They were the last to leave the restaurant. Handshakes became hugs and they parted from David with expressions of genuine liking. Bailey insisted on driving him home in her sporty VW. He was too tired, too wrung out to argue and too giddy from the alcohol or the way she stood close to want a taxi instead.
She was quiet on the drive out of the city and he was content to push the seat back and watch her profile. The Script sang softly about heartbreak not being even, falling to pieces and relationship suicide. It seemed an apt soundtrack for the night. Bailey’s hair was loose and curled around her neck and down her back. He’d never seen her wear it any other way than tied back. He wanted to touch its gloss, feel its sheen wrapped around his finger, but that felt too intimate. She must have felt him staring. More evidence those ‘no eyes in the back of the neck’ studies were wrong. Without taking her glance off the road she said, “What?”
He had to clear his throat before he could get it working. “David was worth saving. I’m glad we saved him.”
She flicked a quick look at him. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t understand how difficult that must’ve been for you. I gave you a hard time. I should’ve minded my own business.”
“I should’ve told you. I let you think I was an adulterous bastard.”
“I guess you had your reasons.”
“Not good ones as it turns out. I wanted a fresh start at Heed without everyone knowing the back story. I thought Blake might’ve already told you and by the time I worked out he hadn’t, it seemed too late to bring it up.”
She frowned at the dashboard and the intersection beyond it. “Is that true?”
It was true enough. Not the whole truth about wanting to create distance between them to protect himself, to protect her. There didn’t seem to be any distance between them now. They were like the skin under a ripped off band-aid, stinging, and pink with healing. There might yet be a scar, but if everything went well, you’d never know there’d been a cut.
A hungry and loud about it Chauncey met them in the driveway, his eyes gone glow-in-the-dark in the car headlights. Aiden ratcheted the seat back to where it’d been. There was so much he could say, but thanks for the lift was the least of it, and the most obvious.
He went for the door handle but the auto lock was on. Bailey flicked something on her door panel, said, “It’s unlocked now,” and when he turned his head to acknowledge her she reached out and put her hand to his face, stunning him still.
A hot electric current buzzed between her hand and his cheek and they both felt the jolt of it. He expected her to shift back, take her hand away, ten and two the wheel, shove the car in reverse, back away as quick as his legs hit the driveway. She did move quickly, but towards him not away. She leaned across the gear stick and kissed his cheek, exhaling softly against his skin. She smelt of peppermint after dinner chocolate and summer flowers.
He said her name in surprise, its two syllables using up all the air in his lungs. He had one hand on the door and one in his lap. He wanted both of them around her so he could hold onto her, keep her close. He wanted his lips on hers, tasting her kindness, drawing out her compassion and reaching beyond that simplicity to see if the electric buzz was a spark of deeper energy between them. He wanted all that. He wanted her. But he was mute and stalled by the shock of desire.
She held his eyes. “Sleep well. See you in the morning,” then released him, like she might a sad, stray dog she’d taken a momentary fancy to. Cute, but stray for a reason. He pushed the door open and got out. Stood in the driveway with the cat and watched her pull out, taking part of his pain and a chunk of his sanity with her.
28: Light
“You didn’t think it was important to tell me Aiden’s wife died in a horrible accident?”
Bailey was so angry with Blake she thought her body might be physically vibrating, levitating her off the carpeted floor of his office. Blake looked sorry he’d come into work early, like if he could legitimately crawl under his desk and hide out, he would.
She’d been on an emotional seesaw since yesterday morning. Weighted down by the awful realisation what she’d first seen in Aiden, inexplicable pain and loss, was real. Buoyed up by the knowledge he was more the man she’d first met, than some home-wrecking, ruthless, self-aggrandising false friend to Blake, and utterly spun out that he was one of her subscribers.
When Aiden had arrived at the restaurant, he’d had a scowl on his face that might as well have been flashing neon announcing his bad mood. She’d wanted to smack him for being so rude and ill-spirited, but when he’d told them about Shannon, she’d wanted him to crawl into her lap so she could brush his hair back, stroke his brow and share his pain. Ridiculous given he didn’t need her comfort. Ridiculous and a little embarrassing that it made her hold onto his hand as though her own life depended on it.
When he’d explained Shannon died alone, unattended and might’ve lived if there’d been someone to help, the anguished expression on his face gave her a dose of déjà vu so bad it made her nauseous. She’d seen this grief in him before. Seen the sense of abandonment and heartache. There was no explanation why she felt that way, other than the rush of understanding his revelation brought forth. And it had no precedent. Nothing had happened between them to hint at Aiden’s real life loss.
Until she went to her backup images file.
And that made no sense either. She was driven to look in that file. She fought dog tired, got out of bed, turned on lights and her pc and made peppermint tea. And when she found the connection she was devastated anew.
There it was under the file name ‘sad man’, sitting in date order between, ‘tire sculpture’ and ‘purple flower’. Files she’d looked at recently. An image from nearly two years ago on the day she’d had surgery. A man sitting by the sea wall in the early morning, head kicked back, face tilted to the sun, but with a set of his jaw and a line in his chest that said he wasn’t resting, that he was in pain; that said he wasn’t comfortable but in despair. He was a man in his prime, a handsome man. He’d been someone’s husband.
