Touching Shadows

Property disputes

AUDREY

It was Monday morning, and my amazing three weeks of holidays had come to an end. I’d spent Friday night having ‘wine night’ with Jem, where she’d grilled me on all the dirty details from our Bora Bora trip.

“Tell me all of it, Aud. I want to feel like I’m there. Every. Single. Detail.”

“Absolutely not, Jem!”

“Come on! I spent two weeks imagining what you two were up to. I need something. Something!”

I had to share some details with her. She had helped Cohen plan and execute the whole thing, after all.

“Ok, ok!”

Jem clapped her hands and settled in with her wine glass in hand, ready for a story.

“So I got there, and I was shown to my own private bungalow over the water…”

Jems’ ‘oohs’ and’ ahhs’ punctuated my detailed description of my bungalow, how Cohen was right next door, how I had fumbled my way through navigating what he wanted from me.

I talked about our seaplane flight, and how Cohen had got my earrings custom made. Then she had to try them on, and tried to convince me that they looked better on her and that’s why she should keep them. She handed them back when I pulled out her own pair, which Cohen had insisted on paying for as a thankyou gift.

Without going into too much detail, I also recounted some of our sexual exploits. She was particularly thrilled when BOB came out to play.

“Oh my God, Audrey! I knew he was worth packing! And also, when did you get so fucking bold?! You are a new woman! I don’t know what that man has done to you, but I like it! You sound like you might give De’Laney and I some fierce competition, and we get up to some right kinky stuff!”

I laughed at my best friend. I had missed this.

“It sounds like he knows what he’s doing, too.”

I nodded shyly.

“He knows how to get me off.”

“Oh, yes babe! You finally find someone who can press your button! I love him!”

And that took me to the whole terrible, awkward declaration of love.

“Really? Aud… you love him?”

I nodded as I bit my lip.

Jemima threw herself at me, wrapping her arms and legs around me and shrieking in my ear.

“Yes! My baby girl is in loooovvve!”

We ended up tucked up in my bed together, talking late into the night about boys, and work, and big amazing holidays we would take together, and how our kids would grow up in the same neighbourhood and would be forced to like each other by their mothers. My heart was happy.

And then Cohen and I spent the weekend house hunting, after he came back from his place and Jemima ordered him to make us pancakes. De’Laney finally came to pick her up and take her home, and we had the house to ourselves again.

And now it was Monday morning. I was going back to work. Cohen had to be in court at 11, and he had taken the day off. Gerry was more than happy to accommodate it, and had organised to cover my second period class so I could drop Cohen off. I wasn’t going in, like Walt had suggested, but there was no way I was going to let Cohen go there alone either.

He hadn’t touched his breakfast this morning, and he had spent most of the night rolling from side to side in bed, unsettled. I had woken at 5:30 and found him asleep on the couch, finally too exhausted to fight it.