by Shona Husk
‘Sorry.’ It was bad form to bad mouth an ex, even if it was the truth … not that anyone knew the truth about what had actually happened except Dan, Lisa and Gemma. There was no doubt that Dan hadn’t cheated with Gem, as she played for the other team.
Dan nodded then handed over the car keys.
Mike got behind the wheel and adjusted the seat. Aluminium cans crunched as the seat rolled. ‘Dude …’
‘Yeah. Yeah.’ Dan leaned against the headrest and put his sunglasses back on.
For a second Mike wanted to say something more, but he didn’t know what and he already knew that Dan didn’t want to hear it. Maybe he’d say something to Gem. She had an in with Dan that no one else did.
‘Where are we heading?’
‘You pick.’
There was a nice waterfront pub on the edge of the Swan River. Something different to their usual haunts in the centre of Freo, and walking distance from his flat … a long walk but doable. However he wasn’t really in the mood to go drinking now.
They drove without talking for a few minutes, Dan flicking through the radio stations at a speed that made Mike want to stab him through the hand. ‘Did you really clean up the flat?’
‘Yeah. I saw your note and figured you meant it.’ Dan glanced over. ‘You were gone early.’
‘Went for a ride.’ That should’ve been obvious. Had Dan not noticed the bike was missing and that his car was still there?
‘Ah. Thus the lift requirement.’
Mike blew out a breath. He needed to get this done. ‘I think I’m going to stay at Mum’s, so I’ll clear out the bedroom for you.’
Living between two places was painful, he couldn’t keep track of what was where. His life was in enough chaos without keeping two separate houses.
‘You sure?’ Dan was supposed to be sleeping on the sofa. Although Mike suspected that he’d used the bed more than once, particularly over the last couple of weeks when Mike had hardly been there.
‘Yeah …’ Mike took a breath. He had to do it now. ‘If you could help out with some rent.’
Dan was quiet for a moment. ‘I appreciate you letting me crash there.’
‘That’s okay.’ Mike shrugged. ‘I’m sure you’d have done the same.’
‘Nah.’ Dan gave a strangled chuckle. ‘I’m sure Lisa wouldn’t have allowed it.’
That was probably true but this time Mike kept quiet.
‘Rent is pretty high … can I cover the mortgage only?’ Dan’s parents propped up his lifestyle, but Mike wasn’t sure how much that figure ran to. Nor did he know how much Dan had put aside. Maybe nothing.
‘That would be fine.’ For the moment, covering the debts was all that he was worried about. The rest he’d sort out later.
‘Text me your bank account and the amount and I’ll set it up.’
‘Thank you.’ The tension in his shoulders slipped away. He’d been dreading this conversation for no reason. He’d expected Dan to cry foul, or argue. Maybe Dan knew he had to pick up the ball and get back in the game. It was about bloody time.
‘If funds were tight, you should’ve asked before getting a real job.’ Dan grinned.
You could’ve offered weeks ago.
Besides, covering the flat was only a small part of the hole that was his finances. There was no way he was going to be able to put enough aside to cover the house repayments while the band was over east.
It was another reason not to go.
The first was his mother. He didn’t want to be on the other side of the country for weeks on end.
But he had no idea how to even start that conversation with Ed. And if he didn’t go and record the album, was he still part of Selling the Sun? If he wasn’t part of the band, that meant he was stuck being a sparky.
That was not the life he wanted.
He parked near the pub and they walked in, ordered and found a table. The music was good and so was the view. As he drank his overpriced imported beer, the only one he was having, he realised how far his life had deviated from what he had wanted. Somehow everything had got mucked up.
He’d thrown out his plans of being an air force officer when his mum had gotten sick the first time, and that was fine. He’d made up a backup plan. But he didn’t want to live plan C. He didn’t want to be a tradie and he didn’t want a different woman every weekend. On the road it had been fun. At home it just sucked.
