Her Favorite Rival

by Sarah Mayberry

  Unusual for her. But maybe she had a meeting first thing.

  Fifteen minutes later, a light flicked on on the other side of the office.

  Audrey.

  His heart rate kicked up as he contemplated going to speak to her.

  Probably a bad idea, given that her mere presence in the building was enough to make him hard. He gave his crotch a rueful glance.

  Thanks for helping me out, buddy.

  It was a grim day, the empty desks in the department serving as a powerful reminder of yesterday’s carnage. At midday the rumor went around that the first of the marketing department staff had been let go. By the end of the day, there were eight empty desks there, too. It certainly helped put unrequited lust into perspective.

  He left work with a heavy briefcase, but instead of heading straight home he traveled through the city and into Footscray. He had a standing arrangement to catch up with his mother once a month, and tonight was the night. She probably wouldn’t register the loss if he failed to turn up, but something in him insisted that he keep the date. Duty, perhaps, or love. Or maybe it was simply guilt.

  He stopped at the local shopping center for takeaway Indian, ordering enough for two even though his mother wouldn’t touch food if she was high. She was invariably skin and bones, her addiction ensuring that eating food for sustenance ran a poor second to her body’s demand for drugs. If he could get some food into her, he’d count the evening a success.

  A familiar heavy sensation settled over him as he parked his car in the driveway and walked to the front door. Unlike several of the other houses in the street, the lawns were neatly mown, the rudimentary garden trim and neat. He paid a garden maintenance company to take care of the yard, as well as covering the rent and utilities and ensuring that a regular delivery of groceries appeared on his mother’s doorstep once a week.

  He knew that some people would consider him an enabler, since anything he did to support his mother invariably meant he supported her addiction, but he’d made an uneasy peace with the arrangement. He’d tried cutting her out of his life, turning his back on her for several years when he was studying. He’d told himself he was free of her, and that she was free of him, too. No more guilt and broken promises and disappointment for either of them.

  Great in theory. In practice, it had meant he was called to the E.R. at various Melbourne hospitals two, three, four times a year, late night calls that dragged him out of sleep with his heart thumping, sure that this time would be the last, that his mother’s wasted body had been fished out of a slum or a river or a gutter. At some point he had acknowledged to himself that he couldn’t live with the uncertainty and had set her up in the house next to Vera, an old family friend, and done what he could to keep his mother alive without giving her ready cash to feed her habit.

  Not an ideal solution, but life was full of compromises.

  He had a key, but he knocked, anyway. This was his mother’s house, her private space, and it had never been his home. After a short silence he heard the sound of someone moving inside the house, then the door opened.

  “Zach.” His mother blinked sleepily, a beatific smile curving her mouth as she registered his presence. “Hey, baby. I forgot you were coming.”

  Her face was flushed, her pupils shrunken to pinpricks, her words verging on slurred. Her clothes hung on her frame, her thin arms carefully covered with long sleeves to hide the bruises and track marks.

  Same old, same old.

  “Hey, Mum. I brought you dinner.”

  She felt impossibly frail when he embraced her. She’d lost more weight since last month, a worrying sign because it usually meant she was using more.

  “Thought I could smell something good.” She smiled and pushed her gray-streaked dark hair behind her ear. “You always bring me good things.”

  She blinked a few times before performing a labored about-face and making her way slowly down the hallway, one hand on the wall for balance. For a heartbeat he remained on the doorstep watching her painful progress, fighting the urge to drop the bag of food and turn tail and run.

  There was nothing but despair for him in this house, and he’d had enough to last a lifetime.

  He stepped inside and shut the door behind him before following his mother to the living room at the rear of the house. He caught her as she tidied the paraphernalia strewn across the coffee table—the length of stocking she was using as a tourniquet, the spoon she used for cooking her gear, the sterile swabs she used as filters, a box of sterile syringes.

  “It’s okay, Mum.”

  “I know you don’t like it.” Even though her high had left her far from coordinated, she worked doggedly until she’d transferred everything into a wicker basket, which she then took from the room.

  He collected a couple of plates from the kitchen and was serving up the food when she returned.

  “Butter chicken. My favorite,” she said as she sank onto the couch.

  She talked a good talk, but he had no illusions that she’d eat anything while she was high. Before he left he’d cover her untouched meal and leave it in the fridge for her to find later.

  “So, what’s been happening?” he asked as he picked up his own plate.

  “Oh, not much. Some new people have moved in up the street. Single mum with a couple of kids. She’s been pretty friendly so far, but that will change.” His mum pulled a face.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Zach, come on. The moment she finds out there’s a junkie on the street, the kids will be warned off and I’ll get the silent treatment. And someone will tell her, don’t you worry about that.” Her words came slowly and it was obvious she was struggling to stay focused. Any second now she’d fade out altogether—“nodding out,” in street speak. If her high ran to form, she’d fade in and out for the next hour or so.

  Could be worse. She could be strung out.

  Last time he’d visited she’d been suffering withdrawal symptoms, pacing agitatedly as she fretted over when her dealer would return her call. His two-hour-long visit had felt like a week.

