The Right Time

by Dianne Blacklock

  Life had taken over from there, there were no choices to make, it seemed, even though they made dozens and dozens of choices from then on in; but in reality, they were just reactions to the situation they’d found themselves in. We’re having a baby, we should get married, we should have another baby so they’re not too far apart, we should buy a house now Tim’s graduated and working full-time, she should go back and finish her degree, she should do teaching, it’s a good career for a mum . . .

  And so it went on. But now her kids were spending the weekend with her estranged husband and she was sitting in her pyjamas alone on a Saturday night. Now, she had some choices to make, and she didn’t know how to go about it.

  Was Finn there for the choosing? Could it work with him? But there was the thing – did it have to work with him? She was an adult now, a consenting adult was the popular term. What exactly did that mean? That you give your consent to have sex, freely, without expectation, without ties, without obligation. Was that possible? Was that what she wanted? How would she know? She’d never had sex with anyone but Tim. She had no idea how it would feel. And she never would until she gave it a try.

  This made hang-gliding look easy.

  Ellen stared at her phone on the coffee table. Her heart was pounding against her rib cage, vibrating right up into her ears. She was well aware she’d had too much to drink, she wouldn’t even be considering this if she hadn’t. But she also knew that if she didn’t act now, she never would; that she’d wake up tomorrow morning and remember what she had contemplated and be incredibly relieved she hadn’t done anything about it. And then she would stop going around to Finn’s garage, she’d pay off the rest of her account online, and she’d probably even try to find a new mechanic. And she would regret it. Granted, she might also regret having sex with him, but what was she likely to regret more?

  She lurched forward and grabbed the phone. Her hands were trembling as she scrolled through the numbers and pressed Finn’s.

  He answered almost straightaway, which was just as well or she probably would have hung up.

  ‘Hello.’

  She took a breath. ‘Hi . . . it’s Ellen.’

  ‘I know.’

  Great, what was she supposed to say now?

  ‘You got home all right?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, thanks. Oh, are you at home? Am I interrupting anything?’

  ‘No, I’m just watching telly. It’s a big Saturday night in.’

  Ellen was trembling all over now. And she’d gotten hot all of a sudden. She held out the front of her pyjama top and blew on herself.

  ‘So, what are you doing?’ he asked after a while.

  ‘Oh nothing,’ she said quickly, dropping her top again as if he could see her. She took a breath. Of course he couldn’t see her. ‘I’m just watching telly too.’

  ‘Hm.’

  There was a pause. What the hell was she thinking? What was she going to say to him? This was such a stupid idea.

  ‘So . . .?’ he prompted after a while.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ellen, you called me.’

  She sighed. ‘Yeah, I did. I think I shouldn’t have, I’m sorry –’

  ‘No, no, wait on,’ he said. ‘What’s up? Did you want to talk?’

  ‘Oh, sure, yeah . . . I guess.’

  ‘What did you want to talk about?’

  Okay, this was it, speak up or forever hold your tongue. Or was it peace? She took a gulp of her wine. ‘I was thinking about what you said today.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He wasn’t going to throw her a line at all.

  ‘As I was leaving,’ she added.

  ‘Oohhh,’ he said like now he understood.

  ‘Well, I was wondering if you meant it,’ she blurted quickly.

  There was a pause. Shit.

  ‘Ellen . . .’

  His tone . . . this was excruciating. ‘Never mind, I shouldn’t have bothered you –’

  ‘Wait, just wait a minute,’ he said over the top of her. She was quiet. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Ellen,’ he started again. ‘Well, yeah, of course I meant it, but I didn’t mean it . . . I mean, I wouldn’t throw you a cheap line like that and expect you to take me seriously.’ Now he sounded like he was nervous. She heard him take a breath. ‘I was flirting with you, you know?’

  Ellen wasn’t sure how to take that. ‘Did you mean to?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Did you mean to flirt?’ That didn’t make sense. ‘Were you flirting with intention?’

  There was another pause, another deep breath. ‘Well, yeah . . .’

