Unsuitable

by Ainslie Paton

  “I’d only had a two beers. They were on something. Wouldn’t stay the fuck down.”

  “You hurting?”

  Reece grinned. Polly had come in to do what he’d always done after a fight—to check on him. “I’m a little sore. It’ll be worse tomorrow. Nothing broken.”

  “Hands?”

  “Fine.”

  “Head?”

  This time, this question was different. It was about his mental state, not whether he might have concussion. “She looked at me like she didn’t know me, Pol.”

  “Should’ve taken a fall.”

  Reece nodded. He’d made it look too easy. It was easy when you had the training, the experience he’d had, when you were sober and your opponents were half out of their tiny minds. When you were doing it to protect the woman you loved. If he’d taken a fall she might not have seen him as so much of a machine. She’d looked at him as if she didn’t know him, as if he’d beaten her affection for him to a pulp and juiced it all over scorched earth.

  “I don’t want to be a dickhead all my life you know. I really like Les. Exactly as she is. But I don’t know what I’m doing in this deep, with someone so different, so if you don’t work it out with Audrey you know I’ve got zip chance of keeping Les.”

  Reece pulled his knees up, curled his back to relieve an ache there. “I thought I knew what I was doing.” But he wouldn’t be alone in Polly’s spare bed if that was the case. He’d have Audrey in his arms, and the stiffness in his lower back would feel like nothing.

  “Shit, man. Get sleep. It’ll look different in the morning.”

  From his unanswered texts to Audrey, he figured it would look worse.

  When he woke, hands stiff and sore, bruising over his torso and back, muscle strain in one thigh and across his lumbar, Audrey had responded. She was fine. Mia said Snapper missed him. That made him smile. He should take the day off to rest.

  All perfectly reasonable. But it made him ansty. He called. Got voicemail and stuttered a message about nothing sensible. He wanted Audrey’s real voice, real responses. He was tempted to simply lob over there. He hung up and rang again. Mailbox again. If he lobbed, he was making a thing out of it. She was well again, in theory his weekends were his own now. In theory, he didn’t need to use her guest room, but they’d avoided dealing with that.

  Fuck theory. He was going over there. He’d spooked her. He’d put it right.

  He drove home to Charlie’s. In the mood he was in he could make things worse with Audrey. Neeva met him on the verandah, on her way out in a netball uniform. “Muuum, Reeeece,” she yelled back down the hall.

  “Hey.”

  They high-fived and she grabbed for his hand and poked his knuckles. “So you beat up dudes.”

  He rescued his hand with a grunt. “What did Flip tell you?”

  “Not Flipper, Ett.” She leapt into a ninja pose, weaving a hand in front of his face. “She said you did some karate thing—hi-yah,” she kicked, “and took down sixty Chinese bad guys with nunchucks who tried to kidnap your boss, who you’re dating—um-ah.”

  He looked at the verandah roof and breathed deep and it hurt. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  She slapped his stomach and he grunted. “What the hell, Reece baby. When did you get all Mortal Combat, Super Mario, Terminator?”

  “Leave him alone, Neeva.” Charlie at the door. “Hello, stranger.” She stepped across the deck and he bent to kiss her hello.

  Neev yelled into the house, “Gin, come on. Come see Reece’s gaping bloody wounds.”

  “I’m not wounded.”

  “Did they really have nunchucks?”

  “Neeva, do you believe everything Etta tells you?” said Charlie.

  Gin appeared in the same netball uniform. “Oh wow, look at your hands. Does that hurt?”

  “No, I poked him, he didn’t do anything,” said Neev.

  Gin yelled down the hall. “Flip, hurry up, we’ll be late.” Then she came at him, wrapped her arms around him and squeezed with her skinny arms. “I worry about you.”

  Charlie smoothed Gin’s ponytail. Reece patted Gin’s back. “I’m all right. No need to worry.” He released her and Flip appeared in her netball uniform carrying the team ball and a bag of quartered oranges.

  She offered her hand for a high five then dodged it. “See ya, Flop.”

