by Lilian Darcy
Kit hugged her jacket around her, feeling that it was more for protection than for warmth. Her skin rose in prickly bumps, but it wasn’t because she was cold. Gian straightened slowly, watching her, then turned and went up to the cash desk. He counted out several bright notes, the colour of flames, and waved away the proffered change. He was back in less than a minute.
‘Let’s go.’
As she stood, he ran the palm of his hand down the leather sleeve of her jacket, stroked his forefinger across her knuckles, then laced his fingers through hers. The warmth of his grip sent sensation all the way up her arm, and when he stepped closer to bend and plant a kiss in her hair, her breathing caught in her throat. She could feel his warmth, smell the subtle aura of soap and maleness that clung to him, sense the gravitational pull of his body on hers.
‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said on a low growl.
‘Like what?’
‘As if you’re scared, and as if you want me to kiss you at the same time.’
‘I—’
‘Because I will kiss you. Right here. Just to prove that there’s nothing for either of us to be scared of. And I don’t want to waste our first kiss on an unappreciative audience of couples and workmates out to dinner. I want our first kiss just to be for us.’
‘Please, don’t—’
‘Kit, I didn’t think I was ready for this either. I wasn’t looking for it at all, and I certainly wasn’t expecting it to have this sense of…’ He broke off. ‘No, can’t find the word. But it seems as if, when it happens, our sense of readiness just doesn’t count.’
The streets were still wet. Wet and quiet. Only a few cars splashed past, sending up cold droplets of spray. Kit hugged her arms around herself, keeping Gian at bay. She didn’t know if it was by accident or design that he walked next to the kerb, bearing the brunt of the water. She suspected there was nothing accidental involved.
‘It’ll be nicer by the river,’ he said.
The terraced lawns of the nearby municipal park sloped down to the water, and there were some huge and ancient eucalypts by the banks, as well as a playground and bench seats, a cycling path and beds of flowers, all of them well lit.
It was too wet on the benches to sit down. Gian didn’t even consider it. Instead, he pushed her defensively folded arms down to her sides and pulled her against his warm body as soon as they reached the little gazebo, where musicians occasionally played.
‘Now,’ he muttered, very close to her mouth. ‘Let’s get this whole thing on the table right now.’
His lips met hers a fraction of a second later, brushing, coaxing and tasting. Soft and firm, warm and full, drawing her response as strongly and inevitably as salt created thirst. The sound of protest that constricted her throat was meaningless. She closed her eyes and let the moment sweep her away, let her strength sigh against the support of his thighs and his chest, let her mouth fall open and her tongue begin to explore.
He tasted of coffee and lemon, and he smelled just of himself—a rich, woodsy, leathery smell that spoke of strength and confidence and adult desire. He didn’t mind that she knew how much he wanted her. His kiss was intended to show her that she wanted him just as much.
That wasn’t in doubt. That wasn’t the problem.
Well, it was part of the problem, Kit revised. If she hadn’t felt this way, hadn’t wanted to kiss him so much, then they could have ended the evening with an average amount of courtesy and respect, because she’d have known there was no potential between them for anything more. This way, with the intuition they shared, and their electric physical response to each other, what she knew she had to do was so much harder.
‘Please, don’t.’ She breathed the words against his mouth, and felt the deep, musical gurgle of his laughter. She groaned and parted her lips further.
‘Try just a little bit harder, Kit!’ he said.
He cupped his hands around her jaw, his mouth tormenting her with deliberate intent. He nipped at her lower lip, salved the make-believe wound with his tongue, made his mouth dance over hers. When an anguished sound of need escaped from her throat, he laughed again.
‘You know what, you’re not trying at all!’
‘You’re not letting me try!’
‘Letting you doesn’t count. I want you to fight, Kit.’ Finally, he was serious. He pressed his forehead to hers, laced his fingers together in the small of her back so that his chest was a wall of warmth against her.
