Cake at Midnight

by Jessie L. Star

  He swivelled away from his computer, giving Giovanna his full attention in a way he did for nobody other than his most important clients. This was something else he’d realised over the past few weeks: as out of nowhere as her comments and questions often were, he found he always wanted to give them his serious consideration.

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘Mine,’ she agreed with a great deal of satisfaction. ‘They were sensational, even Céleste couldn’t fault them. I’ve never been prouder of anything in my entire life.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  He heard her give a happy little sigh and then she asked, ‘How did your big meeting go? Another triumph for the Stone Cold Killer?’

  ‘It went well.’

  Her heard her let out a breathy laugh. ‘Considering that’s your version of a fist pump, I think we should celebrate tonight. How does some good food followed by some good sex sound to you?’

  His smile widened, there just wasn’t an ounce of the game player in her and it was unbelievably refreshing. ‘It sounds amazing, and also like how we’ve spent every night so far this week.’

  ‘And hasn’t each night felt like a celebration?’

  She had a point.

  ‘I’m just waiting for the bus so I’ll be home soon,’ she said. ‘Should I get dinner on, or are you working late?’

  He should work late, he was usually the last one out of the office and continued working for a few hours after he got home, but this week he’d been leaving while a number of people still sat at their desks. He’d ignored their surprised looks, pretending he didn’t notice the way they bent their heads together or the sniggered mutterings that were inevitably to the tune of ‘rushing off to O’Connor’s girlfriend’.

  ‘Bossman, I’m gonna need your signatures on these– Oh.’ Ari burst into the room and then drew up short as Theo swung towards him and revealed the phone pressed to his ear. ‘Look at your face!’ he crowed. ‘You look like the cat that got the cream, which must mean–’ He lifted his voice and called out, ‘Hi, Gio.’

  ‘Hi, Ari,’ she replied cheerfully into Theo’s ear.

  ‘She says hi,’ he relayed.

  ‘How’s our boy performing? He treating you right?’

  Theo glared at his assistant who so stubbornly refused to respect professional boundaries, but Giovanna was giggling. ‘Tell him I have no complaints,’ she said, with a hint of wickedness that made something lurch low in his abdomen.

  ‘She has no complaints,’ he repeated, and he defied any man to not feel at least a little smug at that assessment.

  ‘I bet she doesn’t,’ Ari smirked and then set down the stack of documents that needed signing and a book, which he tapped meaningfully a couple of times before heading out.

  Leaning forward, Theo saw, as he’d suspected he would, the latest from Ari’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of self-help books. This one was titled How to Give What You’ve Got and Get What You’ve Not. He flipped it face down and turned his attention back to Giovanna.

  ‘How do you feel about going out tonight?’

  ‘Out,’ she repeated, obviously surprised. ‘For dinner?’

  ‘Yeah, or whatever you want to do.’

  ‘Why, Mr McKillop, I do declare,’ she said, putting on an atrocious approximation of a southern US drawl, ‘are you asking me out?’

  Was he? Yes, he decided. Yes, even though it’d been a knee-jerk reaction to Ari’s not-so-subtle suggestion there was stuff he should be giving her that he wasn’t. Yes, even though it didn’t exactly fit the parameters of ‘no expectations’. Yes. Because he wanted to.

  ‘I am.’

  He could practically hear her grinning down the line at him. ‘Yay,’ she said softly, then, at her normal volume, ‘What should we do? Where should we go?’

  He laughed at her enthusiasm; of course she hadn’t even tried to play the invitation off as if it were no big deal.

  ‘How about I surprise you?’ he suggested, looking through the glass wall of his office to where Ari was tapping away at his computer and weighing up whether asking for his suggestions would lead to more or fewer self-help books.

  ‘A surprise sounds amazing,’ Giovanna was saying. ‘D’you think–’

  But then there came the sound of a male voice in the background and she broke off to exclaim, ‘Oh my god!’

  ‘What?’ he asked, sitting up straighter at the change in her tone.

  ‘It’s Dec,’ she said quietly and then, before he could respond, she added, ‘I’ve got to go.’

