by Tiffany Sala
I froze at Steven’s shout, like I was a bird who’d suddenly realised the gun was already pointed at me. Steven and Lucas were walking towards us, schoolbags balanced impossibly on the edges of their shoulders, uniforms a crumpled mess.
If Callie had been tense before when it was just me, she was rigid now. She looked like she was bracing for a crash, the way she’d looked riding in Ryan’s car the couple times he’d given her a lift home after her old car got hit the first time.
The thing was, Steven had been more right than he intended—Lucas was nothing like him. Lucas had always seemed a pretty decent guy to me, aside from being as entitled as anyone that rich and handsome. I wasn’t worried about him hurting Callie—not intentionally, at least. But he was well out of her league, and I guess that made all the difference.
Steven, on the other hand, was dangerous. I felt my body reacting to him the way Callie’s was to Lucas’s growing proximity, and I could tell from the smirk on Steven’s face he thought I’d deliberately walked myself into this trap.
But… was I sure I hadn’t? I could have texted Callie any time and it would have been much less awkward. I knew damn well that Steven was Lucas’s best friend and that they probably spent time together after school.
“I was just leaving,” I said.
Lucas sped up a little so he could reach Callie’s side and put an arm across her. “You can come with if you want. Steven’s got training though, so he’s staying behind.”
Had Steven told Lucas something? It seemed like the answer to that might be obviously, and from the way Callie had suddenly forgotten to be tense and was staring at me with occasional peeks at Steven, she was just figuring it out. The question was, what was she figuring out and would she let me in on it?
A shiver ran up my spine, and a second later Steven was at my side. “Hey, Tamara.” He touched my arm, just for a second, and I nearly fell over.
I had to get away from here. “Sorry, my brother’s waiting to take me home. I just dropped by to say hi to Callie.”
“I’ll text you tonight,” Callie told me, already turning towards the car. If she’d worked anything out, it clearly wasn’t giving her much to worry about. Well, she spent more time around him than I ever had now, so perhaps I should see that as a sign not to worry either?
Callie probably didn’t know about the restraining order, though. Had he managed to hide it from Lucas too? I couldn’t imagine Lucas would let a girlfriend of his anywhere near Steven if he’d done something like that.
The question was, how long ago had that restraining order business been? A month or months? Years? It couldn’t be that old, I wasn’t sure they even handed those out to people under eighteen. Was it still active though? I had no way of knowing… and that meant I couldn’t begin to speculate properly on the next important question: was it reasonable for me to think he might have changed since then?
Well, the place to consider this was not standing right next to Steven. If I lingered too long he might try to invite me to come out with the group or watch his sports training another day, whatever was the done thing between a guy and girl who weren’t dating, and the one thing I did know was that I wanted to keep this under wraps for now.
I stepped away. “I’d better get going.”
But I didn’t go to Ryan immediately. Instead I hid myself in the library, which was open for a couple hours after the end of classes some days, and watched as Steven and some other guys showed up on the sports field and started setting up for training.
I sort of wished I could go out and watch properly. It seemed like a lot might be revealed about who Steven was from one of his favourite activities.
But I didn’t have any right to stay, and I had a brother waiting for me… who I knew was going to give me a few choice words about how long he’d waited already.
I turned away, ducking curious looks from Mrs. Donal, our librarian.
Mum came into my room to chat again that night, but I was ready for her.
“Do you think it’s possible for people to change?” I asked. “I mean, people who have done bad things in the past. Do you believe it’s common that those people turn their lives around and do better, or is that the exception?”
Mum began fidgeting with her dressing gown cord. “Tamara…”
“I’m just asking for Callie, mostly,” I said quickly. “I mean, I know Lucas was really young back when it happened, but he totally crushed her before when he was screwing around with her, and I guess I’m wondering what chance there is he won’t do it again.”
Mum stood, and began pacing the small amount of available space in my room, looking at anything that wasn’t me. “There must be some people who don’t just go and do the same thing they always have,” she said, “or we wouldn’t have a rehabilitation-based prison system. But I think that number is smaller than anyone realises. When it comes to non-criminal acts, things people can get away with doing over and over with no consequences… I’d say there are almost no people who ever change their tune.”
I had a feeling the next question in my head was going to really set her off, but at the same time I couldn’t seem to stop my mouth from working. “Mum, did you ever think about checking to see what… what the sperm donor did, after you left him? Did you ever see or hear from him again?”
“Never.” Mum’s voice sounded like it was coming out of frozen lips. “You know, Tamara, the colour of your walls actually makes me feel a bit sick. Maybe we should think about changing it.”
I didn’t believe that for one second: Mum had selected that colour for goodness sake, although she’d made some attempt to involve me in the process. But I let her leave, because I felt bad that I’d asked that question in the first place, and I needed some time on my own to think about what had provoked it.
Now the question was out in the world, I couldn’t put it back in my head and cover it up. I hadn’t wondered before what my biological father was doing now, what he might be like, and now I did. And it seemed to me like finding out would help me decide what I was supposed to do about Steven. My father had been about as bad as I could imagine anyone being when we’d still lived with him. If he had managed to turn things around after we’d left, there had to be hope for Steven.
