Chapter 7

The doorbell rang and they both jumped, looking automatically towards the hall, guilty as teenagers caught making out on the couch by parents coming home unexpectedly.

“Shit, the pizza,” he realised the source of the doorbell first, his laughter shifting as he lifted from her and closed his jeans. He paused a moment, looking down at her, his eyes smouldering. “You look f-king sexy like that Emily,” he commented, and she flushed, pleased despite the offhanded crudity of the comment.

He went to answer the door, and she sat up, waiting until the door closed again and pulling her clothing as much to order as she could with her underwear and skirt in rags, feeling exposed and vulnerable, and sluttish. Owen, fully dressed and looking nothing like he had just f-ked her stupid on the couch, joked with the pizza delivery man, as he accepted the pizzas and bid him to have a good night, before using his elbow and hip to close the door.

“I will be just a moment,” she told him from the couch.

“I know where the plates are,” he replied, sliding a look at her out of the corner of his eye, his expression unsettled, and took the pizzas down to the kitchen. She went into the master bedroom, grabbing clothing from the closet as she went into the en-suite bathroom, and changed there, washing her face and her hands in the sink.

She met her own eyes in the mirror. The woman who looked back looked excited, hopeful, brighter than in days. “Don’t get your hopes up,” she told her. “Even were he to change his mind about breaking off the relationship, he has still quit his job, is selling this house, and plans to take off with this band.” Where did that leave them?

She went through the gallery of their past happiness, to the kitchen.

“That has just,” he said as she entered, holding a piece of pizza in one hand, and leaning back against the benchtop. “Confused things further, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she agreed stopping at the end of the bench top, facing him, searching his eyes for some idea of what would happen now.

“Does it matter?” He asked his blue eyes meeting hers. She could not read what he was feeling in them, and his guardedness made her uneasy, crushed her burgeoning hope. “Do we have to put a label on what is between us, Emily? I know there are all these things about friends with benefits, and whatever, but I don’t think that is what we are, either.”

She blew out a breath and helped herself to a slice. At least he was talking to her, she thought, in a way that implied that the door was no longer closed between them. “I don’t know, Owen. I miss you,” she flicked him a glance under her eyelashes to see how he reacted.

“I miss you too, Em,” he said quietly.

“I can’t imagine my life without you.”

“Me either,” he admitted, putting down the piece of pizza and reaching out to pull her against him.

She leaned against his chest and breathed in the scent that clung to his skin. The smoke smell was fading now, and he smelled more like himself - he was using the same soaps, the same deodorant, the same aftershave as he had always used - but most of all, he was still Owen, the man she had known since he was a boy, who had been her best friend for two thirds of her life, who had been her first kiss, and her first and only lover.

“I need to do this,” he murmured. “I need to see if my music can take me somewhere in life. If I don’t, I will regret it. But, when I think about that life, without you in it, I can’t see it. I want you there to celebrate when we have our first concert, when my song is on the radio, when we win our first award, or cash our first big cheque. These moments don’t have meaning without you in them.”

“I want to be in them,” Emily replied.

“I love you Em,” he said. “I do. But I am not sure I am in love with you. The love I write in my songs, and the love I feel for you, aren’t the same thing, and I want to experience the sort of love I write about – something that consumes you and tears you to pieces. I want to know what that feels like.”

She could barely breathe beneath the pain of his words, a pain felt physically as he had reached into her chest and clawed her heart. “I am not in love with you.” It was so final. So devastatingly brutal. She clung to him as if physical proximity could repel the words. She wanted anger, she wanted to fight against what he said, but the grief robbed her of it.

“I love you,” she said in despair. “I am in love with you.”

“Oh, Em,” he stroked his hand along her back. “I am sorry. I really don’t want to hurt you. Do you think we can be friends?”

Be friends. She didn’t want to lose him. But what if Megan was right, and he already had someone, or wanted to find someone? Could she be a friend, and watch him move on to a new relationship? “I am not sure that I can handle being a friend and watching you with someone else,” she said with raw honesty.

“I know,” he sighed. “I feel the same way when I think about you moving on with someone. It is selfish of me, to want the freedom to look for what I think I am missing, but I to want to keep you to myself too. This isn’t easy. I knew it was going to be hard, but it is not as straightforward as it seemed, either.”

“No.” She didn’t know what else to say.

They both stood in silence, holding each other.

“Don’t sell the rings,” he said almost without sound. “I didn’t realise how I would feel about it until you put those boxes on the table. It is just so… final. I am not ready to do that yet.”

“Okay.”

“Give me six months. I have taken an extended unpaid leave with my job, for that long. If the band isn’t going anywhere at the end of that time…”

“Okay.” She said the word but resented it. He was asking her to hold on and wait but offering nothing back in return. He would go on tour with this band, sleep with Cordelia or anyone else he wanted to, live the life he dreamed of, knowing that she was waiting in the wings if things did not work out… But if she argued with him now, she would lose him, she thought. And, just as he wasn’t ready to part with the rings, she wasn’t ready to lose hope.

“Do you know what the difference is between being a gambler and an entrepreneur?” His voice was lighter, as if a weight had been lifted from him, and he released her, reaching for the pizza again. “Success. If you succeed at something crazy, everyone is all, wow, I could have done that. But whilst you are trying, everyone says, it is a foolish gamble. I am gambling at the moment, but if I am right...”

“I hope you are right,” she told him. “I really do.”

“So do I,” he replied. “Shall we go drink that wine?”

They sat in the front room, on the couch they had bought together, surrounded by pictures of their time together, and ate and drank whilst he chatted about the band, his plans, the music, with an enthusiasm he had never shown for architecture.

Where had this man been? Had he, as he had said, been buried beneath the beige of their lives together? She had thought they had been happy, the two of them, working together and building a solid future, a solid foundation, in a solid relationship. How had she not known about this side of him? How had she not seen that he had been so unhappy?

“I am sorry,” she said.

He looked startled. He had been talking of the contacts he had been making, and her apology was off topic, throwing him. “You are?”

“I didn’t realise,” she leaned against him and wrapped her arm around his waist, trying to fill herself up with him, to store the moments with him within herself, something to hold onto when he went again. “I didn’t see that this was missing for you.”

He wrapped his arms around her and leant his chin against the top of her head. “I didn’t let you know. I don’t know why. At first, maybe it was shyness. Then, we were doing gigs for weddings and the like, and that sort of filled the space for me. It has really only been the last couple of years, as we have settled into jobs, bought the houses, and been renovating, that I have sort of looked at myself and haven’t recognised who I have become.”

“We have become complacent in our relationship, too,” she said hesitantly. She was not sure if he would discuss that. “We haven’t kissed properly since we were teenagers, haven’t sat around and had a few drinks and just talked to each other in… I don’t know how long.”

“We haven’t f-ked properly ever,” he said under his breath. And she wondered how he knew if she had been his only partner? What basis of comparison did he have…?

“Are you sleeping with Cordelia?” She asked, not sure she wanted an answer, but needing to know at the same time.