Surprise Package

by Donna Alam

  Liddle darl-lin’ . . .

  ‘I don’t want to hear about the sun coming.’ I close my eyes, resting my head on his chest. ‘Make it go away.’ The Beatles can just bugger off as far as I’m concerned. Surely, this is a song more suited to March or May and not the depths of a snowy December.

  My head moves with his next deep inhale. ‘It’s not just the Beatles that’s bringing the sun, darlin’.’ His arms tighten across my back. ‘The snow is starting the thaw.’

  Chapter 19

  IZZY

  But I’m not ready for this to be over. Yes, so I have work on Monday morning and probably a million complaints for going off grid during one of our busiest periods—they don’t call this the silly season for no reason. But just because real life has to creep in doesn’t mean I have to let go of the fairy tale, I think, as a figurative light bulb goes off in my head.

  ‘We could do this—see each other still,’ I qualify quickly, so quickly I don’t give a thought to being nervous or his reaction. But surely, he’d want the same thing, wouldn’t he?

  ‘Darlin’.’

  ‘Just think about it,’ I add quickly. ‘The past few days have been . . .’ Like a dream. Like a Christmas dream.

  ‘Perfect. The past few days have been perfect,’ he asserts, taking my head in his hands. ‘And unreal.’

  There’s a certain something in his tone, something I can’t quite place. But unreal is okay, isn’t it? It’s a bit of a buzz word, and personally, I’d have just gone with fantastic. Unreal in that sense is a word you’d expect someone in my place of work to use—some beard-owning, square-spectacle-wearing, trendy metro rather than Greg.

  But that’s okay, isn’t it?

  ‘I’d be the luckiest man alive to be in a relationship with you, but believe me, I’m not what you want.’

  ‘Oh.’ I step back from the heat of his body. Fucking unreal. ‘Oh, well, I see. If you’re going to mansplain what I need, then I suppose that’s it.’

  ‘That’s not it at all.’

  ‘Then you tell me what it is,’ I demand, wrapping my arms around my waist. This is confusing and unexpected, but most of all, it fucking hurts. ‘I’m too old to play these games, so you tell me, Greg. You tell me exactly what this is.’

  ‘This is me telling you how wonderful you are—’

  ‘While also letting me down as gently as possible.’ He may as well just chuck me from the roof. I’m not sure it’d hurt any less.

  ‘This is me telling you I can’t be what you want.’

  ‘Okay.’ I stride purposely to the window. ‘Okay.’ I can see the little red roof of my hire car and a little of the windscreen but not enough that I can leave.

  ‘How old do you think I am?’ I ask suddenly.

  ‘You said twenty-nine.’

  ‘I’m sure I didn’t,’ I murmur, turning back to face him.

  ‘Aye, you did. You said twenty-nine, for sure.’

  ‘No, I intimated I was around thirty years old. You inferred twenty-nine, and that’s not my responsibility.’ I know by the way he’s looking at me right now that he thinks I’m a little nuts. Whatever. I certainly feel a little nutty right now. ‘I’m thirty-three, Greg. Thirty. Three. I have a great job, that also happens to be terrible, my own home, I’m all natural’—his eyes follow the path of my hands over my body, my movements deliberate—‘and I have all my own teeth and only a couple of grey hairs. But do you know what I don’t have? A man. They come and they go but I can’t seem to keep them. It’s like Groundhog Day in my knickers, Greg.’ I might stamp my feet a little, but it’s better than bursting into tears. I can’t believe this is happening. Not again. Not with him.

  ‘Don’t confuse them with me,’ he almost growls.

  ‘Ah, yes. You made me come. Whoop-dee-doo. Thank you for restoring my faith in my own body. But make no mistake, it doesn’t elevate you above them. Thirty-three is plenty old enough to know when someone is taking the piss.’

  ‘Isobel, please don’t be like this,’ he pleads. ‘We never made any promises. Come on, the first day you thought I fucked women for money.’

  ‘Right now, as my heart breaks just a little bit’—I find myself demonstrating just how much using my finger and thumb—‘I wish I could throw down a few fifty-pound notes and be done with this.’

