"Get her!" Kat shrieks, and before I know it, three girls are launching at me, arms wrapped around my shoulders, waist and stomach as if I'm some kind of cream puff and they're trying to squeeze out my delicious filling.
"Happy birthday, lady!" Ana laughs, and soon they all break into this horribly off-key rendition of "Happy Birthday”, all the while keeping me locked in this embrace.
"Happy birthday to you-oo-ooou!" Kat yodels the last line, and I cringe.
"All right, get back in the car." Ellie opens the back door.
"What?" I look toward the school building. One of the admin teachers walks past the school gates, her gaze trained suspiciously on us.
"Get in, quick!" Kat hisses. She opens the passenger door in the front and dives inside. Ana clambers into the back, and even though I am fairly sure we're about to get busted for skipping school with an eye-witness report, I slide back into the front seat. I still haven’t forgiven Kat, but I do it because Ellie and Ana are my friends, and they’ve gone to all this trouble to organise a surprise for my birthday.
And because, y'know, it's my car.
"Drive the stupid thing!" Kat plays a drumroll on my dash, and I click the engine over. “Kat, I’m not …” I shake my head.
“I just want to be here for you, Lia.” She bites her lip. “Just let me try and make it up.”
I suck in a deep breath. I am still hurt, but I’m not angry anymore. And right now, after the battle I had last night, it seems easier just to give in. "Where am I going?"
"The beach," Kat answers, and I pull out of the parking lot and head out to the main road, driving toward the ocean.
It's a beautiful spring day, so warm it could be summer, and I wind my window down, fresh air rolling through the car. A song about parties and good times blares on the radio, and soon we're all singing along at the top of our lungs.
"And that boy he's so sexy," we all sing in unison the chorus's catch line as we wait in traffic lights. A guy in the car next to us offers a wink, resulting in more uncontrollable laughter and even louder singing.
When we reach the beach, the girls run from the car and onto the sand, and even though we're all from such different walks of life, it's as if the four of us have been best friends since birth. The girls force me to do all the usual things you do when you turn eighteen—I go to the liquor store, and buy us all some alcohol. Then I head into a small general store and buy a lottery ticket and a scratchy, taking them back out to the three girls leaning against my car. I even buy a packet of cigarettes, despite the fact that none of us smoke.
With our stash of eighteen-only items, plus a feast of lollies, chocolate and hot chips, we make our way to a spot behind the sand dunes, right where Jase and I had our first-date picnic. It's secluded here, hidden from the main road, which is probably a good thing, because even though the other girls had the foresight to bring casual clothes to change into, I'm still in my school uniform, thanks to not exactly realising I wasn't going to be at school today.
We all sit down and begin eating our snacks and drinking our raspberry and vodka ready-to-drink beverages, hidden from the world. It feels nice to do this. It's carefree, and fun, and kind of ... normal.
"So how did you guys all get together?” I ask.
“I got Ana’s number when I came into The View,” Ellie says, a triumphant smile on her face. “And then when I saw Kat at your car the other week, I hung around again the next day till saw her and got her details.”
“I should have told her we’re not …” Kat starts. “I’m sorry again.”
Ellie shoots me a curious look, and I shrug it off, then turn back to Kat. “It’s … I don’t know that I can be really friends with you, you know?” I gaze out at sea. “But it doesn’t hurt as much as it did then. And when I look back on it … maybe it was for the best. Now.”
A seagull calls overhead and swoops down next to our blanket. Ellie throws it a chip, and suddenly about eighty more birds join him, and soon it's almost like some kind of horror movie.
"Why'd you do that?" Ana waves her arms to try and scare them away, well used to the seagull multiplication rule (one seagull + one hot chip X your tolerance level for noisy demanding birds = the amount of seagulls you will receive to the power of three).
"Hey, if I was a seagull, I'd want someone like—wait, hold up!" Ellie snaps her gaze back to me. "You just said now."
I bite my lip. I hadn't meant to tell them about Jase.
"Spill!" Kat demands, leaning forward, and even Ana pauses in her incessant seagull shooing to give her full attention to me.
