Page 3 of The Missus
And then they were quarrelling in the bloody hall. Keira didn’t want to be that neighbour who brought scenes into the public spaces. She knew Alanna and Benjamin across from her were listening. If she could hear them talking through the door, (which she could) they could hear her.
Eventually, she managed to get the girl to the elevator and inside. She hit the button for the ground floor, and just before the doors closed, she jumped out and yelled, ‘I’ll take the stairs to the car park, quicker that way,’ as the doors closed on the girl's bewildered face. And off Keira went to wait in her car until she could be sure the coast was clear.
As she sat in her car, playing scrabble on her phone, she considered the way her day had started. At thirty years old, this was no way to keep living. She needed a better system. The obvious solution was to nun up. Opt out of sex altogether.
The trouble was that Keira liked it. Not just the sex, but the whole thing. The flirtation, the uncertainty, the mystery of a woman. Though it never took Keira more than a night to unlock that mystery. Once she’d done that, there was nothing more to say.
Did that make her shitty? Some people would say yes. But Keira kept her conscience clean by operating on a policy of full transparency. She made it clear who she was and what she wanted. That worked well with the women who were in Keira’s precise position—looking for no-strings fun. Trouble was, there was no way to properly vet out the stage-five clingers beforehand. You found out when it was too late. And then you ended up sitting in your car like an absolute tit, where your neighbour could see you, knowing that she knew exactly what a childish mess you’d gotten yourself into.
The only way to alleviate the horror was to get it out into the open. Luckily, Alanna was relatively approachable. Which was funny because her boyfriend seemed like a bit of an uptight prick; she couldn’t imagine why Alanna was with him. But this was why Keira didn’t do relationships. People brought you down.
Keira had caught her leaving and tried to apologise for the fuss. Alanna then made a charmingly terrible attempt to pretend she hadn’t heard anything. Keira was quick to push through that. She wanted to be square with Alanna, contrite. She didn’t want to be a bad neighbour.
Luckily, Alanna laughed the whole thing off. Keira couldn’t help but think that someone as good-looking and cool as her should not have to settle for a guy who permanently looked like he had something shoved up his rectum. Alanna was a looker, with intense dark eyes, sharp cheekbones, and extremely good hair. It was thick and dramatic and went right down to her arse. It screamed sex to Keira. As did her curvy body, always dressed in autumnal dresses. Though she tried not to pay it much mind. She wasn’t a sex maniac, trying to shag anyone attractive in sight. She had control in buckets. She had placed a NO ENTRY sign over Alanna quite a while back.
Keira decided it was time to go back upstairs. She tentatively approached her front door in case Pollyanna had doubled back on her, but the coast was clear. She went inside and sat down on the couch, opening her laptop and reviewing yesterday’s pages. Keira wrote mystery novels for a small publishing house, and she’d just begun a new title,The Cradle Falls. It was light, cosy fun meant to distract and entertain but wouldn’t exactly win a Pulitzer. But that was Keira. She stayed away from complexity. She had no time for it. She just wanted to have some fun in life. If only her one-night stands could understand that anything else was asking for trouble.
Three
Alanna was looking at a sad guy in his late twenties, sat across from her in a faux leather chair. ‘Hi, Justin, how are you doing today?’
‘She broke up with me,’ he said, fat tears slipping down his cheeks.
Alanna wasn’t surprised, but she was sympathetic. ‘I’m so sorry. Talk me through what happened.’
He choked back a sob and began to explain, jumping right into the heart of the drama. His girlfriend had fallen out of love with him some time ago and been honest about it. Justin had begged for some time to earn it back. He was sure if he just upped his game, she’d change her heart, and she’d reluctantly agreed. Six months went by, and now here Justin was, dumped.
‘How did you leave it?’ Alanna asked gently.
‘She’s moving out. Or I’m moving out. I’m not sure. It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On which one of us can get someone in to cover the other half of the rent,’ he said, wiping a tear away. ‘It’s so sad how it comes down to this. Rent payments.’
Alanna nodded. ‘Do you want to stay in the flat?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’ He paused. ‘Actually, I don’t… No. Idon’twant to stay. I think it might be weird to be there without her.’ His wet little face cracked a small smile. ‘Thanks, I didn’t really let myself consider that properly. I’m leaving. It feels good to make a decision.’
Alanna nodded. ‘I’m glad.’
‘Yeah. Takes the pressure off. I guess I… I can go and stay with my parents until I find somewhere. Might be kind of nice, actually.’
Alanna thought that if Justin went home, he’d never leave. He was a very coddled boy. It was part of his problem. He expected things to be easy because his parents had trained him not to deal with things for himself. That was why he’d gotten lazy in his relationship. Though they’d talked about this a lot, Alanna couldn’t just tell him not to go home. She had to get him to think about it himself. ‘You want to live with your parents again?’
‘I mean, if I can’t be with Fiona, it’s the next best thing.’
‘Is it?’
‘You don’t think so?’ Justin asked.
‘I just wonder if… We’ve talked about Fiona’s issues in the relationship, what caused her feelings to drift.’
‘I know what you’re getting at. But Mum… It’s not her fault Fiona left.’
If someone had put a gun to Alanna’s head, she’d have said it was about thirty percent on his mother, but again, she couldn’t say that. ‘I’m just saying, this is a tough time you’re going through. The stress of a breakup is tremendous. But if you go home, I want you to be sure it’s for the right reasons. Because this moment doesn’t have to just be about loss. It can be about growth.’
Justin sighed. ‘So you’re saying that I can grow as a person or I can go home to my parents and have them baby me?’
