Beautiful Illusion

by Jacquie Underdown

  Brennan turned to the hill and saw his mum and Joanne making their way back to the house.

  “Did you go and talk to Joanne?”

  I nodded, smiling.

  “And it went well, by the looks of it,” he said. Joanne and Kerri’s laughter pealed out over the field. He leaned down and kissed me again, holding his lips to mine for a long moment. “Have I told you how incredible you are?”

  “Um,” I said, pretending to think. “Yeah, I think you may have.”

  I lifted my head to kiss him and, as I did, I could hear the twins in the background.

  “Oh yuck. Uncle Bren, that’s a girl you’re kissing there. Haven’t you ever heard of girl germs?”

  “I love girl germs,” he said, winking at them before theatrically kissing me again.

  “Uugghh,” they both yelled.

  “Yeah, get a room, you two,” said Alex, laughing.

  Brennan lifted himself off me and helped me off the ground. My back was soaked from the rain-covered grass. I felt so good, it almost scared me.

  Chapter 12

  Weeks later.

  Today was the day Brennan was to meet Dad, an introduction coinciding with the much-awaited AFL Grand Final. Brennan pulled his ute into Dad’s driveway, parking behind the conspicuous black BMW.

  “So is that the wicked witch of the west’s car?” he asked.

  I laughed. “If you’re referring to Cait, then yes, that’s her car. She insisted she meet you.”

  “As long as she doesn’t complain about us being in the same room together, I’ll be happy to meet her.”

  I knew that I had nothing to fear with Brennan and Cait, but I couldn’t help my nerves twinging.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Nothing.”

  “You sure?” he said, eyes narrowing.

  I nodded, forcing a smile onto my face.

  “Well let’s get this over with. I’m feeling nervous,” he said.

  My eyebrows shot up. “Really? Are you saying there are actually situations that ruffle your feathers, Mr Calm-in-every-situation?”

  Brennan smiled. “Meeting the father is certainly one of those.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve prepped Dad. He loves you already.”

  He laughed. “Fantastic. So now you’ve given him a preconceived notion of me that I’m going to have to live up to.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “I hope so.”

  We met Dad at the front screen-door of his modest suburban brick home. A broad smile creased his face with wrinkles. At the sight of that gentle, welcoming face, I realised there was no way Dad wouldn’t like Brennan. He doesn’t have a hateful bone in his body.

  Dad, decked out in brown and yellow—his beloved team’s colours—greeted us cheerily.

  “Hi, Dad,” I fixed my hand on Brennan’s shoulder. “I would like to introduce you to Brennan.”

  “Aahh,” said Dad extending his arm to shake Brennan’s outstretched hand. “I finally get to the meet the man who’s making my daughter so happy.”

  “Great to meet you, Ronny.”

  “Come on in. All the others are already here,” he said, beckoning with his hand.

  We followed him inside.

  “Who are the others, Dad?”

  “Oh, you know. Cait and Greg. And Matty dropped in with his new girlfriend-of-the-month, Brianna.”

  “The more the merrier,” I said.

  In the lounge room, Cait and Greg were the first to greet us.

  “Hi, Brennan! I’m Cait, Leah’s sister,” she said, confidently holding out her hand to shake Brennan’s. I almost felt like smacking her hand away, but I suppressed the urge. Brennan greeted her warmly. Cait’s husband, Greg, introduced himself next. I hadn’t seen Greg in over six months—he was usually too busy with his work. He looked the same as always: close shaved, his dark hair gelled back, polo shirt and yachting slacks.

  “Brennan, would you like a beer?” asked Dad, on his way into the kitchen.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  “Can you grab me one too please, Dad?”

  Matty, who has worked for Dad since he was seventeen, just after his own father died, introduced himself to Brennan. I had filled Brennan in already on Matty’s status as honorary member of our family. He had become the golden boy in Dad’s eyes, and was treated like a son. And fair enough. Matty was a decent guy and a hard-working, loyal employee. Unfortunately, he was just as incapable in the girlfriend department as Dad had turned out to be.

