by A. L. Brooks
“Oh, come on, give me a break! You know what my job’s like. You know how quickly things can change in a day.” Terri’s voice had risen and it sounded incredibly loud in Alex’s ear, making her tremble as her anger transformed into agitation.
Confrontation was not Alex’s natural style, and she was suddenly struggling with the bad energy between them. Her usual need to smooth things over was overcoming her anger. Yes, she did know how fast-paced Terri’s job was, and how her days often careened off-track. It was a big part of what had got them into this mess in the first place. Exhaling slowly, and rolling her head to try to ease the sudden tightness in her neck and shoulders, she paused before speaking again.
“You just don’t make this any easier, you know.”
There was silence. Then, “I could say the same to you.”
The words hit Alex like a verbal slap. She inhaled sharply, but before she could retort, Terri jumped in.
“I don’t want to argue. Quite frankly, I don’t have time.” Her tone held a finality that brooked no argument. “I’m sorry about the counselling. I’ll get home as soon as I can, but like I said, don’t wait up.”
“Fine.” Alex hung up before she said something she’d really regret and carefully placed her phone back on her desk. Leaning back in her chair, she closed her eyes.
So Terri was bailing on their counselling again. Alex couldn’t stop the acid churning in her stomach at how…coldly Terri had written off their session.
Her teeth ground as she bit back the string of expletives queueing up to escape her mouth. While anger was still her overriding emotion, she opened her eyes as she acknowledged the other strong feeling coursing through her.
Relief.
A few hours later Alex slotted her key in the lock with an overwhelming sense of trepidation. Surprisingly, Terri was home already, and Alex had no idea what to expect when she walked into the flat.
She had found the solo counselling session useful, but that didn’t really surprise her. Gloria had helped Alex tap into some of her own long-standing issues around relationships. It left her with more questions than answers, but it had purged a little of the anger that still resided deep within her over what Terri had done three months ago. Just not enough. There just didn’t seem to be a way to remove that nausea, that twist of anger every time she thought about it. The sessions with Gloria had helped, but it seemed no amount of talking or sharing could quite bring her to be comfortable with where they were.
Breathing in deeply, steeling her bruised heart, she shut the door behind her and locked it.
She shrugged off her coat in the hallway and hung it up, heeling off her shoes in blissful relief as she dropped her bag on the floor.
“I’m home!” she called out.
“In the kitchen,” came the muffled response.
Poking her head round the kitchen door, she watched as Terri deftly stirred something in a pan. Terri was in her dark blue track pants, a cotton hoodie over the top with the sleeves rolled up. Her short dark hair was ruffled. Her wire-rimmed glasses were perched on the end of her nose, something she did when cooking to keep them from steaming up too much. She looked adorable, but Alex almost couldn’t allow herself to think it. She was still angry with Terri, and thinking nice things about her diminished that anger. Wanting her, desiring her—none of that was good right now.
“You’re home earlier than I thought you’d be,” Alex said.
“Yep, didn’t take as long as I thought in the end.” Terri looked up. “Want some soup? I didn’t eat earlier and I’m starving.”
Terri’s casualness irked Alex, but she tried to play nice. “No, I’m good.”
Terri blinked a couple of times. Then, “How was the session?”
Alex shrugged and worked hard at keeping her tone neutral. “Okay.” She paused. “Get your work done?”
“Yeah.” Terri stopped stirring the soup and put the spoon down. “Sorry about earlier,” she said quietly. She walked the few steps across the kitchen towards Alex and leaned in for a quick kiss, which Alex returned on autopilot. Alex was aware that she was working very hard not to respond to Terri’s kisses, to pretend they didn’t move her like they used to. Her mind resented them. Her body—more and more often lately, much to her mind’s chagrin—ached for them. But she didn’t trust the kisses, didn’t trust that Terri truly wanted to kiss her. And she wasn’t sure she would ever trust that again.
