by Dale, Lindy
“Nice job. I think we’d better get you home,” he said, standing and sweeping me into his arms.
“But what about Coops and the others?”
Ben opened the door to a taxi and deposited me in the back seat. “I’ll tell them, you wait there…and don’t talk to anyone!”
“Ha, ha.”
As I watched Ben stride across the footpath and disappear into 41, without so much as a grumble from the people who had been waiting so patiently, I knew something major had happened. I had tried to deny the way I felt out of some twisted sense of loyalty to Coops. Over and over, I had told myself that I was a grown up who was content with what she had. But the truth was, I was lying. There was no other man for me, there never had been. When Ben held me in his arms, I’d felt the surge of love I’d craved for eight long years and I wanted it back. I loved Coops, I always would, but not the way I loved Ben.
***
“What’s wrong?” Coops and I were lying on the sofa, cuddling in the moonlight, listening to Carole King’s Tapestry Album, which he hated with a passion. I knew he was only listening because he felt sorry for me; he would never have acquiesced to my pleas if I’d been fit and healthy. My foot was propped up on a cushion on the coffee table and everyone was my slave. Sometimes it was nice when the whole world revolved around me.
The noise I’d heard that night and the resulting pain had come from a snapped tendon, or so the delightful young doctor had told me before he asked me out to dinner. It wasn’t from the cracked bone in my foot. I was fortunate, he’d said, that it wouldn’t require surgery, merely ‘rest and easy on the exercise for six weeks.’
I’d begged off going to the bar earlier that night, saying my foot ached, so Coops and I had stayed in. Surprisingly, he’d agreed to this without a fuss, but I think it was because he thought there’d be sex involved. Sex was the last thing on my mind. All I could think about was Ben and the dream. It had returned with a vengeance.
Since the night at 41, I’d woken up in a cold sweat on more than one occasion. It was the same dream, only it turned into a nightmare that reminded me of a raunchy hospital scene from a porn flick I’d seen once. How could I tell Coops I’d been having orgasms in my sleep but he wasn’t the man giving them to me?
Feeling glum, I sighed as I stared up at the ceiling. Everywhere I turned, I saw his face, he haunted my nights and every minute of my day was filled with a sort of excited dread that he would make some move and I would be powerless to resist. I had begun to ring Justin incessantly, on the off chance that Ben might answer the phone and it was lucky I couldn’t get behind the wheel or I would have done drive by’s of his work, just ‘popping in’ because I was in the neighbourhood. He was becoming an obsession. I had to tell Coops.
“I think we have a problem,” I said.
A tall, blonde problem, to be precise.
Coops bristled. “You’re not doing speed again?”
I shuffled onto my shoulder, to face him, wondering how he could even entertain the thought. I was an invalid for God’s sake, not a drug addict. It had been an eternity since the episode with Mark but it always seemed to lurk in the back of his mind. He couldn’t get past it. And this problem was far bigger than anything speed could fix.
“What is it?” he asked quietly, not looking at me. His hand was squeezing mine so tight; I could feel the trepidation building inside him.
“It’s Ben.”
Coops bit his lip and waited. His arm curved around my shoulder and he held me, as he felt my body begin to shudder with tears. I had thought about it for weeks, already knowing the solution but too scared to put it into action. The night at 41 had only confirmed it.
“Do I want to know what you’re going to say?”
“God, I feel like such a bitch.”
“Have you been sleeping with him?” I felt him tense.
It was a natural assumption. I hadn’t been the poster girl for monogamy before we got together. “Oh God, no! I would never do that to you. I love you too much to ever fool around on you.”
“What then?”
I lay my head against his chest. He’d been there for me through all the bad times and all the times I’d behaved like a drama queen. It was breaking my heart to have to utter the words but I couldn’t hurt Coops the way I’d hurt Dean.
“I think we should break up.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We’ve been friends for a long time. I owe you some sort of explanation and if I’ve learnt anything over the past few years it’s that keeping secrets, hiding the truth and trying to deny your feelings doesn’t work. It always ends in tears.”
“Why?”
I looked at him. Why should we break up? Why does it end in tears? Why do I love Ben and not you?
“Ben was my lover, my first lover. We have a connection. He promised he would never leave me.”
“We have a connection too.”
It was true, I reflected, Coops and I did have a special bond that even Justin didn’t understand but it wasn’t enough, not this time. I had to make him see.
“Ben and I were together for a long time and then he moved away. Things happened,” I continued, “and circumstances changed but even after all this time the feeling between us is as strong as ever. I’ve tried to deny it but it’s there. I can see it in his eyes and I can feel it every time I look at him.”
“So we’re through, you want Ben and not me?” I could see the hurt growing, spreading over his handsome face.
“I don’t know what I want, but what I’m saying is…..I don’t think it’s fair to go on being with you if I can’t give you all my love.” I struggled with the words. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done and yet deep down I knew it was right. Justin had told me to do what was right.
His eyes sparked with anger. Coops never got angry. “For years, since the night in the garden, I’ve wanted you and I knew you wanted me too. I’ve watched you fall for other guys and helped you pick up the pieces. Now it’s our turn and you’re going to toss it aside on a dream of the past.”
