Spiralling Skywards: Fading (Contradictions, #2)(12)

He had been gone for eleven whole days, and although I had spoken to him every day, he hadn’t really had a lot to say.

“Yo,” I answered with my usual greeting, purely because I knew it made him smile. He had told me once I was too much of a white girl to use such a term. I flipped him my middle finger and now used it to answer every one of his calls.

“Yo, pretty girl. How you doing?”

I had to stop walking and breathe in deeply through my nose. The pain of missing him was visceral and caused an ache in my chest and my head to swim at the sound of his voice.

“Bad. Shitty in fact. I’ve just kissed your family goodbye and now I’m heading home to an empty house and that big ol’ empty bed of ours.”

“Sarah . . .” He sounded almost as if he were in pain as he whispered my name.

Loneliness hit me like a punch to the gut, and I once again started walking back towards my car. I was crying and just wanted to climb inside its confines and shut out the rest of the world. I kept my head down and moved as quickly as I could through my tears.

“We have to attend a meeting tomorrow with our lawyers, the helicopter company, and our insurers. The insurance companies representing the families of our staff will also be there.” He paused for a long moment, giving me just enough time to sit myself behind the wheel of my Peugeot, close the door, and wait for the “but” that I knew was coming.

“This whole thing could go on for days, weeks even.”

I covered my mouth with my hand, stifling my sobs and remained silent. Even if I could talk, I didn’t really know what to say.

“You still there, bub?”

“Yeah, I’m here.”

My voice sounded thick, betraying my attempt to hide the fact that I was crying.

“Please don’t cry. I know this is hard, but please don’t cry. It fucking kills me”.”

“I can’t help it. I miss you. I want you to come home.”

“I wanna come home.”

“Then come home.”

“I can’t. I’m the head of Oceanic operations, there’s no one more senior than me. I need to be here.”

“What about Luke?” I felt a twinge of guilt at offering up my brother as a sacrifice, but fuck it. I wanted my husband back.

“Luke’s head of UK and Europe. You know that, Sarah.”

“What I know is that we were married eleven days ago, and I’ve not seen you since.”

“Get on a plane and come over here.”

“I can’t, Liam. I have to go back to work in the morning, my holiday is over.”

“Take unpaid leave, your boss will understand.”

“I’ll lose my job.”

“Who cares? You’ll be pregnant soon and will have to leave then anyway.”

“Not sure if you’re aware of how those things work, but you have to have sex to get pregnant. That’s not gonna happen while you’re twelve thousand miles away.”

“So fly over and I’ll have you pregnant within the month. I miss you. I need you to crawl into bed with every night. I need you to tell me this will all be fine and we’re not gonna get our arses sued for any kind of malpractice.”

I hadn’t realised that was a possibility, and the idea of Liam getting sued made my stomach twist. At no time had he mentioned this before, or he had and I was just such a selfish bitch I hadn’t heard him.

“Is there a chance that could happen?”

“Hopefully not. First indicators are that we did everything by the book and it was just a simple malfunction. Our lawyers are working through all of our practices, but they’re pretty sure that we’ve conformed. It’s always a worry when something like this happens, though.”

I had forgotten to breathe as I listened to his answer and almost choked when I eventually sucked in air as he finished talking.

“So, you want me to look at flights for you?”

“Liam . . .” I groaned. “I can’t just drop everything and fly to Australia.”

“Why?”

“My job for one.”

“Your job’s more important than I am?”

“No, of course not.”

That comment pissed me off.

“Then I don’t see a problem.”

“Well, just like you can’t get on a plane and fly back here because of work, I can’t get on a plane and fly there.”

“You can’t, or you won’t, Sarah? What I have is a career, employees, people depending on me. All you do is sit behind a desk, look pretty, and answer the phone for your boss all day.”

Wow!

“Fuck you!” I snapped and ended the call. His name flashed across the screen again, but I sent the call to my voice mail. It was childish, but how fucking dare he. I started my car and was about to attempt the drive home through my angry tears when it chimed with a text message alert.

I shifted the gear into neutral and grabbed my phone again.

Aussie Husband: Pick up the fucking phone!

I turned it off instead and then cranked the radio up when “It’s Not Over Yet” by the Klaxons started to play.

It was after nine when I turned onto my street. I was still pissed off, but I had calmed down considerably. I’d had time to think as I drove and realised that it probably wouldn’t be too difficult for me to take some unpaid leave. Though, Liam’s attitude and the way he just expected me to drop everything still pissed me off. My rage had cooled from boiling to a simmer, until I saw my brother’s car parked on my drive, and all the anger I had worked through started to bubble inside me again.