EIGHT O’CLOCK CAME and went and Maia hadn’t roused. I didn’t want to wake her, so I made dinner for two, just in case she was hungry when she woke up. After I ate, I turned the TV down low and lay on the couch with a beer in the dark.
In spite of the circumstances, it felt good to have someone else in the house. When we weren’t together, she crept into my thoughts. I wondered where she was, what she was doing. When we were together, she seemed to fill the space around us, and not just with her physical presence, either.
Maybe it wasn’t her, maybe it was me. Whenever she was near, I felt better. Being with her made everything seem brighter, more hopeful. I felt alive again.
Almost as if she could hear me, the spare room door opened and she stood there, dishevelled and half-asleep and yet looking so completely enchanting I was momentarily speechless. She was the epitome of untamed beauty. She brushed her hair away from her face and finger-combed it into place at the crown. As soon as she laid eyes on me, she gave me a small smile.
“Hi,” she said, standing there, completely oblivious to the effect she was having on me.
“Hi,” I sat up, taking control of my senses again. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Much better.”
“Good. Hungry? I made you some dinner, just in case.”
“You did?”
She looked shocked. Still foggy, but shocked nonetheless.
“I mean, don’t get excited, it’s nothing fancy – just pasta.”
“It sounds great. Thank you.”
My heart floated inside my chest, buoyed by an overwhelming sense of contentment. I wanted to make her happy, surprise her, spoil her. She deserved it, for all she had done for me this past week, whether she knew it or not.
“Do you want to go freshen up or something while I heat it up? There’s fresh towels in the bathroom, if you want to take a shower.”
She glanced down the hall to the bathroom, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I said, standing up. “How does fifteen minutes grab you?”
She smiled. “Plenty long enough. Thank you.”
I went into the kitchen and began to heat up her dinner. I heard her turn the shower on. She was only a few metres away from me, with a couple of thin, old walls between us.
Life has a funny way of reminding you of stuff just when you least expect it. A flashback came at me from out of nowhere, this one just as clear as the last.
Em was in the shower, and I went in to watch, leaning back against the bathroom cabinet. She grinned at me, not in the least bit surprised to see me there, and grabbed me, pulling me into the shower with her. She let me wash her, all over, with shower gel and my bare hands. We were in there so long, we used up all the hot water.
God, I missed her. I missed the way she smelled and the way she seemed to know what I was thinking even before I did. I missed how much she trusted me. I missed the little things she used to do for me, like make me coffee in the morning. Like letting me finish the crossword in the Herald in peace and quiet. Like knowing when I just needed to hold her close to me. Like the way she never went to sleep without a part of her body touching mine – a foot, a hand, a knee. It was as if she was assuring herself that I was going to stay there all night, that I wasn’t going to leave her.
And then she left me. How’s that for irony?
I looked up and it was Maia who was standing there, not Em. It was like a reminder – this was the present, that was the past. Time to put them back into their rightful places.
“Feel better?” I asked.
She nodded, but something was wrong. She didn’t look relaxed, she looked nervous. For a moment, I wondered if she had been inside my head. Had I said something aloud, something I hadn’t meant to?
Her damp hair had left watermarks on the shoulders of her shirt, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them as she sat down at the table. Determined to play it cool, I set the dinner plate down in front of her.
“Sorry,” I said with a tight smile. “I might’ve over-heated it. Just give it a minute or two.”
“Thank you,” she managed, smiling that foreign smile that didn’t belong to her.
I sat down at the table opposite her, bringing my beer with me. Something was definitely up. The question was, was I game enough to ask her what?
“I saw Emily’s things in the bathroom,” she said, before I could decide. She stared at the plate in front of her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop.”
I scratched my chin, waiting for her to look up at me so I could see her face properly, see what was going on inside her head. But she wasn’t obliging. It wasn’t like I’d tried to hide any of this stuff from her. Maybe I should’ve.