“People in your sensible world, Em, don’t do that. I don’t care about my job. Designing carparks,” he snorted in disgust. “It is bullshit. This isn’t living, Em, it is… beige.”
“Beige?”
He laughed, and it was no longer a happy sound, the opposite in fact. “Yes, beige, Em. It is humdrum. It is just existing. It is doing the sensible and expected because it is responsible. It is smothering.”
She stared at him, her face pale. “You have never said you feel this way.”
“I didn’t want to…” he paused and raked his hand through his hair. “I didn’t want to hurt you Em. But I have to, or I’m hurting myself. My life, my job, my clothing… It’s all just bullshit. Not what I want, to do, to wear. This person,” he threw a hand towards the photos of them laughing on the wall, “is not the person I want to be.”
“I love you, Em,” he said. “I love you, but I don’t think I am in love with you. I want to be. But there is no… fire to it. I want more.” He drew in a sharp breath, as if shocked by what he had said, and then sighed it out.
“More than me,” she said, bitterly, the tears beginning again, but with the fire of anger behind them. “You want more than me,” she repeated, tasting the bite of those words on her tongue, and feeling a sting, like indigestion between her breasts. She swallowed back the raw pain of those words.
“It is not like that, Emily. It isn’t you, is it us,” he was sorrowful with it. “I am sorry. I hope we can be friends. You have been my friend for as long as I remember. I think it is why I didn’t do this sooner. I didn’t want to lose you as my friend.”
“I don’t want to lose you either.” She sobbed in a breath, the sound ugly and raw, and she pressed her hand to her mouth, shocked by the sound.
“Oh, Em,” he sighed it out and walked back around the kitchen bench to draw her against him. “I am sorry. I wish… I wish I were the person you want me to be, or that we had fire and passion… That would be… great. But it is just not there.”
“Owen,” she did not want to let him go, feared that if she did so, she would never get him back, feeling as if they were saying goodbye but pretending that it was not so.
“Can we be friends? I would like that,” he pulled back and smiled at her, the crooked smile and dimple the same as from their childhood, but there was a lack of light behind the expression, as if he were trying to make something work that he felt wasn’t going to happen, offering a compensation prize to sooth the hurt away. “I had better go. We need to… you know, do this cleanly, Em. It is too easy to go back into old habits because it is comfortable, and that will just make this… drawn out and miserable for us both.”
“Okay,” she released him although it hurt to do so. “Okay, Owen.”
“Okay.” He touched her cheek and then walked to the door. “Message me, hey? We will talk by messages. Give it a few weeks, and then maybe…?”
“Okay.” Maybe what? Maybe they would just be friends? That wasn’t what she wanted, though.
She sank down to the floor as he closed the door behind him and wept into her knees.
“So, what? That is just, it?” Megan stirred sugar into her coffee the next morning. She hadn’t eaten bread since ninth grade declaring it empty calories but loaded sugar into her coffee like it was calorie free.
She had turned up at Emily’s house an hour before, letting herself in through the front door with her spare key. Megan had shaken Emily out of the cocoon she had made in the covers that still smelt of Owen, pushing her into the bathroom, and selecting clothes from the closet, before pushing her reluctant sister into her car. She had whisked Emily away from the misery of the empty house to the rather dubious café tucked in the corner of a dingy and dated building that looked out onto a grimy, shopping street populated by the neon signs of discount carpet and second-hand electrical shops.
Emily didn’t even know what suburb they were in, and wondered if Megan did, or if her sister had just driven aimlessly until she found somewhere that looked as miserable as Emily did and had decided that was an appropriate fit for the situation and so had parked. There was every likelihood, Emily though wryly, that Megan’s slick Audi would not still be there when they returned, or it would be missing its wheels.
“I don’t know. I don’t understand… any of it. How do you just stop loving someone after twenty-two years?” Emily wondered. “How do you just… walk away from your life like that? He is having agents through the house tomorrow. He is actually serious about selling it.” That overly bright early morning message from Owen had sent her into a spiral of self-pitying despair.
“Where are you going to go? He is in your house.”
“I don’t know,” the thought had not occurred to her, she had been too caught up in the misery of not waking up with Owen in bed beside her, not hearing him around the house, in the shower, making coffee in the kitchen… She had missed his clothing in the cupboard, his shoes, his things. It was as if, in one swoop, he had removed himself from her future, the house, and her life, and there was a vacuum left where he had been. “I guess he will move out, and I will move in there.”
“The renovations are mostly done, eh? At least you have that much. The house will be worth more than you bought it. He doesn’t want you to sell that too, so he can reclaim the money you’ve both put into it?”
“Oh my god,” Emily put her face into her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know Megan. I am still at Owen saying he doesn’t want to marry me and moving next door. I am not ready to think that far ahead. Maybe he will come to his senses and change his mind?”
“Maybe he won’t. I mean, Owen is pretty stubborn like that.”
“I feel sick just thinking about it,” Emily moaned into the palms of her hands. “I need a tissue.”
