Entwine

by Rebecca Berto

  She giggled, and thanks to him, forgot about her qualms. “If we’re at different stages of our lives. I don’t know when I want kids, and I’m sure you already want to get started having another child. And then there’s marriage. Etcetera.”

  “Uh-oh. This isn’t about the gorge behind my place anymore, is it?”

  Sarah shook her head slightly, and then realised she had to say, “No.” She continued, “I just want you to be sure. You have no idea how incredible you are; and there is so much incredible about you that it intimidates me.”

  Why am I repeating myself on this issue, going around like a broken record? He wants me. Believe it.

  “Hey, baby.” He let the words hang there. “I never want to make you feel uncomfortable. Ever. I’m sorry for that.”

  “No, I don’t want to hold you back. I was just wondering if we’ll get to go to the gorge there, hang out. Then I started thinking, what’s wrong with me? You’re thirty-four, for crying out loud. You’re a father, not some kid like me who’s trying to keep her first real job, and find herself in the world. I’m still living with my mum, and I relied on her support just a few weeks ago, still. Then tonight was organised, and I started worrying if you’ll spend a lovely evening with someone like Alyssa and think about how easy and great you could have it with a pretty woman like her, make your daughter’s life easier, yours easier, and go back to normal. It’s not like my father is actually going to stick around.”

  “Sarah, I find Alyssa to be one of the fakest, leachiest people in the world. She sucks up, and it’s all that she does. I couldn’t list a quality of hers that attracts me. You’re seriously messed to think that, with my luck, scoring a gorgeous girl like yourself, I’d ever even start to wonder what my life would be like without you. I don’t care if you think it’s best we cool off the hot-and-heavy for months. I want to get to know you.”

  “What about all that stuff I said about our lives and stuff? Honestly, don’t you want all that stuff?”

  “Normal is for people who are too scared to find the best. I don’t care if it’s a juggle to fight for Lucy and to keep you. That’s the only way I see it.”

  “But kids?”

  “Yeah. I’d love more.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll be ready, though. And marriage. I don’t know when I’m ready for that.”

  “Aw, babe. Seriously, calm down.” He chuckled, which promoted that itchy cough to start again. “We’ve only known each other a week. One step at a time.”

  “Crap, sorry,” Sarah mumbled. She felt her cheeks heat. She had to get off this call before she ruined everything. Damn her insecurities. She was creating a problem out of nothing between them. The problems she didn’t want pushing them apart were stemming right from her. What a mess.

  “All right, I better go.”

  “Don’t, please. I can hear you’re stressed. You don’t have to worry about tonight, or the future. I’m really, really into you.”

  “For now, I know. It feels incredible with you. But this is messed. She’s your ex, the mother of your child; she’s the woman who my father cheated on my mother with, she’s the woman now pregnant with my dad’s child; you used to sleep with her, and now you’re with me; and, soon enough, I’m going to have a sibling linking me with her, too. It’s so messed.”

  Sarah realised why she was going back to this issue: it was damn Alyssa. She’d come in and crumbled the confidence Sarah had about herself and Malik together. Sarah wondered if every other young woman like herself would second-guess their worth and beauty next to a woman like her. Or was it just stupid Sarah?

  “Stop. Over. Thinking. Sarah, please.”

  “Malik, I’m not! I’m just worried.”

  “I told you not to be.” He took a breath, and when he continued, his tone was softer, but more stiff, like he had to focus on keeping his voice steady. “Don’t start this. You’re mine. There’s nothing with Alyssa.”

  “It’s her. She’s got her claws into you.”

  Sarah winced at saying that. She slapped the back of her hand down on her forehead and lay there, anxious for him to reply. She should have stuck to her instincts and shut off. Damage couldn’t be done if she wasn’t talking. And, boy, was she on her way to damage.

  “Are you saying I’m lying about being involved with her? Or that I secretly care for what she wants or needs?”

  There was no mistaking it; this was the moment. Malik wasn’t re-assuring now, but in defensive mode. “No, I didn’t mean that.”

