by Tiffany Sala
Twenty years ago, Brad Chalmers had been a footballer based in Melbourne. Every team had been salivating to sign him.
Then… he hadn’t been picked up by any of them, and he’d dropped out of the footy scene. A ‘where did they go?’ website said they’d gotten in contact with him where he was now living quietly in Tasmania, and he’d been happy to reminisce over the old days but wouldn’t tell them why he’d quit such a promising career. A mystery for the ages—at least to anyone who hadn’t been in his family back then.
Well, if he was trying to stay under the radar now, he wouldn’t have his phone listed anywhere. But I put his name into a residential numbers search anyway… and came up with a local match. B Chalmers was not exactly a unique name, there were a few others in other parts of the country, but I could easily rule it out, at least.
I should wait until I didn’t have the worry of Mum or Ryan hearing, but I couldn’t help myself. I carefully typed the number in and waited with my phone almost shaking out of my hand, expecting… well, not sure what I was expecting. Mostly just for the call to ring out—"
“Yeah?”
I reeled back a little at a rougher voice than I’d expected. Well, I was either talking to an ex-footballer… or some random Tasmanian bloke who lived a little bit out in the sticks.
“Hello, is that, um, Brad Chalmers?”
Suddenly, even the way he breathed changed. “Might just be, for the right sweet little lady.”
Well, the last thing I needed was for him to get pissed off because I’d let him think I was some ordinary girl he could hit on. “My name is Tamara Hills.”
I let him just take that in, and heard his breathing shift again. “How old must you’ve been when I last saw you? Two, three?”
“Something like that, I’m told.”
A little growl in my ear almost made me pull away from the phone again. At the same time, I was desperate to hear everything. “That’s right, you wouldn’t remember me. You wouldn’t remember anything.”
“I’ve been told some things,” I said. “I’ve heard one side of how things went down back then.”
“I bet you have.” There was a silence I wasn’t sure would ever break, and then, “So why you calling, then?”
“I’d like a chance to hear your side of things.” A heavy tread elsewhere in the house reminded me I was playing a dangerous game here. “But not over the phone. Can we meet some time?”
“Fuck,” said Brad Chalmers. “There’s nothing I’d like better. I’m sorry, I can’t ask you to mine though. Assuming you’re even still living in the state, I… well, I’ve got another family these days. I’d love for you to meet my daughter—my other daughter—but I think we need to meet privately first before we get around to that. Well… privately in public.”
“I’m still local.” And I probably sounded not that much better than the groupie-type he assumed he was talking to when he first answered.
He named a shopping centre not that far from my school, and suggested that Friday afternoon. I would have to sneak out of school during lunch to be there, but at least that meant I wouldn’t have to deal with explaining my movements to Ryan and then Mum. Honestly, any time I wasn’t spending at school right now was a complete relief.
“Well, there we go.” Brad Chalmers sounded almost like a kid all giddy because his birthday was coming up. It was not what I’d expected, but I liked it. “I suppose… you’ll be coming on your own?”
“I haven’t even talked about this to my mum or to Ryan, if that’s what you’re asking. They wouldn’t understand.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s what I thought.” He sounded pretty okay with that, which was a relief. The last thing I needed was him thinking I had any power to convince the rest of my family to deal with him. “Look, Tamara, I’m so fucking pleased you’ve reached out to me like this. I just… it’s not what I ever expected. You’re a really special girl, that’s for sure.”
That made me feel warmer inside than I could ever have expected I would when I started this conversation. “Well, I look forward to seeing you on Friday.”
And I really was looking forward to it, more than I’d been able to look forward to anything in days. Maybe I should have felt some fear at what I was embarking on, but there didn’t seem to be any of the danger here even that I’d put myself into being alone with Steven. Brad Chalmers—I couldn’t think of that man I’d spoken to as my father right now—had seemed like he might be a bit of a challenge, but everyone in my family seemed to be a bit of a challenge. This was going to be right up my alley.
The thing I’d never anticipated was another family. I had a half-sister? I’d been a little disappointed back in the day that Mum never had more kids with Mike who could be my baby brothers or sisters. Apparently, I’d had a baby sister for a while.
I wondered if she was very young or a preteen. If her mother would accept the two of us spending time together—assuming the sister even liked me enough to want to.
I knew I was getting very ahead of myself already. I needed to find out if I could even accept Brad Chalmers myself before I worried about his new family accepting me. But that fact didn’t seem to have much influence over my thoughts. I didn’t even know if I could wait until Friday to meet Brad. When I went out to eat dinner with my family I was twitchy. I felt like I was with the wrong people all of a sudden, and that bothered me.
Chapter Fifteen: Tamara
I was nervous heading in to school that morning, but my anticipation of Friday kept my energy levels up…
And then when I opened my locker, a small waterfall of condoms in different colours and styles slid out onto my feet.
I stared at the mess, everyone else who had been close enough to see what happened standing around giggling and waiting to see what I would do next.
The stupid thing was, all I could think at first was, this wasn’t Ashleigh. She would have been able to afford to put on a much bigger show.