  ‘Okay then,’ she said. ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Ellen sighed. ‘Listen Finn, we’re adults, aren’t we? And I think we get along, there’s obviously some mutual attraction, and we could spend the next . . . who knows, maybe months, playing this game – a bit of flirting, having a drink, maybe graduating to a whole meal – until we finally make it into bed, which is where we’ve been aiming for the whole time.’

  God, she couldn’t believe she just said that. Maybe Finn couldn’t either, there was only silence on the phone line, she couldn’t even hear him breathing now.

  ‘Finn?’

  ‘Exactly how much have you had to drink, Ellen?’ he said finally.

  ‘Not that much,’ she said, glancing at the half-empty bottle. ‘The fact is, I do know what I’m saying, Finn, and I also realise I wouldn’t be saying any of this if I hadn’t had a drink, but is that such a bad thing?’

  He didn’t respond. He liked these long silences.

  ‘I’m going to get a complex soon if you don’t say something.’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘That you’re coming over.’

  ‘What, now?’

  ‘This is what I’ve been getting at,’ said Ellen. ‘I need to have sex. I need to get it out of the way so it’s not so scary. And I trust you, Finn, you’ve been really decent to me. I just think this is far better than picking up some random guy in a bar, or online. But that doesn’t mean I expect anything to come of this, Finn, I promise. We can even pretend like it didn’t happen afterwards, if that’s the way we feel. I don’t want to lose you as a friend, or a mechanic for that matter.’

  She gave an awkward laugh then, which was met with total silence.

  ‘This is a strictly limited offer, Finn. Honestly, if you don’t say something soon –’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  Ellen hung up the phone and realised what she’d done. But there was no going back now. She jumped up off the sofa, grabbing the wine bottle and putting it back in the fridge. Then she ran up the hall to her bedroom, stopping dead in the doorway as she was confronted with the bed. The bed that she and Tim had shared. What was her problem? There hadn’t been much going on in it for some time, so she wasn’t going to get all weird about it. She didn’t have time to change the sheets, but they were only a couple of days old. She did, however, need to change herself. She started frantically rummaging through her wardrobe for something that wouldn’t look like she had dressed specially; on the other hand, she did want to look at least a little sexy. Who was she kidding, she didn’t own any clothes that were sexy. She finally pulled a simple long-sleeved black top off its hanger and grabbed her good jeans. It was when she went to investigate her underwear drawer that she realised the true extent of her lack of sexy apparel. Her underpants were serviceable, that was the best that could be said about them, and she had one black bra that didn’t look like a safety harness, much. God, she really hadn’t thought this through; perhaps a little forward planning would have been a good thing.

  Too late now. She stripped off her flannel pyjamas and doused herself in perfume, then quickly got dressed. She did not stop to check how she looked in her underwear, in fact she avoided the mirror altogether. She didn’t need to know how she looked, because there was nothing she could do about it now anyway. S
he was just putting a brush through her hair when she heard the door knocker.

  Ellen took a deep breath, and then another one, and then she walked calmly up the hallway and opened the door. Finn stood under the porch light, looking faintly nervous and, it had to be said, very attractive. She supposed he’d always looked like this, she just hadn’t let herself dwell on it. She’d noticed his smile more than anything, and his bare chest.

  Ellen had a sudden mental image of herself sitting opposite Tim saying, ‘. . . and he’s very attractive.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Finn, his voice a little gravelly.

  ‘Come in.’ Ellen stepped back as he walked past, and he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, which she wasn’t expecting, so their faces bumped awkwardly. ‘Come on through,’ she said.

  He followed her down the hall to the kitchen. ‘Nice place,’ he remarked.

  ‘Thanks.’

  He turned to look at her. ‘And you look nice.’

  ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to do that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know, you don’t need to butter me up, you’re going to get laid anyway.’

  He looked embarrassed. That might have been going too far. But Ellen was embarrassed too, she was just expressing it in a different way – by making inappropriate comments. Move on.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ she asked.