Terri stepped back. “Just so you know, I’m going in early tomorrow. We’re having a celebratory breakfast for finally pulling it off.”
“We?” Alex asked, before she could stop herself. Terri started and frowned, but before she could speak Alex held up a hand. “Don’t. Forget I asked. Sorry.” She had promised not to open up old wounds, as part of their path to reconciliation. It was just too hard not to, sometimes.
Terri nodded slowly and breathed deeply, the frown slowly easing itself out.
“So,” Terri said eventually, “it looks like I’ll be free this weekend. Want to do something?”
Alex took a deep breath. On the way home she’d wondered when would be the best time to tell Terri her news, but now her hand had been forced. She could guess how well—or more likely, not—it would be received.
“Sorry, but I can’t. Richard ambushed me at the end of the day—I’ve got to go back to Montreal.”
Terri’s emotions played out across her face in stark clarity. Surprise, quickly turning to anger, followed by another attempt to get that anger under control.
“When?” Terri asked, her voice laced with tension.
“This Saturday, back next Friday.”
Terri pursed her lips, then turned her back on Alex and walked back to the stove where she picked up the wooden spoon again and aggressively stirred the soup that now bore the brunt of her anger.
Alex took a deep breath and walked over to Terri, slipping her arms round her waist from behind, pulling Terri’s resistant body into her own. She rested her chin on Terri’s shoulder, knowing her arms weren’t fully relaxed around her partner, that she was holding a piece of herself back. Terri leaned back into her.
“I’m sorry, I know you don’t like how much travelling I’ve done this year.” Alex’s stomach churned. She was apologising again—for being successful, for being good at what she did. It caused a tiny ball of molten heat to ignite in her gut.
Terri shrugged in her arms. “We knew it would be a big part of your new job. I just have to get used to it. Doesn’t mean I’ll like it, though.”
“I know.” Alex cringed at her automatic need to make things better for Terri, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Years of always making everyone else feel better had ingrained this behaviour into her bones—something she’d only just come to realise in her session with Gloria, and something she didn’t know how to change. A little voice, far off in the back of her mind, said Terri was being unreasonable, given how many hours Terri put into her own job, the cancelled counselling session being a prime example. But Alex wasn’t ready to deal with that voice yet. “I’m hoping this will be the last transatlantic one this year, if that’s any consolation?”
“I hope so,” Terri said, then eased herself out of Alex’s arms. “Okay, I’m ready to eat, so if you want to go get changed, we could meet in the living room?”
Alex could see the effort Terri needed to make that sound as relaxed as it did. Gloria had managed to instil in both of them the need to make an effort at key moments. To take a minute to consider, and breathe, and allow for each other’s feelings. Some days it worked. Some it didn’t. Terri was trying, and Alex had to be thankful for that. Even if all it did was cause that emptiness to gnaw away at her again.
“Okay.” Alex kissed her on the cheek and left the room to head to their bedroom.
They sat together on the sofa, not close, watching a detecti
ve drama on TV. They each had a glass of wine, something else they were learning to moderate between them. Alcohol had played a significant part in the events that had brought them to this point, and they’d both agreed that Terri, in particular, needed to be aware of how much she now drank. As part of the “deal” they’d done in couples’ counselling, Alex never drank more than Terri when at home. Even when, sometimes, all she wanted was to sink into the oblivion that she knew three or four glasses would lend her.
After thirty minutes of silently watching a program she couldn’t focus on, she was relieved when her phone rang.
Seeing Danielle’s name come up in the caller ID, she hurried to answer.
“I’ll go into the bedroom so you can carry on watching,” she said to Terri and stood without waiting for a response.
“Hey, you,” she said into the phone as she left the room.
“So,” Danielle said without preamble, “you are alive, then? I have been texting you all day.” While Danielle’s smoothly upper-class tone sounded pouty, Alex knew that her friend of over twenty years was only teasing. They went back too far, and had shared too much, for Danielle to be that annoyed at Alex not returning a few text messages.
