Spin the Bottle

by Monica McInerney

  She finally delivered the desserts and the cheese, arranging them on the sideboard. ‘Come on over and join us, Lainey,’ Barry called from the head of the table, his guitar across his lap. ‘Sit down here and sing us a song from Australia.’

  ‘I’d love to, really, but I need to get your breakfast things organised.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about that. Sure, we won’t want breakfast till lunchtime tomorrow anyway.’

  ‘No, thanks all the same. I’ve some things to sort out in the kitchen.’ That was the understatement of the year, she thought.

  Adam was wiping down the stove top as she came in. The kitchen was spotless, the dishes done, the floor washed. She shut the door behind her. Too bad if all the guests came down with food poisoning or the roof caved in. Adam was here and they needed to talk.

  ‘All done?’ he asked.

  ‘All done,’ she said. She swallowed. ‘Hello again.’

  ‘Hello, Lainey.’

  The crease appeared in his cheek, the first sign of a smile. She gazed at him, taken aback by how good it felt to be able to look at his face. Not in her mind, for real. He was here.

  ‘Adam, I need to say lots of things to you.’ She needed to hear lots of things too. The idea of Kim was looming very large in her mind. ‘I need to ask you lots of things too.’

  ‘I need to ask you a few things too.’

  The mood had turned wary. ‘Ad, I want to –’

  ‘Hello? Anyone here?’ They were interrupted by a knock at the kitchen door. It was one of the musicians. ‘Sorry, Lainey. We’ve had a bit of an accident with a bottle of red wine.’

  A good hostess would have cared about the carpet, hurried to mop up. To her own surprise as much as the surprise of the guest, she thrust a bottle of soda water and a packet of salt at the man. ‘Here – try that.’ Then she put a chair under the door handle so it couldn’t be opened.

  Adam raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s an interesting approach to hospitality.’

  She was too keyed-up to joke. They were standing just a short distance apart, but it didn’t feel right to be any closer yet. ‘Ad, please. I know we’ve lots to talk about but there’s something important I need to say again first.’ There was nothing to do but blurt it out. ‘I’m so sorry. For breaking up with you. For saying those things that morning I left.’

  He was very still, his expression serious now, too. ‘That was a bad morning, Lainey. I couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t believe I had got it all so wrong.’ He paused, looked at her for a long moment. ‘I just couldn’t understand how someone I loved and I thought loved me could say those things. I knew then – I still know – that we could have survived on emails and letters. I loved the idea of it actually, being able to write to you, getting letters from you, amassing a little collection of love letters that we could read to each other when we were old and grey.’

  Lainey kept quiet, much as she wanted to interrupt, to say sorry again. She knew she had to hear all of this.

  He slowly shook his head. ‘It was a very strange time. I was angry with you at first, then I was confused about us, and then I just got sad. Really sad. Then I met Hugh and I realised that you hadn’t told him you’d broken up with me. And I realised you hadn’t told Christine or the others that you’d finished it either. And that gave me some hope that maybe you weren’t too sure about it yourself.’

  ‘That’s why you did the videos?’ she asked softly.

  He nodded. ‘Hugh was very determined about it. He made us a bit of a project of his, I think.’

  She remembered her last phone call with Hugh, how bothered he’d sounded at the thought she might not be here this weekend. Now she understood why. ‘He knew you were coming over here, didn’t he?’

  He nodded again. ‘He drove me to the airport. In your car, actually. His is broken again. Your parents are in on it as well. We had to get the directions for this place and Hugh couldn’t remember where it was.’

  ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble.’

  ‘You’re worth a lot of trouble.’

  She felt a shimmer of hope, before she remembered something else. ‘Ad, I need to ask you about something else, about –’

  ‘Is it about Kim?’

  She nodded.

  ‘There’s not a lot to say about Kim. Not really.’

