Natexus

by Victoria L. James

  “It seems to be for you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” I was trying to brush her off and ignore her beady eye, even though I knew that I looked how I felt. It was weird. Everything felt off, like I was at the very top of a rollercoaster waiting to be dropped down, only the whole world had been put on pause, and all I was left with was this twisted feeling in my gut.

  “Uh huh. Uh huh.” She nodded, watching my every move as I slipped into the chair beside her and glanced at her from the corner of my eye. Barbara was twice my age, but she never told me exactly how old. ‘Old enough to be your mother’ was all she ever said, even though a part of me always wondered if she was lying. Her flawless, Caribbean skin gave away no signs of age, and the bright whites of her eyes did nothing to make me believe she was even in her forties, never mind any older. There was no doubt about it, though, she loved to play the mother hen. Part of me wondered if that was because she’d never managed to have any kids of her own. “I know that look. Someone got the good stuff last night.”

  “I always get the good stuff,” I boasted through a small chuckle as I rearranged some files on my desk.

  “Nope, this is different. First of all, you never brag. The fact that you’re admitting you’re a lucky son-of-a-bitch to climb into bed with that man of yours every single night is already so out of character for you, I’m thinking Mr. Green Eyes must have pulled at least three or four big Os from you last night.”

  “Barbara!” I whispered, scanning around the foyer to make sure nobody heard her. I wasn’t just grinning anymore; I was showing all of my pearly whites to the world. “You’re wicked, woman.”

  “And you’re…”

  “Going to make coffee,” I interrupted, pushing myself up from my chair before walking away and slipping into the small, behind-the-scenes area where only staff were permitted to go. It was like a shed in there. While the more public areas of the centre looked good to those that passed through, behind closed doors, it was a jumbled mess of old photocopiers, boxes and boxes of psychology books, and the odd treasure chest with enough caffeine inside it to get us all through the year.

  There wasn’t a door to block off the sounds of the reception area, so even while I made coffee for the two of us, I could still hear Barbara as she laughed and chatted to herself about the possible reasons for my enthusiasm that morning. I could hear her as she answered calls with that rare receptionist’s charm of hers that most people weren’t used to.

  I could hear her as the first of our patients came to the front desk. I could hear her as she greeted him with a good morning smile. I could hear her as she asked him to speak up when he gave his name. I could hear her as she repeated it back to him, too.

  “Nicholas Law?”

  “That’s correct,” came a voice.

  His voice.

  The voice I’d been pretending not to hear for over five years.

  Alex.

  Every goosebump on my body broke free in desperation, as though they were individually sticking their heads above the surface to take a peek for themselves – to see if it was really him I was hearing, and not just some cruel trick of the imagination that was there to test me.

  The spoon I was holding landed on the floor with an almighty clang that seemed louder than it probably was, and as my knees began to shake and my feet felt like they were going to give way beneath me, my hands flew to the counter to grab on tightly.

  My mouth fell open, my hair fell forward, and my breaths – they had fallen away completely. I tried to blink and focus, but nothing was happening. White noise started to ring in my ears, until it felt like I couldn’t hear anything at all but the screams of my past.

  “Okay, Nicholas,” Barbara practically shouted, the hint of her accent somehow seeming more pronounced all of a sudden. “If you’d just like to take a seat.”

  Then there was the silence – a pause for thought moment – until he eventually spoke again.

  “Nicholas is my father. I’m here to support him. Dr. Cleveland is aware. He asked me to assist my dad today.”

  “No problem at all. If you’d both just like to take a seat.”

  “I’ll stand, thank you.”

  His voice had travelled through to where I was standing, and somehow grabbed hold of my heart in a few seconds flat. The grip it had on me was frightening. The pain that tore through my body was excruciating, forcing me to lean over the counter as I tried desperately to pull in some oxygen.

  Five years I’d been hiding.

  Five years I’d been pretending he didn’t exist.

  Five years of trying to live, destroyed in five small seconds. All the memories of our time together came flooding back to hit me square in the chest, and I hadn’t even laid eyes on him yet. The very thought of seeing him made me hyperventilate.

  I stared down into two half-made cups of coffee, willing myself to grow some strength, or at the very least, some backbone to go out and hold my head up high, but I knew that all of that was wishful thinking.

  My Alex was standing out there. My Alex.

  How could I be strong around him? He was the one person who had the ability to break me completely. He wasn’t even aware I was nearby, and he was already succeeding. These feelings – the absolute panic and hysteria, the nausea – they were all too much.

  He was too much to me.

  Swallowing down the giant lump in my throat, I growled quietly and closed my eyes to find the fortitude to push myself up and dust myself off. One task at a time – that’s all I had to manage. Open my eyes, pick up the spoon, continue to stir. Push back my shoulders, and try to breathe. Breathing. Breathing was important. In and out. In and out. Feel the oxygen enter my lungs, then let it all out.

  “Excuse me,” Alex called back to Barbara, causing me to flinch and close my eyes like he’d just thrown a spear at my chest.