"I ... don't know what you're talking about?" I screw up my nose, and am rewarded with a slap to the ribs from Kat and a scoff from Ellie.
I guess I could tell them about Jase. I mean, what harm would it do, right?
"So ... I met this guy."
"That part we figured," Ana deadpans, and I shoot her a look.
"His name is Jase. He's twenty-two—"
"Twenty-two!" Kat shrieks, her eyebrows dancing up and down.
"And he owns a bar. The new one, Class, just down the road." I gesture loosely to the track behind us.
"Oh, I've been meaning to go there," Ana says, a veteran of the bar scene, being the far older and wiser age of nineteen. "I hear it's really good."
"He's done an amazing job with it," I gush, pride swelling in my chest at what he's achieved in such a short time. "I'm um ... I kinda told him I was eighteen, and I'm working there on the weekends."
"Whoa!" Ana's eyes widen. "God, does he need any other staff? I'd be keen."
"How'd someone so young get the money to start a bar like that?" Ellie frowns.
"I ..." wonder why I haven't thought of that before. "I don't know."
"I mean, I'm sure he didn't rob a bank or anything." She laughs. "Just curious."
"Well, he has been to prison ..."
Silence falls over the group, and the caws from the eight remaining seagulls have never seemed louder.
"That's kinda hot," Kat says, stretching out her legs, the only one apparently unperturbed by this information.
But the questions are mounting in my mind, and I'm starting to wonder if Mr Honesty isn't perhaps withholding some truths of his own. How did he get the money to start the bar? And would it be easy getting a liquor licence with a criminal record?
"Does he have huge muscles? A prison tattoo? Is he anything at all like Wentworth Miller in that show about the prison, where the guy has a tattoo and tries to break out—"
"Prison Break?" Ana interrupts Kat, and she nods eagerly.
"Does he look anything like that?"
I manage a laugh, and the tension is broken. "He has an amazing body." I close my eyes, thinking how firm and sculpted his stomach is, the way those muscles felt pressed up against mine. My eyelids flip open. "And he is hot. But not Channing Tatum hot."
"No one is Channing Tatum hot," Ellie says seriously, and we all nod and agree, a comfortable silence falling over our group once more at this universal truth.
"Ladies, I think it's time," Kat says, and Ellie and Ana nod. "Lia, close your eyes for a sec, honey."
I do as instructed.
Seconds later, something cool and heavy slides around my wrist.
"Open!" Kat says, and I do.
Clasped around my wrist is a beautiful silver chain bracelet, a delicate eighteen charm dangling from it. It's just the right size for my small wrist, and tears well up in my eyes. "You guys ..." I choke the sob back.
"Don't!" Ellie presses her hand to her forehead. "You know I'm a sucker for a sympathy cry."
"It's rea—ea—lly sweet," I sob-laugh, and it is. I can't believe how nice these girls are, and how perfect my life is in this one moment. I've got friends who care about me. I'm finally eighteen—it's one less thing to lie about to Jase, and I can finally get that damn licence to serve alcohol. Maybe things at home still aren't perfect, but after my confrontation with Mum last night, I feel better. I feel as if I can han
dle almost anything.
"Happy birthday to you," Kat leads the song, and soon they all start singing again as Ellie produces a cupcake from her bag, placing it in front of me and using a lighter to set the candle atop of it to flame.
"Happy birthday, dear Li-a ... Happy birth—"
But I don't hear the rest of the song.
Because Jase just walked around the corner. I smile, then I stop, because oh my God, I am in school uniform. And it doesn't take a genius to realise that no nineteen-year-old is still in high school.
My heart leaps into my throat. His mouth rounds in an O of confusion.
And then he looks pissed.
CHAPTER THIRTYONE
I leap to my feet, but Jase stands stock still. This can't be happening. This cannot be real.
Not when everything was finally starting to look up.
"Jase," I call, but it's barely more than a whisper.
"That's him?" Ana asks, looking to Jase, then me, and back. "Shit."
"He's totally Channing hot," Kat says dreamily, and I shoot her a look. "Just sayin' ..."
