Fading

by Rachel Spanswick

  “Yes?” I turn to him and relax when I see he’s back to carefree and happy.

  “Would you like to go to the lake today? I’d love to see your mum’s favourite spot.”

  “Yes.” I smile. “Yes, I’d love that.”

  “Can you tell me about her?” He asks as he stands and offers me his hand.

  “Sure,” I squeeze his hand as we head out towards the other side of town. “My mother… she used to read to me.”

  “She used to read to you?”

  “Yep, she used to read to me every night and then when I was old enough to read myself, she’d read the same book that I was so we could talk about it when I had finished it. She always finished before I did but she’d pretend that she never. She’s the reason I used to love reading so much. I haven’t read anything other than an email or a report in a long time though.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “I know,” I sigh but smile when I do. “She used to pull me into the kitchen all the time too, she was always baking something and used to get me to help her and then eventually, she’d supervise while I did it myself. She was very involved.”

  “So you can bake?” He asks with a grin.

  “I sure can.”

  “Then maybe you can bake something for me sometime.”

  “I can do that.”

  “Then it’s a date.”

  And in this moment, I’m happier than I have been in years. I don’t have anything to worry about, I’m with a man that I like and could, without even trying, probably fall in love with and that doesn’t scare me as much as I thought it would. Actually, it doesn’t care me at all.

  Twelve

  Monday after work, I head to Lexi’s bookstore but when I get there, the door is locked. When simply knocking doesn’t work, I try banging and I even kick it – I’ll never tell Lexi that, it was only a little kick.

  Just when I’m about to give up and go home, something slams into the door on the other side.

  “Jesus, Lexi! What the fuck are is going on in there? Should I call the police? Are you being robbed?” I pound on the door once more. “Okay, that’s it, I’m calling Matt.” I pull my phone out of my pocket. “He knows how to deal with your crazy arse better than anyone.” I mutter to myself as I listen to the phone ringing in my ear.

  “Hello?” Matt’s voice comes through clear when he finally answers.

  “Oh great, Matt. Look, I’m at Lexi’s store and…” I trail off when the door opens and two women appear completely breathless and covered in brown stuff. “Uhmmm…”

  “What? What about the store?” Matt asks at the same time as one of the women cough and brushes some hair from her face clearing enough of an area for me to recognise her.

  “Lex? What the hell happened to you?” I frown and then squint at her. “Is that dust?”

  “You called Matt?” She asks and takes the phone away from it, covering it completely with the brown stuff and then starts talking into it as she walks back into the store.

  “Uh… hi,” The other woman smiles at me – I only know she’s smiling because when she does, I get a flash of white.

  “Hey,”

  “I’m Jess, I actually work with you, well, I work downstairs, and you introduced me to Lexi.”

  “Oh, right. Jess, hi… again. Umm, why are you both covered in that stuff? Is it okay to go in there?”

  “Yes,” She laughs and pats herself down, trying, I assume, to clear some of it. “We were in the attic, it’s like a frigging gold mine up there.”

  I take that to mean that there are a lot of books in the attic.

  “Anyway, I was just leaving so... bye!” She flashes another quick grin and jogs away leaving me slightly confused.

  “Lex?” I call out and with more caution than is definitely needed, I step into the store, closing and locking the door behind me – simply because I’m one hundred percent sure that whatever she is doing is completely legit. Knowing Lexi, she’s making a tunnel through the rooftops to get into the coffee shop or something. I laugh quietly to myself at the idea.

  “Hey,” She walks out of the office- now clean, and hands me my phone back. “Sorry I kept you outside, we were up in the attic.”

  “Yeah, I heard. So, Jess, huh?”

  “Jess? Oh right, she’s great, you were right, I love her.”

  “Thought you might.”

  “So? Are we still doing this?” She asked with an eyebrow lifted.

  “Of course.” I smile and walk around her to the office where I throw myself down on to the beanbag.

  What is it with beanbags? No matter how old you are, they’re hard to resist.

  Lexi follows me in and collecting a bottle wine and two paper cups – we’re so classy, - she sits on the floor next to me and smiles evilly as she pours and then passes me a glass. “So… spill it.”

  “Date number one; Mark.” I take a healthy sip of the blood coloured liquid. “I wanted to shoot myself before we finished our appetisers”

  “Oooohhh,” She visibly winces. “That bad, huh?”

  “Ask me what component you need to build a laptop. Oh. Oh. Oh. No. Ask me what the best anti-virus software is at the moment.”

  “Uhhhh… no. I’ll pass.”

  “So anyway, after an hour or longer – I can’t remember exactly, the whole thing is a blur, I’m trying to block it out. But anyway, after an hour-ish of talking about computer stuff, he mentioned how he knew I was a sure thing.”

  “He didn’t!” She’s suitably outraged, which makes me feel a little better about the whole thing.

  “He did. He said something about how I had a look in my eye that basically let him know he was going to get laid that night.”

  “What look?” She asks as confused as I was earlier when Jess ran away from me.

  “Exactly. That’s what I thought. I didn’t even know there was a look, let alone that I was capable of giving it.”

  “Huh,” She starts at me for so long I start to feel uncomfortable.

