Note from Riottori: Good morning, guys. Here's the next installment. I know the chapters are kind of small but I want to get stuff out there for public consumption. Enjoy (and I say that warily)...
He sits back in his chair and I feel the space between us growing. He is still watching my face, locked in to my eyes, the eyes he knows so well and somehow, from somewhere inside me, I tap into a pool of strength which allows me to return his gaze. I hope my eyes don't betray me, don't shine a brighter blue sparked from my pain.
A quick flick of his wrist and the waiter is by his side, as pale and insignificant as the moon in the presence of my husband, the sun.
"My wife," he enunciates every word and they drip with meaning, possession as tangible as amber, "would like some oysters." The waiter nods and leaves our side, now Christian's pawn in this dangerous game.
How did we get here? I think. Where is there to get to? I can no longer see.
He hid the key to The Room. It used to hang, innocuously next to the garage key. That was our little joke but I knew that it used to give us both a little thrill. It would jangle when one of us reached for the garage key, alerting us to its omnipresence, sounding its promise. The perverse and the mundane sitting side-by-side: I liked to think that key was a metaphor for us.
Then one day, it was gone. It must have been a few weeks after The Disaster in The Room. I was heading out to the supermarket, Teddy and Phoebe bustled up like little snowmen, waiting for me to get them into the car. I reached forward and stopped suddenly. There was no jangle. The peg was bare.
My first thought was: Oh, God. Someone's got hold of it. I'll have to tell Christian. It never occurred to me that it was he who had removed it.
"But why?" I'd asked him, facing him in his office while he reclined on his high-backed chair.
"Why, what, Ana?" His tone had been sharp, like he was explaining something to one of his employees. "We're not going back in there," the last word had been coated with disgust, "so why leave the key around?"
I'd decided to change tack, then, not wanting to feel like an errant school child called in to see the headmaster for some misdemeanor.
"What if I want to go back in there?" I had tried for defiant but even to my own ears I had sounded petulant.
"You are not going back in there, Ana. You can't...it can't be like that anymore...I don't want it to be..." His face fell and he was my lost little boy again, blinking back his emotions, burying them deep, deep down.
I walked around the barrier of the desk that stood between us and sat on his lap.
I furrowed my brow, comically, pushed non-existent glasses up the bridge of my nose. "Now Christian, Ana, the word for today is communication." I was doing my Flynn impression and right on cue the clouds lifted from Christian's face and were replaced with a sunny grin.
"I don't want us to go back in there. Let's just say I've developed an insatiable desire for vanilla. I'm happy with vanilla. I love vanilla. I don't want us to go back in there." He nuzzled my neck, unleashing the giggles from me that he so loved to hear. I would later remember that at no point did he say he didn't need to go back in there. Want and need, two very different things.
The waiter comes over with a chilled magnum of champagne, the bottom dripping droplets of condensation on the white tablecloth. I put my hand down to wipe it off, then leave it there a second, palm-down, reminiscent of her. I look into Christian's eyes, wait for the realisation to edge in. He looks back, benignly. If he does know the game we are embroiled in, he's keeping his cards close to his chest.
I hold up the elegant champagne flute, watch the liquid effervesce at the mere movement. He holds his up, until we are aligned in perfect asymmetry.
"A toast," he says. "To you, Mrs Grey. The only girl I'll ever love."
I falter. You don't really believe that do you? The voice is with me again, like a ghost, haunting and goading. I force myself to lift my glass, to make contact with his in a satisfying chink, and then I press the delicate lip of the flute against my own lip and drink.