This Is Now

by Maggie Gilbert

  So I was well-motivated to keep improving and I was just tackling the next section in my text book when Michelle marched into my bedroom, and I let her talk me into coming out, just for a bit. Standing at the table looking at all the not-food, shivering with a beer I didn’t really want in my hand, I realised I was absolutely starving and the not-food was better than no food. I scooped up a handful of corn chips, and scoffed those, and was trying to decide between jelly babies and BBQ rice crackers when Michelle sidled up to me.

  ‘My brother’s just arrived. With Anna.’

  I picked out some red and yellow jelly babies and tossed those down after the corn chips. Mmm, not too bad. I glanced at Michelle.

  ‘Yeah, and?’ I decided I may as well try the rice crackers too, and started munching on some of those. I put the beer down on the table and grabbed some more of the corn chips. Cheesy ones. Good.

  ‘I thought you might mind,’ Michelle said.

  ‘Why would I?’

  ‘But aren’t you and Jay back on? After the other night I thought —’

  ‘Shh, Jesus,’ I said, quickly looking around, but I couldn’t see Anna or Jay. Maybe they were still inside.

  ‘Why are you shushing me?’ Michelle said. Without looking, she grabbed a few jelly beans and popped them in her mouth. I shuddered. Ugh, she might have got black ones. Gross.

  ‘I don’t want Anna to know I was with Jay.’

  Michelle shrugged, and started foraging some more. ‘She’s going to find out sooner or later.’

  ‘Maybe not. People don’t really talk to her.’

  ‘True.’

  I chewed up the last of the rice crackers and swallowed them, and wished for a drink of something non-alcoholic. I was hungry and thirsty, and I didn’t want jelly babies or crackers or beer. I wanted a nice steak sandwich or a pie and chips, or maybe some soup and some crusty bread rolls. I was going to start drooling in a minute. I wished I was rostered on at work, so I could get a feed. It had seemed tragic and typical that the one Saturday night I was rostered off Sebastien was in Melbourne, but it was even suckier now that I was out here freezing my butt off and starving. There was bugger all in the cupboards at home. I could always get the bus over, and just roll up at work, they might need an extra hand, and I could get something to eat at cost at the very least, and if there were leftovers that had to be tossed out, I could score those for free.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jess. I thought you two were back together.’

  I shrugged and went after more jelly babies, still trying to make up my mind whether I could be bothered bussing it in and back. If I didn’t lay off the lollies soon though, I was going to have such a sugar crash later.

  ‘We’re not.’

  ‘This could be awkward, then.’

  ‘Why? It’s not like I didn’t know he was still with Anna.’ The familiar guilt rose, and I shoved it back down. I couldn’t take back sleeping with Jay (er, twice) while he was seeing Anna, but I had made the decision not to do it again. So far I had even stuck to it, although I’d prefer to avoid temptation. Hence, no bourbon tonight.

  ‘No, but I didn’t.’ Michelle glanced towards the house and I looked hard at her.

  ‘Did you invite me here for Jay?’

  ‘No! Yes. Well, not exactly. He didn’t ask me to or anything, but he said he was coming here and he asked if I’d seen you lately, and, well, you know.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. I did know. She’d thought she’d do all of us a favour and get us into the same place at the same time so we could fast forward back together. I’d probably never have actually met Michelle, if I hadn’t ever gone out with Jay, because she hung out with a different group in the neighbourhood than my brothers and I did, but despite the age difference, we got along. We were sort of friends, even. I realised I missed her a lot more than I missed Jay. Again with the guilt, after that thought.

  ‘Hey sis. Hey darlin’,’ Jay appeared out of the darkness and kissed his sister and then me. I hoped the dim lighting hid both the difference in the way he kissed me (at least I hoped he didn’t slip Michelle any tongue!) and the way my skin burned when he let me go. I looked past him and saw Anna skid over the bottom step and almost go flat on her arse, and as she wobbled down the path towards us I realised she was absolutely hammered.

