by Tiffany Sala
Now she just looked angry. Whatever was going on right now was doing my head in. “Okay, so maybe you never fucking go to parties unless someone drags you along, but you…”
That was when I realised I’d made a fucking huge assumption that might be already coming back to bite me.
I didn’t think Tamara had been with many guys other than me, she was too twitchy about me getting her alone, but I figured she’d been with one or two. The way she’d been… just the thought of it made my mouth water. No girl could be like that the first time around. She’d barely flinched as I—
But now I was thinking about Lucas, who didn’t exactly talk about his experiences, but didn’t leave a lot to the imagination either. He would keep throwing out these comments—away from where Callie could hear of course—about how some girls were just naturals and didn’t need anyone to teach them. I got what he was saying pretty well.
I’d heard all that and never stopped to think that Tamara might be a virgin too. It was just too hard to imagine, at our age. You wanted to scratch that itch so bad you would jump at it at least once, with anyone who wanted you. It was only after the first couple times you started realising some people were trouble.
Well, I was trouble, never even tried to hide it, and she’d been happy enough to go with me hadn’t she? And she hated parties, so she probably didn’t see a bit of drunken arse-grabbing as normal.
“Come with me.” I took her hand and led her off to where my car was parked. The other guys were laughing behind me as we left but they didn’t have any reason to ask questions.
Once I got Tamara over there and around the side of the car that faced the fence, blocked from the view of anyone who wasn’t obviously trying to pry, I grabbed her arms and pushed her hard against the side of the car. I could tell from the way her eyes widened and she tried to hide a quick glance down she had misinterpreted what we were here for in the same way the other guys were misinterpreting.
Well… now I wanted that too. Had to stay focused.
“Tamara, this might be weird, but… are you a virgin? I mean were you, before…”
The way her eyes shifted answered before she could say the words.
“And you never said anything? You just let me…” I couldn’t make sense of why this was bothering me so much. It felt like I’d done something wrong and she’d led me into it rather than stopping me.
She squirmed. “Is it really any of your business? Whatever experience I do or don’t have, that part of my personal life is… well, it’s mine.”
“This is something I had a right to know.” But I still couldn’t explain why, and that was just making me even more pissed off.
Then I thought of a detail that really was disturbing. I was still holding her, so I tightened my grip, moved in closer. Kept her from wriggling away. “So if you hadn’t been with anyone before me… were you really on birth control?”
“I was going to go to the pharmacy this afternoon and get something,” she blurted out. “You know, to stop pregnancy.”
For the first time I was understanding what ‘seeing red’ was all about. It was like the world was fading in front of me. What the fuck?
“Were you really?” I pushed off against her and stepped back. “Or is this just something you’re telling me now to cover your arse?”
“Steven, are you kidding? Do you really think I would want to—”
“I don’t know what I think,” I said. “Except that you’re a fucking shifty bitch, and I want you to stay the hell away from me.”
Her eyes started to sparkle then, like she was actually hurt, but I wasn’t going to trust in that. A girl who had something to hide from the world knew how to cry on command. How to make it feel like she was the one who’d really been wronged.
I had to get control over this fast. Couldn’t let her think six steps ahead.
“I’m going to take you out after school,” I told her. “Get you whatever you need.”
Her fists punched into her hips. “Because you don’t trust me to do it, you mean.”
“I thought we went over that already.” No way was I letting any kid of mine be born to someone who was capable of ruining their life.
“No thank you,” Tamara said. “I’ve got this covered by myself.”
I had hold of her wrist before I realised what I was doing. “Tamara, I am absolutely making sure you get this done.”
She wrenched away from me with strength that surprised me. “Is that why your former girlfriend had to get the restraining order put on you, Steven? Did you cross the line, start pushing her around in a way that wasn’t fun any more? Is that what you’ve always had in mind for me?”
At first I didn’t believe she was really saying it. It was just my stupid fucked-up brain making me hear the last thing I ever wanted to hear.
Then it sank in. “You—the fuck?”
“You heard me.” The little bitch was really enjoying having surprised me, too. “I have my ways of finding out that you’ve been less than honest with me all along. And, you know what, I would think that a prior history of abusing partners would be something you’d reveal to your next partner before you got them in bed.” She grimaced. “On the floor of the holiday house of someone who isn’t even your friend. Whatever.”
There were a lot of questions in my head. A lot of points I wanted to make.
But one impulse was overriding it all. I pushed her aside, and got in my car. As I pulled out of the parking spot, Tamara was still standing there, her mouth moving. I thought she was probably shouting something at me, but I couldn’t hear anything over the blood in my ears. It was like when I was really engrossed in the mark I was going to take next, to the point where no sight or sound existed except that which brought me closer to that goal. The ultimate goal.
I didn’t start thinking anything that wasn’t animal again until I was pulling into our driveway at home. That was when it hit me that I’d probably just made everything much more difficult for myself.
