She is not joking. I wait and wait for El to laugh but she doesn’t. Her words sink into my chest, dragging my heart to my stomach. She returns to work and my lips pull into a line as her head hunches over the sheets strewn across her desk. I think I have been dismissed. That too by my wife. She doesn’t want more kids.
El doesn’t notice how I sigh with my whole body or when I bring out my phone to check on our girls. Lydia is with them. I place a hand on the small of her back, loving and hating the feel of her body against mine. We are so close yet so far.
I shoot a text to Lydia to let her know we would be home soon. I don’t want to be here anymore but one look at El stops me from standing. She’s too invested in the portraits. It reminds me of Bri’s sketch that used to be in the hall. It’s the only thing I have from her. Something she made for her dad, to gift her dad but never got to do.
Uncomfortable with the silence, I pick one of the sketches, a pencil drawing of a model-thin lady without a head. The focus of the artist is on the skirt. Cinched at the waist and flared at the knee. There are too many of them spread out on El’s desk. The designs vary but some are repeated with little improvements.
“What are these?” I ask.
El yawns again. I carry her to the long couch in one corner of her office and place her between my legs. Her back presses to my chest, I massage her shoulders and she lets out a grateful sigh.
Why doesn’t she want more kids? We are fine now. It has been six weeks yet we agreed to try for a month.
Her head turns to me, she points at the desk. “Remember I said T is an investor?” The mention of his name puts me on edge, my hands slip from her shoulders. “And it’s kind of complicated.” I nod because it is expected of me and I want to be in her good books until I work up the courage to convince her to have more kids. Two boys and we can stop. “Yeah, this is what I meant.” I still don’t get it and I let her know.
“We—I am starting a fashion line. We will be partners.” I want to be her only partner, we can do it as a family. “The whole idea is mine but he has the connections, he knows the right people. He is already in contact with some of them, he will do more later. Am I talking too much?” she asks with a giggle when all I do is stare down at her. She’s cute when excited. But that’s beside the point. I have connections too, maybe more than T. “That’s all.” Her eyes follow my moves. “What do you think?”
“I know the right people too,” I whisper. Her face falls. I said the wrong thing. “The idea is great.” My fingers find a home in her hair, I plant a kiss on her temple and she shoots me a smile. “You will be the next big thing pretty soon.” She pushes away from me so we are on opposite ends of the couch. “I’m proud of you.” Would have been more proud if she was partnering with someone else, someone like me. I pick the sheet on the floor, flip the paper upside down. “What’s your plan for the line?”
“A lot.” El rushes to her desk and returns with more sketches, showing them to me with the same speed as her moving lips. It is hard to keep up. It’s harder to miss her excitement and the proud glint swimming in her eyes. She has thought long and hard about doing this. “There will be a kiddies line too.”
I like the sound of that. I like the passion sizzling the air as she speaks. Throwing my hands over the back of the furniture, I push my legs forward, nudging her with my toe. “What about us? What about men?”
El’s hand slides under my feet, I swallow the moans stuck in my throat when she begins a massage on my socked feet. She looks at me, absentminded as her hands continue the massage. Her voice doesn’t lose its confidence when she says, “No men for now but it’s in the works. Maybe in the second season. We’ll see.”
Pride straightens my spine, she’s thinking far. I love it. “Thought of a name yet?”
I bring my legs under me, she purses her lips. “Not really. It’s so hard to find a unique one.” A cute frown forms on her lips, she tugs on the hem of her skirt and shrugs. “I don’t know if I should use my name.”
“You can use mine,” I tease. Her frown eases, she flicks a finger over my toe. “Cheer up. I’m sure you will find something soon.” Her expression goes from negative to sub-zero, I pull her feet to my laps, tracing invisible circles on her ankles. “I like El,” I say, “it’s short. Easy to pronounce. It’s a great fit for a brand name.”
Doubts creep into her voice. “You think?”
“Yeah. El or Elna, both are great.” I pull her toe until I hear a pop, she relaxes on the armrest, eyes glazed as she watches me watch her. “You should use it.” My voice thickens, I pretend I am that overly excited MC at fashion shows asking people about their outfits and the designers. “Ma’am, who are you wearing?” My tone switches to a lighter one. “I’m wearing El.” Laughter sputters out of her lips, I wink. “It sounds great, baby. I like, no, I love it.”