  “May I help you?” I didn’t miss the flirtatious tone she’d adopted. I could practically see her now: shoulders forward, elbow on desk as she tucked one side of her thick, black hair behind her ear and assessed him. Alex had made an impression on everyone when he was younger. I could only imagine how much he’d perfected that skill in the last few years.

  “I hope so.” The tone of his voice had changed, and where he was once soft, like velvet, he now sounded husky, hoarse and deep. “I was wondering if I could ask you a question. It’s kind of personal.”

  “We like personal around here. Especially me.” Her chair squeaked as she leaned forward, no doubt shuffling her boobs closer together. Jealousy ripped through me with a fierceness I’d not felt since I’d seen him with Bronwyn. I hated it. I hated it beyond all hate.

  Alex huffed out a small laugh in response. “That’s handy for me, Mrs…”

  “Miss Elland.”

  “Miss Elland,” he practically purred. Hearing him speak that way to someone else, someone I knew, was excruciating. Hearing him at all was bad enough. Stupid images of him with other women over the years suddenly made my legs begin to shake again, and the air around me became thick and hot. The problem I had was that there was nowhere to go except out the way I came in… And I couldn’t let him see me.

  “Call me Barbara.”

  He huffed out a laugh again, and it was then that I realised that he didn’t sound like my Alex at all. There was a cockiness to him now – an arrogance, and above all else, an absolute certainty that he had Barbara in the palm of his hand.

  Which he did.

  Arsehole.

  “Barbara. Listen. I don’t mean to pry, and you can tell me to go away if this seems like a strange thing for a stranger to ask, but…”

  “Go on.”

  “I was wondering what perfume you were wearing.”

  “My perfume?” she asked before she obviously lifted her own wrist to her nose and inhaled sharply. “I’m afraid I’m not wearing any today, young man. Unless you count the Eau de Fabulous I wake up wearing each morning.”

  “You’re not wearing any perfum
e?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?” I didn’t catch Barbara’s answer that time. The mumbled words exchanged between the two of them were too low for me to pick up clearly, probably because everything inside my body was currently screaming at me to run away. I was just about to turn and face the music when the sound of hands slapped against the reception desk made me jump again. “My mistake. Sorry to trouble you.”

  “Your mistake?” Barbara called after him.

  “I thought I smelled something that reminded me of someone I used to know.”

  The silence held itself in the air like a swinging pendulum for quite some time as my mouth stayed open in surprise, while both my hands pressed into my stomach.

  The smell of my own perfume suddenly seemed to rise from my skin and drift under my nose, just to tease me, as did the realisation that I’d been wearing the same fragrance for over six years now. It had been Lizzy’s favourite. It reminded me of her.

  “Old memories?” Barbara asked, unable to hide the sympathy and understanding in her voice.

  “Something like that,” he eventually answered.

  “I imagine a handsome man like you attracts a lot of attention. She must have been very special for her to stay with you that way.”

  There was that pause again, and with my eyes closed, I imagined the old Alex and the face he could possibly be making. I remembered the way he wore his indecision well – half annoyed at himself, half too curious to care. A smile tried to tug on the corner of my mouth before I banished it.

  “She was. I imagine she still is.”

  “The one that got away, Mr. Law?”

  “Alex,” he corrected. “Alex Law.” Even the sound of his name as confirmation had my hands pushing farther into the flesh of my stomach. “And please, ignore me. It’s probably my mind playing tricks on me. Miss Elland, I thank you for your time.”

  “Anytime, darling.”

  “Mr. Law?” came another voice – a voice I knew well as Dr. Cleveland’s. “If you’d both like to come this way, I’m ready for you now.”

  I listened to three pairs of feet moving forward.

  I waited until I heard the door close, too.

  Then I bent over and curled my arms around my legs until I was in some kind of balanced foetal position, trying to remember how to breathe, and more importantly, how to stop myself from shaking.

  I must have lost track of time, because before I had a chance to stand up and dust myself off, Barbara was swinging herself around the doorframe in search of me.

  “That coffee you made me is so hot, it’s burning my mouth,” she began to joke.

  Looking up through cautious eyes, I could only imagine how I looked to her. Lucky for me, I didn’t need to say anything at all. Her lips parted as she stared at me, and then, as though all the pennies were dropping at once, Barbara glanced over her shoulder to where Alex had been standing, then back at me again. A few repetitions of that movement and she eventually gave in, bringing her body down beside mine before looking up at me with sadness in her eyes.

  “Oh, shit, Natalie.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Go easy. That’s your third in the space of an hour,” Barbara warned me as she lowered her lips to her glass of vodka and orange.

  I stared into the bottom of my tumbler like it contained all the answers to every life question I’d ever had. It didn’t. It just contained whiskey. Whiskey! Who the hell drank whiskey at six o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon?

  Me, apparently.

  “I’m okay,” I croaked before I cleared my throat and slammed my glass back on the table.

  “Honey, you’re a terrible liar.”

  I peeked up through my lashes, gifting her with my best be-careful-what-you-say glare, even though it probably came off as pathetic and as weak as it felt. “So I’ve been told.”