  “Fuck, Sarah.”

  She heard a crash on his side, and pulled away from her mobile instinctively. Imagining him angry or hurt because of her wasn’t the plan, and hearing him increasingly wound up was too much to take.

  “Please, I didn’t mean to be a bitch. I’m screwed, just worried and—”

  “I know you’re worried, but I hate that I’ve seen why you really wanted to talk. You’re worried not just about her, but about me. I can hold my own, Sarah, and I know you know that. The only way I’d allow her back into my life, or my bed, or my heart, is if I reciprocated.”

  “Malik—”

  “Let me finish,” he said. “And that isn’t what I’ve told or insinuated to you, or to her. So maybe it’s you who has to think about us. If we’re just a whirlwind, I’ll accept it, but I don’t want you having doubts months later. I’m either with you forever, or I’m not. I’m not into games or fucking around. I’ve had enough experience to know what to hold onto when I get it.”

  Sarah pulled the mobile away so he wouldn’t hear her sniffle.

  “Maybe tonight apart will be good. Just think about what you really want, if you’re ready. It just doesn’t seem like you trust me, or maybe you’re not sure. One of the two.”

  He had just finished saying “two” as he began to heave into coughs again. He blamed a sore throat, irritated by a conference call this afternoon. Meanwhile, Sarah started crying. Cop out or not, they needed the break. He said he better go before he lost his voice. When he said bye, she couldn’t even say it back. She just dropped her mobile somewhere in the sheets and sobbed into them. She sobbed for so long, she wore out all thoughts of being alone, and losing Malik, and saying stupid things. When she smelt the sheets, she noticed she’d replaced their stiff, crispness with her body shape and scent, unearthing memories of Nicholas.

  She checked the time and it was about dinnertime; or, close enough. She couldn’t help but wonder if Nicholas still had no plans tonight.

  • • •

  NOW

  Sarah’s eyes snapped open to darkness. Wrinkling her forehead, she looked around her bedroom, trying to adjust. The curtains were open and the streetlamp light poured in directly through her first-level window. Luckily, she wasn’t too exposed, not being on ground, but she still shut the curtains, then walked to the light switch with illumination from her mobile.

  The time said 7:30 pm. She gasped, and rechecked it to be sure. Yep, they’d be in a movie by now. Lucy was seven, and couldn’t stay up that late.

  Her heart rate fired up and she couldn’t move her feet, though she willed them to take action. Thud, thud, thud. It was not only the heavy feeling knocking inside her chest but the sound thumping in her head.

  Sarah was a mess. She knew this because of her reflection in the bathroom, when she felt brave enough to look. Her mascara was smudged worse under her right eye, and tapered off to the side. Both of her eyes had an awful black hue underneath them, but the right side had black specks that scattered away from below her eyelid, like a path. She had streak marks through the shimmery blush that otherwise coated each cheek. Her eyes weren’t red anymore, but they sure didn’t look that flash.

  Sarah had a shower for the second time that day. She slipped out of her clothes and stepped under the scalding shower head, feeling the hot water pound against her back, lulling her eyes closed, and encouraging her mind to drift off. After a while, she sat down and cuddled her knees against her. She grabbed the body wash and
lathered it over her whilst wriggling every now and then to scrub her entire body. She grabbed her face wash and scrubbed that over her face, too.

  When she got out, Sarah dipped her head back and took a big breath. The air was humid and dense thanks to the heat from the water, but she felt freer, not to mention fresh and ready to do something proper with her day, finally, at eight pm.

  Sarah picked out a grey singlet. It had beading and sequins splashed across her breasts that tapered into a rough triangle under her bust. She matched it with a red cardigan and did one button up, just above her belly button. She picked out light grey-washed skinny jeans and wore wedges to appear hot, yet not overdressed. She checked her look in front of the mirror and decided it was dressy-slash-casual, but not trying too hard, just effortless sensuality oozing from how her clothes cupped her breasts and tapered her long legs with the height lift.

