39
Muffin whined by the door, indicating he needed to go out for a toilet break, she checked her watch realising it had gone after eleven pm and was pitch black outside. Knowing he wouldn’t do his business out in the garden, she had no alternative but to walk the little fur ball. She needed a break, her back and neck aching from scooping over her technical desk when she was putting the final details on her last piece. A walk was maybe not a bad idea, some air and a little stroll would make her feel ready for bed. Lately sleeping had been near impossible, so her nights had gotten later and later, working until fatigue took over.
She rummaged in the kitchen for a torch and headed out in a woolly cardigan and slip on shoes with her normally light summer dress, Muffin on the leash in hand. The night air was thick and dark. A little too humid and stuffy but the moon was up and full in the cloudless sky, casting a lot more light than normal, she held the torch out in front of her illuminating the ground, avoiding large stones and tree roots as they made their way towards the main road. There was a slight breeze in the air making the trees rustle, the faint sound of the river nearby adding to the mysterious atmosphere.
Muffin sniffed at the overgrown bushes at the sides but seemed intent on holding in his business until he had been a proper walk. Straining to pull her towards the main entrance, he was restless and whiny. She cursed him under her breath, tucking the doggy bags into her pocket again. Sometimes he was just a stubborn miniature mule. He did not even seem like he wanted to go potty anymore as she headed out of the gravel road, expecting to take a turn to the left and use the grass verge out of town, but stopped in alarm at the dark car parked just off the entranceway. Muffin began excitedly yapping, his tail flying wildly and spinning around in circles pulling the leash tightly. It looked abandoned. Two wheels up on the grass verge just at the start of the turning into the cottage. She recognised it at once and felt her heartbeat start to quicken and her nerves take over; that sinking feeling of dread overcoming her.
She heard him before she saw him.
Rob!
‘Down here.’
Jumping out of her skin, she slid around the car cautiously, realising he was at the back wheel changing a flat tyre. His jacket was off, his white shirt sleeves rolled up and he was expertly using a tyre iron to tighten wheel nuts back on the new wheel, the flat one laying on the grass beside the car. Muffin lunged forward at him, covering his hands and wrists with fevered licks as he ruffled his tiny head. Rob took a second to pick him up for a belly rub before letting him back down and keeping his gaze averted.
‘Hey,’ She sounded as awkward as she felt and physically sick to her stomach, looking at him longingly. She knew the first time seeing him again would be hard, but she had not counted on it being this much agony. She pulled Muffins leash back as he again tried to climb onto Rob’s lap and he sat obediently on the grass verge, wide eyed, that wild little face alert and happy at the sight of his master. Traitorous little beast.
Rob glanced up, his normally clean-shaven, tanned face was stubbled and tired, and he gave a quick smile. It didn’t reach his eyes and he didn’t stray on her face for more than a mere second. It had the same effect as poking something sharp in her heart.
‘Hey... I’m done, so will be out of your way in a sec.’ He stood up, using a rag to clean his filthy hands, effortlessly scooped up the ruined tyre and popped it in the boot. She was struggling for words, trying to find something to say and desperate to drag out this brief encounter now that she was faced with him. Seeing him only highlighted just how much she missed him, just how much she loved him.
‘I thought you were still in Glasgow?’ She said shyly, her voice a little fragile and low, he just seemed normal and distant.
‘My flight got in an hour ago. This is me just getting home.’ He still didn’t look her way, concentrating on putting tools back into a little compartment on the boot floor. He sounded emotionless, no warmth in his voice, no anger either; just indifference. It was sheer agony, being this close and not being able to throw herself into his strong arms when he looked as handsome as always and it only pained her more that he was acting like she didn’t mean anything to him.
‘Right! of course... Did you get things sorted out then? On your trip?’ She sounded odd even to herself, trying to hard not to react to him. He shut the boot
‘All that I could sort, yeah.’ The disinterest and coldness was causing Rose to well up inside. The urge to cry growing stronger and stronger and she felt stupid. She had chosen this; this was her doing, not his, and he was only acting like she should have been. Keeping his distance. It shouldn’t be ripping her open like this, he was being civil and not being an asshole, but it hurt like crazy.
