Almost Mine Page 9

  After being hit-on with lines such as “I’m not drunk, but standing next to you I’m totally intoxicated” and “you owe me a drink”, to which I stared at the young perve-worthy man and wondered whether he was talking to me. He had shrugged and held out his empty hands and said, “Seeing how stunning you are made me drop mine.” The cheesiest was the one that likened me to the sun but that he still could not look away. Damn Lucy for talking me into wearing yellow. But the cheesier they got the more I thought of Nick; none were as cheesy as him — or as heart-stopping — and as the night ticked on so did the unexpected craving to have my husband at my side.

  I scanned the dance floor for Lucy as I scooted from the most sought-after piece of real estate in a busy night club, and my seat was immediately snapped up by the next eager patron.

  Lucy was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t even pick out her ruby red hair in the crowd. I moved around the dance floor to get a better view, but it made no difference.

  Still no Lucy.

  I was hot and very uncomfortable as the music seemed to get louder and louder and the crowed began closing in around me, but slowly I headed to the door, which was only a few steps to my left. I headed out into the refreshing night. My lungs celebrated with a clean burst of fresh air and my body relished the gentle cooling breeze.

  I walked down the few steps that led away from the club, and a short distance down the street.

  ‘Cate? Is that you?’ I turned toward the familiar voice. ‘It is you,’ he said as a smile spread across his tanned face. It took a second to recognise him. His long hair was trimmed short, his skin wasn’t pale anymore and he wore a light white shirt instead of a heavy leather jacket. And he looked…healthy. I hadn’t realised until I released it that I was holding my breath.

  ‘Roy.’

  The heat drained instantly from my body, almost taking my ability to stand with it. He was standing on the steps about to enter the club, but he waved his friends on and came to stand with me on the street instead.

  ‘What are you doing all the way up here?’ he asked with the same grin. He peered down at my left hand and I watched his expression falter slightly. ‘Is Nick with you?’ he added with a little less enthusiasm.

  ‘No, just me and Lucy, but she’s lost in there somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, well you can come and hang out with me if you want.’ Roy smiled again, this time with some sort of an opportunistic glimmer.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Come on, Nick wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Yes, he would.’ I stepped away from him and he seemed hurt by the rejection. Oh well, so was I during those five wasted years.

  ‘Do you want to take a walk instead then?’ he suggested as he closed the previously platonic space between us.

  ‘Ah, no thanks. The hotel seems like a safer option.’ I turned and walked away from him.

  ‘Well the safer option did always work out best for you didn’t it?’ he mumbled, but I heard him.

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  ‘I mean that Nick was the safer option, and the baby was only a way to snare security for yourself; that was weak, Cate.’

  It took countless deep breaths of sea air to stop me from ripping his fucking throat out, but, amazing myself, I managed restraint.

  ‘Yes, that’s me, Roy. I’m the weak one.’

  I spotted Lucy and Tom on the steps behind Roy and I wondered if they’d overheard the conversation. A look of something indecipherable sparked in Lucy’s eyes as they came down to meet us.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Roy Ellis. Fancy that,’ she greeted him with a kiss on his cheek. ‘We haven’t seen you for…’ she eyed me with a bright smile, ‘Cate, you’d know more than I would.’

  What the hell was she playing at? ‘Not long enough.’

  ‘Snagged yourself a man of your own I see.’ Roy held out his hand to Tom. ‘Good to see you’ve moved on.’

  Lucy’s cheeks pinkened. ‘Moved on? I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘Oh,’ he tapped the side of his nose with an index finger and with a conspiratorial tone he whispered that her secret was safe with him.

  ‘Does he mean Nick?’ I asked Lucy because tequila had gifted me confidence.

  Her mouth gaped like a searching fish so Roy jumped to her rescue. ‘No, no. Some other poor sap that Lucy was trying to get her hooks into.’

  ‘Of course.’