Well what was I going to do about it? Go for a run first, a really long fucking run, and then when I got back to the house it would still be way too fucking early for me to be home from school, but Mum could go fuck herself if she cared.
Then, I was going to join Para in the only damn way either of us seemed to be able to strike back against this fucking world that just wanted to ruin us.
“Calm the fuck down,” Para ordered, about two hours later. “You’re going to ruin our whole setup.”
The four of us had been laying a trap for our favourite rival group for the past thirty minutes, so I understood her strain. I was so wired it was hard to take it in the right spirit, though.
“Could you give me a fucking break, Para? I’ve had a day.”
“Hey,” Danger spoke up, “we don’t harass the woman in our team, do we?”
“Para,” said Potatoes, “look, he doesn’t deserve it, but could you please go one-on-one with him and talk him down from whatever teenage drama has ruined today for him? You always seem to have the magic touch.”
“We’ll keep doing all the boring work here and let you know when to come back,” Danger added.
“I just want to have one thing work out well today,” said Para. “Come on, Baddy.”
“Come on,” I whined, embarrassed that I was whining but unable to stop. “I don’t need a fucking intervention, I—”
“Yes, you do,” said Danger and Potatoes.
So thirty seconds later, it was just me and Para in one another’s ears.
“Okay, so dude, what happened? You’re usually the one getting me not to totally melt after a… a school day.”
I was so low I ended up being a little more honest with Para than usual. “I guess I told you at some point I have really, really bad taste when it comes to women… well, today I really fucked up. I thought this girl was really sweet, but she turned out to be a menace.”
“I’m surprised you’re willing to let a girl get you like this,” Para admit
ted. “Like… don’t take this the wrong way, but you never hold back with me, and I wouldn’t expect you to hold back with anyone else either.”
It wasn’t at all true that I didn’t hold back with her, and maybe she knew that too, but I liked that tough image of myself right now. “Are you saying I need to go back in there and stop being a whining pussy?”
“I’m just saying you would never let me get away with getting to you.” I didn’t know what Para looked like really, she’d never shared pictures and her avatar was just some fanart she’d found somewhere and liked, but I could almost see her smirk now. Para was full of sass when she was in a good mood, which was usually whenever she could get her dad to give her a break.
I swear we were soulmates. Not in a sex way, I didn’t know how to think like that about a girl I’d never met, but it always seemed like one of us was there to pick the other up. We made a good team even outside of the game. Maybe a necessary team.
I knew better than to completely discount anything she said.
“I think you’re fucking right. I’m not going to let anyone just walk over me.” Not any more.
I would be ready for Tamara the next day. No matter what she thought she was going to pull over me. If she wanted to be crafty and to use things she couldn’t have learned fairly against me, I was going to use every bitch trick in the book to keep myself safe.
And I’d learned from a master bitch.
Chapter Fourteen: Tamara
I didn’t really remember the rest of my day at school. The highlights of that fight with Steven kept going around and around in my head.
He’d just assumed I’d done something like that before? Why? I was pretty sure he knew about as much about Callie’s prior sexual history as I did now; it wasn’t like it was hard to draw a line between those dots.
Was it something about me then? Did I just give off an impression of being really—
I tried not to let myself go down the road of questioning implications that might not even be there. That was probably exactly what he wanted me to do, exactly what would keep me so messed-up I would be at his mercy.
Well, I wasn’t going to think about him at all. I had my own problems: lots of them.
Callie ran into me outside the door of my last class of the day and pulled me aside. “Look, let’s not let some stupid fight get in the way of things that are actually important. Not sure if Aileen is still around, but the two of us can go take care of that little… mission, if you’d like?”
I shook my head and shook myself out of her grasp. “Maybe another day.”
Callie was doing a bad job of keeping her jaw from dropping. “Tamara, you do realise there’s sort of a ticking clock on this, right?”
I grimaced at her wording. “Just not today, okay? I’m going to go home with Ryan and try to have a nice calm evening.”
“It’s because you had a fight with Steven earlier, isn’t it?” she said. “You need to put all of that out of your head and focus on what’s important for you right now.”
So the gossip had spread to her already. It was strange to think of Callie as an endpoint in the rumour mill.
I started backing away. “Just leave me alone, Callie, please?”
She called after me once as I turned to hurry off, but when I looked back she wasn’t following.
I got myself without further incident to Ryan, who never had much to say during these short lifts at least. He hated that he had to do them at all, but Mum had quite a lot to say about his suggestion that I could just take the bus like every other normal high school student who didn’t have a car of their own yet. I, apparently, was not ‘just normal’. But at least Ryan’s smugly subtle resentment gave me the space I needed to go within myself, to the place I needed to be to calm myself down.
By the time we were back at home, I was feeling quiet in my head again. It had been an upsetting day, but I had done what I needed to do and gotten through it. I’d done it mostly on my own too, no need for the variable support of my friends.