  She felt like there was something stuck in her throat. Not a lot was too much, as far as she was concerned. ‘I know it’s not really my business, but…’

  He seemed to want to tell her. ‘She called me, about six weeks after you had gone. She suggested we meet for lunch. She had some good ideas about a joint promotion with that wine company she works for.’

  Lainey vowed then and there never to drink their wine again.

  ‘Then we met again, a few times.’

  ‘And?’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Did anything else happen?’ She hated asking the question but she had to know.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Anything… physical?’

  Adam paused. ‘I kissed her. She kissed me. We kissed each other, I suppose.’

  Lainey knew she had gone pale and then turned red. But what right did she have to be upset about it? None at all. ‘And then?’ Did she actually want to know what happened next?

  ‘And then nothing. That was it. We met for lunch once more, but it just wasn’t working. I had a feeling she felt differently, but it was no good. She wasn’t you.’

  Lainey was watching him very carefully. ‘And is that when you decided to come here?’

  ‘I’ve been wanting to come here for a long while. Then your video arrived and I got the first flight I could.’ It was his turn to ask the questions. ‘Tell me about the man you mentioned on the video, Lainey. What happened with him?’

  She swallowed. ‘There’s not a lot to tell.’

  A pause. ‘Did you sleep with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you kiss him?’

  ‘No. Well, he kissed me once, just a peck on the cheek, after his niece was found safe. After she’d gone missing.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Adam, I don’t know what happened. I was so confused about everything. I think I just needed the distraction, talked myself into getting some strange sort of crush on him.’

  ‘A crush?’

  She nodded.

  A smile had started in his eyes. ‘And this would have been about the same time you started listening to the Osmonds and trying on make-up for the first time?’

  She frowned. ‘What?’

  The smile reached his lips. ‘It’s just that a crush sounds so teenage.’

  ‘It felt a bit teenage. And I’m too old for crushes, aren’t I?’

  ‘Too old, but still lovely.’ He moved closer to her, tucked the hair behind her ears. ‘How are you, Lainey?’

  The feel of his hand was doing extraordinary things to her body. She told the truth. ‘I feel better now you’re here.’

  ‘I feel better now I’m here too.’ He moved even closer, gently touched her cheek. ‘I’ve missed you, Lainey. Things were very dull without you around the place. You have this way of walking into a room that lifts the colours for me somehow. Things seem brighter for me when you’re here.’ He gave a soft laugh. ‘And you surprise me. I never know what you’re going to do or say next. And that’s why I thought it would be a wonderful thing to live with you, to spend the rest of my life with you. Because whatever else it would be, it would never be dull.’

  ‘You thought it would be?’ He was talking in past tense?

  ‘I still think it. I’m thinking about it now.’ He touched her chin, lifting it slightly. Then he leaned down and kissed her, a soft, sure, beautiful kiss. ‘What do you think, Lainey? Did you mean everything you said on the video?’

  ‘Every word of it.’ She was momentarily thrown by the big smile he gave her, but she needed to explain further. ‘It just took me a long time to realise it. I got scared, Ad. I still am a little. How do I know it’s all going t
o work out between us? How do I know I won’t do something that hurts you again?’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel.’

  ‘You do? You’ve had those doubts too?’

  He nodded solemnly. ‘I’ve been worried sick. How do I know you won’t wake up tomorrow morning covered in boils and be so hideous I can’t even look at you?’

  ‘Adam…’

  ‘How do I know I won’t develop some ailment that makes my laugh sound like a donkey braying?’

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘Or how do I know I won’t suddenly decide ELO is my favourite band?’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. I know those sorts of things won’t happen.’

  ‘They might. And if they did, we’d just deal with them. I promise I’d learn to love your boils.’ He gazed down at her, held her gently against him. ‘Lainey, my angel, you’ll never be able to control everyone and everything. But if you just let things happen sometimes, put down your barriers now and then, let things take their own course, good things can happen as well as bad things, you know.’

  ‘Like what good things?’

