by Lucy Clark
Even though he wasn’t using the word research, which she appreciated, there was no other way to really disguise that what they were planning to embark on was, in fact, a research project. She sighed at the words.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘It’s nothing.’ She looked at her menu. ‘I think I’ll have the gnocchi.’
‘It’s not “nothing”. Tell me. What’s wrong?’ He reached across the table and touched her hand but the touch felt wrong, clinical and very…researchy. She tried not to recoil because deep down inside she really did want this to work. She wanted to be with Arthur. He was her knight in shining armour but right now he felt more like her lab partner.
‘My parents were scientists.’
‘I know.’
‘Researchers.’
‘I know.’ He nodded, a small confused smile on his lips.
‘They spent more time in their labs, studying the contents of microscope slides, mass-spectrometers and Petri dishes than they did with me.’
‘I know.’
‘As parents, they were married to their work, and as a child I could accept that.’
‘What’s your point?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want this…’ she gestured to the invisible air between them ‘…to become an experiment. I don’t want to be analysing every little thing, to be taking notes, comparing data.’
‘I’m not saying that’s exactly what we’ll be doing.’
‘But you said we should cautiously investigate the possibility of the attraction we feel.’
‘Maybelle, what is it you’re trying to say?’
‘I don’t know.’ She closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. ‘Perhaps we’re trying too hard. Perhaps coming out to dinner was a mistake.’ She glanced around them, feeling highly exposed and self-conscious. ‘I’m not good in open spaces. I’m not good at making small talk. I’m not good at these normal things.’
‘You agreed to come to the restaurant. We could have stayed home.’ He spread his arms wide.
‘I know, Arthur. I’m trying to do the normal things but the more I try the more I realise that I’m not good at the normal things. I’m good at the abnormal things and—’
‘May I take your order?’
At the sudden appearance of the white-aproned waiter Maybelle almost jumped through the roof, he’d startled her so much. Her knee hit the underneath of the table, causing the glassware to clink and the silverware to rattle. She had a fork clenched in her hand, ready to use it as a weapon if she needed to.
‘I’m s-sorry…’ the waiter stammered.
‘You startled her,’ Arthur remarked, smiling at the surprised man. At the same time Arthur leaned over and placed his hand over Maybelle’s clenched fist, almost willing her to relax. ‘Perhaps you could give us a few more minutes, please?’
‘Of course, sir.’ The waiter disappeared and Arthur tried to meet Maybelle’s gaze. When he did, he realised she’d shut down. She wasn’t going to open up and talk to him, not here, not now, not tonight.
‘We can leave, if you’d like,’ he said.
‘We can?’ She seemed surprised at that, unsure of the social parameters of dining in a restaurant. ‘OK, then.’ Without another word, she dropped the fork, collected her bag and coat, and walked quickly towards the door.
Arthur didn’t want to delay too long in the restaurant, quickly apologising to the waiter and seating hostess, in case Maybelle left and drove home without him. On the drive back to their apartments she was silent. It wasn’t until she was at the foot of the stairs, ready to head up to her apartment, that she ventured to say anything.
‘I’m sorry, Arthur. I thought I could do this.’
‘That’s OK. Perhaps we should have eaten at home, at least until you get the hang of being out in public spaces and—’
‘I meant you and I. I thought I could do this—that I could be impartial, try to see whether the feelings we have are residual or something more…but I can’t.’ She started up the stairs.
‘Maybelle, wait. It’s just a trial run. Remember we’d agreed that if we both feel it isn’t going to work, we’ll go back to being just friends.’
‘I’m sorry, Arthur. I can’t do this.’ She continued up the stairs.
‘That seems to be your answer for anything you don’t like, Maybelle,’ he called. ‘“I can’t do this”. Well, I have a question for you. What can you do? Huh? Let me tell you what you can do. You can tie a man up in knots and make him question his previous rational decisions. You can confuse a man so he doesn’t know which way is up and you can break his heart if you continue to walk away.’
Maybelle tried not to listen, tried not to hear the pain in his voice, but his words pierced her heart. She leaned over the balcony and looked at him. ‘“I can’t do this” means… I’m empty, Arthur. I have nothing to give you and the last thing I want to do is to infect you with my emptiness. All my life, every step and decision I’ve made has been analysed, first by my parents and then by the government. And the one time—the one time I allowed myself to throw caution to the wind, my mother died.’ Maybelle choked back tears.
‘I was held to ransom for two and a half days, locked in a dark room with dirty water offered as my only means of sustenance, while my father went through the hell of being blackmailed. Finally, I was rescued with government operatives shooting dead my captors. I saw all that and once I was free I had to deal with the task of burying my mother. After that, I had to care for my father because he didn’t know how to live without my mother.’
