Almost Perfect (8 page)

Georgie frowned at him.

‘The first day we met, you and your sister-in-law made conclusions about me based on the whiteness of my shirt.'

She looked abashed. ‘If I plead guilty, can you get me off with only a warning?'

Liam smiled. ‘I'll see what I can do.' He paused, watching her. ‘What colour is your hair anyway?' he asked.

‘It's kind of red, with bits of purple–'

‘No, I mean what colour is your hair really?'

‘You're looking at it.'

‘What is the colour of your own hair?' he tried again.

‘This is my own hair,' she insisted. ‘Go ahead, tug it, it's not a wig.' She tilted her head towards him.

‘I'm not going to tug at your hair.'

Georgie lifted her head again and he was staring at her intently. She was beginning to feel self-conscious, and she hardly ever felt self-conscious. ‘You have a little . . .' he touched her cheek lightly, ‘. . . piece of lettuce,' he finished, flicking it off his fingers.

She grimaced. ‘Well, now I'm embarrassed.'

He smiled again, resting his hand against her cheek. ‘Don't be.' He was still staring at her, his eyes flickering to her lips. She knew he was thinking about kissing her, unless he'd noticed another stray bit of food around her mouth. But no, he was leaning closer, Georgie felt her heart beating fast and a not-unpleasant tingling in her toes, of all places. When his lips touched hers it was tentative at first, they touched, pulled back, touched again. It was nice. Then they touched and lingered, pressing more firmly against hers, then shifting, their lips overlapping, so she could just taste the inside of his mouth. She felt his fingers lacing through her hair as his lips became more determined. Their mouths opened against each other, she felt his tongue, the edge of his teeth. Her heart started to race . . .

A wave crashed onto the sand right beside them, spraying them with a fine salty mist. Liam was on his feet before Georgie had time to register. ‘I have to get back,' he said.

‘Okay,' she murmured, getting up onto her knees. She sat back on her haunches, watching him brush the sand off his clothes with an almost violent resolve.

‘Do you think you got all the sand off there?' she drawled.

‘I can't go walking half the beach through the office.' He didn't look at her as he kept whacking furiously at his clothes. It was a little like self-flagellation.

They marched back to the stairs in an uneasy silence. What had got into him? Georgie wondered. Kissing her one minute and springing up like a startled rabbit the next. And what's more, why did she find it strangely appealing?

When they arrived at his car Liam opened the door and sat down, unravelling the legs of his pants and brushing away still more sand. Two things were stopping Georgie from just walking away and leaving him to his obsessive preening. One was her promise to Nick. The other was the way he had kissed her. The way it had made her feel. She had to do something drastic, or in the very least memorable.

She bent forward and swiped a pen from his top pocket, which made him straighten to look at her, and in one swift movement she turned, planted herself on his lap and cradled his forearm. She began to write along his inner arm.

‘What are you doing, Georgie?'

He didn't sound mad, more resigned if anything.

‘I'm writing my phone number on your arm,' she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘You know, so you . . . have it.'

‘I already have your number.'

‘At the shop. I don't live there, you know.'

‘Georgie . . .' Liam sighed heavily, and then to her surprise she felt him relax, leaning his head against her shoulder. ‘I'm sorry.'

She shifted around to face him. ‘What are you sorry for?'

He looked at her plaintively. ‘I'm not very good at this.' He paused. ‘I think I might . . . disappoint you.'

‘You'll only disappoint me if you don't call.'

He breathed in. ‘The thing is, I told you I work long hours, and right now we're in the middle of closing a huge deal.' He hesitated. ‘We're having some major problems, the weekend is the only time I'm going to have to sort them out . . .'

Georgie held her fingers to his lips. ‘It's okay. It doesn't have to be this weekend.'

She had to hold herself back from saying, ‘We've got the rest of our lives' which of course would have been insane. Mad, barking insane. She barely knew him, but it had been right on the tip of her tongue. This feeling was quite overpowering. The intimacy of sitting there on his lap, their faces so close, his eyes so openly gazing back at hers. There was a connection she could feel deep inside her, like his face would forever be burned into her mind. That he would always be a part of her. Georgie wondered if she was perhaps a little insane after all, but sanity had never felt this good.

She leaned towards him and pressed her lips against his. She let them linger there, her hand touching his cheek, just feeling the closeness of him. When she pulled back his eyes were still closed. He opened them slowly, staring at her, his eyes glassy now.