  He looks like I’ve slapped him, but I refuse to experience one grain of regret for lashing out. I know I sound like a harpy—a total bitch—but he played me. We might’ve only had a few days but look at the table! Look at his suit! He didn’t have to do any of that. I’d have slept with him anyway. And I did. Why lay on all this . . . this perfectness for someone you’ve no feelings for?

  ‘It’s just cruel, Greg.’ Despite my intentions, his name hits the air as a sob.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ Still standing in the same place I’d left him following our dance, he slides his hands into the pockets of his pants, tipping his head.

  ‘We could try?’ I whisper, not quite done with humiliating myself. But I want this chance with him. Maybe just a little too badly. ‘I think—’

  ‘I know what you think, but I can’t help you.’ His head comes up fast, his expression bitter, his eyes hard. ‘Ask me how old I am.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go on. You’re so fixated on your biological clock, so ask me.’

  ‘I don’t need to know how old you are.’

  ‘I’m forty-three, not thirty-three, and I’m divorced.’

  ‘I know that.’ The divorced bit, but not his age. Bloody hell, it’s unfair. He looks at least eight or ten years younger than he is.

  ‘Ask me why I’m divorced?’ he adds, angrily turning the tables on me.

  My mind swims with possibilities. He’s angry for a reason, and the reason is me. I scan my mind for the insults I’ve hurled at him, for the hurts I’ve laid at his feet. He said he wasn’t the same as the men I’ve dated before—he said he was different. Yet . . . yet something I said sparked this tirade, didn’t it?

  ‘Go on—ask.’

  ‘Because you were unfaithful.’ It can be the only reason for his reluctance to discuss this civilly, the reason for his anger and bitterness. He can’t help me because—

  ‘I’m divorced because I couldn’t give my wife a child.’

  Chapter 20

  IZZY

  From my position in front of the window, I watch his polished oxfords disappear up the stairs. No wonder he wants to get away from me. I’m a self-involved bitch who can’t follow clues—who jumped to conclusions. A bitch who made this all about her.

  Greg tried to make today the highlight of my stay, and I’ve ruined it by not listening and by my childish display.

  Not only am I a bitch, but I’m a nightmare house guest, too. One there’s no escape from in this tiny blizzard-covered tomb. I wouldn’t blame him if he was up there attempting to escape from a window or something. While my natural instinct is to follow him upstairs, I get that he might need a little time away from me right now.

  But probably just a couple of years or so.

  So I don’t follow him upstairs. I’m a grown-up, and whether I choose to behave like one or not could be probable cause for throwing me out into the snow. Not to mention, certain death.

  So I take myself off the table, clearing the dinner detritus while swallowing great mouthfuls of my glass of wine. I stack the dishes, top up my wine, and blow out the candles, feeling more than a little sad as Greg’s words settle in my brain.

  Infertile.

  Divorce.

  Cast aside.

  I carry the dishes into the kitchen to where the remains of the beef lies on a thick wooden shopping board, and pile the plates from our entrée next to the sink. I pull open the fridge and notice there’s no pudding in here.

  Maybe his plan was to partake of dessert bedroom style.

  That won’t be happening now.

  I’m not hungry in the slightest, but I need to do something and find myself scanning t
he shelves for produce.

  Milk. Cream. Chocolate.

  Okay, so maybe not so random.

  I suddenly swallow uncomfortably, the motion hampered by the lump of glass in my throat. A lump of glass to match the tiny splinters making my eyes prick and burn. Picking up the folded tea towel from the countertop, I bury my face in it. I won’t cry, even if I feel like it. I won’t cry for Greg, and I won’t cry for myself. There are worse things, I remind myself. War. Famine. Death. Puppies left abandoned. Those kinds of heartbreaking, terrible things. Lifting my head again, I take a deep breath, discarding the towel to the counter again.

  I am not going to cry. And I am going to make this better between us somehow.

  Hands balled into fists by my side, I swallow again, choking back the threatening tide of emotions. Sorrow. Hurt. Anger. I feel them all for us both. I’m also wildly conscious of how I’ve behaved. Of my childishness and my own bloody-mindedness.

  I want to go to him, throw my arms around him, and tell him it’s all okay. But how can I? How can it be okay for him?

