“Do you want to talk about yours?” Kristin sank her head against Sheryl’s shoulder.
“I had lunch with Martha. She finally came out to her children.”
“Wow.” Even though this was great news, Kristin found it hard to muster any enthusiasm for anyone’s good tidings, not her own, few and far between as they had become, nor anyone else’s.
“Shall we have her over for dinner some time?” Sheryl clasped her arm around Kristin’s shoulder. Being ensconced in her partner’s embrace worked like a temporary sleeping aid. Kristin could fall asleep there and then, but it would only result in more of the tossing and turning she’d been doing too much of in bed lately. “Babe?” Sheryl asked.
“Hm. Sure.”
“I’ll set it up,” Sheryl said, and it was the last thing Kristin heard before she fell asleep on Sheryl’s shoulder.
Sheryl couldn’t move. Not if she didn’t want to wake Kristin, who looked like she desperately needed every minute of sleep she could get. She listened to her partner’s slowed breathing and took a deep breath herself. This was their life. Exhausted Friday evenings on the sofa, barely time for a decent chat. The bottle of wine Sheryl had easily polished off on her own hardly made a difference. She was of half a mind to open another, but that would involve moving and Kristin sleeping on her shoulder was about the pinnacle of intimacy they reached these days. Often, when Sheryl sat drinking alone, she wondered if this was it. If this was what it all amounted to. Despite not having to travel for work outside of Australia, Kristin’s hours had still grown longer over time. Each year, she’d given that company a little bit more: more time, more dedication, more pieces of herself. Parts of her that were once reserved for Sheryl had been squandered on work. But it wasn’t what worried Sheryl most.
Kristin used to take such pride in her work. The sparkle in her eyes when she came home after a great day was almost worth not seeing her often enough. Because Sheryl knew what it was like to have a job that fulfilled you, an occupation that made it all worthwhile. But that sparkle had faded in the past year. These days, Kristin only seemed to give more and more, emptying herself into a void, without getting anything back. Her energy didn’t get replenished anymore. She was depleting herself. Sheryl saw it. She suspected Kristin knew it. But she didn’t know how to start that particular conversation, as if time had silently but slowly chipped away at their means of communication.
Kristin stirred, made a noise in the back of her throat, and pushed herself away from Sheryl. “I fell asleep again,” she said, sounding apologetic, though this happened almost every night, and if she was truly sorry, she would perhaps try harder, however physically impossible, to stay awake.
“Don’t I know it,” Sheryl said, mustering a smile.
“Do you want to go to bed?” Kristen barely managed to suppress another yawn.
“You go. I’ll be up in a bit.” Every time she said those words—almost every evening of their life together, Sheryl mused: the couple who goes to bed together, stays together. They only went to bed together on weekends and, Sheryl had to be honest, then she was usually the one falling asleep like a log.
“Good night, hon.” Kristin pressed a light kiss on Sheryl’s cheek and went upstairs.
Sheryl looked at the empty bottle of wine. When was the last time Kristin had said anything about her drinking habits? Years ago. Then her mind wandered back to her conversation with her colleague Martha earlier that day.
“You and Kristin are my role models,” she’d said. “I want what you ladies have.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” Sheryl had joked, put on a smile, and hidden all the anguish, all the lonely days, and all the conversations they so desperately needed to have, behind it.
She got up and opened another bottle.
Chapter Seventeen
Kristin looked at her corner office and the view behind it—one she wouldn’t miss one bit. The surface of her desk was immaculate as always. She didn’t understand how people could work in chaos. Whereas she had loved the gentle disarray of Sheryl’s student flat when they’d first met, the coziness it created, her admiration had soon made way for stupefaction when she’d visited Sheryl’s office. It had been such a big mess, Kristin’s mouth had uncontrollably fallen open.
“You may not see it, but there’s order in my chaos,” Sheryl had said, her voice low and seductive, and Kristin had believed her. Kristin always believed Sheryl. Up until recently, she’d had no reason not to.
She walked behind her desk and sat in her chair. Would it be the last time? Did she owe it to herself to work through her notice period or just take gardening leave? After seventeen years, her best years, she certainly didn’t owe it to the company. But she knew she would. She would train her successor, transfer her knowledge as best she could, and walk out of that very office four weeks from now guilt free. She’d not just given everything to Sterling Wines, she had given more than she had. Which was all well and good when she could thrive on the satisfaction she got from helping build the company from a local distributor to a worldwide one. But those times had long gone.