The chick in the ultra-short white dress who kept smiling at him looked cheap. Or he hadn’t had enough to drink. A tattoo peeked from under the very short hem. Usually that was all he needed to start something.
It would be easy. He could walk over. Make some random conversation. They’d have a few more drinks, stuff would happen … and he’d wake up with a hangover and another case of morning after I-have-to-stop-doing-this.
What kind of idiot kept doing stuff if it didn’t feel good for longer than five minutes?
The chick started towards him.
No. Don’t do it. You know how this goes.
Getting laid would be nice. A smile formed.
The chick in white smiled, her hips swinging as she drew closer. She was obviously looking for a good time.
Then for some reason he thought of Ava and the way she’d smiled when she’d given him her number. It had been warm and friendly, not full of liquored-up lust. He glanced down at his beer. What was he doing?
He had two hands; he could get himself off and skip the drinks and the dubious good time. He didn’t want what the chick in the white was offering. Before she reached him, he finished his beer and escaped before he changed his mind. He still had Dan’s keys, but had no idea where he’d got to. Dan could find his own way home, by taxi if he couldn’t walk.
At the flat Mike swapped cars, then he went home, alone. By the time he got home he couldn’t be bothered spending quality time with his hand. He had to be up at six.
Chapter 5
‘So does this mean that you aren’t moving out?’ Rose leaned against Ava’s doorframe in her pyjamas. Three years younger, she was very good at looking as though she was doing the right thing while in reality doing whatever she wanted. To Ava that seemed dishonest, even if it did create fewer headaches in the short-term.
Ava gave the new lock a test and grinned. ‘Nope. But I’m not rushing either. I will find a place where I will be happy, not leap from one hell to another.’
Buying and switching her old doorknob to one with a lock hadn’t been as hard as she’d thought. Plus she now owned a drill … and she knew how to use it.
‘You could’ve got me one while you were at it.’
Ava had no idea where Rose hid what she didn’t want found, but she did a better job than Ava ever had. ‘Buy one and I’ll fit it for you.’
Ava had announced that she was putting a lock on her door over dinner, having already purchased everything. Her father had said he didn’t want tradesmen in his house, which was when she’d said that she was perfectly capable—she hadn’t expected him to offer. Grandmother had suggested she wouldn’t need a lock if she had nothing to hide. Ava hadn’t been able to let that slide by or agree. Her suggestion that she wouldn’t need a lock if her bedroom was treated as her sanctuary and afforded the same respect other people’s bedrooms wasn’t well received.
No one had said anything after that. It was hard to defend the searching of her room and impossible to talk about the incident without mentioning periods and menstrual cups in front of her father. No one wanted to do that—although she was sure he was aware.
Her sister wasn’t as subtle. ‘So have you tried out the ruiner, the cup of doom, the instrument of your eternal damnation?’ Her voice became more dramatic with each word; the back of her hand was pressed to her forehead as she slumped against the doorframe in cinematic style, as though the whole thing was too much.
‘No.’
Rose straightened and sighed. ‘Oh. Well that’s a letdown.’
Ava packed away her tools and stood up. ‘Mel sa
id that it’s great.’
‘Mel also says sex is great.’
‘She’s probably right about that too.’ While her friends were having fun, she was withering. That might have been an exaggeration, but if she didn’t find the man she wanted to marry until she was thirty, that would mean another six years of nothing.
She couldn’t do it.
People regretted the things they didn’t do more than the things they did. She was missing out on life experiences and she knew it. She had reached the point where she didn’t care if the experience was good or bad, she just wanted to do something. Here she was suffocating, and she was letting it happen.
She was sick of feeling cloistered.
She wanted to live and if that meant screwing up a few times, well, she was prepared to risk that too. She wanted more than what she was being offered. Maybe if she’d been born in India and didn’t know any different she’d have been happy, or not. But if one more nice Indian boy with a good family was waved under her nose, she was going to shag the first Aussie boy she fell over just to make herself unmarriageable.
