by Sabre, Mason
“You sound like my husband. He…” She caught herself, mentally cursing her slip. “Chocolate ones then? Double or normal?” She didn’t wait for him to answer. She ordered a bag of five mixed instead. They could have one each. She only wanted to taste them again. Devan could have the rest of them. She had no doubt he would probably give them away, but as long as someone enjoyed them, she didn’t mind.
They chose a table outside the coffee shop. This one was different to Taylor’s. It was still a franchise but owned by a different company. She had seen them around but never tried one. She wasn’t a fan of new things, not unless she thought about it first, but even then, she went back to what she knew.
When the waitress came to take their order, she ordered a regular coffee. The thought of another latte made her feel she would happily throw up. Devan went to order regular too, but she insisted that he order something he liked. She offered him something to eat but he refused. She insisted, though, and the waitress began to look impatient. He finally chose the cheapest sandwich he could find.
“Does your husband know that you pick up the dregs of society from the street?” he asked her as they waited on their order. If she had been drinking something, she would have spluttered it everywhere. Instead, she tried not to choke on her shock at his question.
“He won’t mind,” she said. She shuffled back into the seat, trying to get comfortable and sit properly all at the same time, but it didn’t seem to matter. With Devan there, she was ill at ease, afraid she’d say the wrong thing and make him leave.
“He must be very understanding then. You’ve been married a long time?”
“Just a couple of years,” she said, not offering any more information. Saying ’My husband is dead’ would make her cry. Devan was a stranger. She didn’t want him to wonder or ask why she wasn’t over her husband yet when someone else would be by now. She was a failure, believing everyone considered her weird or pathetic. She didn’t bother with her friends for that reason. She didn’t want to see their pitying faces or hear their words. He’s in a better place. He’d want you to move on and be happy. In truth, that was all a lie and she knew it. He wasn’t in a better place. A better place was with her. And would he really want her to move on? She wouldn’t if it were the other way around. Not that she’d want him sad, but to move on to another person? No. She felt like a fool half the time so she stayed away from everyone, and they stayed away from her. They wouldn’t understand anyway. His death was her fault. No one would ever want to be near her if they knew the truth. She did want to ask Devan about Eric, though, and the work he had done with him. She had no idea how to go about it, though. “You help the homeless?” she began.
He nodded and it was his turn to shift uncomfortably in his seat. “I got into it a few years ago, and now it just seems like the right thing to do.”
“You don’t get tired of it? Think maybe you can get yourself off the streets instead of someone else?”
“What kind of person would do that?”
“Many. Most people think of themselves first.”
The waitress arrived just then with their sandwiches and coffees on a tray. Tara indicated to her which coffee and sandwich was hers and which was Devan’s. “I’m not most people,” he said, and she had to agree. There was something different about him.
He didn’t lift his sandwich until Tara had, and it made her worry at first that he wasn’t going to. She took a slow bite of her own as she watched him, and only when she began to chew, did he lift the small plate to rest on his dirty jeans.
“You helped the girl at Taylor’s?” she asked, daring to steer him towards Eric.
“Sasha? It wasn’t really me. My…” he seemed to be looking for the word to use as he paused. “...friend. He did most of the work.”
“Your friend?”
“I used to have someone who helped me out. Now I don’t.” He took another small bite of his food. “This is really good,” he said, changing the subject. Tara had enough sense to leave it alone. For now.
They ate their sandwiches and drank their coffees. They both glanced up occasionally to watch people walk past, oblivious to Tara and Devan’s presence, too caught up in their own worlds. They chatted between silences that weren’t awkward. If anything, Tara liked it. It was comfortable to just have him there even if they didn’t speak at all. Most of all, he didn’t leave, and she was happy about that.
Afterwards, Devan made a pit stop at the men’s room and then they walked back through the precinct and out onto the main street. The rain was heavier. Tara surveyed Devan and the pathetic coat he wore. It wasn’t going to keep him warm or dry with all those rips. Besides that, they were both still damp from the rain before. Maybe he would get sick. “Where will you stay tonight?” she asked him. “I mean, where is it that you go?”
“There’s places.”
“Places?”
“Yes. Like a first come, first served. We all pick a card and if it’s the right one, we get a bed for the night. I don’t use them really. I give them to others. I don’t need them.”
“Because you have somewhere else to stay?”
“Because I can do without.”
“I have a house,” she said. “It’s got spare bedrooms.”
“It’s okay,” he said, before she could ask him.
“It’ll make me feel like I am doing something good.”
“You bought me coffee and a meal. That is good enough. Wouldn’t your husband draw the line at me staying?”
“He won’t mind.” Her eyes darted away as guilt suffused her. It wasn’t really a lie, she reassured herself. She looked around at the people running up and down trying to get out of the rain. She watched them with umbrellas and hoods. Tonight, they would go home, get dry and have somewhere warm and cosy to sleep. She couldn’t bear the idea of Devan sleeping outside, especially in this weather. “It’s not very far. You can come and help me. My husband isn’t there and I have some things that need moving. You’d be doing me a favour.”