  “You’re not a monster, Mum.”

  “I know that. You know that. But most of the world thinks I’m a waste of space. They might be right, too.” She huffed out a laugh before her eyes drifted shut.

  Right.

  Even though his appetite had completely deserted him, Zach ate his meal. He had a lot of work to get through once he got home, and he needed the energy.

  After a minute or two his mother stirred, her chin lifting from her chest, eyes blinking. He kept eating. There wasn’t much point restarting their conversation, since she’d only lose track of it in a few minutes when she nodded out again.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay, Mum.”

  It wasn’t, but he was past the point of being angry or hurt by his mother’s addiction. Judy had been a heroin user on and off for nearly twenty-five years now. Together they’d seen it all: three overdoses, various infections, his mother’s hepatitis C diagnosis, brushes with the law, more hospitalizations than Zach could count on the fingers of both hands. His mother had kicked it—gone cold turkey—many times, but the longest she’d stayed straight was a year, and she always found her way back to the life. It had taken him years of pointless railing and fruitless hope, but he had finally understood that something was broken inside her. Whatever it was that she’d been running from or seeking comfort from when she first started using casually had long since been eclipsed by the multiple traumas her addiction had visited upon her. Upon both of them. She was a living, breathing vicious cycle—she took drugs to comfort the pain of living, and the drug-taking made her life disastrous, so she took drugs to escape reality... And so on, and so forth.

  “Meant to tell you—Beano has been clean for nearly six months now. How ’bout that?” Judy raised her eyebrows, clearly expecting him to be impressed.

  He’d seen too many of her friends go on and off the gear to get too excited about anyone’s sobri
ety.

  “Is that a record for him?”

  “He stayed straight for a year once.” His mother scratched her arms before shooting him a sideways look. “He wanted to know if he could move in here for a while.”

  Zach gave her his full attention. “Why would he want to live here while you’re still using? Wouldn’t the temptation be too much for him?”

  His mother shrugged, her gaze drifting from his. “Who knows? Seems like a good idea, though. He can help out with the rent.”

  “Mum.” He said the single word heavily. He wasn’t in the mood to be bullshitted. There were too many other pressures bearing down on him right now. Despite the way his mother was dressing it up, he knew without a doubt that Beano’s moving in was her idea, and any rent money he paid would go straight up her arm, not toward the upkeep of the place.

  “What? I’m trying to help a mate out.” She hunched her shoulders like a naughty child who’d been accused of a crime she hadn’t committed.

  “If you need money, maybe you need to think about tapering off.”

  His mother worked part-time to feed her habit, something that was only possible because Zach covered all her other expenses. If she was scratching around for more money, it meant she was chewing up her wages with drugs, which, in turn, meant her habit was getting out of control.

  “I don’t need to taper. I’m good.”

  “Okay. I still don’t think Beano moving in would be a great idea.”

  She considered his response, her head starting to nod again. He made an exasperated noise and stood, taking his half-empty plate and her full one through to the kitchen. He dumped his own food in the bin and covered hers and stowed it in the fridge. When he returned to the living room she’d listed to one side, her eyes closed, her face slack.

  The sleeve on her sweater had rucked up and he could see the ugly scar on her forearm, the result of an abscess in an abused vein that had gone bad and had had to be excised, along with a portion of the surrounding tissue. Her body was riddled with scars—track marks, injuries from accidents, wounds inflicted by fellow users or boyfriends.

  Which reminded him...

  Leaving his mother in the living room, he did a quick tour of the house. The kitchen was clean, the fridge stocked with groceries. A six-pack of beer gave him pause, though. His mother hated beer.

  He stopped in the doorway to his mother’s room. The bed was neatly made, a pile of books beside it. To an outsider, it no doubt looked very ordinary, utterly benign. It hadn’t always been like this. When Judy’s addiction had deepened when he was in his early teens, they’d slowly lost everything that she’d acquired as a single mother. The TV, the computer, her car, any jewelry she could pawn. At her worst, she’d pawned his Christmas presents from her parents to garner enough money for a hit. They’d been evicted from more apartments than he could remember. The first time had been enough to shock his mother into rehab, but being homeless eventually became something she accepted with equanimity, like so many of the inevitable humiliations that came hand in hand with addiction. After all, the only thing that mattered in her life was heroin. Everything else was white noise.

  He turned away, annoyed with himself for checking on her. Nothing he did or said would stop her from making bad decisions. It was futile to waste time and energy worrying that she’d found herself a new boyfriend; far better to prepare himself to pick up the pieces when things went wrong.

  As they always did.

  She was still out of it when he returned to the living room. He collected the throw from the couch and helped her into a more comfortable position before covering her. Then he obeyed the dictates of his gut and got the hell out of there.

  He dove into work when he got home, desperate for the distraction. After an hour he straightened in his chair. His back and neck were stiff. Rolling his shoulders, he went into the kitchen to make coffee and stood at the kitchen counter watching the kettle work itself up to a boil, the growing pressure inside the appliance threatening to push the lid off.

