The Chatsfield Short Romances 11-15
He stops in the middle of the lobby and I take a breath, turn to him.
‘Would you like to come up for a drink…a nightcap?’
I know my voice wobbles and he hears it too, gives me a questioning look. ‘A nightcap?’ he asks, a slight frown creasing his features.
I nod. ‘You know…brandy or something. I’m sure there’s something like that in the suite…’
We look at each other. I know what he’s thinking. He’s wondering if I mean just a drink. So am I. But this doesn’t feel like one of those tingly moments, hot and heady, the sort where a girl gets carried away. I just feel…desperate. I look at him, begging him to understand. He must know how this feels. I’ve seen it in his eyes. He knows the loneliness, knows that someone would do anything to escape it, just for a moment.
He steps forward, reaches up to touch my cheek so gently. ‘Yes, Sophie. I will come for a nightcap. I will keep you company, if that is what you want.’
I hold back a sniff and nod vigorously. How does this man, whom I’ve known for less than twenty-four hours, who is so different from me and my safe Sussex village lifestyle, read me better than Gareth did after six years? It must be a dream, something I’ve conjured up in my sleep from too much wishful thinking. I’ll wake in a moment, drenched in sweat, heart pounding, distant sirens wailing through the quiet London streets.
He reaches down for my hand and we head for the lifts. I feel the warmth of his fingers between mine as we travel up to my floor and I let out a sigh. I’m safe. For the moment.
When we get to the suite it is empty, just as Mel and Vikki said it would be. They must be really serious about this wild, sexy fling idea. I almost laugh but then I realise that I’m actually bringing a man, a stranger—although he doesn’t feel that way—back to my hotel room. Reality lurches again. This can’t be real, can it? Cristian can’t be real.
But his body feels warm behind mine as I fumble with the key card in the lock more than once. His hands are solid and real as he gently takes it from me and then the little green light flashes and we are walking into the suite. I’m quite relieved it’s got a living room, I discover, that we’re not just walking in and seeing a great big empty bed taunting us.
I go to the little bar across the room without looking back at him over my shoulder. I find a bottle of something amber-coloured and reach for it and two large tumblers. With shaky fingers I pour a little too much into each glass and then I turn and walk over to him, hand it to him. For some reason I feel the need to smile at him brightly, but it feels papery and thin on my features. He gives me a What are you doing? look.
I can’t tell him, because I don’t know. I just know I don’t know how to do this. Whatever it is.
If this were a book or a film, I’d have that fling. Right now on the expensive Persian rug beneath our feet. The perfect rude gesture to Gareth for his cowardice, for his bloody awful timing. For that stupid little ‘x’ at the end of his text.
If this were a story, I’d wake up tomorrow morning and feel liberated and free, as if everything Gareth has done to me has been washed away, and I’d step out into my bright, shining future. Only, as I stare at the man standing a few feet away, his eyes dark and full of unspoken emotion, I realise that real life is far more complicated than that.
I breathe out. My chest deflates and suddenly I feel very tired.
I walk over to Cristian. I take the glass from his hand and put it on the coffee table, and then I place my hands on his chest, I look into his eyes and then I lay my head on his shoulder. For a moment he is deathly still, but then his arms fold round me, he breathes out a word in Spanish that I don’t understand and I feel his face on my neck as he pulls me closer.
It’s as if we’re dancing again, but this time there are no lights, no music, not even any movement. Just this wonderful stillness that soothes something deep down inside of me. Slowly I begin to relax, feeling the slight roughness of his suit jacket against the skin of my face, the seams and folds of a pocket under the fingers of my right hand, the smell of him—warm and sharp and hypnotising. I lose all track of time, all awareness of anything but these immediate sensations. I could be anywhere. It could be any time of day. I don’t care, because I am holding onto him and he is holding onto me and that is all that matters.
For the first time in ages, I feel as if I am properly breathing. I do it again and again, relishing the feel of cool, fresh air in my lungs. How long have I been holding all this tension? For a week?
