Husband Sit (Husband #1) (32 page)

Part
of me had expected an email from Finn, or a text or a call. But there was
nothing from him. I told myself to be relieved about that. I was surprised,
however, to find an email from Sieu in my inbox. When I opened it, I discovered
a very businesslike letter that began with:

Thank
you for your direction at our meeting of 24
^th
. Our principal,
Phineas Walters has assigned me to manage your project, and if you can raise a
capital investment of $100,000 and approve the outlined action plan, we can
create a contract and begin the process...

So
Finn was wiping his hands of me. But he wasn’t wiping his hands of Fritha’s
dream. Which should make me happy, only I wasn’t sure if he was allowing his
company to continue with it for Fritha’s sake, or for mine. Maybe the two of
them would get together, and if that was the case, I mustn’t be jealous.

Between
the four of us, we’d never fought over a man, and I wasn’t about to start. My
friendships were way more important than sexual relationships—way more likely
to last. So I told myself that if Fritha and Finn became an item, that was
okay. I’d passed on him. It was fine for someone else to pick him up.

Dandy.

The
fact that my fingernails were biting into my palms at the idea, couldn’t
convince me otherwise, so I set about forgetting him by reviewing who I’d fuck
next.

After
all, the best way to get over one man...

The best
choice was one I’d passed on because it sounded boring, but meticulous Virgo
that I am, I hadn’t deleted it. It was filed under
Blah
in the
Fuck
Work
folder of my email program. Sasha and Renee were French, and Sasha—the
guy—was at his happiest with regular sex, so his wife was happy for someone to
step in while she was away on a ten day meditation retreat. As she’d said in
her email, she wouldn’t want to do without her morning yoga, so why should he
do without his nightcap sex?

It
was a bread-and-butter job, missionary position, usually lasting five to ten
minutes. I just had to be in bed, clean and ready around ten pm at night for
him to fuck, and the rest of the day was mine. I left Ange after two days at
her house, with a promise to answer the phone anytime she needed me, except for
around ten pm as the dog I was house sitting needed to be walked for his
evening shit at that time.

I
was surprised to discover I was becoming a very good liar.

Luckily
for me, she was so involved in her own situation, she hadn’t asked a lot of
questions. Fritha, however, was a whole other nightmare. I’d rung to tell her
about the tea house and to shout at her about Finn. At first her excitement
about running her own shop had overridden her desire to tell me I was a moron
for letting him go, but the conversation had deteriorated into us both agreeing
we were seriously pissed off with each other.

We’d
always be friends, so our
Fuck you
and
Fuck you back
goodbye
hadn’t left me with any long-term concerns. I responded in the affirmative to
Sieu, telling her I’d have the funds to her within six months. I knew I could
weather the discomfort of more husband sitting to get Fritha’s dream job up and
running. I even imagined we’d laugh about all this at some point in the future.

But
I wasn’t there yet. I was in the middle of
I don’t like this
and I just
needed to keep going. What had started as a scary adventure, now felt like
work. The good news was that my moral issues had faded into the background. My
concern about Brittany falling off the radar and my angst about Finn
overshadowed everything else. So I was just putting one foot in front of the
other and hoping time would heal.

When
Sasha arrived home at the end of my first day in his unit, I was relaxing on
the beautiful garden terrace that overlooked the Sydney Opera House. I put down
the celebrity magazine Ange had given me, relieved to stop reading about the
rich and botoxed.

He
stepped into the room and smiled. “You are here. Good.”

Accents
normally turned me on, but I was still feeling numb and I blamed that on Finn.

I
offered him a practiced smile. “Did you have a good day?” and leant back on my
antique wicker armchair to fill the empty space with inane conversation. The
evening passed superficially, and by nine-forty, I was in bed, lying naked in a
room that could have featured in Ange’s celebrity magazine. It was all mirror
furniture, white carpets and plush linen.

At
exactly ten pm he knocked on my door and I said, “Come in.”

I
was awkward then, especially when he strode in naked and fully erect with his
cock already enclosed in a condom. He turned off my bedroom light without
asking, then left the door open so the hallway light illuminated the windows
across from me. Lying in the dark corner, I watched him walk up, pull the
covers down to the bottom of the bed and say, “Are you ready?”

