by Gabi Moore
It was a beautiful, handmade wooden horse on wheels. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. Rather than being painted, the different colors of the mane and the hooves and the eyes were all done in different colored woods, all polished to a high shine and worked and carved with great care. It was like something from a museum.
I tried hard to swallow the lump in my throat.
“Dear? Who was it?” he yelled form the kitchen.
“Nobody. I mean, someone left a gift.”
He came into the living room and looked down at it with a quizzical expression.
“That’s odd,” he said after a while.
“It’s a wedding gift, maybe? I guess it’s for Nicky…” He took it in his hands and turned it over in his hands, trying to look for the catch. “Weird. What’s the point?”
“What do you mean, what’s the point?”
“Well, obviously it’s too nice for a child to play with. Kind of a pointless gift, don’t you think? Strange.”
He put it down again.
“I like it,” I said quickly, and picked it up again.
Uninterested in it any further, he left the room to go and finish making the cocoa. I stared at it, long and hard. He had been thinking about me. He had been thinking about …Nicky. I tried to wipe away the tears that prickled my lower lashes. Too little, too late. Anthony was right, what was the ever-loving point? Of any of it? My head was a mess.
“Don’t worry about cocoa for me, dear” I yelled towards the kitchen. “I think I want to go and try on my wedding dress.”
“Try it on? Are you worried it doesn’t fit?”
I pretended I didn’t hear him and went to my bedroom, and closed the door behind me. With eyes bleary with tears I pulled out the giant box from the closet and lifted out the great, poufy mess that was my wedding gown. I had gone with the gathered bodice after all. And the beaded belt. And the regular frilled satin garter belt and veil that looked like curtain mesh.
I absentmindedly pulled it on, zipping myself in. I thought of his face. His gorgeous, deep eyes, and the way I felt so perfectly naked when he ran them over him. About his soft, warm voice and the way he had stood before me, nearly nude, all of his strong young body hot and hard for me. I thought of his clever, well-worn hands. I thought of his breath.
I grabbed my phone and sent him a message. The first in weeks and weeks.
Kat: Thank you for the gift
I sent it, feeling as though it simply went out into the void, another pointless gesture in my pointless life. But the void responded. Almost instantly.
Mark: Do you like it?
I stood there, crying in my stupid wedding dress. Of course I liked it. I loved it with all my heart.
Kat: It’s beautiful
I flopped down onto the bed and the voluminous skirts puffed up around me like a marshmallow.
Mark: I miss you
Kat: I’m getting married tomorrow
He didn’t reply for a good five minutes.
Mark: I miss you
It was honest, at least. I missed him too. But so what? Sometimes the right things in life are the hardest to do.
Mark: Why are you doing this? It doesn’t make any sense
Kat: Remember you said that sometimes you do things and only understand why you did them later on? Maybe it’s like that
I hit send. I didn’t believe a word of what I’d written, not really. He didn’t reply. The screen went dark and so did my heart. What did I expect, anyway?
I wiped away my tears.
All at once the bedroom door came swinging wide open and Anthony stood there, doorknob in hand, staring at me like I had I was some kind of space alien wearing lace and a tiara. I made a lame effort to cover up the dress with my hands or make a dash to hide behind the door, but he just stood and gawked at me.
“Anthony! You’re not supposed to see me!” I cried out, dismayed that he was just standing there staring dumbly at me. “Get out!” I said in shock and tried to shoo him away. An expression I didn’t recognize sparked over his face and all at once he slammed the door behind him and took a step towards me.
“Do not speak to me like that.”
His tone frightened me.
“Anthony, I already told you, you’re not supposed to see the bride before the ceremony.”
He rolled his eyes and took a deliberate, bare look at me, all the way up and all the way down again.
“Well, I’ve seen you now, so we can just drop this stupid thing already.”
“It’s not stupid,” I said and hastily started to take everything off again.
He laughed.
“Are you honestly mad? Come on, you’re being silly.”
“If you tell me I’m being silly one more time,” I said, and froze to stare at him. He lifted his eyebrows at me.
“Kat, I don’t know what’s gotten into you. You’ve been acting weird all week, you haven’t been your usual self.”
“No offense, but how do you know what my usual self is?”
I had stuffed the dress back into its box and now stood before him in my underwear. It was the same blue and white set I had worn the day Mark had …well, I knew for a fact I looked good in it. I knew that many men would have crawled through mud to get a glimpse of me wearing this. Yet none of it seemed to register with him at all. He just stared at me with impatience.
“You’re tired. I’m sorry, dear, I know that these little things are important to you.”
“Anthony, we’re getting married in the morning, that’s not a ‘little thing’.”
“Sure, I know, I only mean that …well, I know that women need to have all this stuff, the dress, the wedding and all that.”
I stared at him dumbstruck. That ‘stuff’ had all been his idea.
“I guess I just don’t see the point of all that stuff, that’s all, I’m sorry for being insensitive,” he said, and extended his hand to me.
