Disclaimer: As before
Author's Note: Sorry it's taken me so long to come up with another chapter for this, as you know I was away on holiday and since I've been back I've been busy doing lots of shopping for the new flat (I have discovered a love for charity furniture shops – oh, the bargains!) Here's the chapter though, and I hope you enjoy it.
For the rest of the honeymoon, Neela did her very best to act as normally as she could. She didn't think she did all that well at it, but she must have done well enough, as Michael did not seem to have any suspicions that there was something amiss, at least, not that he voiced or gave any indication to. In truth, he was too happy to notice.
She'd done more pregnancy tests, at least one a day, and usually more, every day since that first one when she'd found out. She didn't know why she carried on, she knew what the answer was going to be. Still though, the triumph of hope over adversity perhaps.
Every day, she got up, early, making sure she was thoroughly sick before Michael roused, then had a shower, nailed a smile to her face, and discreetly pushed her breakfast around her plate while Michael tucked in heartily. She was too afraid to eat in case in sparked off more nausea, usually forcing down a little bit of cardboard cereal, definitely Special K rather than Lucky Charms, for the sake of appearance then tried to make up for it later in the day when she stood at least a fighting chance of keeping food down.
Most days, by early afternoon, she began to feel more like herself again and so threw herself into whatever they did in the afternoons to hide the fact that she spent most of the morning clutching her stomach and lounging in the sun somewhere very close to a toilet. As far as the alcohol consumption was concerned, she hadn't been able to escape the odd glass of wine, but she had sipped at it conservatively until Michael went to the restroom or happened to be distracted and she had the opportunity to pour it back into the bottle or into a plant pot if there was one handy. She'd already been complaining of the stomach virus and although she stopped mentioning it as much in case he suggested going to see a doctor about it, it was a useful excuse for when she couldn't hide the sickness.
On the whole, physically, she felt that she was doing well. Shame that her head was an utter mess though. Every spare second that she had was eaten up with agonising over her situation. She had been over every action and every single possible consequence that could arise a thousand times and she was no further forward in having the slightest idea what to do. Each way she turned, all she could see was hurt and pain and heartache, a spiralling black hole from which she couldn't extract herself without betraying either her husband or the man she was in love with.
Sometimes, on the rare occasions she had managed to get a moment to herself, she just burst into tears. She would liked to have thought that it was down to the hormones, but she knew that she had a lot to cry about. Then, of course, she would berate herself at her pathetic self pitying state. She'd brought it all on herself, it was entirely her own fault, and she could blame no one else.
That made her feel worse still. It would have been nice to have someone to shout and scream at, to ask why, what she had done wrong to find herself trapped in such a hateful situation, with the lines between right and wrong and friendship and love and lust so hopelessly blurred. It felt like someone had cast her out in the middle of a deep dark ocean in a very small and lonely boat, and taken away her compass, just for fun.
Being stuck in Jamaica… no, stuck wasn't the right way to put it. That made her sound like she wasn't enjoying herself, that she didn't want to be there, and that wasn't true; she was on her honeymoon, she had a gorgeous, loving, honourable husband, and she loved spending time with him, especially in this beautiful place. But being so far from everyone, so far from reality, wasn't helping her come to terms with the situation. She was burying her head in that white, tropical sand and she knew it. She was putting off the moment when she had to decide, to tell the truth. Rationally, she knew that the longer she left it, the more difficult it would become, and the more heinous the lie, but she was too afraid to form the words. She made excuses for herself, that she needed to talk to Ray first, but she knew that when the moment came to talk to Ray, she would turn those excuses up on their head, persuading herself that it was in fact Michael who deserved to know soonest.
Now though, now she was sitting on the plane back to Chicago, flying back to face the music. She'd been able to hide things so far from Michael, but there was a flicker of fear in her chest that Ray would not be so easily fooled. They knew each other so well, too well. The stomach virus excuse would not hold at home, and the walls of the apartment were plenty thin enough for him to hear her hurling at six o'clock every morning. There had been plenty of times she had heard his alcoholic binges end abruptly in the bathroom, and she didn't doubt he would soon hear her too. What's more, Ray would see the dead look in her eyes, the crumpled frown of worry that was permanently etched onto her forehead; little tiny signs of upset that Michael would never notice.
Not that that was Michael's fault in the least. She might have known him longer than Ray, but you didn't really get to know someone through letters, a one night stand, a lot more letters and a whirlwind marriage followed by a fortnight's honeymoon. Ray she lived and worked with. For nearly a year, she had seen him every single day, picked up his towels and washed his clothes, eaten his cooking and pinched his beer. It would take a monumental effort to hide something like this from him, and it was an effort she didn't think, in her current state of emotional exhaustion, that she was capable of.
Like it or not, she was going to have to tell him, else he would figure it out for himself.
