‘I don’t think—’
‘Don’t think, then.’
She couldn’t really believe he could be so upfront about it.
‘Juan…’
‘I can’t talk too long. Christine is being a pain and I don’t want to upset her at her leaving do. We can talk some more back at mine.’
Cate excused herself and nipped out to the toilets. She wished for a guilty moment that she hadn’t when she saw Christine in there in tears. Cate really didn’t know what to say.
‘It’s hard, leaving,’ Cate attempted, ‘but you’ll still keep in touch…’
‘Do you really think I’m crying about that place?’ Christine looked at her. ‘I couldn’t be happier to be getting away from it. It’s Juan.’
‘Oh.’
‘I made a bit of a fool of myself,’ Christine said. ‘I asked if he wanted to come back after…’ She cringed. ‘I was very politely rebuffed. I told myself before I came out not to drink and Juan.’ Cate gave a thin smile at Christine’s pale joke—she knew exactly what she meant.
‘Our livers will be thanking him,’ Cate said, because she wasn’t just being a martyr, driving everyone around—since she’d met Juan she’d been clutching water, terrified that a thimble of wine and all restraint would be gone.
‘I should have known better.’ Christine started the repair job on her face. ‘I knew it wasn’t going anywhere, but it was so great being with him…’
Cate really didn’t want to hear this; she didn’t want to hear from Christine how good he was in bed. She was just about to excuse herself, skip to the loo, do anything to avoid that conversation. She had no idea what was coming next.
‘It was all going great until you came back from leave.’
‘What?’
‘Oh, come on, Cate…’
‘There’s nothing going on between us.’
‘I’m not blind.’
Cate just stood there; she knew this could get nasty and she certainly didn’t have to explain one kiss to bloody Christine.
‘What’s going on between the two of you, then?’ came Christine’s slightly drunken demand.
‘I don’t know about you, Christine, but I left school years ago,’ Cate said, and walked out.
She went to get her bag but she’d promised Kelly a lift.
Kelly could pay for a taxi for once, Cate decided. But there was no need to rush off. The drama was over—Juan had already gone.
Once the bill had been paid, even Kelly didn’t want to head off to a club; so Cate drove her home and then dropped off Abby, which took her unbearably close to Juan’s.
She couldn’t just walk up the garden path for sex.
‘Hi, Juan.’ She could just picture it. ‘I’m here.’
Cate was nothing like that, she did nothing like that.
She had fewer regrets than Frank Sinatra.
Yet Cate didn’t want to be sitting on a gurney in fifty years’ time, speaking about this stunning six-foot-three Argentinian who had offered no strings, who had offered nothing but a night, maybe a couple of days…
‘What did you do?’ She could just see the young nurse asking her half a century from now.
‘I went home.’
‘Oh.’
‘Nothing could have come of it,’ Old Cate would rationalize. ‘There was no point if it was going nowhere.’
Elsie would be disappointed
Bridgette too.
Even the imaginary nurse of the future would be disappointed in her tonight, Cate thought as she refused to give in to temptation.
She arrived home—there was a present on her doorstep and Cate opened the note with it as she stepped inside.
Hope you don’t get this till morning and you can take this beauty out for a whirl tonight.
B xxx
Lilac velvet panties, still fresh in their pack, and they’d cost an absolute fortune, Cate knew, because Bridgette had been trying to sell them to her!
Wasted, she thought, crunching them into a ball in her fist and trying not to cry.
Lying in bed alone at two a.m., Cate was disappointed in herself too…at her wasted chance.
IN HIS NIGHTMARES he relived it.
Juan had waited for Cate until one and then given in and gone to bed, but he left the lights on outside and in the hall, just in case she changed her mind. He dozed off, trying to keep one ear open for her car, trying to fathom what it was about Cate that held his attention so, when he found himself back in his hospital bed.
‘I felt that!’ Juan said.
Manuel was washing his arm and Juan felt something, a vague sting, but at least he felt it.
His breathing came faster, scared to hope.
It was two a.m., the nurses were doing their rounds the night after his meltdown.
His roommates had all been wonderful.
‘Love you, Juan,’ André had called to him that morning as Juan had woken up. He was so ashamed for what he had put his roommates through, not knowing it was part of the process, not knowing two of them had done it too.
‘Love you, Juan,’ José had called, and Juan had closed his eyes.
‘Does it make me gay if I say I love you?’ young Eduard had called out, and Juan had smiled at the ceiling.
‘No,’ Juan finally answered. ‘I love you guys, too,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
It had been a day of conversation, a day of comradeship in the room as they’d stared up at the ceiling and joked and laughed. With the nurses’ help they had even video-called each other that afternoon, finally face to face with each other. Eduard had told them about his amazing girlfriend, Felicia, who was currently flying back from a student exchange in France and would be coming in to see him tomorrow.
Juan had woken at two a.m., as he always did when the nurses approached.
‘Not like this!’ Juan’s eyes snapped open as he heard Eduard shout. ‘I don’t want Felicia seeing me…’
Poor man.
Juan closed his eyes in agony as he heard Eduard screaming to Graciela, who was by his side. Poor man. Juan wept as Manuel wiped his tears and Eduard’s deranged, grief-filled rant continued.
Oh, Eduard!
Juan wanted to go over and hold him. He wanted to fix him, to heal him, but all he could do was lie in respectful silence, grimacing over and over in agony as Eduard let out his fears in a room, in a ward, that understood.
Poor man.
Good man.
He looked up at Manuel, saw that his eyes were filling up too, but he gave a small smile of comfort to Juan.
‘It’s okay,’ he said quietly. ‘He will be okay.’