No, longer, I realise. Much longer.
Cristian’s hands move on my back, bringing me sharply back to the present. At once I am aware of the carpet beneath my feet, the ornate Art Deco clock ticking on the mantelpiece, the hum of the air-conditioning unit. I peel my face away from his shoulder and look at him.
‘Sophie—’ he begins to say, but I cut him off by reaching up and brushing my lips against his. There is a moment or two, pulse beats, while everything is still again, but then his arms squeeze around me and his lips find mine.
The kiss that follows is exquisite. It is soft, yet teasing. Passionate, yet gentle. I feel as if I am something utterly precious in his hands, something never to be let go of. For a woman whose other half wimped out on the ‘to have and to hold’ part of our marriage contract, it is seductive. Maybe even a little addictive. I don’t want it to stop. Ever.
But it does, and when we pull away from each other and open our eyes, Cristian is looking a little shaken for the first time in our acquaintance. For some reason I find this funny and I start to smile.
‘I did not mean to do that,’ he says in a husky voice.
‘Neither did I,’ I reply, ‘but I refuse to regret it.’
His lips twitch and his eyes warm. ‘Nor I.’
I shake my head and then lay my forehead against his. ‘What are we doing?’ I say on a sigh. ‘This is crazy.’
I feel him inhale, hold it and breathe out again. ‘I know.’
‘You’re going home to tomorrow…’ I hear the hint of despair in my voice. I look up to see if the shutters have come down, the way they did in Gareth’s eyes when I dared to be too honest emotionally, but what I find there isn’t awkwardness, a vague look of fear, but matching longing, matching frustration.
‘This is stupid,’ I say, shaking my head, attempting to back away. ‘We don’t even know each other.’
Cristian holds me firmly, stopping my retreat. He waits until I meet his gaze again. ‘Don’t we?’
My heart starts hiccupping inside my chest.
I close my eyes. I want so badly for all of this to be true, for this to be the key that releases me from the prison I’ve been trapped in. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I really could just take Cristian into my bed and make everything else disappear? I know it would be amazing.
I also know all we can have is this one night.
But will that make it better, or worse? Suddenly I am second-guessing myself again, poisoning the atmosphere of promise clinging around us with my doubts. I step back and this time he doesn’t stop me. I start walking and realise I am heading for the bathroom. I wave a hand. ‘I just need to…you know…’
And then I bolt, running through the bedroom until I am back in my porcelain mausoleum, the door shut firmly behind me.
Chapter Eight
I stare in the mirror. I don’t recognise the woman staring back at me. She isn’t grey and weighed down. She’s flushed and her breath is coming in short pants. She looks alive. I know I can’t walk back into the other room and grab this chance with both hands, but she looks as if she could. She looks like a woman who knows how to take a leap of faith.
I try to smile at her, to ask her what she’s going to do, but the image shifts and flickers. She’s still there, but now there is someone else there too, like a ghostly shadow.
It’s the woman with the hollow eyes. Her face gets clearer the more I look, swallowing up the other me, absorbing her. I want to shout out to call her back, but I know my voice will carry to the living room.
Now Hollow Eyes is all that is left. She looks back at me sadly. Knowingly.
I brace my hands on the sink and drop my head. I can’t bear to look at her any more. Her work is done, anyway. She’s woken me up from this temporary insanity. Truth has come rushing back into my evening like a cold draught.
I could sleep with Cristian tonight, but it wouldn’t change anything. It wouldn’t make me free. The ghosts are still here to haunt me. My friend in the mirror is proof of that. Tomorrow I would feel cheap and dirty. Instead of remembering this wonderful short time together, I would want to pretend it had never happened.
And Cristian is not a faceless man fit only for a meaningless fling. He’s right—I do know him. In a way I can’t articulate and don’t understand. How can I use him like that after all he’s given me? It would make me no better than Gareth.
