Training Days (23 page)

Ally grabbed a kitchen knife and chopped viciously at the vegetables as the voice of the television news presenter droned on in the background. The television would be turned off at dinnertime and she and James would eat together at the table, discussing what had happened in each of their days. With parents who took casual dining to the extreme, Ally had grown up eating dinner from a plate on her lap while perched on the couch. After graduation she’d swapped her parents for a TV-addicted flat-mate who could only conduct a decent conversation for the duration of an ad break, so this civilized method of dining was a relatively new concept that she had embraced fully.

She wondered how the conversation would go tonight.

“What did you do today?” James would ask.

“Oh, just the usual. Drew up some award-winning house plans, threw my phone down the toilet and gave up any hope of trying to stop thinking about Morgan.”

James would take a piece of perfectly stir-fried chicken between his chopsticks. “Are you thinking about her now?”

“Yes,” Ally would admit, poking around her bowl with her own chopsticks, looking for a still-crisp snow pea.

James would admire the perfectly cooked chicken before taking it to his mouth. “And what are you thinking?”

The snow pea would be steaming hot, causing Ally to fan her mouth with her hand. “How she was so close I could feel her breath on my face. How her breasts were so soft when she pressed against me. How her lips melted against mine when she kissed me . . .”

In the next instant Ally’s knife dropped with a thud onto the chopping board and she yelped. “Fuck!”

“Let me see.” James was soon by her side and holding her index finger, which was bleeding quite profusely. He directed the finger under the cold-water tap. “What happened?”

“I wasn’t concentrating.” Ally looked at her own watered-down blood spiraling into the plug hole. Her finger didn’t hurt—too much—yet she had a terrible urge to cry. She buried her head into James’s shoulder and sniffed, trying to pull back the threatening tears. She couldn’t. “I cut myself.” She sobbed.

“My poor love.” James enveloped her in his arms and rocked her. “What with your broken phone and now your broken finger, you’re not having a very good day, are you?”

That brought on a fresh rush of tears.

James bandaged her cut and ordered in some couscous, declaring the consumption of the stir-fry, now that it contained the blood of Ally’s finger, equivalent to an act of cannibalism. Ally kept telling him how sorry she was for ruining
another
evening, and thanking him for being so nice.

At bedtime James turned to her, maybe sensing his chivalry had earned him more than just gratitude.

“Not tonight,” Ally told him, almost regretfully. Why could she no longer drum up even the teeniest bit of amorous feeling for him? “My finger hurts.” She turned onto her side at the same time he turned on his, so they lay back to back. And she lay awake for hours, listening to his breathing as it first turned rhythmic, then into snores.

“I do love you, James,” she whispered softly, her back still to him. “But just not in the way you want me to.”

She lay staring at the wall for quite a while longer after that, trying to think of a way to tell him that when he was actually awake.

Ally hovered around James the next morning. She hovered in the bathroom while he was taking his shower and shave, she hovered in the bedroom as he was dressing, and she hovered next to him as he stood at the kitchen bench, pouring coffee and reading the headline story in
The Australian
while he waited for his toast to pop up.

“Aren’t you going in to work today?” he finally asked as he transferred his toast onto a plate. Usually their morning preparations were staggered so Ally would just be descending the stairs, showered and dressed, while he was finishing his breakfast.

“Yes, I’m going.” Ally stared at the kitchen bench and trailed a finger across the polished granite surface. She’d better work up the courage to say now what she had practiced in the early hours of the morning, or she’d have to wait until tonight when she saw him again. “But I wanted to speak to you first.”

James must have picked up the edge to Ally’s tone because he put his plate on the bench, pushed his newspaper aside and turned to look her in the eye. “Yes?” he asked simply.

Ally would have preferred to spit out her words while James was still involved in his paper, and then turn tail and run. But that was not going to happen. “I’ve been thinking a lot over the past few days,” she began.

“Yes?” James repeated, the darkness of worry entering his eyes. He had to know this was leading nowhere good.

“And I’ve come to realize that—as much as I think you are a good man and I care for you deeply—that I don’t want to be in a relationship with you.”

James’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat as he swallowed twice before speaking. “What are you saying?”

“Exactly what I just said. I’m sorry, James, but I don’t want to go out with you anymore.”

His Adam’s apple bobbed again and he ran a hand through his dark hair. “But we’re good together, Alison. I know we’re having a bit of a rough patch at the moment, but—”

“James. Listen to me.” Ally took his cheeks in her hands and directed his gaze, which had strayed to the fridge door, back to hers. “This isn’t just a rough patch for me. I’ve been thinking about this all night and—”

“One night?” James interrupted, his expression incredulous. “We’ve been together for nine months and you tell me you want to split up based on a single sleepless night?”

“It’s not like that at all. Something happened to me—”

“You’re having an affair!” James’s voice gained its usual timbre . . . plus a bit more. It was the first sign of a building anger. “Something . . . or some
one
happened to you while you were away and you’re having an affair!”

“No!” Ally shook her head vehemently and in her attempt to defend herself her words rushed out quicker than she could think them. “I’m not cheating on you. I kissed her, but only once.”

“You don’t call kissing someone else cheating?” For a single moment Ally thought James was going to raise his hand to her. His face turned red and a vein in his forehead throbbed purple. But his hands, which were clenched, remained at his sides. Then his expression changed to one of utter puzzlement. “Her? What do you mean you kissed
her
?”

It was very difficult for Ally to maintain eye contact, but she did. “I kissed a woman.”

