Almost Mine (13 page)

His lips were in no way comparable to the softness, the sincere tenderness of Nick’s. His kiss was not patient. It didn’t make me believe that I was his one and only; his lips articulating how much he loved me, needed me and lusted for me. Instead, Roy’s kiss was hurried, his impatient tongue darting in and out of my mouth as he pressed his chapped, sun dried lips hard against mine. This had to stop.

‘You’ve lost your touch.’ I shifted back, creating a platonic space between us.

‘Have not.’ He leaned in determined to prove me wrong.

‘No,’ I denied him, thinking about the past. I replayed previous kisses, many kisses with Roy in my head, so as to make an unequivocal and fair judgement. ‘I guess you never had it to start with. I just had nothing real to compare it with.’

His mouth fell open. His adolescently stunted brain had trouble formulating a response other than a sulky, ‘I did so!’

I stood as he continued to sit dumbfounded in the sand, and turned to walk away.

‘Cate!’ I heard him call after I’d taken a few steps away. He grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him, pulling me back into a lip-locking embrace. My hands pressed to his naked chest to push myself away.

‘That’s enough!’ I yelled.

‘Come on,’ he persisted reaching for me again. I smacked him.

‘I no longer have my head in the sand, or buried deep within you.’ I turned toward the crashing waves, mostly talking to myself. ‘I see now that what I have deserves more than what I have been giving it, and that finally,
finally
, I recognise that Nick is the man that you will never be, and not the other way around.’ I turned back to Roy.

‘Well, that’s a swift jab to the balls.’

‘The truth hurts.’

‘So this is it?’

‘It was over years ago, Roy. I just didn’t know it.’

He reached for me but once again I stepped back.

‘You should really give me another chance to persuade you.’

‘There would be no point.’

‘But —’

‘No point whatsoever.’ I crossed my arms.

‘Tell me this then. Tell me why you think you love him,’ he challenged me and up until a few minutes ago I would have stumbled in answering.

‘Because he makes me feel like the loveliest, most important person in his life, and quite honestly, Nick is the most amazing person that I’ve known. He’s selfless, generous, patient, handsome…’ I smiled as his face reappeared in my vivid memories of my very own Nick Mathieson.

‘Ok, that’s enough,’ Roy interrupted. ‘So you say you love him, but why did you just now try and kiss me?’

‘
I didn’t!
’ I replied indignantly.

‘You did!’ he teased.

‘You’re unbelievable! Argh! I’m done with you and your bloody mind games and immaturity! Don’t you find it boring? Have yourself a nice shallow life while the rest of us continue on with our meaningful ones.’

I strode off down the beach and as I moved farther away from Roy a smile spread across my face and my heart swelled almost to the point of it bursting. I loved Nick! And I knew it without a doubt! And to have my heart feel it was…was...so surreal and…liberating!

I had finally realised that I did actually love him, deeply love him, like a wife should love a husband. So as I peered over my shoulder back at Roy, I realised that I couldn’t hate him as much as I wanted to right at this moment. He’d helped me to understand my own heart. He helped me understand that yearning for the past and what you believed love should feel like just wasn’t reality. Love was hard, and for me, it didn’t just fall in my lap like Lucy always told me it should. Because if you had to work for it, if you had to let it grow at its own rate, it was all the more fulfilling, satisfying, and quite honestly, fucking magnificent.

I felt like a real, loved woman who was part of something that nothing else could ever compare to…until I had the blessing of becoming something more than just a loved woman. Only a mother’s love could surpass such an intensity of emotion.

The gentle ocean breeze moved smoothly across my face with a sense of exquisite clarity. I was in love with my husband and maybe, just maybe, I had found the missing piece
to our puzzle, the piece that would now complete our lives and in turn bring us everything that we had dreamed of.

Lucy was squished between Mr Sweaty and Mrs Complain-a-lot as the flight home finally ascended from Brisbane airport and descended into Tullamarine. I blissfully ignored the stone-cold expression of the woman who wanted my husband, grateful to have a seat to each side of me empty. How that had happened, we did not know, but according to flight regulations, you must not exchange seats or move to an empty seat that is not your own in the event of the plane crashing and us needing to be identified. Well if that wasn’t a confidence boost to the safety of the aviation industry, I didn’t know what was.

I was grateful to have this time to myself, though. I held in my hand a small white envelope that Lucy had given me as we had boarded the plane. Apparently Roy had not said all that he wanted to and had passed on a letter to Lucy at the hotel to give to me. What were they, still in high school? So I sat with this small peace offering and tried to decide whether or not I really cared about what Roy had to say, or whether I should tear it up and place it in the vomit bag hanging on the seat on front of me. But curiosity can diminish any common sense that you may have had previously, before you were handed this letter from your high school sweet heart.

I slowly ran my index finger under the opening of the envelope in a carefully blasé fashion, without giving Lucy any reason to think that I was actually interested in what he might say. I didn’t have to respond, so what was the big deal? I read the scribbled writing that covered the page before me…

Cate,

I am an arse. You know that more than anyone. You deserve more and I hope that all can be forgiven. You’re a great person, better than me, and I never deserved what you had to give me. Nick is a lucky, lucky man. I hope we can be friends and feel free to call and catch up if you’re ever up this way again. I really do miss you. Really. We had great times for the most part didn’t we?