  “It’s nice to see you barrack for the right team, Brennan,” said Matty, pointing to the Lions jersey Brennan was wearing. Never mind that his team had not even made it close to the final. “Ronny insists that Hawthorn is the ultimate in AFL teams.”

  “They just got lucky making it to the Grand Final this year,” taunted Brennan.

  “Hey, I heard that,” said Dad, returning from the kitchen, handing us our beers.

  “Hawthorn has had a ripper season, you can’t deny that.”

  Football talk was my signal to leave. I took a seat on the couch with Cait and Brianna.

  “You and Brennan look very serious, Leah,” said Cait, raising an eyebrow.

  I gave a coy grin. “We are.”

  “He is so hot,” said Brianna.

  From a comment like that, I placed Brianna in her early twenties. A little young compared to Matty’s norm.

  “I have to agree with you there,” I said.

  “So, how’s work going? Are you coping alright after the accident?” asked Cait.

  “I’ve only been back for two weeks, but it’s good to be amongst the living again. I still can’t seem to clear the fog from my brain, though.”

  “It may take a little time.”

  I shrugged.

  Brianna was still gawking at Brennan “He’s gorgeous. So tall and muscular,” she said.

  I rolled my eyes in Cait’s direction, my nostrils flaring. Cait gave me a look that said, ‘what’s her caper?’

  “How long have you two been dating?” Brianna asked, finally looking back at me, her small brown eyes wide and excited.

  “A little over a month, give or take.”

  She nodded, looked back at Brennan again, and ran her tongue over her bottom lip. “Have you, you know, tapped that?”

  I could feel my jaw clenching and suppressed another eye-roll. “I’m not really sure it’s any of your business if I’ve tapped that or not.”

  Caitlyn covered her mouth with her hand, unable to restrain her laughter.

  “I’m just curious,” Brianna whined, biting her bottom lip.

  “How long have you been seeing Matty?” I asked.

  “This is just our second date. Not that our first date was really a first date, if you know what I mean?”

  Caitlyn shot me a glance from the corner of her eye, and gave Brianna a brief smirk. “Um, no, Brianna,” she said, faking innocence, a softly taunting edge to her tone. “What do you mean?”

  Brianna looked at Caitlyn as though her own grandmother would have known what she meant. “We hooked up last weekend at this hot new club in the Valley and went back to his house. Completely skipped the need for all that first-date bullshit and jumped straight into the hot-and-heavy. I didn’t hear from him for nearly and week until he rang me yesterday, asking if I wanted to come here today. I don’t normally give guys a second shot, but Matty does have a particularly nice sized dick.”

  Caitlyn nearly spat out her drink. She swallowed hard. “That’s way too much information about Matty,” she said.

  Brianna elbowed me softly in the ribs and winked. “From what I’ve been told, Leah, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

  My face was glowing like Rudolph’s nose on Christmas Eve. I threw back my beer, coughing on the dregs. “I’m going to get another beer.” I quickly ducked away towards the kitchen, but Caitlyn wasn’t far behind me.

  “What was that about?” she asked, striding into the kitc
hen.

  I shook my head and turned away, opening the fridge and pulling out another beer.

  Caitlyn gasped. My silence was proof enough to her surmising about Matty and me.

  “How do you know that Matty has a big penis, Leah?” she asked slowly, emphasising every word.

  “I don’t know anything about it,” I said.

  “Bullshit. Otherwise you wouldn’t be trying to evade me like this. How do you know? Did you sleep with him?”

  I removed the cap from my beer and gulped a mouthful. When I spun around to face Caitlyn, she was waiting for my answer, smirking.

  “Have you and Matty slept together?” she repeated.

  I closed my eyes, took a deep breath in and nodded.

  Cait gasped again. “Oh my God. When?”

  “Christmas, when I was nineteen.”

  “What? Here? In this house?”

  I nodded.

  “Wow. What happened?”

