Beautiful Mess

by Claire Christian

  I turn and look at him, lying shirtless on the bed with the sheet sitting on his hips. He’s looking at something on his phone.

  ‘Lincoln?’ I ask.

  ‘What?’ He doesn’t look at me.

  ‘Do you think—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you think she’d be mad at us?’ I rush out. We very rarely talk about her. But I want to. I so desperately want to know what he thinks, to see if his insides are churning too.

  ‘I don’t care what she thinks.’ He still doesn’t look at me, just stares at the phone above his face.

  ‘You do.’ I turn around and lie on my stomach on the bed near him and immediately he gets up and picks a pair of shorts up off the floor.

  ‘I don’t’—he pauses and finally looks at me for the first time—‘because she clearly didn’t give a flying fuck if any of us would be mad at her.’ He picks up a shirt off the carpet. It’s inside out and he tries to fold it out the right way but his hands move too quickly and he just ends up pegging it across the room. ‘I hope she’s mad at me. I hope she’s furious,’ he says, staring at the shirt on the floor.

  I sit up and cross my legs. ‘I hated it when she was mad at me.’

  ‘She was never mad at you.’ Lincoln softens a little and breathes heavy.

  I watch his chest move quickly up and down. ‘Yeah, she was. When I wouldn’t follow along with one of her crazy plans or I’d be too much of a pussy to say things.’ I pause. ‘Or when I’d ask her to tell me how she really felt she’d just get mad at me.’

  ‘You should’ve made her.’ His eyes look hollow and he bites the corner of his lip.

  ‘Should’ve made her tell me?’ I scoff. ‘I couldn’t make her do anything.’ I pull at a loose thread on the blanket. ‘None of us could.’

  Lincoln turns his back and raises his hands above his head. He grips one hand with the other and rests them on his forehead and sighs loudly. ‘You could’ve.’

  ‘No,’ I tell him, but he rushes over the top of me.

  ‘She trusted you. She loved you.’ He closes his eyes, shakes his head. Turns away. Under his breath he says, ‘But you let her die.’

  ‘What?’

  It’s like he’s punched me in the guts and I propel my body forward, standing up. ‘You think this is my fault?’

  ‘No. I didn’t mean that.’ He shakes his head, agitated.

  ‘You did.’ I grab his shoulder and turn him around to face me. ‘You did mean that.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry,’ he mutters and tries to wrap his arms around me but I push at his chest.

  ‘You don’t care about me.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m feeling, Ava.’

  ‘That’s it though, Lincoln. I do.’

  ‘She was my sister—’ he screams, and he takes a step towards me with his finger in my face.

  I cut him off. Push his hand out of the way. ‘SHE WAS MINE! I know EXACTLY how you feel. Exactly,’ I yell louder than I’ve ever yelled before. How dare he. I’m furious. My hands start to shake. ‘Fuck you, Lincoln.’ I pick my shorts up off the floor and quickly step into them.

  ‘You already did,’ he whispers.

  I spin around and with all my strength push my hands into his chest. I’m so angry. He pushes me back and I land on the bed and I kind of bounce so the side of my face hits the bedside table. The pain is immediate. I hold my cheek. I’m bleeding. My heart is racing and all I can smell is cigarettes and spit as I close my eyes, shaking my head.

  He crouches down in front of me straight away and touches my leg. ‘Ava I’m sorry—’

  I pull away. ‘Don’t touch me,’ I hiss. I fold my knees under my body and stare at him. Neither of us moves.

  ‘I just—Ava?’ He softly touches my arm and I reef it away.

  ‘No,’ I sob and it all comes pouring out in a mess of tears and snot, ‘you don’t care. You don’t care about me. Why? Why are you doing this?’ I look at him as my heart pours out onto the bed and all over Lincoln, who just sits there. Scared. ‘You never have and you are a bad person and I am a bad person for doing this and I should’ve told you. I should’ve told you—I should’ve said no but you should’ve known not to do it. But I let you. And this is all my fault because I wanted to feel like shit. I did it cause it hurts,’ and I cry. Cry like the moment I found out that Kelly died, cry because it’s the only thing I can do. Cry because every single part of me hurts. ‘It hurts all the time, and I just miss her. I miss her so much.’ I hit my chest with my hand and quickly cover my face.

