A few hours earlier I'd thought leaving my car parked at my residential hall was a good idea; that going to complete a deed on foot would be a chance to get some fresh air and essentially 'walk off' the constriction in my chest. It was a bravado I was seriously regretting now. I'd barely managed to hold it together during the two hours I'd spent directing a first year on the best way to decorate for his 'Christmas in July' party, only my pride and his enthusiasm for his project keeping me going. Now, with no-one but myself needing my help, I wasn't doing so well.
My legs were wobbly beneath me, my forehead prickled with sweat, despite the temperature being in the single figures, and a chilling fear that I wouldn't even be able to make it back to my room was starting to sink deep into my bones. Imagining the humiliation I'd experience if I fainted out in the rain and was discovered by some random, however, not to mention what Fletch would say if he found out, kept me plodding one foot in front of the other.
After what felt like several hours of grim trudging, my building came into view and I was finally able to haul myself in out of the rain. I usually eschewed the lift in favour of the stairs, but there was no chance of that today, despite the askance looks I had to ignore from the other students who ended up sharing the carriage with my dripping self.
By the time I got to my room there was nothing left in me to undress, and I crashed down on my mattress just as I was; sodden clothes, saturated hair and all.
I wouldn't have said what came next was sleep exactly, it was more that I closed my eyes and tried to think of something other than the fact that even my fingernails felt like they'd started to throb.
Stuck in this strange conscious unconsciousness, I couldn't have said how much time passed, but it seemed like a couple of hours at least before a sharp knock on the door roused me. From habit developed over almost three years of automatically responding when people summoned me, I forced myself upright. Even after my so-called 'rest', this simple move took enough out of me that I decided to stay seated on the bed and call out, "It's open," rather than attempt to answer the door myself.
My voice had been so thready I wasn't sure I'd been heard, but then the handle turned and the tiniest thrill cut through my achy fog as Fletch was revealed. He looked wary, but that was nothing new; wariness seemed to be his expression of choice recently, around me anyway.
Things between us had been...off since Donny's memorial, or more specifically, since the day after. Perhaps he thought I didn't see the way he seemed to hesitate before every move towards me, or how his gaze had started to roam over me as if searching for something when I spoke, but I did. I was no Merry when it came to knowing what was going on with other people, but if there was one person I could read it was Fletch, and to put it succinctly, he'd been doing a lot of jaw clenching around me recently.
That jaw should've been the prompt to cut it off with him, and I knew it. The whole screw-buddy thing had become skewed somewhere along the line, not at all the simple arrangement it was supposed to be. The hypothesis of submitting to time together had been that we would get each other out of our systems, but I knew I was being drawn in deeper to whatever it was we were as time went on, not being repelled out of it. This was clear in my visceral response to his presence in front of me; his short hair glistening with drops of rain, his t-shirt, shorts and thongs combo not quite as off-putting as once it had been.
"Hey," I croaked, coming back to myself and quickly rubbing at my eyes to remove the crust that had formed while I'd tried to sleep. "What are you doing here?"
"You told me to come," he replied and, searching through the fuzziness in my brain, I found that that was right. I'd texted him that morning under the optimistic impression that I'd be feeling better by the time the evening rolled around.
"Right." It was my turn to utilise the clenched jaw thing as I realised my teeth were chattering and had to grit them together to try and control it. When he looked at me strangely, I pushed myself to my feet and stepped forward unsteadily to distract him with a kiss, only for him to step back.
"You look a state," he said and the nausea that had been pulsing in my stomach for the past couple of days swelled against the sides of my throat unpleasantly at his flat assessment.
"Cheers," I said sarcastically, trying to make my flinch at his rejection seem more like a calculated decision to move back. "Stop looking at me like that," I added as the skin between his eyes puckered into a frown. "You must have seen someone with a cold before."
His eyes widened slightly. "Oh, it is a cold now, is it?" He asked pointedly. "Because I could've sworn you've spent the past week telling everyone that you're perfectly healthy."
The prickly heat in my cheeks intensified. I'd been a brat about being sick, I knew it, but being ill had just been too much on top of everything else. Fletch had already copped an eyeful of what I was like in an emotionally pathetic mess, I hadn't been too keen on him seeing me in a snottily pathetic mess as well.
I'd thought that if I kept our interactions brief over the past week I'd get away with it, but it was obvious I hadn't. This failure was only reinforced as I tried to reply and was instead wracked by a rib-cracking cough. A nasty bubbling sound rippled from my chest and dots swam before my eyes as getting in enough air became more than difficult, it became impossible.
"Hey." Fletch's hand closed around my elbow and he guided me back to my bed, crouching before me as I pressed a hand against my chest and continued to convulse in an attempt to try and clear the feeling that I was choking.
"This isn't a cold, babe," he muttered when the attack had subsided somewhat. "We're way beyond that. Have you been to a doctor?"
I was momentarily thrown by the way he'd said 'we're' rather than 'you're', and hid the conflict this stirred up in me behind some further sarcasm. "Yes, Mum," I gasped, still catching my breath. "And I make sure to floss every night too."
"So that's a no?" He asked heavily.