  ‘I brought wine,’ he said, holding up a bottle.

  ‘Oh, I’d better not drink red, makes me sleepy.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He put it down on the kitchen table. ‘It’s just what I had at home.’

  ‘Don’t apologise,’ said Ellen. ‘I’ll get you a glass.’

  ‘No, not if you’re not having any.’

  ‘I’ve got some white in the fridge,’ she assured him. ‘I’ll have that.’

  Besides, it gave her something to do. She found a corkscrew and handed it to Finn, then she got them each a clean glass from the cupboard, and retrieved the white from the fridge filling her glass. Finn poured himself a glass of the red and picked it up.

  ‘What shall we drink to?’ he said.

  Every phrase that went through Ellen’s head sounded like a tawdry come-on. ‘To good friends,’ she said finally.

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said, holding up his glass.

  Ellen took a gulp of her wine. ‘Jeez, this was a lot easier on the phone.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Maybe we should sit down, relax.’

  She knew she wasn’t going to be able to do that. ‘No, you know what?’ said Ellen, putting her glass down on the table. ‘We should just get on with it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come with me,’ she said, grabbing his hand and leading him back up the hallway towards her bedroom.

  But Finn stopped abruptly, pulling his hand free. ‘What are you doing, Ellen?’

  She turned around. ‘We both know why you’re here, so why hang around drinking wine and making small talk?’

  He folded his arms. ‘What has gotten into you?’

  She blinked, staring up at him.

  ‘I’m not a performing monkey, you know, Ellen,’ he said. ‘Can you imagine if this was reversed?’

  She caught her breath. ‘Oh my God, I probably would have slapped your face.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m so sorry, Finn. I don’t know what I’m doing, I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m so bad at this.’ She was choking up. She turned around because she couldn’t look at him. ‘I understand if you just want to go.’

  She felt his hands on her shoulders, turning her around again. ‘I’m not going, and I’m not going to slap you either.’

  Ellen looked up at him and he smiled at her.

  ‘Why don’t we go and drink some wine and make small talk?’

  She smiled back. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘It’s just so much harder for a woman after a marriage break-up,’ Ellen was saying, once they were ensconced on the sofa, drinking their wine and making not so small talk. ‘I mean, even in our case, where it was completely mutual, Tim gets to start this whole new life. He only has the kids a quarter of the time, he pays the standard child support, but because there’s a whole lot of men out there who don’t even do that, he’s considered some kind of hero. It’s like the base line is “bastard”, anything above that and you’re father of the year. Who ever says to the woman, the mother, wow, you’re doing an amazing job there, you’re really going the extra mile?’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Finn, ‘but your kids will always be much closer to you than Tim.’

  ‘I know, and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. If anything I wish they could be with me the whole time,’ she admitted. ‘And I certainly couldn’t bear to have them any less than I do now. But men seem to be able to detach themselves a lot easier.’

  ‘That’s a bit of a generalisation,’ said Finn. ‘Sometimes we don’t get a choice.’

  Ellen looked at him, frowning.

  ‘I have a son,’ he said.

  ‘You do?’

  He nodded. ‘Josh. He’s all grown up, he’s a year or so older than your Kate. He’s at uni in Queensland.’

  ‘So you were married?’ Ellen asked.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘His mum and I were very young, and very foolish, and she ended up pregnant. I was working by then, and my sister had finished school, so I tried to do the right thing. We both tried, but a few months after Josh was born we gave up pretending that we had any hope of making it as a couple. It was all good though, I had him most weekends for the first couple of years. Then Trace . . . Josh’s mum, Tracey, she met someone, and they wanted to move to Queensland, with Josh, of course. I tried to fight it at first, got a lawyer and everything, but then I realised it was going to get really nasty. Trace and I had always got on well, which was much better for Josh, and I could see how happy she was with this guy, which could only make her a better parent. So I let him go.’

