The Younger Man

by Foster, Zoe

  ‘Are you crying? Baby, what’s wrong? Come here …’

  He pulled her into his chest and held her closely, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head, his breath short and concerned. It was exactly the kind of thing she didn’t need. She pulled back and wiped under her eyes, taking in a monstrous breath as she did so. She was over-tired; all of her coping mechanisms were faltering.

  ‘Can we just have a glass of wine and go sit on the lounge for a bit? And chat?’

  ‘I’ll get the wine, you go get comfy.’

  Abby walked into the lounge room and sighed. There was work shit everywhere – as she’d suspected, containing it all in the office was nothing but an optimistic dream. Marcus came in, handed Abby her glass, and kicked off his shoes.

  ‘So, what’s going on?’

  ‘It’s about Italy.’

  ‘I thought that might be it,’ he said, quietly, before taking a small sip of his wine and placing it on the coffee table.

  ‘I don’t really know how to articulate it, but—’

  ‘You want to be single and carefree over there.’ A twinge of disgust had crept into his voice, which was jarring for Abby. She had assumed he would be his usual calm, understanding self, but he’d clearly already loaded his gun. Also, she still kind of considered herself as single … They’d never had The Talk about being boyfriend and girlfriend, even if there was an unwritten agreement that shagging anyone else would be very uncool. She hated feeling like this was a breakup, it wasn’t worthy of all that energy.

  ‘This needn’t be so dramatic, Marcus.’ She looked at him with an expression that was begging for rolled eyes. ‘This, us, it was always intended to be a bit of fun and—’

  ‘Oh come on, Abs. You know I never felt that way.’

  Abby continued, ignoring his interruption.

  ‘I admit it has become something more than just hooking up. I love being with you, and your brain, and your wit and your generosity and thoughtfulness and your …’

  Marcus kept his gaze locked onto Abby, suddenly silent.

  ‘But, you know, let’s not make things harder than they need to be, it’s not like we’re—’ Abby stopped. ‘Look, maybe while I’m away, we just keep things relaxed and—’

  ‘Be with other people. That’s what you mean, isn’t it? Keep our options open?’

  Abby was taken aback by Marcus’s spitting upset. The indignant side of her brain whispered that this was precisely why they should end things now: he was clearly too emotionally attached.

  ‘Marcus … You’re twenty-two years old. Aside from the fact I have a decade on you—’

  ‘And don’t you love reminding me of it every day.’

  A childish interjection, but not unwarranted, thought Abby.

  ‘Can we not get angry? Please?’

  ‘Sorry. It’s a bit hard to stay cool when you’re being dumped.’ He looked straight ahead with a steely glare, elbows locked, hands palm down on the lounge, and his chin down.

  Well, thought Abby. This was going marvellously.

  ‘Okay, you know what? Fine. Let’s just get it all out. Us, you and me; it’s a lot of fun, I love hanging out with you, but Marcus, it … At this time of my life, I can’t invest in something that I know is … well, doomed.’

  ‘What are you talking about, “doomed”?’ Marcus erupted. ‘How do you know we won’t work, and why do you get to make that call? And who said anything about us settling down anyway? You’re acting like I’ve asked to move in!’

  ‘You know what I mean, Marcus. Making a proper go of things! Committing to this relationship!’ Abby was pissed that Marcus was making out she was the only one who had contemplated a more serious future for them. He was the one who kept banging on about their future together, not her.

  Abby gathered her cardigan around her body and spoke quietly.

  ‘You just, you need to be a guy in his early twenties right now.’

  ‘Oh really.’ He was back on a roll. ‘And who made you God? Who gave you the power to decide what I will do in my life, and how I will live it, and what I should be doing with it? Why do you get to choose how I’ll feel in five years?’

  Abby sighed. ‘Marcus. All I am saying is that I know what I was like when I was twenty-two, and compared to who I am at thirty-three, I’ve lived a thousand lives. And I needed to! I needed to go through all of that, and try different jobs, and date lots of different people, and just be myself to get to where I am. Making a commitment at tha—’

  ‘What is this commitment you keep talking about? It’s a simple boyfriend/girlfriend set up! I’m not asking for your bloody hand in marriage!’

