In Another Life (3 page)

On the bedside table, my phone lit up, the buzzing and vibrating shaking it closer to the edge. Mike lunged and grabbed it before it fell, then answered. “Yeah, he's here but he's not making much sense yet. Hang on.”

He put the phone in my hand and, when I just stared at it, he lifted my hand so the phone was at my ear.

“Eli? Eli? Are you there?”

“Quinn? Why are you ringing me?”

“You said you'd come over for breakfast this morning. We got worried when you didn't show. You haven't been home.”

“No, I went out.”

“Eli, are you alright? You sound…you didn't get drugged did you?”

“No, no, I don't think so. Just drunk.”

“Drunk? But you don't get drunk. You haven't had more than two drinks at once in the whole time I've known you.”

“Last night I did.”

“But why? Jerry's going to be okay. We're going to be fine. Why would you need to get drunk last night?”

“I don't know, Quinn. Look, can we postpone breakfast and maybe make it brunch or even lunch today?”

“Eli, it's after six in the evening. I've been trying to call you all day. The only reason I haven't rung the police is that whoever is with you let me hear you snoring last time.”

That made my eyes open wide. I glared at Mike. “I don't snore.”

“He said you'd say that,” Quinn chuckled. “Who is he? He seems to know you well. Why haven't you told me about him? I thought I knew all your friends.”

“You do. I have. He doesn't know me at all.”

“What?”

“Quinn, I have to go. I'm really sorry about breakfast this morning. I didn't intend to get quite as drunk as I did. I'll see you at work tomorrow.” I hung up before Quinn could get any more questions out. I had told him about Mike but until I found out exactly what was going on, I couldn't talk to Quinn about it.

“Here, put this on.”

I turned to find Mike holding a soft robe out for me. I threaded my hands into the sleeves and let him put it on me. “Why are you here, Mike?”

“I live here.”

“Don't be obtuse. You moved to L.A. You were working your way up the ladder until
you got where you wanted to go. Why are you here, in this town, right now?” I looked around the room. “You're living here, not just visiting.” I stared at him, forcing myself to maintain eye contact, no matter how much the light hurt my head.

“I decided I wanted another life.”

I almost vomited again but staggered to the bed and sat on the edge instead. Another life. That's what he'd said all those years ago. “In another life we would have worked.” I lifted my head and glared at him. “Is that what you're talking about?”

Mike froze. I don't think he even breathed for the long moments it took him to answer. “Yes.”

I surged to my feet, ignoring my pounding head, my churning stomach and rancid mouth already watering in anticipation of the next purging. When I spotted my clothes, neatly folded over the chair under the window with my shoes beside, I threw off the robe and began dressing. “Well, fuck that.” I didn't bother to do up the buttons on my shirt or tie my shoes, just checked I had my wallet and my phone and stormed out of the room.

“Eli, wait.” His footsteps thundered down the hallway as he caught up to me and grabbed my elbow.

“Let me go.” I ripped my arm from his hold as I searched for the front door. It wasn't difficult to find. The house wasn't as large as I thought it would be considering his income bracket. My feet slowed as I walked through the living room, my breath catching in my throat.

It was our house. It was the house we'd dreamed about and planned when we were twenty-two. I rounded on him. “You built our fucking house?”

“It's what we always wanted.”

“Fuck you. We planned this together, for us. You threw ‘us' away, so you don't get to have the house. It doesn't work that way.”

“I was wrong.”

“Damned right you were wrong, you bastard. You and your ‘in another life' bullshit. You were so greedy for what you wanted for yourself, you didn't realize we already had everything we needed. We already had the life that would work. You walked away from that, without even attempting to work through the first hurdle we had. You didn't even want to talk about it. You just decided it wouldn't work and walked away. Now you're back, sixteen bloody years later, to say you made a mistake. Well you got that right, you bastard. You made one hell of a mistake.” I had finally reached the front door and pulled it open. “You made another mistake coming here. All the money in the world can't buy you a time machine. You can't go back. You can't suddenly fulfill promises you broke years ago.” I rounded on him, not surprised to find him right behind me, and shoved him hard in the chest. “If you miss me so damned much, play those fucking CDs you took with you.” I ran down the steps and out onto the footpath before pulling my phone out to call a cab.

He didn't come after me.

Quinn cornered me in my office when I arrived at work the next morning. I didn't give him a chance to speak.

“Can we talk about this later, Quinn? I have those contracts for MacQuarrie Holdings to go through before the meeting at the end of the week.”

Quinn stared at me for several moments before responding. “We'll have lunch. I'll come by for you so don't leave without me.” It was the warning it sounded like. If I tried to duck out of it, Quinn would hound me mercilessly. He'd make a public scene if he didn't
think anything else would work.

I sighed. “I'll be here.”

Quinn's response to Mike's sudden reappearance in my life wasn't what I expected. “You were there, Quinn. You know what he did and how it messed me up. Why are you so blasé about him coming back now? It's been sixteen bloody years.”

“It does make me wonder,” he said as he leaned his chin on his fist. “Why now? Why hasn't he come back before now? Was it the merger with Wilson's a couple of months ago?”

“Exactly,” I retorted, my anger once again building. I knew it was illogical. If I was truly over Mike the way I kept telling everyone, and myself, I wouldn't be anywhere near this angry now. “If he knew it was such a mistake, why did he stay away for so long? It's not as if I'm difficult to find. Hell, I'm the top fifteen spots on Google.”

“Did you ask him?”

“Of course I did,” I paused, and then forced myself to be brutally honest. “I probably didn't give him a lot of time to respond, though.”

Quinn chuckled as he picked up his sandwich and continued eating his lunch.

“It's not funny. I was angry. The bastard built our house.” At Quinn's raised eyebrows I explained. “The house we planned to build together.”