‘I'll see you then,' Georgie said in the softest
voice. She eased herself off his lap, smiling at him as she turned and walked away slowly. She knew he was watching her. Should she turn back around? No, just a wave. She raised her hand above her shoulder and fluttered her fingers. She wondered how she looked to him. Appealing? Intriguing? Memorable? She wondered what he was thinking right now. She wondered if he would call.

‘Mac?' Stella said tentatively, standing in the doorway to his office. He hadn't heard her quiet knock a moment before. He'd turned his chair to face the view and he was just sitting there, staring out. He'd been doing that a lot this week. Usually he threw himself into work. It must have hit him hard this time.

Stella stepped further into the room. ‘Mac?'

He jerked round abruptly.

‘Sorry,' she said, ‘I was going to head off, if there was nothing else you needed?'

He seemed a little out of it. He looked up at her, not registering for a moment, then gradually he came back to earth. ‘Stella, I didn't realise you were still here.'

She nodded. ‘I wanted to finish printing up those reports so they'd be ready for your breakfast meeting Monday.'

‘Thanks,' he said with a weak smile.

‘So, if there's nothing else–'

‘Have a drink with me,' he said, getting up from his desk.

‘What? Now? Where?'

‘Here.' Mac crossed to a cabinet against the wall that housed a small bar fridge. ‘What's your poison?'

Stella shrugged. ‘Whatever you're having, I guess.'

He crouched down, inspecting the contents of the fridge. ‘Do you drink beer?'

‘I've been known to.'

‘Well,' he said, picking out two bottles, ‘this is appropriate, have a Stella, Stella.' He tossed her a Stella Artois and she caught it. ‘And I guess you'll be needing something to open it with?' he added.

‘That'd help,' Stella smiled.

Mac found a bottle opener and passed it to her before walking back around his desk. ‘What shall we drink to?' he asked.

‘What do you suggest?' she replied uncertainly. He was acting a little strange, artificially buoyant. Why didn't he just go home?

Mac looked at her. ‘I'm sorry, am I keeping you from something?'

‘No,' she assured him. ‘Just Friday-night drinks with the girls. I'll be able to catch up.'

‘Sounds like a regular thing,' he said, lowering himself into his chair, and indicating for her to do the same.

Stella sat down opposite. ‘Semi-regular,' she nodded. ‘It's really more of a discussion group, we
talk philosophy, politics, the global economy, you know the kind of thing.'

‘It's really all about picking up guys, isn't it?'

‘Absolutely,' she said, taking a sip of her beer. ‘Unfortunately only the married ones come anywhere near us.'

‘Really?' he remarked, eyebrows raised. ‘How do you know they're married?'

‘Well, some are too stupid to take off their wedding rings, or too arrogant. The others, well, you can just tell.'

Mac was intrigued. ‘How?'

‘There're not a whole lot of half-decent thirtysomething fish in the ocean who aren't already married. The cliché about them all being married or gay is only a cliché because it's true. Anna was lucky, she snapped you up young.'

A faint smile hovered around his lips, but Stella could see the sadness in his eyes. ‘How is she?'

Mac sighed. ‘I don't know.' He paused. ‘Not good.'

He'd been able to keep it from Stella initially. Mac and Anna had decided not to tell anyone when they first embarked on IVF. Even Anna's parents didn't know, after all this time. But as the process became more complicated, more clinic-centred, there had been no choice but to tell Stella, not least so she could cover for him. He could still recall the completely unexpected but profound relief he'd felt sharing it with her. And Stella remained his only confidante. She was discreet to a fault; most of the time she acted as though it had never been
mentioned, yet she seemed to know innately when he needed to talk.

‘What are you going to do?' she asked.

‘I don't know,' he said plainly. ‘We're supposed to discuss it this weekend.'

‘What do you want?'

Mac blinked at her. It was such a simple question. What did he want? Foresight would be a good thing. If someone could assure him that the next cycle would result in a pregnancy that would proceed to full-term, then of course he would go ahead. The one after that? Sure. Five more? He didn't think he could do it. The hardest part about stopping was that it made everything they had gone through seem like a waste of time. Seven years of their lives, half their marriage, had been consumed by the quest to have a baby. He understood Anna's reluctance to give up, but they couldn't go on forever, or at least he couldn't.

‘I want it to be over,' he answered finally. ‘One way or the other.'

‘Even if that means no baby?'

Mac sighed heavily. ‘You know, sometimes I don't even know if I want a baby any more. It feels tainted, I can't see how a baby will make us happy now. But what worries me more is what are we going to expect of this child after all these years, waiting, agonising?' He paused. ‘It's unnatural. I just think it's gone on too long, we've lost perspective. We have to admit defeat and try to salvage a life out of all this.'