I turn and rest my bottom on the sink, stare at the tiles on the wall. They blur and swim into a sea of white.
I don’t want to forget Cristian. No matter how great the pleasure could be in this moment, I don’t want to rob myself of those future memories. I want to treasure the moments—my first tango, the way he looked at me…as if I was special, as if I was worth something. I need these things to hang onto if I’m ever going to banish that sad grey creature who looks back at me in the mirror.
I take in a breath, stand up and walk towards the door.
Chapter Nine
When I re-enter the living room, Cristian is about to walk out the door into the hall. ‘No!’ I shout and he turns. He looks at me, but he doesn’t let go of the door handle. I walk over to him. Tears begin to stream down my face.
I know I brought him up here under false pretences. I know I have no right to ask him to stay. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say hoarsely as I come close.
He turns to look at me. ‘For what?’
I give a little shrug. ‘Because I don’t think I can…you know…’
He shakes his head. His eyes glitter in the soft light and I see his jaw tense. ‘You think I leave because of that?’
His accent is thicker, stronger. He is angry.
‘I…’ I shake my head. I can’t deny it. It’s exactly what I thought. Exactly what I still think.
He pulls himself up taller. At once I am taken back to the evening before, to not just the grace, but the power and control with which he danced. ‘I was leaving because you are not ready for this, Sophie. Not any of it. Not even the little we have shared.’
The tears, which must have stopped briefly, halted by shock, start up again. I nod and my lips crumple. I look at the floor.
He swears in Spanish and then I feel his arms around me again. I just cry on his jacket, making a big soggy mess of it, but I’m too far past caring to stop.
When the tears finally run dry, he leads me back into the room, sits me down on the sofa. ‘You are grieving,’ he says.
I look up, swiping my eyes. ‘No I’m not,’ I say firmly. ‘It’s nothing like that. Nobody died it was just…’
I trail off, look at the clock on the mantelpiece.
‘Oh.’
It’s exactly like that. Okay, no actual person died. There hasn’t been a funeral. But my hopes and dreams? The future I’d planned for myself? It’s all gone. Nothing is left but an empty space. And that’s what death is, isn’t it? The hole left behind when something you love isn’t there any more, something you can never get back.
He sits down on the other end of the sofa. I can see understanding and sympathy in his eyes. And knowledge.
‘You know what this is like, don’t you? You’ve done this too?’
He nods.
Hope flares inside me. Cristian seems so grounded, so solid. Not the wavering mess I feel I might dissolve into at any moment. I realise that maybe it won’t always feel this way, that one day I might reach that state too.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
He blinks slowly. ‘I was engaged to be married a long time ago, but the wedding never happened.’
I butt in, far too eager. ‘She ran out on you?’ I know I shouldn’t sound so excited, but something inside me wants confirmation of this feeling that we’re a matching pair.
He shakes his head. ‘She died. A stupid accident that made no sense…still makes no sense.’
I look at him. Those hints of sadness I’d only been half aware of become clearer now. He wears them like scars. But where mine are raw and weeping, his are faint and silvery. Not erased. They will never be erased, I suspect. But they have become bearable.
‘I’m sorry.’ This time I say it for the right reason. I see gratitude in his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to be crass earlier…with the running out thing…’ I know I’m babbling, but I can’t seem to stop. I feel as if I’ve been holding it all in for so long and Cristian isn’t scared by this side of me, not the way Mel and Vikki are. ‘But that’s what happened to me.’
I stare up at the plasterwork on the ceiling, look round my opulent suite. Not the one-bedroomed one Gareth had booked—Mel had seen to that the moment we’d checked in—but close enough. ‘This…’ I say, and my voice breaks, underlining nicely just how not ‘over it’ I am ‘…was supposed to be my honeymoon. I should have got married eight days ago.’
I see in Cristian’s eyes that he knows where I’m going, but I say it anyway. I don’t know why, but I need to.
‘He left me standing at the altar. No explanation.’