‘Fight me, if you want this to stop,’ he went on. ‘It doesn’t make sense for you to protest, and push, and put up barriers, when I can feel how much we both want this. When I can feel that there’s a spark, a magic, that I haven’t felt in a long time, that I haven’t ever felt quite the same as this, and that I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel again. Not like this, anyway. Not this good.’
‘If you’re looking for an affair…’ She looked searchingly into his face, feeling the way her eyes had narrowed, wondering what he would see. Evidence of all the times she’d cried? She’d noticed lines beginning to appear around her eyes and mouth over the past year.
‘I’m not looking for an affair,’ he said. ‘Why place limits? Not just an affair, certainly. It’s a starting point.’
‘I wish you were,’ she blurted. ‘I really wish you were!’
The repetition ended on a sob, and she broke away at last, hiding her face in her hands.
Behind her, Gian was silent, until at last he growled, ‘This isn’t making sense, Kit. You weren’t ready for this, I know that. Neither was I. We’ve both come out of other relationships that have, at some level, failed.’
‘Yes, so—’
‘Having it happen, unexpectedly, is what’s suddenly made us ready, it seems. Or that’s how I feel, anyway. We can take it very slowly, if you like. And we’re free to stop it, either of us, if it isn’t working out.’
‘I’m stopping it now, in that case.’
‘No, you’re not. Not until you tell me why.’
She sighed. ‘This feels so…back to front.’ She looked at him, and saw how intently he was watching her. She spread her hands. ‘I have to tell you something. Far too soon. I know it’s too soon. I wish there were boxes. “Too soon” and “too late” and “just right”. But there aren’t boxes, there’s just one huge grey area, and we’re in it, and I have to tell you.’
‘Making me nervous, Kit,’ he said lightly.
‘I know.’ She laughed. Then she bit her lip. ‘I’ll just say it.’
‘Go ahead.’
‘I probably…more than probably…can’t have children, Gian. That’s what broke up my last relationship. Not my idea. His. James. He went through the motions for a long time, after we found out—and finding out was a journey in itself—but in the end he decided I was damaged goods, and he—OK, I’m cutting a long story short here. He moved out.’
She paused, pictured Tammy, sitting happily out in the waiting room at Black Mountain Hospital’s pre-natal clinic, while the contents of her thin patient file—fertile women didn’t know how lucky they were to have a thin file—blurred before Kit’s own vision.
Should I mention that part? she wondered. That James acted like a free agent and started sleeping with Tammy before he even moved out of our house? That she had already conceived, purely by accident, while I was still waiting to hear the bad news on our final IVF cycle? That James is going to be a father in a couple of months?
No.
She’d sob if she talked about all that.
Sobbing would not help.
‘What is it, Kit?’ Gian was saying. ‘Hormonal? Mechanical? There’s so much that can be—’
‘Don’t turn into an obstetrician.’ She closed her eyes. ‘Not now. Please.’
‘I am an obstetrician! How can I help—?’
She cut in, ‘It’s endometriosis.’
‘Some women can still—’
‘I know about some women, Gian. When we tried, it turned out that I wasn’t one of them.’
‘What did you—?’
‘Stop. Please, stop!’ She stepped back, saw the way he was still watching her. ‘Do you see why I had to tell you this?’
‘Let’s just assume I’m very obtuse,’ he said softly. ‘You tell me why.’
‘Because it would have been too unfair not to. I know you want children. It was the rock your marriage split on, wasn’t it? You did, and your ex-wife didn’t. Your mother said something to Aunt Helen, and I overheard.’
‘Ah. That was bad luck.’
‘It was for the best. Telling you now seems…’ she took a breath, gave a laugh with no amusement in it ‘…absurdly too soon, as if I’d been thinking you were going to end the evening, tonight, by saying, “Have my baby.” But telling you any later, when I already know about the reason for your divorce, would have seemed as if I was trying to…reel you in first, or something. Trick you into—No.’ She pressed her hands to her temples. ‘No, it’s too stupid to finish, that sentence. I’m sure you see my point.’