Megan dug into her purse. “I brought a box.” She whacked it onto the table between them. “This Louis bag is great. Stylish and you can fit a bottle of wine, a box of tissues, and half a make-up case inside it without destroying how it hangs. And I got it at an estate sale,” she added with satisfaction. “At a fraction of what it would have cost to buy.”
Only Megan, Emily thought, would be unbothered by carrying around a dead woman’s handbag, bought at discount from grieving kin. She knew what Megan would say if Emily pointed out the macabre side of her purchase – that is the circle of life, honey, and no one can take their Louis bag collection with them when they die.
“It is so embarrassing to be crying in public,” Emily wiped her face, looking around uncomfortably. The café was a dingy little place with scuffed lino on the floor, and grimy paint on the walls, totally in keeping with the street visible beyond it. The chairs and tables they sat at were sticky to the touch, and the service was disinterested – they had ordered a pot of tea ten minutes before, and the waitress was still standing at the register staring at her phone.
Emily wondered if they should remind her, but then discarded the idea. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself.
At least the café was not crowded, and the other patrons had the air of regulars, bringing out e-readers and newspapers, as if settling in for a long wait… Though, in hindsight, she was not sure if that was a good or a bad thing. More people might mean more people nearby, but with less people, she felt more noticeable, crying in the back booth.
“It is why we have the booth, hon. No one can see. Cry to your hearts’ delight.”
“I don’t know how to do this,” Emily reached for another tissue. “I love him. I don’t want to lose him.”
“It sounds like that is a done deal,” Megan replied. “You have to think self-preservation, now Em.”
Self-preservation was a skill that Megan had honed like a knife. She said her motto was marry up, without the marrying part. Megan always came out ahead after a breakup. She approached it as an opportunity to forever imprint herself in her ex’s life, with a savagery that ranged from petty to chilling and often resulted in the ex in question agreeing to anything just to end the torture. She had lunch with her lawyer, Constance, once a month, they had become such good friends.
“I can’t. I feel like… I just want to curl up in a ball and die.”
“You have never had a break-up before,” Megan was sympathetic. “Most of us have a few practice-runs during our teen years to give us survival techniques for later in life. Here is what you need to do. Call in sick tomorrow. Take annual leave for the week, whatever you need to do, because, believe me, this is going to get messy. These things always do when you have been living together. It is just like a divorce, without the legal proceedings… Unless,” she added with a hint of wickedness. “You want to go that road. I am sure Constance can fit you in.”
“No, no thank you,” Emily shook her head. “And I can’t just call in sick. I can’t just say, sorry, my fiancé has decided to run away with a band, can I have a week off?”
“Why the hell not? Other people do.”
“I am an editor, Megan. I do my job, or I lose it. I am only as relevant as the last book. If I ever hope to become published myself, I have to stay in my bosses’ good graces.”
“The love of your life dumped you on the day you put a deposit onto your wedding dress. That is a pretty big deal,” Megan pointed out.
“Oh my god,” Emily began to cry again. “What am I going to do?”
“Call around and try to get your deposits back?” Megan suggested helpfully.
“What is wrong with me? Why aren’t I enough?”
“Nothing is wrong with you, Emily,” Megan sighed heavily. “Men suck, is all. Take my advice. Call in sick at work. Get your deposits back from the wedding vendors. Ask the agent to sell both houses. Get a new haircut and begin again. It is like they say, you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince. Trust me, I have done this enough times to have it refined to an artform.”
“I love Owen.”
“Yeah, but he doesn’t love you back, does he?” Megan was gentle about it. Brutal and gentle at the same time. “It sucks, babe, it really does. But maybe you and Owen were always just meant to be friends.”
“No, I do know it says non-refundable,” Emily closed a window to block out the music from next door. Owen’s band was using the house to practise in again. Cars had been rocking up all morning, and the street was lined with beaten up, paint-challenged vans and Utes. Surely there was not so many people in the band? What were the rest of them there for? “But it says, non-refundable unless you manage to rebook the venue on that day. “Now, I know for a fact you have waiting lists because I was on one. The date is still six months out. I am sure if you call one of the brides who were also on that waiting list, someone will want the venue on that date. Hell, if you give me the list of phone numbers, I will call them for you.” As she moved through cancelling the many bookings that they had made for the wedding, Emily was learning to be pushy. People who had been only too happy to be helpful and answer any question they had, who had been always cheerful and pleasant to deal with, showed anot
By the time the ugly, beaten-up cars that crowded the pretty little street began to pull away, and Owen knocked on her front door, she had ordered pizza, opened a bottle of wine, and had two lists lined up on the coffee table. “Wow,” he said, shrugging out of the leather jacket as he entered. “We could use your skills for the band.” “Shall we start at the top?” She was curt as she took her seat, pressing herself tightly against the arm of the couch, her knees tight and her ankle bones digging into each other, physically holding herself together as if doing so would hold her emotionally intact. “Sure,” he said warily, sitting on the couch next to her, sitting close not out of desire for proximity but because it was practical in order to go through the lists with her, she knew. “You seem… mad.” “Mad?” She repeated. “Why would I be mad? I have just spent twenty-two years of my life believing I loved someone and was loved back, only to find out that it was a lie, and now the future we
The doorbell rang and they both jumped, looking automatically towards the hall, guilty as teenagers caught making out on the couch by parents coming home unexpectedly. “Shit, the pizza,” he realised the source of the doorbell first, his laughter shifting as he lifted from her and closed his jeans. He paused a moment, looking down at her, his eyes smouldering. “You look f-king sexy like that Emily,” he commented, and she flushed, pleased despite the offhanded crudity of the comment. He went to answer the door, and she sat up, waiting until the door closed again and pulling her clothing as much to order as she could with her underwear and skirt in rags, feeling exposed and vulnerable, and sluttish. Owen, fully dressed and looking nothing like he had just f-ked her stupid on the couch, joked with the pizza delivery man, as he accepted the pizzas and bid him to have a good night, before using his elbow and hip to close the door. “I will be just a moment,” she told him from the couch.