Roy xxxxxx

I reread the letter to make sure that I understood exactly what Roy was trying to tell me. To me, the letter was arrogantly presumptuous and I did not have any inclination to return his sentiment, now or in the future. I shoved the letter into the vomit bag where it belonged and sat back in my chair. Outside the window the earth was at my feet, and I had Nick waiting on the other side of this flight, ready to be everything and do anything for me. Why would I waste my time on someone who only cared about the next whim and where it may sweep him away to?

I searched around the crowded airport, impatiently waiting for a glimpse of Nick. Tourists and locals alike were bustling for their baggage, and with searching desperation I barely noticed Lucy at my side when I swung my suitcase from the carousel, almost taking out her left knee.

‘Sorry,’ I said as she grumbled something under her breath. ‘What’s wrong, Lucy?’

‘Oh, nothing beside the fact that I’ve spent the last two hours listening to an old lady drone on and on about how much she hates plane food, her daughter that refuses to take her calls, and her dog that has his own prescription of puppy Prozac. I don’t know, Catey, after such a delightful flight, what could be possibly wrong with me?’

With our bags dragging behind us we navigated our way out if the terminal.

‘So will you tell Nick about seeing Roy?’ Lucy asked when we had room to move.

‘Yes,’ I answered immediately, but thought about taking it back when Lucy threw me an ‘
are you crazy?’
look. ‘Well, why wouldn’t I? You may not believe this, but honesty does go a long way.’

‘You don’t think he’ll get a bit, I don’t know, jealous?’

‘I’d want him to tell me something like that.’

‘But would you want to hear it…?’

‘Do you really think that I should keep this to myself? I actually thought that you would prefer it if I told him that I’d seen the only other person that I have ever been with?’

‘Why would I want Nick to be hurt?’

Opportunity, perhaps.
But as I spotted my husband I dared not say it and spoil what was about to come next. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘I can see him.’

He was waiting by the arrivals gate, and as I caught his eye, he smiled. His mouth, his eyes, his ears, every part of him lit up at the sight of me, just as my entire body reacted ecstatically to him. His arms spread as I dropped my bag, and in true airport fashion, I ran to him, leaping into his eager arms.

‘Welcome home, my beautiful angel,’ he murmured into my hair. I clung to him, breathing him in, reacquainting myself with his musky scent and everything that I’d missed while we were apart. He looked different though, or maybe it was just because he hadn’t shaved for what looked like a few days.

Finally he placed my feet back onto the floor and looked at me, as if he too were reacquainting himself. ‘God I missed you, Cate,’ he said as his hands cupped my face, his searching blue eyes drinking me in. He lowered his mouth to mine; tasting each other, we were bumped and knocked by people who were not fortunate enough to have such a delectable greeting as this.

‘All right you two,’ Lucy interrupted, ‘can we get out of here?’

Begrudgingly we agreed and the three of us headed for home, more than ready for round one million and two, and three, and four…

Round one million and five, well, we’d see how successful that was in about two weeks’ time. But, for now, I wore Nick’s faded Kings of Leon T-shirt over a pair of boy-leg underwear — to show off my new tan — as I fed my home-made hot apple pie and ice-cream to him. It was his favourite and it was important to me to make him feel loved, wanted, needed as much as I was able; I had a lot of time to make up for. So I’d tend to my deserving husband like a good wife should.

I had been home for less than five hours and it seemed like the perfectly sublime welcome had worn off. Nick was sitting on the floor with his back leaning on the sofa behind him. He was wearing a pair of navy blue sweats and nothing else; his defined chest and arms drew me away from overwhelming thoughts of baby-making and into heavenly memories of
times spent under covers in our bed and under blossom trees in years gone by. His toned stomach, covered in smooth, delicious skin, was spectacularly irresistible, and I had to force my eyes away from him, otherwise the hard timber floor would become a makeshift bed for round one million and six and I would ruin his enjoyment of his dessert.

‘You’re so beautiful, angel,’ he said as I sat on the sofa behind him and wrapped my legs around his waist while he continued to eat.

‘You’re not too terrible to look at either.’ I bent and kissed behind his ear and soothed him as I rubbed out the knots in his tense shoulders.

The only light in the room was provided by the open fire as the flames licked the oxygen soaked air. Nick and I sat subdued as we watched them, absorbed in the melting sound of Adele as she beautifully filled the room from an iPod dock on the lamp table.

‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked him as I slowly massaged his shoulders and rubbed down to his lower back and then up again, my slender fingers trying to span as much of his skin as they could. His back was too broad and left neglected muscles out of my reach, so I let my mouth pick up the slack. I kissed along his shoulder to the nape of his neck, pulling him against my body.

‘What makes you think that something is wrong?’ he murmured, succumbing to my fingers.

‘Other than the fact that you haven’t shaved for a week, or the fact that you haven’t actually asked me if I enjoyed my holiday, or that you haven’t filled me on how my dad was while I was gone. Details, Nick. You’re usually pretty thorough with them. Something is distracting you. So, spill it.’ He said nothing. ‘Ok, then. Let me tell you something. Roy was on Bribie Island.’ I thought he was tense before, but at the mention of Roy’s name, Nick’s body became as rigid as a post. I was not deterred despite the fact that his body language articulated his apprehension to take part in the conversation. ‘I had no idea he was going to be there of course, but there he was on our last night. He said the usual dickhead things and then when I was out walking he went to the hotel and gave Lucy a letter to give to me. As if a belated apology would make we swoon,’ I rambled.