  “Lex?”

  “I know!” She all but screams at me. “You have to give me the look.”

  “What look?” I throw my hands out in exasperation, spilling wine everywhere. “Oops.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” She waves her hand at the stain and clicks her fingers in front of my face. “You need to concentrate. Look at me exactly as you looked at him.”

  I let my mouth go slack, drop my eyelids to half-mast and let out a rip-roaring snore.

  “Okay, okay,” She laughs, slaps my arm and refills my glass. “Forget about the snooze. Tell me about date number two.”

  “Date number two? I didn’t go back out with the guy a second time.”

  “Noo… tell me about the second guy.”

  “Ethan. Oh!” I sit up straighter and smile. “Ethan.”

  “That good huh?” She smiles back at me.

  “He’s so….. nice.” My nose screws up when I think about it. “No, not nice. He’s great. We’ve been out twice, the first was a coffee date, I was still feeling weird about the date with Mark so when he got there, I just laid it all out for him. I told him I wasn’t having much luck with the whole dating thing, told him I didn’t really know what I was doing. I told him about you and Matt setting me up with Jason and I also told him about Gavin. After that, we went out and spent the next few hours talking. We text and email every day, he calls me every night. We went out over the weekend and spent the day at the lake then we went to see a movie in the night.”

  “You told him about Gavin?” She asks but she looks like she’s going to cry which confuses me.

  “Yeah, I just wanted to get it out there, if he was going to be bothered by it, I wanted to know right then and there instead of it coming up at a later date. I also kind of just expected him to run after my rant, but he stuck around.”

  “So when are you seeing him next?”

  “He’s coming over to mine tomorrow night, I’m cooking dinner and we’re going to watch a
movie.”

  “You’re cooking him dinner?” Now she’s surprised.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing, except that’s the universal, ‘we can have sex now’ date.”

  “It is?”

  “Lilith… why are you smiling?”

  Thirteen

  “Hello?”

  “Lex?” I grip the phone in my one hand and stir gravy with the other. “Lex? Please come and help me.”

  “What do you mean ‘help you’? Isn’t tonight your date with Ethan?”

  “Yes, which is what I need help with. Can you come over please?”

  “No, I’m not coming over, just tell me what the problem is and I’ll try to help.”

  “Okay,” I take a deep breath and a huge gulp of wine – my second glass, of wine. “So I’m cooking dinner. But I don’t know what I’m doing and I need some help here. Why can’t there be a step-by-step guide for this stuff?”

  “Lil, seriously, you need to chill out, you can cook a simple meal for two. What are you making? Pasta? Steak?”

  “No, Lex, instead of cooking a simply meal for two people, I’m making a fucking chicken roast. The whole things, I have a whole chicken. – which by the way is cooked to perfection, I have a both roasted and boiled potatoes, I’ve done carrots, peas, broccoli, stuffing, yorkshire puddings and gravy.”

  When Lexi’s laugh comes clear through the phone, I roll my eyes and start taking the food out of the over. “It’s not that funny.”

  “Okay, okay.” Everything goes quiet for a few seconds and I know it’s because she has muted me to hide the remaining chuckles. “Right, here’s what you need to do. Leave everything but the chicken, potatoes, peas, broccoli and gravy. Keep the rest of it in the oven and then when he goes home, wrap it up and we’ll figure that out tomorrow. Just put together the chicken potatoes and veg and serve that.”

  “I can do that.” I start moving the food I’d already dished up back to the oven. “That’s good. See I totally needed you.”

  “No, you just have no experience at this, if you had-”

  “Lex! Shhh. I have to go.” The doorbell rings again. “He’s here.”

  “He’s there now?”

  “Yes!” I stop just before I reached the door. “I really have to go.”

  “Wait! What are you wear-” I hang up, effectively cutting her off and open the door to Ethan.

  “Hey,” I smile and open the door wider in an invitation to come in.

  “Smells great.” He comments and walks through to the kitchen without direction.

  Plastering on a smile and brushing away the stress of the last two hours, I straighten my dress and prepare to deal with dinner.

  After dinner we move in to the front room and settle down on the sofa to watch a film. I’m not sure what film we’re watching, all I know it that it’s been on for an hour and a half and I think there’s still an hour left. It’s about two men in prison and I have no idea how we ended up watching this out of the hundreds of dvd’s I have.

  Dinner went great though, Ethan was happy with the food and seemed to enjoy it and I dodged the whole embarrassment of cooking enough food for a family of six, which if I have anything to do with it, he’ll never know about it.

  “You know, I kind of feel bad for these guys, those guards are arseholes.”

  When a minute or two passes and there’s no reply from Ethan, - which is unusual because he’s been keeping up with my comments all night, I turn to look at him and have to do a double take.

  He’s sleeping.

  He’s sleeping?

  What. The. Fuck.

  “Ethan?” I call and when that doesn’t work, I poke him in the shoulder. “Ethan.”

  Having no luck, I get my phone from the kitchen and call Lexi.

  “Hello?”

  “He fell asleep.”

  “Huh?” She sounds groggy and on a check of the time – 11:20pm, I realise that I probably woke her.