  He paused, taking a breath. ‘But it was a wrench, being so far away from him. I flew up every second weekend, but we had to stay in motels, it wasn’t ideal. Anyway, long story short, I ended up taking a job on an oil rig so I could work for blocks of time and then get weeks off at a time. Trace was really happy for me to have him because she was working, but I think she also wanted to spend time with her new bloke, which was fair enough too. I had Josh every school holidays, and I took him all over Australia. We had a pretty great time.’

  ‘Sounds like you made it up to him.’

  ‘I guess,’ said Finn. ‘When he got into his senior years, we had to pull back a bit, only one big trip a year. And he started to get his own life as well, wanted to hang out with his mates in the holidays.’

  ‘Are you close to him now?’

  ‘Yeah, I think so. I hope so,’ said Finn. ‘We had a lot of fun, and did a lot together, but you know, I still missed having breakfast with him in the morning before school, weekends making him do his chores, just being a regular dad.’ He looked at her. ‘That’s what I started out saying – try not to compare yourself to your ex, think of yourself as lucky that you get to be with them so much more.’

  ‘See the glass as half-full,’ Ellen nodded. She looked at her own glass then. ‘Which you can’t do when it’s empty. Maybe I will have some of that red after all.’

  Morning

  Ellen stirred, rolling over onto her back. What day was it? Then she felt movement in the bed next to her. She opened her eyes. The room was dim, the blinds and curtains drawn, the door shut.

  ‘Hi.’

  Ellen slowly turned her head to see Finn, waking up beside her.

  Scenes from last night flittered across her brain like a film montage, but the last thing she remembered they were sitting on the sofa together. How did they get here?

  ‘Did we . . .?’

  ‘It was that memorable you have to ask?’ Finn said, his voice all husky from sleep.

  Shit. Ellen really couldn’t remember. But she was still dressed under these co
vers. Well, mostly dressed. No jeans, but everything else was in place, even her bra. Surely they hadn’t . . .?

  ‘We didn’t,’ Finn was saying.

  Ellen turned over onto her side to face him. ‘What happened?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have started on the red wine,’ he murmured. ‘You said it would make you sleepy.’

  ‘So I fell asleep. Not in the middle of things, I hope?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, we didn’t even get started.’

  ‘Exciting night for you then.’

  He smiled, rolling onto his side now, facing her.

  ‘Why did you stay?’ Ellen asked him.

  ‘You asked me to. When you started to nod off, I tried to get you to go to bed, but you were determined to go through with it. That’s what you kept saying. And you started trying to get your jeans off, but you couldn’t quite manage, and then you kind of passed out on the bed, with your jeans around your knees.’

  She pulled a face. ‘That would have been a good look.’

  ‘It wasn’t bad,’ he smiled sleepily. ‘Anyway, I tucked you in, but you hung onto me and asked me not to go. I thought I’d just stay till you were sound asleep . . . and that’s the last thought I remember having. Except for when I got cold sometime through the night and climbed in under the covers.’

  Ellen shifted, and her leg brushed against his. ‘And took off your jeans?’

  ‘Bit uncomfortable to sleep in.’

  Ellen stifled a yawn. ‘Well, thank you.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For coming and for staying.’

  ‘Thanks for inviting me.’

  Her face was close to his. He looked all ruffled and sleepy, and quite adorable. Ellen brought her hand up from under the covers to smooth his hair, and then she couldn’t recall what happened next; was it his leg that slid across hers, or the other way round? His arm came around her pulling her in close while they kissed, but who kissed who first? Hard to say. It was as though their bodies moved by instinct, coiling around each other, their remaining clothes slithering off of their own accord, till Ellen heard herself moaning as she felt his skin against hers, then his mouth, his tongue . . . She was breathing faster, her heart was racing, and as he pushed up inside her she was completely overwhelmed. She couldn’t think straight any more, she couldn’t think at all, she was all nerve endings, wired, intoxicated. Was it him thrusting, or was she doing that, and did he bring her up on top of him, or was it her, pushing him over, straddling him as she rocked harder and harder against him till she almost blacked out.