Healed, almost

Stairs, endless stairs. I took two at a time in an effort to minimise their number, but seemingly to no avail. There were six floors in all, until I reached the very top – or so I thought. Thankfully, I found I had reached my destination, and I needn’t bother with the final three stories of the shopping mall. The building was huge – so large I felt as if it were a town in its own right.

For a moment, I forgot what I was doing there. It took so long to get there, I had forgotten I was headed for the café. To study, no doubt, and then I remembered.

I did not expect, however, to slip into a seat, only to find myself joined by four of my old friends. Two couples, Anne and Leon, Sally and Carter. Carter was beside me, Sally pulling up a chair next to him, and the other couple opposite.

It looked like I wasn’t going to get any studying done.

While we drank coffee, the five of us chatted, catching up and laughing like old times. In truth, we had barely spoken for a couple of years. I noticed how little Sally spoke; she was least close to all of us and watched with quiet jealousy while Carter flirted with me.

I remembered the summer three years ago when he and I had been close. Too close. They had just started seeing each other and my ex had just ended with me. It was strange that now I should remember that time with fondness, though this was also tinged with guilt. Carter, oh Carter. Form months, he’d suffered Sally’s incessant nagging and anger, and when I’d stayed at his we’d found our solace in each other.

As he’d bent to kiss me that night, I’d truly felt saved; his hands on my body, smoothing away the loneliness, his arms protecting me from its return, and our embrace like a hot balm, torrid, yet cleansing of his hurt and mine.

In the café, though, I was flush with guilt as I came out of my reverie. Anne and Leon bid their goodbyes to us and the rest of us looked awkwardly at each other. I do not think she knew, until then, what had passed between us. But it was in that moment, that glance, when the two of us, he and I, looked at each other and then to her. I knew neither of us would forget the strength of feeling we had expressed in those few secret months.

Later, he had texted me, to say we should make a go of it, but I honestly didn’t think it would work between us; we had used each other as a healing salve and forged a bond, but being together was too dangerous. 

And he would always have her.

Even as she saw the look and stormed from the café, we knew Sally would return to him, albeit furious and prepared to punish him.

It was then that he sighed and leaned back. I gripped his hand and started to see his eyes glisten. I smiled sympathetically.

That day, we did what we always had done, in the beginning, when we were no more than friends. The pair of us would walk everywhere, all the while talking animatedly, rehashing the same rants about our respective troubles in the efforts to purge them from our systems. As we walked, I felt his hand close around mine and his fingers thread through mine. This had been meant to be a harmless walk, but his grip was poignant. I think at that moment, though I didn’t realise it, we both knew what would happen.

We went to his house.

It was the home he shared with Sally, two bedrooms and an annex with a pool. It was there that we found ourselves, and I gazed at the water and its patterns on the walls. The room was bathed blue, like it meant to emphasise the atmosphere; Carter’s mood, and my blissfully nostalgic heartache.

Then, as before, I felt his hands run over my skin and all too quickly my clothes fell to the floor, and his too, so that we stood in our underwear.

“Did you want to swim?” he whispered against my shoulder, hands on my arms. He pressed himself to my back.

I had no swimwear, and he wore none either, and we sank into the cold water in the shallow end up to our nipples. Carter followed me, still close behind me, and his hands cupped my breasts. A gasp filled my throat, though I knew what would happen.

And finally, we sank into the water together, coming up, from both the water and each other, only to breathe before we descended once more, into the pool and into the darker part of ourselves that could do this to Sally.

But to us it came naturally. As before, we took the other, and took advantage of them in their weakest moment, knowing they did the same, and we came out healed, almost.