‘Yet you don’t deny there’s something there. You feel the attraction too, you’ve just said as much, I mean how can you not, it crackles around us like electricity! I can’t stop thinking about it.’
She lay back once again in the water, flattered no doubt, transfixed by his admission of the very thing she had felt too. But more than this, she was alert to the unalterable facts that would guide her, nothing else.
‘AndIcan’t stop thinking about how horrible it feels to be pulled into whatever it is you have going on, the wholeI’ve got a flatruse. I’m not stupid and it feels...’ She ran out of words.
‘You think it’s a ruse?’
‘Uh-huh.’
She heard him exhale loudly. ‘Shit!’ he spat. ‘Really?’
‘Yes.’ She held her ground.
‘It’s not.’ His voice now a little clipped, as if affronted by the suggestion. ‘It’s not. I signed the lease on the day we met, a small flat near a boat shed in a marina. I told Trish, and she has asked me to stay until after the wedding, to help everyone get through the next few weeks, as me moving out and planning for Iris’s bigday was a little more than she could cope with. So I agreed. We haven’t told Iris. Don’t want to spoil her moment. That’s why I’m still going home, but the flat is real. My intentions are real. I don’t know what else to say.’
Enya felt the uncomfortable gulp of sudden tears. It all felt a little more than she could cope with, on top of the shitty meeting with Jenny and the sharp cut of loss at what that meant.
‘It’s never about intentions, it’s about action. Not that I’m telling you to act, nothing like that! But words are easy and I’m not,’ –strong enough, healed enough– ‘not ready to deal with words and the complexity of it all.’
Dominic was quiet for a moment and when he spoke his voice was calm, softer once more.
‘You’re crying because you know thisissomething, you know we’re not nothing. And that’s okay.’
‘It’s not okay,’ she managed, ‘nothing about this is okay.’I am Jonathan’s wife, still, very much Jonathan’s wife...
‘I was listening to Iris telling her mother how when she saw Aiden for the first time, it was like everything she had known up until that point was thrown into doubt, her plans now chaos. Like something had been revealed, a secret world that had been waiting for her and the moment she had glimpsed it, she knew there was no going back. And I had to grip the steering wheel with all my strength and bite my lips to stop myself from yelling out that I knew exactly what she meant! Because it had happened to me too!’
‘But it can’t. It just can’t, it’s not real! How can it be?’
She had said something similar to Aiden, trying to help him understand that secret worlds and bright futures were what grew with time, they were where she and Jonathan had arrived eventually, but that whole instant love and a happy future concept? It was just that, a concept, an idea without foundation. And she would notgive in to the novelty, not devalue what she and her husband had built by leaping at no more than a fancy for this man!
‘No, Enya. No. You’re wrong! This feeling, it’ssomething! And I know you feel it too, you were receptive, you were lovely. How do we ignore it? What are we supposed to do, carry on as if it hasn’t happened?’
‘Yes, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do.’
‘What if I can’t, what if I don’t want to, what if I think I deserve this shot at happiness, and what if you do too?’
‘No.’ Her tears felt hot on her cheeks, clogging up her nose and throat. ‘Just no! I don’t know you and what I do know, I don’t particularly like!’
‘That’s not true, I sense how you feel about me, I can see it. The way you look at me.’ He spoke softly.
The way you look at me...It was undeniable, not that it made it any more real.
‘I didn’t like the way you spoke to Trish – snapped at her in my kitchen. It was unkind.’ She spoke plainly.
‘You’re right, it was. I’ve thought about that too, a lot. I was thrown by seeing you, completely thrown, but more than that, the moment she suggested having adrinkie, I knew where we were headed, the dancing, the conflict, the slurred words, the aggression, the antagonistic cutting comments. Trust me, I’ve tried to help her make different choices, been trying for years. I’m exhausted by it. I wanted to disappear. I wanted to run!’
‘It was still unkind.’ She held steady.
There was a silent pause.
‘I can’t give you all the details in this one conversation, but I would dearly like the opportunity to talk to you about it. What I will say is that I’m so tired of not moving forward or making progress. When you popped up in the car park that day, it was like,’she held her breath, listening to his every word, ‘it was like fate. I had no idea that I might ever feel this, thispull.’
Enya said nothing, but her heart skipped a little in her chest; it was new and enticing and not like her at all. She was not this person, not in the habit of feeling this way either. Her life was set, sedate, or at least it had been, until that one day when Aiden had got on a plane and changed the course of his life, and she had met Dominic, who was suggesting he could change hers.
‘We haven’t started, Dominic,’ she said it again, ‘we are nothing, and yet already I’m sitting here, crying in the bath, how can that be the basis of anything good?’
‘It’s already good, just knowing you are out there in the world is filling my crappy life with joy! I think we have potential, at the very least we have to explore this!’ he pushed.
