Making Up Read online

  I think I dozed off while she was in there. I woke up the next morning still able to taste Holly in my mouth, to smell her on my skin. I didn’t want to wash those smells away but Erica was getting ready for work, was hurrying, so I hurried with her. Now I wish I’d kept something of that night to remember. A photo, if they’d let me. A deeper appreciation of their tastes and smells and textures.

  *

  It took a while for the problems to become clear. Erica didn’t want to kiss me any more. She did, but she didn’t want to. Not passionately. She stopped enjoying sex so much, did it out of habit and duty and a mechanical need to get off. She fantasized more. I think she didn’t realize I knew, but if she was off somewhere else she always shut her eyes, came with her face more relaxed. This started happening every time, when it had only used to be when she was tired or stressed or having trouble coming.

  She started having an affair. She’d found a taste for sleeping with other people, I supposed. The excitement of the new. I felt it too, had since Holly. I’d considered calling Holly, asking to see her alone, but knew how stupid that was. Not only was she probably only interested in me as part of a threesome, she’d be almost obliged to tell Erica. Erica seemed to have been tempted more, though. By other men, I assumed. She’d been reminded strangers were sexy. She started shaving every day. She did her hair and makeup more carefully now. She’d always just done a ponytail when she was running late, now I didn’t see a plain ponytail for a week at a time. I only noticed because I was wondering if it was a sign of a damaged ego. She started staying for work drinks, and sometimes didn’t come home until very late. If I asked she said she’d been working. I half assumed it was Gareth, but didn’t want to push and find out.

  I was surprised when I realized it was Holly.

  I saw them one evening, when I was supposed to be home. They were having dinner at a tiny noodle bar, talking rather than eating, holding hands. It was the way they were holding hands. Erica wasn’t comforting Holly, or being comforted, or touching in conversation. She was talking intently, looking into her lap, holding one of Holly’s hands in both of hers and fiddling with Holly’s fingers, moving them, twisting Holly’s rings. It was what she did while she was explaining something difficult, something she didn’t want to say.

  I can’t explain why, but seeing that made me realize. I stood across the street and watched them in the window, and when Holly got up and Erica kissed her goodbye. Kissed for ten seconds, her eyes closed, her hands Holly’s cheeks. Only lovers kissed like that.

  I suppose there are worse things than your girlfriend having an affair with one of her best friends. I suppose there’s worse things than having had a blowjob from that friend yourself. I felt sorry for Erica, and worried about her. I wasn’t sure what to do.

  I’d been ready to find out she was sleeping with Gareth, which would have destroyed me. Jealousy is a strange thing. Betrayal with Gareth would have been unforgiveable, but betrayal with Holly was almost hot. I suppose I believed then that Gareth could give her something Holly couldn’t, that a woman couldn’t compete. I suppose a lot of men feel like that, when put on the spot. It’s why we leer at girls making out in bars instead of seeing it as two potential women off the market.

  Erica didn’t see me and I didn’t say anything. It had looked like a goodbye, a break up, so I gave her time to sort things out in case that was what it was. I could understand if she’d wanted to try sleeping with Holly again, and finish it off properly. Closure, to have it done. I didn’t understand why she hadn’t just tried at home, with me, but perhaps Holly hadn’t want to. Maybe Erica saw her first effort as some sort of failure and couldn’t stand to have me see her try again. She sometimes got like that, had never admitted if she’d failed exams or didn’t win an auction on ebay, just said she hadn’t liked the course or wanted the thing after all.

  I’d thought it was over, but it didn’t seem to actually end. Erica came home with damp hair, and I had no way to tell if that was because she’d showered at the gym or after a hotel-room tryst. I’d never taken a big interest in her movements, hadn’t wanted to be possessive, and now that started making things difficult. She wasn’t used to casually telling me where she’d be. I tried to check on her spending, to see if she was staying in hotels, but if she was, she was paying cash, and I’d never cared enough before to know where all her money was, or how much there should be. She’d always gone away for overnight work trips, sometimes for several days, and she still did. I tried to work out if it was happening more often, and wasn’t sure. She started masturbating more. In bed when she thought I was asleep, gently, sometimes in the shower.

  I wanted to hold onto her. I wanted to hold onto us. So I did the only thing I could.

  “I know about Holly,” I said one morning, while she was doing her hair. Morning was unfair, when she had to go to work, but I’d been awake half the night and couldn’t wait any longer.

  She looked at me for a moment, then said, “No you don’t.”

  Not asking me what about Holly, and not saying there was nothing to know. I could have called her on this, pointed out her denial was as good as an admission, but with Erica that would just lead to an argument.

  “Do you want to tell me?” I said.

  “Nope.”

  “I’m here when you do.”

  For a moment she looked so stricken, so guilty, I wanted to hold her and tell her it was okay. I said, “I love you,” and went to make coffee.

  By the time she was finished in the bathroom she was pretending the conversation hadn’t happened. That was her. With Erica you needed to give her the time to do things her way, to think about what she wanted to feel.