Palming her face, she nods. “I love it too.” I nod in agreement. “El it is.”
Her phone rings, she groans but hops to her desk. I note the instant transformation in her composure once she picks. Jealousy tightens my chest. Is it T? She shakes her head as if she knows what I am thinking, smiling through the conversation she’s having in hushed tunes. I need to chill out or I’ll die of a heart attack, leaving T free to hit on my wife. My arms slide around her waist from behind, I lift her off the floor and carry her back to the couch.
“Baby,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to her neck while my hands locate her boobs. “I’m bored.”
El snorts with laughter, warning me with her eyes to behave. She tries to pull away but I drag her back to pinch a nipple. I can’t behave when she has been on a call for two minutes. I overhear the person on the other end, a female, ask, “Who’s that?”
A moment of hesitation passes, I must have imagined the brief tensing of her shoulders. “Nobody.”
I am unaware my hands are clenched at my sides until she pries them open. El refuses to meet my gaze, the gentle squeezing of my shoulders fails to loosen the tension lodged in my joints. An unfamiliar sound breaks free from my lips, a pathetic unmanly sound and my body shuts down when I look at her face.
“Now I’m nobody?” El swallows her words, I retract my hands and shove them into my pockets. At least my pockets think I am worthy. “Elna. Elna?”
The space between us grows, she continues poking the couch and I begin to fear she will make a hole in it. Everything she does, she does it without meeting my gaze and I relent. I am the one who bridges the gap.
Ava once said humans act strange under pressure. I dart El a long glance and the anger leaves my body. She never lies except she feels the need to. My fingers skim her toes, she looks up and the part of me that belongs to her, which is all of me, flutters. I push forward. Her slim arms wrap around her knees pressed to her chest, she lifts her eyes to me.
“Why did you lie?”
“I panicked.” Remorse fills her gaze as the pad of my thumb brushes her cheek. A silent plea hangs heavy in the hair, she leans into my touch and her body sags when I smoothen her hair. I want to lift her to my laps, carry her away from here to a place where the past doesn’t matter. “Ma doesn’t know we are back together and I don’t want to get her hopes high. She won’t be able to handle it the second time.”
“You think we won’t last,” I murmur, doing us the favour of putting into words what she fears to say.
My thumb freezes on her cheek, our knees brush. Tingles burn through my outfit to my skin to soothe my frayed nerves. Questions darken my gaze. I feel the sparks, our connection. Doesn’t she feel it too? That fire that starts in the pit of my belly when we casually or deliberately touch. We won’t break up.
It’s the momentary pause before she finally replies that bothers me the most. “Do you?”
“I think we will last forever.” The conviction in my words is lost on her, it feels like I am talking, trying hard to convince only myself. “We survived one month already, Elna. We can survive more together.”
El sighs. “I don’t know.” She has to know. We can’t start our second chance with doubts. If she’s not so positive about our future, it will affect her actions. At least that’s what Ava would have said. Something about how our fears find a way to taint our future and some more shit about the energy we give. I need positive energy. “Things fell apart in less than a year, I don’t think one month is enough to determine if this will work this time.” She looks up to me. “What if we break up again and end up hating each other?”
My head is shaking before she completes her statement. “I can’t hate you, El. Even when I try, I can’t. You mean more to me than you will ever know.” Our collective sigh reverberates in her office, I offer her my hand and she places her small one on top. I need to start wearing my ring. Maybe like her, a part of me shares her fears. The ring makes this more real. “It will work if you want it to.” Her eyes clench shut like my words are doing physical damage to her. “I want us to work. You have to want us as much as I do and I want us, El.”
Sandwiching her legs between mine, she draws circles on my knees. “Are you mad at me?”
I smile. “A bit. But I understand.”
“I’m sorry.” All she gets is a bigger smile. Her jaw rests on her knees. “I like that you’re receiving therapy. It’s good for you.” Me too. I like it. “You are not a nobody, you mean more to me than you know.”