Chapter 14 #2
Ronan cocks his head, then furrows his brow. He moves slowly when he’s like this. Takes his time. I can see in his eyes he is weighing me up. I struggle to hold his glare, so I push my hands over my face, rubbing my eyes. He sighs. I can’t tell if it’s exasperation or self-regulation or both.
Or kindness.
He steps around the island until he is stood right next to me.
When he stops, I suddenly feel tiny. ‘You can’t be acting recklessly.
We both know how that ended last time.’ He leans down and gently kisses my forehead.
‘Have a nice, relaxed day on your own today. You don’t have any clients.
’ He makes this sound like I have more than three.
Like I am perpetually busy. ‘I’ll be out all afternoon, so you can just enjoy some peace and quiet.
’ When he puts his hand on my shoulder, I don’t flinch.
I know how not to.
‘That sounds nice.’ I pause, swallowing a surge of guilt that threatens to topple me. ‘I’m sorry. I really am.’
He smiles. ‘Don’t be.’
‘I am...’ My voice wobbles.
‘Hey – look at me.’
‘I shouldn’t have got drunk.’
‘I know. But we are learning. Together.’
‘I love you,’ I say. It comes out of me instinctively, impulsively again, but this time born of a need so deeply obscured that I don’t know where it originates.
It escapes me entirely without deliberation or thought.
I have a flash of being stood opposite him in the field we got married in – wearing my wellies, his eyes bright in the sun.
In sickness and in health, he’d said. We both did.
He points to the book, open next to me. ‘Shakespeare on a Saturday? Sounds lovely.’ He picks it up, turning it in his hands. ‘Pericles. Interesting. I didn’t know you liked that one.’
‘It’s underrated,’ I lie.
‘I think Taming of the Shrew is underrated,’ he says quickly. He then winks playfully, but the brazenness to his words does something to my insides – a sudden injection of cortisol that makes the muscles in my stomach clench. Fight or flight. Fight or flight.
Instead, I freeze.
He places the book back down, but stays standing, right next to me. He begins to pat his pockets. ‘Oh, bollocks. I’ve left my phone upstairs. Could you just google the sports club, I think they’ve changed the start time.’
I try not to let the panic in my body surface, but it sears through my pores. He never leaves his phone anywhere. ‘It starts at midday, doesn’t it?’
‘They mentioned last week it might move because of the new intake group.’
‘Oh, right.’ He is staying exactly where he is. ‘Sure.’ I pull my phone out of my pocket. The Grindr app. Is it on the home screen? Shit. ‘Surely they won’t have moved it?’
‘Can’t you just check?’
A film of cold sweat immediately seems to coat my skin. ‘Of course.’
I start to punch in the passcode, as he watches each digit, my brain scrambling to remember if I moved the app.
Surely I did. I was being meticulous last night.
Wasn’t I? I managed to write – to write pages and pages – and I cleaned everything.
Not a trace. My mind was sound. Sane. Could I have missed this?
I know I didn’t delete it – because I need the profile. I need Chat?;) to remain—
The screen opens.
Thank God. It’s not there.
And I suddenly remember.
I buried it within a folder labelled wellbeing.
I try not to scream, Yas! Slay!
‘Let’s see,’ I mutter instead, navigating to the internet browser.
As I type in the words Crouch End football club, I can feel something in the space between me and Ronan: an understanding that we both know this is nothing to do with the football club.
Not only because the webpage looks like it hasn’t been updated in about three hundred years, but because his hand is still on my shoulder.
Feeling for any tension in my body. I know this move.
We’ve been here before. I always forget how suffocating it is.
He knows that I am hiding something. ‘Starts at midday. Look.’
‘Ah, yes.’ He kisses the top of my head. ‘While you’re open, did you get any pictures of last night?’
Pictures.
Pictures.
My brain nearly whites out.
‘Pictures?’
He laughs, because I said this like it would be the most ridiculous thing ever. ‘Yeah, pictures, Mal. I forgot to take any.’ He puts his fingers on my chin and lifts my head so I am looking up at him. ‘You seem rattled, baby.’
Baby.
Baby in any and every context makes my brain want to be obliterated with the swipe of a finger. ‘I’m not!’
I remember all the shades of his flesh. The grid of his body, all splayed. I know I deleted them. I had to. But for some reason now I’m unsure. ‘Joanie got loads. I think I was too distracted! By all the fun!’
‘And the bathroom meditating?’
We both laugh, but I want to cry. ‘Yes, exactly!’
I open the camera roll. I can’t look directly at it.
‘So that’s what you were doing...’ he points to the screen.
His finger is pointing to an accidental screen shot of Candy Crush with the word DIVINE! written across a fruit explosion. No flesh.
Thank God.
‘Oh...’ I say. ‘Busted.’
But I feel his body relax.
His hand leaves my shoulder as he glances at the grid of pictures. No hairless nipples. No shades of flesh. Just a few of the two us smiling on the heath, some screen grabs of shopping items from whole foods, and excerpts from articles that I pretended to read for my therapy course.
Nothing amiss.
He kisses my forehead. ‘I love you, Marvellous Mal.’
He uses that one sometimes too.
It fluctuates.
‘I’ll get your boots,’ I say, standing up from the stool. ‘I think I put them on the shelf in the cupboard.’