James stood silent, searching Ally’s face as if looking for some sign she was joking. Her continued gaze, although unsteady, seemed to convince him otherwise. “But I don’t understand. You’re . . . you’re not like that.”

Ally could not hold eye contact any longer. She looked at the floor. “That’s what I thought too.”

“So you’re telling me you’re now a lesbian?”

Ally took a long moment before replying. That very same question had plagued her thoughts ever since “the kiss,” and she was still no closer to a definitive answer. Was she a lesbian, bisexual or just plain curious? She’d never before considered where she lay on the spectrum of sexuality. Ask her before she boarded that train and she’d have answered without thinking, “I’m straight.” Ask her now and she wouldn’t be so sure. All she knew was that something had occurred between herself and Morgan that she had never experienced with anyone—male or female— before. Their time together on the train had been brief, their physical contact even briefer, yet Ally had the distinct feeling they were moments that had the power to be life-changing. And she also knew that, wherever Morgan sat on the spectrum, there was an invisible yet extremely strong thread drawing her to the same place. “I don’t know, James. The way I feel . . .” She lifted her gaze from the floor to meet James’s eyes again. His gaze darted over hers, showing his desperation for her to provide the answer he wanted to hear. But she couldn’t do that, any more than she could pin a label on herself. She was just Ally, a woman who felt very much that she was in danger of falling in love with another woman. “I just don’t know.”

James swung round to face the bench. He rested his hands on the granite, his head hanging low. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

That was the first time Ally had ever heard James utter anything coarser than
bloody hell
. But then again, they had never had a conversation like this before.

James’s shoulders heaved as he took a large intake of breath and exhaled it slowly. “Last week you told me you loved me,” he said, his voice so tight it cracked. “And this week you tell me you don’t and that you think you’ve turned into—I’m sorry, Alison, but things just don’t all of a sudden change like that.”

“I’m sorry.” Ally didn’t know what else to say.

“So you’re telling me you never actually loved me?”

“No, James. No! I called it love because that’s what it was . . . what it
is
,” she corrected herself. “I do love you, but not . . .” She trailed off, at a loss for the words to adequately describe what she felt inside. “Love comes in many forms.”

“And which form do I fall into?” James asked bitterly. “And this . . . this . . .
woman
. What form does she fall into?”

Ally could hear the hurt in his voice and it cut right to her core. “I don’t know, James. All this is new for me. I just don’t know.”

James turned back around, a sudden hope glimmering in his eyes. “You said you only kissed her the once. How can you make a decision like this based on one kiss?”

“I’m not.” He had just gone straight to the crux of the matter. If Ally had focused less on the embrace and more on the feelings that surrounded it, she would have come to her realization long before now. “That’s the thing. I don’t think I even had to kiss her the one time to know it. There was just
something
there. Something that, up until now, has been missing for me.”

It was past ten a.m. when Ally finally turned her car into her parking space located at the rear of the office premises. She made a conscious effort to put a bit of spring in her step but failed. She was emotionally wrung out, having tried to explain to James something she had difficulty explaining to herself. She hadn’t done a particularly good job as all he seemed able to do was to shake his head and say repeatedly, “I don’t understand.” But he did manage to mumble, “There’s no need. I’m leaving now anyway,” when Ally suggested it may be better if she showered at home today. He picked up his briefcase and was gone even before Ally reached the top of the stairs.

Over the past nine months, a sizable amount of Ally’s personal possessions had found semipermanent homes at James’s townhouse. She had a share of the closet space and allocated drawers in the bedroom, and she had overtaken at least half of the shelves in the bathroom. Books, CDs and even some board games and the occasional kitchen utensil lurked in various other corners of the residence. Ally had vacillated over whether to take the entire morning off work, sort through everything and load all her things into her car. Finally she decided to take the items that were in open view—such as her shampoos and perfumes— and leave the rest for later. She’d call James in the next few days to make arrangements for a suitable time to come over and take everything else, and for him to do the same at her place. Then they’d return the spare house keys and . . . that would be that. Unless—within time—she and James could become friends.

Ally dragged herself up the two steps that led to the rear entrance of her offices, thinking, regrettably, that friendship with James was unlikely. Without exception, she’d never maintained contact with any of her exes. Also without exception, she’d been the one to make the split. Maybe there was a connection there— the fragility of the male ego and all that. Or maybe it was more to do with Ally herself. Looking back, she’d never dated anyone she’d previously called a friend. Even during her school years, she either dated older boys she didn’t normally mix with or ones who attended different schools and she’d met via community dances or sporting events. At uni she was often set up on blind dates or was approached in the grungy university tavern. After graduation the business of networking often turned social and she’d accept an invitation to drinks or dinner. So she dated relative strangers and—if her ability to walk out of their lives so easily after the relationship ended was any indication—she never really became friends with them even while she was in the relationship.

Maybe, since the circumstances of this particular split were a first, she could set another precedent and maintain contact with James. After all, she did genuinely like the man. She just didn’t want to sleep with him anymore.

Office keys in hand, Ally gripped onto the lever-style door handle and was initially surprised to find it gave way under the pressure. Usually she was the first to arrive at work so had to unlock the door and disarm the alarm. The open door was a reminder that she was late, and a quick glance to her watch reminded her by how much. Josh was an easygoing boss and not one to quibble over a few hours here or there, but still she crept in, not really feeling up to detailing the reason why she was only just arriving for the day.

Kirsty, one of the three draftspeople who shared the open area just behind the reception, called her a loud hello. Ally nodded in greeting and quickened her step. But she hadn’t reached her office before she heard Josh summoning her to his, located next to her own.