The Forever and The Now, page 12
“Yes.”
“Yeah. I figured.” Nice, Shiv. Way to toss me under a bus.
“Really?”
“Mmhmm. She tends to plonk her good fortune or whatever—her easy ride—onto others, with the hope that they’ll have the same slippery-slide journey as her. But it doesn’t work that way. I get it, you know. If life’s that comfortable, and it has been for her—it always is—then you lose track of how much you have to be thankful for. I don’t think Bron does it intentionally, you know? The ungrateful thing. I really think she needs it to be pointed out to her, which sucks because she’s forty-four freaking years old.” Siobhan’s volume increased in the last sentence.
“Not quite forty-four yet.”
“Ha. Well, in three months.” There was another pause. “She’s a good person, you know?”
Kate’s smile must have been wide and powerful because it made it up the hallway. “Yes. Yes, she is.”
“You two are so perfect together. All hearts circling your head shit.”
Kate laughed. “I utterly adore her.”
“I know.”
“I want us to move in together.” I nearly face planted the carpet. What?
“About fucking time! Oh. Shit. Um, you know. About time.”
“That was almost an apology, Shiv.” I could imagine her eyes twinkling.
“Fuck, can’t be having that.”
I kept Kate’s admission to Siobhan about moving in together secret, firstly because it wasn’t my place to say anything as technically I’d been eavesdropping, and secondly, I think I wanted it to be Kate’s suggestion because it hadn’t even occurred to me to merge our lives like that. But when given exciting, astounding and completely unexpected information, rolling it around in your head for a week does wonders for clarity.
Apparently, tortellini is a great meal to eat when dropping life-changing bombshells on to the dining table.
Kate placed her cutlery on her plate. “Bron?”
I stilled my hand, halfway to my mouth. “Sweetheart?”
“I was asked another one of those ‘but how are you gay when you were married?’ questions today.”
I growled. “Jesus! They won’t let up, for fuck’s sake.” I winced. “Shit. Swearing…”
“Sorry,” Kate said quietly, and I saw what Siobhan meant about the hearts floating around our heads. “Mm. They asked why I’d not only got divorced but become gay particularly because Neil and I owned a house together.”
“That’s illogical.” I laid my fork on the plate, the tortellini still attached to the end. “Why would having a house together be the reason to be together?”
“You don’t think two people who are in a committed relationship should move in together?” She stared at me intently.
“Sometimes, sure.” I shrugged.
“What about if those two people were to purchase a small place because they’re in a committed relationship?” she said very carefully.
For a close-to-middle-aged woman, I can be the biggest, most clueless idiot in the entire world, because suddenly I caught on. My eyes roamed across Kate’s face, which was broadcasting hope, love, anticipation, and anxiety. It was a lot. My week of washing machine thoughts about this very moment had finally wrung out one conclusion; I wanted to be wherever Kate was. Apparently, she wanted to be with me. And to do that, we needed to be in the same location. In a house, a purchased house according to Kate, which scared me slightly, because even though I had pretty good savings, it wasn’t enough for a real adult property, that’s for sure. I must have spent too long having all those spin cycle thinkings because Kate’s face fell and she looked down at her plate.
“Are we those two people, sweetheart?”
Her head shot up, and all of the emotions reunited. She swallowed. “Yes.” She swallowed again. “If you want to be.”
I reached across the table. “I want to be.” Out of nowhere—that’s a big lie—tears ran down my cheeks. “Yes, please.” I squeezed her hand. “I don’t have a lot of money but if I go for the deputy principal position at work then I’ll be on better pay and—”
“You don’t need to have a lot, Bron. I insisted on an equal split with Neil for our property and other things so a small two-bedroom cottage or similar is very doable.” That must have been a hell of a moment with Neil. Ick. It was probably only the presence of her lawyer that halted the sorry-but-I’m-walking-away-from-this-tense-and-very-personal-encounter.