  ‘Had a few already?’ Michelle said, following my gaze.

  Jay grinned and shrugged. ‘Can’t keep up, is all.’

  ‘Jay,’ Anna called, holding her hand up to shield her eyes from the flood lights shining across the yard. A few people turned to glance at her briefly, then towards us with a great deal more interest. They might not tell Anna anything they thought she didn’t need to know, but they would just love it if Anna got jealous and started a cat fight.

  I wasn’t going to stick around for that. I didn’t know how much Anna knew about me seeing Sebastien, but I was aware she could easily say something to Jay without even realising I’d rather she didn’t. Or if she did know, and she was jealous, she could say it on purpose. How had I let my life get so damn complicated?

  ‘Well, I’m off,’ I said.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Jay asked me, and I turned a little towards him, wondering at the tone of his voice. Did he know something? Maybe I was just being paranoid?

  ‘Called in to work,’ I said, following the first rule of lying: stick as close to the truth as possible.

  ‘How are you getting there?’

  ‘Bus.’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘It’s not even eight o’clock, Dad.’

  ‘Hey! There you are!’ Anna half fell into Jay, and he put his arm around her to hold her up. It made me feel weird, to see him do that, and I hadn’t expected that.

  ‘I better go,’ I said, dusting corn chip crumbs off my hands.

  ‘No! Just got here! Keep missing you,’ Anna muttered, and my hair just about stood on end. Jay and Michelle wouldn’t understand what she was on about, they’d think she just meant she hadn’t seen me lately, but I knew she meant something different. I didn’t like to still be at Sebastien’s when Anna got home, so I’d been playing that ‘oh, sorry I just missed you’ game. If I didn’t get out of here quick it was going to bite me on the arse.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Must go to the loo.’ And I belted off before Anna could get the idea to come with me. Maybe it was just because I hadn’t had many female friends, but I didn’t get that whole go to the loo in a pack mentality thing. When I went into the bathroom to do the necessary, I sure didn’t want company.

  I took my time about it, though, detouring into the kitchen to get a drink of water and say hi to Dani and Jeff, whose house it was. I made the appropriate noises about how well the house was looking (it was) and how much I loved their plans for an extension (I didn’t, it was going to unbalance the house) and drank another glass of water. Then when I was heading back out I bumped into one of my brother Brian’s ex-girlfriends, who was just stopping in to score some speed off my other brother, Troy, before she headed East side to go clubbing. I mentioned I had to go into work and she offered me a lift, as I’d hoped she would. Because she was driving into the city she hadn’t had anything to drink, so at least I knew I would be as safe in her car as I would be in any car. She hadn’t found Troy yet, which left me a bit of time to go outside and say goodbye to Michelle.

  I was tempted to skip it, and just send her a text, but that seemed pretty weak, considering Michelle was already worried she’d overstepped. So I headed out the back.

  As soon as I set foot outside I wished I hadn’t, but under the full glare of the back floodlight it would be pretty obvious if I turned tail and ran. Over by the fires, and much to the entertainment of most people there, Anna and Jay were having a screaming argument. Well, Anna was screaming; Jay was too cool for that. He was standing with his arms folded across his chest, and his face was as locked up tight as a bank-safe. I knew that look.

  I found Michelle not far from where I’d left her, standing with one
of the groups of spectators. The others all stared hard at me to see how I was taking it, and I gave them all a big fat so-what glare back.

  ‘Kylie Birnie’s giving me a lift into the city, so I’ll be off soon,’ I murmured to Michelle. She looked for a minute as though she was going to argue, and then she shook it off, probably remembering that I’d said I was going in to work. Michelle had worked at three different hairdressers while she saved enough to get started on her own, and she worked killing hours, still. She was one of the few people I knew with a work ethic, and she’d be the last person to throw off at me for skipping a party after a call in from work. I felt a bit bad about fibbing to her, but it was all in a good cause. My stomach gurgled, not happy with jelly babies and chips.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked Michelle, just to show I wasn’t mad at her.

