I relaxed a little. It felt weird to be speaking to Luke while I was away with Richard. I went back to the window, not wanting to waste the view.

  “You were there, weren’t you?”

  “I don’t remember. But buy the pinot noir. Even if it’s not the right one, she’ll still like it.”

  “Okay. And I need to ask you a favor.”

  My stomach clenched. Was he going to tell me he was engaged and wanted me to do a reading at his wedding?

  “I have this work thing. Like an awards ceremony. Will you come with me? It’s black tie and everything.” Over the years, I’d got used to accompanying him to events like this. But I’d not done it for a while. Not since he moved in with Emma.

  I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I was pleased he was asking me, but I knew I shouldn’t go. “Why can’t Emma go with you?”

  “She’s working.”

  I rested my forehead on the cool glass in front of me. I wanted to go. And that was the difference. If Richard were asking, I’d say yes, but I wouldn’t really want to. If I went with Luke, we’d laugh all night and have the best time. “When is it?” I asked. I should say no. I should come up with an excuse. Spending time with Luke wasn’t going to make me like Richard more, and that’s what I needed to do.

  “It’s four weeks from today. Please say you’ll come. I can’t bear these things, and you’ll make it fun.”

  “Can’t Haven go?”

  “I’m not taking my sister. How pathetic do you want me to look?” he asked.

  I smiled. “I thought I was meant to be like a sister to you.” I was prodding him, verging on flirting. I shouldn’t be.

  “Well, you are like a sister, but in an ‘it’s legal’ way. No one has to know I’ve seen you pee yourself. We could pass as a couple.” I’d long passed the point where playing at being a couple was enough for me. I needed something real.

  “Jesus, I was five. Are you ever going to let me forget it?” Luke had been peeing on my mother’s roses, and I’d thought I would join the fun but ended up with wet underwear and a scolding from my mother. Luke had laughed until his eyes almost popped out of his head.

  “I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

  “I’ll check my schedule. I won’t know if I’m working until next week.” How did Emma have her schedule already? She worked at the same group of hospitals, and doctors and nurses got their schedules four weeks in advance. Surely she couldn’t know yet.

  “You’re the best. I’ll see you Sunday.”

  I shook my head at his assumption that I would end up going with him. “I won’t be there on Sunday, but I’ll let you know.”

  “You won’t? What are you doing?” he asked.

  I hesitated for a split second then decided to be honest. “I’m away for the weekend. With Richard.”

  “Oh, right. So . . . So it’s serious then?”

  I didn’t want to get into this with him. “I told you, we’ve been going out three months. It’s three-months serious. Not you-and-Emma serious.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  “I’ll speak to you next week,” I said.

  “Yeah, okay.” There was something in his voice that hadn’t been there before. I couldn’t quite identify it, but he sounded uncertain.

  The shower turned off, and I shoved my phone back in my bag just before Richard came out in his robe.

  “Nice threads,” I said.

  “Thanks. There are his and hers on the back of the door.” He straightened the front of the robe to show me the word “hers” embroidered on the breast pocket.

  I wanted to ask him if he’d left his penis back in London. I smirked at my own joke, but I wasn’t sure Richard would find it funny. “Did you get the wrong robe?” I asked.

  He stood in front of me, pulling at my waistband. “No,” he said, moving toward me. “I wore it because I’m hers. Yours.” He pressed his lips against mine, and I put my arms around his neck and closed my eyes, allowing our tongues to meet. “I’m all yours.”

  And that was the problem. I wasn’t all his, but I was trying to be.

  Luke

  “Why didn’t you bring Emma?” Haven asked as she opened the door.

  “It’s so good to see you, my beloved brother. How are you?” I responded sarcastically. I bent and kissed her cheek, and then we went through to the open-plan living space.

  “So?” she asked.

  Jake was in the kitchen, and we exchanged raised eyebrows.

  “She didn’t want to come. I can’t force her,” I said. The truth was I hadn’t pushed very hard. I preferred it when it was just the four of us. Or the five of us¸ when Beth joined. We fit together well.

  “Did you suggest she come? What did she say?” she asked.

  “That she always felt uncomfortable because we all had private jokes or something.”

  “Well how come Jake doesn’t feel like that? He’s come on the scene more recently than Emma.” Haven waved around a vegetable knife for emphasis. “Were you uncomfortable coming to Sunday night dinner?” she asked Jake, who seemed to be shredding some kind of vegetable with an unusually complicated cheese grater.

  He shook his head. “Nothing would have stopped me from spending time with you, and I wanted to know your family better. Anyway, I love Ash and Luke; why wouldn’t I like hanging out with them?”

  “Stop, you’re going to have me crying into my beer,” I said, and Jake grinned at me.

  “So she wants to marry you, but doesn’t like your family?” Jake asked. He switched from shredding to stirring something on the stove, his eyes fixed on the pot as if he were expecting gremlins to pop out of the pan at any moment.

  “It’s not quite that straightforward,” I said. “I can see why it would be more difficult for her than it was for you. Haven and Ash are quite the force to be reckoned with.”