This was the sort of thing I would expect from someone on a budget more in line with Steven’s. And given our last fight, I could somehow see how his messed-up mind would have come up with this assault.
I didn’t want any teachers to come by and see, because there was no good way to explain the situation. So I quickly gathered the lot of them up and stuffed them back in my locker.
I fled to my first class, leaving behind shouts of, “Got another big night planned huh, Tamara?” and, “You’re gonna need some lube with that!” I hadn’t minded everyone thinking what they wanted about my sex life before, but now I suspected Steven was no longer on my side I just felt filthy and violated. I wanted nothing more than to run straight to Ms. Miller’s office and tell her about every horrible thing that had happened to me. Make it her problem. That was her job, wasn’t it?
But getting Ms. Miller involved had been the real start of all my problems. I bet she would have heard that I’d slept with Steven, too. I had a funny feeling she would be even less helpful given that detail.
Suddenly Steven was in front of me, shaking me out of my thoughts.
“Hey, babe.” He dropped a light punch on my arm that made me reel. “Get my little present all right?”
I did not want to deal with whatever game he thought he was playing with me. I wriggled past without meeting his eyes.
Of course he easily got ahead of me again with those long legs. He blocked his way with his body… the same body I knew better than anyone else’s, maybe including my own. “Well this is strange, Tamara. First you couldn’t get enough of bothering all of us, and now you’re trying to get away without even some basic politeness.”
The bastard was overwhelming my senses, my resistance, and somehow I could tell he knew it.
Well, if what he wanted was verbal proof of my humiliation, I could give him that. “I got your condoms, Steven. If you were trying to come up with a creative way of expressing ‘fuck you’, then congratulations: you succeeded.”
I heard him chuckle as I walked on.
“That’s hilarious: I never would have thought of that.”
“What do you want, Steven?” He was still following me.
“I want you to understand, really clearly, that you do not have one over me just because you think you know some things. You don’t have the power to screw up my life, Tamara. I’m not going to give you that power.”
When he was the one who’d come after me, scared me, then made me think losing my virginity to him was a good idea! I couldn’t believe I’d been planning to apologise to this arse. “Okay, well, message received, okay? You don’t need to keep hammering it in. I’d just like you to leave me alone.”
He didn’t leave me alone. “If you’d followed that suggestion yourself in the first place, Tamara, you would never have gotten yourself into this trouble.”
This time I was the one who whirled to cut him off. “Are you claiming I somehow made you—you—”
I couldn’t say the words for what he’d done to me. I turned and ran—and again he caught up to me easily. Brought me to a halt with a jerk by grabbing my wrist. I felt fear as he pulled me close and loomed over: a shiver that went through my whole body—and I meant every part. It was so incredibly wrong that he could make me feel that way when he was essentially threatening me.
It caused the first twinge of worry to strike me about my intended meeting with my biological father on Friday, and that pissed me off. I wasn’t going to let Steven ruin this as well.
“For the record, Steven, you don’t have to give me anything at this point. I already possess everything I need to put an end to you… if you push me.”
“Oh, I’m going to push you.” His arm wrapped around my waist and yanked me in close to him. Too close—I could feel that he was turned on by this as well.
I didn’t have to like him to receive pleasure from him. And I now had in my possession a supply of condoms that seemed beyond anything we could get through in the near future…
And I was a fucking idiot to even consider it. I got my hands free and pushed against his chest, achieving nothing but giving myself a good feel of the hard muscles under his shirt. Why was nobody ever around to intervene in these situations?
Steven held me tight against him. With shaking desperation, I pushed at him again. I needed to get away before I got myself into something else that was going to have consequences.
“Let me go, Steven.” When I spoke up, finally, he opened his arms and let me stagger back. I didn’t let myself stick around, not for one word or look. I ran, tripping over steps and bumping into people I didn’t stop to apologise to, who would probably become a part of my club of haters.
I wanted to go and hide in the library for the day, pretend I had an endless string of free periods rather than classes scheduled, but that was exactly the sort of thing that would set Ms. Miller on me eventually. She’d want to know what had happened, and I had nothing to tell her that I wanted to tell her. Nothing that would make my life less complicated.
I went to class after class, the only thing I could do, and tried to ignore the eyes and whispers of everyone else who I bet had only come along to laugh at me.
At lunch time, I was able to catch Callie before she joined Lucas’s group, attracting a minimal amount of staring and jeers in the process, and patched things up with her so that she would be willing to go out with me to get that contraception medication.
Actually, she came up with a better plan than my headlong dash before meeting up with Ryan at the end of the day. She had a couple of her work outfits in her car. We would both leave school in the period just after lunch, change out of our school uniforms in the shopping centre toilets, and visit the pharmacy in that less eye-catching gear. Maybe with a little camouflage, I would even escape letting the entire world know my embarrassing business.
We weren’t exactly subtle in our mission. We weren’t alone in the toilet stalls, but we giggled the whole time we were changing next to one another. An elderly lady who was washing her hands as we emerged shouldering our thankfully relatively nondescript schoolbags shot us a superior look as we exited, like she was so senile she couldn’t remember being young and having fun once in a while.