  Oh, sod this for a bloody pastime.

  Returning to the fridge, I begin pulling out all the things. Julia Child, I am not, and no one would ever mistake me for Mary Berry’s love child. But I have to do something. Because if I don’t, that tide of emotions is likely to swell and swell, and I might end up crying enough to wash this cottage away.

  My armfuls of ingredients roll and scatter across the counter, and I only just manage to grab the tub of cream before it drops from the far edge. Next, I successfully locate a clean chopping board and a sharp knife before opening a bar of dark chocolate and beginning to chop indiscriminately at the hard, cold block.

  Because boozy hot chocolate makes everything seem better.

  God, how awful must he feel to have to discuss such a delicate subject? Not that we really discussed it, rather I goaded him into sharing something intensely personal. Private. I wonder if my insensitivity has brought a fresh wave of pain? I can only imagine. I want children, and I’ve always sort of been aware of the possibility of not being able to have them, whether by medical issues or the lack of finding the right man in time. Before my biological clock strikes midnight. But it has always been an amorphous, distant kind of concern. Not a stark finality. And it suddenly strikes me that finding out I would never be able to conceive, for whatever reason, would be truly devastating.

  I begin to chop the chocolate viciously. I’m angry with myself, absolutely livid actually, but I’m also inexplicably angry with her—at his ex. What kind of excuse for a human abandons someone they’re supposed to love both in sickness and in health? Through the trials and tribulations of life?

  ‘That chocolate must’ve really pissed you off.’

  The shock of his voice, so deep and so even, well, it’s . . . shocking. So much so, I almost slice the top of my finger off.

  ‘Ow! Ow, ow, owww!’

  I clutch my left index finger in my right hand before pulling it to my chest, proceeding to bleed all over his shirt.

  ‘Come here,’ Greg says, prying my hand away from my injured fingers. ‘Let me have a look.’

  ‘I don’t want to see it,’ I cry out, turning my head away.

  ‘I said let me see, not you. I take it you’re afraid of blood?’

  ‘Whatever made you think that,’ I reply, my voice thin and reedy. ‘Anyway, I’m only afraid when it’s no longer under my skin.’

  Greg chuckles, and seemingly done with examining it, he decrees I’m not going to die of blood loss. ‘I don’t have a first-aid kit, so you’ll have to make do with a cloth. And I don’t think you’re going to be chopping chocolate anytime soon,’ he says, turning away still holding my finger upright between his as he opens a drawer, probably looking for a clean cloth.

  ‘Is it that bad?’ I close my eyes as a wave of nausea sweeps through me. Is it bleeding so profusely that I need a whole towel to stem the blood? What happens if I need sutures? I don’t want to bleed to death.

  And all of a sudden, I’m aware my free hand seems to have moved by its own volition and is currently unbuttoning Greg’s shirt. Well, the one I’m wearing, anyway. And because my eyes are closed, and my head is turned, I can’t tell what Greg is doing. But I know what he’s not doing anymore, and that’s rummaging through the drawer.

  As I begin to wriggle my arm and shoulder from the right-hand sleeve, Greg’s calloused fingertips brush my shoulder as he helps. It’s left dangling from my left wrist for a beat before I pull my hand from Greg’s and wrap it around the digit. ‘There,’ I announce on a deep breath. ‘I can’t see it now.’

  ‘While I appreciate the whole striptease, it’s only a wee cut. It just needed to be held up and tight for a bit.’

  ‘Well, now I can’t see, so it doesn’t matter if it’s bleeding or not. Don’t judge, we can’t help the things we’re afraid of.’ His smile is slow to grow and, thankfully, genuine. ‘Even the ridiculous things,’ I add in a small voice. I continue to stare at the top of my bundled-up finger almost sure I can see a seepage of blood when Greg hooks one of his own under my chin.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he states calmly, though his mouth quirks as if experiencing pain or discomfort as he sweeps his thumbs under my eyelids.

  ‘It’s because it hurts,’ I qualify as his thumbs come away wet. My statement could mean anything, I suppose. ‘I’m not crying because I’m upset.’

  Oops. There goes my Pinocchio nose.

