Chapter Six #2
My belly squirmed. While I had no intention of sharing my private life with a colleague, I felt that Abel probably needed some kind of explanation. ‘We were a couple. Now we’re not. That’s all.’
‘Uh-huh.’
It was the most loaded ‘uh-huh’ I had ever heard.
‘What?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ he said lightly. ‘Just, a … surprising combination.’
‘Well it’s no longer a combination, so you can spare me your thoughts on it. I’m not thrilled to be in this situation, but I’m not going to let it affect me doing my job either. Okay?’
‘Cool.’ Something seemed to flicker in his eyes.
‘Are you finding this funny?’
He mulled this over. ‘Not funny, exactly. But intriguing. Yeah, little bit.’
Excellent. My life was a source of entertainment for someone.
‘I mean, it beats a standard day in the emergency department, that’s for sure. When did you guys break up?’
‘After I found someone else’s G-string in my bed a few weeks ago.’ It just slipped out before I could stop myself. Those bloody wind chimes. What was happening to me? Where was the guarded and in control Mary?
Abel’s eyes turned into saucers. ‘Wow. And then he rocks up on your escape course unannounced?’
‘In a nutshell.’
‘What an arsehole.’
I lifted my eyes from the dewy grass to meet his.
He was looking at me with an intensity that made me feel rudderless and oddly out of character.
Coupled with that was my anger at Felix and my determination to scrape the last of him from my heart and throw it off a cliff. It was a dangerous combination.
‘Want to help me make his trip hell?’ I asked before I could even think about what I was saying. I didn’t know what had come over me.
Surprise flickered across Abel’s face. Then his lips curved into a small smile that reached his eyes. It was the first time I’d seen anything like a smile coming from Abel Sutherland, and it was disorientating.
‘Yeah. I’ll help you with that, Mary.’
I had serious misgivings about Abel. He seemed like an oddball (odder even than me) and pathologically grumpy, and I got the feeling he disliked me considerably.
But nevertheless, I had started to feel a sort of camaraderie with him.
I didn’t know why he didn’t like Felix – I doubted it was on account of his cheating tendencies.
Maybe Abel just didn’t like most people.
But whatever the reason, I was going with it.
We finally reached our destination and piled out of the minibus. Abel gave instruction to the group along the lines of: Here are the room allocations, go dump your stuff and meet back for the first workshops in half an hour.
I grabbed my bag and headed towards the lodge. I had no idea what I was going to do or where I was going to put my things, but I also wasn’t about to wait around at the minibus, looking like an idiot.
Before I’d made it very far, I heard Felix at my shoulder.
‘Mary, wait.’
I turned. ‘Go away, Felix.’
‘Look, I know this is a bit of a surprise. And maybe I should have told you I was coming along—’
‘Yes, you should have.’
‘But you’re not talking to me! You need to talk to me, Mair! Hear me out!’
‘Okay, then. Felix, did you cheat on me again?’
‘I-I …’ he stammered and my heart clenched with anger. ‘Look. Okay, I slipped up. But—’
‘Fuck you, Felix.’ I’d heard enough. I turned to leave, but he grabbed my arm.
‘How can you throw this away?’ he pleaded and I felt I might die of humiliation.
‘I don’t want to hear it!’ I hissed before he could make more of a display of the pair of us.
His arm was firm on my wrist and just as I yanked it out of his grasp, I felt a different hand on the small of my back. Large, warm, confident and unfamiliar.
‘Hey, sugarplum. Our room is this way.’
I let myself be guided by the hand and tried not to let my face display my total shock at Abel’s unbelievable gesture as he gently led me away from Felix.
I didn’t say anything, just followed, dumbfounded, all the way to the lodge.
Abel’s hand stayed on my back until we were inside the building and it was so discombobulating, I could barely think of anything else.
What. The. Fuck?
Abel Sutherland had just called me sugarplum.
I was still gaping and lost for words as he opened the wooden door to one of the cabin rooms and gestured me in, closing the door behind us.
Before I could gather any kind of professional communication strategies or respectable way of addressing this person who was essentially my boss, I turned on him and demanded, ‘What the fuck was that?’