Rationally, I knew there was no real connection between what my father might have done with his life, and what Steven was going to do with his. But I didn’t have any other way of deciding how I was going to move forward with Steven. There was no way to be sure.
Even if I found out my father wasn’t too bad these days, maybe that would give me confidence I could do something for Steven. With my life experience, I might be able to help him turn his life around properly.
I just had to figure out how I was going to find my father to get in contact with him. I couldn’t ask Mum or Ryan for help, and even though Mike had never really been a dad to me he always got weirdly jealous when my birth father was mentioned. I couldn’t trust him either.
First I needed his name… somehow. But that was just the first step… and I didn’t think the situation with Steven was going to hold off until I was through the rest.
Unless… there might be a way I could use this situation to maximum advantage.
Chapter Eight: Steven
“Just go get her, for fuck’s sake,” Lucas said.
Callie’s mouth was occupied in gabbing to Carlene about colours, of all things, like they were in fucking kindergarten or something, so Lucas was entirely focused on me and my problems. Even though my only problem right now was Lucas bugging me to do a whole bunch of things I was never intending on doing.
“What am I supposed to fucking do, go harass her until she decides to open up her pants for me?”
One corner of Lucas’s mouth lifted.
“Don’t even fucking go there.” I didn’t even like it when Lucas joked about shit like that. I guess we all have different tolerances for that sort of thing, but for me it was simple: if I thought Lucas was doing anything with Cal
lie that messed with her so much she lost control over what she was doing, I’d just fucking kill him.
He’d probably laugh at me if I ever told him that, of course. And he’d think it was even funnier if he knew about Julia. Playing by her rules had been good for something, at least.
Carlene said something that made Callie laugh, a sort of half-hysterical noise like she knew she shouldn’t but hadn’t been able to help herself. That was the thing: I didn’t really want to bring Tamara into the group as well, have her hanging around like a proper girlfriend. She wouldn’t fit in nearly as well as Callie to begin with, she was too much like a stirrer… but then I couldn’t risk it, either. Once she was in like that she’d be able to start building connections, telling people sneaky things on the side I couldn’t get ahead of.
I didn’t like how underhand this was all becoming. It put a literal bad taste in my mouth no amount of swallowing would take away. But if it was both of us collaborating on the deal, that had to be more all right.
Lucas refolded his legs. “Trust me. Don’t let a woman start chasing you. She’ll end up turning up wherever she likes, making the whole thing about her.”
I felt my eyebrow nearest to him going up of its own accord. “Is that your advice for me, genius? How about you tell me what Callie’s going to be doing this afternoon? Her car is staying at your parents’ place permanently these days, isn’t it?”
“It’s just because it’s not safe to have it in her neighbourhood,” said Lucas. “Arsehole.”
I punched him.
Tamara found me, as I’d expected, when I was on my way out of a class where I didn’t have any friends to hook up with straight away. I would have expected nothing less from my little stalker.
She looked much more nervous than she had on any of our other encounters, but was also making a point of meeting my eyes, which I thought was really damn cute.
“I need you to understand why I care so much about the thing with Callie.”
I didn’t really, not to get in her pants, but she was trying to open up to me, give me some vulnerability, and that seemed like it might be useful.
“My biological father…” The way her hands had started to shake wasn’t cute. I already knew I wanted to punch this guy. “I haven’t seen him since I was three years old. When he hurt me, my mum knew she had to run. I don’t know much about the situation, whether he tried to see us again or not, but he’s not a part of my life now.”
Well, I’d known plenty of girls who would sell you some hyped-up drama to get you hooked, but Tamara’s story really was a story. What kind of shit would hurt a three-year-old, even once? I doubted it was just once, either.
“You’re fucking lucky to get away from him,” I told her. I started walking, to a tree-lined spot along the edge of the school grounds that was only popular occasionally as a make-out spot—so not the sort of place where anyone would be paying attention to who I was with. “You don’t need that kind of shit in your life.”
She paid very careful attention to her feet. “I sort of want to find him.”
This was a twist I hadn’t expected. She turned her face up to me as if she was expecting me to tell her she was out of her mind, which she was, but I wasn’t going to do something like that. It wasn’t for me to decide what she should do with her life.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said, so simply I thought it had to be true. “I just feel like… there’s something about you. I thought maybe you’d be able to tell me something that would help.”
I certainly wanted to tell her something. There was just something in her aura, or whatever, that seemed to demand it of me. But I didn’t really have anything but more questions.
“I suppose it all depends on what you know about him.”
“Nothing,” said Tamara. “Well… I guess I have his surname. Mine and my brother’s is different to my mum’s, I assume she kept it.”
