by A. L. Brooks
She still hadn’t lifted herself up from the week Alex had blown into—and out of—her life. She’d spent a lot more time at home since Alex left four weeks ago; her desire to be out at the bars and clubs had disappeared almost overnight. Instead, she’d indulged herself in her love of cooking, often inviting Christina, Sylvie, or both round for a meal after work. She wasn’t putting in so much overtime anymore either; her boss had noticed but hadn’t given her a hard time over it, as the work was still being done. And that was because Justine was throwing herself into it more, immersing herself in the details to keep her brain from dwelling on thoughts of a woman with luxurious auburn hair and sparkling green eyes.
Opening her laptop as she sat down, she entered her password and dived into her inbox. As usual, one morning taken up with meetings had left her over twenty e-mails to deal with when she returned. She skimmed through them from oldest to newest, deleting the ones she knew she didn’t need to read. As she neared the top of the list, a flag on one of them caught her eye. It was marked Private, and her brain took a moment to register the sender’s name.
Alexandra Saunders.
She pushed away from her desk as if she’d been bitten. What the—
Why would Alex be e-mailing her? She was scared to open it.
Scared and curious.
After a few tortured moments, curious won. She clicked it open and read, forcing herself not to skim and actually concentrate on Alex’s words.
Dear Justine,
I apologise for e-mailing you at work, but obviously I have no other way of contacting you. I appreciate it’s not very professional, but I have at least tagged the message as private to keep other eyes away.
I just wanted to explain some things to you. It’s up to you if you feel you want to respond, but that’s not why I’m doing it. I just need you to understand what happened and why I’m so sorry for upsetting you.
Back in August, my partner of five years, Terri, cheated on me. A drunken one-night stand with a woman she works with. While we hadn’t been doing brilliantly in the year leading up to that, her cheating was the last thing I would have expected from her. She seemed very remorseful, and so we tried to rescue what was left. We went to couples’ counselling, but it became rapidly obvious that things were very wrong, and beyond saving. I had just about come to that conclusion when I was asked at short notice to fly to Montreal. The night you and I met for dinner at Gabrielle’s, I was so confused and scared about where my life was going. That doesn’t necessarily justify what I did that night, but I have to be honest with you about what that night meant for me. Because it wasn’t about getting revenge on Terri, or using you to make me feel better somehow. Actually, doing what we did made me feel worse, that I was just as bad as Terri. And I know it upset you hugely given what your ex did to you—finding out you’d been a party to yet another cheater must have been awful for you, and I can only apologise for putting you in that position.
However, what happened between you and me was nothing to do with me and Terri. You talked about the connection we had, and I didn’t dare confirm it. But you were right. It was there, and what happened between us was just about us. I wanted you to know that. I hated that you thought you’d been used or that I didn’t actually want to be with you and was merely treating you as a symbol of something. It was just you, Justine. And that’s also what you gave me that night—you made me feel like someone could find me attractive again. Someone wanted me, as I was, knowing nothing about me or my awful year or any of the things that made me doubt myself.
So I wanted to thank you for that. You may not want to hear that, but as I have now left Terri, and I’m working through all the things I need to get my life moving again, writing to you and saying that to you was high on my list.
I wish you well, Justine, and again, I am sorry for the way I treated you. I hope you can believe it wasn’t you; it was just about all the crap happening in my life, and you unfortunately got caught in the middle.
Alex
Justine locked her screen and walked along the corridor to the break room. She made herself a drink and returned to her desk. As she drank her coffee, she slowly reread the e-mail. Three times.
When she’d finished, she sat back in her chair, trying to sift through her reactions to the words. Alex’s explanation definitely brought her a little relief from her anger and hurt. Without aiming for the sympathy vote, Alex had shown Justine just what a terrible few months she’d had, and Justine could empathise with that. Even after Alex had blurted out in Hugo’s that her partner had cheated on her, somehow Justine still hadn’t realised what that must have meant for Alex and how tormented she must have been. Justine sighed. She’d been too busy feeling like the one who’d been crapped on and unable to take Alex’s feelings into account.
Alex’s e-mail also made her sad. For Alex, and for herself. Because Alex had acknowledged the connection they had, and they couldn’t do anything about it. Even if Alex wanted to, which her words didn’t suggest.
Justine clasped her hands behind her neck and rocked slightly in her chair. Out of all her conflicting emotions, frustration was the strongest. The universe had conspired to bring them together but in circumstances that made doing anything about it impossible.
What a waste.
It was probably the worst Christmas Alex had ever endured, but as she’d assumed before it even started that it was bound to be, somehow she got through it. Danielle and Beth had spent Christmas Day with her at their house, then she had the place to herself as they did family visits on Boxing Day. Alex’s mother had offered her a place to stay for the whole week, but she couldn’t face it. She’d told her mum before Christmas about splitting up with Terri and she’d been less than understanding.
