"But, how will you get home?"
"I can see your sister home safely," Merlin said.
Of course, he could traverse space and time, travelling three suburbs over was no biggie. “Right, well I’ll see you at Mum and Dad’s tomorrow morning.” Tess nodded, though her eyes were back on Merlin, his hands were back on her shoulders, helping her to lean to her left, then twist. I shook my head and headed out.
17
The car felt strangely empty on the drive. I'd been giving Tess a lift since Nan died. We usually left earlier, beat the worst of the traffic and talked shit the whole time. But this time I was stuck, all alone, in the turgid flow of peak hour. It took me almost forty-five minutes to get home, plenty of time to think. I was jerked from my daze by the roar of a motorbike tearing along the lane line. My heart started to race and I looked over at it, hoping to see something familiar. Instead, a ubiquitous black-helmeted guy on a sleek Japanese bike whizzed past to the annoyance of car drivers. I cursed myself for being so dopey and shoved my back hard against the car seat, wrapping my fingers tight around the steering wheel.
My brain was ticking over, had been since this morning. This was a very new experience, something I was completely unprepared for. Really, I would have preferred Tess rode the Merlin train to work, so I could hole up in the flat and try to get my head together. I needn't have bothered, I guessed. Gabe had obviously shaken off the curse and wasn’t interested in coming to see me. I inched further to the mouth of the intersection, then hissed out a long breath as I watched the train of cars on my right leading way back, looking for an opening and not finding one.
I didn’t like the start of something with a guy much. Other people love the excitement, the newness. Me, I liked it when I had my partner’s measure when I was starting to feel secure in whether or not I could trust him. Up until that point, I was an awkward mess. How was I supposed to act? What was reasonable behaviour? What were his expectations? What were mine? The questions would swirl so persistently in my head I found it hard to think of anything else. I didn’t like someone taking that much of my mental energy.
I sternly tried to stop the Gabe train of thought as I stomped up the stairs to my place. It felt empty here, too. I stopped off at the bedroom, saw the mess of rumpled sheets and clothes on the bed, smelt the faint whiff of motor oil and sandalwood then hightailed it to the bathroom to shower. The smell was still there when I came back to get dressed. I opened the window a crack, despite the fact the temperature was starting to drop and yanked the sheets off the bed, stuffing them in the washing machine. I sprayed some lemon myrtle room freshener and felt a bit better. I went into the kitchen, filled the sink full of water and dumped the morning dishes in it to soak. I did a quick scan of the flat. It was empty still, but now, I felt I had reasserted my place in it. It was mine, wholly and solely.
I ended up sitting in front of the TV with a pizza I’d had delivered, feeling the ache starting to leave my muscles and a sense of calm familiarity reasserting itself. Last night was fun, but that was all it was. I was back to my regular scheduled programming. An hour or so later I had a notebook out, playing around with some text for an ad for the shop. We hadn’t really done much advertising, assuming Nan’s clients would be ours. Then there was a knock on the door. I frowned, getting to my feet. When I looked through the peephole, my heart started racing from a dead start and I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.
“Hey, babe.”
I opened the door and there he was. He obviously thought he was pretty sexy, standing in my doorway, hip cocked, looking at me with bleary eyes. He still smelled like motor oil; that and beer. I looked at my watch. It was after eight o’clock; I was ready for bed and the window where I was in the mood for this had well and truly gone.
“Look, Gabe–”
“I’m sorry I’m late! One of the guys had a carton on and then one thing led to another. The clutch is moving smooth as silk now.”
“That’s awesome–”
“C’mon, let me in. I’m dying to get inside and y’know, get inside. . . .”
I placed a hand on his chest as he tried to move past me. It showed how drunk he must have been, that I could stop him without too much effort. God, I hoped he’d taken a taxi.
“Baby,” he said, eyes fixing on me, a slow, drunk smile spreading. “Baby, let me in. I’ll make it so good, you know I will. It’ll be like last night–”
“Gabe . . . Gabe! Look, tonight’s not a good night. I’m tired, I hurt in places I didn’t know I could hurt in and all I want to do is sleep.”
“We could–”
“Alone. Look, we can do this another night, OK?”
His eyes narrowed at this and his jaw jerked up. His face all of a sudden looked hard. I almost shut the door right there and then, a frisson of fear spiking in my belly. I knew nothing about this guy, nothing about his temper, what he was like drunk.
“That right? Maybe there won’t be another night.”
“OK, well, that’s your decision.”
“Seriously?” his eyes roamed over my face. “We got it so good and you just want to throw it all away, 'cos I came home late?”
Right. Anger flared hard in my chest and I took one breath, then another before speaking. I spoke my words carefully and precisely. “I’m not asking you to leave because you came here late, or even because you are drunk. I don’t know you, I don’t know anything about you. Apart from how you fuck and that you inexplicably know how I like my coffee. This is not revenge, me playing games, or any other stupid, manipulative trick. I’m tired, really, really tired. We got very little sleep last night and I’ve been at work all day. I’ll admit, I was worried about you a little when you didn’t show. I didn’t know if you were OK, or whether something had happened to you on your bike. . . . I also felt weird because I didn’t know if I had a right to feel that way. This could have been a one-night thing. That’s a lot of thinking and it’s just . . . exhausting.”
He lifted a big, oil-stained hand to touch me, then let it fall again when I pulled back. The tension had leached out of his body and he looked beat, too. He stared into my eyes for a moment or two, seeing God knows what and then said, “You want me to go? I’ll go. I’m not coming in unless it’s what you want.”
“That’s great–”
“But what if we just slept?”
“What, you mean together? Is that even possible?”
“To tell you the truth, love, I’m pretty damned tired myself. I just need a bed and I’d much prefer it if you were in it. The sex is awesome, but you also smell nice, your bed is comfy and you make this cute little whistling noise–”