  Lincoln sits up on his knees and grabs me hard and tight around the waist and I push him away with every bit of strength I can muster. I don’t want him to touch me. I try and wriggle away but I can’t, he’s too strong. He clings to me so I kind of fall into it, into him, sobbing, howling, crying into his shoulder. He holds me and when I finally catch my breath a bit I sit back and look at him and he stares at me, like right at me. He says, ‘I miss her too. She would hate me right now. Hate this. Us.’

  I nod, looking at his face. This is the look, the sad look, the small open gateway where he lets me in for just a moment. He’s being honest. And he’s right. She would hate it, maybe not us, but this, that we were fighting. That I was crying, him being vulnerable and me being a bitch and us sleeping together when we didn’t really want to, when we didn’t really like each other. Not like that.

  ‘And everything is so fucked. And you are…so—’ He pauses.

  I’m so what? He doesn’t finish the sentence.

  ‘And she’s gone. Yeah? She’s really, actually gone.’

  I’m breathing heavy and he just looks so.

  Sad. So sad. He looks how I feel. So I tell him what I really think.

  ‘Sometimes I think she’s still around.’

  He pauses. ‘She’s not. She’s dead.’

  And like that the look is gone and the gap is closed and he’s back to being wound so tight, like the cork in a bottle you just shook up. He breathes in deep. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get over this.’ And he buries his head into my lap and I don’t need to look at his face because I can feel it in his body, in his shaking chest, in his yelps, that Lincoln is crying too. I wrap my arms around his back, grabbing on to him and he holds me too. His knees kind of falter and it’s just me holding him as he howls.

  I don’t notice the sound of the front door opening. I don’t notice Tina yelling out to Lincoln. I don’t notice her opening the door to his room. I don’t notice till she’s right in front of me, staring at me, looking at me with big brown eyes just like Kelly’s and she doesn’t say anything just lifts my hand off Lincoln’s shoulders and takes his weight and she falls onto the floor with him.

  Her scrambling to sit as Lincoln wraps his arms around her waist and sobs into her lap.

  And she cries and strokes his head and tells him it’s all going to be okay and I just sit on the edge of the bed and watch them. Lincoln’s dad appears and kneels next to them with one hand on Lincoln, his tears welling and distorting his strong hard face. Tina looks me right in the eye and I just stare back at her and I can see it in her eyes that she’s broken too, and she sees it in me and she knows. I know she knows exactly how I feel.

  I can’t remember them walking me into the lounge room, or lying down on the couch and falling asleep. All I remember is waking, startled, with Dad stroking my hair. He asked me if I wanted him to carry me to the car. I remember because it made me smile and that it felt weird to smile.

  ‘I haven’t had to do that since you were about six, but I will if you want me to,’ he smiled. I just shook my head.

  It’s 3:31 a.m. when I wake up and look at the clock in my room. Dad is sound asleep next to me, still wearing his shoes. I feel hungover and empty. I have a pain in my head that smashes into the back of my eyes every time I move. I’m thirsty but I don’t get up, I just roll over and listen to Dad snore.

  It’s the best sound in the world listening to him breathe. I do feel like I’m six yea
rs old again. Like when I’d just had a nightmare and nothing felt like it’d be okay, but Dad would lie with me and crack jokes about rescuing me from whatever bad thing had happened. He’d tell me over and over again that he’d be able to defend me because monsters, or robbers, or sea witches weren’t as powerful as a dad, and I believed him. I’d lie there and listen to him breathe and even though I felt completely unsettled I knew it would be okay, because I knew I was safe.

  Only now I don’t feel safe, not really, because bad shit can happen and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Not even my dad.

  There are flowers on the welcome mat when I get home from TAPs and I smile because I know they must be from Lincoln and everything is going to be all right. He’ll apologise for what happened, then I’ll apologise and then everything can go back to the way it was. I haven’t seen or heard from him in four whole days, which is the longest we’ve gone without talking or seeing each other since Kelly died.