Someone like Mike.
He wouldn’t be waiting for marriage.
She doubted the men Grandmother suggested were waiting either, even though they were supposed to if they followed the Bible strictly.
Mike would probably laugh that she was.
Had she heard him laugh at all? She didn’t think so, but then they hadn’t met in the best way. No, but he had asked for her number and she’d given it.
Rose snapped her fingers. ‘Hey, I was talking, where were you?’
Ava shook her head. ‘Thinking about a patient with a terminal brain tumour.’
‘I’m sorry I asked. I don’t know how you get through the day without slashing your wrists.’
‘If I do that, according to Grandmother, I’ll go to hell. I don’t want to risk it. I’d hate to prove her right.’ Her grandmother’s logic about suicide didn’t work for her. Depression was a mental illness, hardly hell-worthy. There were plenty of priests who’d done worse and yet apparently they could repent. She hoped God judged them harshly and they found themselves at the devil’s mercy.
She never said these things. No one would want to hear them. And she didn’t know how to keep her faith when there were so many contradictions. Turning up to church was going through the motions; it didn’t make her a better Catholic.
Rose laughed. ‘Can’t be worse than here. You’ve put a lock on your door. To keep people out or to keep you in?’
‘You still want one?’ Ava called as Rose walked away.
‘Hell, yeah. I don’t want to hear her rant against lacy lingerie again.’
Ava didn’t point out that every time it was hung on the line Grandmother complained about what the neighbours will think, followed by why a chaste girl needed lingerie. Apparently liking it wasn’t a good enough excuse.
Ava closed her bedroom door and locked it. The snick of the metal was so nice that she unlocked it and did it again. The stress started to ease and she took a few deep breaths. A smile formed. This battle had been won. But there would be more. There was always more. This was a temporary solution, but it would buy her time to find somewhere else to live and that was all she wanted.
Of course, she had to leave her room to shower and do her teeth, but she would get used to locking the door and having the key on her. Forgetting and then having to break into her own room wouldn’t do, and there was nowhere she could hide a key in the house without it being found. Which would defeat the purpose.
Back in her room with the door locked, she took out the menstrual cup, lay on her bed and had a proper look at it. Soft and silicone, she folded it and imagined inserting it. It was bigger than a tampon … not as big as an erect penis though.
She pressed her lips together.
It wasn’t just the sex. She knew how to get herself off—she knew that would be frowned on—but even that wasn’t enough.
Her fingers slid under her clothes and over her vulva and then dipped in, testing how far she could stretch her two fingers apart. She knew the mechanics. She’d even seen porn, although that wasn’t to be believed. What she wanted was to fall in love, to feel that rush of attraction.
That was why she’d given Mike her number.
Her channel slicked as she thought about him. She put the cup down and closed her eyes and tried to imagine what it would be liked to be kissed by him. The roughness of his beard. Would she be able to feel the cool metal of his lip ring?
It didn’t take her long to orgasm, or for the shame to flood in.
She was going to go to hell.
***
Mike hadn’t seen Ava for three days. Either she wasn’t working or she was avoiding him. He was betting on the latter even though he was hoping for the former.
Right now he was tired, in need of a shower and a night at home instead of going to Ed’s. He wanted to sleep more than anything, but he knew he’d wake up tangled in another bad dream, fighting to get free of the sheets.
‘Do you have plans for Australia Day?’ his mother asked.
‘Yeah. Probably just head down to the foreshore.’ He was looking forward to the long weekend. So far this week he hadn’t been able to make himself go for another ride, or even go for a surf with Ed. He hadn’t been for a surf in ages. But the idea of squeezing in one more thing, even something he enjoyed, was too much. There was nothing left.
He knew he couldn’t keep going like this, but at the same time he hadn’t figured out how to stop.