  ‘That’s the thing. I don’t have time to time to be with a boyfriend – as wonderful as he might be – that I don’t see a future with. I just don’t.’

  ‘I don’t get it. You’ve told me a thousand times you don’t want kids—’

  ‘You’re actually proving my point, because that’s not fair to you. I know you DO want kids an—’

  ‘No, that’s MY point. If you don’t have ticking clock issues, then why can’t we just keep things the way they are? We’re GOOD TOGETHER, Abby! And maybe if you weren’t so insecure and so convinced I want to fuck every twenty year old that walked past, we could be excellent.’

  Marcus had switched from angry-upset to sad-upset, and it was heartbreaking to watch. Also, he was right; she had become insecure. But Abby was too determined and too tenacious in getting all of her Important Points across to dissolve into tears yet. That would come later.

  ‘Ouch. But I suppose you’re right … Look, it’s not you, it’s me, as the hackneyed old adage goes. I can’t spend three years with you, maybe move in, maybe even get married, who knows, for you to get to twenty-six and realise you’re missing out on things, and to be restless, and to need to go and explore …’

  Abby’s calm and rational tone was directly proportional to Marcus’s frenzied, worked-up lather.

  ‘But you don’t know that I will do that! How can you? I’m telling you I want to give us a go, and that I believe in us, and you’re sitting there telling me you think I’m going to disappear so I can fuck around in a few years time. Do you even know how offensive that is?’ He looked at her with disbelief, his brows crumpled down over his eyes.

  ‘Marcus, this is an impossible conversation. Neither of us can know what will happen down the track.’ Abby had nothing else to say. She’d said far too much as it was, and none of it had made anything better or easier or happier.

  ‘Well, I hope you look back and you shake your head at what you could have had, and lost. Because while you’re sitting there, planning out my life for me, and telling me how you think I might feel in a few years, I’m sitting here thinking you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever met, and to be able to spend a few years, maybe many years, would be far from a hindrance, it would actually be pretty fucking special.’

  Marcus stood up and grabbed his shoes off the floor, putting them on aggressively.

  Abby wiped at the salty streams that had began to dribble down her cheeks. She had no idea what to do or say.

  He turned to her suddenly. ‘Are you sure this isn’t all an excuse for YOU to go fuck around? I’m not stupid, you know. I know why women in their thirties head off on these “find yourself” trips—’

  ‘Are you for real? Now who’s fucking offensive? Marcus, I have worked so hard for so many years, and I deserve this trip. I don’t understand how you think this is some easy, heartless transaction for me …’ Abby’s words were eaten up by her sobs. She was flustered and emotional and hurt and angry. She put her head in her hands, which were balanced on her knees, and tried to calm down.

  ‘You know what?’ Marcus’s voice was quiet and measured. ‘I don’t want to be with a woman whose overall opinion of me is that I’m so basic that I won’t be able to honour a relationship because my dick will demand a new and exciting playhouse every Friday night. You sure know how to make a man – oh, sorry “boy�
�� feel good, Abby Vaughn. Enjoy your trip.’

  With that, he walked to the kitchen, collected his phone and stormed back through, past Abby, to the front door, slamming it as he went.

  Abby snatched up her TV remote and threw it at the armchair on the other side of the room, and then she cried, and cried, and cried.

  31

  Abby sat down on the basic wooden bench, rearranging her flimsy cotton dress to cover her thighs as she did so. Her legs were tanned and smooth and her feet were secured into simple black sandals. Her hair was jammed under a straw hat and her skin, free of makeup and jewellery, smelled of coconut and sunscreen. A chic point-and-shoot Leica camera sat in front of her, along with a small tan leather purse containing her B&B room key and some euro. It felt delicious being so light on belongings, she thought as she applied an organic, olive-oil based lip balm she’d bought in the last town.