  And she hung up.

  14

  Dec jogged across the road towards me and I slowly rose from the bus stop bench, slipping my phone back into my bag.

  It’d only been three weeks since I’d seen him, not long enough to forget how tall and pale he was, how every step for him was more like a lope, but these things still seemed to come as something of a shock. Perhaps it was because seeing him with Theo’s warm voice still so recent in my ear was incredibly jarring.

  I took a couple of steps towards Dec, expecting to meet him as he stepped up from the gutter. Instead of stopping a little in front of me, however, he closed the gap between us entirely and pulled me into a bear hug. I let out a noise like ‘oop!’ and turned my face in the nick of time to save my nose being crushed against his chest.

  His embrace threw me off balance in more ways than one, my toes barely in contact with the pavement and my brain similarly scrabbling for purchase; the feel, scent and presence of Dec both intensely familiar and vaguely alien. He hadn’t changed cologne, it was the same musk he’d favoured for a few years now, and I still rested against him at the same place, but in the past week I’d become used to a different scent, to a more comfortable height difference.

  I could feel Dec’s heart pounding away and his restless energy was like a presence between us as he held me tight against him. He’d always been tactile with me, throwing an arm across my shoulders or smacking a kiss to my cheek, but he hadn’t held me this tightly since Aggie had died.

  ‘Hey, you okay?’ I asked. It was a filler, just something to say, as it was perfectly obvious that he wasn’t.

  ‘Yeah,’ Dec said huskily, making no move to release me.

  I could feel the other people at the bus stop staring and my neck beginning to ache from the odd angle I was being forced to hold my head at, so I waited only a few more seconds before giving Dec a few pats on the back in the way you do when a hug has come to its natural end point.

  ‘Dec?’ I tried again. ‘Seriously, you’re starting to freak me out. What’s going on?’

  And, with a whoosh of breath, his grip on me finally loosened. He set me back from him and, as he did so, gave me a quick look up and down, as if checking for something that had changed. I clearly wasn’t the only one feeling a bit Twilight Zone about seeing each other again.

  ‘I know it hasn’t been thirty days,’ he muttered after a moment, ‘and we’re supposed to be on a break thing, but I need to talk to you.’

  He was so unsettled, so different from the grown-up, suave, no-problems persona I’d become used to since he started at AHC. He looked, in short, like he had back when he was a traumatised kid, and a familiar sense of dread made my whole body feel suddenly heavy.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Brains.’ I hadn’t used his old nickname in ages, but I used it then to remind him who he was talking to, and how pointless it was to try to bullshit me.

  ‘I just need to talk to you,’ he repeated as my bus pulled up with a whoosh that made my curls fly about my face.

  The doors hissing open gave a literal element to the sliding doors moment I was having. I could stick to my guns, get on the bus and go home to get ready to go out with Theo, or I could do as I’d always done, and prioritise Dec over everything and everyone else.

  As he darted an almost panicked look between me and the bus, however, I knew that there was no real choice.

  ‘Oka
y,’ I said, noting that at least one thing had changed in our absence from each other. He’d never usually have looked so worried that I’d refuse him.

  As my fellow commuters boarded the bus, they snuck looks at us over their shoulders, no doubt almost as curious as I was about how the scene with Dec was going to play out. Ignoring them, I buried my hands deep into my coat pockets and asked, ‘Where’s your car?’

  ‘Back that way.’ He nodded to show where he meant and then added, ‘But let’s walk for a bit, yeah? That okay?’

  ‘Sure.’

  We were being so careful with each other and it felt seriously weird.

  We began walking side by side, close, but not touching. The air was cool now that the sun was nothing but a slight lightening of the sky to the west, and there were few other pedestrians about. I told myself to keep quiet as we walked – Dec was the one who’d come to me, he was the one who had something to say – but the silence felt unnatural, and I was pretty much tearing my lips to shreds as I bit at them anxiously, waiting for him to explain what was going on.

  ‘So I guess Zo’s talked to you,’ he said after we’d walked the length of the block, and I promptly tripped over my own feet.