And he’d made her feel like she should be holding his hand.
Aiden.
She’d known this essential truth about Aiden before she’d met him. And there was no way to reconcile that, to balance it with where they were now.
Blake wasn’t under the desk but he was doing the big man’s equivalent of cowering, hunched forward, neck compressed, looking up at her from under furrowed brows. “Why are you yelling at me?”
“Because you let me think Aiden was two-timing his wife and kid, living out his mid-life crisis in the office with flash cars and trophy girlfriends.”
“I never said any of that.”
“No! You just never clued me in—again!”
“Wait on, Bailey. It’s Aiden’s business. If he wanted to tell you about Shannon he would have. It wasn’t up to me.”
“Too easy. Do you have any idea how hard it was for him to deal with David Millar? He saved David’s life but his own wife died alone, without anyone to help. I had no idea and I badgered him about it. And he never said a word, never told me to shut up, or stuff off or... Oh God, Blake, you should’ve told me.”
Blake opened his mouth, but Bailey wasn’t interested in anything that might come out of it, except the words, ‘I’m sorry’, and like that was going to happen. She cut him off with, “I hate you so much right now,” and he sensibly snapped his gob shut, which meant when Aiden walked in, they were staring at each other across the black glass with unspoken words flying out of their heads like captions on cartoon characters. They’d gone from being Batman and Robin to Superman and Lex Luthor. Bailey was the one with the kryptonite and it was burning a hole in her heart.
“I’ve walked in on a domestic haven’t I?” Aiden gave them a wary look, shifting his weight from foot to foot as if deciding whether to shoot through or stick it out for the fireworks.
He looked so normal. Like a man who’d arrived early to work after a late night and needed
his first coffee. Like a man who had a headache, but he’d work through it. There was no trace of the man she’d driven home last night. When she’d left him in his driveway, he’d looked like he could sleep for a million years, like standing up straight was too much trouble, like he might bring a fragrance to grief and resignation and shouldn’t be left alone.
He slouched on the doorjamb of Blake’s office and grinned at them. “Should I come back when Mum and Dad have made up?”
Bailey felt a fire start in her breastbone and heat flood her body, till it coloured her face. She’d held his hand for hours last night and he’d never moved to shake her off. She’d touched his face. She’d kissed his cheek. And she wanted to go to him and hug him, tell him she was sorry, tell him she understood more than he could know, but she was stuck on the seesaw dug into the dirt with no way of finding level ground.
How was she supposed to relate to him now? What mad random stroke of synchronicity made him one of her subscribers? Someone she sent a message to every morning. She couldn’t tell him about being White Balance. She couldn’t tell him she’d been a voyeur to his despair, stolen his image and filed it away to pry on the moment he’d shown himself as vulnerable. She’d kissed him and he can’t have welcomed or understood that.
“Ah, I’ve got it. Mum and Dad are fighting over me.”
“Got better things to fight about than you, mate,” said Blake. He was shuffling papers but there was still the thing with the neck and Aiden said, “Other leg. Jingle Bells,” and they all knew Blake had been caught out, and suddenly they were grinning stupidly at each other.
Aiden moved into the room, he hooked his arm though a chair, dragged it to her side and sat facing her, knees almost touching. “I’m not sure if it’s a good thing he can’t lie with a straight face or a bad thing, Bailey.”
She might’ve drowned in his eyes. He reached for her hand and enveloped it in his. Her tongue refused to work and the cartoon bubbles above her head said, ‘I’m sorry’. ‘I feel for you’. ‘Let me help you’.
“Don’t think you don’t have tells,” Blake grumbled. He was right, Aiden did have tells, but they were hidden deep and expressed privately. Blake clocked their hands, “Oi, what’s going on here?” He rocked back in his chair. “Don’t tell me you guys like each other now?”
“Let’s say we understand each other better,” Aiden said. He gave her hand a squeeze then released it, shuffling his chair back around to face Blake. “Speaking of tells. I’ve come to talk to you about my old client Bitters Brewery and to make a suggestion.”
Blake put both hands to his earlobes and tugged. “All ears.”
Bailey stood. “I’ll leave you with it.” Much as she was pleased to see Aiden looking so normal, she felt horribly awkward being around him, and she was still mad with Blake for making her life so much harder than it needed to be.
“No, please stay, it involves you too,” said Aiden. She sat back down tentatively, pushed back in her chair and crossed her arms—a spectator not a participant in whatever was about to go down.
“Bitters want to try us out on a project.”
“Fucking A.”
“You got plenty of sleep last night, Blake. Unlike Bailey and me.” Aiden flashed her a smile that made his eyes behind his glasses crinkle.
Blake eye-rolled. “I don’t want to know what that means.”
“Head out of the gutter, dude. If we do well on the project we get to pitch for their whole business.”
“I’m seeing dollar signs and you’re telling me there’s a catch.”
“There is. The project is a launch event. I want Bailey to lead it.”
“Me!” A door would have squeaked more effectively and slammed faster.
Aiden said, “We have no one better than you at what they need.”