  I bite the inside of my mouth against speaking again because I know those words will be a sobbing mess without making any sense. I’m so sad I must’ve hurt him with my thoughtless words. He doesn’t answer, though right now a bawdy quip might detract from what I’m about to do. But some things you just can’t help—even prickly, awkward people like me have their breaking point. I throw my arms around his waist, making him stumble as I bury my face in the soft cotton of his shirt.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Sure, the words are muffled, but I don’t think I’m hiding how sorry I am as my tears wet his shirt. His arms slide around my back, holding me tighter as though I’m the one who needs comforting. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to be sorry for.’ As his hand pushes the hair from my face, I realise that’s exactly the case—he’s the one comforting me.

  Who would give up a man like this?

  A man who puts aside his own hurt to comfort the transgressor?

  ‘But I do. And I am.’ Sorry for my behaviour but just so sorry for him. ‘You must think I’m so self-absorbed. I should’ve realised you didn’t want to talk about it.’

  Greg’s arms fall away, but before I can add another pathetic apology, he takes my face in his hands. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for. I mean it,’ he adds, cutting me off as I open my mouth to speak again. ‘It was all a long time ago.’

  ‘Okay.’ As far as answers go, that was a pretty poor one. But it was the one he most wanted to hear, judging by the way his expression eases. God, he so doesn’t look forty -three. I wonder what his facial regimen is like?

  ‘What were your plans here?’ I feel the loss of his presence immediately as he moves to the chopping board to examine my handiwork. ‘Were you trying to slice or dice this?’ he asks, picking through something that looks a bit like chocolate shrapnel.

  ‘I was just aiming for . . . chopped. I wasn’t going for any particular cut.’ My response is a little defensive as I wrap the shirt tighter around my finger until it resembles a stick of cotton candy.

  ‘You could’ve attacked the dishes,’ he says with a smile. ‘Why the chocolate?’

  ‘There was no dessert.’

  ‘Ah, I see. Your stomach talking to you again.’ I pull a face, then stick my tongue out at him. On the inside, I’m just happy we’ve been able to return to this place of banter and friendly sniping. ‘Any idea what you were making?’

  ‘I thought I’d give making boozy hot chocolate a go.’

  ‘Ah, right.’ His smile seems uneasy t
hough there’s a teasing light in his eyes. ‘The drink that’s almost as good as an orgasm.’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Do you need a hand with that?’

  In a moment of madness, I decide making an arse of myself by being ridiculous is better than doing so through stupid presumptions or tears.

  ‘I’m sorry, a hand?’ I ask blithely. ‘Were you offering me a hand with my drink or my orgasm?

  ‘Aye, well,’ he begins, fighting a very dorky looking grimace. ‘I think we can safely say you don’t need a hand there.’ His grimace doesn’t last very long, not as his gaze drops from my face to my lacy bra and a little farther. His tongue darts out to wet his full bottom lip. It’s such an unconscious motion but a telling one. He’s thinking about how I touched myself. A subtle thrill courses through my veins.

  ‘No, you’re right. No hands needed with the solo side of things, not when I have two of my own. Well, one. The other is out of commission,’ I add, wiggling the fingers of my right hand almost under his nose, spirit-fingers style. ‘But really, it doesn’t take two hands. Just a couple of fingers will do most times.’

  ‘Really?’ Something suddenly moves across his gaze, something a little thrilling and a little real. ‘Just a couple of fingers? That’s all it takes?’

  As he takes a step towards me, I take one back, exhaling a breathless sound. A light, quivering thing that’s the exact opposite of the reactions building inside me.

  I feel stalked. Vulnerable. Wet.

  ‘Sometimes.’ I don’t sound so confident now. In fact, my voice sounds thick. Thick with longing and lust.

  ‘Only sometimes?’ His voice is a sandpapery lick right between my legs. I find myself backed up against door of the fridge, his gaze raining lust down me. ‘If one hand is out of action, the favoured hand, would you be forced to seek help?’

  ‘Why, Greg, are you offering?’

  ‘Darlin’.’ His voice tone is gravelly as his hands slip from my face to my shoulders, and from my shoulders to my hips. ‘Let me take you to bed.’