Entwine (18 page)

Inside, she headed straight to her favourite shops. She bought a bag of mixed lollies, a new top and heels. The heels had sparkles and shone when she twirled in them in front of the mirror. On her way out, she dug into her bag to look, not noticing she’d stepped right into someone else’s path.

“Oh, sor—”

Sarah looked up while clutching her bags tightly, and saw it was Nicholas. That made two times in just days. She wondered why she hadn’t seen him in years, and now she’d run into him twice.

“You again,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

He held out his hand, hovering below her elbow, and looked into her eyes.

“Sure, everything but my pride.”

He looked down at her bag, seeing the shoe shop label on it, and then up to the shop sign, hanging just above their heads. “New pair of shoes.”

“Yes, and they’re gorgeous. Only, I may have spent my lunch money.”

“Eating here?”

Damn it. Why was Sarah so careless? She thought back to Malik and felt guilty. She was about to walk into a lunch date with her ex. Would Malik care? She doubted he’d be jealous, given what they’d talked about, but still … she hadn’t gone into her past relationships.

Knowing it was too late to back-pedal without making Nicholas feel bad, she decided to go on. “Yep.”

Nicholas looked in the food court direction and they set off that way.

“It was my first week at work this week,” Sarah explained, holding up the bags. “I decided to treat myself.”

“That’s right. Congratulations on making it.”

“Thanks. Random question here: I’m wondering why I haven’t seen you in years, and now suddenly you pop up twice in days.”

He smiled weakly and pointed in front of them. There was a café; it had a minimal line wait compared to the others, and decent food and prices. Sarah held onto her questions, now more than she had before. How come he’d avoided answering her? She ordered a chicken and avocado toasted wrap with a coffee, and went to find a table for them to eat at.

Nicholas came back with a burger, chips and soft drink in a cup. It unnerved her that he dug right in, so she took a bite and swallowed before talking again. “I didn’t mean to put you on the spot about why you’re here or anything.”

“Just a twisty one to answer. Um,” he said, sipping at the straw to his cup, “the girlfriend dumped me. I was interstate for a while, and decided to come back home. Nothing for me there, I guess, once I had job offers both there and here.”

Sarah nodded. She chose to take a bite of her wrap, lost for words. Everything just seemed so cliché and he seemed torn up, but he was twenty-two, like her. It could have been a fling, or a serious, long-term relationship. “Glad to be back?” she settled on.

“For sure. A nice shock seeing so many friends, and the family again.” He slowed, asking, “Are you …?”

The way he seemed unsure, nervous, made Sarah realise what he meant. “Oh, yeah but he’s with his ex for the day so I’m here, shopping …”

Sarah’s words also drifted off. How was she meant to explain it?
That woman my dad cheated with? Well, I’m now fucking her ex-husband, the father of their child. No, he’s not my dad’s age, don’t give me a weird look, and yes, he is well to do.
Sarah smiled, deciding silence was better, and for the next couple of minutes, neither spoke. They just ate their meals.

After they finished, Sarah picked up her bag and they left the table, walking out of the food court. Once they reached a T-shaped intersection, they stopped, and looked at each other.

“I’m this way,” Sarah said, thumbing in the direction over her shoulder.

“Right, I’m the other way.”

They nodded, and Sarah could tell by the uncertainty she sensed from him that he wanted to ask her something. But he didn’t, and she turned to leave.

“Uh, Sez? I mean, Sarah? Wait a sec.”

She clenched her eyelids together, and prayed this wouldn’t be too awkward. “Yep?”

“Did you want to do something tonight? I was going to go to the gym if you wanted to join, or we can chill?”

“I’m not sure.” Sarah looked around, hoping for something to fall from the roof and give her an excuse to run. She decided to explain, since Nicholas had assumed differently. “I meant, my boyfriend might be busy tonight, but I am in a relationship. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

A sad smile swept across his face. He nodded. “If you ever want to, you know … my number’s still the same.”

They said bye, and she started toward her car. She checked the time and noted she’d killed an hour and a half, but it was still afternoon, and she had many more hours left to kill before her boyfriend went out to the movies with Alyssa, the most attractive ex-wife in the world.