  “I don’t want go into it.”

  “You have to. You have no choice but to tell me the details.”

  I groaned. “Matty had been working with Dad for about six months at that time and he came over to spend Christmas with us. You were dating… Brad, I think?”

  Caitlyn nodded. “I remember that Christmas.”

  “I was totally smashed and so was Matty, even though he wasn’t supposed to be drinking because he was still only seventeen. I was coming out of my room for some reason, I can’t even remember why, when Matty was heading back from the toilet. I bumped into him and we got to talking, then we got kissing, and before I even realised what was happening we were going for it on my bed.”

  Caitlyn gaped. “Wow, why didn’t you tell me that?”

  I took another skol of my beer. “We didn’t tell anyone. Can you imagine if Dad found out?”

  “He would have gone berserk.”

  “This is a secret I’ll keep until Dad’s in the grave, unless Matty ever stops working for him.”

  “So was he your first?”

  I nodded, looking very sheepish. “Yes. I lost my virginity to golden-boy Matty.”

  “I would never have guessed that in a million years.”

  Again I swallowed another mouthful and rolled my eyes.

  “He’s not that bad. It could have been worse, you could have lost your virginity to David Jensen,” said Caitlyn, pushing her finger into her mouth, pretending to make herself gag.

  “David was fairly unpleasant in the looks department.”

  Caitlyn cringed. “He was worse than unpleasant. How could I have ever let his dick anywhere near me? I’m amazed it didn’t wear glasses and have a bad case of acne.”

  “Oh yuk,” I said, squirming. “When you put it that way, Matty isn’t so bad. At least he is pretty sexy in an Eric Bana kind of way. And, from what Brianna says, he has a big dick. Not that I can remember.”

  Caitlyn laughed. “I don’t like to know that much about him. He’s like a brother to me.”

  “Yeah, well, we overstepped that line a long time ago.”

  Back in the lounge, I found Brennan cornered by Brianna. She was leaning in close, talking to him vivaciously, and flicking her hair around. When I caught his eye, he discreetly mouthed, “help me”.

  I laughed as I walked to his side. I slid my hand around his waist, raised my free hand to his ear and whispered, “Pretend like I’ve said something important and we need to go somewhere together.” I paused, before cheekily adding, “By the way, I thought you’d like to know that I’m not wearing any underwear.”

  His eyes widened and he suppressed a grin. “Right, yes, we better take a look at that,” he said. “Excuse me, Brianna.”

  I pulled him by the hand towards the kitchen, laughing as soon as we were out of earshot. “Thank you,” he laughed. “Who is that girl?”

  “I don’t really know her myself.”

  “She’s a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Talking about some leotard she had hand-made for a dance routine she’s going to perform on So You Think You Can Dance, or something like that?”

  I burst into giggles; Brianna was proving good for comic relief, if nothing else.

  Brennan smiled as he pulled me in close. He slid his hands up the back of my thighs, edging them up over my bare arse. “I see you were telling the truth.”

  “I wouldn’t lie,” I answered demurely.

  He kissed me softly up the length of my neck. “You’re a tease doing this to me. Today of all days.”

  “I’m a little bit naughty, aren’t I?”

  “The worst.” He kissed me one last time and took a step back. “And now you’ve gone and given me a hard on.”

  I laughed and turned towards the fridge, grateful that girls don’t have such obvious indications of arousal.

  “Would you like another beer?” I asked, intentionally changing the topic.

  “I better not. I’m going to have to drive us home.”

  “One more for me, then.”

  When we joined the others in the lounge room, they had settled into the couches and chairs around the television as the Grand Final game was about to start.

  ***

  By half time, Sydney was ahead of Hawthorn.

  “It’s not looking as good as I’d like, boys,” said Dad.

  “They’re just not strong enough,” said Brennan. “I hope for your sake they make a comeback in the second half. But I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The Swans have had a good season. I think they can maintain their pressure till the end.”

