Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
When Love Meets Lust
Stephanie Cross
Copyright © 2018 Stephanie Cross (SLEC Publications) All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by an means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Disclaimer: The characters in this book are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-9999749-0-9
First Edition
This book is dedicated to my mother, Denise. Thank you for everything.
CHAPTER 1
Love. Simple and pure. And unobtainable. For me anyway. Any potential Prince Charming within a 30 mile radius is either gay or spoken for. Only the frogs are left. The slimy, creepy frogs.
One-eyed Bill, the postman, is starting to look like a potential catch, even with his Captain Pugwash features and his Cornish accent. I don’t know where the accent comes from. I don’t think he has been any further than Epping Forest.
But needs must. Perhaps if I fake a peg-leg and get a parrot Bill will start finding me attractive too. Christ, I really am desperate. Fortunately, my twin sister Martha chooses this moment of deliberation to shout into my face.
‘Stop staring into space you doughnut and just get up and dance.’ She pulls at my arms, forcing me to my feet. ‘Oh come on, this is our leaving party before we head Down Under…In the words of Prince…let’s party like its 1999.’
I can’t be bothered to tell her that in 1999, when we were nine, partying consisted of eating jam sandwiches and drinking fizzy pop. This particular party is definitely not like that. As I shuffle from foot to foot, trying to engage with the music, I look around at our collective and sigh. I love them all. But they make the Addams Family look normal.
At the far end of the living room, Mum and Dad are serving pina colada, in the belief that it is as popular a cocktail in 2016 as it was in 1986. They are working from a makeshift bar, and Grandad Shane is sitting just to the left of it sucking sherbet lemons and looking miserable. Next to him is Grandma Betsy, with her pencilled eyebrows drawn in so high she looks in a state of permanent shock. She also has quite a severe blue rinse, reminiscent of Dame Edna Everage.
Aunty Libby, my Mum’s sister, is waving her arms around in the middle of the room. At 53 she’s two years older than Mum, but as a reaction to her divorce from Uncle Kevin, who ran off with a younger woman, she has taken to dressing like a 23 year old, with peroxide-blonde hair and so much make-up she makes Chuckie the Clown look pasty. Ageing does not look like much fun to me.
Our old school friends are here too. Dave, Rosie, Si and Mel. We all went to the same primary school and all our parents are a little on the crazy side. I remember when we all went to Si’s 14th birthday party and his parents thought it would be a good idea for us to sing ‘Kumbaya’ several times to him in the voice of David Beckham as an alternative to singing ‘Happy Birthday.’
I’ll miss these guys. We have lots of shared memories. Lovely memories. Memories of graduating university, spending long summer holidays cycling around Epping Forest and enjoying the sunshine on our backs as we whizzed through the green leafy landscape. Days of just being free and enjoying each other’s company. Not so carefree now. Time changes things, and we all have responsibilities: Dave and Rosie are now engaged, Mel is currently saving for a house, Rosie is just about to start her role as a junior doctor at Romford General Hospital and Si is about to embark on a PhD on the use of mummification during the Egyptian period. Creepy. But at least he is following his interests.
And then there is Martha. They say twins are supposed to be similar in characteristics and personality, but even though we both have wavy blonde hair and blue eyes, and are both five feet seven and three quarters (to be precise), that’s where the similarity stops. Martha is more outgoing than I am. If you see a crowd of people, Martha is bound to be at the centre of it. I prefer my own company. Someone has to be the quiet, sensible on. Two crazies together don’t equal sanity.
Sadly, despite being the sensible one, I seem to be the drifter, with no idea of what I want to be or do. Martha already has a job lined up in Australia as an IT consultant. I am tagging along in the hope that I will find more to life than watching a photocopier churn out another 100 pages of ‘blue sky thinking’ or answering the telephone to another imbecile who doesn’t know how to switch on a computer. But mostly, I am hoping that this trip will bring me Love.
As ‘Land Down Under’ by Men at Work starts to blare through the lounge speakers and Martha drags me into the centre of our circle of friends, everybody in the room gets up to dance. Even Granddad Shane has a go, clearly hyperactive after too many lemon sherbets. As I look around the room I realise, not for the first time, that I am so lucky to have these people on my side. Even if they are all weird. I love them and I will miss them, But tomorrow I am going to fly to the other side of the world and a whole new chapter of my life will begin.
CHAPTER 2
Women. I love them. As long as they are naked and don’t mention the ‘R’ or ‘B’ word. ‘R’ for Relationship and ‘B’ for Boyfriend. There are too many women in the world to experience to be tied down to one. I want to be free and have fun.
Miss Wednesday mutters something from under the duvet, something about not being able to find her bra.
‘It’s under the bed,’ I reply, trying to remember if her name is Laura or Lauren or something else entirely. Still, it doesn’t really matter. Time for her to leave. Time to kick her out. In a nice way of course - I am not a complete bastard.