  “See ya,” he paused, “Pippa.”

  She scowled at him. “Ooo.”

  He shrugged and the three of them went down the stairs and out the gate. Etta would be at work, her Saturday Macca’s shift, so he had Charlie to himself.

  She turned to go inside. “I’ll put the kettle on.” He followed her. “I told them you learned how to box, but that’s all I said. The rest is up to you, but you’ve obviously told Etta something before last night.”

  He nodded. “Told her I was an idiot. She remembers me being away, remembers you being mad at me. Told her not to be an idiot.”

  “She’s smoking.” Charlie filled the kettle.

  He groaned. “Told me she’d give it up.”

  Charlie put the kettle on the stove and turned the gas on. “She knows it’s not good for her. Knows I’m unhappy, but it’s no good me saying anything. She has to choose. Gin’s barely talking to her.” She opened a loaf of raisin bread. He’d get toast with tea out of this. “Should I be mad at you about last night, Reece?”

  “No. They came at us. I had no choice.” She studied him and he didn’t feel wilted. Once they were in the laneway he’d had no option but to win.

  “All right then. Tell me about Audrey.”

  “I love her, Mum.” Shit, his voice crackled. He’d never said anything remotely like that to Charlie before.

  “Oh, Reece.” She leant on the breakfast counter opposite him and lightly touched the backs of his hands, above the crusty scabs. “How much older is she?”

  “Does it matter?” He pulled his hands away, annoyed, but more with himself for showing his feelings so early.

  “Yes, it matters, because she has a child and a different life to you, and she’s your boss, in case you forgot that while you were lolling around in her bed.”

  He shifted on the stool. “Charlie.”

  “Well, you are sleeping with her, aren’t you?”

  He rubbed his face. Not talking about sex with Mum. “Not lolling. It’s not like that.” She made it sound frivolous, temporary fun. It was everything to him and he knew that sounded whacked out.

  “Where is this going? Is it a fling? You only just broke up with Sky.”

  “It’s more than that.”

  She turned away to put toast in the toaster and warm the teapot. “Oh that’s right, you love her.”

  Shit. The kettle wasn’t the only thing boiling. “Look, I get love didn’t work out for you.”

  “You noticed that did you?”

  She had her back to him and he was glad of it. That was a crappy thing he’d said. “But this is different.”

  She made the tea. “You know you sound like Etta. Everything is always different with her. Like she’s the first person to ever have discovered a boy will pressure her into a blow job.”

  “Charlie.” He swallowed an embarrassed laugh.

  “I was an absent mother, not an ignorant one.”

  She buttered the toast with aggressive flicks of the knife. “And I worry about you now because I didn’t have the capacity to worry about you then. I was too busy relying on you. You are like you are today because I needed you to be an adult far too quickly and you didn’t get a choice. But that’s done, nothing I can do about it, and I couldn’t be prouder of you, but you have to know this with your boss is a bad idea.”

  “Her name is Audrey and I love her.”

  “Oh Reece. You’re not sixteen and she’s certainly not.”

  She put a plate of slightly burnt toast in front of him. It still smelled good. His second breakfast for the day. He’d learned to cook by watching her get it wrong, before he found cooking
videos. He loved her, but she didn’t understand, she’d never had this. She’d had men who disappeared on her, left her holding all the hard stuff.

  “Audrey is the first thing I think about when I wake. She’s the last thing I think about before I sleep. I thought those goons last night were going to hurt her. I’d have let them kill me first.”

  “Oh honey.” Charlie frowned at him. Her what a disaster face. He’d never make her understand.

  “I’m not some poet with the right words to tell you how Audrey and Mia make me feel. The girls were all practice for Mia. I get it right most of the time with her, because of Ett, Neev, Gin and Flip. Audrey makes each breath I take when I’m with her feel fuller, each thought I have smarter. When she was sick and we all thought she might die I understood despair for the first time. I feel like crap this morning, not because I had a beat down with six guys but because I frightened the fuck out of Audrey and she’s gone cold on me.”

