The Box Under the Bed – Part 2: Pavlova

By Saturday afternoon, Rowan had cleaned the entire flat twice.

Tessa found him at four o’clock scrubbing the bathroom grout with a toothbrush.

“Ro.”

“Mm.”

“The grout is fine.”

“The grout,” said Rowan, “was a disgrace.”

She crouched down beside him on the bathroom floor and took the toothbrush gently out of his hand.

“You’re nervous,” she said.

“I’m terrified,” he admitted. “Not of you. Of being bad at it. Of it being weird. Of you seeing me,” he stopped, “I don’t know. Different.”

Tessa was quiet for a moment.

“I’m nervous too,” she said. “I read about eleven articles. I watched a video of a woman explaining it with a cucumber. I nearly called my sister.”

“You did not.”

“I got as far as dialling.” She smiled. “Ro, listen. Nobody is going to be good at it. That’s not the point. The point is we trust each other enough to be bad at it together.”

He looked at her.

“That’s quite wise,” he said.

“The cucumber woman said it,” said Tessa. “I just remembered it.”

He laughed so hard he slid down the bathroom wall.

---

At eight o’clock, she told him to sit on the edge of the bed and wait.

Her voice was different. Calmer. Lower. It was the voice she used when she was in charge of something at work, a voice he had heard on the phone to clients a hundred times and never once directed at him.

He sat. He waited. His heart was going like a drum.

She came back into the bedroom with the black box, still tied with its red ribbon, and set it on the bed beside him.

“Before we do anything,” Tessa said. “Tell me the word.”

“Pavlova.”

“And if you say it?”

“Everything stops. No sulking. Cheese on toast.”

“Good,” she said softly. “Now. Look at me. Not at the box. At me.”

He looked at her.

“I love you,” Tessa said. “Nothing tonight changes that. Nothing tonight is a test. Okay?”

“Okay,” Rowan whispered.

She untied the ribbon.

---

What happened next belonged only to them.

There was a lot of laughter, at first. One moment involving the instructions, which were in four languages and none of them helpful, made both of them laugh until they cried. There was a pause, early on, when Rowan went very quiet, and Tessa stopped and asked if he was okay, and he said yes, and she asked again, and he said yes and meant it. There was her voice, steady and certain, telling him exactly what to do and when. There was the slow, astonishing feeling, for both of them, of a trust so complete that nerves didn’t have anywhere left to go.

Neither of them said pavlova.

---

Afterwards, they lay tangled in the duvet with the window open and the sound of the harbour coming up from the dark.

Rowan was quiet for a long time.

“Talk to me,” Tessa said, stroking his hair. “Honestly. How do you feel?”

He thought about it carefully. She had taught him that, tonight: to think before answering.

“Safe,” he said finally. “That’s the weird thing. I thought I’d feel embarrassed, or exposed, or something. I just feel really, really safe.”

Tessa didn’t say anything. She just held him tighter.

“And you?” he asked.

“Powerful,” she said slowly. “But not in a scary way. In a,” she searched for the word, “a trusted way. Like you gave me something and I looked after it.”

“You did look after it.”

“I know,” said Tessa, and he could hear her smiling in the dark. “I’m very good at it.”

---

At eleven, she made him cheese on toast anyway.

“Nobody said the word,” Rowan pointed out, sitting up in bed with the plate on his knees.

“It’s not a punishment,” Tessa said. “It’s aftercare. I read about that too. Article number seven.”

He ate it in four bites. It was the best cheese on toast he’d ever had.

---

The next morning, the black box was back under the bed.

But there was a new card tucked under the ribbon. In her handwriting, under the old message, a new line.

Ro. Only if you want to. No pressure. Ever. — T.

P.S. Next Saturday? You can say pavlova.

He found it when he went looking for his other running shoe, which had somehow gone missing again.

He wrote his answer underneath, in pen, and put the card back.

Yes. Bring the cucumber woman’s wisdom. — R.

---

The End.

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