I nearly laughed out loud.
If I wasn’t doing it for him, then who was I doing it for? Why was I standing with an overpriced ugly white dress in my hands that I’d never wear again?
I stared at him sitting on the bed. I had sold my life for almost nothing, and it turned out to be even less than that. My head began to spin. A thought that I’d been trying to ignore barged its way into my head. The wedding night. Tomorrow night. I saw myself crying quietly into my pillow, wearing dry, tasteful bedclothes, him trying to tell me that he just didn’t see the point of fucking, and that we’d do it later. Maybe.
I took his outstretched hand and he pulled me down beside him on the bed. Without thinking, I leaned into him and tried to kiss him. He reacted violently; pulling away with such force I thought he’d give himself whiplash.
“Kat, what are you…?”
“Just kiss me.”
I lurched forward and planted my lips on his, but he froze, his entire body tightening in my grasp. We proceeded to bumble through a kiss so awkward it nearly hurt. Red-faced, he pulled away from me and fiercely hid his face from mine.
“I don’t get it, just kiss me…” I said. I looked down and saw both his fists balled up on his lap.
“Kat…”
“What’s wrong? For God’s sake we’re going to be husband and wife,” I cried, and reached out for him again. This time he reacted almost by instinct, his hand shooting out to deflect mine, striking me so hard I yelped and recoiled. Instantly he turned a horrified face to me.
“Kat …Kat, I’m so sorry” he whispered.
He looked mortified.
The spot on my arm was still thumping where he had swatted he off. The tears came easily now.
“Are you …are you gay or something? I don’t understand.”
His face only grey redder, contorted with some hidden shame that suddenly seemed out of his control.
“You’re afraid to do that …you’re, you have some sort of …issue?” I said blindly.
For weeks I had blithely pretended that it wasn’t weird as hell
. That it wasn’t strange at all that two engaged people had scarcely touched one another, had ‘kissed’ only a handful of times. It suddenly seemed ludicrous that I had never even seen him naked.
“I’ve made a terrible mistake,” I said. But not to him. I stood up as though sleepwalking, and made for the door.
“What do you mean? Kat, don’t go. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t do this,” I said. The words left my mouth and then the thoughts caught up with them later. “I can’t do this,” I said again, once I realized that I meant them.
“Kat, don’t go.”
I opened the door to leave.
“Kat, sex isn’t everythi--”
I turned to look at him. He suddenly seemed so small. So fragile. What if sex was everything? What if there was nothing worth pursuing in life except that beautiful moment of orgasm, of perfect ecstasy?
“I’m sorry,” I said, and slipped the engagement ring of my finger and gently placed it beside him.
“Kat …you can’t do this…”
I turned to look at him again. No matter how hard I looked I just couldn’t see it. He was a good man. A fair and kind and reasonable man. He just wasn’t Mark.
I turned to leave.
“Kat, don’t go! They won’t refund us for the venue!” he cried out after me.
I threw on a slip dress and some shoes and went to fetch Nicky. She was already playing with the wooden horse in the living room.
“Baby, do you like your new toy?” I said and went over to stroke her brow. “Why don’t we go and show it to aunt Lily and Jess?” Her face lit up and in an instant she had found her little backpack and had put her shoes on, ready to leave.
I looked up and saw him standing in the bedroom doorway, watching me forlornly.
“Don’t be here when I come back” I said quietly. Then I turned on my heel and left.
Chapter Sixteen – Mark
I told everyone I jogged at night because it was less busy. That I didn’t want to be out there running with all the other joggers. But the real reason was that it was myself I was trying to avoid.
Out running, I didn’t have to limp into those dark, wee hours of the morning alone in my studio, long after my hands were tired and my eyes were sore and I had blundered through every distraction I could think of and yet still couldn’t sleep.
I told myself that I was happy she left. I didn’t want her anyway if she was even the tiniest bit conflicted. Call me selfish, I don’t care. But I wanted it all or nothing. I didn’t want to share, not even a little.
I threw down each foot hard into the tarmac, finding some sort of redemption in the fatigue growing in my thigh muscles, in my breath that looked white in the black night.
I turned a corner, swiveled on my toes and kicked off hard, pulling into a sprint, squeezing out the last shivering threads of energy from my muscles. Elbows bent, I whipped my arms through the air and ran like the devil himself was chasing me.
I knew fuck all about love. About women. But I knew how to do the simple stuff. I could make the toughest piece of snakewood submit under my axe. I could tan leather and bolt together a house from scratch if I wanted to. And I could run. I could run like my fucking life depended on it. No matter what, this physical world, this world of sinew and sweat and bone was mine. I always had that.
I felt the rubber under my soles whine and twist under me. I approached the main corner stop and saw the traffic light blink yellow. I clenched my jaw and sped up. I had to make it before it blinked red. Heart pounding, I raced up to the edge but missed it by a few feet, and came skidding to an abrupt halt.
“Fuck!” I said as a few cars trickled up to the traffic light.
