Read Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel for Free Online Page B

never forced you to do anything,” I reply, deliberately avoiding the question. My guilt is not like an anvil, it is a small, determined, lethal parasite that has gnawed its way through my mind, my body, my heart, my spirit. My guilt has hollowed me out and left me dead inside.
    “I know. It was my choice.” He clutches the bottle over his heart, a brand of his guilt as well as that anvil. “And I’d make the same choice again. I’d always make that choice.”
    I move across the room to him, all anger gone. I wrap my arms around him, the bottle, his symbol of remorse, still between us, separating our hearts.
    “There’s something I meant to say to you earlier,” I tell him, trying to bridge the gap.
    “Yeah?” he asks, still clutching the bottle between us.
    “It’s a little weird that we both forgot,” I said.
    “Forgot what?”
    “It’s our anniversary.”
    He closes his eyes, exhales deeply. “I did forget. With work and everything … I’m sorry.”
    “I forgot, too,” I remind him. “If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have gone to dinner with a lot of other people tonight. I only remembered as we sat down to eat.” I lower one of my arms, and with my hand I find the space on his body reserved just for me, that only I am allowed to touch in this way. “We could always make it up to each other.” I flatten my hand more firmly against him, but there is no response, his body hasn’t replied that he wants what I am doing to him. I continue talking, keeping my voice low, a suggestive smile on my lips—if I can get him to respond it will be fine. We’ll be fine again. “You know how good we are at making things up to each other.” Nothing. Absolutely nothing from his body. Absolutely nothing from his face: his eyes stare blankly down at me, as though I am a person he does not recognize, as though I am speaking a language he does not understand nor wants to learn. My fingers find his zipper and slowly draw it open. He shifts away from me then. Only a fraction, but it tells me his answer very clearly: no.
    “I forgot,” he repeats, fumbling with his free hand to redo his zipper.
    “Happy anniversary, Mal,” I say, and with a strength I didn’t know I possessed, I keep the tremble of tears out of my voice and off my face.
    “Steph, happy anniversary.” His lips are brief and distanced as he touches something approximating a kiss on my forehead. He carefully untangles himself from me and leaves me to stand rejected and humiliated in the darkened kitchen.
    My fingers curl into my hands, my nails dig into my palms and I close my eyes to stop the panic.
Breathe.
All I have to dois stand here and breathe. It will be fine, it will be OK if I can breathe.
    I know he means it. I know he means it when he says he’d make the same choice again. Between Nova, his oldest friend, and me, he would choose me. Between his son and me, Mal would choose me. Always, he’d choose me.
    I know this. But I also know that at no point in the last eight years has Mal said he doesn’t regret the choice he made with every bit of his guilt-heavy heart.

“
Why you crying?
”
    Mummy was sitting on the sofa with her head in her hands and she was crying. She was crying and crying and crying. She looked up at him and she had a wet face and funny eyes and she kept crying.
    “
Why you crying?” he asked.
    “
Because I’m tired, Leo. I’m really, really tired. The house is a mess, and I don’t know where to start. Amy’s on holiday for another week, so I have to run the café on my own because that girl who was covering for her kept stealing from the till. I’m scared to close my eyes and go to sleep at night because you keep climbing out of your cot and I’m terrified that if you’re not turning on the gas downstairs, you’re going to work out how to unhook the chain and then you’ll disappear out the front door. And I’m sick of doing this on my own. I’m sick of having no one to talk to, no one to rely on, of