‘I’m working on it,’ he growled. ‘There were other reasons why my marriage ended, Kit.’
‘But the crunch, the thing you couldn’t get around, was the issue of children.’
‘Yes. Yes, at heart it was.’
‘You see? This way, we’re both all right. We’re safe. It’s not hurtful to have you back off now, before we really know each other.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘No. Or much less, anyway. We’re still safe, both of us,’ she repeated. ‘I want you to back off. It’s sensible. Rational. Because there’s an unbridgeable distance between what you want and what I can provide. It’s the ultimate incompatibility. Nothing personal about it. It just is. So we won’t see each other any more, and we won’t get hurt, and life can go on.’
Gian was silent, and she waited.
‘Are you going to have this conversation with all the future men in your life?’ he said at last.
‘Not all. Only the ones I like.’
‘That makes sense.’
‘It’ll be fun, won’t it?’ Sarcasm dripped like vinegar in her voice. ‘Maybe I should just get a T-shirt printed up, or something, instead.’
‘What would it say? No. Don’t answer that. The humour’s too bitter, Kit.’
‘Sometimes, it’s a relief. Hardly anyone knows. Maybe turning it into a comedy routine might be easier than having a series of dramatic, confessional talks. I’m not enjoying this!’
Gian could hear the strain in her voice, and see in her body how tightly she was wound. He was so tempted to take her in his arms again and tell her it didn’t matter.
But it did matter.
She was right about that.
This wasn’t the time for rash assurances, for promises he might not, in the end, be able to keep. It wasn’t hard to understand how badly she had been hurt, and he’d seen at first hand, with some of his patients, how a couple’s infertility could make cracks widen in all but the strongest relationships.
How in heaven’s name could he guarantee, at this early stage, that he wouldn’t hurt her again? How could he guarantee that if this intuition between them petered out, it would have nothing to do with what she’d said tonight?
He said finally and very carefully, ‘It was brave of you to talk about it, Kit. I appreciate that. And you’re right. We need to step back.’
‘Yes. More than that.’
‘Step back,’ he repeated. ‘We still have to work together. We have to maintain a way to deal with each other.’
‘As distantly as possible, Gian. It doesn’t make any sense to do anything else.’
The rain started again—appropriate, given her bleak words. Gian felt several drops on his hands and face, and saw them beginning to bead the waterproofing on Kit’s soft jacket. Without the talk they’d just had, he might have grabbed her hand and they’d have run back to his car, laughing and soon soaked to the skin and not caring a bit.
The rain and the chill wouldn’t have mattered. He’d have turned on the car’s heating at full blast and held her in his arms and kissed her with all the heat and hunger inside him until they were both warm and dry again. Even a ruined jacket wouldn’t have seemed important.
But you couldn’t destroy two things in one evening. They’d already destroyed any prospect of a relationship between them. The jacket, however, could be saved.
‘We’d better get back to the car,’ he said. ‘In fact, why don’t I leave you at the bus shelter and come back for you when I’ve picked it up?’
He had parked just a couple of hundred metres further along, outside the restaurant and within sight of the place where he was proposing to leave her.
‘Yes, all right,’ she agreed. ‘It must be getting late. There’s hardly anyone about.’ Her tone was bright, but it wobbled. She wasn’t quite carrying off the ‘I’m OK, and I’m not thinking about it any more’ thing.
They walked side by side up towards the road, quickening their pace as the rain grew heavier. There was no one else at the bus shelter, no more buses tonight. It was already after ten. Ducking out of the shelter again, Gian began to run, and didn’t stop until he reached the car, his wet shirt and trousers plastered uncomfortably to his skin. The sky had opened up, and it was pouring now.
He looked back along the street. Kit made a lonely figure, beneath the shelter’s roof, her face very pale and her feathery hair softening the shape of her head. She’d hugged herself again, running her hands up and down her arms as if she was cold to the bones and needed the heat of the friction.