I looked in the mailbox once I was out of Ryan’s car out of habit now (there was a lock, but Mum never bothered to put it on) and pulled out a bunch of mail-order catalogues for Mum and something for Mike in a suspiciously nondescript envelope…
And a much more official-looking envelope for me. I didn’t see my name on envelopes very often. My bank statements twice a year, letting me know my funds were being slowly depleted. The occasional thing from school. This was very different. I actually struggled to catch my breath when I thought about the significance of what was held inside.
I picked up a couple of Mum’s things I’d dropped in my surprise, and headed into the house. I nearly tripped over Mum three steps in.
“Oh thanks, Tamara. I’ll take that now.” She held out her hands for the mail.
“Um…” I hadn’t thought this part of the plan through at all. I wriggled the bottom envelope out of the pile and passed over the rest, biting down on an urge to try explaining myself. I didn’t need to explain myself. I was an adult who lived here, just the same as Mum or Mike or Ryan. It was normal to expect me to sometimes receive mail.
Mum was paying that envelope a lot of attention, though. I tried to keep my fingers spread across it so she couldn’t get a good look at it. “How was your day, Tammie?”
“Not bad.” I made a big show of yawning. “Very tiring. I’m sorry, I think I’m going to have to go lie down for a bit.”
I could tell from the way Mum was pursing her lips that this was just awakening even more curiosity in her. If I kept going like this, I’d have her assuming I was pregnant. Especially if she happened to hear any of the gossip going around about me… and I was pretty sure she would hear something eventually.
That was the worst thing about living in Hobart: everyone knew everyone, or even if you were less important like me, everyone knew someone who knew you. In my case, Ryan seemed to have a lot of friends for a guy who spent so many of his daylight hours sulking at home. The time Callie, Aileen, and I managed to get in on a group who were trying out weed at someone else’s house, one of the older guys there blabbed to Ryan because they thought it was so funny I would do something like that, and of course Ryan went off, because he can’t just be a cool brother who makes his mistakes and lets me make mine too. My mother is probably never going to let me forget my ‘drugs incident’ even though the only scary part of it was when she found out. By that time we girls had all agreed we hated the whole experience and would never be trying it again anyway.
When I got into my room I sat down on the bed and tried not to let myself get lost in thoughts about my mother and her shit. That sort of thinking always just left me feeling upset and paralysed and kept me from getting anything done.
I settled on my plan for if she came in suddenly: I’d stuff the certificate under my blankets. It didn’t have to be in perfect condition, I just had to be able to read the name of my father.
My hands shook as I quietly opened the envelope and slid out the piece of paper. It seemed somehow less impressive than it should have, just an ordinary page with government logos printed on it and my name: Tamara Edith Hills, at the top.
I quickly found the section I wanted and felt my face screwing up as I tried to make sense of what I was reading.
Father: Bradley Thomas Ryan Chalmers. Chalmers was my mum’s surname. Her married surname, apparently. Where the fuck had ‘Hills’ come from?
My answer was a little further up the page: Susan Janet Hills. Ryan and I must have come along before they were married. It seemed strange to me that Mum had kept his name, knowing how much she hated him these days, but maybe it was just too much effort. Aileen’s parents had been divorced since she was a baby, and she’d told me her mother never changed her name back because she dreaded the paperwork and the probable resulting confusion.
Steven was smart to get me to look at this certificate. Even if it had been scary, I could never have gotten anywhere without it.
But I
shouldn’t have thought about Steven at all, because now I was feeling awful over everything that had happened with us. How was it possible to sleep with a guy one night and then so quickly after have everything ruined?
Sleeping with him so soon had been a mistake, but not because I was supposed to stay pure or get to know a guy before I did that or anything. The two of us just had too much baggage for such an intimate interaction to go well. I hadn’t been able to trust him enough to tell him the truth about my past experience… and there was no way I could judge him for not trusting me with the details of the restraining order so early on. We weren’t even dating, anyway. If he really had changed, like I suspected, he wasn’t going to want to just let every girl he was with see that dark part of his history. I got that. My family was the same with the whole situation with my dad. And it wasn’t too crazy for him to want to make sure I wasn’t pregnant, either. That was something I should have shown him I was taking more seriously.
I needed to make things right with Steven when I could see him next. I would make sure he knew he didn’t have to worry about me getting pregnant, or sharing his secret with anyone else. We probably wouldn’t be sleeping together any more—and after his response to Rowan’s sleazy behaviour, I wasn’t sure I cared. I needed a guy to be a bit more willing to jump in and fight for me.
And that seemed to be it as far as that situation went. I’d discovered how good sex could be, but I might not be having any more for a while. Maybe that was a good thing, too. A good partner who didn’t want anything to do with me any more couldn’t hurt me.
I moved on to the really important issue: my father. I needed to find a way to get in contact with him… but how?
I got out my phone to search for his name, just in case he had a business or something… and my jaw dropped.
Suddenly my father’s face was there on my screen, right in front of me. I knew it was him even though I didn’t remember seeing him before, because that man standing with each of his arms around another equally muscular guy looked almost exactly like Ryan.