Everyone else has been looking at me with pity since it happened, but not Cristian. For a moment his eyes flare with a hint of the anger I saw at the door to the suite, but then I see both admiration and acknowledgment. ‘And so you ran away,’ he says softly, with no judgement.
I stand up and laugh. I don’t know why. This last twenty-four hours has been surreal enough as it is and I seem to have lost the ability to surprise myself any longer. I fling my arms wide. ‘Does it look as if I’m running away? I came on my own honeymoon, for heaven’s sake!’
Cristian just looks at me.
‘Oh, shut up,’ I say and pace away in the other direction. I go to stare out of the window. Even though it’s late the city is still alive, busy like an ant hill, but populated with taxi cabs and red buses instead of insects.
He comes to stand behind me then he runs his hand down the outside of my arm. I shiver. ‘I should go,’ he says.
I nod, still looking at the trail of red tail lights winding down the road. ‘I don’t want you to.’
He leans forward and kisses the top of my shoulder. ‘Neither do I.’
I turn and look at him. Our faces are close. I feel breathless. ‘Is it just me?’ I ask, searching his face for his answer before it comes. ‘Am I the only one feeling this?’
It’s highly probable that’s the case. I have come slightly unhinged, after all.
He looks down at me, his face sad. I feel certain he is going to say that it’s all in my head, that he’s sorry he let me think otherwise, but then he nods. ‘No. It’s not just you.’
Terror and joy wind themselves round my throat like creepers. Joy that maybe I’m not as crazy as I thought, but fear of what this might mean. He’s right. I’m nowhere near ready.
‘Our timing stinks,’ I say, and he lets out a low, dry chuckle. I like the sound of his laugh.
And then he kisses me again. This time it’s not just a tangle of sensations, wonderful as they were. This time he is communicating, just as he did when we danced together. I don’t know the exact translation, but my heart sighs in agreement. I mumble against his lips. ‘I don’t want this night to end.’
He pulls back and I open my eyes. ‘Then we won’t let it,’ he says. ‘We will squeeze every last second out of it.’ And then he grabs my hand and leads me to the door.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask.
He smiles at me. ‘Nowhere. Everywhere. It doesn’t matter.’
I smile back as the suite door slams behind me. No, it doesn’t matter. I don’t care where I go, as long as I am with him.
Chapter Ten
From where we stand on the roof terrace of The Chatsfield the whole city lies before us, washed clean from the grime and heat of the previous day by the silvery blue light creeping across the sky. Cristian and I have walked, we have talked. We have kissed and just held each other, but now the night is almost over, the seconds draining away along with the safety of the darkened sky and I feel the old sense of heaviness returning. I start to panic.
He knows this and comes to stand behind me, folds his arms around me and places his cheek next to mine. My breathing begins to slow.
I close my eyes against the invading dawn, hoping to delay it just that little bit longer. Why now? Why did I have to meet him now, not in two years’ time…? Or why not seven years ago, before I’d even met Gareth? Fate might have blessed us by letting us find each other, but her cruel sense of humour means this will always be a ‘what if?’, a bittersweet memory that both soothes and taunts.
‘It’s so unfair…’ I whisper softly.
Cristian just holds me tighter. ‘It is not fair or unfair,’ he says. ‘It is life.’
I turn and face him, grab his shoulders just a little desperately. ‘Can’t you stay?’ While I wait for him to answer I start trying to work out when Gareth will realise I’m draining his bank account and if there will be time to buy a plane ticket to Argentina before then.
He looks down at me, those dark brown eyes so expressive, even while hardly any of the emotion shows on the surface. I used to think Gareth had hidden depths, that his emotional constipation was masking who I believed him to be, but staring at this man, I know this is what strong and silent looks like. His heart beats; it is not made of concrete.
‘Even if I could, I would not change anything,’ Cristian says.
I shake my head.
‘Grief has its own time scale,’ he adds. ‘You cannot rush it or wish it away. I know this.’
