Sheryl wasn’t so sure of that joint decision any more now.
“Look, babe, I know this is a last-minute thing. And I truly am sorry about the timing, but I have to go. I have no choice.”
Sheryl swallowed the question that had already made it to the tip of her tongue—“What would actually happen if you didn’t go?”—and tried to shift her mindset into reconciliatory mode. She didn’t want Kristin to leave in an atmosphere of reproach like this. Moreover, she didn’t want to be this person whining for her partner to not go on a business trip. Kristin was right. Sheryl was not usually like this. Then again, she’d never needed to be before.
Kristin threw her arms around Sheryl’s neck, and it still, always, sent a frisson of excitement down Sheryl’s spine when she did. “Remember when it was the other way around?” Kristin said, her voice smooth as silk. “When we just met and you always had one meeting or another to attend in the evening?”
That was entirely different, Sheryl wanted to say. I was fighting for our human rights, not selling alcohol all over the world.
What bothered Sheryl most was that, despite having a long-term partner, she felt more alone now than before she and Kristin had met. She had always been busy then. Her life was filled to the brim with social activities, which had slowly dwindled away. Sheryl didn’t have meetings with a bunch of like-minded women to look forward to anymore. She attended plenty of faculty activities, but in another capacity now: as Professor Johnson.
More than anything, Sheryl hated feeling alone, and that’s exactly how Kristin’s upgraded position at Sterling Wines made her feel.
Kristin put down her Blackberry for a few minutes. She hated missing their anniversary. She hated how her travel made Sheryl feel. So wasn’t the conclusion obvious? Her Blackberry chimed—a noise that had started to make Sheryl flinch—but she ignored it. She’d have plenty of time to check her messages at the airport. Besides, she knew it was her boss asking the same question he’d been asking her for the past two weeks: have you made a decision yet?
She looked out of the taxi window. Night was falling. She had a seven-hour flight to look forward to. After taking the promotion almost a year ago, she had soon learned that business travel wasn’t as glamorous as it was cracked up to be. Especially if your target market was Asia and you lived in Sydney. An issue her boss had pointed out not long ago and which had resulted in a subsequent question Kristin didn’t know the answer to: would she be willing to relocate to Hong Kong? Settle there and have much easier access to the markets she was responsible for? Her flight times would be cut in half. It would be an adventure. It would be great for the company and for her career.
Kristin had been asked the question almost two weeks ago but hadn’t brought it up to Sheryl yet. Before she did, she wanted to have a firm list of pros at the ready, along with a proposal of how all practicalities would be handled. She’d done some research on life as an expat and she was trying to put all of that together into a package to present to Sheryl, much like giving a presentation to a client. But, if she was really honest with herself, the real reason Kristin hadn’t told Sheryl about this new opportunity yet, was because she knew that it wouldn’t go down well.
She was afraid of Sheryl’s reaction and of how it would crush Kristin’s dream immediately. Sheryl had only been a professor at the University of Sydney for three years. She had finally reached her destination after long years of work and doing all the crappy jobs professors didn’t want to do. Kristin could simply not imagine Sheryl putting her career on hold for hers. Because it was always silently implied that what Sheryl did for a living was so much more important than what Kristin did—even though Kristin’s job paid a hell of a lot more than Sheryl’s.
Perhaps it was fitting for their relationship that they would spend their tenth anniversary apart. Kristin had heard of the seven-year itch, but she’d never heard of the ten-year one. She knew they were going through something serious enough for her to not be openly happy about being given another amazing opportunity at work. If she couldn’t share that with her partner, no matter what they would decide to do, that was quite the itch. Kristin was afraid to tell Sheryl about the Hong Kong opportunity, and it said all there was to say about the current state of their relationship.
Chapter Twelve
Sheryl desperately needed to get out of the house. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she didn’t. Well, she did, and it was that very thing she wanted to avoid. All this time she had to find a way of spending. So many people she knew were always going on about the luxury of time and how having time on your hands is just so great and blah blah blah. Time to be enjoyed with your loved ones, perhaps. Time to hang out with friends. Time to discuss the future. Time to learn a foreign language, to go for a hike, to unwind. Sure, that kind of time was more valuable than any money the jobs that ate away at time were worth. But the kind of time she faced then, the two hours before bed on nights when Kristin was away, seemed to open a void inside of her that could only be filled with one thing. The one thing that Sheryl despised the most, though despise was not the right word. She feared it, but she had also grown to crave it. And it was the very thing Kristin was away from home to promote.