by Sandy Barker
“Uh huh. Just texting Cat about our plans for the day.” That sounded breezy, right?
“So, what’s in store then?” Crap, I hadn’t thought that far ahead. Lying was hard.
“Oh, she wants to go shopping, but I’m thinking of the National Gallery. I love that place.” Or, maybe lying wasn’t that hard.
“You’ll get to see sunflowers,” he said. I didn’t get it.
“Sunflowers?”
“Van Gogh. Sunflowers is my favourite painting in the National Gallery,” he replied.
I caught up. “Oh, yes, it’s mine too!” That part wasn’t even a lie. I love that painting—or rather, that series of paintings. I’d seen two of them in person—at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the one in London.
“In between tours, I’d go to the gallery and sit in front of Sunflowers, just taking it in—sometimes for an hour or more,” I said. “It was a way of stilling my mind, catching my breath after the intensity of the tour.” I smiled to myself. The gallery visit had started as a lie, but I wondered if I could talk Cat into stopping in that afternoon.
“So, kind of like your visits to the British Museum then?” he asked.
“Yes, in a way. Although, they served different purposes. I’d head to the museum if I was feeling homesick or just blue, whereas Sunflowers was more of a palate cleanser for my brain—a reset. Does that make sense?”
“I know just what you mean by that.” Maybe I had explained myself better than I thought. “And each time I see that painting—although, I haven’t been for a while and must go back sometime soon—I see something different in it. It’s remarkable.”
“Yes!” I exclaimed, “I do too. It’s both elegantly simple and compellingly complex.” We exchanged a quick smile and I had to bite my tongue, so I didn’t invite him to the gallery with us. I didn’t even know if we’d end up going, and I really couldn’t drag out our goodbye. It was hard enough as it was.
Not long after we discovered our shared love of Van Gogh, we pulled up outside Cat’s building. As promised, there she was, grinning like an annoying little sister.
“Uh, James?”
He parallel-parked the car—expertly of course—and looked at me. “Yes, Sarah.”
“Heads up. You’re about to meet my sister.”
“Oh? Really?”
“Yes. And I apologise in advance.” He laughed. I didn’t.
We both got out of the car and as James got my tote—sorry, Cat’s tote—out of the boot, I tried to cut Cat off at the pass. All I managed before she pushed past me was a quiet, but pointed, “Behave.” It came out like a growl.
“Hi, you must be James,” said my ridiculously infuriating but utterly charming sister. She held out her hand and James took it and then kissed her on the cheek.
“And you must be the much-loved sister, Cat.”
They stood there beaming at each other. I don’t know which one I wanted to slap more.
“Here, I’ll take that,” said Cat, signalling to the tote. Well, at least she was being helpful. “It is mine, after all.” Argh! Killing her would have been too kind. Torture came to mind.
James gave her the tote. “Well, thank you for loaning it to Sarah and for sparing her as much as you have this past week. I know this was supposed to be your time together.”
“It’s no problem at all, really. We’ve still got the rest of today and tomorrow morning.” Listening to them talk as though I wasn’t there was both fascinating and bloody maddening.
“Oh yes! Sarah said you’re thinking of going to the National Gallery.” I what? Oh crap. Lying was hard again.
To her credit, Cat didn’t miss a beat. “Sarah loves her Sunflowers,” she said, saving me and being a condescending cow in the same breath.
My level of angst increased as the ridiculous conversation went on. James didn’t seem to notice—or if he did, he was an excellent actor. “So she said. I’m glad she’ll get to see it before she goes home. And, I’ll make sure to put it on the itinerary when she’s here next.”
Well, that shut her up. Cat’s mouth formed a perfect O and her eyebrows nearly leapt passed her hairline.
After a moment of rare silence from my little sister, she just smiled and said, “How lovely.” Then she seemed to come to her senses. “Well, I’ll just take this upstairs and leave you two to … leave you two alone.”
James leant down and kissed her cheek again. “So lovely to have met you, Cat.”
I think she blushed. “And you, James. Bye.”
“Goodbye.” She turned back towards me, her eyes wide with approval and a silly grin on her face, and left James and me to say goodbye.
I walked over to him and reached up for a hug. He wrapped his arms around me. “I think you know how much I hate this part,” I said, my voice muffled by his chest.
“Me too, darling.” We stood like that for some time.
I pulled away, keeping my arms around his neck. “Kiss me.” He did, sweetly. When the kiss ended, I said, “I need to go inside now and not see you drive away. Okay?”
He just nodded, the sheen of tears in his eyes. “Goodbye, Sarah.” I stood on my toes and pressed my mouth to his. Then before I could drag it out any longer, I turned and walked into the building. I pressed the button for the elevator several times, impatient for it to come and take me away—away from where I knew James was still standing and watching me.
It finally arrived with a “ding” and I chanced a glance outside. He raised a hand and I raised mine. Then I stepped into the elevator and dissolved into tears.
Like I said, goodbyes suck. They’re even harder than lying.
Chapter 9
Cat was waiting for me with the front door open and even though she is a tiny woman, she threw her arms around me and enveloped me in a huge hug. I boo-hooed for a good couple of minutes before I let her go.