He smashed the cushion with his fist. “I don’t get you, Bella. Why do you destroy everything? Don’t you want to be happy?”
I pulled his twisted fists of hands to me. The tears fell from my eyes and landed on his shirt, next to his heart. “I want to be happy so badly but if I’m making you unhappy then it will never work, don’t you see? I love you Coops, but not the way you deserve to be loved. I never realised until now. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Then why? You know I love you.”
“Please don’t say that, I don’t deserve your love. You should go and find a nice girl who can give you all the love you need.”
“I don’t want another girl. I want you. I thought that one day, maybe, we’d get married.”
“In your heart, you know that’ll never happen, don’t you?” I whispered. “Please don’t hate me; I’m trying to do the right thing.”
His voice was fractured, the anguish in his face a burden for me to carry, “I know, and I could never hate you. I only want you to be happy.”
“Then let me go. Let me be free.”
And that was how it happened. As Carole King sang “It’s Too Late,” we set each other free.
Chapter 22
ALL I WANT IS YOU
But all the promises we make
From the cradle to the grave
When all I want is you
U2
For the first time ever, since I’d found out that boys were not some strange alien species from another planet, I was single. It was an odd feeling, like the day I’d been admitted to the ‘Bra Club’ at school. I wanted to be in that club, to wear a bra no matter what the cup size, but once in the club I’d discovered it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. A bra could be an annoying thing. So could being single.
On the night before the removal of my crutches, I drank with Justin and Nick at the bar. Coops and Ben were noticeably absen
t.
“Why didn’t he come?” I moaned into my glass.
“Who? Ben or Coops?”
“Coops, you ninny. As if I want Ben here.”
“He’s hurt, Bella. He wants to stay home and mourn the loss of the love of his life.”
I smiled wanly. “Thanks. You’re supposed to be cheering me up, not making it worse. Give us two more, please Nick.”
Nick produced the tequila bottle, reproachfully. “Drowning your sorrows in ‘slammers’ doesn’t help, Cara. You should know that.”
“I’m not drowning my sorrows, I’m celebrating not having crutches after tomorrow.”
“That’s pathetic.”
“I know, but Coops isn’t the only one hurting,” I pouted. “I just want him to be my friend again. I want our friendship back the way it was. I want the days when we danced together, before this all began.”
Before Ben came back and made me yearn all over again.
“You want too much,” Justin said. “Things change.”
Nick put his hand over mine, his mouth curving mischievously in my ear, “what you want is a good seeing-to. Why don’t you step around into my office and I’ll see what I can do for you? Sex with crutches could be kinky.”
“Hmm…. Tempting, but like Jus said Nick, times have changed. Unfortunately, you’re still a dirty boy. I’m just not that dirty a girl anymore.”
“Offer’s on the table, Cara” he smiled, as he went to serve another customer.
***
The exhilaration of being a single woman lasted approximately six weeks, at which time my foot was mended, the sympathy being forgotten along with the crutches, and I was sick of my own company. I’d tried every diversion in the book but I was lonely.
“What am I going to do?” I asked Prue, as we sat in our regular lunch spot at Mocha. It was just like being back at school, sitting in that café. Everyone had his or her designated area and nobody dared to stray. We were all too chic and too busy sipping latte grandes to notice the poor sods vying for the draughty table by the door, forgetting that once in the dim dark past we were them.
“God, you’re hopeless. You gave up a good thing with Coops, who’s still desperately in love with you by the way, because you thought you were in love with Ben. Now you’re single, all you do is whine about it. Life isn’t meant to be perfect.”
I was flabbergasted. All that coming from a woman who had experienced nothing but perfection in her life since birth. Her childhood had been filled with every luxury a girl could ever desire, right down to the genuine cork wedge shoes and faux fur bomber jacket she owned at age eleven.
“But I don’t understand it. I thought he would’ve been round like a shot when he found out about the split but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of him.”
“Maybe he wants to give you some time alone?”
I frowned. “I’ve had enough time alone. Now I want Ben.”
“Then why don’t you stop being such a baby and act more like the woman of the world you’re always claiming to be?”
“How?”
“Why don’t you do what you’ve done with every other man you’ve ever wanted?”
“What? Flirt?” I laughed. Somehow, I felt there had to be more to the game plan than flirting.
“No, dummy. Just hang around, be yourself. If you do that Ben will come running, he always has. The man can’t resist you.”
“What if it’s not enough?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if I wait and he never comes?”
“Oh for God’s sake. If he doesn’t come you can give it up and get on with your life.”
I smiled wanly. What she said was true but the idea of being without Ben was as foreign to me as watching TV on a Saturday night. It would never happen.
“I think the trick here,” she continued, “is to let him believe that it’s his idea. Men like to think they have all the good ideas. That doesn’t mean to say that you can’t help him along to that way of thinking. Subtly, of course.”
We both knew that’d be difficult. I was as subtle as a sledgehammer.