  Charlie’s expression didn’t change, but she’d listened. He felt like a little kid spilling his guts like that. She put her hand on his arm and pulled his head down. She kissed his cheek. He wanted to wipe it away, then she said, “I’d better meet Audrey and Mia, because if they’re that important to you, they’re important to me too.”

  He sighed and some of the anxiety he felt got stuck in his throat like blackened toast crumbs. “But that’s it. I think last night I wrecked it all. It was intense Mum, not sixty, but six, and they didn’t have weapons, but they thought they were invincible.”

  “And you did nothing to start it?”

  He’d had to act the big man. He’d fucked it up. “I could’ve handled it differently. They targeted me, but I could’ve avoided that.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Only my heart.” He shrugged. It was a pathetically soppy thing to say, but he meant it.

  “Oh Reece, honey. Audrey might need time to adjust to the idea of you as a man who can take down a small army. You never hinted at any of that have you? But you probably should’ve.”

  “If I’d told her as my employer she’d never have hired me.”

  “But as her lover, did she not have a right to know? This is different from not telling your sisters and friends.”

  “I don’t know all her past sins either. Why should I have spilled mine?”

  “Because you say you love her. By not telling her you’ve surprised her with it. That’s a tough thing. And if she can’t accept this about you, then you never truly had her, which is what I’m worried about. She was so sick, Reece. You virtually nursed her back to health. She’s bound to be attached to you, but you’ve been playing happy families and, well, this might have woken her up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a truth universally unacknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good job must be in want of a wife.”

  “Now who’s the poet? What?”

  “Think about it, honey. Audrey is a woman who has a career and chose to have a baby on her own. That doesn’t tell me family is her main priority. It tells me independence is. It tells me she planned to buy the support she needs.”

  He looked away. “Are you saying she only used me?”

  “I don’t know. I know you don’t want to think that.”

  He shook his head. “You always think the worst about relationships. I get why, but it’s not like that with us. Audrey loves me, but I scared her. I can make it right. I just have to work out how to do that without pushing her away. She goes back to work Monday, she’s tense about that. I need to play it cool, give her space, it’ll all work out.”

  His phone peeped and he fished it out and smiled. Audrey.

  Barrett coming this arvo & spending weekend. Better if you weren’t here. Hope your hands are okay.

  “What hon?”

  “I need to make a call.” He wanted to hear Audrey tell him that. She’d asked about his hands, not about him, and there was no see you soon, no warmth at all.

  “Reece, you just got through telling me she needed space.”

  “If I don’t correct what she’s thinking—”

  “You can’t correct her. She has to make up her own mind.”

  He closed his eyes and snorted air. Shit, this was messed up and it didn’t need to be. It’s not like they’d had a fight. It’s not like anything between them needed to change.

  “Stay and have dinner with us tonight. I’m not working.”

  He looked at the plate of uneaten toast. “You mean stay and cook dinner.”

  Charlie laughed. She binned the toast. “We’ll go out. My treat.”

  Yeah, that’d be good. Keep his mind off Audrey and Mia hanging out with Barrett. He’d seen photos of Barrett. Handsome bastard, elegant look about him. An antique dealer. Well off, lived in New York but travelled extensively. The idea of him made Reece itch. He preferred to think of him as the furniture removalist—juvenile, but so what. To agree to have a kid, and to not be a part of their life. He couldn’t fathom it. It was exactly what his own dad had done, fathered a kid and nicked off never to be heard from again. That wasn’t what Charlie had needed, but it was what Audrey had gone after. Confusing as hell. Charlie left the kitchen and he sent Audrey a text.

  He made it simple. I miss you.

  He watched the screen, wanting a response more than was sensible. He got it. I miss you too. It brought sucker punch of relief.

  I want to see you.

  My last weekend with Mia, before work. Barrett complicates it.

  He typed: Are you breaking up with me? Jesus, how needy could he be? He deleted and replaced it with, Call if you need anything. Then watched the screen for way too long.

