Discovering Stella (37 page)

He
shook his head with amusement and wiped the chocolate from his face with his napkin.
“You
are lucky that this is
my
happy place. Nothing
can
make me mad
here.”

“Tell
me about the times
you
came
here
with your mum?” I asked, licking the tip of
my
finger and wiping a small smear of chocolate from his nose.

Lawson picked up the bottle of strawberry wine and poured us both a glassful.
“Well
...
that’s
just it, every time we came
here,
we did the exact same thing.
We
gathered our trays and supplies, chose a spot in the field and picked the best berries we could
find.”

“So
it
was a comforting routine?” I asked, chinking
my
glass against his.

Lawson’s
gaze
slipped
past
my
shoulder,
held suspended
as
he
recalled
a
memory
dear
to
his
heart.
I
envied
how
he
so
openly
wore
his
grief
over
the
loss
of
his
mother.
It
was
something
I
had
not
yet
found
the
strength
to
do.
Instead,
I
wore
anger
over
Tristan’s
death,
and struggled
to openly acknowledge
that I
did,
in
fact,
grieve
for
him.
Deep
down,
I
missed
him
terribly.
I
missed
what
we’d
had, what
we’d
shared
and
what
we’d
formed
during
our
time
together.

“Stella, why are
you
crying?”

I blinked, unsure of what he was
talking
about. “What?”

“You’re
crying. Why are
you
crying?”
He
raised his finger to
my
cheek and collected a tear.

“I
don’t
know.
Don’t
worry about it.
It
was nothing,” I said dismissively.

He
ignored me.
“My
mother was delivered a cruel ending to
her
life. A life she’d appreciated and lived to its fullest. A life she’d used to teach Meg and me everything we would need to know to live ours without
her.
And that included
how
to accept death,
how
to accept that shit happens and
how
to
move
on
from it. Before she left this
world,
she
told
us
how
we were to grieve
her
when she was
gone.”
Lawson turned his chair to face mine and
my
chair to face his.
He
then took
my
hand and held
it
on
his lap. “Princess,
you
have to forgive him.
You
have to let
your
self miss him and mourn his
loss.”

My
vision blurred
as
pools of tears spilled
on my
cheeks. I knew he was right,
but
all
I could do was nod in response.

“Good,”
he whispered, pulling me in
for
a hug.

We
both sat embracing
for some
time, and at
one point
I climbed
onto
his lap and just allowed his comforting arms to ease the emotions that had
bubbled
to the surface.

“Toad?”
I mumbled against his neck. “Yeah?”

“I
really,
really
like
you,”
I said, repeating the words he’d swapped
for
the
word
love
when he
sent
me the song link
for
‘Please Forgive
Me’.

He
chuckled and kissed the
top of my
head.
“Yeah,
me
too.”

*
 
*
 
*

It
had been three months since moving to Pittstown, and
one
month
since allowing myself to
move
forward with Lawson. In those three months, we’d grown incredibly close. I’d practically
moved into
his bedroom, which seemed the smart choice, considering I ended up sleeping there every night anyway. The two of us just clicked.
He
knew when to leave me alone and let me ‘deal’,
but
he also knew when to bug the
absolute
hell
out
of me until I relented, which aggravated me no end.

I hated being wrong. Hated it.

And he
loved
being right.
Really
loved
it.

When he managed to break me down in those
moments,
there was never a time when the shithead
didn’t
gloat, at least a little.
But
you
know what? That was
one
of the qualities I
loved
about him.
I’ve
always
loved
it.

Even
in the beginning when I
didn’t
know
how
I felt about him, even then I knew his
pushy,
smartarse ways were
an
attri
bute
I was drawn
to.
Most would say that seems somewhat masochistic
...
allowing oneself to be tortured by
another’s
frustrating antics. Except
it
was during those
moments
when he provoked me to lose
control
that nothing and no
one
existed. Sanity seemed lost, words were spoken — well, technically, they were either screamed
or
cried —
but
in that place he drove me
to,
there was no rhyme
nor
reason
...
and there was no blame.

Looking back — even though
it
was what I’d needed at the time — I
now
realised that
my
refusal to acknowledge the past was
not
a
long-term
solution,
nor my
saving grace. Learning to trust, share and forgive has essentially brought me back to life. Lawson has helped me discover that being
open,
as
opposed to evasive, is much
more
effective when
trying
to
move on
with
one’s
life.

