by Tiffany Sala
I was feeling pretty good when I did finally get to make my way back to my car to head home.
I hadn’t seen Tamara again for the rest of the day, and that was actually fine with me. It was probably about as much as I could take keeping myself in control while thinking about her shuffling around trying to keep everything off show.
Then I stopped dead halfway across the abandoned tennis court. She was there.
Not Tamara, fucking Julia.
I wished I’d had enough warning to be able to hide those panties in my bag. I didn’t want Julia knowing I had anything going on with someone else.
A sick thought grabbed hold of me: did Julia already know? She might have seen us before, if she’d been watching. Julia had dropped out of school at sixteen and she didn’t have much else she needed to do with her time.
I wanted to just turn and run in the other direction. That was what I should do, according to the law. But I had to get to my car to get out of here at all.
So I stepped close enough that I could speak to her without shouting. Julia was leaning against the near side of my car, twisting her hair around one finger.
“Julia.” I had to try to get her attention before she would even look at me, even though she’d probably seen me coming ages ago. ‘Just Julia things,’ I used to say, back when I was still desperately trying to convince myself there was enough good in her.
I flinched when she met my eyes. I still thought she was pretty… even if that was only on the inside.
“Steven, you’re not supposed to be so close to me. I could have you put away for this.”
“You could,” I said. “But I’ve got to get to my car, so what the fuck am I going to do about it?”
She looked at me with those big eyes, revealing no emotion I could make sense of. In the later days, I’d started to go with the conclusion that there was no emotion in there that any reasonable human could pick out.
“Okay, so are you going to tell me what you’re here for?” I didn’t have time for this. It felt strange, actually: for the first time in a long time my main feeling during a confrontation with Julia was just… impatience.
If she noticed something was different about me, she didn’t let on. “Just wanted to see how you were going. I don’t need an invitation to do that, do I?”
“I fucking do.” As if she needed reminding, that cunning bitch. “And since that’s your doing, you should have the decency to not try to get me into more trouble.”
“We can end that any time you like though,” said Julia, as if this whole thing was just a phase in our relationship. As if there might be some way Steven and Julia as a couple could move past her dad knowing what I’d done to her.
“I know what you want already. I’m not saying it.”
That provoked the first flash of something like a real human feeling: she was annoyed. “You said you were sorry before, I don’t know why this is suddenly a big—”
“There’s a lot you don’t know, Julia. Including, apparently, just how far you can hope to push it.” I was fucking pissed now, and unlike Julia I didn’t get off on not showing it. I needed to get that out somehow but I knew she wouldn’t let me get away with it.
She shook her head. “If that’s how you want to play this.”
She stepped away from my car and turned her back on me, walking like it didn’t prickle her at all to have me glaring at her. Well as if I could make her nervous now. If I threw so much as a too-nasty curse at her, she would wreck me.
And, unless I decided to go along with her plans for my future, that was all she had really been there to tell me.
I’d been pretty fucking stupid to think I could go messing around with Tamara and not have it blow up in my face. Maybe Julia didn’t know about her… but that wouldn’t last long, would it? Not if the two of us were messing around all over the place. Julia would see sooner or later… and what? She couldn’t do anything to Tamara.
Well, there was no guarantee of that, either. I used to think I was such a nobody I had no buttons to be pushed… and then Julia had taught me that anyone could be fucked up, with a good steady pressure.
“Fuck!” I punched my car, right where she’d been leaning. Sent so much pain through my hand I could no longer feel my fingers. Just a shitty throbbing ball of pain.
There was no hope for me. No escape.
Chapter Nineteen: Tamara
I felt so awkward sliding into Ryan’s car with my underwear missing.
Why had I just let him take it?
I’d been so caught up in what we’d just shared, I felt sexy and wicked, and that was exactly the sort of thing a woman like that would do, right?
I actually remembered a book Callie had brought to school before we moved up to Burgundy College that had the exact same thing happening to the heroine. Aileen and I had grabbed the book off Callie and laughed as we did our dramatic reading, then we’d traded shifty looks as we tried to work out which of us would actually go for that sort of thing. Aileen said right away she was completely up for it, but it sounded like she was making a joke the rest of us weren’t smart enough to figure out. Callie refused to say much of anything.
I said never, no way. The whole thing sounded degrading to me. But apparently everything had changed.
I didn’t realise I was grinning until I followed Ryan into the house taking very small steps, and nearly tripped over Mum, waiting.
That wouldn’t have been enough to scare me except for two other details: Mike hanging around in the background shifting on his feet as if he expected to have to jump in and break something up… and the piece of paper in Mum’s hands, now even more rumpled than I’d left it. If she was going to tell me she’d just ‘accidentally’ found that I wasn’t—
But of course she didn’t think she even needed an excuse. “Tamara,” she said, “what have you been doing?”
I looked around for Ryan, not that he was the hero I needed right now… and he’d already slunk off to his bedroom.
Mum was coming close to me, peering at me. I was afraid she’d smell him on me—I didn’t even know which him I was more worried about.