  I was growing both impatient and irritated at the direction of this conversation. Did they both think that I was completely unaware of what was going on, of what had been going on for as long as I could remember? As much as they thought they did, neither of them knew me. The only person that did was thousands of kilometres away missing me as much as I did him.

  ‘Well as nostalgic as this is, I’m bored as hell and my feet are killing me. I’m going back to the hotel.’

  ‘But we’re just about to reminisce, babe.’

  ‘Well, the two of you have fun catching up on the old times. I have better things to do than live in the past.’

  Yes, as I walked away, I almost choked on the lie that had just sprung from my mouth.

  The following day the sand was once again beckoning me as I gazed out of the mammoth glass window, so, despite the fact that Roy was lurking around Bribie Island somewhere, I opted to brave it. My feet deserved indulgence, and who was I to literally stand in their way?

  And it didn’t disappoint.

  The instant the water trickled over my toes, my eyes rolled back in my head with pleasure and closed so as to permanently etch the blissful memory in my mind. Once my brain was satiated with nothing but Bribie Island, I reached down with a jar in my hand and I took a small sample of heaven to take home to Nick.

  I strolled further along the sand, completely swept away by a daydream as I gazed out to sea. I was surprised that my thoughts were only filled with Nick, first, for once, ahead of menstrual cycles. I allowed my thoughts to drift as I remembered him at the foot of our garden when he’d kissed me in the rain… Shit! Suddenly my face hit the sand as I tripped on an ill-placed body board.

  ‘Shit!’ I said aloud as I pulled myself up, brushing myself down. I could feel gritted sand between my teeth.

  ‘Your hotel room really would have been safer,’ Roy laughed as he reached down for his board. I shook my head with disdain and promptly turned back down the beach. ‘Wait, it was a joke!’ he called after me. ‘Cate!’ I continued to walk away, but I felt him at my side, and then I felt his hand on mine and I snatched it away as if he’d scorched me with his touch. ‘I’m sorry, it really was a joke,’ he reiterated with a small degree of sincerity. He did still have an amused mouth though.

  ‘What do you want, Roy?’ I said unforgivingly. He stepped back a little, straightening himself at the look of contempt within my eyes.

  ‘I didn’t know about the baby, honestly, I didn’t, and I’m sorry for being such an arse last night.’

  ‘Lucy told you about the miscarriage?’ Of course she did. ‘It doesn’t matter, Roy. I didn’t tell you about it because it had nothing to do with you,’ I said, deadpan, keeping my turmoil of emotions hidden behind indifference.

  ‘I guess not. And you and Nick, everything going well?’

  ‘Lucy didn’t update you on that?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Do you really care?’

  ‘I’m hurt,’ his hands spanned his toned, bare chest at the apparent low blow. ‘I still think about you, you know?’

  ‘You really shouldn’t. I don’t think about you.’

  ‘Liar,’ he grinned again. ‘You’ve gotten bitter over the past few years. How’s that working out for you?’

  ‘You really shouldn’t apologise for being an arse and then continue to be one.’ I dismissed his attempted rebuttal by turning my back on him and making my way back along the beach, but his hand on mine stopped me. The look in his eyes as I whipped my head around forced my words to the back of my throat. Was he about to cry? I wasn’
t sure, but they were wetter than a minute ago; granted, it could have been because of the salty breeze. But they’d weakened, as had his arrogant shoulders and suddenly I was seventeen again, with Roy as he began working his way back in.

  ‘Please sit,’ he gestured to the soft sand, and slowly I extricated my hand from his grasp, ‘just for a minute.’

  Without a word I did.

