Making Up (3 page)

“It’s okay,” she said, still in her suit
jacket and overcoat, still holding her briefcase and handbag.

“Don’t you want to put all that down?”

She shrugged
and did, seemed to have forgotten she was holding anything but the
vodka.
“I wasn’t going to talk to you
tonight,” she said, “I was going to stay at work all night. But I
found myself coming home.”

“And buying vodka?”

“
Yeah, and
buying vodka.”
She smiled. “I’m not
planning anything bad, I just…”

“I know.”

She shrugged
off her coat.
She put down her bags and
went and changed. I poured vodka into two glasses, put the bottle
in the freezer, and sat down at the table to wait. She ran water in
the bathroom for a long time. Hiding in there. She did that when
she was worrying about something.

She came back
into the kitchen in jeans and a shirt, the clothes she wore every
evening.
Like she had with Gareth. That
was reassuring, though. If she was planning on leaving she’d have
kept warmer clothes on.

“I am,” she said, “And I’m not.”

I
waited.
Erica said things for effect,
then explained when she was ready.

“
You were
half-right about Holly,” she said, “I wanted to try again.
We saw each other and probably shouldn’t
have.”

“And its over?”

“
It’s
becoming over.
She’s a friend, it’s
complicated.”

“You slept with her?”

“
I
tried.
She couldn’t.”

“You tried?”

“Like the time with you.”

I wasn’t sure
what to say.
I didn’t know if I should be
angry. We’d both got ourselves into this, so it didn’t seem fair to
put the blame entirely on her. Erica isn’t a bad person. She’s
organized and efficient and ruthlessly intelligent. She plans and
sometimes doesn’t notice that people are in the way of her plans. I
was still sure she wasn’t trying to hurt me, just that she hadn’t
really noticed that she was.

“
I’m not
angry,” I said.
“I would like to know
what happened, though.’

She
shrugged.
“I tried to sleep with her,
like I tried when you were watching.”

“But you didn’t?’

“
Not
really.
I made out with her.”

“Made out?”

“
Yeah,” she
was starting to look annoyed, which meant she was feeling
defensive.
“Yeah, made out now and
then.”

“Kissed her?”

“Of course.”

“Got into bed with her?”

“Sometimes in bed, sometimes on her
couch.”

“Sex?”

“
I don’t
know.
Why are you so interested in the
details?”

“
Please.
I’d like to
know.”

“
It’s two
chicks,” she said.
“For fuck’s sake. I
don’t know when it starts being sex.”

“If you’re not sure it probably is.”

She was quiet
for a moment.
“Then yeah, I guess I slept
with her.”

“Tell me.”

“You don’t really want to know.”

“Part of me does.”

Erica
shrugged.
“She didn’t want head. Because
it made her feel like she owed me something. So we didn’t do that.
We did other stuff.”

“Like what?”

Erica was
looking annoyed again.
“I have a hand,
all right. She has a hand. I bought a couple of vibrators and left
them there. We figured out ways to make do.”

“So what now?”

“
She doesn’t
want to keep going.
Neither of us are
sure we’re…”

“Gay?”

Erica shrugged.

“So you’re here to start over?”

“I suppose.”

“To confess.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong.”

I looked at her for a while, and wondered how
she could say that, then decided I didn’t care enough to fight for
the point.

“
I love you,”
she said.
Said it like that was supposed
to solve everything.

“Do you love her?”

“
Not like
that.
Not like I do you. Just like she’s
a friend, which I assume is the problem.”

“All right,” I said.

Erica sat
there for a while.
“She says it isn’t me,
that isn’t about me that she can’t go down on me. That it isn’t my
pussy or that I’m gross or anything. She just can’t bring herself
to.”

“
I kind of
get it.
Like me with a guy.”

“
Yeah.
Weird thing is, I don’t. I never realized
before.”

I was a bit
surprised, just nodded.
“So what
now?”

“
I stop
trying to fuck Holly, obviously.”
She
seemed tired, quite bitter. “You caught me, well done. Now I’m
yours again.”

I suddenly
thought of the detail she’d been omitting.
With Erica you have to be very careful you’re thinking
about the actual question, not the question she wants you to think
about. “How often were you seeing her?”

“Why are you obsessed with the details?”

“How many times?”

“
A
few.”
She sat there. “Ten. Maybe
more.”

“
More?”
I counted weeks since
Holly, four, maybe five. I wasn’t sure right now. “Ten or
more?”

“More.”

“So twice a week?”

“
Usually
three,”
Erica said, defensive again. “I
see her at least that often anyway.”

“Not for sex.”

She shrugged again.

“And you won’t see her again?”

“Not like that.”

I looked at
her, felt worried.
Erica was looking like
a girl who’d just been dumped. “Your choice or hers?”

“
Hers.
I called her today. One last chance kind of
thing.”

“Shit, Erica.”

“
I thought I
had to.
So when I talked to you I knew
how things were.”

“If you were talking to me, surely…”

“Maybe.”

“But no?”

“
No.”
She sat up a little. “Is that all? I’m tired and
I’ve had a shitty day.”

“Mine hasn’t been that great.”

“
So talking
this to death won’t help, will it.
I’m
going to bed. Come and join me if you feel like it.”