Thinking about what had happened that day with Steven gave me unexpected courage, though. “I just wanted to have a copy,” I said. “I…” I shouldn’t say the rest. “I wanted to know his name.”
The way her face twisted actually scared me. I was far more afraid in that moment that Mum would hit me than I’d been of Brad. I glanced to Mike, needing to know he was still there… even if I didn’t really believe he could do anything. He would have done it before now, wouldn’t he?
“I have a copy of your birth certificate, Tamara. I could tell you that name. You could have asked.”
My head felt heavy, unwilling to move, but I shook it. “You know I couldn’t ask you. You won’t even acknowledge he was someone who existed and had a part in our creation—and no, I don’t consider all this indirecting you do about ‘terrible men’ to count.”
“Acknowledge him? You know what he did to you—”
“I know because you’ve talked about it once. One time, and it’s always been obvious we’re not supposed to revisit it.” There was something inside me that was pushing me on now, keeping me from faltering. “And don’t try to tell me there’s something wrong with me for wanting to. Doesn’t it make sense that someone would want to talk about something that big that happened, before they could remember? Haven’t you spent a lot of time, over the years, going over what you remember in your head, trying to make sense of how you could have gotten yourself into that situation? Can’t you understand how it is for me, knowing but not remembering?”
There was a softening I hadn’t seen in her before. “You never say anything.”
Mike was edging towards the nearest door. Maybe, for a wonder, I didn’t need him. “You’ve never made me feel like I could.”
Mum took a step closer to me I allowed, and took hold of my arm. Her nails were digging into my skin, she had to know, an
d still she didn’t let up her grip. I tried not to squirm as I was reminded of my unwelcome lack of underwear. Why was it since I’d dared to come out of my shell I’d been lurching from one ridiculous situation into another?
“I’m sorry if I’ve forced you to keep all your feelings bottled up, Tamara,” Mum said. “I of all people know that’s not healthy, not sustainable. But at the same time… well, there are some things that just aren’t supposed to be remembered. You need to know about him? Fine, you have his name on that damn piece of paper—” the one she had yet to give back to me, “—and I bet it’s embedded in that brain of yours now. So go find out all you want to about him, I’m sure there are a few details you’ll find interesting. But try to read between the lines of what there is to be found. Think about it in context. Whatever you can learn from just his name, that’s all you should need. Don’t get any closer.”
“Why did you never tell me I have a half-sister?” I blurted out. It was my biggest, my most telling mistake ever.
“You’ve already been in contact with him,” Mum said.
My eyes were drawn aside by Mike stiffening. He was in the doorway, but he’d stopped.
“I met with him, yes. For better or worse, I wanted to hear what he had to say about what happened.”
Her nails had been pressing in harder ever since I mentioned Jess. I bit the insides of my cheeks rather than telling her she was hurting me. “Oh, I bet he had a lot to say.”
“His story was a bit different to the one you’ve always told me… but I have a feeling you already knew it would be that way, didn’t you?”
She wouldn’t look at me.
“More than anything you hate that he cheated on you, isn’t that right? It’s been fifteen years and you still can’t get over it. Could never bring yourself to let me know the little sister I asked Santa for when I was six years old already existed. Cheating has always pissed you off more than anything, you won’t even watch a television show once you find out there’s a cheating plot—”
Mum fired right up. “It’s a brutal thing to do to someone who loves you, Tamara, a complete humiliation—”
“Did Brad ever really hit me, Mum? Or was that something you made up so you wouldn’t have to face the real reason you left him?”
In my whole life, I had never seen her go off the boil as fast as she did then. She stepped straight back, my certificate falling to the ground without her seeming to realise.
I didn’t understand why there were tears in my eyes. I didn’t understand any of what was happening right now, though. “It’s true. It’s fucking true. You took us away from him because of something that had nothing to do with me.”
That fired her up again. “No, Tamara, not nothing. You—”
“Mum, if there is an actual reason I am eager to hear it.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Mum, this is your big chance. If you have something to say you need to—” I shook my head and turned away. “Who am I kidding? You don’t have anything to tell me. Fucked my whole life around and you don’t have shit to say for yourself about it.”
Mum clutched at me as I started to walk from the room. I paused. “Yes?” Her lips quivered, but she didn’t speak. “Yeah. I thought so.”
I went straight to my room, closed the door, and sat on the floor leaning against it like I was still thirteen (it hadn’t worked then, and it probably wouldn’t work now). After a few minutes Mike and Mum forgot they were trying to keep me from hearing their argument, and I got up to put my earbuds in. I couldn’t concentrate on music or anything though. I just kept thinking about Brad, about how terrible it must have been for him all these years. How his life would never be the same thanks to this. He had done something wrong… but, even though I felt a little bad for thinking that way, surely that was between him and my mum. Ryan and I shouldn’t have paid for it. Jess shouldn’t have paid for it.
I didn’t even know what my sister looked like.
I jumped at a knock on my door, and pulled out my earbuds. It wasn’t Mum with that careful knock, that was for sure. “Yes?”