Gian felt a sense of loss that was too sharp, considering how little they knew each other. Infertile couples had to grieve for the death of hopes and possibilities. It must feel a little like the way he felt now.
He hadn’t lost someone he loved, but he’d lost the possibility of loving—loving this particular woman, whose scent and smile had bewitched him, who could deal with their professional differences sensibly, who cared enough about family to come and live with a widowed aunt, and who didn’t have a good head for wine, or the right words to describe its taste.
The restaurant was closing, he noticed.
Places didn’t stay open late on a weeknight in Glenfallon. People had to make their own entertainment. He heard a carload of young men roaring down the street in a hottedup old Holden. They slowed as they approached the bus shelter, and Gian floored the accelerator pedal of his own vehicle and pulled in beside Kit just as the Holden turned to come back for a second look at her solitary figure.
‘I shouldn’t have left you here,’ he said, feeling as if he’d abandoned her twice in the space of minutes.
She lifted her chin. ‘They’re pretty harmless, I think. In any case, I know how to use a bunch of keys.’
She held up a fist, and he saw that the slits between her tightly held fingers each bristled with a key. She gave a faint smile that didn’t quite reach her brown eyes.
So she had been nervous, he realised, despite her denials, despite her independent stance. There was nothing he could say. After what they’d agreed tonight, he wasn’t the man to offer her any kind of protection. This fact underlined how separate they were.
They didn’t talk much during the drive. Kit asked if she could switch on the radio, and they listened uncaringly to an announcer’s upbeat patter and half of a current hit. When Gian reached out and pulled her into his arms just as she was about to duck out into the rain to open the gate leading into her aunt’s yard, he hadn’t planned the moment, it just happened.
She made a sound of surprise and feeble protest as his lips touched hers, but he ignored it, and parted them slightly to make the touch of his mouth soft and sweet and slow. Their kiss didn’t last long.
‘Just to show that nothing else in the way I feel has changed,’ he said. ‘Thank you for your company.’
He left her to interpret the words any way she chose, and went to open the gate.
‘You can shut it on your way out,’ she told him when he ca
me back to the vehicle and drove through. ‘The sheep are under a tree, asleep and keeping out of the rain. They won’t wander in and bother the dogs at this time of night, or vice versa.’
He wheeled around the muddy yard and pulled in as close as he could to the small porch which led to the kitchen door.
‘Um…’ she began, and, thanks to her awkwardness, he guessed her intent.
‘You’re going to ask me in, because you think it’s polite,’ he said. ‘Or because your aunt will expect it.’
‘Unfortunately, yes, she will. It’s only because she—’
‘Because she cares. I know. I have one of those in my life, too. It’s not just Italian mothers, then?’
‘No, Scottish aunts as well.’
‘Tell her my pager went off.’
‘Very convenient!’
‘Mostly, it’s not. Mostly I’m just getting into the shower, or sitting down to a meal. For once, let’s give the damned thing a chance to work in our favour. I shouldn’t come in, Kit.’
‘I know. No sense in…creating expectations.’
‘How much does your aunt know?’
‘About why James and I split? She doesn’t. I don’t talk about it to many people. Not fun, dwelling on the details.’
He recognised her indirect plea for him to keep his mouth shut around the hospital, and at home, and it was oddly hurtful to learn that she would think such a warning was necessary. He swallowed and said, ‘Hell, do you really think I would, Kit? Do you think I’d breathe a word?’
‘James did, at first, to his mates. Until I yelled at him.’
Gian swore.
‘Oh, gosh, I think I just heard your pager going off,’ she said tightly, and was up the steps and through the kitchen door, her shoes clattering wetly on the cement porch, before he could reply.
His pager hadn’t gone off, of course, but he knew why she’d said it.
Aunt Helen met Kit in the middle of the kitchen. The television was on in the other room.
‘You didn’t ask him—?’
‘His pager went off. And I wasn’t sure if you’d still be up.’
Aunt Helen looked guilty. ‘Well…I waited up, actually.’