  She picked up the menu. It was brown paper, and the dishes were handwritten: Prosciutto e melone, Insalata Caprese, Affettati e crostini toscani, Ribollita Toscana, Spaghetti al pesto, Scaloppina ai funghi … But Abby knew precisely what she was going to order: the caprese salad to begin, then the pesto pasta. With a glass of crisp Vernaccia di San Gimignano, and a side glass of ice, because wine was the temperature of minestrone within moments of being out in the fierce Italian sun. Satisfied her meal would help her attain that day’s five Italian food groups: pasta, coffee, mozzarella, tomatoes, grapes (fermented, in liquid form) and gelato, as well as sending her off nicely into an afternoon nap, Abby placed the menu down and looked around her, inhaling her surroundings with voracious eyes and a desire to imprint the scene in her mind forever. No matter how many photos she took, they never came close to capturing the beauty of a Tuscan summer, the fields simmering with a hazy heat, the stoic, crumbling city buildings jutting into the intense blue sky and of course, the swarms of slack-jawed, sweaty tourists, all as enchanted and well-fed and camera-happy as Abby.

  Abby was seated alongside the restaurant’s wall, looking into one of the main avenues of San Gimignano, a precious little medieval town she hadn’t even known had existed until she’d struck up a conversation with the lovely man who ran the bed and breakfast at her place in Siena, a town which she had wanted to love, but had felt was too dark and foreboding despite the lovely English-garden-style elegance of her room, and the vast, glorious views that stretched out before her as she sat in the garden eating her pastries and drinking her coffee.

  Each morning in San Gimignano, Abby would sit in the room at her bed and breakfast, a dark-wood and opulently curtained villa with beautiful old dressers and intricate maroon and gold bedspreads that felt like she’d crashed a wealthy old couple’s home (she essentially had) with her laptop, sipping on coffee and munching on fruit. She would stop and poke her head out the window onto the street to sniff the air, listen to the locals bellow at each other below, and feel the sun on the back of her neck, and just be aware of where she was, and what she was doing.

  San Gimignano might be her favourite place in the world, she confirmed each time she ran along those country roads, the ridiculous dance music pounding through her earphones about as appropriate for the landscape as seeded mustard on jam donuts. She’d already been here five nights but was reluctant to move on.

  Hungry, Abby felt her tummy and was surprised to feel not too big a mound. After all, lunch each day was a delicious mountain of pasta and crisp white wine. Gelato featured every afternoon without fail, used alongside a shot of espresso to revive her after the strain and exhaustion of a nap. Although, she was running most evenings; that had to be helping. Especially since she appeared to lose her body weight in sweat each time she went out there, running through fields of perfectly lined vineyards and old farmyards blazing in the evening sun, unable and unwilling to get used to the beauty of her surrounds.

  Abby was expecting the weight to hit any moment: she was eating everything on the Real Life ‘No’ list. The fruit, chocolate-filled croissants, sticky buns and three cups of coffee she scoffed each morning as she booked jobs and updated the Allure Facebook page were a prime example.

  The agency was growing at a terrifying rate, which was interesting since Abby was doing far less work on it than ever before. Charlie was magnificently reliable. She didn’t skip a beat, never dropped the ball, and other sports-type metaphors that mean she never let Abby, the clients or the girls down. In fact, Abby had barely been in touch with any of the clients or girls since she’d been here – Charlie had really taken it upon herself to manage everything in Abby’s absence.

  Abby knew she’d be lost without Charlie. She couldn’t believe her good fortune that she’d come along just at the right time. There was something incredibly thrilling about being on the other side of the globe and still able to work as normal. The Webra boys really ought to have been paid triple-fold – even Rob had agreed as he watched Allure’s expenses shrivel up like a plum in the sun.

  The waitress – rushed off her feet with the influx of several thousand tourists who poured off tour buses and out of hire cars each day – finally came out to bring Abby some water and take her order.

  Abby took a deep breath and clumsily muttered, ‘Ciao! Caprese, spaghetti al pesto par favore and uno vernaccia …’

  ‘Si.’ She collected the menu and went to walk back in.

  ‘Oh!’ Abby said, ‘and some … ghiaccio!’