  ‘Seeing you last night, so unexpectedly, gave me such a shock that I had no idea how to respond to you. So you know that being an arse was not my intention, it’s just how I am when I don’t know what else to say. I don’t always know the right words, you know that,’ he chuckled softly. I didn’t, so he continued. ‘It broke my heart when you married Nick, and I know that you probably don’t believe me, but it really did. I was not always forthcoming with my feelings, and to tell you the truth, I don’t think I always understood exactly what they were. I guess that’s why Nick has you and I don’t. It’s true that I still think of you often and I imagine what our lives would be like now if I took you with me that night instead of being a dickhead. You know that I never appreciated what I had, but, over the years, I have learned to. It helps when I remember the people that I have lost.’ He reached for my hand, and when I didn’t pull away, he took hold of it. ‘And then there you were, standing on a Bribie Island street holidaying just like I was. You looked more beautiful than I can remember and I was back there with you again, being young and in love, and I wished that I had been grown up enough for you back then. The ring on your finger snapped me back to reality. I miss us Cate, believe me when I say that.’ Roy took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I smiled at his nerves.

  ‘How long have you been rehearsing that speech?’ I softened.

  ‘I didn’t…ah…would you believe since your…wedding day?’

  ‘Really?’ I laughed. ‘I’d believe that you’d seen it on a movie that one of your girlfriends forced you to watch.’

  He shrugged. Before I realised it, both of my hands were in his and that convincing look of lust, sorrow and regret was in his eyes again.

  ‘I won’t apologise for being honest, Cate. But I will apologise for being a fucking idiot back then. I love you.’ He leaned in close.

  ‘Roy, stop,’ I whispered just before he reached my lips.

  ‘Do you love him?’ he murmured.

  ‘Stop,’ I said, but made no effort to distance myself. I remembered this feeling of longing, of wanting, and it didn’t occur to me not to follow through with what I remembered to be the most breath taking kisser of my life.

  ‘He’s a workaholic Mummy’s boy who doesn’t deserve you. He will never love you the way I do,’ he murmured before pressing his lips to mine.

  Had he not said that last part, he may have persuaded me to allow him to open my mouth with his as he seemed intent on doing. ‘He will never love you the way I do…’ Nick’s face smiled indulgently down at me in vivid remembrance of that moment by the letterbox, of when he danced with me on our wedding day, of every sweet kiss...He would accept anything I had to give him — or not give him — without hesitation, no matter how minute it may be in comparison to what he offered in return. Unlike Roy, who was never satisfied with anything that I had to openly offer.

  However, despite the fact that I knew that he could never win his game of seduction, I let him kiss me. It was mostly out of curiosity, but a small part out of lust for a life that never was. As Roy kissed me my insides warmed and my heart filled with love — almost burst with love — in remembrance of a kiss that I never thought that I would miss. And though it was Roy’s mouth against mine, it was Nick here with me. I missed him more than I ever thought I was capable of. My brain celebrated with the fact that even though Roy was trying his hardest, attempting to be the best there is at this, he was failing dismally at making me swoon.

  His lips were in no way comparable to the softness, the sincere tenderness of Nick’s. His kiss was not patient. It didn’t make me believe that I was his one and only; his lips articulating how much he loved me, needed me and lusted for me. Instead, Roy’s kiss was hurried, his impatient tongue darting in and out of my mouth as he pressed his chapped, sun dried lips hard against mine. This had to stop.

  ‘You’ve lost your touch.’ I shifted back, creating a platonic space between us.

  ‘Have not.’ He leaned in determined to prove me wrong.

  ‘No,’ I denied him, thinking about the past. I replayed previous kisses, many kisses with Roy in my head, so as to make an unequivocal and fair judgement. ‘I guess you never had it to start with. I just had nothing real to compare it with.’

  His mouth fell open. His adolescently stunted brain had trouble formulating a response other than a sulky, ‘I did so!’

  I stood as he continued to sit dumbfounded in the sand, and turned to walk away.

  ‘Cate!’ I heard him call after I’d taken a few steps away. He grabbed my arm and spun me around to face him, pulling me back into a lip-locking embrace. My hands pressed to his naked chest to push myself away.

  ‘That’s enough!’ I yelled.

  ‘Come on,’ he persisted reaching for me again. I smacked him.

  ‘I no longer have my head in the sand, or buried deep within you.’ I turned toward the crashing waves, mostly talking to myself. ‘I see now that what I have deserves more than what I have been giving it, and that finally, finally, I recognise that Nick is the man that you will never be, and not the other way around.’ I turned back to Roy.

