The Way Out by Vicki Jarrett Read Free Book Online

It was as if I wasn’t different enough for him anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some hopeless romantic, I do know that in every relationship, that initial hot flash of infatuation has to transform into something more stable over time. But if you’re lucky it sets, like a molten planet cooling, into a world you both want to settle on and share, maybe even colonise, with its high mountains, lush valleys and deep, rolling oceans. Ideally, you’ll want to preserve a scattering of exotic undiscovered regions just to provide a few surprises along the way. That’s what love between two people is: your own Home World. That’s what I’d always been looking for, what I had hoped I’d finally found with Derek. But rather than allowing our planet to form, Derek grew increasingly distracted by certain design features.
    He became more ambitious, his set-ups more elaborate. The ears became a bit of an issue. It wasn’t enough that Mr Spock got to experience emotion for the first time. He needed perfect ears for the occasion, and Derek would spend ages sitting at the kitchen table carving them out of potatoes before he’d come up to bed. Eventually I got tired of waiting.
    His fixation with the green Rigelian dancing girl was really just the last straw. Our relationship’s final frontier.
    It’s 3am when I shoulder my bag and tiptoe from the bedroom. No point in waking Derek and risking a scene. I navigate the darkened hallway using only the faint glow from the tip of my extended index finger. Derek’s face would be some picture if he could see this.
    Outside, the stars are spread out across the sky, at once both lonely and welcoming. I press the button on my key and the wheels of the Honda Civic parked at the kerb rise and disappear smoothly into its elongating chassis. My starship hovers there, waiting for me.
    I’m not too sure where I’m going, where I might one day find somewhere, or someone, I can call home.

Her Feelings About Auckland
    â€˜I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ she says. ‘You’re always trying to put things in boxes.’
    He pauses and looks up from the box of junk he’s sorting through. Rain patters on the attic skylight, a peaceful backing track to his rapid rewind through their conversation. He’d like to pinpoint the problem with the boxes before responding. He recalls talking about how pointless it was to keep all this broken stuff in the attic, but nothing that provides a clue to her current irritation.
    â€˜Um…?’
    She knows he’s pretending to be clueless so he doesn’t have to engage with what she’s saying. ‘You know. That thing you do. Compartmentalising everything?’
    He shakes his head. ‘I thought we agreed we were going to have a proper clear-out? We don’t need any of this stuff.’
    They both go back to raking through old lamps and burst tennis rackets.
    â€˜It’s not just stuff though. There are memories and associations, feelings attached to everything. It’s not healthy, this ability of yours to turn all that off whenever it doesn’t suit you.’
    He sighs and stares into the mouth of the old toaster before dropping it back into the box. ‘I’d like to get this finished today.’
    â€˜We will. But we don’t need to be like robots about it. People, normal people, don’t work that way. You can’t separate thinking from feeling.’
    â€˜Course I can. Some thoughts are just thoughts. You don’t have to get all worked up about everything. All emotional whenthere’s no need.’
    â€˜I’m not getting worked up,’ she says, her voice rising. ‘I’m just saying it’s not possible to think anything without having some form of emotional response to it.’
    â€˜I’d say it is.’
    â€˜And I’d say you’re wrong. Every thought you have, no matter how mundane, you also have a