Quinn put his sandwich down with such martyred acceptance on his face I choked on my drink. “Shut up,” he said, looking longingly at his lunch. “I'm hungry, but you're obviously more important to me than my stomach today.” He took a sip of his drink. “So, is this house anything like the one you built ten years ago? You know the one I mean — the house you live in and have an unhealthy obsession with planning a rock garden you never actually build.”

The heat flooded my face and I ducked my head to take another drink I didn't really need to try to hide it.

“If it's okay for you to build the house, why isn't it okay for him?”

I glared at my friend and boss. “It's not okay because he walked away from it. He told me he didn't want to live with me anymore, that he couldn't do it, and he walked away without so much as a backward glance. He gave up all our dreams when he did that, Quinn. He doesn't get to take them back.”

“They weren't just your dreams, Eli. They were his as well. If he wants to hold onto a few of them, that's none of your business.”

I gasped, then choked and coughed as a small amount of liquid went down the wrong way.

“None of my business? This is my life, Quinn. Of course it's my business.”

“It's not your life anymore. Mike hasn't been a part of your life for sixteen years. What he does, where he lives and what type of house he builds has nothing to do with you.”

I gasped, my throat tight and eyes burning, just like they did the day Mike walked away. It was all the same. I wasn't over him, I hadn't moved on. Not one bit. I hadn't done anything but bury the hurt under the mist that had become my life. “Oh God, I'm such an idiot.” I pushed away from the table and rushed from the café, ignoring Quinn's call.

That evening I sat in my car outside Mike's house. I went there to think but my mind wouldn't work. A kaleidoscope of images flashed around in circles, all of them fragmented and overlapping until I wasn't sure which ones were past, present or dreams of a future I'd never stopped wanting.

A tap on my window made me jump, my heart thudding, an echo of the rhythm of the tapping. I looked out to see Mike's blue eyes, dark in the fading light but no less compelling. I lowered the window a few inches.

“Come inside,” he said.

I shook my head and raised the window again as I returned to staring at his house, noting how similar it was to mine, how all the trees in the front were the same, just younger. The window frames were a different color. Mine were blue, like his eyes. His were black with matching security screens. The passenger side door opened and Mike sat beside me. I hadn't expected it but I wasn't surprised.

The silence in the car thickened as we sat there. Eventually, I heaved a sigh and turned to look at him.

“I can't decide where to put the rock garden,” he said quietly. Somehow beginning this conversation where our last life finished seemed appropriate.

“I can't either. I'm beginning to think a rock garden isn't the right thing.”

“I like the idea of a rock garden but it's too much for me, like I'd never be able to build it right and if I try I'll get it so wrong that all I'll end up with is a pile of rocks.”

“A pile of rocks isn't so bad. It'd be possible to move just one at a time and place each one carefully and let it sit for a while before you decide where the next one has to go. You don't have to get it right all in one go.”

“If I move them one at a time, I'll end up with something that wasn't planned.”

“It wouldn't be an exact replica of the original plan. It would be a conglomerate of thoughts and experiences that meshed into something beautiful — just by moving one rock at a time and allowing for adjustments to be made when things didn't work the way you thought.”

“I was scared,” Mike's voice trembled. “It was so perfect, everything I ever wanted, and I was terrified of making a mistake that would change everything.”

I looked at him incredulously. “But that's exactly what you did.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

He was sorry. Sixteen bloody years and he was freaking sorry. I nearly let the anger take me again. It had been so long, I'd come to rely on the anger to get me through each day. Some days, it was the only thing that stopped me blubbering into my pillow all night, but it was time to let it go. To let go of everything I'd been holding onto for the last sixteen years.

I started the car.

“Where are we going?”

I didn't answer. It wasn't a long drive and when I pulled up in front of my house I turned to Mike. “Will you come inside?”

Mike opened his door slowly and stood beside the car, his mouth hanging open in his surprise. “You built our house,” he whispered.

“I promised I would.”

“And you always keep your promises.”

I nodded.

“Do you remember the only promise I made to you?” Mike asked.

I stared into his brilliant eyes, hardly daring to breath. Hardly daring to believe.

“Remember I told you I didn't make promises because I thought they were too easy to say and too easy to break? I made you one promise on the day we moved in together,” said Mike.

“You said that no matter what happened, you'd love me forever,” I whispered. Tears streamed down my face. For sixteen years, I'd thought that promise had walked out the door the same day Mike did, but a tiny part of me had held onto it because it was the only promise he made and I needed that spark to get me through each day.

“I told you I'd let you know when I changed my mind.”

My breath caught. Was this the day he was going to tell me? After all this would he tell me he wasn't going to love me forever?

“I still feel the same, Eli. It didn't matter what I did, or where I went, nothing changed that one thing. Nothing is going to. I don't know if you want anything from me anymore or if you don't, but I'm not scared of the things I was once and I want to be yours again. I want to build another life with you.”

“You bastard,” I hissed. “You think you can just walk back into my life after sixteen years, build a house, say you'll always love me and expect me to take you back?”

He remained silent and I humphed. At least he'd learned
something
in those years. I let the quiet engulf us as my mind spun with all the possible responses I could make, but I knew which choice I would be making. I'd always known. It didn't matter how long he stayed away. It wouldn't matter if he left again — although that would break my heart — just like the last time. For me, nothing had changed. This time I'd make sure he stayed.

I reached out and grabbed his hand. “Come inside and look around. We need to decide which one we're going to live in.”

“You know, we could build a new one just for us. With a rock garden.”

“A rock garden? I thought that was just a pile of rocks.” My heart began a steady thudding in my chest. Was Mike saying what I thought he was saying?

“That's all it would be without you.”

“This isn't going to be easy, Mike. There's a lot to forgive.”