  “Ethan. We had dinner and then put on a movie and he fell asleep.”

  “He fell asleep? So what did you do?”

  “Nothing, he’s right there, just sleeping.”

  Once again, she’s starts laughing uncontrollably.

  “I’m so glad you find this amusing.” I aim for a dry tone but I can’t quite supress the laughter.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just that well, he’s sleeping...”

  “I know that, I’m looking right at him.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t realise how late it was and I already tried waking him but he’s out.”

  “You tried waking him? How?”

  “I said his name a couple of times and I poked him.”

  “Wait, you poked him?!”

  “Yeah, just in the shoulder. It didn’t work. Obviously.” I move back into the front room and watch him sleep. “What should I do? Do you think shaking him will work?”

  “Lil. Lilith. Do not shake him. Do you hear me? Do not shake him.”

  “Why? I need to wake him up, he can’t be comfortable, his back will hurt like a bitch tomorrow.”

  “Call his name again. I don’t know, just wake him gently.”

  “And what do I do then? Kick him out?”

  “I don’t know. Unless you want to let him sleep in your bed, sure.”

  “Okay, I’m going to do it.”

  “Okay, call me when he leaves, I don’t care if it’s tonight or tomorrow, just call me.”

  “Fine.”

  I hang up the phone, drop it onto the coffee table and consider my options. My eyes drift back to the phone… maybe I can accidentally drop it on his head. Everybody drops phones, right? Or maybe, I can spill some water on him and tell him that I was just trying to get comfortable and didn’t even notice that he’d fallen asleep.

  As luck would have it though, it’s as I’m leaving over him to reach the remote control when gravity screws with me and my plan and I end up falling on to top of him.

  Of course this is how he wakes up.

  “Uhnguh hu what?” He grumbles.

  “I’m so, so sorry. I’m not trying to attack you while you sleep or anything, I fell. I actually did fall too. I was contemplating different ways to wake you which actually included shaking you, potentially killing you by dropping a phone on your head and throwing water on you. Falling on you wasn’t even an option. I swear.” I rant as I scramble to get off him.

  “Hey, it’s okay.” He slowly gets to feet and rubs his whole face with a hand. “I fell asleep?”

  “Apparently,” I shrug as if it’s a normal occurrence for people to fall asleep on my couch and I didn’t spend almost half an hour freaking out about it.

  “I’m really sorry about that. It’s been a long week and I had a busy day and then that amazing dinner you cooked, I guess it all just caught up with me and I drifted.” He smiles sheepishly.

  “It’s okay, I’m sorry I kept you here so late.” I offer as I walk him to the door. I really didn’t mean for this date to go on all night, not in my own home.

  “It’s fine. I’ll call you tomorrow?” He steps closer and wraps his arms around me.

  “Sure,” I return the hug. “Goodnight, Ethan.”

  “Nigh, Lilith.”

  I watch him walk away and when I close and lock the door behind him, I do with a smile.

  Fourteen

  “Okay, Lil, You have my complete attention so tell me what’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really?” Cal cocks an eyebrow at me, clearly more amused than worried. “Then why haven’t you noticed that we’re the only two people left in here?”

  With a frown I turn from the bar and realise that not only is the bar empty but it’s also been cleaned. “When did that happen?”

  “Exactly.” He gets us both a fresh beer and comes around to my side of the bar, sliding on to the stool next to me. “We closed an hour ago, you didn’t even notice me w
iping down the bar in front of you. Not even when I lifted your beer and wiped under that.”

  “Oh.”

  “So, are you going to tell me or do I have to sit here for another two hours while you stare off into space?”

  “I don’t know,” I sigh and turn on my stool so that I’m facing him. “I’m not even sure why I came here, I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate but I have no one I can talk to about this stuff and it’s embarrassing because I’m twenty six for Christ sake, I’m supposed to know what I’m doing or at the very least how all of this works and I can’t talk to Nate because he’ll tell Lexi and then I’ll have to answer a million questions and I don’t want to think about so much that I start second guessing myself and then there’s Jason, he’s the last person on earth I want to talk to, I wouldn’t trust his opinion on which way around the toilet roll goes on the holder let alone anything personal. If Gavin were here and things were different between us, I could have talked to him about it, I could always talk to him, you know? So that leaves you, and I know that I can talk to you if I need to and I know you won’t judge me but it just feels weird.”

  “Uh…” He blinks at me and for the first time all night I smile, not a small smile or a grin but a full out one hundred watt smile.

  “You asked.”

  “I did,” He nods and then shakes his head. “So, I’m guessing you need to talk to a guy about something and no, I won’t judge you and just to make it a little easier on you, I promise I won’t tell anyone that you even came here tonight, so technically this conversation never happened.”

  “Thank you.”

  “So, what’s on your mind?”

  “You know I’ve been dating, right?”

  “Yeah, Ian or something isn’t it?” He takes a long swallow of beer and I remember that he’s been working all night and now I’m dumping on him.

  “Ethan. We’ve been on a couple of dates, three actually.”

  “So it’s going well? You like him?”

  “Yeah, I do. I mean it’s not like I’m falling for him or anything – it has only been a couple of dates but I like him.”