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18
December 2016
Dominique’s party emptied out, as directed, at midnight. Dominique stood at the front door, seeing people into the lift, her high heels long kicked off, yawning theatrically. Rachel leaned into her ear and said, ‘Text me tomorrow.’ Dominique said, ‘I sure will.’ Then they hugged and waved goodbye and Michael and Rachel climbed into an Uber and headed back to Michael’s apartment.
It was a mild night for December, and they asked the driver to drop them by the river. The still surface shone with reflected streetlights. Behind them the tall sash windows of big Victorian houses glittered and glowed with lit-up Christmas trees. Rachel pulled her coat tight around her and nestled herself against Michael’s shoulder as they walked. Her feelings were muddled and strewnin random places, as though she’d been ransacked. She felt intensely that she was in love with Michael, in love with him in a way that she’d never imagined being in love with anyone, let alone a rather cocky older man with baggage and secrets who was leaving the country in three and a half months. All she wanted when she was with Michael was to touch him, smell him, be held by him. In shared spaces she wanted his gaze upon her, his attention, his arm around her, his thoughts consumed by her. She missed him with an ache on the rare occasions when they were not together. If he took too long to pick up a call or reply to a message she fretted over it, convinced that he was having second thoughts about their relationship, that her lustre had dimmed somehow, that their bond was fading. The relief she felt when the text reply came or the call was answered or the flowers were handed to her with a flourish, when his fingers were in her hair, his arms around her waist, his lips against her lips, was so powerful that it sometimes made her gasp.
She would look at herself in a mirror occasionally, after one of these pathetic, desperate interludes, and wonder who she was. Was she still Rachel Gold, the ice princess, the ball-breaker, the statuesque brunette who could never find a man to meet her high ideals? Or was she now somebody completely different? Had there in fact never been one finite version of herself? Had she always contained multitudes? Had Simpering Rachel who clutched men’s arms at parties in order to repel a competitor for his attentions been there all along? How awful, she thought to herself. How absolutely awful.
But now she pulled those feelings into some semblance of order.
Of course she was still Rachel Gold. She was just Rachel Gold who’d finally met someone she needed a commitment from. That was the only difference.
And as if he could hear her thoughts, Michael stopped and turned her towards him so that they were face-to-face. ‘I liked it’, he said, ‘when you were jealous earlier.’
‘I was not jealous.’
‘You were jealous. I loved it. The idea of you, being jealous around me. Ha! I mean – wow. Any man should be so lucky. Any man should be so honoured. And I do not know what I have done to deserve the jealousy of a woman like you, but man, I would like to keep hold of it. Forever. Because I tell you what, the thought of another man making you feel jealous makesmefeel jealous.’
They laughed then, and Rachel stared into his eyes and said, ‘No other man has ever made me feel jealous. Not ever. I usually just want men to fuck off out of my face, to be completely honest. But with you … it’s just … different.’
Michael grabbed his heart theatrically and made a pleasurable groaning noise. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘I cannot take it. You’re going to give me an uncontrollable monster ego and I’m going to leave you for a Hollywood film star. Talk down to me, please, remind me who’s in charge. It can’t be me. Don’t let it be me.’
He was playing with her, he wasn’t being serious, she was certain. She smiled and said, ‘OK, loser, show me that you’re worth keeping around. Or I’m going to go off and find someone decent-looking with some money and a good personality.’
Michael laughed, rocking back slightly on his heels before straightening and leaning in towards her. ‘You,’ he said, ‘oh God, you. You are just, just too, urgh, too beautiful. Too everything. Iam – fuck, Rachel, I am fucking insanely in love with you. I do not want to think about being without you, not ever. And listen. I know it’s only been a few weeks; I know we’ve barely gotten started. But I already know that this is it. This is me. And I want to stop, right now, stop everything and … I want to marry you, Rachel. Will you? Will you marry me?’
And there, there it was. The thing, the elusive, flighty thing, the small fluttering bird that had been trapped inside her all these years, crashing into the walls of her psyche, her notion of who she was and what she was meant to be. She wanted to be Michael’s wife. There. Simple. The window opened; the bird escaped.
‘Yes,’ she said, clutching Michael’s hands in hers. ‘Yes! Fuck! Of course. Of course. But where shall we live?’
‘Everywhere,’ said Michael. ‘We will live everywhere.’
At work on Monday Rachel steamed straight into Paige’s studio.
‘I have a commission for you,’ she said theatrically.
Paige pulled her black-framed reading glasses down her nose and peered up at Rachel through her eyelashes. ‘Oh. Cool. What sort of commission?’
‘An engagement ring.’
‘Right. OK. Not my usual thing, but tell me more?’
‘It needs to be white gold. A solitaire. Very simple.’
‘Well, that sounds more like your kind of thing than mine. Why don’t you want to undertake it?’
‘Because’ – she could barely keep her voice even – ‘it’s for me.’
Paige’s eyes grew wide. ‘You mean …?’
Rachel nodded, feeling half ecstatic, half ridiculous.
‘Michael? The American guy?’
‘Yup.’
‘Fucking hell, Rach, that’s immense. That’s – what’s it been? Two months?’