  ‘This.’ He kissed her. ‘And this.’ He kissed her again. ‘Lainey, I don’t know for sure what will happen with us either. But can’t we try? Take a risk? See how it goes day by day? We can have a business review meeting once a year if you like, see how things are, set an agenda, record the minutes, set some objectives. Or we can just think, what the hell – let’s give it a whirl and have some fun along the way.’

  ‘Just some fun?’

  He pulled her in close against him and kissed her once more. ‘No. Let’s try for plenty of fun.’

  The kiss lasted for a long time, weeks of longing and hurt and misunderstandings dissolving in the feel of their bodies close against one another. She slipped her hands up under his T-shirt, feeling his warm skin, her eyes closing in pleasure as his hand moved up under her top, cupped her breast. They were pressed hard against the kitchen bench. Only the thought of the others in the room beyond stopped them from taking the next step.

  She broke away first, slowly, reluctantly. This was real. This wasn’t in her mind, and it was even better than she had remembered. She noticed his eyes had darkened, the way they always did when they were about to make love.

  ‘Adam, I want to give you something.’

  ‘Yes please, whatever it is.’

  She took off the bracelet she’d been wearing and offered it to him. He took it, turned it around in his hand. ‘You really have been wearing it all this time?’

  She nodded.

  He was puzzled. ‘But you don’t want it now?’

  ‘Yes, I do. But I’m also asking you a question.’

  It dawned on him then as he looked at the words on the bracelet. Come live with me and be my love. She watched as a smile slowly appeared on his face. ‘Do you mean that? You’re sure?’

  She nodded. ‘If you still want it.’

  ‘I want it very much.’

  ‘But we’re still going to be apart for months.’ A hope rose. ‘Unless you’re here to stay?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wish I was, but no, the most I could manage is a week. But we’ll cope, Lainey. We can talk as much as we can while I’m here, stay up all night, look at each other all day long, lock ourselves away. And after I’ve gone we can still phone and email and write to each other. In fact, I can write some letters for you while I’m here and all you’ll have to do is post them. I could pre-write some emails too, I know exactly what I’d like you to say. We could even pre-record some phone conversations.’

  He meant it, she realised. He was completely sure that everything would be fine. She gazed up at him. ‘You’re quite mad, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not really.’ He leaned down and whispered into her ear. ‘Just mad about you.’

  The next morning she woke early. She looked at the clock – six a.m. She’d have to get up soon and get the breakfasts started for her guests. Mind you, they hadn’t finished up till very late, from what she’d heard. It would probably be some time before she saw them. She and Adam had joined them for a little while, then gone up to her bedroom. She stretched luxuriously, remembering all that had happened after that. There was a lot of communicating that could be done without words, she’d realised.

  It was quiet outside, the only noise in the room the soft sound of Adam’s breathing. She rolled over and looked at him, asleep beside her. She could look at him all morning, stay in bed with him all day. ‘I missed you so much,’ he’d whispered during the night, as they lay arms wrapped around each other, bodies tangled. ‘We’re going to have to do this six times a day, you realise, until we catch up on that lost time.’

  ‘Let’s try for seven. Get our averages up,’ she’d whispered back. With a fingertip, she traced his face now. She moved the sheet, touching him on his chest, moving lower and lower. He stirred.

  ‘Ad, are you awake?’

  ‘Mmm.’ He stretched out an arm, wrapping it around her, pulling her naked body close against his. She lay beside him, their bodies stretched against each other. She kissed one closed eye, then another, then his nose, his lips, the kiss quickly deepening into something passionate. His hands moved down her back in slow, stroking circles, moving further down. Eyes shut, he rolled slowly until he was on top of her. He lifted his lips from hers and began tracing a slow, gorgeous path down her body to her breasts and beyond…

  It was nine o’clock the next time she looked at the clock. She stretched again, aware of every inch of her body, feeling completely kissed and loved and sated. A noise downstairs stopped her movement and she lay there, listening for a moment. It sounded like someone was in the kitchen. She lay still a moment longer, hearing laughter, voices in conversation. Her guests were already up. Oh hell, what sort of hostess was she? She rolled back the sheet, about to get up, moving slowly so she didn’t wake Adam.

