Marshmallows for Breakfast

by Dorothy Koomson

  Gabrielle and I worked so well together, we always had, and I didn't want to ruin things by admitting to something that would make her think less of me. Would make me seem a bad person in her eyes. But then, maybe I should tell her. The urge to confess and to have someone remind me how awful I'd been had been swimming around my chest for weeks. I was due a telling off. I'd been having it pretty easy since I got back. So easy I'd almost forgotten what I'd done.

  “He was married,” I said and braced myself for the gasp, the look of disgust, the setting of the jaw.

  “I'm going to need more information than that,” she replied when I said nothing else.

  I looked at her sideways through slitted, suspicious eyes. I'd expected more of a reaction. OK, so she needed the full story before she berated me and packed my bags and sent me to friendship Siberia.

  “I knew he was married and nothing happened the first time I met him. I didn't even remember him that much. The next time I saw him was at a party. I walked into the garden and there he was. It was like a bolt from the blue or Cupid's arrow hit me when I saw him. Pow! Right in the center of my chest. Seriously, I hold my hands up, I don't normally believe in such things. But I can't describe what happened in any other way. It wasn't his looks, it was just him. I did the only thing I could, I turned and ran.”

  I turned and ran. Pushed through the drunken bodies standing in the garden and ran to put myself somewhere else. Somewhere safe and hidden. I ended up in the kitchen. I'd been at Evangeline's house most of the day helping her to set up for her party and now I clattered around, trying to tidy up, trying to quiet the nerves tumbling through me.

  He walked into the kitchen and my heart punched me in that space where my ribs were meant to meet at the front. My heart was panicking and it was trying to escape my body. It, and I, was terrified. I'd never felt anything like that bolt from the blue when I saw him in the garden and that was why I'd had to turn and flee. I didn't even know who he was. He was nothing to me, not really. Someone I'd once spent a few hours sitting next to in a bar, talking about nothing I could remember now. Despite that, his presence in my vicinity was making me insane. There was no escape now, either.

  His face brightened beatifically as he smiled at me.

  I pushed my fear aside, stood on tiptoes to wrap my arms around his neck. “Hello, you,” I whispered into his ear as his arms slid around me. He clung onto me, our bodies becoming almost as one as he received and gave his hello. A few seconds passed and I was about to let go when I realized he wasn't going to release me. He was holding on just that bit longer. Clinging to me as though I was his salvation. The smell of him—ck one, his skin, pheromones—filled my senses. I was about to give in to it, relax and enjoy the closeness when he let me go and took a step back.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “I'm fine. How are you?”

  “Good.”

  “Are your wife and kids here?” I asked, cementing in both our minds that nothing was going to happen. He may have caused all sorts of new and not unpleasant emotions to surge through me, I may have unintentionally done something to make him cling to me, but nothing could happen.

  “No,” he replied, looking uncomfortable.

  “Are they in Manly, too?”

  He paused, glanced away for a moment, then back at me. “No.”

  “So, are you staying in Manly overnight or are you going back to the bosom of your family?” I was determined to bring up his other life, to keep this block between us, but he was determined, too. Determined not to talk about it.

  “One of my friends lives a few miles away so he's letting me stay over.”

  “Oh, right,” I replied. “So, why aren't you—”

  “What's this?” Will cut in to deflect my question. I turned to what he was looking at. He took a step towards me, to look at the pot on the stove.

  “That's my barbecue sauce,” I said. “I made it from scratch.”

  “Can I try some?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I replied. I reached for a wooden spoon from the pot of utensils on the side, scooped some of the thick, red, onion- speckled sauce from the pan and lifted it to his mouth, holding my other hand under the spoon so nothing would drip. He leaned towards me, took my hand to hold it steady, received the sauce. His eyes held mine, and my heart started that pleasant panic again.

  “Good, isn't it?” I said brusquely, pulling away the spoon.

  “The best,” he replied with a slow grin.

  “It's not like you're going to say it's crap, are you?”

  He laughed and the sound sent shards of pleasure through me that pooled in my stomach. I took the spoon to the sink.

  As I turned back, a man came towards me. I watched his eyes flick over me, up my legs rarely revealed in a brown suede skirt, over the mounds of my chest under my orange top that kept slipping off my left shoulder. “Are you Kendra?” he asked.

  “Yup, I am indeed.”

  “I was told that you would give me a tour of the house.”

  My party trick at Evangeline's house was to give a tour of the place. They'd recently finished refurbishing it and she was bored of showing it off so I happily stepped into the fold. I often pretended that I'd designed the place as a favor to Evangeline. “Who told you that?” I asked.

  “One of your many admirers,” he said with a cheeky smile.

  “Oh, stop,” I replied.

  He grinned, raised an eyebrow at me. “So, about the—”

  Will was suddenly beside me. “Actually, mate, she was about to give me one.” An uncomfortable beat passed. “Tour, that is. You promised me a private tour ages ago.”

  “Did I?” I had done no such thing.

  “No, you didn't. But seeing as we're old friends, I reckon I should get first dibs on a tour.”