  It was not what I’d expected him to say.

  And, actually, as I considered it, I realised that Zoë hadn’t talked to me, not for ages. We’d texted a few times, but I hadn’t actually seen her since she’d walked in on me and Theo well over a week ago. Oh god, was I one of those dicks-before-chicks girls? Had I fallen into a modern, no-expectations relationship hole with Theo and left Zoë standing on the rim wondering where the hell I’d got to?

  ‘About what?’ I managed to choke out and Dec withdrew the hand he’d automatically placed on the small of my back as I’d stumbled, his expression incredulous.

  ‘She didn’t tell you?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  He considered me for a long moment and I felt the familiar mantle of responsibility for him settle across my shoulders as I saw his face was even paler than usual and that there were purpley-grey smudges under his eyes.

  ‘Hey, come on, talk to me,’ I said more gently, coming to a stop and forcing him to do the same.

  His eyes searched mine and he looked like he was just about to say something before figurative shutters slammed shut across his expression. ‘No,’ he said, starting to walk again. ‘Zo’s right about not dragging you into it, it’s not your problem.’

  Well, if anything was guaranteed to make me want to know what was going on, that was it. Since when did Zoë know something about Dec that I didn’t?

  ‘Is it your family?’ I asked as I struggled to keep up with his long-legged gait. ‘Your dad?’

  He winced. It was only a slight tightening of his shoulders, but I’d been looking for it and it made my heart sink. Of course it was his dad – it was always his dad.

  ‘Is he okay? Has he contacted you? Left the hostel? What’s happened?’ I put a hand on his arm, trying to get him to slow down and face me, but he was wound so tight that, for a brief moment, I thought he was going to throw my hand off him.

  He didn’t, but neither did he look at me as he said firmly, ‘Nothing I’m not dealing with. It’s not on you.’

  I sometimes wondered whether Dec regretted having grown so close to Zoë and me when we were at school and he’d been less adept at hiding his shitty home life – mostly because it was still his home life. He was so determined now to put all that in the past – all the yelling and the cowering and the bruises he’d had to keep hidden – and for us to know the truth of it must’ve kept it real for him. Still, I couldn’t be sorry that we knew, it wasn’t the kind of thing he should have to carry on his own.

  To that end, I lowered my voice and said, as gently as possible, ‘I know things are . . . weird with us right now. But what’s on you is on me, that’s always been the deal.’

  He shook his head, his jaw clenched. ‘Not this time.’

  The streetlights had flickered to life and the traffic was beginning to thin, things I noticed distractedly while I tried very hard not to cry. Being beside Dec, knowing the scab had been pulled off such a deep old wound of his, and not being allowed to help, was a physical pain in my gut.

  In that moment, a cowardly part of me wished I’d just accepted Dec’s apology the morning after the Allsopp party. I’d thought separating myself from him in the short term would make things better between us in the long run, but now it just felt like an abandonment.

  ‘Okay,’ I forced myself to say past the lump in my throat, ‘you don’t want to talk about your dad. So what do you want to talk about?’

  ‘Are you going out with Theodore fucking Leventis?’ The ugly words burst from him like I’d just prodded at the weak spot in a dam. I recoiled from them.

  ‘Going out with’, though, it was such playground wording. After so much time spent with Theo, the most grown-up person I think I’d ever met, Dec and I suddenly seemed really young.

  ‘No,’ I said quietly, knowing that telling him the whole truth would be kicking him while he was already down. ‘And his name is Theodore McKillop.’

  I hadn’t been able to stop myself adding that last bit and, for a second, Dec’s face went blank with surprise. Then he rallied.

  ‘So how come I keep coming into work and finding my desk covered in that picture of you at his sister’s sculpture thing?’

  ‘Because your workmates have nothing better to do with their lives?’ I suggested tiredly. Theo hadn’t mentioned the unveiling debacle to me since the day after it, but I hadn’t been stupid enough to think that that meant the whole thing had died down. Still, it didn’t feel great to have my suspicions confirmed.

