Page 74 of People In Love
Robin blinks.
You wanted to marry me, from day one?
Well, technically day two, Robin says, because I asked you out for a drink first, but you said you’d prefer a croissant, soit was the next morning, when we got pastries and hot chocolate. You ordered the eighty-five percent. Which surprised me. And you started talking about the magical properties of cacao beans and then, smooth as anything, moved on to the theoretical difference between writing and drawing, and I knew, right then, that I wanted to marry you.
But, Nora says, not sure what is bothering her so deeply, here – why did you never say so?
A pause then. Like Robin doesn’t understand the question, or thinks he’s already answered it.
Because you didn’t want to, he says.
But this has to be two-way, she says, taking her hand out of his so she can gesture between them. This has to be about what we both want. We’ve been together fornine years, Robin. Nine years, and you never once told me you wanted to get married.
Does that matter?
It does, yes! It really matters!
Because how can they start something she has no idea how to be in, wrapped in white lace and harpist music and served with a hog roast for a family she barely has, when the ones shedoeshave – Robin, looking at her, now, Bren, on her doorstep, then – aren’t even their full, honest selves with her? Nor she, with them?
I want to be with you, Nora, Robin asserts. Wedding or no wedding.
But to the detriment of what you actuallywant? Nora says. I can’t be that person, Robin! I can’t let you go along with a life that isn’t what you’d choose.
She thinks of Josie, boxed up at home.
Jon, straying, because life with her was not what he’d hoped.
But what Ichooseis to be with you, Robin repeats, and heseems angry now, just like he was the other night as she says but how can I trust that, now?
Because it’s us! We’re Robin and Nora, aren’t we? Or is this not evenabouta wedding, he says, and she hears something else in his voice, a shift from anger to fear as he says it’s starting to feel like you’re looking for a reason to get out of this. And like an idiot, I’ve just given you one.
You’re not an idiot, Nora says, reaching for him.
What am I, then? Your fiancé, or just some guy you were killing time with, until the guy you actually wanted came home?
She gasps at this, because she had feared this might get thrown out there but still it gives her whiplash; had heheardwhat Bren had asked her, last weekend, has he been sitting on that, all this time? Or just piecing together what he can’t have missed? Sudden inkling, then, that there is more he’s not telling her, but she doesn’t ask, it is instinct to defend, to say instead that that’s not what this is – she loveshim, she does, but he was the one person she thought was straight with her, the one person she could always trust, and suddenly she’s not sure who he is or what he wants and he, too, is looking at her like he feels the same way.
They stare at each other, on the felled tree. Their breathing, out of time.
You said yes, he murmurs.
But you didn’t ask, she says, did you.
Which is the truth that grows between them, as they sit there with the day ending, all around them. Nightfall, now. Their hands growing cold.
FOURTEEN
Bren is in a chain café in town, on a hot date with his laptop. Shooting out emails to different adventure centres, enquiring for the winter season, keeping his leads warm, his options open. He never usually queries this far in advance, just shows up and banks on availability, but he needs to do something. Busy his bouncing brain, his bouncing knee. Fighting what could be some kind of encroaching psychosis, surely, when he can’t sit still, can’t hear his own thoughts through the noise. He scrolls on the flight app again, between emails; prices have gone up, because he keeps checking, probably. Damn algorithms.
Define stir crazy, he googles, when he closes the app and sees that Nora has still not texted him back.
Define the brain disorder that he thinks about, but never names out loud. Ninety-nine percent hereditary, apparently.
He gets up for his second coffee and isn’t thinking about all that when a girl he used to know – a vague connection from secondary school – joins the queue behind him. Although vague is probably inaccurate, seeing as he’d lost his virginity to her after a school hockey match one night. He remembers the pastel curtains in her bedroom. The soft cotton of her bra. How she’d tasted of spearmint Polos and how, the next day, she’d told her friends he was bad in bed. Cruel, and humiliating, though he no longer cares. Does care, though, abouthow red Nora had turned, when she’d found out. How she’d gone and lost her own virginity, not long afterwards.
Bren? the girl – now woman – says, from behind him. Brennie Fergs?
Hi, Lisa, Bren says, arranging his face as though he’s pleased to see her.