‘Dan’s paying rent.’ He’d been true to his word and had put in a bit extra to go toward December. Mike hadn’t expected that, but he was grateful.
‘Good. What about the house?’
‘I’m living there.’ He couldn’t live in the flat with Dan. That had been made very clear to him. They wouldn’t last more than three days before someone ended up dead. They used to get on better. Mike knew the fault wasn’t entirely with him, but he wasn’t helping things.
‘I don’t want you to struggle.’
‘Yeah. I know.’ He nodded. That was his mother’s main concern.
‘There’s no inheritance, Michael.’
‘I know. I’ll work it out.’ He would. He didn’t know when he was going to find the time to, but he would. He raked his fingers through his hair then stopped. He had to be calm. She didn’t need his stress.
‘Work yourself to death.’
‘It’s just to get some money saved up …’ He stopped and looked at his mother. He couldn’t tell her that he wanted to go over east as much as he wanted to be here.
She reached out and put her hand over his. ‘You don’t have to come every day.’
‘Yeah, I do.’
She looked at him. ‘I came here to make it easier, not harder.’
He changed the topic without using the clutch and making the transition smooth. ‘The writing’s going well.’
They were getting some songs together. The piano piece he’d written had been turned in to a very dark Dan piece and an old drum solo he’d put down had formed the backbone of another. When he left here there would be work to be done on the other songs. While he called it work. He enjoyed it, but he knew things were moving slowly because he was only able to be there in the evenings. He hated feeling like he was letting them all down.
Sometimes he wondered if he would be better stepping away. One less thing to do.
But the thought sent him screaming in the other direction.
His mother had months to live; if he gave up Selling the Sun he’d have absolutely nothing after she died. So he was trying to hold onto everything and hope he didn’t burn up in the process. The flames were heating up his boots and starting to melt the soles.
‘I hope I get to hear some of it.’
Mike glanced at her. ‘Of course you will. It’ll be recorded in March.’
That was less two months away. She had longer than that … didn’t she?
She hadn’t
said anything. ‘Mum?’
She smiled but it was strained. Since moving in he was sure she’d aged. ‘Is everything okay here?’
‘As I expected.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘That I’m tired, that the pain is always there. I don’t want to see you looking just as worn out as I feel.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘Please. Take tomorrow off and don’t feel guilty.’
He looked away and tried to breathe through the crushing vice around his chest. Great, now he looked so tired he was depressing his dying mother. That was bad. He would feel guilty either way now, so he agreed to not come in and to have an early night. What else could he do but do what she asked? To disobey seemed even worse.
Ava stepped into the room with his mother’s meds. They looked at each other for a moment.
‘Michael, you remember Ava. She helped me settle in.’
‘Yeah.’ He nodded and stood. He’d spent too much time thinking about her. Since visiting time was over, he leaned over and kissed his mother’s forehead.
‘Remember what I said.’
He nodded and left the room, but he waited in the hallway, hands in his pockets. Ava and his mother talked for a few minutes but he couldn’t make out the words.
Ava came out and pulled the door to, then startled when she saw him.
‘I didn’t think you’d wait.’
‘I didn’t think I would either.’ He didn’t know why he had. ‘Is she going okay?’
‘As well as can be expected.’
That was a non-answer. They stood there for a few more awkward seconds. He didn’t know what to say to keep the conversation going, even though he wanted to.
‘I have to keep going.’ But she smiled like she wanted to stay and chat.
He wanted her to stay. Unlike the chick in the bar, he wanted to get to know Ava better. Yeah, he was so noble and all his thoughts about her had been above the neck. While he’d gotten her number, anything else was much harder sober. It hadn’t used to be. Or maybe it had and he’d forgotten.
He shouldn’t be playing with her at all. But it was so normal and it gave him something else to think about. She was the one bright star in his life at the moment, and he’d met her in a place of death and darkness. Every time he came here it swallowed him up. Yet he couldn’t not come, so he was caught between the living and the dead …