And
that’s
exactly what I’d been doing during these past three months, divulging
more
and
more
of
my
past. In particular,
talking
about Tristan was something of a shock
for
me. When Lawson had asked me what
my
husband had looked like, I had paused, having to consciously recall his image
...
I still vividly remember that feeling of dread I had experienced
as
a result of
not
being able to instantly and automatically visualise Tristan. Thankfully, the brain is a miraculous organ and had fairly quickly produced a clear picture, allowing me to tell Lawson that Tristan had been close to two metres
tall
and that he’d had short, well-kept,
light-brown
hair, and a small scar
on
his chin from when he’d stabbed himself with a
fork
as
a child.
It
was at that
point
I realised I had no pictures of him.
None.
I’d left them behind at the house when I’d fled.

Lawson wanted to take me back there.
He
said
it
would be a huge step forward, yet I knew
it
would be
taking
ten steps back. I knew this because, although I had been agreeably forthcoming in
my
efforts to
move
on,
there were still many things I kept
bur
ied. Things that would be stirred up had I visited
home.

This was the
point
in time when Lawson and I had our first real fight
as
a
couple.
I’d
told
him to back the fuck off and let me pace myself. He’d then accused me of deliberately
taking
the pace of a snail. And
that’s
when I’d snapped, shouting at him: “Three months
we’ve
known each
other.
Three months! I’d known Tristan
for
five years, and we’d been married
for
two of those years. So
don’t
fucking tell me
I’m
moving at a snail’s
pace.”

I
didn’t
sleep in his room
for
three days after that. And that was the
point
when I’d received
my
second bunch of flowers and a song link to ‘Hard
To
Say
I’m
Sorry’ by Chicago. And
...
it
was also the
point
where we’d had the best make-up sex in the history of make-up sex.
My god, it was good
.

After
receiving the song link message he’d
sent
me, I’d thought
it
a nice idea to
show
him — in person — that he was forgiven, so I made
my
way to the
workshop. He
was servicing pizza-man
Pete’s
HQ
Kingswood when I walked in, his legs poking
out
from underneath the
front
of the car. Before leaving the house
for
my
impromptu
visit, I’d
put
on
some
sexy,
red high heels and a short black dress, which was the perfect outfit
for
standing above him,
one
foot
on
either
side
of his
body,
so that when he slid
out
from underneath the
car
on
the trolley he was lying
on,
he had a rather nice view up
my
dress — a view that
wasn’t
marred by panties.

Let’s
just say that Lawson liked the
view,
because
it
took him less
than
a minute to have me sitting
on
the
side
panel of
Pete’s
car
with
my
feet
propped
up
on
the wheel and
my
legs spread, giving him
complete
access to
my
pussy with his tongue. And
boy,
did he make the most of that access. There was
not
one
surface between
my
legs that his tongue did
not
sweep,
not
one
part of
my
breasts that his hands did
not
caress, and
not
one
part of
my
body that did
not
explode in ecstasy when he gave me the best orgasm
of my
life.

Overall, the past
couple
of months had been good. Lawson was good. I was good.

We.
Were.
Good.

The sound of
‘Cold
As
Ice’ by
Foreigner
snapped me back to the
now,
prompting me to figure
out
where the song was coming from.

Noticing
Lawson’s phone
on
the bedside table, I shouted,
“Toad,
your
phone
is ringing.”

He
didn’t
answer, so I figured he’d finished shaving and had already stepped
into
the
shower.
Whoever was
calling
could either leave a message
or
try
again
later,
so I let
it
ring
out
as
I returned to focussing
on
my
book, which was both
bitter
and sweet. The story was brilliant
but
the leading female was driving me crazy!
For god’s sake, woman, just choose one of them.

Not
long
after
it
had stopped ringing,
Lawson’s
phone
sounded again, with the same ringtone. Curious
as
to who he would designate such a song
to,
I rolled from
my
side
of the bed to his and picked
it
up,
finding
Vicky’s
name flashing across the screen. Instantly,
my
blood ran cold, and
for
the life of me I could
not
put
the
phone
back down. Instead,
as
if being possessed by the shifty-police, I hit accept and
put
the
phone
to
my
ear.