Me Without You (13 page)

‘Surely you aren’t
defending
marriage? You? Really?’

‘It’s a beautiful thing, Cal,’ she insisted. ‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t get married, I’ve never said that. I think you’d be a great husband—you’re loyal and stable and considerate.’

‘So why can’t I be
your
husband then?!’

‘Fuck, don’t go proposing on me.’ The brakes slammed on in her tone and I chuckled. This was the Lilah I knew. ‘Firstly, I don’t necessarily believe in
legal
marriage. Of course, I completely understand that the law has to manage matters of family law, property ownership between partners, and so on. Informal partnerships bring much the same rights as an official marriage certificate these days, why bring the government into it? But I do wholeheartedly believe that monogamy is a beautiful, wondrous thing for most of the population.’

‘But not you.’

‘Nope. Definitely not me.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s not something I want for myself.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why don’t
you
want it?’

‘I saw you deflect that question.’

‘What’s really so bad about those two having a tiff in the supermarket? He forgot the toilet paper. She got angry. He was already trying to make it up to her when he came back—did you see the way he kissed her? It was sweet. And later on she’ll probably kiss him back and they’ll share gross old-people kisses on the couch while they watch reruns of 1980s comedies. I’ll bet they are both more rounded personalities now than they were when they met, and if they hadn’t made some kind of commitment that this was love and that they were in it for the long haul, they’d have lost all of that at the first argument,
let alone
surviving the thousands of arguments they’ve had since then. ‘

‘Lilah, you are bloody maddening.’

‘You could do with a wife, actually.’ She was warming up to the topic, climbing up onto her soapbox. ‘Someone to challenge you and round you out a bit. She could nag you into eating better, and finishing your renovations, and she could make you take holidays,’ Lilah proclaimed, but the longer her rant went on, the more I heard the edge to her tone.
Jealousy
. I looped my elbow through hers and stopped walking, pulling her back to stand in front of me.

‘I should find myself a challenging lady and settle down and marry, hey?’ I spoke softly. She met my gaze and nodded. ‘And if I find this lady tomorrow, what do I do with you?’

‘Well, you know from the outset I’ve said I didn’t want anything long term...’

‘Are you honestly telling me that if I shack up with someone else tomorrow you will be absolutely fine with that?’

She nodded without hesitation.

‘Liar,’ I dropped my voice to a whisper and saw her eyes flicker downward.

‘I told you from the outset…’ Her tone was weaker now though. She cleared her throat, took a deep breath and then looked up at me. ‘I’d be sad to see you leave my life at the moment. But if you really met and loved this lady, I’d be happy for you and I’d tell you that you were making the right decision.’

‘And if I did meet someone who challenged me, and who rounded me out, how do you suggest I proceed?’ I was lowering my head, going in for the kiss. The air around us had become thick and the conversation felt startlingly intimate. Was I really gaining ground with her? How had I started a conversation arguing
against
commitment, only to feel I’d won just by bringing the discussion around to whatever was happening between us?

Lilah snapped her head back and disentangled our hands.

‘In the case that you do meet someone who at first glance seems a suitable match, the very first thing you should ask her is does she want a lifelong partner. And if she makes it clear that she doesn’t, and she doesn’t want any kind of commitment and is only in the relationship to take things day by day, well, then you should respect that.’

I smiled even as I sighed.

‘So to summarise—marriage sucks, and that’s a beautiful thing, which I should definitely want, but you’re allowed not to.’

‘Exactly.’ She gave an exaggerated sigh of relief. ‘You
do
understand me. Did we say we’re going to your house tonight or mine?’

‘Come back to mine.’ It was a primal sense of possessiveness that I didn’t often experience, but there’d been something so delicious about waking up with her in my bed that morning and I couldn’t wait to feel it again. ‘I’ll make you breakfast.’

‘How about you
buy
me breakfast?’

‘Deal.’

We started walking again.