She watched him for an answer. As he started to shake his head, it started to hail, and she couldn’t be happier. Luck was on her side. Great big chunks of rain and ice hammered down and the street cleared as people darted like rats into shop doorways and sheltered crevices between. She turned back to Devan, raising her eyebrows at him.
“Fine,” he said. “Just tonight.”
Chapter Four
Tara sat behind the steering wheel of her car. She had her seatbelt on and her foot was down ready on the accelerator. All she needed to do was turn the key and start the ignition, but she just stared out of the windscreen, frozen. Devan sat in the passenger seat beside her. He fixed his gaze out of the side window and waited. He waited until the silence and lack of movement became uncomfortable. He shifted in his seat to look at her. “Is everything okay?”
She nodded, but made no effort to move, just gripped the steering wheel tighter until her knuckles were white.
Devan shifted more in his seat and leant forward so that he could see her face. Her green eyes were filled with tears. She could feel him watching her, but she didn’t look away until he spoke. “You’re crying.”
She turned her head away in shame, tears and guilt welling up at things she couldn’t undo. She reached down to the compartment in the driver’s side door. “It’s just the rain from my hair,” she said as she pulled out a pack of tissues, took one and then wiped her eyes. She made herself turn the key. She could just drive slowly – take it easy. She reached down and gripped the key between her finger and thumb. She hadn’t had anyone in her car since that day. She hadn’t wanted to risk killing someone else. It didn’t matter who they were. She couldn’t live with that kind of guilt. Why had she not died too – it was unfair.
“Have you changed your mind? I can leave if you have. I won’t be offended.” He took hold of the handle to open the door. Tara felt her stomach twist instantly at the thought, panic setting in.
“No, don’t,” she pleaded
. “It’s not you. I'm sorry.” She had grabbed his arm to stop him without realising it. The shock that coursed through her was similar to what she had felt in the precinct, only maybe not as forceful this time. He didn’t look as hurt this time either. She wasn’t even a touchy-feely kind of person, so god knows why she was today. She snatched her hand away and fumbled with the key until she managed to start the engine. She could still feel the impression of his arm through his thin sleeve on her skin. The palm of her hand buzzed with warmth and electricity from it. As she put the car into gear, eased off the clutch and pressed the accelerator, she could still feel it on her hand. She tried to wipe it away down her thigh, but that just seemed to make it more.
She kept her eyes on the road as she drove, looking for any unexpected hazard, something that might cause her to crash the car. The journey was fast, and aside from her sight on the road, she didn’t really remember the details of it. Her mind had drifted off and tangled itself somewhere deep inside her heart.
With a strange sense of dissociation, she pulled up outside her house. Maybe she was dreaming or hallucinating, or both. They had made it to her house alive. Her house wasn’t that far from the city; just a couple of miles. It was far enough to make one feel they were in the countryside. Tara lived at the end of a road, literally the end a dead end. Around the houses were fields. There was a local farm just off one of the lanes. The couple there owned all the land around, except for the private houses in the little road that Tara lived on. There was a field that ran alongside her house too.
Devan copied Tara and got out of the car when she did. She wanted to pinch herself. Maybe Devan wasn’t real. Maybe she wasn’t. Nothing felt real in that moment, except for the rain. It had seemed to get heavier as she drove, but then as she pulled up, it slowed to gentle splashes.
“This is your house?” he asked her. “It’s nice.”
She stood next to him as he looked up at her two-storey detached house. It wasn’t particularly big. It held three bedrooms – ready for a family. She cast that thought from her mind. That chance was gone for her now. Instead, she stole a glance sideways to Devan and wondered how long it had been since he lived in a house. She thought to ask him but then decided against it in case it was rude and made him leave.
“I’m afraid I let it go in the last couple of years,” she said as she saw everything that was wrong with it. Bits of plaster were missing that she hadn’t got around to calling anyone out to. The flowers that she had once taken enormous pride in were now entwined with weeds. The path hadn’t been swept in quite a while and tufts of green pushed up between the cracks, victoriously fighting their way to freedom and the sunshine.
Inside was tidy, though. There were some things she couldn’t let go even though she wanted to. Some days she just wanted to stay in bed, pull the covers over her head and never wake up. Eric was in her dreams - alive. She hadn’t killed him there. Cleaning up the inside was the only real thing that got her out of bed. It was a way to pass the time and keep her mind focused on something else.
Devan followed her as she went up the two steps that led to the front door. She unlocked it and let him enter the porch, and then she followed and locked the main door behind them. For a moment or two, she wondered if she should worry about her shoes and the floor. She glanced at Devan and knew how pathetic she was. He was homeless and she worried about water marks on the wood.
She couldn’t do it, though. She took off her shoes. She envied people who lived with that don’t care attitude, but then fear swept in with its niggling voice, tormenting her with what it would be like to not care. Then her floor would be dirty and she’d live that way - happily. Her brain was such an odd mess sometimes. She slipped off her drenched jacket and hung it on one of the pegs to dry. Devan did the same, kicking off his shoes first. As he did so, Tara noticed that he had no socks. His feet were red from the cold and black from the marks in his boots. He followed her gaze down and then, as if suddenly ashamed, hid one foot behind the other. He shook off his jacket and searched for a peg, but Tara took it from him.