  ‘Anna’s drunk and weepy and clingy.’

  ‘Jeez, three strikes.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  We both watched as the confrontation escalated, as Anna changed from yelling to wailing, hanging off Jay and sobbing that she loved him.

  I winced. It wasn’t that Jay minded drunk, he didn’t, but I’d never seen him out of control on drink or drugs or anything, and he didn’t have much tolerance for that kind of excess in others. He’d left a string of broken hearts behind him and every now and then one of them would get drunk and confront him and I knew he hated it. I’d sworn to myself that I’d never be one of them.

  But Anna hadn’t been around long enough to know all that, and if she kept this up, she’d be dumped on her arse before she even had a clue she’d done something wrong. I wondered if I should do something. It was in my best interest to keep them together, for a number of reasons.

  As Michelle and I and half a dozen others watched, I at least saw the moment when Anna either crossed some kind of line, or Jay had just simply had enough. He peeled her hands off him, and pushed her away. Snarling at her to stay away from him until she’d woken up to herself, Jay swung away from Anna and melted into the darkness.

  Anna stood with her face in her hands for a moment, and then went to go after him. She tangled her feet together and went down in a heap.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Michelle said, sounding equal parts sorry for Anna and disgusted by her.

  ‘Come on Chelle, give me a hand with her, will you?’ I said, heading towards Anna. If we could put her back together again and maybe get her some food or some coffee, she might be able to maintain some tiny shred of her dignity.

  ‘He-he-he d-d-doesn’t l-l-l,’ Anna hiccupped, as we approached.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, heard it all before,’ Michelle said, as we bent to grab an arm each, and I snorted back a horrified laugh.

  ‘Up you get,’ Michelle added, and we got Anna up, almost losing her straight onto her face again as we underestimated both her state of drunkenness and how much she weighed. ‘She’s sturdy, isn’t she?’ Michelle said, and dusted grass off Anna’s jeans as I struggled to hold Anna steady. ‘The whole family are built like it,’ I agreed and peered down at Anna’s feet. Her ankles flopped back and forth on her wobbly high heels. Those had to go, or she was going to end up with more than a hangover and a bad case of embarrassed morning-afters. I looked around for Anna’s bag, knowing she nearly always had ballet flats rolled up in there, and saw it in the grass not far away.

  ‘Hold her a minute,’ I said, and went to get the bag. I felt around gingerly and sure enough, found the balled up flats down the bottom.

  Anna had calmed down enough by then to drape her arm across my back and try to steady herself while I changed her shoes. I hoped she wouldn’t puke down my back before I could get it done, but luckily she was still at the blubbering stage rather than the hiccupping and retching phase of the evening. Stuffing her heels into her bag and doing the zip up, I threaded the strap over Anna’s shoulder and got her arm through it so it was slung securely across her body. She might puke on that before the night was done, but hopefully now she wouldn’t lose it.

  Her face was a disaster, streaked with tears and makeup and other, er, stuff I didn’t want to look at too closely.

  ‘Yeah, she’s a mess,’ Michelle sighed. ‘I’ll walk her a bit if you can go and get a face towel and wet it.’

  ‘OK.’

  I gladly left Anna with Michelle and went inside. I eventually found the linen cupboard, totally not where I’d put one in a house with this layout, grabbed out a washer and went into the bathroom to soak it. I felt sorry for Anna, and embarrassed for her. I wondered whether to say anything, about maybe playing it cool where Jay was concerned, but I thought better of it. I knew I had good intentions, at least I was pretty sure I did, but Anna had no way of knowing that. I didn’t really want to attract her attention to any relationship I had with Jay, and it was just really a bad idea all over.

  ‘Jess,’ Jay said behind me, and if I hadn’t recognised his voice straight away I think I would have jumped into the sink.

  ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that,’ I said, wringing out the facecloth. ‘I could have had a heart attack.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Michelle sent me to get something to clean up Anna with.’

