Photograph

35 - Taking The Plunge

Well, there it was, I'd put it out there; my greatest concern about contemplating Mick's offer. I'd saved the best till last - well, okay, I guess I wouldn't really categorise it as the best, per se, but it was certainly the one that was giving me the most cause for pause. Ha ha, I'm a poet now.

Naïve as I was about how it all worked, I did at least know that the idea behind making an album is to get yourself known; this in turn hopefully leads to being asked to tour with someone more famous, making more albums and then eventually being a headliner rather than an opener, more albums, more tours, yada yada and then hey presto, the fame and fortune thing.

Which meant change, not just here and there, but to practically every aspect of my life as it presently stood; singing in pubs with the guys and teaching, not to mention having never been away from my family for more than a fortnight. Ever.

And I honestly wasn't sure that I wanted or could handle that degree of change. I'd always been resistant to new things - well, not always, but since...you know - so had been careful to only ever make small changes, a little at a time, so my equilibrium wasn't rocked by tidal waves of newness.

While I waited for Ben to voice his reaction, I concentrated on little things to prevent wandering off into anxiety attack land. I closed my eyes and worked my other senses, thinking about how safe it felt sitting here with his arms around me, how good he smelled, how it tickled slightly when his breath stirred the hair at my temples, the warmth of his thighs against mine, the reassurance offered by the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest.

"Change can be good; it can help us grow and move forward."

Without conscious thought, I went all Peter Pan on this one. "What if I don't want to grow?" Actually, I think I probably sounded more like a moody teenager who'd been told to do something they don't want to. Great Cara, you're a thirty two year old woman sounding like a fifteen year old whinger. I sighed, opened my eyes and looked at Ben, hoping to get some idea of how he felt. "Dammit Cumbers, you've got your actor face on."

"What does that mean?" The faint pull of his lips didn't quite make the sexy half smile I was hoping for.

"It's your defence shield, your invisibility cloak - the face where I can't tell what you're thinking or feeling."

"I'm trying not to influence your decision; it has to be yours alone - it's your future."

Ah. And there it is, the final niggling doubt that so far I hadn't mentioned. My future. A future that I had begun to hope - foolishly it now seemed - would include and involve him, and therefore he should have a say in. With those words, though, I felt something shrinking inside me even as I told myself not to get upset; sure, he'd told me he loved me, but he'd never so much as hinted at our relationship being a long term thing. Let's face it, we had happened with lightning speed - maybe he envisioned us burning out and ending at the same pace. It had barely been three months, after all - what the hell was I expecting? Perhaps he was thinking we'd nearly reached our expiry date and hoped the record deal would be a good distraction.

I got up, suddenly finding I couldn't take being that close to him, and headed to the kitchen to put the kettle on. "Fancy a cuppa?" I managed to ask, keeping my back to him as I fought against the sense of loss that was beginning to overtake me. Putting his tea in front of him a few minutes later, I muttered, "I'm out of milk; I'll just pop out to the shop to get some," and grabbing my purse, headed out the door before he could do more than give me a searching look. I needed air, and space from him, and...oh God, I have no idea what else I need. A new heart that doesn't feel like it's being squeezed and mangled? Yeah, that'd be nice.

Milk obtained, my footsteps slowed as I turned back. I had to act as if nothing had changed - which it hadn't, I guess, for him at least. Maybe I could make up a story about having dinner with a friend so that...oh shit. Dinner. We were having dinner with my family tonight. I groaned out loud, startling an elderly woman walking past with a dog, who veered as far over on the footpath as she could to give me a wide berth. Great Cara, freak out the neighbourhood.