‘Wow,' Stella said quietly. ‘You really are over it, aren't you?'

He nodded slowly, scratching at the label of his beer bottle. ‘Yeah, I think maybe I am.'

‘How does Anna feel about that?'

‘I haven't told her.'

‘Oh.' Stella looked uncomfortable.

‘I hadn't even admitted it to myself till just then.'

They were silent for a while. Mac realised something huge had just occurred. A person could pretend for only so long, persevere, ignore the niggling doubts, but he couldn't pretend to himself any more. He'd said it out loud. Things were going to change now regardless.

‘So how do you think she's going to take it?' Stella said eventually.

Mac regarded her steadily. ‘How would you take it?'

She shook her head. ‘God, I dunno, Mac. I'm not Anna, I haven't been through what she's been through.'

‘But how would you feel if you thought you would never have a child?'

Stella stared across at him, clearly taken aback.

‘Sorry, that's none of my business.'

‘It's not that,' she shook her head. ‘I think about it all the time. I hear it from my parents constantly. “You're never going to get married and have babies”,' she said with an Italian accent. ‘“What are we going to do with you?”'

Stella had turned thirty last year, but she didn't have a party because as far as her family was concerned, thirty-year-old unmarried Italian women had nothing to celebrate. Career was a foreign word
to them; probably American, they suspected. Whatever, it was wrong. It had taken Stella's focus away from the important business of finding a husband. If she didn't spend so much of her time at work, she might have a chance. But she was getting too old, and as her nonna liked to remind her more often than she cared to hear it, her eggs were shrivelling up.

‘I've faced the possibility of being single for the rest of my life,' said Stella. ‘And I've decided I can cope. I mean, what's the alternative?'

Mac nodded. ‘Good point.'

‘But you know what? In the back of my mind I hold on to the fact that even if the right guy doesn't come along, I can still always have a baby.'

‘What, on your own?'

She sighed. ‘Oh, look, I know I could probably never go through with it. Can you imagine how that would go down at home? But the option is there, for a while yet.'

‘So you're saying you're more prepared to face life without a partner than a baby?'

She screwed up her face. ‘Not when you put it like that. I'm just saying that single doesn't have to mean childless, and that's a comforting thought at times. It's different for women, Mac. We get a pretty hard-to-ignore reminder every frigging month about exactly what we're supposed to be doing with our bodies and our lives. Is it any wonder we get tense?'

Mac smiled faintly. He looked so tired. Stella remembered the young aspiring executive who had
arrived here seven years ago, full of ambition, even a little full of himself, which was perhaps to be expected given his meteoric rise in the corporation. But over the last few years, she had watched him grow weary and worn down, as though he was gradually being sucked dry.

Stella got to her feet. ‘I'm leaving now so that you can go home to your wife and go to bed.' She closed her eyes, wincing. ‘I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I meant, go home to your wife, and go home to bed, whether it's with her or not is none of my business–'

‘I know what you meant.'

She gave him a feeble smile. ‘Want to walk down with me?'

‘No, it's okay, I have a couple of things to finish up.'

‘Mac,' she said sternly, ‘go home. You look terrible.'

‘I'm just tired. I've got the whole weekend to rest.'

‘Maybe what you and Anna need is a holiday.'

‘Maybe.' If only it was as simple as that. Go away somewhere, just the two of them, erase the last seven years, rekindle what they once had, look to the future.

‘Night,' Stella called from the doorway, breaking his reverie.

‘Goodnight, Stella.'

‘Don't stay too late,' she warned.

‘I won't.'

A moment later he heard her leaving the outer office, and soon after, the ping of the elevator. He
picked his beer up off the desk and swivelled his chair around to face the window. The last sliver of orange sunset had faded from the sky and darkness had officially taken over for the night shift. Mac watched the red and white trails of car lights as they snaked along the Cahill Expressway, making their way home to wives, husbands, families. But he wouldn't go home, not yet. He'd stay here until he could be reasonably certain Anna would have gone to bed. He wasn't avoiding her, he was avoiding a late-night ‘discussion'. They were the worst kind. The later it got, the more logic, understanding and common sense retreated from the front-line, leaving only frayed nerves and raw emotion to carry on the fight. Mac knew it was going to be almost impossible, but somehow they had to try to leave emotion out of it. It was important that they rationally assess the situation and come to objective conclusions based on concrete evidence.

Who was he kidding?