[Aidan's marriage has been shattered by his wife's cheating. Unable to cope with the thing she did, he boarded a plane and put as much distance between them as possible. He finds himself in Australia, making new friends in Sydney, including a pair of mates on a road trip around their vast, empty continent. He's also met Kat, sharing her bed, the first time in many years that he's been with a woman who isn't his wife. Now, he's back on his own again as everyone goes their separate ways.
The background to Aidan's story can be found in
Oxygen Games
by oneagainst, continued here with permission]
---
THE RIPTIDE
Aidan is on the balcony of the pub, watching the foot traffic in the pedestrian mall below, with his phone on the table and a beer in his hand, alone. There is an excited squeal, and he follows its source to three girls in little bikinis below him on a bench, huddled around a phone, babbling excitedly. It spurs him to pick up his own phone, and he finds himself scrolling through his feeds in the late afternoon sun.
It's fairly quiet in the pub. He'd gravitated to it after seeing Hardy and Flint off on the next stage of their epic adventure around the Australian coastline. Hardy had been all bullshit and bluster, showing no hint of the conversation out on the water. He clearly wanted to keep his travel companion in the dark about the reasons for the trip and how it was being funded. It was wrong, Aidan thinks to himself, but he can see why Hardy is doing it. He has to admit to himself that he would probably do the same. Hardy's destination is preordained, inescapable, the only choice remaining to him now is how he meets the end.
Aidan takes another swig of his beer, feeling the sun on his skin. He tries to imagine what it's like for Hardy, to know that time is ticking away, that he can do nothing about it. Aidan shudders and takes another sip of beer, pushing the dark thoughts from his mind. It's not helping.
With the boys gone, he feels lonely. He taps on the screen, sending a quick message to Kat to wish her a good flight. It feels like everyone's getting on with their plans, going their own ways. They had all given him a subtle invitation to tag along, but here he is, drinking on his own. If the boys had been heading down to Melbourne, maybe it would have been different. Maybe if the arrows of fate had been all aligned in the same direction, he would have followed them. Instead, rudderless, here he is, just waiting for the next thing to happen.
He looks through his message notifications. Ant has commented on his Sydney harbour sunset picture, calling him a tease for clearly having such a good time while Ant is stuck at work. Theo, his boyfriend, has liked the shot too, and there is a steady drip of people on his follower list reacting to his first post after such an unusually long gap. He scrolls to the bottom, reacting back, sending comments on their comments, until he gets to the bottom. Rosa hasn't commented, though he knows she would have been notified. Unless she'd blocked him.
Aidan holds his phone in one hand and his beer in the other. He takes a gulp, tasting the bitterness of the cold, amber drink. In the back of his mind, it still feels wrong to be back on the alcohol after a year of abstinence while they'd tried for a baby. He hadn't liked the idea at first, but he'd done it for Rosa, to maximise their chances.
Not that it had worked. For some reason, the dream he'd had months ago about the clinic comes back to him, of his wife emerging with a purple velvet pouch containing two beautiful golden marbles. After all the treatments and the cycles, they'd just simply run out of viable eggs, leaving the last two. One had gone on ice and the other one had been inserted, but it hadn't survived. Now here they were, separated by a vast distance in space and an even wider one in their relationship. He remembers her face, the last time he ever saw her, in their kitchen in the morning after she'd come home and confessed to sleeping with the guy from the coffee shop. She had been remorseful and scared and vulnerable and gloriously beautiful. She'd broken his heart.
He feels his eyes pricking with moisture and he blinks rapidly, trying to quell the awful empty feeling before it overwhelms him, in public in the bar. His memory is relentless, though, playing that scene back, and then shifting, mercilessly, to his wife in the car with the window down in high summer and her dark hair fluttering around her face, replaying the way she smiled at him. His memory is punishing him, a part of his mind that had very strong opinions on where he should be, and it wasn't here, in a pub, running away. A real man would fix all this. A real man wouldn't just turn tail. No wonder she cheated.