  He left before Charlie found him something to help out with and headed to the beach. He wanted to catch Sky and unless she’d changed, a good place to find her on a Saturday was playing volleyball.

  She was finishing up a game when he got there. He watched her from the walkway. She looked great, stripped down to black lycra. She played better, not giving a point away and relishing her victory as if it was a novelty. She’d have been a cranky sod if she’d lost. That was something to be grateful for. He went down to the sand to meet her. She watched him approach, the expression on her face a mixture of surprise and too much chilli powder.

  “To what do I owe this sudden pleasure?” That was all chilli, then she grabbed for his hand, her mouth dropping open. “What happened?”

  “Bit of trouble in the city last night. It’s nothing.” She wouldn’t give his hand back. Sky, who’d never been clingy. “You should see the other guy.”

  “Yeah, right. What really happened?”

  He peeled her fingers away. “No, that’s what happened.”

  “You’re not fighting again?”

  “No way.”

  Was that disappointment flavouring the chilli surprise? Sky had come along after the fighting ended, but he’d told her about it because it was better it came from him than someone in circles they mixed in who knew him from those days, someone who’d seen the video. He hadn’t had that risk with Audrey, years on and not knowing the same people. He’d thought Sky would be horrified. He didn’t spare the horses, gave her the whole gory story. She’d been full of regret she hadn’t known him then to see him fight.

  “Okay then, if I’m not about to get to see you ringside, how come I’m seeing you now?”

  “I’ve been dodging your calls.”

  “Knew it.” She turned her back on him, bent and started fussing with her sports bag.

  “I’m here to make it up to you. Can I buy you lunch?”

  She peered at him awkwardly under her arm. “Why do you want to do that?”

  “You were the one calling me. If I’m annoying you I’ll go.” This had started as a chore, but now he wanted things to be right with Sky. As right as they could be at least.

  She shouldered her bag. He reached to take it from her and she twisted out of his grasp. “Did you break up with her?”

&nb
sp; “No.” He took a breath, said it again with more confidence. “No.”

  “So what’s this with me then? You should’ve kept dodging me.”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  She looked back towards the net where the next game had started. “I struggle with that.”

  “You could tell me about it.”

  She kept her face turned away. “I miss you. I still miss you. I’ve been dating, and we weren’t even all that good together. I resent it, you know. Why should I pine after you?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry, Reece. That’s pathetic. If you’re still with Audrey, you’re not any good to me. You don’t have to pretend otherwise.”

  He scratched his head. This day was a dog bite, a dose of food poisoning, root canal surgery. He was nowhere he wanted to be, doing things that irritated people. Gold star for effort.

  “I’ll leave you alone then.” He trudged back up the beach. He was too sore for the gym. If he went home to Mum, there’d be a job to do and wasn’t in a helpful mood.

  Sky jogged up beside him. “I’m being a shit.”

  He grinned at her. They bumped arms and it was going to be okay.

  They stuffed themselves with fish and chips, the perfect comfort food. Sky told him about work. He said very little, but this was better, being honest, being back in contact. She’d have no need to pester him. He’d have no need to dodge her calls.

  She sipped a bottle of water. “What is it about Audrey you like so much?”

  They sat side by side on the main steps leading down to the sand. He cut her a look. “Is this the torture yourself part of the afternoon?”

  She waved a crab claw at him. “Of course it is. Make it good.”

  He turned back to face the sea. “I got off on being needed at first. You don’t get that bricklaying. Later it became about how being with her made me feel. It’s hard to explain.”

  “You’re not even trying.”

  “Audrey doesn’t need me. I thought she did, I got the employer and the infatuated bit mixed up. She needed a nanny and a housekeeper and a nurse, but she didn’t need me.”

  Sky tossed the crab claw in the takeaway food box. “This is not what I expected.”

  “She wants me, Sky. Like I want her. It’s this weird pull, like my skin needs to be touching hers, like my ears need to be hearing her voice, my eyes seeing her face. Like I don’t function right unless she’s near. She wants me for exactly who I am.” He looked away. Until the moment she worked out he could be deadly.