Chapter 22
NOW
Matt paused in the bedroom doorway. I could see us through his eyes – Alex leaning forwards, his eyes lit up, and me sitting up against the bedhead, cheeks flushed. Had he heard our conversation? We hadn’t been talking quietly.
‘Are you okay?’ He rushed across the room and kneeled beside me, taking my hand, which still had the hospital wristband around it.
‘I’m fine now,’ I said in what I hoped was a reassuring voice. ‘I had an allergic reaction. The EpiPen worked, and they didn’t have to do anything else at the hospital. I feel normal now, just exhausted.’
He visibly exhaled.
‘What are you doing home?’ I realised as soon as I’d asked the question that it was the wrong thing to say in front of Alex, that somehow, I’d revealed too much. I immediately wanted to recall the question, like an email gone to the wrong address.
‘Your dad called me,’ he said. ‘He’s your emergency contact.’
I felt a pang from somewhere deep. If Dad had known I’d been unwell enough to end up in hospital, for my work to call him, why hadn’t he come to check on me?
I shook my head. He’d probably been in the operating theatre standing over a cracked chest. An allergic reaction was hardly more of a medical emergency than a heart attack – when he finished his list, he’d probably call me on his way home.
Or maybe when my phone came back to life, there’d already be a stack of missed calls and worried messages from him.
‘Thank you.’ Matt, still holding my hand, turned to Alex. ‘I spent the whole time on the plane just thinking what if you hadn’t been there and the worst had happened...’ His voice caught as he trailed off.
Matt must have raced to the airport, bought a ticket for the first plane leaving Sydney, and been white-knuckled the whole flight home.
I felt another shock of energy burst through my body, as if someone had stabbed me again with an EpiPen – except this time, instead of adrenaline it was a shot of guilt.
Matt looked like he’d spent the last few hours wracked with worry because I hadn’t called him, because he’d probably received some unclear call from Dad.
Why hadn’t I updated my emergency contact when Matt and I got serious?
When we’d got engaged? When we’d moved in together?
I mean, the obvious answer was that I’d been working at the same company forever – I had a corporate headshot from my fringe era (a truly unfortunate choice), and an emergency contact set when Dad was my go-to person.
But still, I should have been more on top of this stuff.
‘I stabbed her then jailbreaked her out of hospital. I don’t know if that really warrants thanks,’ Alex said lightly as he pulled himself out of the armchair.
Matt laughed and I was grateful that Alex had broken through the thick tension in the room.
‘I think that we’re out of the danger zone.
Now that Matt’s here to keep an eye on you, I might head off. ’
‘Yeah, of course,’ I said quickly. ‘Sorry I derailed your day.’
Alex paused at our bedroom’s entrance and smiled. ‘It’s not a day I’ll forget in a hurry.’
Matt smiled back at him; it was the type of comment that was meant to sound offhand and placating. Except I knew what Alex was actually implying – there was a day, well, night, that I’d apparently forgotten.
‘Do you need anything?’ Matt had returned to the bedroom after showing Alex out.
I started to ask for a glass of water, but instead burst into tears. I saw Matt look at me for a moment, surprised. I wasn’t a crier.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to get a hold of my body, which was betraying me again as he moved towards me.
‘I’m such an idiot for eating the wrong food.
I never do stuff like that. I’m being ridiculous, having an allergic reaction is hardly a big deal.
But I just... hate hospitals. And it was just so. .. so...’
‘Hey, hey, Becs,’ he said soothingly as he climbed into bed, ‘mistakes happen. That’s human. It must have been scary.’ He held his arms around me.
My body heaved with each sob. He silently cocooned me until my breathing returned to normal – for the second time that day.
I snuggled against the length of his body while he gently ran his hand in circles across my back, as if I was Alice, needing help getting to sleep.
For the first time since the attack, I felt like I could properly relax.
‘You work better than an EpiPen,’ I said, my face still buried in his shirt. Alex was all nightshade, triggering responses in my body that I didn’t want.
‘When I was in the hospital, I was really freaked out,’ I said, almost in a whisper, as if I was making a confession to the rider on his embroidered horse. ‘The only person I wanted there was you.’
The circles on my back stopped for a moment and then continued again in the same pattern.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t call,’ I continued, this time pulling my head up from his chest. His bright, warm chestnut eyes met mine. There wasn’t a hint of recrimination or even hurt, just concern on his face. ‘I knew how important this trip was for you. I really didn’t want to ruin it.’