  “Old friends? We sat next to each other once in a bar.”

  “But you spent the whole night insulting me; that makes you close to a person.”

  “No, it means you find many faults in a person.”

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  I turned to the other man and found he'd gone. Clearly he knew when he was beaten.

  I took Will through the various rooms of the house, aware of his presence beside me all the way. His warm body. His footsteps. His rhythmical breathing. Every step made my mouth dry, my heart beat in triple time. The last place on the walkabout was the conservatory. Evangeline kept it locked at parties but I was allowed to have the key and show people in if I locked it afterwards. I let us into Evangeline's pride and joy, an extension to the house that took advantage of their place on the hill. Three of the walls were glass, the ceiling was glass, and from this room you could see out to the Tasman Sea; beyond that was New Zealand.

  I left the door open a crack so I wouldn't have to put on the main light or the sidelights, which would spoil the effect of being in here at night.

  “And this is the pièce de résistance,” I said. From its place on the hill you could look out into the constant rolling blackness of the sea, but my favorite thing was to look up at the thick blue-black sky speckled with tiny stitches of stars. To look up and see into infinity.

  “This room is like London architecture,” I said to Will, who was standing a little way behind me to my left, gazing awestruck at the horizon.

  “How do you mean?” he asked.

  I spun to him as I said, “You see the best things if you look up.”

  He put his head back, exposing his throat, and I wanted to stroke my fingertips over his smooth white skin. I wanted to climb onto tiptoes and touch my lips at that exact same point, taste the softness where his words were made. Instead, I smiled as delight spread itself over his face when he saw that he was standing outside inside, that he could see to the end of the universe. “It's beautiful,” he whispered. He lowered his head, stared at me. “Truly beautiful.”

  Whoa, I warned myself. Whoa. “So, how come your wife didn't come with you tonight?” I said, placing her firmly between us aga
in. I took a few steps back, perched on the back of the sofa that sat in the middle of the room, the shaft of light from the corridor falling across my legs, my stomach, my chest and my neck.

  He lowered his eyes, worried at a spot on the ground with the toe of his shoe. “Do you want the official answer or the complete answer?”

  “Whichever you feel most comfortable peddling to a virtual stranger.”

  “OK, virtual stranger, my wife had a one-night stand four years ago. We've got a three-year-old son, and when he became seriously ill last year we thought he might not make it, so she confessed all to me because she thought it was her punishment for what she'd done. He's definitely my son; even if he wasn't biologically, he'd always be mine. But since then we haven't really been able to be normal with each other. So that's why she's not here. We're struggling.”

  “Right,” I said. “Right.”

  “Yup, that's what I'd say if I was you, as well.”

  I stood in silence, his worrying at the spot on the floor slowed, and I was aware that he was staring at me. Peeling back my defenses, trying to get under my skin. It was working. And that wasn't right.

  “Why didn't you just say ‘my wife doesn't understand me’ and be done with it?” I asked.

  “Because it's not true. My wife does understand me, I understand my wife. We just can't be normal with each other.”

  “Is that what this is about?” I asked, pointing at our two bodies across the distance between us. “Revenge?”

  “I wish it was,” he replied. “If it was, then I'd know how I felt. It'd mean that I'd gone beyond the shock. I've been stuck at shock for about a year now. It'd be good to feel something else. To form enough of another emotion to get a plan together to go out looking for revenge.”

  He took small steps towards me, and I watched his scuffed brown suede shoes, moving closer and closer until they were toe to toe with the long, pointy toes of my black boots. My head was scared to look up. Scared of how much my face would betray me. I gripped onto the back of the sofa, holding on for dear life. I didn't know why I wanted him now when the first time I met him I didn't. Why I couldn't stop these feeling gushing through my veins, I never got this crazy about men. I was always in control. Always—unintentionally and intentionally—holding back. This Will person made me feel as though I was behind the wheel of a vehicle I had no license to drive; that at any moment I was going to careen over the edge of a cliff into an abyss of pure bliss.

  “After I left that night we met I got to the car,” he was saying “which was parked all the way down on the other side of the city, and decided I had to come back to get your number. I was buzzing after talking to you. I hadn't laughed so much in so long I wanted to see you again. I got to the top of the stairs, and then realized what I was doing. How I couldn't be doing what I was thinking of doing because I wasn't free, you probably weren't free and I couldn't be your friend. I couldn't be just your friend. So I left again.”

  In my ears I could hear my breath, soft but ragged. I clung tighter to the sofa, closed my eyes, hoping to hide there. Trying to hide in the dark because this vehicle had gone off the cliff and was clinging on by the caught edge of the number plate. Any sudden movements and I'd be lost.

  “When I saw your face earlier, when you walked into the garden and turned around and left, I realized that you felt the same. It wasn't a one-way thing.”

