Ant thought Dan might laugh. There wasn’t an ember of humour in him. “Not vulnerable because she felt threatened by you?”
He had to think for a minute. He leant on Dan’s fridge. “No. She was vulnerable because she admitted she found the job exhausting.” He came back to the table and sat. “She told me outright I was making her uncomfortable and I ignored it, but she didn’t back down about it. Kept on telling me to get out and leave her alone. At no time did I pick her for scared.” Not even when she’d come at him, almost climbing on the table to get in his face.
“But for all that you still thought she felt threatened?”
He had a couple of seconds of think music while Alex put the omelette down in front of him. “I asked her if she hated me. She’s always avoided me like I’m diseased. One time she chose to stand up rather than take the last seat at a meeting table beside me. She said she was too exhausted to hate me, but the way she reacts to me it’s gotta be near enough.”
“What’s your role in it?”
He picked up the knife and fork. “I breathe.”
“Ant.”
“Look, I really don’t know, that’s why I asked.” He took a bite of egg and ham. “I thought I had a pretty good fix on how I played with other people, but lately I’m not so sure.”
“Wouldn’t be having an epiphany would you?”
He looked up at Dan and caught his smirk, but said, “Great omelette, Alex. Bree might’ve felt threatened because she knew what I was going to ask.”
“How would she know?”
“She knew it wasn’t a work question. She knew I wanted it to be between the two of us. She knew I’d seen the bruises. And she sure as hell knew I wasn’t going to ask her out.”
“So what happened when you did ask?”
“She fucking lost it with me. But not in some hysterical female way.”
“I beg your pardon, Ant,” said Alex. He knew she was objecting to his assumption that all females got hysterical. He dropped his eyes to his plate. There was ballroom dance teacher Alex, not to be mucked with Alex. The woman who’d turned Dan inside out and helped him re-make himself.
“Sorry, Teach. But you know what I mean. She didn’t shout or cry or carry on. She was calm. She told me plain and strong to get the fuck out of her business.”
“So it didn’t go as well as you might’ve hoped,” said Dan. “But this is fixable. You can pick a better approach, you can talk to her again. What’s really upsetting you?”
Ant put both hands to his head. “She’s so goddamn irritating.” He dropped them back to the table. “I stood in that room and I could see how she might push someone to hurt her.” Dan shifted, his weight coming forward. He was about to rip into Ant so he kept on, “That’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is I stopped caring if they were. I just walked out on her. What kind of a bastard act is that, Dan?”
Dan said the words, “And now,” and they were like an option in a contract. They came with conditions. If Dan didn’t like what Ant said next, things would get dead ugly.
He looked down at the half eaten omelette. “I’m ashamed I thought that for even a minute. And I fucked up bad because I made this all about me, about how she wounded my pride.” He pushed the plate away and stood up. He walked over to Dan’s fridge and opened the door. No beer. Probably just as well. “I’m only irritated by Bree because she doesn’t fall for my act and she took what I wanted. She deserves the senior analyst role, I know that. I always knew it. It just didn’t suit me to admit it. She’s got the credential for it and the skill.” He came back to the table and sat. “And she sure as fuck doesn’t deserve to be threatened by me or smacked around by anyone, ever.”
Dan reached over and pushed the plate back at him. “Eat. You need your strength; epiphanies take it out of you.”
Ant ate. He still felt scalded. All he could think about was how to fix this; how to get near Bree without making her so distrustful she was like a roller derby girl playing offence and defence at the same time.
When he left, hours later, Alex kissed his cheek and Dan walked him out. At the door he said, “I’m just a big loud fuckwit,” and it felt like a definition of the normal he no longer wanted to live with.
Dan sniffed a laugh. “Yeah, so was I. So was Mitch, till we met the reason not to be. Maybe you’ve met yours. And I don’t mean the girl. It’s bigger than that. It’s about what’s going on in your heart.”
Ant nodded. It was close to midnight and he was tired of this day. He wanted a shower and his bed. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
Dan slapped him on the back, in a place where the imaginary sunburn still stung. “I’m your fuckwit mate, I’m not an oracle. All I know is you have to be genuine and it’s something we’ll always be working on.”
Ant went home and stood under the shower till the hot water stuttered, but when he got into bed he couldn’t sleep. He got up again and fetched his laptop; he might as well check the markets, read a few reports as stare at the ceiling. He wondered if Bree did that too. Or did she leave the office and forget about it, did she enjoy her evenings with a bloke? That made him think about the bruises again. He opened an email. If he asked her again this way, it’d be done. And without the awkwardness of another confrontation he didn’t know how to manage.
He typed bre and her email address popped up. He thought about the subject line and typed A moment. Then he put his cursor in the message space. He wanted to keep the language as businesslike, as impersonal as possible. Maybe that way she’d overlook her personal feelings for him and react to the content not the context.
He typed: My apologie
s for disturbing and upsetting you yesterday, it was not my intention. Unfortunately I allowed my own feelings to get in the way. I do however feel the need to follow through on our discussion but rather than disturb you again in person, I thought I would ask my question again here so you can respond at your leisure. Or not, as you see fit.