‘Yes, amazing.’ I yawn.
Callum unscrews the lid of the water and passes the bottle to me as I continue to drive. I try very hard not to touch his fingers as I take it and end up nearly dropping it. He catches both my handandthe bottle in his (successful) attempt to save the day and prevent me from being drenched. I jerk my hand really hard in reaction and nearly knock the bottle again.
There’s a short silence during which I think that at least that’s woken me up a bit.
Callum then coughs slightly and says, ‘So this time I’m going to tell you exactly when I’m going to give you the bottle and maybe you should put your left hand out in a kind of bottle-holding position so I can put it directly into your hand.’
‘Okay.’ I begin to snigger.
‘When you’re ready.’ Callum’s still sounding very serious and I start really laughing.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, still laughing. ‘You just sounded like a gynaecologist. Like you were talking me through an upcoming smear, trying to make me comfortable. It was very funny.’
Maybe the tiredness and stress are getting to me.
‘Oh, Isee,’ Callum says, all sarky. ‘Legs in stirrups, speculum at the ready andhold the bottle.’
‘So many questions,’ I tell him. ‘And facts. You don’t put your legs in stirrups. And I was just pointing out that your tone of voice was highly gynaecologist-pre-internal-exam-like. And question: what do you know about speculums?’
‘I remember you going to your first ever smear and talking me through it in detail afterwards because you were pissed off that women have to do shit that men don’t have to do, and I should at least suffer being told about it.’
‘Oh yes.’ I remember that too. ‘Yeah.’
We both go silent for a bit, me because I’m now thinking about the past and howyoungand untouched by the shit reality of life we were; I don’t know why Callum’s silent.
After a bit, I say, ‘So I’d love some water.’ I’m not actually thirsty right now and I’m feeling a lot more wide awake after our conversation, but I think we need to conclude this.
‘So if you put your hand out, I’ll put the bottle in,’ Callum says, and then he begins to laugh, and then I laugh too, and then he says, ‘Okay, I did hear myself. I don’t know a lot of gynaecologists and yet I can hear exactly what you mean. And now I can’t talk about this bottle without adopting my gynae persona.’
‘We can’t do it,’ I say, when I’ve stopped laughing again. ‘I might crash if we spill it. I’ll wait until we turn off.’
We lapse into silence once more and then I get all sleepy again.
‘How far until the services?’ I blink hard to try to wake myself up.
‘Nine kilometres.’
‘What? How can it be so long? It’sagessince I last asked.’
‘Because you’re driving very, very slowly.’
‘But if I drive faster I might crash because I’m so tired.’
‘Then it will take a long time to get there.’
‘Yes, okay, thank you, Mr Logic.’ I smile at him to indicate that I’m not really being snippy. The smile turns into a huge yawn.
‘Okay, we need to do something else to wake you up.’
Callum doesn’t really sound like a gynaecologist any more, just like a very concerned regular man. With a very sexy voice (and that’s stress and tiredness addling my brain again).
‘Yes, we should talk, or play a game,’ I say, hoping that I don’t sound as though I was thinking about anything to do with sexiness.
‘Okay. Um… I Spy?’
Yep, that’s better. I Spy is very unsexy.
‘Good idea,’ I say. I hate that game. ‘You go first.’