Alex giggled and thrilled at the sound. She hadn’t realised she had that left in her today. She walked across the hall to the bedroom and flopped herself on top of the bed. The duvet gave way beneath her with a puff of air.
“I had a very long day, thank you. And found out I have to go back to Montreal this weekend.”
“Oh dear, I can’t imagine that went down too well at home? Or have you not told her yet?” This time Danielle’s tone was acerbic, and Alex knew she meant every bit of that emotion. Danielle, despite thinking what Terri had done was unforgivable, had agreed to support Alex in staying with Terri, when Alex insisted that was what she wanted. But it didn’t mean Danielle liked it.
“Yes, I told her. And no, she wasn’t happy.” The unspoken “of course” hung in the silence after she spoke.
“How have things been?” Danielle asked quietly.
Alex shrugged, even though she knew Danielle couldn’t see the gesture. “Okay. Hard. Just…”
Danielle’s exhaled breath sounded loud against Alex’s ear. “What?” Danielle asked.
Alex’s eyes welled up, and she flushed with anger at this weakening of her defences. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t be nice to me. Not tonight.”
There was a pause. “When is your next counselling session?”
“Actually, I had one this evening. But on my own. Terri had to work.”
Danielle tutted. “Why am I not surprised,” she said. “Do…do they really help?”
Alex couldn’t stop the snort that escaped her. “I have no idea,” she said. She closed her eyes. She didn’t need to get into this with Danielle. Not tonight. She was so tired. “Look, forget it. It’s a process. It takes time.”
“I understand. But…”
“What?”
“Is this still what you want?” The question came in a rush of words that tumbled over each other, so out of character for Danielle, who usually spoke with a calmness and grace Alex could only envy. “Only I am not so sure it is, quite frankly, and if it isn’t, would it not be better to—”
“Don’t, Danielle. Please.” Alex’s voice ached with emotions she couldn’t release; the consequences were just too enormous.
Silence fell between them for a moment.
“What about lunch on Friday? Can you manage it?” Danielle’s voice had transformed into measured and falsely cheery, but Alex was grateful for the change in direction. Even if it was only a stay of execution until Friday lunchtime.
“I’m sure I could squeeze you in,” Alex said, forcing herself to smile as she spoke, to crowbar her own false cheeriness into her tone. “One o’clock, the usual spot?”
“Lovely. See you then. And Alex…”
“Yes?”
“You know where I am. Whenever. All right?”
Alex’s throat closed up, and all she managed to squeeze out was a strangled “Uh-huh.”
She lay on the bed for some minutes, the phone clutched to her chest. Her emotions were all over the place, but the warmth she felt after talking to Danielle comforted her, even as her friend’s question ricocheted around her brain.
“Is this still what you want?”
No, she wasn’t sure this was what she wanted anymore. How could she be? She knew plenty of couples managed to survive one partner’s infidelity, but right here and now, she had no idea how they did. She’d been trying for over three months and was coming to realise that she wasn’t sure she wanted them to survive it. They weren’t the same people they’d been before that night. And no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t look at Terri and not have an image, however brief, flash up in her mind’s eye of Terri with Liz, Terri’s boss. Terri had slept with her one night three months ago. A night that had changed everything Alex and Terri had shared for the last five years.
When Terri had guiltily confessed all, a week later, she’d blamed the copious champagne they’d drunk that night as they’d celebrated landing a new client at the bank where she and Liz worked. But Alex had wondered if blaming the alcohol was just the easy way out. She remembered all the references to Liz in the previous few months. That extra little zing in Terri’s voice when she spoke about what she and Liz had done during the day. All the niggly little arguments that had started to play a bigger part in her and Terri’s daily life, and all the times they simply crossed paths as both their jobs took up more of their time.
The distance that crept between them like a slow-moving fog.