She shook her head. ‘Relationships are hard. I know this and when I say I can’t do this, I mean that I can’t…’ She stopped, her voice breaking along with her heart. ‘I can’t open myself up to you in case I lose you, too.
‘The government’s told me that the threat to my life is over but what if it isn’t? That might just be paranoia talking but what if they come after me again, thinking I know the magic formula to give them their undetectable serum? What if they come after me…through you? I can’t let that happen. I can’t and I won’t.’
With that, she turned and headed into her apartment, closing the door firmly on any relationship between herself and Arthur.
*
It was almost impossible for Maybelle to sleep at all that night, tossing and turning in her bed as visions of the life she’d always dreamed she’d have with Arthur floated around her. Part of her wanted to accept what he was offering with both hands, to run to him and wrap her arms around him and never let him go. The other part of her saw the two of them running from people who were chasing them in big black cars. Arthur was holding their daughter in his arms and she held their baby son as they ran.
Finally she managed to get them to safety, where they were no longer being followed, and Arthur looked at her with anger and hatred in his eyes, telling her this was all her fault, that he was taking the children from her so they could be kept safe. That he didn’t want her or the trouble she’d brought into his life any more, that he didn’t love her.
‘Arthur! Arthur! No! No!’
Waking with a start, she sat bolt upright in bed, her face wet with tears. Her heart was thumping wildly against her chest as though she’d just run a marathon. It took a good five minutes for her to even move her head, her eyes still wide with fear as she looked at the clock. Four o’clock in the morning. That couldn’t be right. She felt as though she hadn’t slept at all. As she tried to untangle herself from the bedsheets, she realised she was covered in sweat.
It wasn’t the terror of things that had happened to her that was causing her to feel so incredibly empty but the realisation that her life without Arthur would be worse than anything she had experienced.
‘I love him,’ she whispered as she walked slowly out to the kitchen, the coolness of the morning soothing her over-warm skin. ‘I honestly love that man and I will never love another the way I love him.’ Speaking the words out loud as she poured herself a glass of water onl
y made her accept the depth of her feelings for Arthur. He was her other half. He was the man she’d measured all others against and she’d ruined it.
How she was supposed to keep working alongside him when she felt this way, she had no idea. She’d faced some difficult things in her life, hiding, changing her name, kidnappings, her mother’s death and watching her father fade away to nothing. She’d been taught how to survive in a dark and sinister world but nothing had prepared her for the world of light and happiness. How was she supposed to survive?
Sitting on her lounge, she sipped the water and contemplated her dream. Bad things had happened and Arthur had blamed her. The look in his eyes, the look of hatred had been enough to scare her far more than anything else in her life ever had. She knew it had been a dream but dreams could come true, especially bad dreams.
Shaking her head, she tried hard to clear her thoughts, to push the panic of never having a life with Arthur out of her mind, and headed to the shower. She was up and awake, so she may as well get ready and head to the hospital. At least there she could bury her thoughts about Arthur in work…unless she saw him there…unless she was called to work alongside him.
‘What am I going to do?’ she wailed as she stepped beneath the water, the soothing droplets doing nothing to ease the tension in her shoulders. After her shower, she dressed and contemplated eating something, but when her stomach churned at the thought she grabbed her bag and keys and headed out the door.
She was halfway down the stairs when Arthur’s front door opened. Reacting on instinct, Maybelle immediately turned and sprinted up the stairs back to her apartment, hoping he hadn’t seen her.
‘Maybelle?’
The sound of her name being called made her speed up, made her want to hide inside her apartment for the rest of her life. She managed to make it to the door but was fumbling for her keys when he took the stairs two at a time, coming to stand next to her just as she fitted the key into the lock.
‘Maybelle, you can’t start avoiding me.’
‘Yes, I can.’ She unlocked her door and went to go inside, but dropped her bag as she struggled to pull the key out of the lock. Arthur, being the incredible man he was, graciously stepped inside her open door, holding it for her while she picked up her bag and removed her key from the lock.
‘Can’t sleep either, eh?’
‘I can sleep.’ Her answer was defiant as she walked back into her apartment, knowing there was no way of avoiding him now. The conversation she didn’t want to have was about to happen and she tried to steel her nerves by walking into the kitchen and switching the kettle on. Why couldn’t they just go on living their separate lives, finding a sort of weird level of friendship so they could at least work together without things being awkward?
‘I know you can sleep. I carried you to my spare bed, remember. You were out of it.’
Maybelle pointed her finger at him. ‘Don’t be cute.’
‘That’s a little difficult given my natural charm and charisma but for you…I’ll try.’ He leaned against the kitchen bench, watching as she moved around the kitchen. She wasn’t sure what she was doing. She was trying to be busy, to make them tea or coffee or something, because she didn’t want to talk about things, didn’t want to face the truth of the situation.