“Come inside,” she said. “We don’t want to scare the neighbours.” It wasn’t even that funny, but it had the desired effect and I smiled a little as I wiped tears and snot from my face.
“You didn’t let him see you looking like this, did you?” asked my not-so-subtle sister.
“No,” I wailed. “I was very dignified. I waited until I got in the elevator.”
I followed Cat into the living room, and I could hear the kettle boiling, so I knew tea was on its way. I love my little sister.
“Sit down,” she said, handing me a box of tissues. I sat. “Wipe your face.” I did. She could have told me to do pretty much anything and I would have followed her instructions to the letter. I was not in a state to make my own decisions.
She brought over a plate of chocolate digestives. The plate was overkill. I could have happily tipped my head back and let them pour into my mouth from the packet. I took one and ate it in two bites. While I chewed and snuffled and got myself together, Cat made us tea. When there was a giant mug in my hand—really, she’d busted out the big ones—she sat opposite me.
“Before you tell me what happened, let me say one thing,” she said earnestly. I nodded and swallowed my biscuit. “James is hands-down the hottest frigging man I’ve ever seen in real life.”
That did the trick. She got me laughing.
“Seriously, Sarah. What the actual F? I mean, you’re a catch, you know I think that, but … I’m … well, I’m in awe. Go, you.” She raised her mug in a toast and I clinked mine against hers, grinning through my tears. “Okay, now, what the hell happened? Are you engaged? Are you moving here? What?”
“Enough with the proposal stuff, already,” I wailed.
“Fine. But something happened. Look at you.” She made a face that encompassed the giant mess that was me. It was not flattering.
I sighed. “He says he’s falling in love with me.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“And do you feel the same way?”
“I don’t know.”
“So, is that a solid maybe?” I chewed on my lip. “Stop chewing your lip
. You’ll gnaw right through it.” I stopped and lifted a nail to my mouth and started nibbling. “And stop that too. It’s nasty. Here.” She pushed the plate of biscuits towards me.
“Getting fat on biscuits is better?” I took a biscuit.
“What did you say to him? Did you say anything?”
“I said that I have feelings for him.”
“Huh, well that’s good, right?” It must have been a rhetorical question, because she didn’t wait for me to answer. “So, what does all this mean, logistically?”
“Logistically?”
She got impatient with me. “Is there any possibility that you might be moving to London?”
“I’m not moving to London, Cat.”
“Well, you can’t blame me for hoping.” She gave me an encouraging smile. “So, how did you leave things?”
“We both think there’s something there and that we need to see what it is, and he said we’ll work it out.” I stared at the surface of my tea, not really seeing it.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“So, no firm plans?” I shook my head. “Are you all right with that?”
I lifted my eyes. “Yes, I guess so. I mean, I’m sad. It’s hard to say goodbye when you don’t know when you’re going to see someone again.” I realised that the same would be true when I said goodbye to Cat, but I pushed the thought aside. One crisis at a time.
“But you think it will be soon?”
“Yes.” I was relieved to discover how certain I felt. “James has means, obviously, so he can come to me, or fly me here. There’s my job, but the terms are only ten weeks long, and then I can travel again.” I was starting to feel better.
“But you didn’t talk about any of that?” she asked.
“No. It didn’t seem the right time to dwell on all that. But, I know we’ll see each other again. Like he said, we’ll work it out.” Calmness washed over me. Talking it through with Cat had helped immensely, and I really did believe it would be okay. I would miss James, yes, but we’d be together again, and as soon as we made plans, I would have that to look forward to. I leant back against the couch and took a sip of tea.
“So, Sarah?”
“Hmm?”
“What about Josh?” Cat asked, hesitantly. “How does he factor into all this?”
Oh, crap. Josh!
I hadn’t given him one thought since … I realised I couldn’t remember the last time I’d thought about Josh.
Josh—the guy who made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe, whose smile made me feel all squidgy inside, and who shared the longing that now fuelled me, the need for a bigger life. Josh—the guy I was seeing for New Year’s in Hawaii.
My sexy American boy.
“Oh, Cat. What am I going to do?” I looked at Cat, stricken, and her face was riddled with concern.
But there was no answer she could give. It was my mess, and she seemed just as flummoxed as I was.
We finished our tea in silence, and I chewed on my thoughts, contemplating how I had let myself fall for two men at the same time.
Then, tea drunk, Cat shooed me off the couch with some much-needed tough love, telling me to freshen up so we could go out for the day. Apparently, she had plans for us and none of them included me moping around her flat. We rode the train and then the tube into central London, and popped up at one of my favourite places—Leicester Square.
It was awash with tourists, as it usually was, and there was a street performer who was doing things with a giant hoop that would have impressed me on any other day. Cat took one look at my morose face and dragged me towards my favourite bookstore in London, Foyles on Charing Cross Road. It wasn’t a long walk, maybe five minutes, and she handled it like she does all crowds—elbows out and barking “excuse me” a hundred times. I followed closely behind, not wanting to get lost in the melee.
“Was this part of the plan?” I asked as we stood roadside opposite Foyles and waited for the little man to go green.