  “Yeah,” agreed Matty, wide eyed. “Sad to say it, but I think it’s the Swans’ year.”

  “We’ll see how we go,” said Dad.

  As I watched their casual, comfortable banter, I could tell that Brennan was fitting in well. Dad wanted to know all about how far Brennan went with his football, and every detail about the injury that ended his potential career in the AFL. Dad quizzed him on what his parents both did for a living, and they soon moved on to the subject of carpentry.

  My eyes started to glaze over as I watched Brennan talk animatedly with Dad about the finer points of joinery or some such thing. Brennan was a natural with people and it was no different with Dad. He was winning Dad over completely with genuine charm.

  Brennan glanced at me, giving me a gorgeous smile, his dimple flashing. I realised my heart was truly warming, defrosting from where it had been suspended for two years since the terrible break-up with Antony. I knew at that moment that I was opening up, allowing Brennan in. It filled me with an incredible elation and, concurrently, a creeping panic. I returned Brennan’s smile, but it was forced. It didn’t touch my eyes.

  I slunk away to the kitchen for another drink. As I was removing the cap from my beer, Brennan came in after me. Concern exuded from the molten centre of his eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  I nodded and forced another tight smile. “I’m fine.”

  He grabbed my hands. “What happened? Is Caitlin being civil?”

  “Yeah, she’s being great, actually. But that’s not it.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  I shifted nervously on the spot, my eye contact brief. “I realised that I’m…” I stopped short, not sure of whether to admit it so soon in our relationship.

  “You’re what?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Leah. Tell me.”

  I sighed. “I realised that I’m falling for you.”

  A smile spread across his lips. “And that worried you?”

  I shook my head, and then nodded.

  Brennan laughed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He kissed me. “It makes me happy hearing you say that. That you’re falling for me.”

  I looked up at him. “It does?”

  He laughed again. “Of course.”

  Matty’s voice pierced our moment. “Brennan, Leah, the game is back on!”

  “We’ll continue this conversation later,” he said,
kissing me again.

  I nodded.

  The game ended with Hawthorn losing by ten points. Matty was not subtle with his taunting either. Dad took it on the chin, though I knew he would have been devastated by the result.

  ***

  We all moved outside onto the back pergola while Dad struck up the barbeque for dinner, smiling bravely. Matty and Brennan were absorbed in conversation about the game, both equally disappointed with the final result. Meanwhile, I chatted with Cait, Greg and Brianna. Greg was telling me about the renovations they were making to their penthouse, and how he would have to have Brennan and I over for dinner once they were all finalised. Caitlyn told me about her work—how busy they had been, having scored some major new clients.

  “Do you miss working in Human Resources?” asked Greg.

  Caitlyn glanced at me before lowering her eyes to the table.

  “Yes and no. I miss the money. Not having to worry about bills, being able to make my house repayments on time. But I don’t miss the stress, and the constant targets and whingeing clients.”

  Greg laughed. “It would be nice to give it all away. I sometimes feel that way about my job.” Greg was a high-profile stockbroker, in a prominent position with a major international bank. He flew overseas frequently and I remembered him telling me once that living in hotels was starting to get to him—he wasn’t able to see Cait as much as he would like.

  Caitlyn snapped her head around at Greg as he confessed. “You feel like that, Greg?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, sometimes. It’s nice to earn all this money, but when you have no time to even spend it, it makes you wonder if it is all worth it.”

  “Honey,” said Cait. “You need to talk to me about these things.”

  He shrugged. “Like I said. It’s only sometimes.”

  Brianna barely stifled a yawn and leaned over the table towards me. “So how long did you and Matty see each other for?”

  I shook my head dismissively. “Matty and I have never gone out.”

  Matty looked at me, eyes wide. Brennan and Dad also stopped their conversation mid-sentence to look at me. My stomach immediately started rolling over on itself.

  “So you just had, like, a one-night stand?” Brianna persisted.

  Once again Caitlyn nearly choked on her wine. She dabbed at her chin with a napkin.