My legs are frozen in place and I can't seem to move from the spot where I'm standing. How can he be here? How can I have been so careless?
But I know the answer. It's easy. Because for once, things were going right. In fact, better than right. Things were good, and I let my guard down, and now look what's happened.
I force myself to walk toward him, one step at a time. His arms are folded across his chest, and in this moment, he isn't Jase, my Jase who leaves sweet letters on my car windscreen. He's Jase who's been to prison, Jase who isn't to be messed with, Jase who hit his father. There's no sympathy on his face.
I stop in front of him and look into his eyes. They're burning with anger.
"Jase, I'm so sorry," I whisper, and it breaks him. Devastation flashes through those golden orbs, before they're quickly steeled and cold, angry Jase takes over.
"What the hell, Lia?"
"I ... I'm so sorry."
"You're in school." His gaze rakes up and down my body. "And it's your birthday?"
I nod, my lower lip trembling. Do not cry. I have to stay strong.
"Your eighteenth birthday?"
More nods.
"Shit!" he roars, and I flinch as his hands fly wide. "Why would you lie to me? After everything I told you?"
"I didn't mean to!" I protest. "You just kind of presumed—"
"But then I outright asked you, and you said yes." His voice breaks over the last word, and I can hear the pain in him, know the way his heart is breaking over my false truth. It doesn't make me feel better though. It makes me feel ten times worse.
"Did you think at all, Lia? You're working, under eighteen, obviously without an RSA, in my bar. What would you have done if the police came, huh?" he yells.
"I was going to go out the back, then disappear through the stock door ..."
"That's it, huh? That was your brilliant plan?"
"It sounded a lot better in my head."
"The fines I woulda been slapped with—I can't even ..." He runs his hands through his brown hair, the dappled afternoon light catching it through the trees.
"Well, what about you, huh?" I think back to my talk with the girls, desperate for something, for any leverage in this fight that I stand no chance of winning. "What about that guy I saw you yelling at the other day?"
Jase blinks, and for a moment he looks taken aback. “I wish you hadn’t seen that,” he says. “I’m not the licensee of the bar. Soraya’s brother is. That’s why I keep her around as a waitress, as a payback, plus I give her bro a retainer every week. He just came around to pressure me to date her, and I told him I’m not a whore.” He spits the word out, and I shiver. “Apparently, I’m just a sucker who fell for a liar instead.”
The words stab into me, and I find my fire once again. Because damn it, I didn’t mean to hurt him. And surely he’s done something wrong too. In desperation, I ask, “Well how about the bar, huh? How’d you get so much money to start one, and to pay this retainer?”
He raises his eyebrows, the expression on his face one of pure sarcasm. "Oh, really? You wanna know about that?"
All of a sudden, I don’t.
No.
"No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—"
"While I was in prison, doing time for hitting that bastard, he took it one step too far. Pushed her down a set of stairs." He steps closer to me, so close that I can see the sheen of tears that veil his eyes. "She died, Lia. He killed her. I started the bar with her life insurance cheque."
I open and close my mouth like a goldfish. "Jase ... Jase, I didn't know."
"Because we're new, Lia. We haven't talked about everything yet. That's why I hadn't told you about the bar stuff." He sighs, and looks out to the lake.
"I never meant to hurt you," I say, and my voice shakes. "I just ... I needed that job so badly. I needed to save the rest of the cash so I could get away. I didn't expect to fall in love. I didn't expect us."
"And what about us?" His voice is lower now, and he takes a step closer. "I trusted you."
"And I trust you—"
"I thought we had something special."
"We do." A tear snakes its way down my cheek as I place my hands on his chest. He doesn't push me away, but he doesn't pull me close, either.
"I thought I was falling in love with you."
My breath hitches in my throat at the painfully beautiful words I didn't realise I was longing to hear. The man I love felt the same. It's the most exquisite torture. It tears me apart.
"I'm falling in love with you," I say on a sob, and I look up into his eyes for any sign of hope, for any sign of a future for us. I zero in on his lips, those plump, kissable lips, and lean toward them, hoping I can make it right. His hands go to cover mine, and for one second, one split second I think it's all going to be okay, and that he's going to forgive me for this.