He shrugged, seemingly unfazed that I had just spoken to him so viciously. ‘Sorry. I figured you might appreciate a diversion from the conversation you were in. Though if I’m wrong, then please feel free …’ He indicated to the door.
I sat on one of the twin beds and put my hands over my face. I was doing an awful job of maintaining my cool. The whole thing was a nightmare.
‘This is an astronomically bad situation,’ I finally said.
‘Mmm.’
I pulled my hands down and studied him, my outrage at Felix and shock at Abel’s actions giving way to genuine bewilderment about what had just happened. ‘Did you just pretend we were …’ I couldn’t even put the words together.
‘He looked like he needed a kick in the balls. And I think the effect was similar, from the look on his face.’
Abel was enjoying this. Maybe he had sadistic tendencies? Maybe he was a psychopath?
I looked around the small cabin. Wooden floors. Wooden walls. Wooden ceiling. Much wood. And two beds with barely a metre between them.
‘There is obviously no possible way I can stay in here.’
‘Sure. You want to stay with Felix, as planned?’ Abel was watching me with mild amusement, leaning nonchalantly against the wall, arms folded across his chest.
‘No. Ugh.’ I sighed. ‘I’ll stay in the … common room. There must be a common room?’
‘I understand if you don’t want to share a room with me. But I’m also not letting you sleep next to that dickhead. Or in the common room. I’ll sleep in the common room.’
‘What?’ I snarled. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. “Registrar displaces consultant into common room?” Not a good look. I’ll fail my term assessment for sure. Sleep is not that valuable to me. I’ll sleep in the common room.’
‘No, you won’t. I’d offer to share with Felix, but I’m afraid I can’t do that,’ he said flatly. ‘I have zero tolerance for arseholes. So I’ll take the common room.’
‘Great. We both will.’
We stared at each other in some kind of weird stand-off. This was ridiculous.
‘I don’t snore,’ he said eventually.
‘Good,’ I retorted. ‘I do.’ (That was a lie. Obviously.)
‘I’ll use the bathroom to get changed.’
I scoffed. I literally scoffed. ‘I can’t believe I’m in this situation. I’ll probably fail my term regardless, won’t I? “Registrar arrives in Hobart, can’t keep her personal affairs private, bunks in with supervisor …”’
‘I’m not your supervisor. I’m a retrievalist. This has nothing to do with the emergency department. We’re colleagues on this trip.’
‘Why are you offering this?’ I asked, genuinely baffled.
He shrugged a shoulder. ‘I don’t like Felix. And I’ve got a duty to my colleagues to see that that they’re not forced to sleep in the common room.’
So far, I’d been under the distinct impression that Abel was a dick. Grumpy and intimidating. Presumably on some giant power trip. Why then, did it seem he was trying to help me out?
I chewed over the options. The very, very grim options.
If I were to sleep in Abel’s room, it would piss Felix off.
And after Abel’s ‘sugarplum’ thing, it could piss him off in a way that was really quite spectacular.
The number one goal of this trip was to disentangle myself from Felix, so maybe sleeping in another man’s room and letting Felix believe there was something going on between us was, in fact, genius, as lowly and pathetic and unprofessional as it may be. But, look, I was at a pretty low spot.
Abel just watched me as my brain circled and finally landed.
‘Okay, fine. But this was your idea. If you speak unfavourably of me to anyone I’ll tell them you called me sugarplum.’ I stared at him with a what-the-fuck sort of expression. ‘Sugarplum?’
A deep laugh emerged from somewhere inside him, a surprisingly nice sound, like the rumbling bass of a good song starting, and his face almost coloured. ‘It was a spontaneous moment. I didn’t think it all the way through.’
‘Is that a pet name you usually give your colleagues? Or … fake girlfriends?
He really did colour then. ‘Okay. I’ll not speak unfavourably of you. You don’t mention the sugarplum moment. Deal?’
‘Fine. Deal.’ I shook my head and gave a slightly desperate laugh. My life was a joke. I was almost ready to give up on the pretence that it was anything but a joke.