  It didn’t say anything in particular, but Sarah decided then and there she did have something rather particular in mind to do. She re-did a face of make-up, adding barely there eyeshadow and eyeliner to her usual look, and then drove away in her car.

  • • •

  NOW

  As Sarah drove there, she processed the likelihood of the cinemas they’d be at. The one just near her station was her top choice. Otherwise, there was another about fifteen minutes toward the city, and another a little west of there, too. She’d try her luck at the same movies she and Malik had visited on their first date.

  As she drove, Sarah’s thoughts wondered about all the minor details that had made up their first date, and how much she began to feel for him that day.

  It was her bodily reaction to his proximity that arrested her thoughts. A brush of his fingers across her arm. The way his hands rubbed at the skin around her waist. After they got out of the cinema, she remembered his square jawline again, and melted inside, wanting to run her hands down his face and memorise all his contours. When he sat, just the way his thighs were effortlessly parted, the way all men do it, but how she could make out his hard, contoured muscles, set him apart from just another stranger.

  Sarah found herself at the parking lot in seemingly the next moment. Biting her lip and breaking out into a smile, she let herself remember how much Malik made her happy, hot, and in heaven any time he spoke, touched or appeared in her thoughts.

  She walked through the shopping centre, not even bothered by the intense need to just stop and check out her favourite stores quickly. She was driven and focused, and that would cut off half an hour from her time. Plus, she didn’t care for her usual browsing of cocktail jewellery, shoes or tops.

  Once she got to the board that showed movies now playing, she was slightly breathless. She caught her breath whilst scanning.

  There were only two kid’s cartoons showing. She waited until they called her, and then asked what cinemas the current two were playing at. Sarah waited on a bench around the corner where Malik, Alyssa and Lucy would pass on their way out and waited, read and re-read movie posters, and listened in on people buying tickets and customers at the candy bar.

  By the timetable, she had a fifteen-minute wait until one ended, and twenty minutes until the other. She knew they’d be in one of those; the sessions before were too early for them to attend, and the ones after started at 10:15 pm, and that was way too late.

  Sarah tried to check the time every ten minutes but whenever she looked down, she saw only two minutes had passed. She wasn’t sure how that could happen, but she stopped checking anyway, and just waited. She couldn’t risk playing any mobile phone games. She had to be aware.

  And aware she was, in the beginning. But, as time passed, her mind started drifting, and she wanted to give in to the urge to rest her head against the wall behind her.

  When some more time had passed, she checked her mobile.

  What she saw shocked her. It was 9:10 pm. If they’d been in the last movie, it would have ended ten minutes ago. She’d already seen the cleaner just enter. No one else was left.

  Confused, she stood there, shoulders slumped, and felt like a kid spy trying to conquer the world, like a model hero from a detective movie. Through clenched teeth, she exhaled, and then mumbled, “Grr” as she threw her handbag strap over her shoulder and walked back to her car.

  Ridiculous, she thought. They wouldn’t have gone out the back door; no one used that except for teens. It was dark, run-down and she’d never seen families exit that way. Only people who didn’t give a shit about the world, or stupid people who didn’t think bad things would happen to them would go that way. Or Sarah and Malik, when it was so late everything was shut, and it was the only way out.

  Sarah put her hair up in a messy bun on the top of her head in her car with a spare hair tie she found. She didn’t want the annoying feeling of hair rubbing on her neck, or the front strands tickling her. She chucked her bag in the passenger seat and drove off.

  Sarah got stuck at the traffic light while exiting the parking lot. Then she got stuck again at the first set down a straight strip, and then again at an intersection, waiting to turn. She knew she had bad luck, and tonight it was all piled up in one crap bundle. Maybe she was being tested to see how much she could cope with.

  Well, Sarah could deal with shitty luck.

  It was as Sarah gazed around the intersection, waiting to take off, that she spotted the cropped hair of Malik and his exquisite square jaw facing Alyssa at an ice cream parlour. She could see beneath the table; their legs were tangled. And, in an instant, that square jaw of his opened as Alyssa leant forward to kiss him.