I imagined I was just as blurry as she was, based on the amount of tears we were shedding. I’d already assumed that Kate would pay more for the house or whatever it was that we were buying, seeing as she was on a much higher salary than any teacher could ever earn, but it was a relief to hear my assumption confirmed. I winced to myself. Assumptions like that had got me into trouble before. I would need to check in with her along the way during this purchase, otherwise I knew—as did everyone else it seemed—that I’d become all a bit blasé about the house and the moving in and the merging and Kate would wonder what the hell had happened to Bron, the love of her life, and replaced her with Bron, the ungrateful shit.
I knew Kate was a highly focused machine when given a task to complete or a problem to solve because I’d seen her in action during our eighteen months, like when she’d run me through the intricacies of a successful contract that her team had scored last year. It was enlightening and scary and such a turn-on.
So when, for the thirtieth time, she flipped her iPad around, beamed over the top of it, and curled her arm around to point at the screen, I really wasn’t surprised.
“This one?” The question wasn’t ‘Do you think this might be a good investment and should we ask for an inspection on the property?’ Nope. The question that Kate asked was ‘This one is perfect and I’m in love with it already and please say yes because I want to buy it now. Can we?’. Her eyes peering over the top of the screen were like the liquid dark chocolate of Labrador puppies, pleading to be picked up and cuddled. I laughed, took the screen from her hands, and she scooted closer.
I was a sucker for Kate’s eyes, which was hardly newsworthy, because they were adorable, and said such a lot and when she was aroused, those eye—house, iPad, focus.
“Now, this one? This one is great!” I flipped through the photos, which showcased each room, the small backyard, the patio, the single garage, which I imagined, if we bought the house, would be where Kate parked her car because mine enjoyed the elements. Then I caught a glimpse of the asking amount and paused my swiping. “Bloody hell!” That was a significant jump in price from the one we’d talked about. I stared down at her hopeful expression.
“But it’s doable.” Her voice and expression synchronised.
“Gees, Kate. It’s at least forty-thousand over. I don’t have enough to be anywhere near the fifty-fifty split for this.” I gestured to the rather beautiful little blue and cream cottage on the screen which was perfect and I could already see us living in it and come on, heart, that was really unfair of you to fall completely in love with the house in five seconds.
“I have enough.”
I flicked a glance at her. “Mm. This is where it gets sticky, Kate. I don’t want to feel beholden to you.”
She shoved off my shoulder. “You will not be beholden to me. We are a couple.” She lightly smacked my arm. “And we make decisions based on what’s best for both of us.” Another soft smack. “So I say we look at the house and make an offer that’s under the asking price but not so low that it offends people.”
It turned out that another skill to add to Kate’s repertoire of awesomeness was property negotiation, which was hardly surprising given her job. But to watch her work her magic on the hapless real estate agent was fabulous, and when the paperwork was all done and the owners agreed to a quick settlement, we were moving into our new home by the end of May. It was fast, and utterly breathtaking.
Kate’s footsteps clicked across the wooden floor and I looked up from my coffee. Her business suit, low elegant ponytail, heels, subtle makeup and her eyes that carried the bedroom, stood in the doorway of our little old-fashioned blue and white kitchen. My puddle of goo gave an encore performance.
“God, you look amazing.” I pushed my chair back, rose slowly without breaking eye contact, and slunk around the table, a smirk growing on my lips.
Kate pointed. “No.” But she couldn’t suppress the smile. “Sweetheart, I have the world’s most boring meeting to attend this morning, and despite a desperate desire to skip it, I can’t, so—”
“We could create lasting memories for you to reflect upon during said boring meeting.”
Kate burst out laughing. “Is that my coffee?” She pointed at the travel mug on the bench, and I nodded. “Thank you.” Kate looked me up and down. “I so wish I could wear…” She gestured to my jeans, rugby shirt, sneakers, and shoulder-length hair which was engaged in an interpretive dance that would have made Siobhan shudder.
“I’m not sure the Veris Gods would be thrilled.”
