Footy

THAT WHICH WE ARE, WE ARE (31)

The clear weather had lasted, and hints of spring had multiplied. The days were warm, but the nights icy. For those in bed with someone to love, nights were cherished.

The psychiatrist at the Bainbridge Institute didn't want Will to come home just yet, though Emma was convinced that he'd be happier at home than in the depressing institutional surrounds of the rehab center. Sean and Emma had reluctantly submitted to the strongly expressed opinion of the expert, but every time they left Will, both of them felt a sense of desolation and depression, even though they both hugged and kissed him in lingering goodbyes. On the second visit to Will after they'd agreed to the new arrangement of their lives together, Emma invited Sean to coffee in a café near her home. She found the house lonely and depressing, and when she was alone she couldn't stop her mind going over what had happened again and again. Her happiness and joy that everything was going to be all right dissipated. In an unexpected irony, Sean was the only person she could talk to. She had wanted to talk to her mother, but shame had stopped her. She knew when she was rational that what had happened wasn't her fault, yet she kept on gnawing away at the conviction that she should have known, that she should have observed Will better. Having coffee with Sean allowed her to talk, to stop the pointless and dismal recurring bouts of angst.

“I wish Will could come home,” she said.

Sean nodded. “Yeah.” He paused for a moment, before adding, “He's still not roight.”

“Right?” But Emma knew exactly what he meant.

“He's different to what he was before. I know he's... happier, but, somethin's gone. The will to live. I can't explain it.”

This bleak assessment coincided only too well with her own understanding for Emma to disagree. She knew women who played games with men, who were never totally straight in their dealings, and she'd always despised them. Yet she wanted to deny Sean's judgment, because she didn't want to face what it implied. His directness and lack of guile still sometimes startled her.

“What can we do?”

“Love him. Trust to time.” He pronounced it 'toim'. But she had no inclination to mock or despise him. Instead, she found it endearing and touching. His robust common sense and realism, unmarred by world-weariness or cynicism, made her feel safe.

On impulse, she asked, “What are you doing for dinner?”

“The usual. Something tasty from the cupboards in the flat. Baked beans on toast?” He was smiling at her, his eyes gently mocking.

“Men!” She was smiling. “Let me offer you something better.”

She made salade Niçoise. While she was boiling eggs and washing lettuce, he leaned against the kitchen counters, sipping the Chardonnay she'd opened. She kept sneaking looks at his long legs in their worn jeans and scraped Blundstones. She was very aware that he and Will may have done something similar, when she'd been out with her friends. There were still small embers of anger in her. Yet she also felt simultaneously a sudden fierce attraction towards him. She tried to pretend otherwise to herself.

They ate at the kitchen table. She felt that getting out the best linen and china and silver would make it all too formal. She was sure her mother would have disapproved of the haphazard nature of their utensils. Une affaire de coeur was one thing, but to descend to the barbarism of eating without all the proper accoutrements was quite another.

“Whoy are ya smoilin'?”

“My mother would be shocked at us eating in the kitchen like this.”

His blue-grey eyes sharpened for an instant, as though he suspected insult.

She quickly said, “She's French. Everything has to be just so.”

“Is that where Will learned French?” The moment he'd asked this, Sean remembered that the only time Will used French phrases was when they were in bed together. He felt himself color, and stared down at his plate.

But Emma appeared not to notice. “No, he learned it at school.”

“Can you speak it?”

“When I was small, it was the only language I spoke. But I was born in Australia. My French is a little rusty, but it always comes back when I go to France.”

“I wish... ”

“What?”

“Nothin’.”

She smiled at him, and he was taken again by the beauty of her blue eyes and face framed by her ash blond hair.

After they had finished eating, both were reluctant to end the meal. They sipped the wine and chatted in the way new friends do, willing to make allowances for the other, but not yet sure what to talk about. Sean wasn't good at talking about his feelings, and Emma didn't really want to. She had been attracted before to men, sometimes strongly, but had never acted on her attraction. Her mother might be French, willing at countenance her own and her husband's adultery, but Emma had never even considered it as an option. Her mouth drew down as she thought about what Will had done. She had never seen Will look at another woman, and realized now that that had been because he was looking at other men.

Her reverie was interrupted by Sean's voice. “What's wrong?”

“It's just... I've never been unfaithful to Will. What he did... it hurts.” She had had just enough wine to tell the truth. The stress of the previous few weeks made her more candid than she might have been otherwise.

His eyes met hers across the table, and there was such compassion and empathy in them that she started to weep. “Oh, God, I'm being so silly,” she said through her tears, wiping her eyes with the heels of her hands.

She heard the scrape of the chair, and then he was with her, his arms around her. She could smell his cheap aftershave (Brut, she thought, inconsequentially), the faint tang of his sweat, the clean soapy smell of his clothes.