"You don't go to the doctor for a cold," I said stubbornly, but I seemed to have lost his attention, he was now focused on the hand still cupping my arm, some of the fabric from my sleeve trapped between his fingers.
"Your clothes are wet," he said blankly.
"Yeah, well," I shrugged, "it's raining."
"Not in here it isn't. Have you...were you out in that?" He nodded towards my window and I turned my stiff neck with difficulty and saw that rain was still lashing against the glass; the usually clear view nothing but a grey ripple.
"Clearly," I grimaced.
"Why the hell were you-" he stopped suddenly and shook his head. "You were on a deed, weren't you?" He scoffed at himself. "What am I saying? You're barely able to breathe and it's pouring with rain, of course you were on a deed." He got to his feet and crossed to the other side of the room, scrubbing a hand across his short hair agitatedly.
I tried to be glad that he'd dropped the concerned act and given me space, but I couldn't. It was like his hand on my arm had kick-started my breathing again, his proximity enough to make me forget my lungs were having trouble expanding, and now...
"What's your problem?" I asked as I surreptitiously rested a hand behind me on the mattress to steady myself.
"My problem?" Fletch demanded incredulously, swinging back round to glare at me. "I'm not the one damn near killing myself just to help some bloody stranger pick the right shade of lipstick, or whatever the hell you were doing."
My defences already shot to pieces, his words hit me like a sharp slap to the face and I felt my eyes start to sting.
"Don't be so dramatic," I snapped, the sick feeling of coils in my stomach writhing as I realised I'd stolen one of my dad's lines. "I was helping someone out, not attempting suicide."
"My mistake, obviously you've been taking real good care of yourself," he bit back and my fingers clenched into the bedclothes, blindsided by how quickly the conversation had escalated.
"God, so I walked through the rain, so what?" I asked. "What does it matter?" My exasperation fell flat as
my voice broke on the last word and I watched, my heart hammering, as something definite, but entirely undefinable shifted in Fletch's gaze on me.
There was a long, strained pause, and when he spoke again, it was in an entirely different tone. "It matters because you matter," he said quietly, "in general and to me specifically, so it'd be nice if you'd look after yourself for a change."
Something other than disease made my chest clench and I had to blink several times to force back the tears that were welling in my eyes. Why didn't he get it? I didn't want to matter.
"You think I matter?" I asked bitterly. "And when did this blinding bit of insight come to you? When I started having sex with you? Because it really didn't seem like I mattered to you when you turned up and accused me of selling drugs to Saskia, or anytime in the last couple of years when you've taken every chance you got to rock up and have a go at me."
I thought I heard him swear under his breath and there was a distinctly Canadian burr in his voice as he said gruffly, "I've told you, it's never been about having a go."
If it hadn't felt like I had two bricks shoved up my nostrils, I would've snorted in disbelief. "No?"
He leant back against my door and shoved his hands into the pockets of his shorts, saying uncomfortably, "Give it a rest, would you? Now's not really the time to get into this, is it?"
Despite his words, he sounded resigned. He knew me too well to think I'd back down, especially when I so clearly needed something to distract us both from my laboured breathing.
"No, let's get into it," I said hoarsely. "Because if it hasn't been about giving me heaps for your own amusement, what has it been about? What did you want from me?"
I threw out this last, dangerous question as a last resort as I knew I was about to be hit by another coughing fit. I'd been trying to repress the urge, but it was no good and I was bowed forward by the force of the almost seal-like barks that ripped through me. I recovered myself as quickly as I could, but I'd missed Fletch's initial reaction to my question and, when I finally was able to cross my watery eyes back to him, his shields were firmly in place.
"You know what I wanted," he said dispassionately. "I wanted, I want, you to see that you don't owe anybody anything. That's it."
I opened my mouth to throw back another snarky remark, but he got in first. "Knock it off, Lara," he said tiredly. "I'm sick of going round in circles with this. You heard Salida the other week, what she said about you not being any good the night that Donny...when I cheated on her, I mean, she was just angry. You can't base your whole life on-"
I shot to my feet, swaying slightly, any chance of a dismissive come-back evaporating instantly. "Hang on, you think I needed Salida to tell me that I'm not any good? Are you kidding me?"
How could he, after everything, still be so badly missing the point? Fletch knew me, he'd seen all the crap I'd pulled since age 14, so why was he making it sound like it had all begun the night Donny died?
"Your ex might've been the first to...vocalise it," I continued haltingly, anger and infection warring with each other as I tried to speak, "but that doesn't mean I didn't already know what I am. Just stop with the nice guy act for a second, Fletch, and admit it. My deeds are the only thing that stop me from being just a common, garden variety bitch; the girl who grew up to be just like her daddy."
I'd said too much and stopped abruptly, my chest heaving. Twisting at the cotton sleeves of my top, the stupid, damp, betraying sleeves, I pulled them over my fingers and scrunched them tight. I was pulling the material irrevocably out of shape, a nice match for what Fletch was doing to me; what he'd always done to me.
A few seconds of ringing silence passed and then, when I finally built up the courage to look back over at Fletch, I saw that my words hadn't had the desired effect at all. Rather than understanding, the expression on his face seemed to be veering dangerously close to pity.