I know it too, but I want to pretend I don’t. My voice rasps when I respond. ‘Will I ever see you again?’
For a long time he doesn’t open his mouth, but then he says, ‘That, Sophie, will be up to you.’
Something inside me shoots up like a firework, even as I frown. ‘What do you mean?’
He takes my face in his hands, drops a swift, soft kiss on my lips. ‘What I mean is that you need space and time, and that I am going to give them to you.’
Space and time. Just what Gareth had asked of me. I’m not at all amused by the irony, especially as I realise Cristian is much more generous than I am. I wanted to take Gareth’s time and space and shove them up his—
‘Sophie?’
I focus back on Cristian. I can feel the warmth of the rising sun touching my shoulders now and I shake it away.
‘Ciera los ojos,’ he says and I do as I am told, closing my lids and eradicating everything but the feel of him, the faint scent of his aftershave. His right hand moves to just below my shoulder blade, his left intertwines with mine, but we don’t dance, we just stand there, feeling the warmth of the dawn grow brighter and hotter.
‘I will be back in London one year from today,’ he whispers in my ear.
I start to open my eyes to look at him, but the little noise that he makes tells me I need to be patient, that it isn’t time to break the spell.
A year? That seems like an awfully long time. ‘Will you?’ My voice is so faint I’m not sure he even hears me.
He nods and I feel his stubble against my cheek. ‘I will be here, in this very spot, waiting for you.’
Tears spring from under my closed lashes.
‘If you want to meet me here, it will be up to you.’
I almost laugh. ‘Of course I’ll—’
He cuts me off without either moving or saying anything. I just feel the change in him like a drop in temperature. ‘You cannot say that yet. Not until you have been through the depths and come out the other side. Until then, it is impossible to know what you want.’
‘What time?’ I whisper.
‘Sunset. And then we can continue our night together as if it did not stop.’
He kisses me one last time, and it reminds me of the Malbec he gave to me the first time we met—rich and velvety, full of promise—and then he steps away. Somehow I know I’m not supposed to open my eyes.
I hear his footsteps fade across the terrace and disappear.
Part of me wants to collapse into a heap and take up where I left off a day and a half ago, immersed in my own misery, barely surviving, but a newer part refuses to be that weak. The new part turns and faces the sun, tilts her head back to feel its warmth on the face he just touched and kissed. She smiles.
I don’t know if I’ll tell Mel and Vikki about this. I don’t know if they’ll ever believe me. Better to let them think I had my fling. And I know they won’t believe that Cristian will be here in twelve months. Despite all her giddiness about men, Mel, in particular, is very sceptical. She’d probably say it was sweet talk to stop me following him and making a fuss.
And I suppose, after my aborted wedding last week, I should probably think the same.
I try to picture things that way, to just brush this off as a lucky escape, but I can’t. All I can see is an image of Cristian standing here on a warm and breezy summer’s evening. As hard as I try, I just don’t see myself here, humiliated and alone a second time, waiting for a man who never comes.
But more than that… I look further, wider, and I realise my future is no longer a thick grey fog, stretching out before me forever. This bright morning sun that is warming my cheeks, making the lights dance inside my eyelids, has burnt it away.
I stand like that for ages, feeling the sun climb higher until it bathes me completely, and when I finally open my eyes again, I know exactly what I must do.
I need to talk to Gareth. As much as I don’t want to, I need to open this wound and clean it out, try to understand and move on. He owes me this. Forget the credit card, this is the one debt he really needs to pay.
And then I must not be afraid to mourn. I must be brave enough to follow grief’s lead until she has danced her way through me.
I blink back the low sun and head for the door back into the hotel, a smile on my face and a determined sway in my step. Once inside, I take the lift down to the hotel reception, knowing that the very first thing I need to do is reserve a room—for exactly one year from today.
***
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Tara Pammi
Step behind the hotel room doors of The Chatsfield, London…
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