  Dec hunched his shoulders, an old defensive trick he’d employed when he’d been the only kid over six feet tall in our Grade 10 class, and he sounded just as juvenile as he said, ‘If you’re not going out with Killer, what were you doing with him, then?’

  ‘At the unveiling?’ I shrugged. ‘I went because he needed someone to go with. Just like you needed someone for the Allsopp party.’

  ‘It’s nothing like that, we’re friends.’

  ‘And what makes you think that Theo and I aren’t?’

  ‘The fact that he’s an arsehole!’

  It was almost a bellow and there was a tense pause in the aftermath, my skin prickling and the air around us tingling with the poison he’d spat. A woman on the other side of the street looked over at us, clearly concerned, and I gathered myself enough to send her a tight, reassuring smile.

  The Gio of a few weeks ago would’ve dropped it, unwilling to upset Dec any further, but I’d grown a hard knot of protectiveness towards Theo since my last altercation with Dec and it wasn’t going to let me accept that.

  ‘I don’t think he is.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, you don’t know him like I do.’ Dec spoke darkly, knowingly, and I glared at him.

  ‘If there’s something you want to tell me, some deep, dark secret of Theo’s you think you know, I’ve got to tell you that I’ve had a gutful of hearing people accuse him of things he hasn’t done.’

  ‘What about things he has done?’ he retorted. ‘You okay hearing those?’

  I sighed. ‘Is this about him recommending that you be moved to another team?’

  That drew him up short. ‘He told you?’ he asked and I shook my head.

  ‘Theo didn’t.’ I hesitated, but it wasn’t as if Vanessa had sworn me to secrecy or anything, so I said, ‘Vanessa Allsopp did.’

  ‘Vanessa . . .?’ His strides lengthened, as if he wanted to just walk off and leave me, but then he spun back to demand, ‘Why the hell would Vanessa Allsopp be talking to you about me?’

  ‘I met her at that party and then–’ I broke off, my stomach somehow finding another couple of centimetres to sink as I saw the metal of a familiar sculpture glinting over Dec’s shoulder. ‘We exchanged numbers,’ I said hurriedly, hoping I could move us on before Dec realised where I’d unwittingl
y led him, ‘and we went out for lunch.’

  ‘Christ, Gio!’ He let out a strangled laugh. ‘What’s going on? You told me to give you space and I’ve been trying to, and meanwhile you’ve been befriending half my bloody workplace behind my back.’

  ‘Only Theo and Vanessa,’ I said, trying to placate him, ‘and it’s not been deliberate, it’s just . . . happened.’

  ‘So, what did your good friend Vanessa say about me?’

  His snarkiness made my eyes narrow, but at least he was looking at me and not behind him at Lena’s artwork.

  ‘Just as I said, that people knew that Theo had recommended you be moved to another team, but no-one knows why.’

  ‘That’s it?’ he asked sceptically.

  ‘Yes.’ I felt my face grow hot as he stared at me. He knew me too well to accept that that was all there was. ‘That and some stuff about people thinking we’re in some sort of love triangle, but I told her that’s not true.’

  He ran both hands through his dark hair, making the sides curl out and ruining the AHC-approved style. ‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered. ‘Everyone thinks there’s this big story, but you know what? I just made one mistake. That’s it. I forgot to include one document in a report. And I was the one who told him! When I realised what I’d done, I went and told him and the next thing I knew, Killer’d sent me to sit at the bloody kiddie table.’

  As some light was finally shed on the mystery I went very still, as if any movement would scare the truth away.

  ‘That “recommendation” thing is bullshit, by the way. Everyone knows Killer’s the one running that team. The old guys above him are just for show, to keep the traditionalists happy. Killer’s the one who got rid of me.’ He bent to pick up a small rock by his foot and then suddenly whirled to peg it at The Brother. It connected with a loud clang.

  So much for keeping our location from him.

  ‘And it’s not just me he screwed over, you know?’ Dec was marching towards the sculpture now and I followed him, almost having to run to keep up. ‘Everyone’s got a self-righteous Killer story. Did Vanessa tell you what he did to her?’