  He didn’t move away, he let her lips meet his. As Sarah swerved and stuck her finger up at an angry driver she’d just cut off, she ducked over to get that spare park across the road and hoped she’d get to that witch’s tongue in time before it became entwined too far down her boyfriend.

  Luck, ey?

  How lucky Sarah was in this exact moment.

  ALYSSA

  NOW

  Sarah waited in her car after she’d killed the engine. She wanted to throw Alyssa off him, but also wanted to see if Malik would throw her himself.

  What Sarah witnessed was Alyssa’s fingers working around to the back of his head, the same way Sarah had for their first kiss. She clenched her fists in her lap and growled in frustration. This had to be a joke! Malik wobbled and tried to catch his weight on the table, but missed, at the same time as Alyssa braced his weight. He pushed off her and felt around for Lucy who was clueless to it all, just licking her ice cream.

  Malik shook his head and his lips moved. They stood and he wobbled, and while he was correcting himself, cradling his head in one hand, she paid and came back with Lucy. He leant on her weight and she helped him out.

  Sarah was too mad to go out now. She didn’t want them sorry, or shocked, or even grovelling for forgiveness. She was too mad to move a muscle. She creased her forehead, gripped her knees with her fist and watched, unblinking.

  He was the worst kind of drunk. Sloppy, hopeless, and on top of the hurt, she wanted nothing more than to stay far away from him. He was just as sleazy as Alyssa, and far from the confident sexy man she first saw. Slouched in the arm of his ex-wife, he was just as hopeless as her father, too.

  She’d let her guard down and trusted the first man with her heart since Nicholas, only to discover he would be the worst of all the other potential heartbreaks.

  Alyssa strapped Lucy in the car first, and then came back to Malik, who was wobbling with his hands pressed against the car door. She pressed up close to his side, and Sarah saw her eyes wonder down his body.

  Sarah dry-heaved, and had to focus on breathing. There was a moment when Malik’s eyes wandered and placed her across the street.

  For a split second they caught her, and she wished he could explain why, but then he turned away. That moment perfectly captured their entire relationship.

  Including the end.

  • • •

  NOW

  Sarah’s favourite ty
pe of movie was a rom-com. She loved to hate the bit where one, or both, of the characters stuffed up and fell into the hands of another lover, but in her own life it completely sucked, and with her mum out on a date, Sarah could think of no one else but Nicholas.

  If Nicholas was the same guy he was at nineteen, he’d make sure his whole night was free on the off-chance Sarah would magically call or appear. Even though it was now almost nine-thirty, if he was that same guy, he would still be waiting.

  Sarah took off and remembered his words, “My number’s still the same” and didn’t hesitate on calling him through her Bluetooth as she drove.

  “Sarah?” he answered.

  Of course. Sarah shouldn’t have been surprised he’d kept her number. She did, too, but only because she hadn’t consciously deleted it. She hadn’t come across it in years.

  “Yup,” she said.

  Sarah wasn’t crying, sad or nasally. Sarah was fine. Nicholas had no business knowing or laughing at her crap luck.

  “What are you up to?”

  He chuckled. “Watching this really bad rom-com. Has this dreamboat guy with a real twangy accent, and some rake-thin chick, washboard chest, yet she still wears draping necklines.”

  Sarah burst into laughter. Those words were exactly hers. “Why the draping neckline?” Sarah had once told Nicholas, back when they were dating, “If you don’t have boobs, cover up, and create an illusion that you do, even if you have to stuff chicken breasts in your bra—and don’t ask, they’re not real chicken.” Nicholas had just shaken his head. Sarah had promptly said she could overlook that movie oversight because of Matthew McConaughey’s dreamy look and accent.

  “You are gay.”

  “No, I’m just some sad, straight guy, bored out of his brains.”

  “Well, would you like company?”

  “Err, what about … you said it wasn’t appropriate …”