She also wondered what else more intense than what she just did would she have to do to keep occupied. She never forgot the night she caught Alyssa sneaking out to cheat on her dad. She never was able to prove anything, or  to tell him. Now, the memory served to agitate her confidence.

In that instant, all the calming and pre-occupying she’d done to keep her mind off torturing herself with thoughts was ruined. She was back to feeling a dark, heavy sensation in her core, like tonight would be the night when everything fell apart, and she was helpless to stop it.

UNRAVELLING

NOW

Sarah decided she could do this. Malik was nothing but driven, honest, and, amazingly, into her. She knew it was her thoughts that gave her the most grief. In reality, she shouldn’t worry. The woman was pregnant, for Christ’s sake! She couldn’t even try to get him to knock her up to sink in her claws into his life further.

The revelation of thoughts brought calm back to Sarah and she sighed, stepping into her bedroom. She swept a look across the floor, the furniture and up around the walls. It was clean enough, but she figured she’d use this time to clean it more. She hated spring-cleaning, but rarely was she not working or studying, or not wanting to hang out with friends, go shopping or be doing something. Right now, she’d be horrible friend-company, and she couldn’t force her heart into anything else when it was so focused on her feelings for Malik. She gulped down that one. Could she really be falling for him? Was she in love?

Instead of pondering more, she dropped to her knees by a stack of clothes she’d thrown into the corner of her room to deal with later. She picked each item up and put it in a basket for the wash, only sniffing one scarf and a few jeans that were probably still wearable, hanging those back up on her hangers. She found enough clothes between her stuff and the few already in the laundry to make a load, though her mum had only done one yesterday.

When that was done, Sarah stripped her bed and put new sheets on, new pillowcases and a new cover. They were fresh and crisp, and she allowed herself a moment to fall back and let the comforting buzz travel through her body. Fresh sheets were her favourite.

They were also Nicholas’s favourite. In that moment, she thought about all the things she knew about him that she didn’t know about her current boyfriend. She knew a handful of details about Malik, yet with Nicholas she knew a huge roll of inventory.

Nicholas didn’t mind staying in with her over his mates. He would still go out with them, but claim he was being fair giving both 50/50 hanging out time. Even to Sarah, she could tell she’d get two occasions to his friends’ one. But Sarah would pretend she didn’t realise that because she enjoyed snuggling with Nicholas. He had a grip that she couldn’t quite describe without meshing different people’s personalities together. He had the tenderness of her mum’s hugs when Sarah was bawling her eyes out, and the comfort she felt being in her dad’s strong hand when she was a little girl. His intimacy and love for her showed in how his hands would constantly rub her, or turn into a mini-massage, or press his head close to the crook of her neck.

She was still discovering all this about Malik. What if Alyssa never let her claws go? He was forever linked to her with their daughter, Lucy, and that was an incredible bond that made Sarah’s heart feel small and heavy, and too empty to move any more for tonight.

Sarah stayed on her bed, deciding, she wasn’t the cleaning type, anyway. She’d dealt with the clothes situation, and that’d be enough.

She rolled over and picked up her mobile. Out of all the stupid app purchases she’d made, she couldn’t help but be drawn back to the free solitaire one. She tapped the new cards into their piles, and relied on hints, and when she felt her eyes red and had to put the mobile down after a long while of fighting the pain, she squinted at the time on screen. It was four in the afternoon.

Feeling her sore legs, she got up to stretch. After grabbing a glass of water, she came back to her room, and then couldn’t hold back any longer. She grabbed her mobile and went to dial Malik to say hi, but noticed she had a missed call from him.

The thought he’d dialled her just before she broke to call him made her feel all warm, and she had a smug smile plastered to her face as she crawled onto her bed, snuggled under the covers, and called him back.

“He—” He coughed violently and then blew out a breath. “Hope it’s nothing bad. I can’t handle not kissing you,” he said. “Oh, and hey, babe.”