  She didn’t take as long as she sometimes did to decide. She brought a bottle of vodka home that night, which meant she thought I’d be needing it. We usually only kept wine and beer in the house. I looked at it, wary, suspecting a dumping gift.

  “It’s okay,” she said, still in her suit jacket and overcoat, still holding her briefcase and handbag.

  “Don’t you want to put all that down?”

  She shrugged and did, seemed to have forgotten she was holding anything but the vodka. “I wasn’t going to talk to you tonight,” she said, “I was going to stay at work all night. But I found myself coming home.”

  “And buying vodka?”

  “Yeah, and buying vodka.” She smiled. “I’m not planning anything bad, I just…”

  “I know.”

  She shrugged off her coat. She put down her bags and went and changed. I poured vodka into two glasses, put the bottle in the freezer, and sat down at the table to wait. She ran water in the bathroom for a long time. Hiding in there. She did that when she was worrying about something.

  She came back into the kitchen in jeans and a shirt, the clothes she wore every evening. Like she had with Gareth. That was reassuring, though. If she was planning on leaving she’d have kept warmer clothes on.

  “I am,” she said, “And I’m not.”

  I waited. Erica said things for effect, then explained when she was ready.

  “You were half-right about Holly,” she said, “I wanted to try again. We saw each other and probably shouldn’t have.”

  “And its over?”

  “It’s becoming over. She’s a friend, it’s complicated.”

  “You slept with her?”

  “I tried. She couldn’t.”

  “You tried?”

  “Like the time with you.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t know if I should be angry. We’d both got ourselves into this, so it didn’t seem fair to put the blame entirely on her. Erica isn’t a bad person. She’s organized and efficient and ruthlessly intelligent. She plans and sometimes doesn’t notice that people are in the way of her plans. I was still sure she wasn’t trying to hurt me, just that she hadn’t really noticed that she was.

  “I’m not angry,” I said. “I would like to know what happened, though.’

  She shrugged
. “I tried to sleep with her, like I tried when you were watching.”

  “But you didn’t?’

  “Not really. I made out with her.”

  “Made out?”

  “Yeah,” she was starting to look annoyed, which meant she was feeling defensive. “Yeah, made out now and then.”

  “Kissed her?”

  “Of course.”

  “Got into bed with her?”

  “Sometimes in bed, sometimes on her couch.”

  “Sex?”

  “I don’t know. Why are you so interested in the details?”

  “Please. I’d like to know.”

  “It’s two chicks,” she said. “For fuck’s sake. I don’t know when it starts being sex.”

  “If you’re not sure it probably is.”

  She was quiet for a moment. “Then yeah, I guess I slept with her.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You don’t really want to know.”

  “Part of me does.”

  Erica shrugged. “She didn’t want head. Because it made her feel like she owed me something. So we didn’t do that. We did other stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  Erica was looking annoyed again. “I have a hand, all right. She has a hand. I bought a couple of vibrators and left them there. We figured out ways to make do.”

  “So what now?”

  “She doesn’t want to keep going. Neither of us are sure we’re…”

  “Gay?”

  Erica shrugged.

  “So you’re here to start over?”

  “I suppose.”

  “To confess.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I looked at her for a while, and wondered how she could say that, then decided I didn’t care enough to fight for the point.

  “I love you,” she said. Said it like that was supposed to solve everything.

  “Do you love her?”

  “Not like that. Not like I do you. Just like she’s a friend, which I assume is the problem.”

  “All right,” I said.

  Erica sat there for a while. “She says it isn’t me, that isn’t about me that she can’t go down on me. That it isn’t my pussy or that I’m gross or anything. She just can’t bring herself to.”

  “I kind of get it. Like me with a guy.”

  “Yeah. Weird thing is, I don’t. I never realized before.”

  I was a bit surprised, just nodded. “So what now?”

  “I stop trying to fuck Holly, obviously.” She seemed tired, quite bitter. “You caught me, well done. Now I’m yours again.”

  I suddenly thought of the detail she’d been omitting. With Erica you have to be very careful you’re thinking about the actual question, not the question she wants you to think about. “How often were you seeing her?”

  “Why are you obsessed with the details?”

  “How many times?”

  “A few.” She sat there. “Ten. Maybe more.”

  “More?” I counted weeks since Holly, four, maybe five. I wasn’t sure right now. “Ten or more?”

  “More.”

  “So twice a week?”

  “Usually three,” Erica said, defensive again. “I see her at least that often anyway.”

  “Not for sex.”

  She shrugged again.

  “And you won’t see her again?”

  “Not like that.”

  I looked at her, felt worried. Erica was looking like a girl who’d just been dumped. “Your choice or hers?”

  “Hers. I called her today. One last chance kind of thing.”

  “Shit, Erica.”

  “I thought I had to. So when I talked to you I knew how things were.”

  “If you were talking to me, surely…”

  “Maybe.”

  “But no?”

  “No.” She sat up a little. “Is that all? I’m tired and I’ve had a shitty day.”