  He sympathized. Some months he could walk away from his mother’s place feeling nothing, perfectly numb. Other times—tonight—he felt as though there were a scream building inside him and that if he wasn’t careful it would find a way out.

  Was it any wonder that he’d kissed Audrey? She was one of the few bright, exciting, promising things in his life. The only thing, really, that had nothing to do with either the past or the future. Audrey was about now. About how he felt when he was near her. There was nothing rational or sensible about his attraction to her. If anything, it was the opposite—everything sane in him told him to stay the hell away from her. Yet he felt the way he felt.

  He wanted her. Badly.

  Only an idiot would go there. Especially at the moment. And you are not an idiot.

  He wasn’t. He was a ruthless, determined, selfish bastard—because that was what life had taught him he needed to be to survive. He was used to missing out today in order to have what he wanted tomorrow.

  He’d add Audrey’s name to the list of things he couldn’t have and get on with it, like he always did.

  Simple.

  He switched the kettle off before making himself a strong black coffee. Then he went back to work.

  CHAPTER TEN

  AUDREY HAD NEVER considered herself a particularly sensual person. She liked sex, but she wasn’t mad for it. She’d never stayed awake at night thinking about it, for example. She’d never caught herself daydreaming about it when she was in an important meeting, or during lunch with her best friend, or while she was making toast in the morning.

  Until she’d kissed Zach.

  In the days following their short but hot encounter against the side of her car, Audrey found herself thinking about him—about them—so many times she began to doubt her own sanity.

  The mere sound of his voice was enough to send a tremor through her body. The sight of him sent heat racing into her pelvis as she remembered weight of his body against hers, the taste of his mouth, the scent of his skin. Every time she was forced to look into his eyes and talk to him, she had to concentrate like crazy to stop herself from blushing and giving away the direction of her unruly, steamy, X-rated thoughts.

  It was crazy, and disconcerting, and deeply worrying. She didn’t want to be so aware of him. She didn’t want to sit opposite him in meetings and wonder what his mouth would feel like on her breasts. She didn’t want to lie in her bed aching for him. Especially when things were so tense at work.

  She’d let the genie out of the bottle when she’d kissed him. She’d destroyed months of determination not to notice the sexy, cocky man who’d dropped like a bombshell into her workplace. And now she was a hot mess, pure and simple.

  A fact that was confirmed when she looked in the mirror on Saturday morning ten days after The Kiss. Her eyes were puffy from lack of sleep, her skin sallow. She looked tired and anemic. As though she were recovering from an illness—or, perhaps, succumbing to one.

  You need to get on top of this. You need to concentrate on what’s important and get this other stuff out of your head.

  The woman in the mirror didn’t look inspired by the pep talk. She looked a little lost. As though someone had stolen her internal compass.

  She flicked the cold-water tap on and cupped both hands before sluicing her face with water. The shock of it made her gasp. She was even paler when she checked her reflection again, but the slightly dazed look was gone from her eyes.

  Good. She needed to stop walking around in a lust-induced haze and get on with things.

  For today, “things” consisted of lunch with her parents and her sister to celebrate her sister’s birthday. Her father had settled on Vue du Monde as an appropriate venue for such a special occasion. Audrey hadn’t eaten there before, but she knew from reports from friends that it was the sort of place that offered a set price degustation menu that went well into three figures. The wine list, no doubt, climbed into four.

  Not her kin
d of dining, but her parents wanted to mark the occasion for Leah, and Audrey was hardly going to argue with that. She thought about Leah’s present as she ironed her dress. She’d wound up settling on another watch, an elegant, simple piece that she hoped her sister would think was beautiful as well as practical.

  It was so hard to know. She and Leah were such different people, in almost every aspect, to the point where people often looked surprised when they learned they were related. The only thing they had in common was their brown eyes. Where Audrey was curvy with a medium build, Leah was willowy slender, and instead of being dead straight, her hair had a distinct curl to it. She was also a successful high-achiever, the sort of daughter most parents dreamed of having, whereas Audrey—

  Are we really going to do this today? Really?

  She yanked the iron cord from the wall so sharply that the plug flew back and smacked her in the shin. Today was not the day to wallow in the past. Today was her sister’s day. A happy day.

  She tackled her pale complexion with a little more blush than she usually wore and within minutes was zipping up her dress, a black and white and taupe striped tea-dress with a box pleated skirt. It was very Jackie-O demure, with a neat little black fabric belt. She curled her hair under on the ends and toed on her black sling-back wedges and pronounced herself ready.

  The restaurant was on the fifty-fifth floor of the Rialto building, and she found a parking garage nearby. She had to blink when she stepped out of the lift and into the dim, modern interior. Dark walls and a dark floor sucked light from the space, allowing the myriad overhead lights to sparkle like stars and throwing the huge floor-to-ceiling windows into stark relief. Her parents and Leah were already seated, and she checked her watch as she was escorted to their table. She was right on time, which meant they were early rather than her being late. Still, she apologized as she arrived at the table and they broke off their conversation to greet her.

  “We saved you one of the seats with a view,” her father said after they’d exchanged kisses.