She snorted, picked up her coffee mug, leaned in to kiss me, and kissed me again as I snaked my arm around her waist. Then my kiss in return was totally hot, which was completely in retaliation for how gorgeous she looked.
After a careful breath, Kate shifted back. “Right, well, that’ll keep me going during this morning’s meeting.” A quick grin. “I’ll see you tonight. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I had some time so I wandered about the house again. Our lives had merged at the end of May and here we were at the end of June, still discovering more about our quirky cottage. Like the one floorboard near the ensuite that squeaked and the cream walls which changed to a lighter tint at the lounge room because the previous owner had obviously run out of paint and they couldn’t match it at the paint shop.
I trailed my finger across the seam at the top of the leather couch. The furniture was mostly Kate’s because it was nearly new, classy, comfortable, and actually resembled furniture. We’d retained some of mine even though it generally looked like it had arrived in my old apartment after hauling itself off the footpath. The few pieces I kept were sentimental. Like the hall table. I’d sanded it back to its original wood, then stained and varnished it, arranging it at my front door. The table had puffed up with pride that day.
Sentimental, like the bowl, nearly full with Kate’s cranes. Looking into the opening of the bowl was like looking into the lens of a kaleidoscope. I never asked Kate where she bought her special paper. I didn’t want to know. The cranes simply appeared, wearing their technicolour dreamcoats; each one bearing its individual message. Although, when I thought about it, I hadn’t received a crane for ages, but that wasn’t surprising, I guess, as we’d both been so busy.
Finally, I checked my watch, realised that I needed to get a move on, and shouldered my backpack. Larry, our neighbour, who lived in a heritage red version of our cottage, waved at me from his armchair on his front porch. When we’d moved in, Kate had noticed Larry peering over the railing observing our to-ing and fro-ing, so we paused in our box transference, leaving most of it to Paul, his mate, and Rick, and wandered over the grass strip separating our two homes. Kate tilted her head up, and smiled, probably blinding Larry in the process. “Hi, I’m Kate and this is my partner, Bron.” Her eyes sparkled.
Larry blinked at both of us. “Well then, my name’s Larry.” Then he pushed off the railing, held up a finger as if he needed a minute, then made his way carefully down the four steps at the front of the porch. We walked around to meet him, and he stuck out his hand; the back of it wrinkled, skin translucent, with the soft brown marks of age rising above the veins. Brief afternoon and morning chats and longer weekend conversations quickly established a neighbourly friendship, where we learned that Larry was eighty-two and lived by himself.
“My wife died. Heart attack. One minute she’s baking a loaf of banana bread and the next she was gone.” He’d stared unseeingly over the top of the railing as we sat drinking tea on his porch two weeks after we’d moved in. “I never told her I didn’t like banana bread.” He breathed out loudly. “Helen was the love of my life, you know? I always told her that. That I loved her. She was my best friend.” Another deep breath. “That’s what’s important, isn’t it? To tell your person that you love them. That you’re grateful that they’re in your life.” He leaned his elbows on the small table that we were sitting around and contemplated us.
I held back my tears. “Yeah. Yeah, it is.” My voice was rough.
“You two like that?”
Kate answered. “Yes, we are.”
Larry nodded. “Good. Not many folks get a love of their lives.”
Tears threatened a bit more and a quick glance at Kate showed her in a similar predicament. Then Larry gestured at Kate. “Do you bake?”
Kate blinked. “Um, not really?”
“What can you cook?”
“I can make a pretty good vegetarian lasagne,” Kate eventually supplied. The look on her face was priceless, then Larry turned his head and frowned at me.
“Do you like Kate’s lasagne?”
Deer. Headlights. “I do, actually.”
Larry harrumphed. “Good. If she ever gets it into her head to bake banana bread and you don’t like it, tell her. You might not get the chance one day.”
So, as many afternoons as I was able to, I sat with Larry on his porch and we’d talk about politics, and social change, and how to fix a tap washer, and what in God’s green earth was a meme? I still visited my bridge, just to check in and say hi, but it wasn’t often. I figured she didn’t mind.
