my hands in his, he led me over to our little dining table. It had been laid with more care than I thought possible, white linen tablecloth, proper napkins, single red rose in a miniature glass vase I was almost certain he’d borrowed from upstairs, and the classiest touch of all, two chilled bottles of Brooklyn Brewery’s finest lager with the tops already popped. The doorbell rang and I immediately started for the door. It was an old habit I just couldn’t seem to kill – what if it was post? Exciting post?!
‘I got it,’ Alex said, leaping nimbly through the candles and answering the front door.
I vaguely heard a muffled exchange while I stood by the table, unfastening the little buckles on my shoes and taking it all in. Ten weeks. He would be gone for ten weeks. No more kisses or romantic dinners à deux until November. Not that I was mad or sad or anything, other than extremely happy for my beloved husband. Honest. Only, I couldn’t remember the last time things had been so easy. All my friends were happy, my parents were off on a cruise somewhere mobile phones didn’t work, my job was going well, and things between Alex and I were perfect. Well, he was leaving me for months on end to go travelling around South East Asia but hey, what married couple didn’t go through that on your average Wednesday? No siree, no problems here.
‘Dinner is served.’ He opened the door with his foot and then kicked it closed behind him, two huge flat boxes in his arms, still steaming from the cool evening air. ‘Get your ass sat down.’
‘Pizza!’ I clapped, delighted, all my worries about how much I was going to miss him devoured by the growling in my belly. If he wasn’t the best bloody husband of all time.
‘One porkypineapple for me,’ he confirmed, moving the rose from the table to the kitchen top to protect it from the massive pizza boxes. ‘And one disgusting tuna sweetcorn, specially made for m’lady.’
‘You got them to make me a tuna pizza?’ I gasped as I pulled back the lid and inhaled. ‘Alex!’
Truly, this was a tremendous gesture of love. There were approximately fourteen thousand pizza restaurants in New York City and not one of them offered a tuna pizza on their menu. Even the places that sold tuna sandwiches as well, flat out refused to put canned fish on a plain cheese and tomato pizza. I’d been living in this country for six years and I still couldn’t understand why it was the biggest possible transgression a human could make. Buy a rifle in the supermarket? Oh, OK. Empty a can of tuna onto a margarita pizza? No bloody way.
‘I still don’t understand why America refuses to embrace it,’ I said. Who needed a seat at the chef’s table when you had an entire tuna pizza in front of you?
‘Because it’s gross?’ Alex suggested, settling down in front of his own enormous pie. ‘And you should be ashamed of yourself?’
I shook my head, peeling one massive, slightly floppy slice off the bottom of the box, pinching the edges of the crust with my thumb and forefinger then folding it in half. Alex watched approvingly. He’d make a New Yorker out of me yet. As soon as he got me to give up the tuna.
‘Firstly, they have it in Italy, where pizza comes from,’ I said with a mouthful of cheesy goodness. ‘And secondly, you’re defending the eating habits of a country that puts cheese in tins and aerosol cans. You can’t say squirty cheese is an acceptable food and then deny a woman her tuna pizza.’
‘Easy Cheese is a basic American human right,’ he replied, swiping a stray smear of tomato sauce from the side of my mouth with his thumb. ‘I get it, you can’t understand. You were brought up on toads in holes and spotted dicks, it’s practically child abuse.’
‘Ooh, I could go for a bit of spotted dick for pudding,’ I said, still chewing my pizza. ‘Have we got any custard?’
‘You’re disgusting – and I love you,’ Alex replied. The grin on his face turned wistful as he watched me eat across the table. I felt my cheeks blush and wiped the corners of my mouth with the back of my hand.
‘Do you think they have Easy Cheese in Cambodia?’ I asked.
‘I hope not,’ he said. ‘That’s kind of the whole point of going. Get away from the Easy Cheese for a little while, try something new.’
‘But I thought you loved Easy Cheese?’ I said, pulling a piece of sweetcorn off my pizza and popping it into my mouth, avoiding his gaze. ‘I thought Easy Cheese was the best thing ever.’
‘I do love Easy Cheese,’ Alex picked up his chair and moved it around the table until we were side by side, ‘more than anything, but my mind needs a break, though not from Easy Cheese. In a dream world, you know I’d take Easy Cheese with me.’
I paused to chew and swallow.
‘Just to be clear, I was using Easy Cheese as a metaphor for our relationship,’ I said, wiping my fingers on my napkin.
‘Really?’ Alex’s denim-clad leg pressed against mine. ‘I was definitely talking about Easy Cheese.’
I looked over at my husband’s sweet, smiling face and bright green eyes and tried my best to look happy for him. He had been planning this trip for almost a year and I knew he was doing his best not to get too excited in front of me. We’d debated going travelling together but there was just no way. For one, I had what my mother would refer to as ‘a proper job’ and couldn’t just nick off for months at a time and expect said proper job to be waiting for me when I got back. Alex had the time and the desire to spend weeks on end living out of a backpack. He was a musician, a proper one, in a band with a record contract that went on tour and sold records and everything. Well, he used to go on tour and sell records. Stills hadn’t played any big shows in a couple of years and record sales were slowing down at an incredibly alarming rate. Bloody Spotify. He needed this trip and I knew it, I wasn’t going to ruin our last night together by playing the ‘poor me’ card.
‘There’s still time for you to change your mind, you know,’ Alex said, nursing his beer. ‘This time tomorrow we could be on a river beach in Laos. This time next week, we could be checking out temples in Myanmar, next month dancing at a full moon party in Thailand.’
‘You know that I would if I could,’ I whispered, staring at his perfect features. His full lips, his sharp cheekbones, his shiny black hair that had obviously seen shampoo in the last forty-eight hours. ‘You know I’d love it more than anything, but asking for two months off at work would basically be the same as handing in my notice.’
It was a complete and utter lie. Two months of nothing but Alex Reid, all to myself? Yes, please. Two months of living out of a backpack in dirty clothes, without telly or online food delivery? I just couldn’t see it. The closest I’d ever come to roughing it was an abbreviated weekend at Reading Festival when I was seventeen and even that ended with my dad picking me up on the Saturday afternoon after I’d caved and tried to use the toilets. I hadn’t seen the inside of a tent since.
‘You could just quit,’ Alex stage-whispered into my hair, one arm snaking around my waist. ‘You could just leave.’
‘I really wish I hated my job,’ I replied, sliding my hand along his cheek. ‘And having a home. And food. And things.’
‘You do love things,’ Alex agreed with a theatrical sigh. He squeezed my hand in his and my engagement and wedding rings pressed sharply against their neighbouring fingers. ‘And I guess someone has to hold down a steady job. Looks like I’m stuck with Graham.’
Just