“This is a lot easier to laugh about than I thought it would be,” I admitted. The pharmacy we were headed for was at the far end of the shopping stretch we were walking down.
“You’ve got to make the best of whatever situation you find yourself in,” Callie said. There was something about it that was very un-Callie-like in some way, but I couldn’t put it in words.
“Well, I guess what I mean most is that I’m glad I haven’t lost you in this whole mess yet.” I shot a peek at her and added, “Not entirely, at least?”
Callie heaved a big sigh. “It’s going to be very difficult if you keep having this level of conflict with Steven, though.”
“You think I want it? Did you hear what he did to me this morning?”
I felt my throat lock up as I remembered the way he’d held onto me, our little battle of wills. I didn’t want to think about what had been going on during that, let alone get myself into talking about it.
Fortunately, when Callie said, “Oh, yes, he made sure we knew all the details of that little stunt,” I could tell from her disgusted face she was talking about the condoms. “How did you two even get to this point? Steven is so chill most of the time, sure he’ll fire up if you get too much in his face, but he’s the sort of guy who seems to just want to hang out and stay low-drama.”
I remembered the time we’d spent playing that stupid video game at Ashleigh’s house: hanging out, no drama. I didn’t want to remember. It had seemed like no big deal when it was happening, just a regular nice time, but now the memory had a mist cast over it that made me ache when I looked back on it.
“Tamara? That you?”
I winced at a diversion from a direction I didn’t want. Mum’s friend Anita was hurrying over, waving at me.
“I’m surprised to see you out and about so early,” said Anita, even though she knew I was skipping school, of course.
Callie edged in front of me while I was still moving spit around in my throat. “Oh, Tamara was just helping me out this afternoon. I work at the phone store behind us. You should come and visit us the next time you need to replace your phone!”
Anita muttered a few bewildered things and made her escape.
“What?” said Callie. I was staring at her. “One thing I’ve realised lately is that if you talk enough, even if what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense, people will just let you get away with whatever you’re trying to do. You just have to talk.”
This was not the Callie I used to know, who would put her head down and not say much of anything. “That disturbs me somehow,” I said. And then I noticed something that disturbed me even more: Steven standing outside a shop across the way from us, staring.
I elbowed Callie compulsively until she saw what I was indicating, and she put her hand over her forehead. “Oh, I did not need to get caught in the middle of this.”
I shot Steven a scowl. “It’s okay, he’s probably just here to make sure I do… well, what we’re about to go and do.” I mouthed stalker at him and led the way off.
Callie glanced at me once we were several strides away. “You were pretty weird about the idea of actually getting that problem sorted out yesterday. I mean, I wouldn’t blame him for being a little antsy about a girl going off like that. If I thought she might be… you know.”
“Are you seriously defending this behaviour?”
She looked outraged, which was strange because defending Steven was exactly what she had been doing. “I’m just saying there’s a lot more going on with some people than meets the eye.”
“That has nothing to do with what you were saying.”
She seemed surprised to hear that. “Maybe I didn’t express myself well enough.”
“Maybe.”
I was tongue-tied at the pharmacy trying to explain what I wanted to a woman not much older th
an us who I could only hope didn’t have any connections to my school. Callie had to step in and explain for me. I really shouldn’t have had sex with anyone if I wasn’t capable of handling the fallout.
We didn’t laugh getting our uniforms back on in the bathrooms, and Callie hurried back to class after our excursion was done without much to say to me. I went back to the library, looking behind me the whole way there. There was no reason Steven should be able to track me there. I didn’t think I’d so much as glanced at a book in his presence after all, and I couldn’t imagine someone who played sport as a hobby would even know that libraries could be used for other things.
I put my head down at a computer in the back and pretended to study until I could go meet Ryan to go home. I started every time someone walked behind me, but nobody bothered me, and after a while I was able to grow so relaxed I stopped watching the clock and didn’t notice I was free to go until it was nearly four. So when I ran out to find Ryan I had him grumpy with me anyway—well, on that day he could join the club with that attitude.
Chapter Sixteen: Steven
I could tell from the way Tamara moved around for the next few days that she was expecting me to do something else to her. Her head was constantly turning from side to side as she walked, and she flinched at every loud noise nearby.
I didn’t actually have anything planned. Honestly, I was fucking embarrassed I’d done that condom thing. I’d had to go to half a dozen different places, and I’d even scrounged some free ones from the local sexual health place. Now between that and her birth certificate payment I had no fucking money, and she had all the condoms. It didn’t exactly seem like the genius plan I would have liked to begin my career as an evil mastermind with.
Of course, the real genius of it was that I didn’t really need to do anything else. She was obviously coming up with far more interesting ideas than I ever would.
I should probably have been feeling bad about what I’d done, but at least I wasn’t the sort of shitty coward who did this stuff under cover. Everyone knew I was responsible for those fucking condoms. I made sure I told them if there seemed to be any chance they’d missed the memo. I thought bloody Callie was going to start some shit with me over it actually, but she just had this constipated look on her face whenever it came up, like she was trying really hard not to let anything slip.