"There's nothing common about you, babe," he said carefully when he saw me looking at him. "And that you worry about being like your dad is exactly why you're nothing like him. If you'd stop hiding behind that stupid folder," he gestured dismissively towards where Big Blue peeked out from the top of my bag lying on the floor, "you'd probably have figured that out years ago."
He was still slouched against the door, but the concentration he was putting into maintaining such a relaxed pose was obvious. Still, he was one up on me; I doubt I could've maintained a relaxed pose at that point if I'd been sedated.
"And that's really how you see it, isn't it? That it's all about what's in Big Blue?" I went to push my hair back over my shoulder, but my fingers became tangled in the damp knots and I ended up just yanking at it painfully. "You can blame the things you don't like about me on my deeds and then if I stop doing them then, what? I'm cured? God, has everything always been this easy for you?"
I knew as soon as the words left my mouth that they weren't right and wished I could stuff them back down my raw throat. But it was too late. Fletch straightened suddenly, all traces of pity gone as he slammed a fist back against the door with a loud bang that made me jump.
"My high school years were all about my mate dying, my family falling apart and the girl I liked sleeping with some other guy," he said fiercely, looking as if he was going to start towards me, then changing his mind and staying planted in place. "So no, Lara, it hasn't always been easy for me."
"You think you were the only one who had things to deal with after Donny died?" He continued harshly, talking now in a way that made me realise how much he'd been holding himself back up 'til then. "You think I didn't want to create some strategy to block out all the crap like you did? You wanna talk easy? You made your own reality that you got to hide behind, but I was the one still out in the real world. I was the one who had to deal with Brock Baines mouthing off about how he’d been your first. I was the one who apologised to Salida, and made my peace with Donny, and I was the one who had to watch you-"
"Your good deeds don't atone for anything, by the way," he changed tack abruptly, "because you know what? They're totally on your terms. You still have all the control and the 'problems' people come to you with aren't real problems. It's cardboard, stupid stuff that can easily be fixed because we both know you're too chicken-shit to face actual problems."
I wanted to disagree, to fight back, but I couldn't. I could only stand there and feel his words pinball into all my carefully constructed barriers, everything that made up the reality he'd been so envious of, and shattering them.
With no finesse left available to me to object to his assessment, all I could do was choke out the truth that I'd suddenly realised was probably the one thing he'd never figured out about me.
"My deeds are the only thing that make me feel any good."
For a split second that drew him up short and his previously defiant expression went blank with surprise. In the next moment, however, his brows pulled together again and, his voice incredibly, painfully quiet, he asked, "The only thing, huh?"
I let out a little hiccoughing sob, a wretched noise that came from somewhere I didn't even know I had, and sank back down onto my bed. I was a mess; suddenly awash with tears and mucus as the cold merged with my distress so I didn't know which was which.
Through the misty film that blurred my vision, I saw Fletch's shoulders sag and then he reached out to snag some tissues from the box on my dressing table. Walking forward, he pressed them into my hand, his fingers brushing up my arm and lingering at my shoulder for a moment.
"Lara, just…" he hesitated in both his words and touch, and then withdrew, finishing, "...just take care of yourself, yeah?"
When I didn't, couldn't, respond, he sighed and walked back across to the door. Pausing just before he exited, he added, "Consider that a deed request. Maybe if you put it in Big Blue it actually has a chance of happening."
And then he was gone, the door clicking softly behind him.
For a long time I just sat there, shaking slightly, staring at the spot I'd last seen h
im. In my head I was yelling; screaming and howling and demanding that Fletch come back. It didn't do any good, but then why would it? I only knew of one way to really deal with the feeling that my world was crashing around my ears.
Sliding off the bed to the floor, I made a grab for the strap of my bag, pulling it towards me and extracting my phone. Ridiculously exhausted even by this small bit of exertion, I sagged back against the bed-frame and accessed my saved voicemail messages completely by rote.
Where are you? Where...? God, he's died, Lara, he's gone and I was the only one here with him. He would've wanted...Come home, Lara. Now.
Just one listen of my mum's message from the night Donny had died was supposed to fix me, to kick me back to the surface and force me to get on with things...but it didn't seem to be working this time.
I tried again, and again, but it was no good. My mum's voice coming through the speaker sounded too tinny and unreal. She was just saying words. Words that I'd heard so many times before that they'd lost their meaning. But that couldn't be right. It wasn't just words; it was her telling me that my brother was dead and that I'd left her alone to deal with it. It was the supreme betrayal of the only person I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I loved. It was the defining moment of my life and...it wasn't what it used to be.
Self-pity had turned out not to be the spectacular hiding place it had always been before.
This last thought coincided with a fresh bout of coughing and I was almost glad to give over to the demands of the bacteria I could just about feel crawling through me; a relief to submit to something beyond my control. I wouldn't have minded the tears I'd forced away to come back as well, to cry in big howling wails that would show all my frustration and annoyance at myself, but they seemed beyond me now. All I was left with were the coughs that tore through me, without seeming to go any way towards clearing whatever it was my body was trying so hard to expel.
The Do-Gooder Page 26