‘Maybelle.’ He paused. She knew he was waiting for her to look at him but she couldn’t. ‘Honey—’
‘Don’t call me that.’ Maybelle picked up the cloth and started wiping down the bench, completely avoiding the area where he stood. She was being a complete coward and that wasn’t like her but when it came to facing the truth about how she felt about him, a coward she was. Putting the cloth aside, she clasped her hands together and turned her back to him. Closing her eyes, she counted to ten but still her heart continued to race and her brain refused to acknowledge any sort of rational thought apart from the tattooed rhythm of the words, I love you. I love you, I love you.
‘Maybelle. I just have one question for you.’
‘Hmm?’ She opened her eyes and forced herself to look at him.
‘Did you mean it when you said you couldn’t lose me again?’
Maybelle thought for a moment, trying desperately to remember exactly what she’d said to him last night. She’d been distraught and over-emotional. Regardless, she knew the words were true. She would be devastated if something were to happen to Arthur, especially on her account.
‘Yes.’
‘And you can’t enter into a relationship with me in case you let me down or hurt me, is that right?’
‘Uh…’ She went to pick up the cloth, to try and clean something again, but with her heart continuing to thump out that I love you tattoo, making her breathless with longing, wiping the bench seemed so incredibly meaningless. In fact, everything in life seemed incredibly meaningless…without Arthur. ‘Uh…yes.’ She nodded for emphasis.
‘Oh, honey.’ He took a step towards her and she immediately took one back. ‘Will you just stand still for a second?’ He took another step towards her and she remained where she was, her mouth dry, her knees turning to jelly and her every nerve ending in her body zinging to life as he slipped his hands around her waist. ‘You’re far more messed up in the head than I thought.’ He brushed a kiss across her lips. ‘But I love you, Maybelle. I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving you and I don’t think I ever will. It’s for ever, this love. For ever. I offer it to you, with all my heart and with no conditions. My love is yours. Unconditionally.’
‘Unconditional love?’ she breathed the words, unable to believe that what her father had told her to find, she’d actually succeeded in doing. ‘You love me? Really love me?’
‘I’ll prove it to you.’ Arthur drew her closer and pressed his lips to hers. The way he kissed her, the way his lips held firm to hers for a long and powerful moment, the way he made her realise he wasn’t going to let her go was also a promise. It was as though he was promising to always be there for her and Maybelle was having a difficult time wrapping her mind around that concept.
‘But…’ she managed when he eased back for a moment. ‘But what about your career? Your research projects? You already have funding for one of them. That, combined with your work in the ED and running the ED and researching and career-ladder climbing and…when are you going to have time for a relationship?’
‘I thought long and hard last night about everything you’d said, and I realised that what you were trying to say in the restaurant was that you didn’t want to take second place to my work.’
‘I spent all my life being way down the list of my parents’ priorities.’ Her voice was soft.
‘I know, honey.’
‘I can’t live the rest of my adult life being way down on your priority list. I can’t do it.’ She shook her head as though to emphasise her words.
‘You won’t be. The re—the scientific investigation projects are each only six months in duration. Both of them will be conducted one day a week in the research laboratories attached to the hospital…and I’ll be needing specialised staff to assist me with the investigations.’ He looked deeply into her eyes. ‘I know you’ve been through hell and all because of scientific research, honey, but the areas I’m looking into are nothing like the research your parents were conducting.’
‘I know that. Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I know that not all research is bad? That the majority of research projects don’t lead to life-threatening situations? The rational side of me understands that. However, the irrational side of me, the one that has been fed through surviving in such difficult circumstances…the side that makes my stomach churn at the mere thought of entering into any sort of research, tends to become predominant, causing me to behave like a crazy lady.’
He couldn’t help but chuckle softly at her words. ‘You might be a crazy lady, honey, but you’re my crazy lady.’
‘I am?’ He clearly wasn’t put off by what she was saying and that astonished and delighted her.
‘I don’t want you to choose. I want to—’
He pressed his finger to her lips to silence her. ‘I know you’re not asking me to choose. I know you respect my work, not only as a doctor but as an emergency specialist. You get that and I know, once you read my research proposals, you’ll become as passionate about the projects as I am…because I know you. You give and you give and you give, and again that’s just another thing that I love about you.’
Tears had started to well in Maybelle’s eyes at the way he was speaking so passionately, not only about her, and the way he thought she was intelligent, but about his work, and in that one moment Maybelle finally understood the relationship her parents had shared. It had been one of mutual love and respect but also an equal meeting of intelligence.
She couldn’t help herself any longer and threw her arms around his neck and drew his head close to hers until her lips met his in a powerful kiss. She poured all her love into that kiss, and to let him know that she wanted to be with him, to share every aspect of his life.
‘So you love me?’ he asked a while later, and she was astonished to hear the slight hesitation in his tone.