‘Thanks for a great night Ryan,’ says Miss Wednesday, as she slips her boobs into her bra and reaches behind her to do it up at the back. ‘We will have to meet up again some time.’ Her boobs look very tempting, and she is looking up at me seductively. But her panda eyes from not taking off last night’s make-up, and the orange streaks left by the fake tan on the bedsheets bring me back to earth and I mumble: ‘Sure we can meet up again. On the 12th of Never’.
‘What did you say?’ she replies, pulling her dress over her head.
‘I said just send me a text and we can meet up whenever.’ A good save. Once she has finished dressing I lead her to the door and tell her that I am going to be late for work. She gives a fake pout, and then blows me a kiss as she leaves. I breathe a sigh of relief when the door closes behind her. At least she left before she had the chance to eye me up as her potential Prince Charming as I am anything but. I’m just the King of Toads in the virtual pond of internet dating, where you take your pick, have your fill, and then go back to fish out another to satisfy those mid-week urges.
One woman I def
initely won’t be hooking up with today is my mother. She has left me a text saying ‘Call me’. Most people know of her. She is Doctor Lara Turner, the relationship guru, Australia’s answer to Dr. Phil. There’s isn’t a billboard in sight that isn’t emblazoned with her name and details of her talk show and the column in Cosmopolitan magazine that gives advice on how to get the love life you deserve.
She first came to fame 12 years ago after divorcing my Dad. She was 43 and wrote a book called ‘How to be a Cougar’. How to entice that youthful man using just a smile and your well-earned wisdom. Or, as I like to call it, ‘how to grow old disgracefully.’
Before the divorce and that book she was just an average psychology lecturer at the University of Sydney, as was my Dad, but then she suddenly decided she wanted more from life. She’s currently dating a guy a year younger than me. He’s called Larry and she is apparently having the best sex of her whole life. These are things a son never wants to hear about from his own mother.
Meanwhile, my Dad took the divorce in his stride. He said that he totally understood mum’s desire to follow her own path, and he agreed that he should follow his. And I should follow mine. Sometimes I think spending too much time studying psychology has done their brains no good at all.
Dad is now living in Perth in a permanent state of mid-life crisis. His latest idea is to train as a surf instructor. He is dating a woman who looks like Madge Bishop from Neighbours. ‘Madge’s’ current obsession is knitting tea cosies. I have received several. They are decorating the inside of my bin.
So, not difficult to see why I prefer to lead a single life. I’m damaged.
En route to the train station from my apartment in Bondi, with another day of number-crunching in the CBD on Martin’s Place ahead of me, I decide to give Mum a call. After three rings she picks up.
‘Hi Darling. Mummy wants to know if you'd like to join her and her fluff ball of fun for dinner tonight as it would be lovely to catch up and see how my little boy is growing up.’
I’d rather eat dog food on my own in a broom cupboard than have dinner with ‘fluff ball’. Mum on her own I can handle. But with Larry? God, it is just unbearable. Last time I went to dinner with them he insisted on calling me ‘son’, even though it’s not even biologically possible, while continually stroking my Mum’s leg. Awkward doesn’t even begin to cover it.
I give my excuses to Mum, narrowly avoiding a night of sheer hell with her and her peculiar lover, and then I decide to text Pete to arrange drinks after work tonight. That will ensure a much better night of entertainment and will give me a chance to find my next catch. Miss Thursday.
CHAPTER 3
It is raining. My first ever day in Australia and it is raining. This wasn’t what Greg the travel agent told me Australia would be like. Even my own Dad, who was born in Australia, sold me an image of a country where there is continuous warm, sunny, hot weather. I was preparing myself for a place where the sunbeams would warm my back as I sit on one of the many glorious beaches watching equally gloriously tanned lifeguards from behind my oversized sunnies.
Instead, I am soaked through by pounding rain as I struggle up the hill from the train station with my rucksack, which is now broken and has only one strap left. So instead of ‘living the dream’ and eyeing up some Aussie hotties, I am now hauling my bag across my back as if I am auditioning for a female version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and hoping this nightmare will end.
Martha is already several paces ahead of me.
‘Hey Martha! Can you slow down a little…I’m kind of struggling here.’
Martha swivels around and shouts back; ‘Come on Ruby, don’t be such a whinge bag we are nearly there.’
Eventually we make it to ‘Wally’s Hostel’ a small little place tucked away on a side street called Woolloomooloo Street. The outside looks kind of grotty and the painted wooden sign on the front saying ‘Wally’s Hostel: a home away from home’ is peeling away. The photo of the smiling woman next to the slogan looks rather jaded and is verging on ironic. But it is tipping it down out here and I am desperate to get inside just to dry off. Besides the inside might be better than the outside.