And somehow
she’d made any ill feeling I might still have be about me, not
her.
If I wasn’t so pissed off I’d love
her all the more.

I sat there
for a while with the vodka, then slept on the couch.
It was a deliberate, and she noticed. Although
it didn’t hurt as much as if she’d been sleeping with Gareth, it
still hurt. I wasn’t sure why, and that worried me a little, as if
one day it suddenly might.

*

Erica woke me
up and handed me a cup of coffee.
The
waking me up meant she’d carefully been quiet until then. Erica was
a morning person and I wasn’t, just another one of those
things.

“
Hey,” she
said, and kissed me, “I’ll be home tonight.
I’ll see you then.”

Not early tonight and not talk to you then,
but it was a start.

I took the
day off and went down to Holly’s work at lunchtime, and sat around
outside waiting for her to appear.
Holly
never bothered taking her lunch, always went to a café somewhere
nearby. I hadn’t seen her since the night we’d slept together, and
I didn’t know if she was avoiding me, but it seemed like the time
had come to talk.

She saw me and came over and said, “Hi.”

“Can we talk?”

“I don’t think I have anything to say to
you.”

“
Please,
Holly.
I thought we were
friends.”

She shrugged
in exactly the same way Erica did, with the same expression on her
face.
It was odd how similar they
were.

“Please,” I said.

“
Shit,” she
said.
“Sorry I slept with your woman. Are
we done now?”

She sounded annoyed, but wasn’t actually
walking away.

“
Could we sit
down and talk?”
I said.

“What’s the point?”

“
Do you
understand what’s been happening?
What
Erica’s doing?”

She looked at me for a moment, but deny she
did.

“So talk to me.”

“
I told her I
didn’t want to see her any more.
See her
like that. The other week.” Holly glanced over her shoulder, “Look,
we’re right outside my work. Could we do this later?”

“Lunch?”

She
sighed.
“Sure, lets have lunch. Somewhere
a long way away from here.”

We walked
without speaking and she took me several blocks to a tiny
café.
Tiny enough nowhere was out of
earshot of the coffee machine.

“Look,” Holly said, “I know this has been
rough on you, but it has on me too.”

“I was with her first.”

“And I thought I loved her.”

“But you don’t?”

She shrugged again.

“
I wanted
her,” Holly said, “But it didn’t work out.
Now you have her back. Just be happy for that, don’t push
her too much. She’s upset and confused and doesn’t know what she
wants, and if you push too hard, try and make her think about what
she doesn’t want to think about, you might drive her
away.”

I
nodded.
After a while said, “Thank
you.”

“
And she’s
still my friend.
So I care. And don’t
interfere in that.”

I looked at her.

“I’m probably not going to sleep with her
again.”

“You promise?”

“
Nope.
But I don’t think I will.”

More silence.

“
Did you only
sleep with us so you could sleep with Erica?”
I said.

Another
shrug.
“Maybe. Erica’s Erica. I always
thought I wanted her, but I never quite got around to telling
her.”

“I should go,” she said.

I nodded.

“
Hey,” she
said.
“By the way. I don’t owe you
anything. I still don’t, just because you tried to fuck
me.”

“Okay.”

“
But go easy
on Erica.
If you want to keep
her.”

“I will.”

*

Erica came home about seven, which was early
for her.

“Hear you saw Holly today,” she said. “Don’t
fucking do that.”

“You cheated on me,” I said back, “Don’t tell
me what I can and can’t do.”

“Fuck you,” she said, and stormed off into
the bedroom.

I followed
her.
She was sitting on the bed crying.
Her mascara was running a little. She seemed more upset than was
warranted.

“
Hey,” I
said, and sat beside her, put an arm around her.
She leaned on me.

“I don’t want this life,” she said, “I don’t
want to come home every day wondering what you’re going to call me
or accuse me of.”

“I haven’t called you anything.”

“
I know, and
that’s why I’m worried about it.
I have
this awful feeling that one day you’re going to crack.”

“And what?”

“
I don’t
know.
Just crack.”

We sat there for a while.

“
It pissed me
off that I couldn’t get her to do me,” Erica said.
“Gareth did. He did it properly. But Holly
didn’t want to, and couldn’t make her. So I wanted to try
again.”

“You could have told me.”

“
I was
embarrassed.
And besides, you looked like
you had a little too much fun.”

I didn’t know
what to say to that.
“You had Gareth
first,” I said.

“
That was
just…
fucking. Holly is a
friend.”

“
That
probably wasn’t smart,” I said.
“Picking
her.”

“Probably not.”

“Was there anything between you to, before
this?”

“Not really.”

“She seemed to think there was.”

“
She’s a
dick.
She imagines shit. Like that she
can eat pussy.”

I looked at her.

“
Shit,” Erica
said.
“I don’t know, I guess I started
feeling something for her, because she’s a friend.”

“
Remember the
thing?” I said.
“Only once or twice with
the same person?”

Something
we’d talked about, months ago, when her threesome thing had first
come up.
You have sex with people, you
get close to them. That closeness threatens the main relationship.
So, if having threesomes, only do so rarely with each new person.
Once or twice but never more.

“Yeah,” Erica said, “I forgot.”

We sat
there.
After a while she started to cry.
I hugged her again, said, “Sorry.”

“Do something for me?” she said.