‘You confuse me, Callum,’ Lilah said softly. ‘Everything you’ve told me about your life makes me feel like I’m missing something. I know it was tough being left out as a kid; I spent enough time trying to assimilate into schools to really understand how that is. But if I met you and got to know you, and you hadn’t told me otherwise, I’d assume you were a jaded divorcee. It sounds like you grew up with amazing role models for commitment, so why are you so cynical about it?’

‘Because it doesn’t work that way in the real world, Ly. My parents made love look easy, and it’s just not.’

‘Maybe you’re looking back with rose-coloured glasses. They can’t have been that great, Callum. I love my parents too, but I’m not blind to their faults. My mother’s a narcissistic nutjob.’

‘But my parents’ relationship really
was
perfect,’ I shrugged. ‘They loved us. They nurtured us. They pushed us just the right amount. I still feel all warm and cosy inside when I hear an American accent, just because I have such amazing memories of Mum’s gentle voice, all through my life until she died.’

‘But.’

‘But?’

‘Well, the question wasn’t
how fantastic were your parents?
It was
why are you so fucked up
with relationships
, and you automatically started talking about your parents—so on some level you know what the answer really is.’

It felt disloyal to say it aloud, and I felt conflicted admitting my suspicions, even to Lilah. The words came slowly at first.

‘They didn’t
fight
, Lilah. They never argued, or disagreed, or even shared opposing opinions. They were just two halves of the same whole. And it was a stable loving home—the perfect childhood safety net. But how does a person
aspire
to that? You can’t set out to find that person. It’s the impossible dream, isn’t it? What if I hung my hat on finding the person who made my life begin and I never found anyone like that? And even if I did, do all of these decades suddenly count for nothing?’ She pondered this for a moment. I guess I was on a roll now though. ‘I have never met a
single person
I agreed with on everything. Not even
you
, you crazy, vegetable-loving weirdo.’ She grinned at me and I felt bolstered by her attention. ‘I guess it’s not that I don’t believe in marriage, but maybe more that I only want it if it could be perfect. And it just can’t, so no, I don’t want it. My parents bombarded me with a false version of love. Of course they disagreed; they must have—they just never let us see it. Dad had a perfectly good career and some grand adventures right up until that famous day at the supermarket, but the way he used to talk about it, his life was pointless before he met Mum. Whenever I think of them and how great things seemed to be, I automatically want this crazy perfect life that I just can never have. I’ve had plenty of perfectly good girlfriends and not one of them measured up. It’s not fair to anyone.’

‘I
knew
it,’ Lilah was quietly triumphant. The particular light had sprung into her eyes that told me she felt she was about to win. ‘I knew you were a romantic at heart. You’re not a commitment-phobe. You’re a
perfectionist
and you’d just rather be single forever than stuck with the wrong person. You just won’t let yourself risk disappointment.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So what the fuck am
I
doing in your life? Like you said, we disagree on everything. You must have
really
given up if you’re wasting your time with me.’

‘I’ve had plenty of people in my life whom I disagreed with.’ I shrugged. ‘You’re the most disagreeable so far, of course.’

‘Seriously, Callum.’

We were nearing my apartment block, walking towards the unit that had never felt like a home until these last few weeks. I shifted the grocery bag from one hand to another while I debated how much to reveal.

Surely by now, after the amazing weeks we’d shared together, Lilah realised that there was a reason we kept coming back to one another. I’d sensed and even seen the hesitation in her, and had so far been very conscious of not pushing her too far and scaring her off, but maybe it was time to stop playing games. There was a reason we were falling into this easy pattern of sharing ferries and meals and conversations that felt like they originated at new depths to my soul.

‘The fact is, Lilah, you’re the closest I’ve come to the impossible dream. And when I’m spending time with you, all of that cynicism seems ridiculous. When we’re together, I can’t help but wonder if it
can
be easy to be with someone, and that maybe I
do
want that after all.’ Her face fell and I hastened to qualify my words. ‘Don’t freak out, Ly. I haven’t asked you for a commitment, have I?’

‘No, you have not.’

‘The way things are is perfect to me.’

‘Except you’d like it to be this way forever.’