Why
wouldn’t I be?

“Yes...?”

I
fidgeted with my hands, not sure where to put them, but I needn’t have worried
about taking the initiative. Sasha got straight on top of me and poked his cock
at my dry pussy.

“Hey!”
I flapped my hands against his chest. “Foreplay?”

“You
said you were ready.” Even in the semi-dark I could see his frown.

“I
thought you meant ready for sex. Not ready for penetration.”

“I
don’t do foreplay,” he said calmly. “I thought Renee would have made that
clear.”

“Ah,
no
. She didn’t.”

He
sighed, then rested himself on one elbow, spat onto his fingertips and wiped
that on my twat.

What
the hell?

Then
he slotted his cock inside me and started to pump. It was the most perfunctory
coupling I’d ever been part of. No kissing, no touching. I could have been a
blow-up doll, and was still trying to work out if I was supposed to do anything
other than lie there, when he started grunting.

That
was it. I took my hands off his chest and lay them at my sides, waiting for the
inevitable.

“
Ren
-ay,
Ren-
ay,
Ren
-ay,
Rennnnnn,
” he groaned at the end, arching
his back and trembling for ten long seconds. Then he propped himself over me,
catching his breath.

My
head was turned to the side. I couldn’t look at him, and honestly had no
thoughts in my head. It was too bizarre for me to make any snap judgments
about. So I just lay there as he got himself off, said, “
Très bon.
Well
done.” And walked out without a backward glance.

He
shut my door and I lay in the dark, wondering what my life had become.

Whatever
level of numbness I had going, seemed to deepen, and when I searched my body
for signs of arousal, I found none. Luckily, his on-the-spot lubricant had
stopped me from chaffing, but that was the first time I could ever remember
having sex with no foreplay whatsoever. I mean, even Doug had at least tried to
warm me up with a few kisses.

Doug.

My
thoughts drifted sluggishly into the realization that this was the first time
I’d thought about Doug with fondness since we’d broken up. Not that I wanted to
get back with him. No. No. But the distance of time had clearly given me a
different perspective on our relationship. Yes, it had been boring. No, I
hadn’t actively desired him. But he hadn’t been a bad person. We just didn’t
fit. Of course, that funneled my thoughts immediately toward Finn and how well
we’d fit, right up until he’d told me he’d fathered a child behind Katinka’s
back!

But
before I could get too outraged, I remembered Fritha’s take on it all, that
Katinka was a manipulative bitch, she’d cheated on him first and she’d lied
about being infertile. He’d had so many lies told to him. Maybe I should have
told him about Brittany, and family loyalty be damned. At least then he’d have
realized I had no choice about husband sitting. Only, I couldn’t do that to
Brittany, and even if I could, there was no getting around Lizzie’s baby.

The
more I thought about him, the more I missed him, until I finally reached such a
terrible state of longing, I snatched my phone off the bedside table and
Googled
him, hating myself but just wanting to see his face.
Phineas Walters
brought
up his LinkedIn profile with a dreadlocks shot. It was Finn as I’d first met
him, but the dreads made him look ten years younger. So I hit
images
on
the search and found some recent photos—one of him in a suit looking so
scrumptious I ached.

I
clicked on the webpage link and discovered it was a charity event a few days
ago that his company had sponsored—something about clean water for African
villages. There were shots of other people I didn’t know, but I couldn’t help
scrolling through them to make sure he wasn’t on anyone’s arm. Suddenly Sieu
appeared wearing a crisp black suit with her arm around a tiny blonde in a gold
velvet sheath. The girl had to be in her late teens or very early twenties,
with short cropped hair that fluffed about her freckled face in an adorable
elfin way. They were both smiling widely, as if the world was a wonderful
place, but all I could think was, Finn is having a baby with
her?

Jesus.
If I was a lesbian, I’d want her too. She was golden and toned, and that made
me wonder if she and Finn went to the beach or the gym together. God, what a
perfect couple
they
would make. She was young and gorgeous, and looked
like fun. She made me feel old and tired and...shabby.

I
couldn’t stop staring at her, thinking,
that’s Finn’s baby inside her belly
.
I was jealous as hell, but not high up and angry-jealous. This was low down,
sick-jealous that someone else would get to cuddle and bathe and play with a
child who had his eyebrows and his smile. My jealousy was wrong in every
possible way, but I knew then and there that I wanted his baby.