I had been too optimistic. A strong smell of stale sweat and dust fills our damp lungs. The walls are a sickly yellow, faded that shade, I suspect, from an original white. The wood cladding on the walls and on the front of the reception desk is faded, with those that aren’t crying out for a lick of paint just simply missing. In the far corner is a dead eucalyptus tree. The last thing I would say was that this was a home away from home, if my mother saw this place she would have a heart attack as to how unclean it is and everything would be covered in bleach before we could even breathe in the place let alone sleep in it. Greg the travel agent has a lot to answer for.
‘Greetings,’ says the guy behind the reception area.
‘You must be our new guests, Martha and Reuben.’
‘It’s Ruby not Reuben,’ I reply biting the inside of my cheek...
This guy is a bit of a prat. And a creep. He gives me a stinking yellow-toothed grin that makes him almost blend in with the peeling yellow paint. After a moment he slowly licks the bottom of his lips, eyeing me up and down while pushing back his lank long greasy hair.
‘Oh I do apologise, for some reason I had the booking down as one female and one male in the 18-bed mixed dorm.’
‘No that’s incorrect,’ Martha says firmly. ‘It should be two females sharing in an all-female dorm consisting of eight beds.’
‘Well I am ever so sorry about that mistake; let me see if there are two spaces in the all-female dorm.’
He clicks away at the dusty keyboard and squints at the computer at the reception desk.
‘Sorry girls,’ he says after a few minutes. ‘There’s only one space left in the female dorm tonight, so one of you will have to go in the mixed dorm.’
Fan-bloody-tastic. It takes me over 24 hours to get here, 18 of which were spent squashed next to an overweight man whose last shower may well have been more than a fortnight ago. And he snored like a rhinoceros for most of the journey. Then when I do finally arrive, I discover at the baggage carousel that the airport luggage handlers had chosen my bag to play football with, and it was now battered and torn with just the one strap, its pissing it down outside and now they haven’t even booked us in properly.
Martha turns to me and takes a deep breath.
‘Okay, we will have to settle this fair and square…rock, paper, scissors.’
‘No Martha, not rock, paper, scissors as you know you always win.’
‘Perhaps I can assist?’ pipes up Creepy Guy. ‘How about I flip a coin?’
Okay this guy is a creep but I will give him credit for his suggestion.
‘Okay let’s do that, I choose heads and Martha you can have tails.’
Surprisingly Martha just shrugs her shoulders and agrees to it and we await the result of the coin toss.
Creepy guy puts his hand into his grubby blue jeans and pulls out a two dollar coin.
‘Okay girls here we go...’
Please be heads…please be heads…god why is it taking him so long to flip a bloody coin?
I see the two dollar piece somersault in the air and then it lands with a clink on the brown hairy carpet just beyond the reception desk. He leans his skinny frame across the desk and announces the result.
‘Tails.’
Great.
Creepy Guy hands us our keys and then leans over the desk until he is just millimetres away from my face. I think I’m going to vomit.
‘Here I can make up for it by letting you have a free packet of crisps from the hostel’s food store,’ he whispers in my ear.
I snatch them from his hands, but only out of politeness. They are out of date and they aren’t even Walkers. What I would do for a packet of Walkers Roast Chicken crisps right now. I’ve been in the country for no more than a couple of hours and I already miss home comforts. This adventure really isn’t what I thoug
ht it was going to be.
‘Where’s the lift?’ I ask, hoping that this will be the last conversation I will ever have with Creepy Guy.
‘Sorry ladies there is no lift here. Stairs only. I would offer to take them up to your rooms but I hurt my wrist the other day taking the trash out,’ he says, shrugging and flashing another grimy grin.
I take a deep breath and head up the five flights of stairs to my dorm room. Martha is on the third floor, and despite her athleticism being much greater than mine, even she was red in the face from hauling her suitcase ever upwards. Still, my rucksack may have broken its strap, but at least it isn’t a suitcase on wheels. I think I may have a slight smug smile on my face.
The smugness didn’t last long though. I feel like I am going to die. I need some rest. I lean my weight against the door to catch my breath and as I do so the door opens. Suddenly I am face to face with a pair of testicles.
‘Hey I’m Andre.’ I try to look above the testicles, and just make out a bearded face with enormous spectacles that starts to talk to me.
‘Sorry about the lack of clothes but most of them are in the wash and the outfit I had today has a whole load of beer down it from working a busy shift at the local pub. Besides I feel much less inhibited without the clothes.’
I try to play it cool and pretend it’s the most natural thing in the world to talk to a man who is stark naked but I have a feeling my bright red face gives it away.
‘What’s your name by the way?’ asks Andre in what sounds like a Welsh accent.
‘I’m Ruby.’ I offer my hand for him to shake but I am hijacked by the thought that Andre may have touched his genitals just before I entered. And I pray to the Lord I have packed a jumbo bottle of antibacterial hand wash in this rucksack.
‘Welcome, Ruby, to the palace. Tonight, as you can see, you will be sleeping in the penthouse suite with 17 other sweaty strangers. How does it feel Ruby to be surrounded by such luxury?’ he asks with a big grin.
When Love Meets Lust Page 1