***
It was ten o’clock, late to begin an evening of drinking but perfect for what I had in mind when I walked into the bar a few nights later. The plan was simple. I was going to hang around, putting my single self in Ben’s path at every opportunity. Surely, if I flirted a little and smiled a lot, it wouldn’t take too long till he began to froth at the mouth again. If that failed, there was always Nick to make him jealous. He loved to play games.
Ben grinned as I squeezed through the crowd towards him. “I didn’t know you were coming tonight.”
“I wasn’t, but Justin and Prue have gone to see Lush. I thought I’d come and catch up with a few people from Uni.”
Ben looked as if he wasn’t convinced. “Didn’t they invite you?”
“They did, but Coops is going too and things are a bit strained between us. Maybe next time.” I looked up at him and smiled. He couldn’t find fault with that; it was plausible.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” I asked. The two blokes standing next to him were clearly waiting for an introduction.
“Sorry, um…. this is Rob and David. They work with me.”
He seemed a little flustered.
“Hi, I’m Bella. Ben and I have been friends since school. Are you architects too?” I looked at Ben and smirked. Anyone could project a calm sereneness, even me. I projected the calmness of a buddhist monk.
Rob spoke first. “No. I’m an architect, but David is in Project Management.”
“Ben hasn’t told me much about his job. Sounds like a big company.”
“It is. That’s why we needed Ben on board. His contacts and expertise in the field are a great asset.”
“He always was good in fields. Quite handy with a daisy or two as well.”
“I’d never have picked you for a flower arranger, Ben,” David laughed.
Ben looked as if he wanted to throttle me. His face had turned quite pink. “We went camping, once,” he muttered.
I watched, a twinge of amusement on my lips. It was good to beat him at his own game for once.
“Guess you had to be there, right?”
“Something like that,” Ben said. His eyes had taken on that glint, warning me I was treading on very thin ice.
“Sounds like the band’s started,” I said. “Think I might go for a look.”
“I might come too,” he said.
It was just as I had wanted.
We walked down the hall and into a smoky cavern, which was the back room. The space was small, with black theatre curtains draped around the walls, which did little for the acoustics but was wonderful for enhancing the atmosphere. We stood in a corner; a good viewing spot but pitch black as far as any sort of lighting went. It was the ideal venue for the seduction to begin. All I had to do was smile and wait.
“You’ve changed.” Ben said, as we stood listening.
“In what way?”
“You used to be so innocent, so scared of everything. You’d never have gone into a room by yourself. You’re so confident now, not so needy.”
“Is that good or bad?” Some men liked their women needy; it gave them control. In hindsight, it was probably why Mark had found me so desirable. When I’d asserted my independence, he’d run for the hills or to the needle, anyway.
“It’s a very good thing.”
I quivered. Suddenly, my confidence had run a mile. Ben had taken control of the game with one sentence.
The band was playing one of their original tunes. “I love this band,” I said. “They’re great to dance to.”
Ben leant against the wall of curtain, looking for all the world like he wanted to pounce on me. “Is that an invitation?”
“What? No. Let’s listen for a while.”
Shrugging, he turned to face the stage, his eyes on the band, and I felt the warmth of his arm as it grazed mine. He was wearing a heavy mohair jumper that
night, knitted in the darkest of grey wool that made the colour of his eyes stand out more than usual. I looked at it clinging to his shoulders, the whiteness of his t-shirt underneath contrasting with his tanned skin, and imagined what it would be like to be enfolded in its fluffy softness. I gulped at my drink, not even noticing the ice had melted into the glass and the alcohol was warm. I wouldn’t have cared anyway. Ben was with me. That was all I wanted.
“Sure you don’t want to dance?” Ben asked.
“I’m good.”
“Okay. Want another drink? I’m going to the bar.”
“Thanks.” I drained my glass and handed it to him. He disappeared through the doors.
It seemed like an eternity before he returned and we stood, awkward, not knowing what to do. It was a weird sensation, as if we were both waiting for the other to make a move because we were too afraid to do it ourselves.
“What do you want?” he said, at last.
“What do you mean?”
“Why’d you come here? Are you trying to seduce me?” He looked me up and down and I turned to jelly.
“I don’t want anything.” I tried to sound innocent or girlish but let’s face it, it was a long time between drinks, and I was neither anymore.
His brow furrowed.
“Let’s dance then.” And taking the drink from my hand, he put it on an empty table and propelled me onto the dance floor. Our bodies were pressed tight as we made a space for ourselves in the tiny square that was reserved for dancing. We were so close, I could have reached up and kissed him and it took all my willpower not to. He looked so beautiful, all clean-shaven, but he had to make the first move. It had to come from him. My only wish was that he’d hurry. Being close and not touching him was the worst kind of torture.
“It’s been a long time,” he said.
A tingle of pleasure rushed down my spine. It had been too long. But I hadn’t forgotten the feel of him, the firmness of his body. It was the same, capable of sending me into a hideous delusional bliss from the merest touch. Hesitant, my arms crept to that place around his neck where I could feel his pulse, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. His golden head was bent, watching my body and I could feel his heart pounding, doing double time to the rhythm of the drums as his hips pushed temptingly against me. I wanted him that badly if he’d thrown me to the floor and taken me right there, I wouldn’t have uttered a single objection, not even when they arrested me for public indecency.