  He gently rested his forehead on mine. My eyes were still closed but the air went out of my body. “And for the record, this, he whispered, this is attraction. He lowered his head further, gently brushed his nose against mine. “Pure attraction.” I lifted my head and slowly, gently, his lips grazed over mine. I gasped silently. Gradually his lips pressed down onto mine and his hand came up to my face. I let go. Let go of the last edge keeping me on the cliff let go of the sofa and laced my arms around him, ran my fingers up his neck, over the soft bristles of hair at the back of his head as I let him kiss me. I kissed him back. We stood under the stars kissing as though this was just about me and him.

  Gabrielle's car was crawling slowly along towards the A23; we'd been in traffic forever. She hadn't asked much as I told her about Will. I was a little disorientated—talking and thinking about Sydney made me forget where I was. In Sydney that would happen sometimes—I'd be watching a British soap or film, reading a magazine or book, and then I'd look up and for a moment think I was in England. In London. That Sydney was a mirage. I, sometimes in the midst of the Will thing, would wish Sydney was a mirage.

  We went back to his friend's place, which was near Evangeline's house.

  He walked around turning on lights and I sat on the sofa wondering what had happened to me. I never did this. I never went back to a virtual stranger's place. I felt so safe with him though, like I'd known him all my life. He brought me a beer and asked if I wanted a glass. “Hadn't you noticed, I'm not the glass type,” I said. He laughed.

  He cracked open the cold, condensation- covered can and offered it to me.

  It was such a small, simple thing that changed everything for me. It was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for me. The simple act of opening the can showed that in that moment, in doing such an insignificant thing, he thought of me.

  We fit together. His body, solid and warm, moved enough for me to mold myself against him; my upper body slipped perfectly into the nook of his arm; his head fit into the once- empty space between my shoulder and jaw.

  We didn't have sex, we didn't make love. We didn't take any clothes off. We lay on top of the covers, talking. Sometimes giving each other long deep kisses, but mostly, just talking.

  “We didn't sleep together any other time we saw each other. And we didn't really see each other that much—six times in total,” I told Gabrielle. “I tried so hard but I couldn't just walk away.

  “We'd stop contact for months at a stretch and I'd stop thinking about him every day. And then something would happen or I'd see a book or watch something or listen to some music and I'd want to share it with him. I'd write him an e-mail but never send it.” I had hundreds of e-mails that I'd written to Will and never sent. They were like a diary of things I'd been up to.

  I stared at the open road, the cars rolling in front of us. “After a few months of no contact one of us would crack. It was usually me. I'd send a couple of lines and it'd start again. The daily e-mails, the occasional text. The imagining. The guilt. The deep, unrelenting guilt. Then, about eighteen months later, his wife found out.”

  She found out from an e-mail.

  Not from one of those types of e-mails. We didn't send those types of e-mails—the ones that dripped in sex and longing and fantasizing. Not anymore. And he'd deleted all evidence that we ever had. Only a handful of e-mails had been like that. Only a few suggested this thing between us was physical. Most of it was banal and ordinary. Sharing things about our lives, about everyday things. With us, we had no past together, we had no future together, so we talked about the present we spent apart. We shared what was happening, living for the moment. Besides, we were hardly ever in constant contact. Nei ther of us could handle it. Not for anything more than a few days. What was the point when we weren't going to be together? The e-mail she read said:

  Sooo, tell me the best thing about your day.

  That was all. Those nine words were the ones that revealed she had been sharing her husband's affections. She read that e-mail and she knew. I can't imagine what that felt like. What she did next. If she turned off the computer, if she started screaming inside, if she shouted at the computer screen and burst into tears or if she started plotting the revenge that would come later. I know she didn't call him and demand he come home. She didn't scream at him the second he walked in the door. She waited until they'd eaten dinner, the children had been bathed, read to and put to bed. She waited until they both had a glass of wine in their hands and had collapsed on the sofa before she asked him about it.

  Maybe she'd been so numb that she hadn't even thought of it unti
l they sat down together, glasses of expensive wine in their hands, feet up on the table, television carrying on in the background. That was the moment when she could turn to him and reveal that those nine words I'd typed without thinking weeks earlier had told her everything.

  Will and his wife (I don't speak her name and I don't think her name, I'm not worthy of using it, of being that intimate with her) hadn't had a proper conversation in weeks, maybe months, possibly years. It'd been months since she had bothered to ask him how his day was, weeks and weeks since he'd asked her, but someone else, a woman he had never mentioned, a woman she'd never met, cared enough about him to ask. Another female had the luxury, the freedom from the day-today of running a house, raising a family, being with him through all sorts of daily dramas, to ask him about his day That's why she knew. There were no other e-mails, no texts, nothing except those nine words that told her part of him was elsewhere, with someone else.

  “Are you sleeping with someone else?” she asked him when she turned to him over wine.

  He replied without hesitation, “No.” It was the truth, he wasn't sleeping with someone else, he hadn't slept with someone else. “Not at all.”

  She must have been scared then. Terror must have descended upon her—possibly like a heavy stone, possibly like the oppressive fluttering of a tonne of feathers—because she asked the next question: “Are you in love with someone else?” She probably whispered those words, held her breath as she waited for the answer, waited to hear if life as she knew it was over. Waited for a response that was never going to come.