“The plan for today?” I nodded. “Well, no. Not originally. But you didn’t seem too keen on mooching about Leicester Square, so …” She let the thought go unfinished.
“I don’t know that I’m in the mood.”
The light turned green and I started to cross, but Cat pulled me back onto the footpath. A woman, who bumped into us, apologised passive-aggressively, as only the English can do.
“Really? It’s Foyles.”
“I know. Can we just do something else? Maybe see a movie or something?”
“You want to spend our last day together seeing a movie?” She didn’t sound particularly impressed.
“Sorry.”
She grabbed my wrist and led me away from the road into the entryway of a tiny shop that sold antique jewellery. “Sarah, I love you—I do—but this is my day with you and I really don’t want to spend it moping about London or hiding in the dark at the cinema.”
She was right. “Sorry.”
“Stop saying ‘sorry’. It’s really frigging annoying.” She was probably right about that too. “Look at me.” Great, she was resorting to old-school parenting techniques. I must have been more of a mess than I thought. I looked at her. “Do you want to go home? To my place, I mean.”
I didn’t, not really. I’d just sit there and stew in the mess of my own making and—worse!—waste time I could be having fun with Cat.
“No,” I said, sounding reasonably sure. Fake it ’til you make it, right?
“Okay, so what do you want to do?”
“What did you have planned originally, before, well … everything?”
“Benefit brow bar, mooch about Oxford Street for a bit of window shopping, then oysters and champers at Bentley’s Oyster Bar, then cocktails at Bar Termini. Not sure after that.”
“That’s a lot of bars.”
She laughed, “I suppose it is. We can even throw in a quick trip to the National Gallery if you like, for some Sunflowers time. I mean, everything’s right here.” By that, she meant in central London and within walking distance.
“I would like that. Sunflowers, I mean, even just for a few minutes.”
“Great. We have a plan. Brows first, then Sunflowers. All right?”
“Yes. So, you’re getting your brows done?” I asked, as she pointed the way to Benefit.
“No. You are.”
“Oh.” She headed off. I caught up and walked alongside her, then self-consciously touched my eyebrows, wondering what was wrong with them.
“They’re not terrible,” she said helpfully. “But they could be better.”
Well, thank god we were getting them sorted out! How had I survived so long with “not terrible” eyebrows?
*
Less than half an hour later, I admired myself in the mirror. “Your eyes really pop now,” said the heavily made up and very pretty woman who’d tamed them. I nodded in agreement. I had to admit, the brow bar people really knew what they were doing. Cat’s face appeared next to my reflection.
“You look great. And this is my treat, by the way.” She scooted off to pay before I could object, and I met her at the counter where she took her credit card and a small Benefit bag from the cashier. “Here,” she said, handing me the bag. I looked inside. It was a peach-coloured blush called “Dandelion”.
“That’s my fave!”
“Duh!”
I gave her a hug. “Thank you. And not just for the pressie.” She looked, as the English say, well chuffed.
Next was a quick trip to the National Gallery. Cat left me alone with my favourite painting—and my thoughts—while she checked out the gift shop.
I sat in front of Sunflowers staring at the different hues of yellow. I loved that there was nothing symmetrical in the painting, including the vase. Everything was a little off kilter, but the overall effect was very beautiful.
Everything in my love life was off kilter too, but I was struggling to see the beauty in that.
I hadn’t made promises to either man—not
really—but I had been bitterly disappointed when Josh had referred to me as his “travel buddy” right before we’d said goodbye in Greece. I’d wanted more from him. But that wasn’t fair to Josh, especially considering how things had developed between me and James. Josh had even asked me not to see James.
And James had been an absolute gentleman about Josh when we were in Greece, saying he didn’t want to get in the way if there was something between us. But he hadn’t asked about Josh at all during our week together in London. Was he trusting that I would tell him if there was anything to tell, or did he just assume I’d chosen him over the American boy?
And how could I go to Hawaii with Josh knowing how I felt about James?
And a worse question, how could I not?
I knew there was a reason to stay single.
I focused on the painting again. Van Gogh had started to go mad by the time he’d painted it. Mad. We’d call it depression now or some other treatable mental illness, the poor man. The struggle, his struggle, was right there on the canvas. Yet, he’d found beauty in the details, even living inside a troubled mind. I was a little in love with Vincent.
I felt someone sit down beside me and knew without looking it was Cat. She moved closer and rested her head on my shoulder. “I love you,” she said quietly.
“I love you too.”
I was starting to feel the separation already. It sucked.
“We need to start drinking,” she said after a moment. I could not have agreed more.
*
We were seated at the bar at Bentley’s Oyster Bar (& Grill—don’t forget the “& Grill”), a dozen empty oyster shells in front of us and each of us on our third glass of bubbles. It wasn’t champagne though, because the prosecco was way more affordable.
“I’d like to propose a toast,” said my tipsy sister.
“I’ll drink to that,” I said, also tipsy.
She giggled. Maybe she was more than tipsy. “I haven’t proposed it yet.”
“Oh. Go ahead, then.”
“To Sarah, who is brave and beautiful and is shagging two ridiculously handsome men.”