  ‘Well, that’s a swift jab to the balls.’

  ‘The truth hurts.’

  ‘So this is it?’

  ‘It was over years ago, Roy. I just didn’t know it.’

  He reached for me but once again I stepped back.

  ‘You should really give me another chance to persuade you.’

  ‘There would be no point.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘No point whatsoever.’ I crossed my arms.

  ‘Tell me this then. Tell me why you think you love him,’ he challenged me and up until a few minutes ago I would have stumbled in answering.

  ‘Because he makes me feel like the loveliest, most important person in his life, and quite honestly, Nick is the most amazing person that I’ve known. He’s selfless, generous, patient, handsome…’ I smiled as his face reappeared in my vivid memories of my very own Nick Mathieson.

  ‘Ok, that’s enough,’ Roy interrupted. ‘So you say you love him, but why did you just now try and kiss me?’

  ‘I didn’t!’ I replied indignantly.

  ‘You did!’ he teased.

  ‘You’re unbelievable! Argh! I’m done with you and your bloody mind games and immaturity! Don’t you find it boring? Have yourself a nice shallow life while the rest of us continue on with our meaningful ones.’

  I strode off down the beach and as I moved farther away from Roy a smile spread across my face and my heart swelled almost to the point of it bursting. I loved Nick! And I knew it without a doubt! And to have my heart feel it was…was...so surreal and…liberating!

  I had finally realised that I did actually love him, deeply love him, like a wife should love a husband. So as I peered over my shoulder back at Roy, I realised that I couldn’t hate him as much as I wanted to right at this moment. He’d helped me to understand my own heart. He helped me understand that yearning for the past and what you believed love should feel like just wasn’t reality. Love was hard, and for me, it didn’t just fall in my lap like Lucy always told me it should. Because if you had to work for it, if you had to let it grow at its own rate, it was all the more fulfilling, satisfying, and quite honestly, fucking magnificent.

  I felt like a real, loved woman who was part of something that nothing else could ever compare to…until I had the blessing of becoming something more than just a loved woman. Only a mother’s love could surpass such an intensity of emotion.

  The gentle ocean breeze moved smoothly across my face with a sense of exquisite clarity. I was in love with m
y husband and maybe, just maybe, I had found the missing piece to our puzzle, the piece that would now complete our lives and in turn bring us everything that we had dreamed of.

  Chapter 9

  Lucy was squished between Mr Sweaty and Mrs Complain-a-lot as the flight home finally ascended from Brisbane airport and descended into Tullamarine. I blissfully ignored the stone-cold expression of the woman who wanted my husband, grateful to have a seat to each side of me empty. How that had happened, we did not know, but according to flight regulations, you must not exchange seats or move to an empty seat that is not your own in the event of the plane crashing and us needing to be identified. Well if that wasn’t a confidence boost to the safety of the aviation industry, I didn’t know what was.

  I was grateful to have this time to myself, though. I held in my hand a small white envelope that Lucy had given me as we had boarded the plane. Apparently Roy had not said all that he wanted to and had passed on a letter to Lucy at the hotel to give to me. What were they, still in high school? So I sat with this small peace offering and tried to decide whether or not I really cared about what Roy had to say, or whether I should tear it up and place it in the vomit bag hanging on the seat on front of me. But curiosity can diminish any common sense that you may have had previously, before you were handed this letter from your high school sweet heart.

  I slowly ran my index finger under the opening of the envelope in a carefully blasé fashion, without giving Lucy any reason to think that I was actually interested in what he might say. I didn’t have to respond, so what was the big deal? I read the scribbled writing that covered the page before me…

  Cate,

  I am an arse. You know that more than anyone. You deserve more and I hope that all can be forgiven. You’re a great person, better than me, and I never deserved what you had to give me. Nick is a lucky, lucky man. I hope we can be friends and feel free to call and catch up if you’re ever up this way again. I really do miss you. Really. We had great times for the most part didn’t we?