Then he drags my hands from his shirt, letting them go when they fall loosely by my sides.
"Goodbye, Lia." He turns and walks back the way he came.
My knees weaken, and I crumble to a heap on the ground. The fall hurts, and the dirt and rocks smart against my knees, but I don't care, because I just lost the best thing I have, and I don't know how to get it back.
I sob as he walks further and further away, and just as he rounds the corner that will take him out of sight, he calls out, without turning around.
"Happy birthday."
And then I break.
***
Tears rain from my eyes like it's a thunderstorm. They're so heavy, so thick I can't see. My chest heaves with emotion and I shake, my whole body shakes and stings and ravages and aches with this raw need for him.
"I love him," I cry, just as I feel an arm around my shoulders.
"It's okay."
"Hey, we're so sorry, babe."
After that, I don't hear them anymore—all I hear is the throb of my heartache and those words from his lips. He'd thought he was falling in love with me ... thought.
And now he never will.
And I only have myself to blame.
I cry harder, and my throat aches as the girls stand me up and guide me back to the car. I slide into the back seat and one of them even does my seat belt up as they drive me home.
Ellie gets out of the car and walks me to the door, unlocking it for me when my fingers just won't work. "Do you want me to stay?"
"No. Thanks, but no."
He was the one good thing.
The house is quiet, and for once I'm thankful that Mum's obviously with Smith because right now, I just need to be alone with my tears and my sorrow and my anger at myself for being so damn stupid. Why hadn't I just told him the truth?
But no amount of could haves or what ifs will bring him back.
No matter how much I want it to.
Step number five: Bleed in private
I crawl under the covers of my bed, still in my uniform, and cry myself to
sleep, the taste of raspberry still ghosted on my lips.
CHAPTER THIRTYTWO
I lie on my bed, throwing a tennis ball up at the ceiling and then snapping it close to my chest. It's a droll, mindless activity. It's exactly what I need right now.
I still can't believe I ruined things with Jase. And while there's a little part of me thinking well, it was going to end when you moved to Melbourne anyway, I almost don't know that it's true. Because maybe we could have made long distance work. Maybe he could have moved.
Maybe I could have found a way to stay.
I just know that losing him is a million times worse than losing Duke ever was. This pain is physical, a hollow ache in the pit of my stomach. I hunger for him like a woman starved, and we've only been apart for six hours.
"Lia! Come downstairs, baby," Mum calls from the stairwell, and I press my eyes shut. All I want to do is kind of feel sorry for myself, but I know that won't achieve anything.
"C'mon, Lia," I mutter, pulling myself up into a sit. "You're a doer. And you still have Melbourne."
The words fall flat. I don't even cross the day off on the back of my door.
Instead, I stand and thump my way downstairs, where Mum and Smith are chatting away in the kitchen. Mum's stirring a pot of something that actually smells quite good, and while Smith has a glass of wine in his hand, I think that's water in the glass next to Mum at the stove.
Then again, it could be straight vodka.
With her, it's hard to tell.
"Honey, you look terrible." Mum drops the spoon in the pot and walks over, placing her hand on my shoulder. "What's wrong?"
"I don't want to talk about it." The words stick in my throat, coming out croaky and just all wrong sounding.
"No one's hurt my birthday girl, have they?" Smith smiles, but I still cringe at his use of the word my.
Be nice, Lia. He's lost someone too.
I shake my head. "No." Pause. "Well, they have, but I deserved it."
"Oh baby, well I have two birthday surprises that are gonna cheer you right up." Mum grins. "But first, I need you to go have a shower, put something nice on. You don't want to be wearing that ol' uniform at your birthday dinner."
It's then I notice what they're wearing. Smith has a button-down shirt on, and Mum's in one of her summer party dresses. She's even got a smear of lipstick on, and once more I feel like an ingrate for not even noticing how much effort they were going to for me.
How To Save A Life (Emerald Cove #1) Page 22