“Maybe I can throw it in the washing machine and freshen it up for you?” she suggested, hoping that it wasn’t offensive to him.
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to,” she said, and then folded it over her arm and clasped it to her chest as if guarding it, afraid he might try to take it back. “I think you are about the same size as my husband. If you want to, I can wash all of your clothes and you can borrow some of his.”
He moved from one foot to the other. His face flushed a brighter red than the nips from the rain had made it, and then he pulled the tatty blue hooded jacket he’d worn under his coat tighter around him. “I don’t want to put you out.”
“You’re not,” she said, and then she lowered her voice. “Perhaps you’d like a few new clothes? My husband has so many. He won’t mind.” Her voice was shaky as she spoke. He was an adult, but she worried she was patronising him in some way or treating him like a child.
She was relieved when he looked down at himself and then smiled. “Are you implying that there might be something wrong with my attire?”
Her face flushed at his words. They were teasing and he mocked her with a fake accent. “Sorry,” she muttered, and then she showed him into her house, happy to dismiss her moment of shame. She went straight into the kitchen and dumped his coat into the washing machine, although it was probably better in the bin. He followed her and stopped at the doorway. He looked taller there and his broad shoulders almost filled the gap for the door. There was nothing frightening or menacing about him, though. As tall as he was, he still emanated gentleness. Eric’s height had been part of what had attracted her. He was tall and slim, but his presence had filled the room radiating warmth, never generating fear. She paused at the sink, tempted to wash her hands. He might be insulted if she did, though. She fought the overwhelming urge to scrub her hands clean and stepped back.
She led him up the stairs to the spare room, but he stopped on the way. All along the hallway were pictures - pictures of her and Eric. They’d only been married a couple of years, but they had lived together before that. The wall was filled with memories. Their happy faces smiled back at them from wedding and engagement photos. There were pictures of highlights at their work, others of things they had done, holidays, Eric buried in the sand, another of her where he had decorated her face and nose with ice-cream - happy memories. Pictures that made her ache inside every time she saw them. Sometimes she stared at them, as if they would move and come alive if she stared long enough. She wanted to transport herself back there, when she had thought she had forever with him. She stared at herself in them. She looked at her face, into her eyes. She was so happy. That woman was gone now. That woman had had no idea what lay in the future for her.
The last picture at the top of the stairs had been taken three months before he died. He didn’t know he only had three months left to live. Neither of them did. What would they have done if they had known there was a clock ticking above his head? Maybe she’d have tried for a baby so she still had a piece of him now. Maybe they’d have said all the things they hadn’t. Maybe she wouldn’t have got into the car that night ; , or insisted he drive instead of her. He smiled out from the picture with a group of young adults whose lives he’d changed. Tara had contemplated taking the pictures down and putting them away. They hurt her to see. Then she’d think of Eric. What if he could see? He’d think she was moving on or forgetting about him. So she’d left them - for him. So that he would know.
Tara tried to read Devan’s expression as they walked up the stairs. Perhaps he would gasp when he saw his friend’s smiling face, but he didn’t say a word. His eyes took them all in without a flicker of familiarity for the person staring back. The only thing that changed was the way he suddenly tensed up, but that seemed more a result of the dampness of his clothes rather than the recognition Tara had anticipated. His pace slowed as he absorbed each moment depicted. As Dev
an’s gaze fell onto a photograph of Eric at his art class, Tara thought she caught a glimmer of sadness cross his face but it was gone in an instant. She took Devan to the back bedroom that was between her room and the bathroom. In there were a couple of wardrobes. One had her old clothes in – things she didn’t wear but didn’t want to get rid of. The other held Eric’s clothes. She couldn’t bear to throw them away, but she couldn’t stand to have them in their room either. It was just too hard.
Devan stayed by the door, but she waved him in. “You can stay in here tonight,” she said. There was a spare bed in the room too. No one ever used it. She did sometimes when sleeping in her own bed was too much, but then she preferred the sofa when she was overcome with loneliness and Eric’s absence.
She opened the closet with Eric’s things in. Seeing them pulled at something inside of her, but she pushed it away and turned back to Devan. “Jeans okay?” She started pulling things out before he could answer. She found some jeans, a t-shirt and a sweater. There was a bag at the back packed with things like ties and socks. There were also shoes at the bottom, so many of them hardly worn. Eric wore trainers all the time. He even wore them with his pyjamas instead of house slippers, much to Tara’s annoyance. She took out a couple of pairs of socks for him.
“These should all be okay. Do you want to jump in for a shower first? Maybe warm up?”
“Sure,” he said before Tara could scold herself for being so pushy.
He strode around the bed and stopped at a painting on the wall. He pulled off his hat. His hair was wet and stuck down to his head. Although it looked dark now, she could tell it was blonde. So many emotions seemed to cross his face. She wished she could read his mind. He reached up and she was afraid he would touch it, but he didn’t. Instead, he hovered his fingers over it and traced invisible lines.
“I painted that,” she said. “Well, with my husband’s help. He was the artist, not me.
“It’s wonderful.”