  “What does that mean?” Haven’s eyes narrowed as she pointed what looked like a very sharp knife in my direction.

  “It means that you are both very protective, and that’s great and everything, but . . .” Ash made things complicated. She wasn’t my sister but knew me as well, if not better, than Haven. And I enjoyed her company, but girlfriends hadn’t historically understood our relationship. “Let’s get off the subject please. I hear Ash is away this weekend?” Something was always off when she wasn’t around on Sundays. It was unsettling.

  “Yeah, Richard’s taken her to the Lake District. He’s really serious about her. You can tell he has a green, flashing light right over his head,” Haven said.

  I looked at Jake to see if he was wondering what the hell she meant. He seemed as confused as I was.

  “What?” he asked. “A light on his head?”

  “You know, when guys are ready to get married, all the lights turn to green. Richard is ready and he wants it. You can tell.”

  “Where did you come up with this crazy theory?” Jake asked, and he pulled her toward him and kissed her roughly.

  She pushed him away. “Watch that sauce, or it will burn,” she said. “Everyone knows that guys can just suddenly turn their green light on, and when they do, they’re married within a year.”

  “You reckon?” I asked.

  “That didn’t happen with you and me,” Jake said with a confused look on his face. “I mean I wasn’t green light until you came along.”

  “Yeah, but I’m special—the exception that proves the rule. Or something. All I’m saying is that I think if Ash wants to marry Richard, they’ll be engaged by the end of the year.”

  My gut twisted at the thought of more change being thrust upon me, of Ash being engaged. I’d been focused on how mar
rying Emma would shift things, but if Ash married Richard . . . What would that do to our routine, our Sunday night dinners? Would I still be able to hang out with her? Invite her to work events? My head started to spin.

  I wasn’t sure if Jake and Richard being ready to commit so quickly meant that I was just different, or if it meant I just wasn’t with the right woman. Haven was, for sure, the right woman for Jake, and Ash? Was she the right woman for Richard? Was Richard the right guy for her?

  “You never know. He might propose this weekend,” Haven said.

  “What? That will never happen. He’s barely known her three months,” I said.

  Jake nodded. “She might be right. When you know, you know. Took me less time than that to know I was going to marry Haven.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. Does she like him enough to marry him? I didn’t get that vibe from her.”

  Haven didn’t respond and just shoved some apples and a vegetable peeler in front of me.

  I picked up an apple and started peeling. “I’m not sure they fit together, you know?” In my head, I’d always seen Haven married someday, but I’d never thought that would be for Ash. I’d always seen her as . . . belonging to me, somehow. Like we were a pair. Not that there’d ever been anything romantic between us, it was just . . . I knew that she was special to me, and me to her. We had a bond.

  “I don’t want her to end up married to some loser. It’s bad enough having to put up with this one.” I cocked my head at Jake and he grinned.

  I tried to remember what Richard was like, but it really had been a fleeting introduction. I hadn’t seen any kind of massive spark between them, but maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. I suppose he could be seen as handsome, and he would be able to look after her financially. He was a doctor. “I guess on paper he’s a catch—”

  “You might be married to Emma by the end of the year,” Haven said.

  “No way,” Jake said before I had a chance to respond. Haven playfully swiped him on the arm. “What?” he asked her, and she shot him a look.

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do?” she asked.

  Although I’d tried to put Emma’s ultimatum at the back of my brain, I’d thought about little else. At first I’d been convinced she was bluffing, and that she’d calm down in a couple of days and things would go back to normal. But I knew that wasn’t going to happen. The problem was we wanted different things. The more time that went on, the clearer it was I didn’t want to marry her.

  “Nope.” All I saw was a lose/lose situation ahead of me.

  “Hey,” I called as I let myself back into our flat after dinner.

  “Hi,” she replied. That was progress. At least she was speaking to me tonight.

  “Haven and Jake asked after you,” I said as I joined her in the living room.

  “Right.”

  “Emma—”

  “Don’t ‘Emma’ me, like I’m being some unreasonable shrew. I’ve done nothing but love you. I just want you to decide whether you see a future with me.”

  I slumped onto the sofa. I loved this couch. I’d had it since university, bought it when I shared a house in my sophomore year. Emma had tried to convince me to throw it out when we moved in together, but I’d bargained with her and given in to her choice of location on the condition I got to keep it. I smoothed my hand down the soft brown leather of the arm and took the comfort it offered. There was no point in replying. I didn’t have anything to say, it was clear there was no talking her round. Things weren’t going to go back to how they were, so she was right. I needed to decide whether or not I wanted to get married, have a family, do all those things that normal people did.

  “If we split up, I’m keeping this flat. I’ll buy you out,” she said.

  She’d clearly been thinking about this. Making plans. Jesus, I couldn’t keep up. “You agreed to give me some time to think it over. It’s a big decision.”

  Emma sighed and got up off the chair opposite me, taking her book with her, and headed toward our bedroom. “The thing is it shouldn’t be.”