“Don't,” he said into her neck. He kissed her softly, he too released from constraint by the wine. Then, shocking but inevitable, his mouth was on hers, his tongue against hers, and she felt his strength and maleness, the lean muscularity of his legs, the powerful flesh of his back, the comforting security of his arms.

He pulled back a little. With his gaze fixed on hers, his eyes dark with emotion, he murmured, “We... ”

“What?”

“We shouldn't.”

“You don't find me attractive?” Her hurt and guilt made her tone sharper than she'd intended.

His expression hardened and he stood up. For a moment he looked as if he was going to speak, and then he lifted her out of chair. Only the slight grunt as he raised her off the ground revealed the effort he was making. He put her down, and kissed her, his eyes dark. His kiss was hard. His mouth, though, was soft and warm. She tasted sourness from the wine. His face was rough against hers, his bristles scraping her skin. His hand lifted her dress and moved up her thighs to her groin. She could feel the calluses on his fingers. For such a strong man, his caress was surprisingly gentle.

Sean could feel her heart trembling, a small frightened bird in a cage, and it tempered his anger. Yet he wanted her, he wanted to possess her. All thought of consequences had vanished. She was wearing lacy thong panties. He cupped her buttocks, and slipped his fingers past the elastic into her body. He stroked her tight pout of her butt-hole with his thumb, while his index finger traced the warm folds of her cunt and the swelling within.

Emma was suddenly afraid. He was so strong. Absurdly, all her ridiculous fears of working class men returned. Bogans, construction workers, navvies whistling at her, making crude comments as she went by.

“Don't!” she whimpered, her eyes indigo with terror.

He at once removed his hand from her undies. He lifted his fingers to his nose, and without taking his eyes off her face, he sniffed them then licked them, his eyes dark with desire and need. After a moment he whispered, “I won't hurt you. Ever.”

At once Emma understood that her fear had been ridiculous. At that moment, it seemed to her that she could trust Sean absolutely. He held out his hand, and when after a moment she put hers in his, he raised it to his lips, and in a courtly and European gesture worthy of any elegant and civilized Frenchman, he gently kissed it.

After a moment's silence he said, rueful, “I'm sorry. For a moment there... I wanted you very much.” He looked away at the reproduction 18^th century watercolor prints and sighed.

“I wanted it too,” she said, feeling she needed to tell him.

“I know,” he said, his grin sly. She wondered how, and then blushed as she worked it out. He was quiet for a moment. Then he went on, “Well, now we knaow.”

“What?”

“What we're capable of.” He took a deep breath, and leaned back against the kitchen table in unconscious imitation of his stance before dinner. “Oi'm glad ya stopped me. If we do this, it’ll be with Will's knowledge and permission.” He looked at her steadily. She found it hard to meet his eyes. “Ya said you didn't want two husbands. Fair 'nough. But how about a husband and a friend?”

He inspected her face, the eyes shining with unshed tears, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted, pink and full. In his boxers, his cock was still hard with desire and need. He was surprised and ashamed at himself, but also glad, in a way. “Oi'm sorry,” he said.

She shook her head, looking away from him. “No.” She turned her head to stare right into his eyes. “You stopped when I asked.”

“Oi almos' didn'.”

“But you did. And yes, I'd like a friend.”

“Then ya have one. Always.” He pulled on his motorbike leather jacket and reached for his gauntlets and helmet. “They need me tomorrow evening. Oi might go visit Will tomorrow arvo. Ring me. Here's my number.” He zipped up his jacket, and pulled her into a rough embrace. He kissed her on the forehead, like a brother. “Thanks for dinner. Thanks for everythin'.” Then with the grin she was coming to recognize, teasing and kind and knowing, he said, in bogan-accented French “A bientot, cherie.”

After the growling whine of the bike had died away, she stood for a long time in front of the ornate mirror in the drawing room, looking at herself, smoothing down her dress, remembering the rough gentleness, the fingers, the fear, the relief. A friend. Some part of her mind that had been hidden, even from herself, gave her the knowledge that she had been planning, once Will had recovered, to oust Sean, to push him outside their charmed circle. She shook her head impatiently. No. Not that. Not now. It had become impossible. Not just because she liked him so much, not just because his strength would be necessary for them to survive, but because the charmed circle now unquestionably contained three. She wasn't quite sure how it had happened. Yet she was glad it had. She put out the downstairs lights and went up to bed, but the inimitable Jane's matchless prose and sly humor did little for her, and in the end, she put down her book, and switched off the bedside light and watched the lights of the downtown skyscrapers against a clear night sky of grey silk.

<<Chapter 30

© 2009 Nigel Puerasch. All rights reserved.
Romantic m2m novels and short stories