So
much.

What
I didn’t want was for Lizzie’s baby to come first, for Finn to be comparing her
child to mine, and I definitely didn’t want to share him with—or lose him to—another
woman. Despite all that, the longing I felt for him was a hundred times worse
than it had been.

I
put the phone down but, unfortunately, Lizzie’s image was engraved on my brain,
so I didn’t sleep for hours. I just lay there in the dark, thinking about the
fact that I might never have children. I’ would make sure Fritha’s shop went
ahead, but I didn’t want to be involved, and I certainly never wanted to meet
this girl, this Lizzie. She wasn’t a slut. She was wholesomeness personified,
and when I thought about the two of them together with their baby, I wanted to hate
him, but whenever the image of him in that beautifully tailored suit came into
my mind, I ached. And I had no idea how I’d get past that.

The
next day, however, provided an unwelcomed distraction. Brittany on the phone.

“
Hey
sis, I’m in Spain.”

“What!”
I rattled my coffee cup onto the breakfast bar.

“
We’re
walking the el caminito del ray. It’s the most dangerous footpath in the world.
How cool is that?
”

We?
My brain
couldn’t catch up. “Bangkok. What happened to—”

“
Jase
sprung me.”

“What?
Who?”

“
Jason,
”
she said impatiently. “
He paid for my boobs, remember?
”

I
gripped the kitchen chair in front of me so hard my fingers hurt. “No. I don’t
remember because you didn’t tell me.”

“
Anyway.
He paid the hospital and got my passport back, and now we’re in Spain.
”

As
if I should be happy. I sucked in an unsteady breath and said, “Is this the
person who paid for a cheap boob job, and then left you in the lurch when you
got infected?”

Fucker.

“
He
didn’t ‘leave me in the lurch’. He went off to get money from his dad,
apparently. Then he came back. And anyway, I thought you’d want to know where I
am, but if you’re just going to be shitty with me, I shouldn’t have bothered.”

I
stood in the sunlit, marble kitchen of someone else’s home—a man I was fucking
so I could pay her bills—and said nothing, because I was suddenly very empty. A
part of me knew I should be angry, I should be saying
You have no idea what
I’ve done for you
, but another part of me knew she’s just hang up on me,
and then I wouldn’t hear from her for another six months. Even if she was in
trouble. And I couldn’t bear the thought of her being stranded or sick or lost
and thinking I wouldn’t care.

So
in the end I just said, “That’s great,” with no enthusiasm whatsoever. “Have
fun. Say hello to Jason for me.”

“
Will
do! See ‘ya.
”

Then
she was gone and I was staring at my hand on the back of the chair, wondering
what the point of it all was—what the point of anything was. I stayed like that
for probably ten minutes, not even thinking, just numb. Then I went back to my
computer and finished the secretarial assignment I’d been doing, because I
honestly didn’t know what else to do.

The
week dragged on as I grew more melancholy, and it became harder to keep up the
happy
and bright
banter with Sasha. I was spending hours in their gym, just
running on the treadmill, and the mirror told me I was losing weight. I didn’t
want to drink—a bad sign for me—and I didn’t want to call a girlfriend.

Some
part of me felt as if I’d got myself into this situation and I simply had to
get myself out. One fuck at a time. But it must have shown, because when the
job was over and I was saying goodbye, Sasha told me to seek psychiatric help
for my depression. He’d had a friend who suicided, and he saw the signs in me.

I
didn’t have the energy to disagree.

Instead
I went straight to Missy Lou’s house and threw myself on her mercy—small though
that was—for the remaining few days before her soiree weekend. She fed me
alcohol, whether I wanted it or not, and didn’t care whether I ate, which was
helpful because I had little appetite. Plus, she didn’t ask questions. I
suspected that was so I wouldn’t ask about her problems. Whatever, it made life
easier.

The
only highlight in those dark days as I tried to re-establish my mojo was an
unexpected email from Simon. I’d been trying not to think about him, and when I
did, it was only to hope that I hadn’t damaged him irrevocably with the
butt-fucking. So his upbeat email came as a complete surprise.