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Maybe I just needed to see Edwin happy.
14
I got through an evening at my ex’s house, the house I bought with him and had lived in with him and which he now lived in with someone else, by pretending to be asleep. Eventually, though, pretending faded into not-pretending, and then I was jolting awake in a room lit only by the hallway light with Edwin leaning over me.
“Fuck me,” I choked out, alarmed.
Edwin reared back abruptly, somehow managing to trip himself up and landing in a heap on the floor. “S-s-s-s-s—”
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“I w-w-was trying to s-s-s-ee if you were asleep.”
My heart was still racing. “Blatantly I was asleep.”
“Bu-bu-b…” Edwin sucked in a breath. “B-but s-sometimes you pretend to be.”
“Well, I wasn’t pretending. And you just woke me up in the creepiest manner imaginable.”
Scrambling to his feet, Edwin straightened his pyjamas. He was still the only person I knew—with the possible exception of a pretentious literary twat from my university days—who worecoordinated sleepwear. In this case, cream-coloured flannel with light blue stripes and navy edging at the cuffs, collar, and top pocket. Once upon a time I’d found it adorable. And part of me still did. Probably always would. Although the fact he was wearing them right now suggested it was late. Or early.58
“Sorry,” he said again.
I pushed the hair off my brow and sat up. “Forget it. Did you want something?”
“Not really.” He rubbed the arch of his foot against the back of his calf.
“Shouldn’t you be snuggling your lumberjack?”
“I couldn’t seem to settle.”
“And you thought putting your face super close to my face while I was unconscious would help?”
“I thought you might be awake as well.”
“Why would you think that?”
Edwin was still balanced, uncertain and one-legged, in the middle of the room. “Because sometimes you would be.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“I know. But today was…today.”
I was a little surprised he would be so direct about it. Perpetually mistrusting his words—and other people with them—Edwin had almost made an art form out of avoidance. Then again it had been years. People changed. Painted their front doors a different shade of green. “I suppose it did stir things up a little,” I conceded.
He nodded. And then, typically, said absolutely nothing else.Nor gave any indication of leaving or intending to leave. Well, it was his house.
“Do you want to sit down or something?” I asked, shifting the covers in a vague gesture of sociability.
He shook his head.
I stared at him, sleepy, confused, my own emotions lurking far too close to the surface, as vulnerable as carp on a sunny afternoon. What did he want? What, for that matter, didIwant?
“That’s new.” I pointed at the picture that hung above the fireplace, in the space that had once been occupied by one of my paintings.
Edwin nodded again.
“Thierry Cohen?”