  It was early, but bed seemed like a good place to be. I needed some space to think. Would Ash feel like this when Richard proposed? Would she have doubts? I knew Haven and Jake never questioned their future together. They knew that it was right, and Jake worshipped my sister. But not every couple was like that, were they? The fact that Richard hadn’t been to Sunday night dinner suggested that Ash wasn’t as serious about him as Haven had been about Jake. But maybe if he proposed, she’d get more serious? I closed my eyes. I should have been concentrating on Emma and me, not thinking about Ash and Richard.

  Should I take Jake’s advice and wait for the right girl? Was I the sort of man who found the right girl? I wasn’t sure. Emma was right; we’d been together long enough to understand our feelings for each other. And although I loved her, when it came down to it, if I was being true to myself, I didn’t want to marry her. As much as I tried to imagine being married to Emma, it was easier to imagine us not together anymore, not in each other’s lives. That feeling wasn’t as uncomfortable. My mind drifted back to Ash. The thought of her not in my world because she’d built a life with Richard was . . . Well, it was unthinkable. Just the possibility made my temperature rise and my palms sweat.

  I’d missed Ash this evening. It was never the same without her. Surely she would be back this evening from her weekend away? I pulled out my phone to message her.

  Luke: Hey. Missed you at dinner tonight.

  I scrolled through a few work emails, wondering if she’d message me back.

  Ash: Good to know I’m missed.

  I grinned at the screen. Of course she was missed.

  Luke: Did you check your schedule? Can you make the awards dinner?

  I was looking forward to that evening now I’d invited her. I hoped she wasn’t working.

  Ash: Yeah, I can make it. Richard’s out that night too.

  When had Richard being out become a factor in Ash’s decision making? Maybe Haven was right and they were serious. My fingers hovered over the dial button. I wanted to call and ask her what was going on, whether she was going to marry him. I mean, I was like a brother to her. I had a right to know, didn’t I? But it wasn’t just protectiveness I felt.

  It was jealousy.

  Of Richard.

  Ashleigh

  “It’s been amazing, hasn’t it?” Richard said as he kissed me softly on the lips. We were putting our bags in the car, ready for the journey home from the Lake District.

  I nodded. The weekend had been lovely, but not amazing. Richard had been kind, thoughtful and attentive as always. I had nothing to complain about. But I hadn’t laughed as much as I normally did, hadn’t been silly or . . . I just hadn’t felt quite like myself.

  “I always forget how beautiful it is up here,” I said as I turned away from the car, back toward the view of the lake below me. The mountains jaggedly cut though the blue sky, and I took a deep breath full of mountain air. Before my parents moved to Hong Kong, we used to visit the Lake District quite regularly. Haven and Luke joined us once, before their parents died. Even when it rained, which was most of the time, it was incredible, magical and such a contrast to London. “Thank you for bringing me back.”

  “We’ll have to come again. Maybe we’ll have our honeymoon here. You never know,” Richard said, grinning at me.

  My stomach lurched at his suggestion, but I managed a small smile. It wasn’t excitement that coursed through me. It was anxiety at the thought of a honeymoon with Richard, a life with Richard. He was such a great guy, and I knew that I was crazy with a capital C for not swooning at his suggestion. But as much as I tried, I wasn’t as serious about our relationship as he was. I was disappointed in myself for not being able to fall for him. Part of me wondered whether I was just destined to be unhappy, or if I would choose the most difficult route to happiness and be bound for failure.

  Richard opened the passenger door for me, and I got in
, getting comfortable for the long drive.

  “Have you got a busy week?” he asked as he started the engine.

  I nodded. “Yeah, quite busy. I’ve got to study for my entrance exam, so the next few weeks will be brutal.”

  He glanced at me. “Sorry. What are you talking about? What entrance exam?”

  “I told you that I was thinking about applying for an MBA program.”

  “No you didn’t. Why do you want to do that?”

  “I think it will be good. It’ll help me if I want to head up nursing in a big hospital, or . . . I don’t know. I might want a career change, to move into a more general healthcare role.” I liked the challenge that an MBA provided, and it was increasingly common for nurses to get them. As much as I enjoyed my job and the contact I had with patients, I felt there was more I could do for people if I had an opportunity to influence policy within a hospital.

  Richard didn’t respond. He just stared out of the window at the road in front of us.

  “You don’t think it’s a good idea?” I asked.

  “I didn’t think you were a career girl, that’s all.”

  What did that mean? “What’s a career girl?”

  He frowned and looked in my direction, then back at the road. “Wouldn’t you want to stay at home with your children?” he asked.

  “Well, unless you know something I don’t, I’m not pregnant. Anyway, I like working. I don’t understand how a girl with a career is a bad thing.”

  “I’m not saying it’s a bad thing. I think it’s great that you’ve been to university, but motherhood is the most important job you can do.”

  “Like fatherhood?”

  “Well, yes but it’s different, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “Well, apart from anything else, my earning potential is more than yours, so it makes more sense if either of us is to stay home that it would be you.”

  Were we really discussing what married life was going to be like for us? I wanted to undo the top button of my shirt to relieve the tightness around my throat, but I was wearing a V-neck and it wasn’t the collar that was creating the restriction.