  The waitress smiled good-naturedly, nodded and walked inside. Abby felt like a dingus each time she ordered in Italian, but she’d come here vowing to not be a lazy, annoying tourist, and to at least try to speak the language. A young man came out with some bread in a small bowl with the obligatory balsamic and olive oil, and as he disappeared back inside, Abby nearly dropped her glass of water. He was Marcus. He was exactly like Marcus. Right down to his hair and his eyes and his toned shoulders. She’d always thought Marcus had an Italian flavour, not too much, just a sprinkle of oregano perhaps, but now she’d seen his doppelganger, she realised it was more like he was dipped in Napolitano sauce. Abby cleared her throat, horrified at the way she’d just made her innocent waiter morph into her ex-boyfriend, like some kind of lame apparition in a Hollywood movie. He popped back out smiling goofily as he produced her cutlery. God he looked like Marcus!

  Predictably, he immediately slammed Abby back into thinking of Marcus, an activity she actively tried to avoid. The fact that she was alone all day, every day with only her thoughts for company exacerbated the cyclical, confused nature of her thoughts. Her cycle of emotions usually went from accidentally thinking of him, to trying not to think of him, to being angry with herself for thinking of him, to being angry for having fallen for someone just before her long awaited almost-sabbatical, and now wasting time on it thinking of an absent, painful lover. She replayed going over to his house to try and normalise things, the night before she flew out, and being greeted by a man who vibrated with anger and disgust, and who had about as much interest in smoothing things over before she hopped on her plane as he did in setting fire to his loft. He’d said she was selfish and that the only reason she’d bothered coming over was to make herself feel better about things, not because she genuinely cared about his feelings, or the way she had decimated their relationship with her absurd notions of how a ‘relationship’ should be, and how old people needed to be before she would take them seriously. She was not expecting such fury. Nor was she expecting such a blow to her self-esteem – was she really that heartless and selfish? Was he right to blame her ending the relationship on her antiquated theories and self-protective barriers? The more time she spent on her own, knocking back white wine with no one to talk to, the more she believed he was right. She was an asshole. She had broken his heart unnecessarily, callously, and now he wanted nothing more to do with her. Which of course made her want everything to do with him.

  As usual, the moment Abby’s reflections became morose and she realised what a bad person she was, the feisty section of her brain picked up their pom poms
and made their way to centre stage, to remind her that she was awesome, thank you very much, and Marcus’s behaviour only confirmed what she had suspected about him, which was that he was a child, and his inability to discuss the situation like an adult, without being so vitriolic and attacky, was all the proof she needed to know she’d made the right decision to end things.

  And yet, every morning she refreshed her email on her phone, the ‘checking for new mail’ spinning wheel mirroring Abby’s stomach spinning with hope and excitement that he might have sent her an email, and then, when he never did, her heart falling flat and becoming still, before her mouth took over and uttered a few, ‘well fuck him, who needs him anyway,’ type sentiments, and then her pride bounced in to remind her to definitely NOT send him one, even though she very much might like to, around 279 times a day, especially in moments like this, where she sat alone with gorgeous food steaming in front of her, knowing how much he would enjoy this, and how much she would enjoy this, if he were to be here enjoying it in front of her.

  In exasperation, she skolled a huge portion of wine and slammed the glass hard – too hard – on the table. Of course, just as she did so, the godamn Marcus wannabe came back out with parmesan.

  ‘Everything okay, senorita? Youa not happy today?’

  It was the most simple sentence, and yet it bore through Abby like a hot drill. Tears flashed into her eyes, and she fumbled on the table for her sunglasses, jamming them clumsily on her face.

  ‘Oh, no, no, I’m fine. Who wouldn’t be happy in a beautiful place like this? Ha ha ha.’

  She was selling, but he wasn’t buying.

  ‘Do you travel alone?’

  Oh you have to be kidding me, she thought.

  ‘Yes.’

  Idiot. Why didn’t she say her boyfriend was back in the room?

  ‘Since the booka? De pray eat love booka? So many women come here by they selfa …’ He smiled; annoyingly he was possibly even more handsome than Marcus. And looked roughly as young.