Marriage Make-Over

‘I did get your preposterous letter,’ she said, ‘and I would appreciate it if that was the last of its kind.’

‘Fine. Don’t write rubbish and I will have no reason to refute it.’

Her first response was a slow, steadying blink as he walked past her without another glance and took his bags of groceries into the kitchen. She followed, striving to drag her treacherous gaze from the tempting sight of tanned, tensed forearm muscles as he carried the heavy load.

‘Rubbish?’ she yelled when she finally found her voice. ‘I would have you know the women I write about are all real people. Real women with real experiences and real hopes that have been dashed one too many times by men.’ She all but spat the word in his face.

He continued to unpack his groceries all but ignoring her outburst. ‘That column of yours has to be damaging. Individual women have the capacity to make up their own minds about their individual relationships. The last thing they need is some unqualified post-feminist hack spreading easy wholesale answers to serious situations.’

Kelly coughed and spluttered her way back into the conversation. ‘I would have you know that it is the most popular new column in the magazine’s history.’

He shrugged. ‘Popularity is fleeting and not something to hang your hat on. Think plaid flares. Think fluorescent socks. Need I go on?’

‘Readers love me!’

‘I thought your job was to convince your readers there was no such thing as love.’

She counted to ten in her mind. ‘No such thing as romantic, everlasting love between a man and a woman. Respect and heartfelt thanks are out there in droves and they are coming my way.’

‘Fine. You are a star. But you are also a liar.’

Steam was streaming from her ears, literally, she was certain. She could feel it heating up her scalp! ‘Me? A liar? How dare you—?’

The steam faded. She was a liar, wasn’t she? Of sorts. Nobody knew she was married. But then again she did not know if Maya was married. And to all intents and purposes she was alone. And single. But before she could tell Simon just how wrong he was, he turned on her.

‘Did you actually read my letter?’

Only a hundred times. ‘Yes,’ she said through clenched teeth.

‘And that’s why you’re here?’

‘Of course. Nothing else would possibly have dragged me here. But my editor wants me to respond to your ridiculous statements in the next column.’

Simon smiled, his beautiful mouth turning up at the sides and revealing lovely, naturally neat white teeth. Her heart leapt. She mentally slapped it down.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I look forward to hearing your response.’

‘My response, Simon, is that you can stick your letter up your—’

Simon’s sensibilities were saved by the shrill ringing of his mobile phone. He turned away and answered it. His voice switched into professional mode. After a few moments he put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, ‘It’s my broker. Won’t be a moment. Don’t go away.’ He walked out of the room, talking residuals and percentages as he went.

She had never seen him talk like that to anyone. Her Simon had been a thinker, a dreamer, not someone who lived in a museum, carried the latest in mobile phones, and had a stockbroker! And not someone who could demand her to stay with such authority that she could not help but shoot him a saucy salute behind his departing back.

After a few moments she followed, intrigued despite herself, and peeked around the corner.

He was in his bedroom and it was as sparse and flavourless as the rest of the apartment. He had already whipped off his soaked top and tossed it on a gargantuan white bed and was pulling the belt from his trousers. One glance at the broad naked shoulders and tanned buff chest on show was enough for Kelly to spring back into the dining room, her heart beating a million miles a minute and her head swimming with mixed images of Simon at twenty-one, slim and fit, to be sure, but certainly not the strapping man she had just glimpsed.

Well, several seconds of solid ogling were probably more than a glimpse…

Kelly’s self-consciousness returned in full measure. She worried that compared to her eighteen-year-old self she looked too thin, too grown up. She rushed through the bare apartment searching frantically for a mirror and had to settle for her reflection in the microwave.

She needed all the body armour she could muster. She tugged at her dress, smoothed out her hair, ran a finger under each eye to make sure her eyeliner was even. She sucked in her stomach, puffed out her minimal chest and waited for her one-time paramour to return.

He did, soon enough, wearing dry chocolate-brown trousers and a deep red shirt, untucked with the top two buttons open showing a glimpse of the enviable physique beneath, and went straight to unpacking his groceries without even a glance her way.

Even in her barely-there dress she felt hot. Hot and bothered. Yet he had barely even taken in her sexy short dress. She had not caught him checking out her legs or anything! It was plainly obvious he was not back for all that and she fought to squash the rising disappointment. So why was he back?

‘Why are you writing this column, Kelly?’

‘To pay the rent,’ she spat out. It meant infinitely more to her than that but she had no intention of letting him know the power he held by simply being on the scene.

His hands stopped shuffling for a brief moment before taking up where they left off.

‘With folks like yours I wouldn’t have thought that would be a major concern for you.’ He must have sensed the scream welling inside her as he continued. ‘Or why not stick to obituaries?’

That stifled the scream in an instant. So he had been keeping up with her career for a while. It had been months since she’d had the reward of that particular job.

‘Why write this column?’

‘Because I have the in-the-trenches experience to have real insight. With Single and Loving It! I really have something valuable to say.’

‘Which is?’

‘Love is an illusion and what the illusion promises exists in the woman’s mind alone and never in real life.’

She wondered if he too felt the words sounded rehearsed, as though she had repeated them like a mantra inside her head a thousand times before.

His glance shifted her way and held and all the body armour in the world could not have kept her safe. Kelly’s breath faltered. Her skin warmed. And her long-since-dormant libido whirred back to life. As, standing before her, his beautiful hazel eyes boring into hers, he seemed as far from an illusion as could be.

‘Do you really believe that?’ he finally asked.

Kelly swallowed. How was a woman to stand up to such focussed attention from such a man? Unless armed with the knowledge that the promise in his eyes and the tumbling feelings in her own stomach were all precursors to disillusionment, any woman would be sucked in only to be spat out at a later date. Thankfully her column was around to prepare women for just such an occasion.

‘I do believe it,’ she said, and she meant it.

Simon shook his head and several damp locks of hair flicked onto his forehead and it was all Kelly could do not to close the distance between them, reach out, and brush them away, just as she would have done all those years before. How could she expect her readers to follow her advice to disregard the very real physical sensations one experienced at times like this if she was finding it so hard?

All the more reason to be strong.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked.

‘This is my apartment.’

Kelly’s fingernails dug into her palms. ‘I mean why are you back? In Melbourne?’ Living barely streets away from me?

Simon turned back to his groceries and Kelly expelled the breath she had been holding. He loaded up a platter with fresh bread sticks, soft cheeses, and other trimmings and walked into the dining room. Kelly could do little but follow. He set the platter down, and pulled out a chair for her. When she remained standing, he pressed her into the seat, his achingly familiar fingers leaving warm imprints on her bare shoulders, then sat in a chair on the other side of the gleaming oval table.

‘I am back for all sorts of reasons.’