“I think you’ve forgotten I don’t work here.”
“I haven’t forgotten. We’d contract Bailey Wyatt Events to work for us, with me, on this.”
“Done deal,” said Blake. He rubbed his hands together as though he was warming them up for cold hard cash to flow into them. Typical. And a mistake.
“Not a done deal.” Blake didn’t own her, and he couldn’t make decisions for her, much as he continually thought otherwise.
“What’s the problem, Bails? It’s win-win. We extend your contract, you take the income and we win ourselves the opportunity to pitch Bitters’ whole business. What could be sweeter?” Life was always so simple for Blake and it always went his way.
“Sweeter would be me making my own decisions.”
“Quit being mad with me and get on board.”
“I knew you were fighting,” said Aiden. He stretched his legs out, crossed his ankles, settled in. Now he was the spectator.
“Thank you for the opportunity, but I have to get back to my own clients. I’m sure you have people who could work on this.”
“We’d be your client. Don’t you want to work with us?”
“I have other responsibilities.”
“Like what?”
“Blake. It’s none of your...”
Aiden shot forward. “Not for him. Forget about him, obnoxious sod that he is. Bailey, will you stay for a while longer to work with me?”
Yesterday she’d have repeated her departure date and repeatedly stabbed her bad leg with something sharp before she’d have committed to spending any time with Aiden. Yesterday was a knife with a broken blade.
“I can’t give you all of my time. I have other commitments.” And none of them would pay her anything like this would. If she could suffer working with Aiden, she had the chance to totally rebuild her finances and freshen up her reputation.
“We’ll take whatever hours you have to give.”
“I’m not taking responsibility for you getting to pitch Bitters. I’ll do my best, but there’s no come back on me if they’re not ecstatic.” All care and no responsibility, what could be better.
Aiden was smiling, all the way to his tired eyes. “Ecstasy is my problem.”
“God help me,” said Blake, then ducked as Aiden stretched across the desk and cuffed the side of his head. “Hey, no hitting in the office.”
29: Dark
“This is bloody mad. It won’t work,” said Roberta.
Bailey found Roberta and Aiden huddled over a work table in the art department. It was early and the office was still waking, people were fetching coffee and eating cereal. Evan came past in his running gear, headed for the shower. This was her first day working with Aiden on the pitch for the Bitters event. She stood in the doorway wondering how he was going to sweet talk Roberta.
He drew on the poster size print on the table with a red marker. “If you move this here, change this font, lift the colour.”
“Still won’t work, the copy is too long.” Roberta scrubbed her bleached blonde buzz cut with her knuckles and frowned at him.
“I’ll cut it.”
“You’re a pain in the neck you know.”
Aiden grinned, “Part of my charm.”
Roberta shook her head and gathered the artwork, pushing Aiden’s shoulder to get him to stand aside. If you didn’t see the expression on her face, you’d have thought her aggressive. A devious little smile twisted her purple lips. She looked like she wanted to gather Aiden up and cut his copy to fit the back of the Harley Davidson she rode. Bailey felt like she was interrupting a private moment. She was oddly jealous of Roberta and the easy rapport she’d established with Aiden.
Easy was not how she felt around him. Ironic, given she’d been communicating with him every morning for the last four years. Incongruous, because eight weeks after he’d arrived in a blaze of sacking and scandal, the rest of the office was now much more comfortable with him. According to the grapevine gossip he had high expectations and didn’t suffer fools, but was generally fair and supportive. Wary of the corridor whispers, Bailey was keen to gather her own evidence.
She’d started listening out for his voice, eating her lu
nch in the staff kitchen, taking her time on trips between the floors in the hope she might run into him. It was so sixteen year old she might as well have been drawing fake angel tattoos on her arms with magic marker and plotting with her besties how to get with him.
For all the skulking around she’d not seen him except in passing since the dinner with David. Though she’d heard him plenty. Like Blake he created noise wherever he went: shouts of laughter, grumbles of complaint, the clamour of work getting done. The closest she’d come to him was a couple of friendly waves from the balcony as he passed through reception and she was on the stairs. He was always moving at warp speed and appeared out of reach as though he was determined to put as much distance as possible between the self he was in the office and the one she’d seen in her car.
This efficient, driven, good humoured Aiden wasn’t someone you held hands with and kissed because you were moved by his pain. He was someone you ran to catch up with and fought to stand next to so you might look more attractive and clever by association.
Bailey was unaccountably nervous about spending time with Aiden, and worried her confused feelings would get in the way of a good working relationship. There was also the issue of having to split her time between finishing Blake’s project, picking up work for her own clients and this new pitch. It didn’t leave much time for physical therapy. That could be a problem, but she’d manage one way or another.
Aiden was still smiling when he looked up and saw her. “Morning. Guess you copped that little demonstration of how much respect I’ve earned around here.”
From a room away Roberta yelled, “Respect—huh! Lowlife skunk thinks he can come in here and do a better job art directing than me.” She poked her head around the corner, grinning at them. “And bugger me, he can,” then adjusted her expression to one of mock annoyance, “Now get out of my department and don’t come back till I invite you.”
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