Page 76 of Kiwi Gold
“So,” he said, “you thought we could do more of it. Since it feels right. Casually. Also secretly.”
“Well, yes. I’m not sure God really cares so much about that. I’ve … I’ve wrestled with that a fair bit lately, and that’s what I’ve decided. I think I can do what I’m comfortable with—well, semi-comfortable—but I don’t know what that is, other than that it probably still isn’t sex outside of marriage, especially any sort of … any odd things. Things that would scare me.” My face felt like it was on fire, but I plowed on. “You said you didn’t want to get married, though. That you don’t want kids. That means you’re casual, by any measure I know about. You want to … to have sex with different women. Obviously, because that’s what it is, isn’t it, if you know marriage is off the table? You’re having sex.”
He said, “I couldn’t be having a relationship, I suppose. An emotional connection. And I can’t believe what a prat I sound like,” he went on, like Lachlan again, “so stiff and proper and outraged. I’m trying to work out why I’m so insulted. Well, the thing about not telling your dad, obviously, because I’m not sneaking around. But besides that …” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I know that I need my tea before we talk more about this. And possibly a glass of wine. Yeh, sorry, but it’s the Esplanade, and I’m paying.”
“We’re having afight,though,” I said. “At least I think we are. Don’t we need to finish that first, before we go sit in a restaurant? I’ve never really had a fight, but surely it feels like this. Twisting in your stomach and all. Heat in your … your head. Your heart beating too hard. Dread.”
He’d had a hand on the gearshift, but now he turned to me. “You haven’t had a fight?’
“No. Not really.”
“What happened, then? When you had a … a difference of opinion?”
I had to think about it. “I guess I just … adjusted. After the twisting in my stomach and all, but before I got to the point of dread. Marriage takes compromise, right?”
That was when he did the thing that astonished me. He put his head down on the steering wheel, and then he banged it. When he came up, he said, “You’re going to kill me. Youarekilling me. No. You don’t adjust. That’s rubbish. You ask, like you did just now. You negotiate. You demand, if you have to. You draw the line. And—bugger. Now I need to show you how.”
33
MAKING THE LIST
Lachlan
We didn’t talk about it over dinner. Too many people around, and how did you bring it up? Whatever it was she wanted, which sounded like pure unadulterated torture for me. And, yes, I wondered why I’d agreed. She wanted to try more things, but only to a certain point? A point, I was fairly sure, that didn’t involve taking off her clothes or mine? I’d been sixteen. It had been bloody frustrating. I had no need to go back there.
We didn’t talk about that, or about my trip to Saudi Arabia, either, or what she’d say to her dad. We didn’t talk about babies who died, or husbands who did. We edged our way around all of it like we were navigating around a stand of spiky trees whose thorns kept reaching out to grab us, and I watched Laila’s face, the changes on it like sun and clouds, all of it muted by her self-possession. I watched her controlled movements, the way she tamped herself down, and I burned.
We talked about the girls, about Yasmin with her horrible monkey, about Amira and her temper. About the different ways people reacted to things, as witness my own sisters. We talked about Laila’s plans for the studio, for the firm. About the gap she was going to have when Oriana went back to school and her assistant wouldn’t be back from maternity leave. She explained, “You can’t do the photos without an assistant, because it’s not safe. You need hands on the baby at all times, and not the parents’ hands. You need somebody trained in this.”
I listened, and I also looked at her golden eyes in the low light, at the sky outside turning about five delicate shades of pink, at her graceful, ringless hands. I said, “I’d offer my sister, Lexi, because I think she’s about to quit her job, but …”
She smiled. “Yeh, I don’t think that one would work. It takes heaps of patience. Heaps of calm.”
“Ah,” I said. “Definitely not Lexi, then.”
She went on, “But you don’t have to fix my problems, Lachlan. It’s nice to be able to tell you. To have you listen. That’s all I need.”
I said, “It can’t be all you need. It would be better if I could help, surely.”
“Mm-hmm. The way you help your sisters.”
“Well … yeh. Why not?”
This time, she laughed. “Do you help them because they ask, or is it that when they tell you about a problem, you jump to, ‘How can I fix it,’ because that’s what you’ve always done? And then possibly complain about it?”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again, and she said, “Yeh. I thought so.” Self-possessed once more.
She didn’t take my hand after dinner, walking to the car, and I didn’t take hers, either, because I had no idea where we were here. It wasn’t where I was used to being with a woman, and I wasn’t enjoying it. Which could make a person ask why he was doing it.
Never mind. I knew why I was doing it. Because I couldn’t have stayed away.
Back in the car, then, and heading home. It wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes to get there, but that was fifteen minutes we had, alone in the dark.
“So,” I said. “No way out of this but a conversation, I reckon.”
“Oh? You’re not a fan of awkward silences and suppressed desires? Or is that just me?”
If I hadn’t been driving, I’d have had my head on the steering wheel again. “You’re killing me,” I told her.