  Barbara turned away from me, choosing to glance around the slightly pretentious surroundings of Veronica’s bar. It wasn’t our usual spot if we chose to go for a cheeky glass of Pinot Grigio after working hours, but for some reason tonight, it seemed to fit. Several storeys above the streets of Leeds didn’t feel like far enough away from reality, actually. If I could have, I’d have buried my head in the clouds and stayed there.

  “Can I ask you a question, Natalie?”

  I sighed, choosing to circle my glass in my hand as I waited for her to go on, regardless of my response.

  “Why would anyone choose to have their eyebrows painted on in a way that made them look permanently angry?” she asked seriously, her frown fixed on her face as she watched several women walk past us, all identical clones of one another.

  There wasn’t anything to do other than laugh at that. I knew exactly what she was talking about. Every woman in this bar was dressed in a low-cut dress to showcase their fake boobs, wearing matching, forever-surprised tattooed eyebrows above their eyes. It wasn’t quite the question I’d been expecting, though.

  “I don’t know, Babs,” I started. “Maybe that’s their biggest focus in life – achieving the ultimate arch.”

  “They’re all just trying to find their Marcus.” She grinned.

  Normally, I would have agreed with her enthusiasm. Mainly because she was right in what she was saying. I had been lucky to land Marcus as my own. I knew it as much as she reminded me of it, but just the mention of his name suddenly had me feeling guilty. Not because I’d done anything wrong, but because my mind automatically went to that morning with Alex. It went to the sound of his voice and the uncontrollable reactions I’d had. That’s where the guilt set in.

  “Hey,” she said in an usually soft voice. Her hand stretched out to mine, covering the back of it while she tilted her head to one side and gave me that look of hers again – that motherly one. “It’s okay to react to an ex, you know. It doesn’t make you a bad person.”

  “No?”

  “You spent a portion of your life on that man. You gave him a part of you that you’d never given anyone else before. It doesn’t matter how long it lasted, or even how it ended. It’s bound to shake you up when you come face to face with him again.”

  “Face to face?” I looked back up at her, unable to hide the sadness in my eyes. “Can you imagine how I’d have reacted had I seen him? I was a mess just from hearing his voice.”

  “Yes, well…”

  I frowned as she shuffled in her seat, tugging down on her dress with her free hand as she suddenly found everything else around us more interesting than me.

  “What?” I asked quietly. “What is it?”

  Sighing, she turned her attention back to me and rolled her big, brown eyes. “Let’s just say it probably wouldn’t have done you any favours had you seen him.”

  “He looks that good, huh?” I cringed.

  “Honey, there’s good, and then there’s good.”

  “Not helping,” I mumbled, pulling my hand away from hers to lower my head into both my palms. I could only imagine how the years had improved on his perfection. The shadowy stubble along his jaw would just make him stronger. The experience would shine from his hazel eyes, and his swagger… I was certain that had a whole new tilt to it. “What am I going to do, Barbara? If he’s on Cleveland’s books now, chances are that I’m going to see him again at some point.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  I peeked up from under my hands and waited for her to go on. I saw no way out at that point, so any guidance she could give me would be more than appreciated.

  “We didn’t know what we were looking for before this morning,” she went on, starting to explain.

  “You’d think I’d see a Mr. Nicholas Law on the appointments clear enough.”

  “He wasn’t listed as Mr. Law, though, was he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He was down as a number, a referral from St. Anne’s. It seems Cleveland is seeing Nicholas Law as a favour for a friend.”

  “Cleveland has friends?”

  �
�Apparently so.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “Please. You think I don’t stick my nose in where it isn’t wanted?”

  “Okay. When did you find all this out?”

  “While you were dry retching in the toilets for forty-five minutes after they’d left the building.”

  “Oh.”

  “Exactly.” Taking another slow sip of her drink, Barbara glanced around the bar one more time before she dropped her glass down. “He’s got to be in some kind of serious trouble for Cleveland to step in. He’s the best addiction counsellor north of London.”

  I shook my head in the palms of my hands and closed my eyes. I didn’t even want to think about all the issues, trials and tribulations Alex’s father had got them all stuck in since I’d been sent away from them for good. I didn’t want to think about it because I was in danger of wanting to know more, and look where that left me last time. He wasn’t mine to save anymore. I wasn’t his, either. I had to remember that.

  “He’s an arsehole,” was all I could mumble before I pushed my hair away from my face, raised my shoulders, and blew out a heavy breath. “That’s all any of us need to know.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Too complicated.” I picked up my glass then and downed the final mouthful of whiskey too quickly. It burned my throat and had me gasping like I was having an asthma attack. “I should get going.”

  “Are you going to be okay, doll?”

  I blew all the air out of my cheeks and slapped my hands on my thighs in defeat. Was I going to be okay? Sure. I’d survived before and I’d do it again. I’d do it because I had a better grip on my life now. I was certain of what and who I wanted, and I wasn’t about to let one, barely there, glimpse of Alex Law’s life change that for me.

  My nod was a little too frantic as I looked back up into Barbara’s eyes.

  “Have I told you how grateful I am to have you in my life?” I asked her in an unusual display of affection.

  “Not recently. I like diamonds, flowers and Yankee Candles.”

  “On my salary? I’ll pick you some daisies from my parents’ back garden.” I chuckled.