“I just think, at your age, you need to be thinking about the long-term. Who’s going to look after you when you’re older if you’re single?” Her mum had practically tutted down the phone line. “I know you’re upset about what happened, but she said she was sorry and she loves you. Surely you can work it out?”
Alex had huffed a breath. So typical of her mother, who had settled for her lot in life from an early age and turned a blind eye to every affair Alex’s father had in the forty years they were married. When he died of a heart attack a few years ago, she claimed she’d lost her soulmate and wore black for two years afterwards. Well, Alex wasn’t going to become that. Just because it was good enough for her mother didn’t mean she had to put up with it. Good enough wasn’t good enough, not for Alex. Not anymore. She might never find it, but she wanted to feel like the woman she was with only had eyes for her, that Alex fulfilled her in every way she needed, and vice versa. But she would take her time looking again. The last few months had taught her that she wasn’t being true to herself. She needed some time to find out who the real Alex was before she let anyone else in.
She travelled into the office on the days between Christmas and New Year’s, just to have something to do. On New Year’s Eve she spent the morning filing and sorting out her office. Over the year, various papers, handbooks, and conference materials had stacked up haphazardly on the shelves, and it felt like the right day to take on the big clean-up. Start the new year with a clean office and no clutter. A metaphor for her entire life.
E-mail traffic had been light all week, as she would have expected, but she took a break from her housekeeping to sit down with a cup of tea around noon and check her inbox. Her gaze narrowed in on an e-mail that had literally just arrived.
From Justine.
She held her breath as she opened it. She’d meant what she said to Justine in her own e-mail before Christmas—and she hadn’t written it to get a response. Her message had purely been about purging her own soul of what she felt was unfinished business from that fateful week.
But now she had an e-mail back.
Hi, Alex,
&n
bsp; Thank you for writing to me. I needed some time to think through things before I replied. I know you said I didn’t have to write back, but I wanted to.
Thank you for your explanation of what that week meant to you. It did help me. I am sorry to hear you and Terri have parted, but at the same time it does sound like it was completely the right thing to do, at least for you. I hope you’re okay. As someone who has been in your position, I can guess how you are feeling right now. I hope you have some good support from friends and family. I was lucky to have Christina and Sylvie to help me through my situation.
I am sorry if I hurt you that week with some of the things I said. But I think you know where they came from, and now I have your story I do understand how we happened. Thank you for acknowledging that it was about us, and that connection.
I hope the coming year allows you to move on and do whatever you need to next in your life. My new motto is to always look forwards. I hope you can do the same.
Justine
Alex placed a hand on her chest and closed her eyes. The absolution Justine had just bestowed brought her relief of the highest order. Her immediate reaction was to fire off a thank you in reply, but she paused. Was she deluding herself? If she got into e-mail exchanges with Justine, wasn’t that playing dangerously? They’d both spoken in their e-mails of that connection they’d shared. That pull they had towards each other was simmering just under the surface. If they started conversing regularly, wouldn’t they be at risk of trying to make something happen out of pretty much impossible circumstances? Alex didn’t need that. She needed time to work out who she was, what she wanted, and what she needed. Even if what a large part of her wanted was a gorgeous Canadian woman with blonde, curly hair and pale blue eyes.
With some reluctance Alex closed the e-mail and returned to her tidying.
“Did it make you feel better, to send her that e-mail?” Christina asked, dipping her bread into the last of her soup.
Justine waggled her hand. “Yes and no.”
“Explain.”
Standing, Justine reached for Christina’s empty bowl and stacked it with her own. She was playing for time and Christina would call her on it soon. The contrasting styles of her friends’ support had actually worked well for her over the last few weeks. Sylvie was gentle and nurturing, teasing answers out of Justine in a cautious way. Christina was bolder, more demanding, pushing Justine whenever she appeared to be wriggling out of the hard conversations. It had been a cathartic time—coming to terms with the fact her needs were changing had caused a significant shift in the way she looked at life now.
She took the dirty bowls into the kitchen and stacked them in the dishwasher.
“More wine?” she called out in the direction of the couch where they’d been eating.
“No, I’m fine. Get back in here.”
Laughing, she re-joined her friend on the couch. “Okay, I’m here.”
“So explain already.”
“It did make me feel better, to thank her for the effort she’d made in contacting me. But…” She sighed. “I can’t stop thinking about her, and so contacting her just brought her to the forefront of my mind. And I need to get her out of there because I need to move on.”
“Yes, you do. I take it she didn’t write back.”
“No, and that’s probably a good thing too.” She’d sent her e-mail about a week ago. When no reply came back instantly, she’d been a little hurt, then admonished herself. She really did need to get Alex out of her mind, so no more contact was a good thing. She just wished she could lose the ache that seemed to have taken up residence in her chest since she’d got Alex’s e-mail.