His finger taps the screen and he watches it working with a horrific fascination. The link is there on the side, in his contacts. He presses it and is met with his wife's face, smiling back at him from the screen. It's a post from yesterday, out on a boat on the lake back home, a group shot with Rosa in the middle effortlessly drawing the eye. She's in a tank top and tight, white pants with shades tucked into her hair, arms across the shoulders of two girls he doesn't recognise. He scans the rest of the faces. They're all new to him, except the man standing behind his wife raising a beer in a toast to the camera. It's Davey.
Aidan places the phone down on the table and runs a hand through his hair. He can't look away. Rosa is smiling for the camera, absolutely gorgeous, her eyes sparkling. She looks relaxed and happy. He looks at Davey, his friend, the property guru, the guy always between girlfriends. His guts churn and he blanks the screen.
The voice in his head is insistent now: what did you expect? It was always going to come to this. Rosa is stunning; it stands to reason that there would be a line of men with whom she could fill the gap left behind in her life by Aidan. That Davey would be the first to try doesn't surprise him. That was Davey's mode of operation: an opportunist, a wheeler-dealer. He'd simply seen an option come up unexpectedly on a prime opportunity and was moving to secure it. The worst part is that there's nothing Aidan can do. She'd cheated. He couldn't just turn up and beg for her to come back. Yeah, it was always going to come to this.
He picks up his phone again and flicks to his photos, anything to banish his wife from the screen. There is a picture of himself with Kat, with the Harbour Bridge lit up behind them in the dark. He finds himself staring at her face, but he doesn't feel the same. Kat had been wonderful, but it feels like a shallow impression next to Rosa. But, he chides himself, wait: it was always going to be hard starting new things, comparing with the past.
He flicks through his messages and finds the one he's looking for, taps the number and waits as it rings.
"Hello?"
"Hi Marley, uh, we met this morning. It's Aidan. I was wondering if you had time to talk. You mentioned you had some work."
"Aidan, hi. Nice to hear from you. Uh, I'm in the middle of something right now, but yes. Do you want to meet up face to face? Are you still down in Manly?"
"Yeah."
"I'm just north of there. How about I pass by in an hour? There's a coffee place at the north end of the beach."
"Sounds good."
"See you then."
"See you."
He ends the call and downs the last of his beer, stuffing his phone roughly into the pocket of his shorts. He has that strange feeling again, like he's just reacting to things, caught in the flow. He strides downstairs and out into the sun, turning towards the beach and Hardy's face comes to him all of a sudden, unbidden. He remembers the way Hardy had looked out at the horizon, picking his wave and then turning. Aidan looks out now at the same view, then down to his feet. He turns left, heading north along the promenade to his meeting.
---
Marley is waiting for him, legs crossed in her activewear, grey hair coiled in a tight bun, slim and wiry. He hurries across the road.
"Hi," he says, "Sorry."
"No, I'm early. It didn't take as long as I thought."
Aidan nods. "Do you want a coffee, or...?"
"I'm fine with the water, but please sort yourself."
Aidan goes to the counter and orders himself a coffee. The beer hasn't slowed him down, but he's nervous and he wants to make a good impression. It's been a long time since he's been interviewed for a job.
Aidan collects his cup and sits in the chair opposite the older woman. She leans forward.
"So, tell me a little about yourself. What brings you to this neck of the woods?"
Aidan doesn't tell her everything, omitting some of the facts. He tells her about the gym, but not that he owns it with his wife. He doesn't mention Rosa at all. He talks about the strength training classes, the yoga. He details his early life and then the Ironman and marathon competitions, trying not to sound self-important while at the same time endeavouring to separate the narrative from the fact that his wife runs all the way through it, intimately entwined. As he talks, Marley nods, smiling encouragingly.
"So, fair to say that you're qualified?" she ventures.
"Uh, yeah. I have certificates in...."
Marley holds up her hand. "I'm sure, and yes, I would like you to email me them. What about a reference? Your boss in the gym?"
Aidan stops: fuck. Marley can see it too, the hesitation. She's left it to the end, until he was feeling comfortable, his guard down, then she'd just dropped it in. Her eyes are fixed on his.
"Is that an issue?" she probes.
Aidan leans back in his chair, letting out a long, slow breath as he meets her gaze. He has nowhere to go but through the middle of it.
"Yes," he confesses.