I shook my head. I was already hooked on this adventure, with just a few words, and yeah I fucking knew that was a terrible idea—the mother who had taken her away from that monster would likely strangle me if she got to hear about it, and that was just one detail—but without realising it, she had me by my weakness. I could never walk away from a problem I hadn’t solved. That was probably why I liked games so much: the ones that weren’t totally open-ended at least. It wasn’t like real life where you had to figure out what the problem was for yourself, where you could get caught up in so many problems before you knew it you were completely tangled up. The challenges were laid out for you, sometimes you got to literally check them off. If you had too many, you could put some of them aside without your whole damn life falling in on you.
“You can’t assume anything,” I told Tamara. “If your mother really wanted to be rid of this guy, she could have changed your names to make it look like you still had his.” My mother had suggested I could change my surname—not because she wanted distance from me, of course, just because it might be easier for me. When I’d kicked up a shit about this, she made out like it was just some stupid thought, no big deal at all. Right. “Have you ever seen your birth certificate?”
Tamara wrapped her arms around herself, staring straight ahead. “Mum keeps our certificates locked up.”
I frowned. “Your brother is younger?”
“He’s a few years older,” Tamara said. “He’s… well, I guess he’s got his own issues getting started in life.”
We slipped behind the screen of the trees and my motivation to work on this problem right this minute started slipping too. I wasn’t as much of a fucking idiot as I looked, though. Tamara was giving me a challenge, trying to figure out what I was worth. If I wanted what I wanted, I’d probably better come through with something.
Maybe I should be bothered by this thing, but no, I got it. I couldn’t be surprised she wasn’t that trusting.
“You need to get a copy of your certificate. Best case, your father’s name is right there on it. It’ll tell you if you’ve had a name change you don’t remember.”
Tamara put her back up against a tree so she was hidden from the rest of the school. “Can I do that? Just order a copy?”
“You’ll have to have some documentation to prove who you are. Student ID, a few other things. I can help you with the details.” I’d had to work out a lot of these things for myself because my mother didn’t really want to do anything for me any more. How to seek legal advice if I needed to. Getting myself to court. Knowing where all my details were on short notice. “Then you can take them in to the place where you make your application.”
“I don’t even know how I’d get there.” Tamara turned her face up to the canopy of leaves above her. “My brother drives me everywhere, obviously I can’t ask him.”
“I’ll drive you.” I said it without thinking about how it would sound to her, so I was a little surprised when her head turned sharply to me.
“I… um… I can’t ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t,” I said. “I’ll tell you what you need to get, and you can come out with me tomorrow. Get your application in, then I’ll take you…” I definitely hadn’t thought this through. I wasn’t taking her to my place, my mum might actually flip her shit and try to ‘expose’ me. And it sounded like hers was an even worse prospect. “We’ll go somewhere nice.”
I wasn’t sure if she got that I was trying to get her really on her own—I wouldn’t say she was stupid, but she definitely seemed a bit disconnected from reality. Well, I would make sure we were on the same page once we got into a situation where that mattered.
“Oh,” she spoke up, just as she was starting to fucking relax a bit too. “It costs money, doesn’t it? I don’t have a job any more, I’m not going to be able to pay—”
I coudn’t be fucked dealing with this any more. I stepped up close to her, enjoying the way she tensed up as my shadow fell over her, and put my hands on her shoulders, holding on a bit har
der than I really needed.
“Just be ready to come with me tomorrow,” I told her. “I’ll sort out the rest.”
She bristled under my hands. “I’m not letting you pay for—”
“It’s a loan,” I snapped in her face, which shut her up pretty nicely. “No interest, no time limit. I just expect you to pay me back when you can.” I had plenty of money from my weekend job stacking shelves at the local supermarket—not as much as when they’d been giving me late evening shifts on checkout, but apparently they didn’t like to give customer-facing work to guys who had hurt their girlfriends, and my mum had to blab to them for some reason when I missed a shift to deal with legal stuff. Well, I hadn’t been going out very much lately, anyway. For a while, every time I went out I’d end up running into Julia, and that would obviously fuck everything up.
Tamara’s head was turning left and right, taking in my hands squeezing her shoulders. “I know why that set you off so much,” I said. “You’re thinking about Lucas and all the fucking shit he’s bought Callie, wondering if maybe I’m the same.”
The way she was nibbling on her lip made me pretty sure I was right. “Well, I don’t have that sort of money, so you’re safe. I’m going to want to be paid back sooner or later.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be able to—”
I shut her up with a kiss. Hard, so she had to struggle not to melt in my grasp. She wanted to, she didn’t want to. Her fingers tried to dig into my arms without managing to get a grip.
I wanted to press against her harder, show her how much I liked being close to her like that. But I knew she would probably fire up if I pushed too hard too soon, and we only had a few minutes before class would interrupt us. I wasn’t afraid to make her angry. I looked forward to it. But I needed to make sure I left her in the right place.
I let myself taste her a little longer, and then pulled back. She stopped her scrabbling and just stared up at me, her lips quivering.
“Make sure you don’t have other plans after school tomorrow,” I told her, and I didn’t let myself look back when I walked away. If I’d seen her reacting, if it was like it had really affected her, then I was going to have problems for the rest of the day.