She was worried about him getting sick, too, but then he said that last word—babe. Two words from him and she wanted to beg for him to forget about going out with his daughter and Alyssa and be with
her
. Sarah would tell him she’d make it worth his while. He could ask her to do anything he wanted. Fear had crept back into her mind and heart, and the possibility of anything coming between them had sent her into a frenzy. Everything was too good for the luck and like of someone as normal and unlucky as Sarah, and to score a male-model-looking older man who was sure of himself, driven, and so confident it made him sexy as hell was more than enough to make her crunch the odds. This surely wouldn’t last forever, but she’d be damned if the end would come too soon because of Alyssa.

“I could get used to being called that.”

“I’d expect you to. I love calling you babe.”

There was a heavy silence, one too grand for Sarah to say anything. He cleared his throat, expelling a little cough, while she was silent then, she said, “I don’t want you getting sick either. But thanks for calling me that, babe.”

“Hopefully not,” he said. “Ah, and I get you. Feels good.”

His voice became breathy as he made a relaxing sound into the line. She tried to imagine what he was doing. Was he lying on his couch, elbow bent lazily, and mobile stuck to one ear, the other hand sprawled across his belly? Maybe he, too, was on his bed, and Sarah clenched at the visual of doing it for the first time there. She’d christen that thing and make him forever remember what they did together.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“On my balcony, on the deckchair, looking over the hill and valley behind my place.”

Sarah knew the one. It was like an incredible oasis in a mundane suburb. A fence shut off the area. Grass hugged the landline and trees swept in paths, with little gravel walkways snaking between the clumps of bushland. If you looked deeper inside, you could see the hint of where the land dropped off and the lake began, but it depended on where you had a lookout. Could Malik see that lake from where he was? She hoped he did, and that he wanted to take her. Sarah had found a cut-out spot in the fence lining the gorge when she was a teenager. And, if repairs had fixed the last one, surely teenagers these days had cut another spot to replace it.

“I love that place, especially the lake in summer.”

“What a cheeky girl. My hey-days are long gone, but the boys and I used to chill down there, too. Throw each other in, or push someone down the hill and hope he missed the trees, rocks and snags.”

“Do you ever wonder sometimes?” Sarah asked. When she said so, she knew afterwards she was vague, but she closed up at the idea of saying how she felt. She never wanted to hear “no” from Malik.

“I wonder a lot about you and me. And just you.”

She giggled, and thanks to him, forgot about her qualms. “If we’re at different stages of our lives. I don’t know when I want kids, and I’m sure you already want to get started having another child. And then there’s marriage. Etcetera.”

“Uh-oh. This isn’t about the gorge behind my place anymore, is it?”

Sarah shook her head slightly, and then realised she had to say, “No.” She continued, “I just want you to be sure. You have no idea how incredible you are; and there is so much incredible about you that it intimidates me.”

Why am I repeating myself on this issue, going around like a broken record? He wants me. Believe it.

“Hey, baby.” He let the words hang there. “I never want to make you feel uncomfortable. Ever. I’m sorry for that.”

“No, I don’t want to hold you back. I was just wondering if we’ll get to go to the gorge there, hang out. Then I started thinking, what’s wrong with me? You’re thirty-four, for crying out loud. You’re a father, not some kid like me who’s trying to keep her first real job, and find herself in the world. I’m still living with my mum, and I relied on her support just a few weeks ago, still. Then tonight was organised, and I started worrying if you’ll spend a lovely evening with someone like Alyssa and think about how easy and great you could have it with a pretty woman like her, make your daughter’s life easier, yours easier, and go back to normal. It’s not like my father is actually going to stick around.”

“Sarah, I find Alyssa to be one of the fakest, leachiest people in the world. She sucks up, and it’s all that she does. I couldn’t list a quality of hers that attracts me. You’re seriously messed to think that, with my luck, scoring a gorgeous girl like yourself, I’d ever even start to wonder what my life would be like without you. I don’t care if you think it’s best we cool off the hot-and-heavy for months. I want to get to know
you
.”

“What about all that stuff I said about our lives and stuff? Honestly, don’t you want all that stuff?”

“Normal is for people who are too scared to find the best. I don’t care if it’s a juggle to fight for Lucy and to keep you. That’s the only way I see it.”