He immediately recognised the error of his ways and back-pedalled. She’d been menopausal for a few years now and she was only just coming out of the other side of the hot flushes, the sleepless nights and flares of anxiety, so the topic was not to be trifled with or trivialised.
‘No, no, of course not. I wasn’t suggesting…’ They both knew he was.
‘How do you see your retirement, Colin? Don’t you want to have a bucket list of exciting things to do? Don’t you want to be surprised by life? To be invigorated with new challenges? To wake up excited by your plans for the day? To have fun? To feel passion?’
His shrug said it all. ‘I’m happy with my lot. Doesn’t that count?’
She didn’t have the heart to tell him that ‘his lot’ didn’t bring any happiness to her any more. Her chronic aversion to causing any kind of distress or upset had wrangled control of her mind again and ordered the fleeting bolshiness to bugger off.
They sat in silence for a few moments, before he surprised her by reaching over and putting his hand over hers. ‘Brenda, this is nothing that can’t be fixed.’
He hadn’t listened to a thing she’d said. Or maybe she just hadn’t been clear enough.
‘You’re right,’ he went on, trying to placate her. ‘I suppose it’s just the way life goes after you’ve been together as long as us. We’ve just got a bit set in our ways. I’m sorry I didn’t see before now that you were unhappy.’
‘I should have made it clearer,’ she conceded wearily. ‘I’m sorry.’ Hang on, why was she apologising? She’d dropped hints and tried to have gentler versions of this conversation with him many times before, and he always just overlooked it. Overlookedher.
Message to self – stop apologising for everything. It was, she knew, one of her worst habits. If someone bumped into her in a shop, she was the one who apologised. If she had – on pain of death – to complain about something or return something faulty, she apologised to within an inch of her life. When had she become so spineless? She’d spent years encouraging her girls to stick up for themselves and the irony was she was incapable of doing the same.
Newspaper set to the side, he leaned forward in his chair. ‘Tell you what. How about I make you a promise to try harder? To inject a bit of fun? I’ll make a real effort and we’ll have things sorted in no time. Right. Let’s start this minute.’
Oh wow. Was he really going to make something happen? Was he going to scoop her up and tell her how much he adored her? Was he going to clear the table with one hand and ravish her right here, right now?
‘Let’s…’ he began, eyes twinkling, ‘…forget the shepherd’s pie we were going to have for tea tonight and phone in some Chinese food instead.’
7
AIDEN
Aiden was lying on the sofa, bouncing a ball in a well-practised, robotic pattern that involved it hitting the floor of his loft apartment, then the wall, then coming straight back to his hand. Throw. Thud. Thud. Catch. Throw. Thud. Thud. Catch.
Trevon came over from the grey concrete kitchen island with two beers – pretty much Aiden’s staple out-of-hours diet for the last couple of weeks since the fiasco at Hilton Head Island. What a disaster that had been. That night, his dad and Mitzy had bailed with the rest of the guests – his father never could handle difficult situations – leaving his mum, her fake boyfriend, Kurt, and Trevon drinking long into the night. The next morning he’d woken to find that, yep, Layla was still gone. Embarrassing. Humiliating. But, most of all, excruciatingly sore on the heart.
Even now that he was back in his own place in Charleston, every time he woke up, he was happy for a few moments and then he remembered. Layla had jilted him at the altar and then disappeared off the face of the earth. He hadn’t heard a word from her since a text later that night asking him to give her space and time. Until yesterday, that was.
‘Are you sure you don’t want me to stick around while she’s here? I can stay low-key in your room and then be here for you if you need me.’
Aiden shook his head. ‘Thanks, pal, but I’ve got this.’
Trevon took a slug of his beer and then puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled. ‘I’m mighty glad you said that because no part of me wants any part of this.’
That made Aiden laugh and for the umpteenth time he wondered what he’d have done without Trevon this last couple of weeks. He’d cancelled his honeymoon leave and gone straight back to work, so that had helped to keep him occupied, but it was the evenings and weekends that were the roughest. Thankfully, his mate had pretty much moved back in with him, sleeping on a pull-out bed in the main area of his loft, making sure he wasn’t alone. Heartbreak, rejection and confusion aside, it had almost been like the days when they’d shared an apartment just a few streets away, down near King Street. That had been a couple of years of uncomplicated, endlessly entertaining and totally carefree good times. Maybe he should just have kept it that way instead of introducing adulting, mortgages and grown-up relationships into the equation.
The intercom went and Trevon exhaled again. ‘Remember, if it all gets too much…’ He took a step forward, then clutched his chest like he’d been shot and fell to the floor.
Shaking his head, Aiden got off the couch and stepped over him. ‘At your age, you could break a bone doing that, bud,’ he mumbled, but he was struggling to keep a straight face. Even now, Trevon could still make him laugh more than anyone else.
He pressed a button on the receiver.
‘Hi, Aiden, it’s Pam.’
Speechless, he didn’t even reply, just pressed the button to admit the newcomer. Pam. Layla’s mom. When he’d got the text from Layla asking if she could come get her stuff today, he’d thought she’d meant in person. That the love of his life, the woman he’d adored, was going to come here and maybe they could talk, get some clarity on what the fuck had happened to their lives together. Apparently not. She’d sent her mother.
‘Man, that woman scares the shit out of me. I’ll stay to protect you, but I’ll be under your bed,’ Trevon whistled.
‘I’ll be right next to you,’ Aiden sighed. Layla’s mother was the type of mom who called her daughter Princess and thought she could do no wrong, even though she was almost thirty years old and human enough to make the odd cock-up. Like not turning up for her own wedding.
By the time Aiden let her in the door, Trevon had changed his mind about going into hiding, and was sitting over on a stool at the kitchen island, finding some reason to be 100 per cent focused on his laptop.