And then I saw her.
In her car.
At the intersection.
My head still pounding and sweat pouring, I thought for a second she had to be a hallucination. But she stared right back at me, mouth hanging open. It was me. She was driving to see me.
I melted inside, a million questions on my face. She tightened one hand on the steering wheel and with the other opened the window.
“Mark…” she said.
It was a surreal moment. A car behind her gently revved the engine as we both turned our heads to see the lights on the opposite side turn yellow.
“Just get in!” she blurted and gestured quickly to the passenger seat. The light blinked green and she sped off just as I bunched myself into the seat and slammed the door behind me.
“Good timing, huh?” she said through a nervous little smile as we pulled off, but she kept staring straight ahead. It was dim in the car, and quiet, and cool, but somehow she lit all of that up, like a furnace, and even though she was wearing nothing but a dark grey slip dress, she seemed electric to me. Luminous.
“Were you…?”
“Coming to see you? Yeah. I was.”
I wished she would just turn and look at me with those beautiful eyes of hers.
“You got my gift.”
She briefly looked over to me and then back at the road.
“Nicky loved it,” she said simply.
“Kat, I’m so sorry, for being an ass about that. I don’t know why …I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking. This is hard for me to admit, but maybe you’re right to go for him, you know, maybe I can understand that? I can’t offer you any of that shit, I can’t do the marriage thing, I’m no good with kids …and if you needed that, well, I don’t blame you for making the smart choice, I get that you--”
“I called it all off.”
Silence.
I stared ahead of me, stunned.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking too. You know, always the same thing, over and over – what’s the right thing to do? That’s my whole life, Mark. All of it. I always have to do the ethical thing. The proper thing. But somewhere along the line I lost something… it scares me how easily I nearly did that, nearly got married to him.”
Her voice trailed off as I could see she was fighting back tears.
“Maybe I don’t want to do the right thing anymore. Maybe I want to do the fun thing. The exciting thing. I met you and …god, you scared me.”
We drove on into the night, my mind racing as she picked through her words, the beginning of tears sparkling darkly on her lashes.
“I can’t explain it. But I just couldn’t stop thinking about you. I couldn’t stop thinking about…” she wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. As she did, the hem of her dress slipped up and something white caught my eye.
“What’s that?” I said.
Startled, she looked down at her lap, then, to my surprise, started laughing a low, bizarre laugh. She pulled the dress higher up and I could see it: a white garter belt, complete with bunched up lace and elaborate little pearls.
“I must have forgotten it there …isn’t that the stupidest thing you’ve seen in your life?” she said and burst out laughing. I nodded and stared down at it. I couldn’t help but laugh too. It was a ridiculous thing, actually. She laughed harder.
“That cost me twenty-five dollars. But really, what’s it even for?” she said, and wiped her face again.
We both stopped laughing as she approached the turn off that would take us back to my place. She stared thoughtfully down the road and then clicked the indicator in the other direction, then glided silently away from my street.
“You’re …abducting me?” I asked, still not quite sure what to make of any of this.
A little sideways smile danced on her lips but she said nothing. The traffic around us thinned as we moved deeper into the suburbs, and then after a few minutes, further out still to the edge of a large community dog park, now dark, gate closed and empty.
She angled the car onto some gravel under a few trees, turned off the ignition, and the lights in the car went dark, too. We sat together in silence, listening to one another breath. The white of the garter belt on her almost-whiter thigh stood out bright in the darkness of the car.
God, she had be
autiful legs.
My mind ran and skipped ahead, and I couldn’t stop it flooding with memories of her, of the way she had twisted and gasped, of the way her hair shook as she came, of the way she smelled…
“I think I want to quit my job,” she whispered in the darkness.
“Do it,” I said. The car suddenly became a Catholic confession booth.
“I’m done working in that industry. I’m done with Anthony. With marriage, even. I don’t want to be married anymore.” Then she turned to look at me, almost as though asking for permission.
“Good. Do that,” I said.
“And I want to travel.”
I smiled.
“I want to get rid of all my ugly clothes, I hate them,” she said, raising her voice. “And I want to get a tattoo, and take up dancing… and I want …” She turned to look at me looking at the garter belt. “And I want you.”
We gazed at one another.
I felt dizzy. Here she was, my goddess, my flame-headed idol, in her pale glory and staring right at me, eyes expectant. I had never imagined it would be like this. In some random cul d sac late at night, in her car, me in my old track pants.
“Kiss me,” she said, and in an instant she had pressed eager lips onto mine, and her little tongue flicked hungrily across mine, and I could almost taste how she’d been holding her breath, how nervous she’d been.
I kissed back, exhaling a soft groan and sinking into her lips. Touching her was bliss. She inched over to my side of the car, the seats creaking after her, and placed some of her weight on me. I was instantly, almost painfully hard. I wanted her so badly it nearly made my ears ring. She kissed me and mumbled incoherently, then kissed again, then whispered desperately again and then threw herself into another kiss.