  “Mine hasn’t been that great.”

  “So talking this to death won’t help, will it. I’m going to bed. Come and join me if you feel like it.”

  And somehow she’d made any ill feeling I might still have be about me, not her. If I wasn’t so pissed off I’d love her all the more.

  I sat there for a while with the vodka, then slept on the couch. It was a deliberate, and she noticed. Although it didn’t hurt as much as if she’d been sleeping with Gareth, it still hurt. I wasn’t sure why, and that worried me a little, as if one day it suddenly might.

  *

  Erica woke me up and handed me a cup of coffee. The waking me up meant she’d carefully been quiet until then. Erica was a morning person and I wasn’t, just another one of those things.

  “Hey,” she said, and kissed me, “I’ll be home tonight. I’ll see you then.”

  Not early tonight and not talk to you then, but it was a start.

  I took the day off and went down to Holly’s work at lunchtime, and sat around outside waiting for her to appear. Holly never bothered taking her lunch, always went to a café somewhere nearby. I hadn’t seen her since the night we’d slept together, and I didn’t know if she was avoiding me, but it seemed like the time had come to talk.

  She saw me and came over and said, “Hi.”

  “Can we talk?”

  “I don’t think I have anything to say to you.”

  “Please, Holly. I thought we were friends.”

  She shrugged in exactly the same way Erica did, with the same expression on her face. It was odd how similar they were.

  “Please,” I said.

  “Shit,” she said. “Sorry I slept with your woman. Are we done now?”

  She sounded annoyed, but wasn’t actually walking away.

  “Could we sit down and talk?” I said.

  “What’s the point?”

  “Do you understand what’s been happening? What Erica’s doing?”

  She looked at me for a moment, but deny she did.

  “So talk to me.”

  “I told her I didn’t want to see her any more. See her like that. The other week.” Holly glanced over her shoulder, “Look, we’re right outside my work. Could we do this later?”

  “Lunch?”

  She sighed. “Sure, lets have lunch. Somewhere a long way away from here.”

  We walked without speaking and she took me several blocks to a tiny café. Tiny enough nowhere was out of earshot of the coffee machine.

  “Look,” Holly said, “I know this has been rough on you, but it has on me too.”

  “I was with her first.”

  “And I thought I loved her.”

  “But you don’t?”

  She shrugged again.

  “I wanted her,” Holly said, “But it didn’t work out. Now you have her back. Just be happy for that, don’t push her too much. She’s upset and confused and doesn’t know what she wants, and if you push too hard, try and make her think about what she doesn’t want to think about, you might drive her away.”

  I nodded. After a while said, “Thank you.”

  “And she’s still my friend. So I care. And don’t interfere in that.”

  I looked at her.

  “I’m probably not going to sleep with her again.”

  “You promise?”

  “Nope. But I don’t think I will.”

  More silence.

  “Did you only sleep with us so you could sleep with Erica?” I said.

  Another shrug. “Maybe. Erica’s Erica. I always thought I wanted her, but I never quite got around to telling her.”

  “I should go,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “Hey,” she said. “By the way. I don’t owe you anything. I still don’t, just because you tried to fuck me.”

  “Okay.”

  “But go easy on Erica. If you want to keep her.”

  “I will.”

  *

  Erica came home about seven, which was early for her.

  “Hear you saw Holly today,” she said. “Don’t fucking do th
at.”

  “You cheated on me,” I said back, “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do.”

  “Fuck you,” she said, and stormed off into the bedroom.

  I followed her. She was sitting on the bed crying. Her mascara was running a little. She seemed more upset than was warranted.

  “Hey,” I said, and sat beside her, put an arm around her. She leaned on me.

  “I don’t want this life,” she said, “I don’t want to come home every day wondering what you’re going to call me or accuse me of.”

  “I haven’t called you anything.”

  “I know, and that’s why I’m worried about it. I have this awful feeling that one day you’re going to crack.”

  “And what?”

  “I don’t know. Just crack.”

  We sat there for a while.

  “It pissed me off that I couldn’t get her to do me,” Erica said. “Gareth did. He did it properly. But Holly didn’t want to, and couldn’t make her. So I wanted to try again.”

  “You could have told me.”

  “I was embarrassed. And besides, you looked like you had a little too much fun.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. “You had Gareth first,” I said.

  “That was just… fucking. Holly is a friend.”

  “That probably wasn’t smart,” I said. “Picking her.”

  “Probably not.”

  “Was there anything between you to, before this?”

  “Not really.”

  “She seemed to think there was.”

  “She’s a dick. She imagines shit. Like that she can eat pussy.”

  I looked at her.

  “Shit,” Erica said. “I don’t know, I guess I started feeling something for her, because she’s a friend.”

  “Remember the thing?” I said. “Only once or twice with the same person?”

  Something we’d talked about, months ago, when her threesome thing had first come up. You have sex with people, you get close to them. That closeness threatens the main relationship. So, if having threesomes, only do so rarely with each new person. Once or twice but never more.