Chapter 16 Emmy
Emmy
“Oh honey,” sighs Chloe, holding out a glass of wine to me. It’s Sunday afternoon and I’ve just finished regaling her with the news about Luke being a secret sex club tycoon and his subsequent rejection of yours truly. If ever there was an ‘oh honey’ moment, this is it.
“I know right,” I reply, leaning heavily against her kitchen counter and knocking back a glug of sauvignon blanc. It’s extra crisp and burns in a good way. Day drinking is definitely the answer.
The memory of Luke’s face as I laid out my offer comes into sharp focus in my mind. The way his face shuttered, that pause before he shifted from flattered to rejection – it stings.
The first time I go and proposition a man – a man who I trust – and he flat out turns me down? Ouch. It really felt like there had been a new chemistry between us in these last few weeks. I swear there had been a few lingering looks, a handful of moments filled with something else.
But perhaps I’ve mistaken a friend who’s looking out for me with a man who’s looking for something more. Either way, lesson learned.
Catching Colin with Stacey was a betrayal but Luke’s rejection makes me feel foolish, like I’m na?ve for thinking he might ever want me.
“Always the quiet ones,” Chloe states, pulling the roast potatoes out of the oven and breaking the spell of my morose reverie.
Chloe makes a mean Sunday roast and I’m here more Sundays than not.
One of the only silver linings of being an orphan is that you get folded into other family traditions.
People proactively include you. It’s kind of lovely.
“That’s what I said!”
“I’m sorry love,” she says, as she deftly flips potatoes. “Luke’s always been a bit of a mystery.”
I twist the stem of my wine glass between my fingers. “I thought there was something there,” I admit. “A few moments where I caught him looking at me… but maybe I imagined it.”
Chloe shoves the potatoes back in the oven and turns to me.
“I think there’s every chance he’s attracted to you, babe.
I mean, look at you. You’re a stone-cold fox.
But I can also understand why he’d hesitate.
He’s what, nine or 10 years older than us?
He’s known you since you were a kid. And he’s best mates with the brother who basically raised you.
It’s got to be a bit of a headfuck for him.
” She purses her lips in thought. “I’m disappointed for you because in so many ways, he’d be a perfect candidate for the Fuckit List. But I do understand his response too. ”
I sigh again, louder this time, and take another sip of wine.
“I know. I get it. But I can’t lose momentum. I’m finally being brave. My sexual peak cannot be being finger-blasted by a tantric goddess in Hackney.”
Chloe snorts and starts peeling carrots.
“I do think Sloane was onto something though,” she muses, pausing mid-peel.
“Salt could be a really good place to find a fuck buddy or two. She said everyone is heavily vetted right? Seems like a safer bet than trawling the apps. Plus, you already know that everyone who goes to Salt is open-minded, and likely kinky as fuck.”
“True,” I reply, pondering the thought. “Won’t Luke be a bit weirded out if I start hanging out there?”
“What’s it to him? He’s turned you down but it would be pretty bloody facetious if he tried to block you from his club. He’s supposed to be all sex positive and enlightened right?”
“I suppose you’re right.” I grin.
Two hours later, I’m lounging on the sofa with a belly full of roast chicken.
Annabel and I are playing tea parties with a bunch of Jellycats while the twins babble to each other on the floor.
Josh is clearing up the kitchen and Chloe’s curled up on the other sofa, scrolling her phone.
It’s been a seriously wholesome Sunday and I’m finally feeling relaxed after a rollercoaster few days.
I can’t believe how much has changed in so little time. In just a few weeks, I’ve left my husband, snogged – and then moved in with! – a total stranger, had a seriously full body massage, and visited a sex club. The Emmy of just a month ago would hardly recognise me.
“Oat milk latte?” Annabel offers me, holding up her wooden teapot.
“Yes please,” I reply, holding out my cup.
Annabel carefully pours an invisible stream of oat milk into my cup, her tongue peeking out in concentration.
“Biscotti?” she asks, holding out a plate of pink wafers.
“Biscotti?” I mouth at Chloe, who grimaces.
“We spend way too much time in Gail’s,” she replies. Annabel beams at me.
“Here you go Auntie Emmy.” Annabel pushes a plate of biscuits into my lap and I reach forward to stroke her hair. There’s a tiny pang I try not to name as I stroke her soft curls. Not regret, exactly. Just a whisper of the path not taken. I sip my imaginary oat latte and smile.
Watching Annabel entertain her Jellycats with total confidence makes me wonder when I stopped making choices just because they brought me joy.
She continues playing, oblivious, as I recall Colin’s note. I refuse to believe he was my last chance to have children, but even if I did, I wouldn’t go back to him. I’d rather remain childfree than have children with someone who so clearly didn’t respect or value me.
It’s wild how quickly the rose-tinted view comes off your marriage when you take a step back from it.
I look at all the things I let slide, all the little red flags that should have told me that Colin was a selfish bastard from the start.
I breathe a small sigh of relief that I won’t have to pay a fortune for Sky Sports or go to Henley Regatta with his obnoxious colleagues ever again.
I wonder if I would even have ended up with him if Mum and Dad hadn’t died.
I was only 13 when it happened, old enough to have my life clearly bifurcated between the before and the after.
The life I had with two parents and a brother, and the life I had where Nick and I tried to figure out how to make our family work with just the two of us.
Well, the four of us if you include Luke and Chloe, who held us each tightly and never let go.
A baby teenager and a 20-year-old, who never made it to university because he became my legal guardian in the same breath as the worst trauma either of us have ever lived through.
I don’t underestimate the headfuck he went through trying to get me through my adolescence while trying to be an adult way before he needed to be.
Thank God he had Luke to lean on or I’m quite sure everything would have really fallen apart for us all. Luke’s always been grounding like that.
Meeting Colin when I was 18 felt serendipitous at the time.
Someone new to love, who doted on me in a way I’d never experienced.
It was heady and exciting and all consuming, for both of us.
But somewhere along the way, I stopped being intentional about who I was and what I was doing.
I became a passenger. And I’m as guilty of that as Colin is of taking the wheel and never pushing me to be the main character in my own story.
I sigh at the thought, disappointment covering my skin like a light veil. I can’t undo what’s gone before, but I can definitely start doing life on my own terms now.
In some ways, I’m glad I caught Colin with Stacey. We could have limped along for years after the light went out, when we both stopped trying. The comfort of the familiar can suffocate you slowly, after all.
A clean break – albeit with a bruised and broken heart – is probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me.
“More wine?” Josh appears in my eyeline, bringing my awareness back to my wholesome afternoon in suburbia.
“Please,” I reply, lifting my glass for him.
“So, Luke’s a dark horse, then,” he says, topping up my sauvignon.
“So, it seems,” I muse.
“Dirty dog.” He grins. “Reckon he’d let Chloe and I in?”
“Joshua!” Chloe lobs a pillow at him which he artfully dodges.
“Put in a good word for us, yeah?”
As hot as Josh and Chloe are, I can’t quite picture them in Salt. But then, I’ve been surprised before.
“I’ll see what I can do. Let’s see if I can get my own membership first.” I smirk and he inclines his head, the gentlemanly gesture utterly ruined by his salacious grin.
Luke might not want to be my fuck buddy, but he’s going to have to get used to me being around.
Game on.