And she remembered all the other late nights, all the other excuses for why Terri wouldn’t be home until Alex had gone to bed. Had she and Liz been sleeping together all that time? Terri said it was just one night, but Alex didn’t know how to believe her. Or had Liz just been planning it all that time, and the deal, and the champagne that had followed, gave her the perfect opportunity to strike?
As easy as it was for Terri to blame the champagne, it was even easier for Alex to blame Liz. To pretend that Terri was somehow a relatively innocent party in this. But she wasn’t. Terri could have said no. She could have resisted.
But she didn’t.
Sure, Terri had begged for Alex’s forgiveness, sworn it would never happen again, and in her shock, Alex had believed her, for a while. Terri had been consumed with remorse and falling over herself to repent. But it had changed them, as individuals, and it had changed them as an “us”.
The couples’ counselling had started two weeks later. Alex had insisted on it. She had still been in shock, and although she’d been bitterly angry and upset at what Terri had done, she’d thought what they’d had before that night was enough to be worth rescuing. If they both wanted it enough.
Now, three months down the track, she really wasn’t sure if either of them wanted it at all. But that was a can of worms she didn’t want to open.
Not yet.
Alex heaved herself upright and walked back to the lounge. She found Terri sleeping in front of the TV.
So much for worrying that Terri would wonder where she’d got to.
She switched off the TV, roused Terri, and they went to bed. After a perfunctory kiss goodnight, Terri rolled over and was asleep in minutes. Intimacy was something they had only just reintroduced into their relationship. For weeks after Terri’s affair, Alex had not been able to relax, to believe it was she who Terri saw in front of her and not Liz. From the snippets of information Alex had gleaned over the months, Liz was younger and taller than Alex, bigger-breasted and longer in the legs. Alex had looked at her own body in a new light—breasts still in reasonably good shape, hips maybe a little wider than she’d had before. Her auburn hair was a little dry on the ends and never qui
te held its style, and her green eyes were constantly circled with dark marks as she threw herself into striving for her promotion. She looked tired, all the time, and lacked energy most weekends for anything other than watching football or heading out to a pub or café for late lunches. Was that why Terri had fallen so easily into Liz’s arms?
Still, over this past month, intimacy of a kind had been resurrected between Alex and Terri. Hugs and tender kisses had morphed into deeply passionate kisses and the occasional fumble up each other’s T-shirts. Until one evening a fortnight ago, suddenly burning with a desire she’d thought may have disappeared for good, Alex hadn’t stopped Terri when her hands slid down inside Alex’s jeans. Terri’s weight had pressed her into the sofa, and the sex had been hard, and fast, and shockingly delicious. And for those few minutes, Alex had been able to lose herself in the sensations and forget the emotions.
Since then they’d tried a couple more times, but not with the same level of success. She didn’t know why, but she couldn’t conjure up that same intensity again, that same letting go of emotions. Each time Terri made advances, something shut down inside Alex and she couldn’t find a way to turn it back on.
So they were back to where they’d been for the previous three months. Strangers sharing a bed, not even spooning anymore.
She turned her head slightly to look at Terri’s silhouette in the darkened room. She was breathing deeply, fast asleep.
Alex tried to fathom why she was still trying to keep this going. Her reasons were a complex mix, and she wasn’t sure she had the energy to unravel them, despite the glimmer of insight Gloria had given her. Her age was definitely playing a role, along with the fact she had a series of failed relationships behind her. Her lifelong tendency to loyalty, even if it was to the detriment of her own happiness, was also biting her in the ass. All of these things she should probably face up to and talk to someone about at length. Gloria had offered each of them individual sessions anytime they wanted—they’d had one individual session each in the early days, which was apparently standard practice. Alex had spent the entirety of that first one-hour session in tears. The betrayal had felt overwhelming, and she’d struggled to verbalise what it had done to her. The subsequent sessions she’d had on her own with Gloria had only emphasised how much she needed to deal with, and not just about her failing relationship with Terri.