Emily took the pizzas out to the garbage bin and threw them away, and then returned to the lounge room and drank the rest of the wine, before drunkenly falling asleep on the couch. In the morning, nursing a hangover to accompany her broken heart, she called the real estate agent, and put the other house on the market, as Megan had told her to do from the beginning. She was starting to think that she should have followed Megan’s advice. She eyed up her hair speculatively in the reflection of the laptop. Well, maybe not all her advice, she decided. “What the f–k are you doing, Em?” Owen demanded the following evening, catching her as she returned from work and made her way down the garden path, his blue eyes blazing with anger and his cheeks flushed with it as he strode across the lawn. “What do you mean, what am I doing?” She was taken aback by his aggressive approach, snapped out of thoughts of the latest book she was reviewing with surprise. She backed up a step, suddenly wary. Wh
Emily tried to focus on the screen, but the words seemed to slip in and out of her mind without their meaning registering. She had read the same paragraph four times, without being able to recall one word of it, or what the meaning behind the words was. She suspected she was going to need a strong black coffee to get through the afternoon. Maybe two. And it was barely past lunch. But her attention was so divided she might as well give in and go home as she was not going to achieve anything significant like this – except that Emily never gave in and skipped work. It wasn’t in her work ethic to do so. In truth, though she didn’t want to admit it to herself, she had gone home mentally weeks ago, but she kept to the routine of work because staying all day in an empty house echoing with the ghost of Owen was far worse than coming to her office and fighting her way through another meaningful day of drudgery. And every dollar she made now, would be useful for when she quit her job and moved
Emily sat in the car going through the tracks and the music, whilst Owen greeted the band members, and signed in at the door to the studio. They began to unload the van, making treks to and from with a flat-trayed trolley, collecting drums, guitars, amps, and keyboard. Every time she glanced up - they were making another trip. Owen signalled for her to join him during the last trip, and she removed the earpieces, and slung her laptop bag over her shoulder as she left the car, hearing it beep locked behind her as Owen activated the key. “This is Em,” he said to the men as they walked towards the double doors. There were only the four of them, including Owen, which made her wonder what all the extra people who had been coming and going from the house next door were there for. Owen draped his arm over her shoulders as she came to stand behind him, the action both habitual and proprietary. “Hi,” she said, uncertainly. She thought she recognized some of them from the times she had snoop
“I like her. I really like her. The opera is a unique aspect, and she fits your aesthetic better. Okay, shall we run through it again, this time recording?” “Yeah.” Owen released her and moved back to his microphone, picking up his guitar and slipping the strap over his head. Yes, Emily thought watching him, the girls were going to love him. Big, built, blue eyed, dark haired, with a face a poet would love, Owen was made to be leading man material. They ran through the song several times, and then Owen, Emily and Seb stepped out so that James and Jeremy could go through the track with just drums and bass. “Come on,” Owen caught Emily’s hand in his and led her into the control room. It was a narrow space, with a couch pushed against the back wall, and a window looking into the main room. Before the window was set the mixing desk and a chair in which one man sat. Two other men in matching branded t-shirts supervised other equipment, talking between themselves, and adjusting the mach
“It was really good today,” Owen said, thoughtfully, his mind on the band, as was so typical of him. “I think it went really well. I heard a bit of a rough playback, and it sounded really professional, even before they smooth off the edges. I can’t wait to hear the finished product.” “I am glad that you are happy with how it went.” “You saved us,” he smiled at her, his handsome face lighting up with the expression in a way that made her heart pick up a beat. “The guys were really impressed.” “I am glad I could help.” She was speaking by rote, biding her time until she got home and could have the crying jag that she knew was pressing in on her. They would have their Vietnamese take away, sex, and he would leave, and she would cry. She could almost schedule it in by the hour, she thought ruefully. “They want to ditch Cordelia and find a new back-up singer,” Owen said with deliberate casualness. “You wouldn’t be interested?” “Oh, Owen,” she sighed. She wanted to say yes, because it