  ‘She sick?’

  ‘No, just messy. What’s she been into tonight?’

  ‘You name it. Wine at the pub, couple of cones over at Smithy’s, some Jack.’

  ‘She’s hammered.’

  Jay sighed. ‘Don’t I know it.’ He looked at me. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Me? I’m fine. I only had a couple mouthfuls of beer. Just not in the mood.’

  ‘Want to get out of here?’

  ‘I’m going in to work.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  I swallowed. ‘I couldn’t go with you anyway, Jay.’

  ‘Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?’

  ‘Either. Both. We’re broken up.’

  ‘So you keep saying.’ He stepped into the bathroom, his boots loud on the tiles, and put his hands on my hips. ‘I love you Jess. Doesn’t that matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters. But it doesn’t make me love you back.’ Pain seared me, and I felt like I’d stabbed my own heart when those words came out. I hadn’t meant to say that. I hadn’t even known I was thinking it.

  ‘You don’t love me.’ He didn’t sound like he believed it, but it wasn’t exactly a question.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said, with more honesty than sense. Or kindness. God, please, help me do better than that. Jay deserved better than that.

  Jay’s hands on my hips rocked me back and forth, gently, for a long moment while he looked into my eyes. I struggled to find the right words and when I couldn’t, I forced myself not to look away, and not to wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his chest. My heart ached so bad whenever I looked into his eyes, when I thought about him, when I was with him, when I wasn’t. But I don’t know if that was love, or just habit. When I looked at him, I didn’t know, and that had already broken my heart. More than once.

  ‘That’s still not a no,’ he said softly, and I saw his eyes change, and knew he was going to kiss me. I didn’t trust myself not to kiss him back, despite Anna crying outside, despite Sebastien playing at his concert in Melbourne. I didn’t know what Sebastien wanted from me, if we were going out, or what, but that didn’t matter, and it didn’t change anything. Something was going on and I didn’t want to be that girl, the kind of girl going with two guys at once. Until I knew for sure that nothing was happening with Sebastien, I couldn’t, shouldn’t let Jay get under my skin. Or my clothing.

  ‘Here,’ I said, shoving the wet cloth at him. He put his hands up reflexively and closed his fingers around it.

  ‘Take this,’ I said, ‘and go outside and help your sister with Anna. Anna loves you, for sure. And she can be with you.’

  Taking advantage of Jay’s surprise at me shoving a dripping towel into his hands, I squeezed past him and made my escape out of the one interesting design feature the bathroom did have
, which was two different doors, one leading into the hall, and one into the bedroom. I moved quickly through the bedroom, pretty sure there was someone (two someones, minimum, by the sound of it) in the bed, let myself out and shut the door quietly, and then went to find Kylie Birnie, hoping she hadn’t left already. This time, I was going with my feeling that I should just say goodbye to Michelle with a text.

  Chapter 17

  ‘Oh my God, that should be illegal,’ I said, and licked the last of the tiramisu from my spoon. I dropped the plastic spoon into the Styrofoam container I’d brought back from the restaurant, and got up from my bed to chuck the whole lot in the bin. They hadn’t really needed any help at the restaurant, but I’d made myself a chicken burger for cost price (food! Yum!) then pitched in with the washing up and so the chef gave me the last piece of the cake. It might have been in the cake cabinet for a couple of days, but it still tasted divine to me.

  I was so full, I practically waddled back to the bed, climbed on to it again and snuggled my feet back under the doona. I picked up the book I’d been reading, an awesome story set in a future where people didn’t get to choose what they did, they were just born into a particular way of life. And I thought I had it hard.

  I was happily digesting cake and sliding down into the world of the story when my phone beeped. I thought about ignoring it, but my reading had already been interrupted, so I may as well see who it was. Maybe Michelle, answering my earlier text. I hadn’t heard anything back from her and I didn’t know whether that meant anything or not.

  It wasn’t Michelle, it was Sebastien. U still up?