  A brown arm shot out of the bed covers and held her around the waist. ‘Oh, no you don’t. I didn’t fly halfway across the world for you to abandon me on our first morning back together.’

  ‘Ad, I have to,’ she laughed. ‘I need to cook their breakfasts.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  ‘I do. That’s part of the deal.’

  ‘No. I explained to Barry last night that breakfast would be a little late this morning on account of some special circumstances. And when I explained what the special circumstances were he said he couldn’t possibly trouble you and they would be perfectly happy to make their own breakfast.’

  She remembered him talking to the musician the previous night, the two of them having quite a conversation. ‘And what did you say those special circumstances were?’

  ‘I just told him the truth. I said that I loved you and that I hadn’t seen you for many months and that I planned to keep you in bed all day long until you said yes.’

  ‘Yes? To what?’

  ‘To marrying me.’

  Her heart flipped. ‘And if I don’t say yes during the day?’

  He pulled her body close against his and kissed her gently. ‘Then we’re staying here all night long as well.’

  EPILOGUE

  Three months later

  ‘SO WHAT DO YOU THINK, Chalkie? What about you, Cheese? Do you love your new home?’

  Lainey roamed through the house with her niece on one hip, her nephew on the other. Behind her Brendan and Rosie were still unloading the large hire car. There were suitcases and boxes all around them – they seemed to have brought everything they owned in Melbourne with them.

  Rosie was all smiles, yet less rabbit-like than Lainey had ever noticed before. ‘Lainey, you didn’t tell us it was this beautiful.’

  ‘It wasn’t this beautiful when I first got here, to be honest. But it looks good, doesn’t it?’

  Rosie was entranced by it. Not just the B&B, but the countryside all around. It was a beautiful October day, mid-autumn, the sky a bright crisp blue, the orange and red of the leaves in the lane nearby almost
glowing. Inside, the warm walls and open fires were cosy and welcoming.

  To Lainey’s dismay, Chalk suddenly burst into a high-pitched wailing, Cheese joining in moments later. She hurriedly handed them both over to Brendan, picking up the suitcases he’d been carrying. ‘Have you left anything in Melbourne at all?’ she asked.

  ‘Not a lot,’ Brendan said with a grin. ‘Once we decided we just got cracking.’

  He had rung her six weeks previously, sounding brighter than he had in a long time. He’d launched straight into the reason for his call. ‘You know how Dad’s insurance money’s finally come through. Well, Rosie and I started to wonder if there might not be the same urgency about selling the B&B. So we went around to Ma and Dad a few nights ago and they’ve said I should discuss it with you and if you think it’s workable and you still want to come home, then I’m going to resign. We’ll come over as soon as we can and take over the B&B. Just for a while, to see if we’re cut out for that kind of life. What do you think?’

  They’d talked for nearly an hour, Brendan in Melbourne in his living room, Chalk crying in the background, Lainey in the B&B in Ireland, sitting on the stairs, looking out of the hall window. Outside, Rod Stewart had crossed her line of vision, stepping gingerly through the flowers in the garden. She’d guiltily noticed he was carrying a bird in his mouth, and turned away to concentrate again on Brendan’s voice. By the end of the call, it was agreed. She would continue with her current series of theme weekends, but not make plans for any more until Brendan, Rosie and the twins arrived. Brendan had hesitated when she’d asked if he wanted her to keep taking bookings for them. ‘I’m not sure if we’ll keep doing the weekends the way you have been, Lainey. Would you mind about that?’ he’d asked. She’d realised she didn’t mind. She’d already proved she could make a success of them. And it sounded like Brendan and Rosie had plenty of ideas of their own, in any case.

  That night over dinner, after the children had finally settled, Lainey heard some of them.