‘I only met you a month ago. You could still be a complete nightmare—maybe we just need to give it more time so I can see through this whole most-amazing-woman-on-earth-act.’ She was staring straight ahead now as we turned the corner towards my apartment block, and she didn’t even smile at my pathetic attempt at humour. I took a deep breath, and added softly, ‘If we take it day by day, and the days tick over, and we happen to get to old age, would that be such a bad thing?’

‘That won’t happen, Cal,’ she shook her head as she whispered the words.

‘Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. If it doesn’t, we haven’t exactly lost anything. Besides which, I’ve just had ten minutes of you grilling me about why
I’m
so anti-commitment—what about you? You’ve just tried to convince me that I need to find a wife, and yet if I dared to even refer to you as
girlfriend
right now you’d probably karate-chop me and feed me to the sharks in the bay.’

‘We’re not talking about me.’

‘We are now.’

‘There doesn’t have to be a reason for everything.’

I laughed and shook my head at her.

‘That’s hardly fair. If you get to play therapist with me, I should get to with you too.’

‘It’s different for me, Callum. For me, aloneness is a choice.’ She was frustrated, the furrow between her eyes deep. ‘I’m at peace with it. I don’t think you are.’

‘If you aren’t happier spending time with me than you are spending time alone, why do you keep coming back to me? Every time you tell me you need space, I respect that. It’s usually
you
who initiates our next meeting.’ And then I saw something I hadn’t seen before in Lilah. I saw the stricken panic on her face, then a burst of pure guilt, and I thought she was going to drop her grocery bag and sprint away from me down the street. I’d cornered her, and I hadn’t meant to. Maybe I’d pushed her just a little bit too far. ‘I wasn’t complaining,’ I added weakly.

Lilah took a deep breath and shook her head slowly. We were at my front door and at least now I had the distraction of unlocking it to let us inside, so I could avoid the discomfort on her face for a moment.

‘Callum, I really like you. But the truth is I really like steak too.’

‘You do?’ I fumbled my keys on the lock and then gave up and stared back at her. ‘Are you joking?’

‘I do. And I really miss it sometimes. Last week when we had dinner here and you cooked yourself that juicy scotch fillet… I nearly ripped your fork out of your hands. But I’ve
chosen
not to eat it. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?’

‘I can understand you avoiding steak, the methane and carbon and… and all of that other stuff. It makes sense. But how the hell is having a boyfriend bad for the environment?’ We were inside now. We walked side by side to the kitchen and Lilah sat her bag on the counter-top.

She began unpacking in silence, her back to me as I sat my own food on my dining-room table. She left my question hanging for so long that I assumed she was going to ignore it, and it was my time to panic. Most of her food was out of the fabric bag when it slipped from her hand. The premade falafel fell to the ground and she swiped for it and missed.

‘Fuck,’ she muttered. I could hear the frustration in her tone, the emotion far exceeding the irritation of her clumsiness. I tried to grapple with the topic to bring it back on course, because it felt a whole lot like I was driving at top speed and headed right for a tree.

‘We’ve really only been seeing each other for a few weeks, you know.’ I tried to use a sensible, rational tone, as if the outcome of all of this didn’t matter anyway. ‘With any other woman I’ve ever been with, I’d probably be getting dressed for our second or third dinner and hoping I’d get her into bed soon. So considering we’re apparently both—what did you call it? commitment-phobes?’ Lilah simultaneously nodded and shrugged, her back still facing me. ‘Well, things have just naturally moved fast for us, but that doesn’t mean we have to negotiate the future tonight.’

Lilah turned around and leant her hands on the counter behind her. She exhaled slowly and finally looked at me again.

‘My work is my partner, Cal, and while-ever you and I are…whatever we are… well, I’m just having a sneaky little love affair behind work’s back. You won’t ever have first place in my life, and I won’t ever promise you a future. Not
ever
. So if you find that you’re starting to hope for more than that, then just give me a sign and we can go our separate ways.’

‘That sounds just fine to me. We said we’d take it day by day, and I’m happy with that.
You’re
the one who started banging on about marriage.’ Again I tried to inject some humour into the otherwise tense room, and at least this time Lilah gave me a wry half-smile.