“How would you feel about meeting someone? Is it too soon still?”
She stared at Christina. “You’ve got someone lined up already?”
“Maybe. Only if you really want to. If you need more time, that’s totally okay.”
She definitely needed more time; she knew that. But at the same time, she wondered how she was ever going to get rid of this crazy yearning for Alex unless she did just get back out there.
“What’s she like?” she asked, and smiled as Christina grinned.
“Toast?”
“Please.” Alex smiled at Danielle, then giggled as a sleepy-looking Beth appeared in the kitchen.
“Morning,” she mumbled, hauling a chair away from the oak table and plonking herself down in it.
Danielle crossed the room and kissed the top of her wife’s head. “Coffee and toast, my love?”
“Mm-hm,” Beth replied, tilting her head back for a kiss on the lips.
Alex watched them with a mixture of affection and envy. What they had seemed so…perfect. She aspired to it for herself, but had no idea how to go about finding it.
They ate their first round of toast in record time, and Danielle laughed as Beth and Alex handed her their two empty plates with alacrity. She busied herself putting a second round on and topping up their coffee cups.
“How you doing?” Beth looked at Alex, a warm smile on her face.
“Okay, I guess.” Alex shrugged. “I swing so much from sad and confused, to calm, and something that borders on happy, it has my head spinning sometimes.”
Danielle placed another plate of toast in front of Alex and wrapped her arms around her from behind.
“You can talk to us anytime, you know? You do not have to keep so much of it to yourself.”
“I know, and thanks. But a lot of it is just me working through stuff in my head. I’ve spoken to a counsellor a couple of times too.”
“You have?” Danielle looked startled.
“Yes, through work. We have a contract with an employee assistance programme. It’s been helpful. Just on days where I’ve felt like there was no way forwards and I couldn’t even string a coherent thought together.”
“Things you cannot share with me?” Danielle’s tone was loaded with hurt, but before Alex could respond she held up a hand. “Sorry, that sounded rather petulant and childish. Of course you should talk with whomever you feel can help you best.”
Alex grasped Danielle’s hand and held on tight. “Sometimes a stranger is just better, somehow. Please don’t be offended. I still value your judgement and support. Hugely.”
“I know. Please ignore me,” Danielle said, winking.
“I’ll be glad to see the back of January, I’ll tell you that much. It’s been non-stop at work.”
A month of meetings, of updating training schedules for the forthcoming months. A month of staring at the e-mail from Justine from New Year’s Eve that she had retained in her inbox. She didn’t know why she hadn’t deleted it. Actually, that wasn’t entirely true. Somehow, for all sorts of crazy reasons, she still wanted some link to Justine. Something that connected them. She’d never answered it but had been tempted many, many times, despite her vow to follow Justine’s motto and look forwards, not backwards.
And thinking of moving forwards made her recall the tense phone call she’d had the day before with Terri, who had made a decision about the flat finally. She’d tried to work out financing to be able to buy Alex out but had failed and had begrudgingly admitted they’d have to sell.
“The good thing is the market’s pretty buoyant right now,” Terri said, her clipped tone making her displeasure at the situation abundantly clear. “At least it’s gone up in value since we bought it.”
“Okay. So we came into it with fifty-fifty money, so we’ll just split the proceeds down the middle, agreed?”
“Yes, of course. And we’ll share the fees too.”
“That’s fine. Let’s just do everything even. I’m okay with that.”
Terri huffed out a breath. “I suppose I’ll need to do all the estate agent work, be here for viewings, et cetera? I can’t imagine you’d be able to
do it, given you’re living in Crouch End now.”
“Yes, unfortunately that’s true. I would offer to help, but it makes more sense for you to do it.”
“I suppose most viewings can take place without me here at all,” Terri mused, and Alex heard the resignation in her voice. “I’ll get the flat tidied up and then get it on the market as soon as I can.”
“Thank you,” Alex said quietly.
“So when do you want to get the last of your stuff?”
“I’ll try to do that at the weekend, then it’s much less clutter for you to tidy away before they take the photos. I’ll let you know when I’ll be over. I assume my keys will still work?”
Terri tutted. “Of course they will. I’m not that much of a bitch.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“And furniture? Anything you particularly want?”
Alex sighed. It was so hard to work with Terri’s bitterness. Especially when Alex thought it was completely unwarranted. “I think the only things I want are that chest we used as a coffee table, and the pair of paintings in the bedroom. That okay with you?”
“Fine.”
They had ended the call rather abruptly after that, and Alex had spent the rest of the afternoon tucked away in her room, swamped with sadness and reluctant to inflict it on anyone else.
“And how are you feeling about the weekend, about getting the last of your things?” Danielle asked, unwittingly tapping into the very thing Alex was thinking about.
“I think it will upset me. I’m prepared for that. Even though I’ve known for a while now that this is the right thing, it will make it very final, you know?”