Mike shuffled in, ducking his head like he thought I was going to throw my phone at him or something. “I’m not mad at you,” I said. “I just feel sorry for you because your partner is a liar.”
Mike shook his head at me. “Tamara, I can’t just let you talk about your mother like that. She’s made her mistakes with this situation. But I know her. I do not believe she would have done this unless she believed she was protecting you.”
“And I’m… what? Supposed to just accept that she made a poor judgement call that very personally hurt at least four people I can think of?”
“I’m saying there might be more to this than you know.”
I shot to my feet. “Do you know something?”
“Nothing you don’t already, Tamara, I swear. She won’t speak to me. But that just makes me think there has to be more to this.”
“What makes you think that is the fact that you’re fucking her,” I snapped.
“Language, Tamara,” Mike shot back. “Now, you were still a kid when you came into my life, and I’ve always considered you a de facto daughter of mine. Your mother never exactly agreed. Sometimes we made like I was your real father, for when we didn’t feel like getting into the details. But Sue was never going to take the risk of another man getting really deep into your life, and you’ve got to wonder about that.”
I didn’t have to wonder about it at all. “She didn’t want anyone else to have a chance at controlling me, did she?”
Mike sighed. Was I the fucking bad guy here? This was such a bizarre situation. What had I ever done but try to keep my mum’s life low-stress, even when she was the reason for her own distress? I did everything she asked—demanded mostly—and played her loopy games. I couldn’t even imagine how stupid Steven had thought I was for being too afraid to ask her for a piece of paperwork I needed to have access to. There I was, playing at being an adult with him, enjoying adult things, but I didn’t know the first thing about acting like an adult.
“Look, Tamara.” He took my hands and sat down with me on my bed. Suddenly I was trying to remember even one prior occasion where that had happened: Mike in my room, sitting with me like a dad. It hadn’t happened, because Mum always found a way to supervise whenever it was just the two of us. I’d never minded. I understood she was scared of me being hurt again, and I knew what had happened with my dad so I was a bit wary too.
Now, even apart from what I’d found out about Brad, the whole situation seemed fucked-up. Mike had done everything a dad was supposed to do for the past ten years, and he got treated like a criminal because of something another man had done. It was even worse when Mum had known all along the prior crime wasn’t what she claimed.
“Now I’ve never held back in telling your mum when I thought she was making mistakes in raising you. I’ve spoken my mind a lot over the years, whether or not I was being listened to. And I did tell her, look, you’re going to ensure your daughter is too afraid to ever have a boyfriend and a proper relationship—and I fully believe that. So if one good thing can come out of this… maybe you don’t have to turn out that way.”
Suddenly, I wanted to tell someone. But definitely not her. I kept my voice low. “I didn’t turn out that way, actually. Even before all of this… well, maybe for a while.” Mike looked dubious. “But something’s changed lately.”
I’d never seen such a big smile on him before. “A boyfriend.”
“Not exactly a boyfriend.” I felt awkward trying to explain it to him, but Mike was calm, his expression without judgement. If only Mum could be the same. “Not yet, at least. We’re just having some fun.”
Mike raised his eyebrows at me. “Safe fun, I hope.”
I just nodded. There was no need to give him all the details of how that situation had come about.
“And you’ve met your… biological father.”
“Briefly,” I said.
&nb
sp; “But you trust him.”
I ran my hands through my hair. “Mike, I… He never bothered me, all these years. He let me choose to come to him, even when he had to feel like what was done to him was so unfair. He isn’t asking anything, even now. I have to give him a chance.”
“You’re right,” Mike said. “Nothing’s more shitty in life than not knowing what could have been.” He meant something specific with that, obviously, and I really wanted to know what that was, but of course he didn’t share with me. “Just, I want you to know, if you ever decide you need help with that situation—or with the not-exactly-boyfriend situation, you can always give me a call. Any time. Don’t hesitate.”
I wish I could have hugged him, but of course we’d never done that—and I’d just remembered I wasn’t wearing any underwear still, which made me awkward. It was strange how something that was seemingly so wrong could so quickly come to feel normal.
Another knock on my door made both of us jump. Mike got up off my bed like he had been doing something wrong.
“That’ll be Ryan,” I said. “It’s not like Mum thinks she needs to ask. Come in, Ryan, it’s a party in here.”
Mike squeezed past Ryan as he stepped in. “I’ll let the two of you have some time to yourselves.” Probably keen to head off Mum most likely.
But once Ryan and I were alone together, he didn’t seem to know what he’d really come in to say. He scratched his stubble and then picked up one of my dolls and gave her an awkward squeeze before setting it down.
It was up to me to get this moving. I made sure my knees were held tightly together first. “Did you hear everything?”
“In this house?” Ryan rolled his eyes. “Is that really true, though? He never hit you? I mean you’re fucking basing your entire opinion of this event now on what he’s telling you?”
I would have expected him to go harder on the whole thing actually. Refuse to hear this side of the story completely. I thought I knew why he was like this, too.