He stopped as he got to his driver door and looked down at Muffin for a moment’s pause, and then finally at Rose.
‘Don’t go too far. It’s late and although rural, you never know who is out here, Penny.’
It was too much, that little piece of concern, even if he did use that awful pet name. Still, the protector; and she was rendered unable to talk. Afraid that trying to answer would cause a breakdown in front of him, she faked a quick smile and nodded, turning away quickly with an awkward wave.
Without looking back, she headed away from the car. Fighting the urge to turn back with all her might, she pushed on, tears now streaming down her face and trying to block out the hum of his car behind her.
Rob watched her walk off in his rear-view mirror for a few seconds, adjusting his mirror to watch her out of sight before heading off and going home.
Rose felt her strength going with the car as it faded away.
Muffin refused to do anything more than scent every bush they passed in the twenty minutes she dragged him around. He kept pausing and straining to look down the road to the way he had driven off and it only angered her. She grew agitated and huffily pulled him back towards the cottage. The tears finally dry and instead the return of numbness and misery.
He had looked every bit as good as her memories. Smelled his familiar scent in the air and the sight of his bare arms and tanned skin flexing as he tightened the wheel nuts had made her long painfully to reach out and touch him. The detailed memories of how his hands had felt on her body and that deep caressing voice. She could not shake the cold blank expression on his beautiful face or the lack of any love in his controlled voice, knowing fine well that she was torturing herself! She pushed open the cottage door and turned on the lights angrily.
Maybe this is what she needed!
To see him again.
To get over the first shock and see that he was happy to move on; to actually feel that it was over and see with her own eyes his disinterest in her; some sort of closure.
He was behaving as she expected he would. Back to being strangers who occasionally nodded in passing. All back down to business as though she had never been more to him than his sisters friend. One thing for sure, he wasn’t suffering the way Rose was at having ended things. He seemed like he always seemed.
Absolutely fucking normal.
She threw herself down in bed after settling Muffin into his and stared at the ceiling, pushing thoughts of him aside and tossing around. She could not get comfy, every part of this room reminded her of him even if he didn’t deserve her obsessing over him. Her sheets, although fresh, still held his scent faintly. Maybe it was not the bed, maybe it was the air around her and the way her ceiling danced with moonlit shadows, even reminding her of lying awake listening to him breathe in his sleep so many times during stolen moments together.
‘Argggh!’
Frustrated, she threw off the sheets and got back up, pacing and hating everything around her.
Was this how it was? In books and movies and life? Is this what getting over someone was like? Someone who you thought really was your forever?
It was horrible and cruel. Like some sort of mental torture! She picked up the phone by her bed, seeing its blank screen staring back at her mockingly and threw it at the wall.
‘I hate you!!!... I hate you!!... I HATE YOUUU... I Hate...’ She broke down into sobs, falling back onto the bed and curling into the fetal position. Talking out loud through a flood of tears, full of self-pity and despair.
‘I’m losing my mind...I’m going insane... Is this how she feels? Is this how you make her feel, knowing she isn’t wanted?’
Slow painful agony and torture.
‘Like she can’t breathe! Like she’s having her insides twisted and pulled apart slowly. She’s seeping away into non-existence...That she cannot function or go on... Or live?’
She closed her eye’s feeling the hot tears change course and trickle down her cheeks towards her ears as she lay flat on her back. Somehow soothing. Morag came into her mind’s eye clear as day.
The first time she laid eyes on her, when she was the hot seductive picture of perfect manicure and control. That alluring demeanor, she had seemed like a woman who got everything she wanted with little effort. Domineering and confident. It was all a facade. A lie. A face she showed the world when really, inside she was broken and aching and drowning in her own despair. She was a first-class actress and the world her stage.
For the first time, Rose felt compassion for the woman, instead of hatred and resentment. She could relate to the despair of dangling on a precipice, not knowing how to feel or act when the man you were devoted too was just indifferent. To have your heart trodden down until it resembled nothing more than ground meat.
She felt ashamed.
She felt lost.