  I’ve been walking around in a bit of a daze since our fight, since I hit my face, trying to process what we said and how angry I was, and how good it felt to get a lot of that shit off my chest.

  I told Minda I tripped and hit my head on the bedside table—I muttered the words, ‘I’m super clumsy.’ I did not tell her it’s because I was having a fight with my dead best friend’s brother right after we’d had sex and he pushed me so hard that I accidentally smashed my face on the bedside table. I don’t tell anyone that that’s what happened. Not even Dad. I can’t quite believe it myself.

  I pick up the flowers, relieved, and then I see it, amid the leaves, a mint-green envelope. I instantly feel angry. Angry that they’re not from Lincoln and that everything is still up in the air and there won’t be any kind of resolution. I’m angry at Gideon for being so nice. I think maybe I’ve given him the wrong idea. I’m angry because flowers complicate things and he and I aren’t meant to be complicated, we’re just meant to be friends. I carry them inside and pull out the envelope. I’m confused and grumpy and feel like shit for feeling all of these things because no one has ever bought me flowers before and they’re really nice. But, shit, Gideon!

  Ava,

  I hope these make you smile. I know they certainly can’t make you happy, but I figure a smile is a good start. No real letter today—it took me over an hour to work out what flowers I should buy. Flowers are hard.

  So here’s the dot-pointed version of my so-called life and this so-called letter.

  • I’ve had a few strange days lately. My friend Robbie is leaving town and it’s kind of spun me out a bit because I’ll miss him.

  • There was a party. Something weird happened. That’s all there is to say about that.

  • Something happened at work on Sunday when you were away. Ricky said you were sick. I hope you feel better. So, Ricky showed me the tattoo on his butt. I don’t know how to feel about this. 1. Because I’ve now seen how hairy his arse is and 2. Because of what it’s a tattoo of. I don’t know if I should tell you because I don’t want to mentally scar you too, but solidarity, Ava, solidarity and I’ve got to tell someone. It’s a weird green-looking boxing kangaroo who is shaving a giant shish kebab which actually just looks like a big shit and around the top it says, ‘Make Magic’.

  If the flowers didn’t work, I hope the mental image of Ricky’s butt did.

  See you on Friday.

  Your friend,

  Gideon

  And despite still being pissed off I crack up laughing. Ricky has threatened to show me the monstrosity that is the artwork on his arse but I have point blank refused to engage and have successfully avoided even knowing what it was for three whole years. I laugh at the mental image of Gideon’s face looking at it and Ricky no doubt laughing maniacally. I think I maybe have the wrong idea about Gideon having the wrong idea. Is it actually possible that he just wants to be friends? Everything in me wants to believe this is true.

  By work on Friday I’ve decided that I need to confront Gideon about the flowers and find out once and for all if he has the wrong idea about us. I can’t deal with anything else complicated in my life right now. I figure it’s better to know now so I can shut that shit down before it goes any further. I wait for a quiet period in the shop and head out the back to the sink where he’s washing up trays.

  ‘Why did you send me those flowers?’ I ask—talk about getting straight to the point, Ava, the only other thing we’ve said to each other tonight is ‘hello’ and ‘hey’ and then you bombard him with this.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The flowers? Why did you send me flowers?’

  ‘Because I thought they’d be nice. Why? Should I not?’ He stumbles, turning to look at me, holding his hands which are covered in big plastic red gloves in the air.

  ‘No. You shouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, okay.’ He looks stung.

  ‘Yeah. Just don’t. I don’t like flowers.’ Which is a lie, I do like flowers but I just want to be clear. Set a boundary, as they say. But looking at his face right now I just feel like shit because I know I’m making him feel bad and that’s not actually what I wanted to do at all.

  ‘Oh. Sorry,’ he mutters, his eyes look to the ground and he bites his lip.

  ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘No it’s not. I’m sorry. I just thought you sounded sad. You know. In your last letter and then you were away.’ He looks up and the sincerity in his eyes smacks me in the chest and I feel like the biggest bitch in the whole universe.

  ‘Oh, fuck, no, Gideon, thank you. Sorry. Shit.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing is wrong. Thank you for the flowers. I just thought—’ I pause.

  ‘What?’

  I don’t say anything. I thought they were from Lincoln is what I want to say. I thought Lincoln felt bad about what happened and he sent me flowers to apologise. But he didn’t. Because he doesn’t feel bad. I also want to say that I thought he may have thought there was something more between us. That we weren’t just two people getting to know each other, as friends. That I thought that the flowers weren’t actually just one friend sending another friend an incredibly thoughtful gift because they thought that friend was sad. Because it turns out I’m actually just a psycho bitch who someone so nice shouldn’t be friends with anyway.

  I realise I’ve been standing here for a long time not actually saying anything and I both look and feel like an idiot.

  Gideon breaks the silence. ‘What should I have sent instead of flowers?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘To cheer you up.’ He takes the gloves off and wipes

  his hands on his apron. ‘What’s your favourite animal?’

  ‘Penguins,’ I reply.

  ‘I should’ve sent you a penguin. I’m an idiot.’ He smiles and I smile and feel awful for ever thinking anything bad about Gideon.

  ‘You don’t need to send me anything. Just, I don’t know. Hang out.’

  ‘Hang out?’ he asks, his voice raised a little.

  ‘Yes. Do you want to hang out?’

  ‘I can hang out,’ he says, leaning on the sink, but he slips on some detergent and I laugh while he blushes.

  ‘Like friends do. Like friends hang out.’ I smile, and he nods and then the bell at the front of the shop goes off and a group of young guys walks in.

  As I head towards the front Gideon yells out to me, ‘Fine. Gosh. I’ll hang out with you, just stop talking about it, Ava. God!’

  I turn and give him the finger and he pulls a stupid face at me. Like friends do.

  Good.

  There’s people playing guitars and singing, a human pyramid being constructed, two girls making out, a card game and two guys running around in giraffe onesies. I was wrong. This is not the perfect place to hang out with Ava for the first time.

  Norma comes running over, squealing, ‘Heeeeeeyyyy!’ and jumps onto me. She wraps her legs around my waist and I just stand there and let it happen as she hugs me tight. She jumps down and puts
her arm around Ava. ‘Ava, welcome to the fourth annual Day in the Park.’

  Andy approaches, smiling. ‘Have you told her about the initiation?’

  ‘Nope. I thought I’d leave that up to you,’ I say.

  ‘Initiation?’ Ava asks, looking at me, and I can’t tell if the expression on her face is interest or fear.

  ‘Quickly! Get the paddles,’ Andy pronounces with a fake British accent.

  ‘Not the paddles, sir, she’s too pretty for the paddles.’ Norma fans her face with her hands.

  I can’t help but laugh and Ava looks at me and smiles. I think the look on her face now is one of mild amusement, maybe curiosity, and definitely a little bit of ‘what the fuck’ thrown in for good measure. Which I expected.

  When we agreed to hang out at work the other night I spent three whole days and two whole nights agonising over where said hanging should take place. I asked Andy and Norma in class on Wednesday night.

  ‘Bring her to Day in the Park,’ Andy suggested.

  ‘You just want to meet her,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Duh!’ Norma smiled, nodding. ‘But also Day in the Park is good for hanging, it’s casual, there’s amusing things to talk about and Andy and I can rescue you if you go into one of your awkward spirals of self-loathing.’

  I wanted to leap to my feet and hug her. Norma was right about everything and I was so excited about finally having a plan that when I saw Ava at Magic Kebab on Thursday night I was a little too excited about said plan and my brain forgot about the whole sentences that usually begin a conversation.

  ‘Day in the Park!’

  Ava spun around and looked at me through the hole in the wall that connects the kitchen to the front of the shop. ‘Hello Ava, how are you? Oh, I’m okay, Gideon, thanks for asking.’ She stared smugly.