‘My job is a job. You’re my life. Love is turning up,’ he said, as though this was the most obvious truth ever spoken out loud. I swallowed – my dad hadn’t shown up. Again.
My head fell back onto Matt’s chest. I could feel his beating heart beneath his crisp, ironed shirt. My breathing fell into his rhythm with each reassuring thump.
‘I am cursed,’ I said. ‘All these things keep happening. All our wedding chaos. I’m forced to work with Alex. I end up in hospital—’
‘You had anaphylaxis when a doctor happened to be in the room,’ he said. ‘I think that makes you the opposite of cursed. It makes you lucky.’
‘I don’t think people talk enough about how optimism can be quite an annoying trait,’ I said. His chest rose and fell faster as he laughed.
‘Go to sleep, Becs,’ he said. ‘I’m here. Everything’s okay.’
I promise to focus on making our future the best version it can be . The vow sprang into my head. I closed my eyes so I could remember it.
Matt was my future. The past could stay in its box.
Alex could drop as many bombshells into conversations as he wanted, but that didn’t mean he got to shatter my carefully built world.
And so what if Alex had a different take on how we’d ended.
It didn’t matter. The headline was the same – we’d ended. That was the important part.
No, I was in control of my life. And it was time to focus on what mattered, who mattered. My world was in this bed.
‘ Question two: Was it love or lust at first sight, or a slow burn ?’ Matt looked up from the piece of paper he’d been reading from.
It was Tuesday mid-morning, and we were both still in bed.
Miranda had ordered me to stay offline and out of the office and Matt, despite my attempts to reassure him that I was fine, insisted on taking the day off too.
I felt awful that he was missing his work trip, but the silver lining was that we had time to finish the world’s longest questionnaire, which Belinda had insisted that we complete and drop back with the official paperwork.
‘Did you mean what you told Belinda the other night?’ I asked. ‘Did you just know?’
‘Yes. After I met you I just... never wanted to not be with you again,’ he said simply. ‘But it wasn’t like that for you, was it?’
‘No . . .’ I said slowly.
Almost two years earlier, I’d decided to accept Matt’s invitation to go on a first date. I’d said yes to the invitation in the moment – it would have felt rude not to – but planned on politely backing out of it like I normally did.
Around that time baby Evie was struggling to sleep.
I watched helplessly as Stella seemed to fall apart in front of me.
Nick, of course, was a bit more sleep deprived than he’d been before Evie had arrived.
But otherwise, his life looked pretty much the same – he went to work, he travelled to medical conferences, he taught at his old uni.
The day after I met Matt in the cinema, I visited Stella and Evie at a sleep school.
I sat on the edge of Stella’s hospital bed, watching her cry with exhaustion and guilt – full-bodied, rib-aching sobs.
Stella loved Nick wholeheartedly. I witnessed what love had done to her – it had torn her to pieces. It tore everyone to pieces.
Stella had fallen head over heels for Nick.
Mum had lost her mind when she’d met Dad, and then again when she’d met Hamish.
I’d had a crush on Alex and then been swept off my feet.
I didn’t want that kind of love. If you fell head over heels or were swept off your feet, you’d land on your face or arse.
To lose your mind was the kind of diagnosis that landed you in a psych ward.
The only things that were meant to be crushed were banged-up old cars and pineapple.
And I also knew that love could catch you by surprise – I’d been caught off-guard before.
I wondered whether maybe the best way to inoculate yourself against the contagion of all-consuming love was to embrace a gentler type.
To not fall head over high heels, but take dainty steps from like to love in sensible flats.
To spend my life with someone like Matt, who I’d already sensed was thoughtful and helpful and hopeful – all the good ‘ful’s.
I could feel Matt looking at me intently. I felt a sting of animosity towards Belinda; she was a licensed celebrant not a psychologist – where did she get off asking these intimate questions?
‘For me, it was a slow burn. But in a good way, like a perfect winter’s log fire,’ I said.
Matt’s smile widened as I wrote The best kind of slow burn on the form.
I hadn’t realised how emotionally frozen I’d been until we’d been together for a while, and I’d begun to thaw. Matt was all warm embers, fireguard in place.
Alex had been a bushfire. He’d swept in, during the peak of summer, an uncontrollable force, destroying everything in his wake. I’d been a gum tree set ablaze, that had exploded and then been left a charred stump. Even if that’s not how he remembered it.
‘Are you feeling well enough to go out for lunch?’ Matt asked.
‘Does that mean we have to get out of this bed?’ I asked as I rolled across the wrinkled sheets into his arms.
‘Tragically, it does.’