Sitting in traffic, tapping the steering wheel impatiently, Ray wondered why, exactly, he had offered to collect them from the airport. It was an impulsive, altruistic gesture that he'd regretted even before he'd finished saying the words.
She'd called him from Jamaica, just before she left, to let him know what time to expect them home, and he'd heard himself say, 'Quarter past six, okay. I'll be there.'
Never mind that it meant driving right across the city in the middle of rush hour, never mind that it was his first day off since before Christmas, never mind that the girl he was in love with was returning from two idyllic weeks in a Caribbean paradise with her new husband. Oh no, his voice had bypassed his brain and taken over his mouth before he could stop it. He guessed when it came to Neela, his brain simply wasn't wired up in the right way. Every signal that with any other girl went to the brain, or well, elsewhere, seemed to go straight to the heart with Neela around.
Once the offer was issued, it was too late to recant.
'No Ray, don't be silly. You don't have to come and pick us up, we'll get a cab.'
Her voice sounded so good after so long. Although he knew it shouldn't, he felt his heart, which had been slowly dying in a tortured twist of pain since she'd been gone, begin to beat again, as if there might actually be a reason for life. Who would have thought simply hearing her voice could make him feel so much better? Who would have thought a fortnight could feel like a century?
'I'm off, it's fine. I don't mind.' I do mind, very much, his brain added, but I don't think I can actually live without seeing you for any longer.
'Well, are you sure?' She caved too easily, not like her usual stubborn self, and he wondered, just for a split second, if she was as eager to see him as he was her. Then he remembered that she had been on honeymoon, with her husband,and was probably just tired, simply eager to avoid the difficulty of finding a cab, the hefty fare to get all the way across Chicago to the apartment. And there he was, friend and roommate, offering a solution to the problem.
'Of course. Bertha's just back from the shop and she's as good as new.' Bertha was the van. The band had named her that after a particularly scary one night stand of Brett's that it was unanimously decided he should never be allowed to forget.
'She, no, it' she corrected herself (Ray's persistent personification of his van was a notorious source of conflict and banter), 'was in the shop again? What happened this time?'
'I'm not exactly sure, but it did not involve me forgetting to top up the anti-freeze and therefore did not result in things freezing that should not be frozen.' One day, he was really going to have to learn to do grown up things like pay bills on time and look after his car. Neela was the complete opposite, of course. Two halves of the same whole?
'Right,' she replied slowly, and he could picture perfectly her rolling her eyes in exasperation at his lack of organisation, tutting disapprovingly and shaking her head, thick curls bouncing on her shoulders and lower lip stuck out just a tiny bit, into a pout she didn't even realise she was pulling. 'Well, if you honestly don't mind picking us up…'
Us. The wrong us.
'It's not a problem. I'll be there,' he promised. He was both proud of and disgusted by the forced casuality of his tone.
Now though, it was a ten to six, and the chances of him getting to the airport in time through the build up of rush hour traffic and the slippery grey slush the last fall of snow had become were sliding away to nothing. He had so wanted to be there to greet her, to see her coming towards him in the crowd, her eyes searching for him. In that one second where there eyes would meet, his fantasy would permit him to forget she had a husband, who would no doubt be standing right beside her, carrying her bag and maybe even holding her hand. In that one split second, it would just be him and Neela. It was a moment that he felt was worth rushing for.
He turned up the radio a little to take his mind off his frustration, but every channel seemed to be playing something about love or regrets and things like that, all stuff that cut just that little bit too deep, and he wound up turning it off, humming to himself to pass the time and kill the silence.
Then, as traffic sometimes inexplicably did, the jam seemed to pass and he was sailing away down the road. He checked his watch. If he found a space quickly, he might just make it to meet her.
No, not her, he reminded himself. Them. Neela and Michael. The Gallants. Neela Gallant. Was she going to be Neela Gallant? For some strange reason, he thought that would make him feel even worse. She was Neela Rasgotra, that was just who she was, her identity. To be anything but that wouldn't make her her anymore.
Not that it mattered. Whoever she was, she'd never again be just his roomie, someone to drink and laugh with. Someone to come home to at night. From now on, she was another man's wife, and Ray knew he might not have been at the front of the queue the day morals were handed out, but he had some rules and that was one of them. No married women. It only led to trouble.
With Neela though, he had a feeling it was already too late.
He threw the van into a too small space and ran all the way to the arrivals gate, just getting there before the disembarked passengers began to pour through. After a few seconds of searching, he saw her walking towards him through the crowd. Her skin was darkened a little more than usual by the sun, and although she looked tired, when she picked him out and gave him a wave, the smile that lit up her face, a genuine, unmistakable delight to see him, he knew that the moment had been every bit as worth it as he had thought it would be. There was no Michael, there was no crowd of disorientated, tired passengers searching for family and friends. Just them.
And that was when he realised he was in more trouble than he'd ever been in before.
What he didn't know then though, was just how much.