We bought a small lawn mower so I could cut the grass in our backyard—Kate would leer at me from the back door as I trundled past in my tank top and threadbare shorts, which did wonders for my libido—then Larry’s backyard, even though he told me not to and that I was a meddling woman, then the shared strip of grass in between our homes. He’d shout instructions and I’d mow in wiggly lines on purpose, leaving a tiny patch of dandelions for the bees, which usually got him worked up. Then he’d laugh and we’d share a beer on his porch.
I waved back at Larry as I clambered into my derelict car and reversed out our driveway. Our driveway of our house. I still couldn’t believe it.
On June Thirty, Kate thrust a winter jacket at me after dinner.
“We’re going outside to look at the stars.”
I squinted at her. “Honey, it’s cold and some of the stars aren’t visible because of the light pollution and—” I cut myself off because Kate was bouncing on the balls of her feet, which was incredibly adorable for a nearly fifty-year-old.
“Just…just put that on and follow me outside.” Her beseeching smile and wrinkled forehead won me over. So, shrugging on the parka, entirely grateful that I’d left my boots on, I trailed after Kate onto our back porch. We leaned our backs against the railing, freshly painted last week in the brightest white available at the hardware store, and peered into the sky. I was right. There were about six stars visible, but that seemed to be an adequate amount for Kate because she snuggled into my side and sighed.
“Are we looking for—”
“Sshh.”
I duly sshh-ed.
After five minutes or so of staring in silence, during which I’d actually spotted another four stars, Kate’s breath warmed my neck, resulting in a delicious shiver that travelled across my skin.
“If you see a certain star one night, you can make a wish on it.” Her voice was soft in the dark grey of the night, in the stillness of the air, in the quiet as if all the traffic had decided to pull over and idle for a few minutes. Her voice slid into our breathy puffs of air; tiny clouds which hovered for a moment only to be whisked away by invisible strings.
“Yeah. I used to do that.”
“I do, too.” She tilted her head to lean her cheek on my shoulder. “Do you think that if you wish on a star and ask for a second chance, you’d be granted that wish?”
I hummed. “I guess.” I hadn’t actively thought about wishes and stars and staring at the night sky and as I stood there, with my girlfriend huddled into my side, I realised what a wonderful experience I’d been missing out on. We needed to do this more often.
“Bron?”
“Kate?”
“I wished on a star the day the divorce was settled. Want to know what I wished for?”
I knew that rule. “Aren’t you supposed to keep the wish a secret?”
“Not if the wish-asker—” I chuckled. “It’s a word,” she said and I felt her smile. “Not if the wish-asker wants to share it.” She hugged me. “I love you.”
I hugged her right back. “What did you wish for?”
“I wished for a second chance. I wanted that wish to be my best wish ever. I wished that I could get another chance at the forever and the now. I wished for another go around with a marriage.”
My greatest wish right then was that Kate wasn’t leaning on me so she wouldn’t feel how utterly frozen I was. Not frozen from the temperature but from the sudden realisation that I’d guessed what she was talking about. I held a very cold breath.
“Bron?”
“Kate?” I croaked.
“I’d like to have another chance, a forever chance, with you. Would you marry me? Please?”
The breath I was holding whooshed out, like horses pulling a carriage of words.
“Oh my God, Kate.” I leaned away and caught her gaze. Her smile was tentative, so I gently held her face, and infused every ounce of love I carried for her into my response. “I would love to be your second chance. My answer is yes, please. Thank you for asking me, for trusting me to be your forever and the now.” Then I kissed her, our lips sliding together until Kate broke away, tears streaming down her face. She pressed her hand to her chest, creating the crinkly sound that parkas make when the material is shuffled about. Then grimaced.
“Sorry. Cold lips.”
I laughed at her expression. “It was your crazy idea to propose out here. What if I couldn’t answer because I’d turned into an icicle?”
