A Beautiful Struggle

by Lilliana Anderson

  The glory of watching her mouth fall open faded quickly, and I regretted my outburst and wished I could learn to keep my mouth shut. As satisfying as telling her where to go was, it wasn’t something I should be doing in a work environment.

  Chapter 4

  “Hi Mrs Mahoney,” David called as he sauntered into the kitchen where I was standing talking to my mother. I was drinking a glass of water, and she was busy cooking the pasta to go with the cabonara sauce she had prepared for dinner. He walked over and kissed her on the cheek and then leaned over and did the same to me.

  He stood next to me and leaned up against the kitchen bench, stealing a piece of garlic bread. “So what are we talking about?” he wanted to know.

  “Hello David, I was just about to tell Katrina that I played tennis today,” my mother informed us.

  “You did? That’s great! Are you going to keep going?” I asked in response, pleased that she was getting out of the house. She used to play tennis when my brother and I were young; I remembered having a great time hanging out with all the other kids while the mothers played and chatted, but she gave up due to wrist problems, became a home body and never went back to it.

  “I will, I think. I’m not sure yet. I will see how my wrist feels tomorrow… Although I did meet the mother of someone you might know from work.”

  “Really? What a small world – although, I’m not sure if I’ll know them, I haven’t even met everyone yet.”

  “Well, her name is Kathy Roberts, and her son's name is Elliot - she said he was a junior solicitor there.”

  I took a steady sip to try and mask my surprise at hearing her say Elliot’s name. David looked at me, recognising the name also, and I shot him a warning glance. I had to think carefully about how I responded as my mother had always had a tendency to see relationship potential where there wasn’t any, she’d never really gotten off my back about how much time I spent with David.

  She picked up a colander and set it inside the sink, pausing to look at me, “Do you know him?”

  Placing my glass on the bench, I said, “I think so, I met one person called Elliot on my office tour. I’m not sure what he does though.”

  Happy with my answer, she collected the pot and started to pour the pasta into the colander to strain it. “His mother is very nice. She invited me to a lunch with all the tennis girls next weekend – I think I might go.”

  “That sounds like a lot of fun Mrs M!” David told her. “Would you like me to take the bread and bowls to the table?”

  “That would be lovely David,” she smiled after him. “I don’t know why you two aren’t a couple Katrina, you spend so much time together anyway.”

  “Mum!” I admonished her.

  “What? He’s such a lovely boy. I don’t understand you two.”

  “I couldn’t date David, even if I wanted to – he sticks his dick into a new girl every night!”

  “You bitch!” David laughed, as he threw a piece of garlic bread at me. With lightning reflexes, I caught it and took a bite, sticking my tongue out at him as I did.

  “I don’t believe that," said my mother, “he spends most nights here, so he can’t be sticking his… as you put it – dick in a new girl every night.”

  David and I burst out laughing at my usually very straight mother swearing and left her in the kitchen to finish setting the table for dinner.

  “Where’s your dad and Tom?” David asked me.

  I lowered my voice to a whisper, “Dads at work and Tom is out with his girlfriend who mum and dad don’t know about so shhhhh!”

  “Is she hot?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met her yet.”

  “Haven’t met who yet?” my mother asked as she walked into the dining room carrying a serving dish full of pasta.

  “Here mum, give that to me,” I offered, reaching out for the bowl.

  “Thanks, so who haven’t you met?” she asked again.

  “Oh…just the big boss at work,” I lied as I took my seat at the table. We all began to eat and talk about safe topics, like work, university and my training.

  However, sensing an untold story my mother asked, “So are you thinking of starting to date again Katrina? Surely there’s a nice young man at the office you could go out with.”

  “I’m not interested in anyone right now mum,” I told her, immediately annoyed.

  She turned to David to try to enlist his influence on me, “Don‘t you think she should start dating again? I’m just concerned that she will miss out on the right guy because she is worried about what happened with Christopher.”

  “Mum!”

  David carefully looked between my mother and I before he answered. “Um…I think she’s only 20 Mrs M. She has plenty of time - I know there’s no way I’m settling down right now,” he told her through a mouth full of food.

  “Yes but she’s very mature for her age. I don’t want her to be turned off men just because of one bad decision.”

  That pissed me off, “One bad decision? Mum! Please leave this alone – I only moved in with Christopher because you pushed me to! I wanted to wait until I was at least finished uni before moving in, but you insisted that I shouldn’t wait. Seriously mum, stop trying to marry me off! If you don’t want me living here again – that’s fine, I will look into campus housing tomorrow.”

  “That’s not what I am saying Katrina! I am happy that you’re home, but I don’t want you to end up like your brother and be nearly 30, still at home and no partner in your life!”

  David, very sensibly, kept his head down and shovelled food into his mouth.

  “Mum, it’s my life – please let me live it. I don’t need you to push me again, especially after what happened.”

  A wounded expression fixed itself on my mother’s face, “How could I have known what Christopher was like? You didn’t know yourself. Please don’t put that on me.”

  “Why not? It’s the truth - If you hadn’t have pushed me, David and I wouldn’t have been there and none of this,” I held up my forearms and flashed my hands at my face and shoulder, “would have ever happened.”

  “Katrina, that’s not fair,” David put in.

  “It might not be fair, but you both know it’s true,” I spat out and got up and went to my room.

  Ok, so maybe I was a bit angry with my mother, a little over a year ago she pushed me into moving out with my then boyfriend, Christopher and it all went horribly wrong. I ended up in the hospital. I just kept on thinking that if she had left the decision up to me, I would have waited. I don’t know if it all would have ended the same way – but I’d like to think it would have been different.

  My inner critic kept telling me that I still could have followed my gut and just said ‘no' to moving out with Christopher, and it was right, I guess it was just easier to blame someone else.

  I was still brooding in my room when I heard a gentle knock on the door, it opened a crack and a hand slid in waving a white sock as a surrender flag. “Is it safe to come in?” David asked.

  “Of course.”

  He walked in and sat down next to me on my bed, replacing his sock. “Your mums pretty upset you know.”

  “Yeah I know, I shouldn’t have said anything to her – I just want her to stop talking about relationships with me. Why can’t she just wait until I’m ready?”

  “Well, number one she’s always been like that, and number two, have you ever thought that she really does blame herself over what happened?”

  I looked down, picking at an imaginary speck on my pants as I thought about this. “Maybe she does, but she behaves like she can’t wait to have me married off and moved out again.”

  He put an arm around me and hugged me to him, “You know it’s not like that, she loves you. I think she just wants the fairy tale for you.”

  We sat in silence for a while, me with my head rested on his shoulder and him with his arm still around me.

  “Hey Trina?” David spoke, nudging me gently with his sho
ulder.

  “Hmm?” I murmured.

  “Do you blame me for what happened too?”

  I sat bolt upright and looked at him, “No! How could I do that?”

  “Because I couldn’t protect you,” he looked vulnerable with his eyes downcast. My heart ached with sorrow at the thought of him blaming himself.

  “David, if anything, I am annoyed at myself for not listening to you when you said you didn’t trust him. I stupidly thought it was just male bravado, and you would get used to each other. I didn’t expect it all to explode the way it did, but it did. So now we move on,” I said and squeezed his leg in reassurance.

  He reached out and ran his finger over the still pink scar that ran down the side of my face along my hairline and past my ear. “Does he ever call you?”

  “Yes,” I whispered moving my hair to cover that side of my face. “But it’s nothing to worry about - he just leaves messages; I haven’t seen or spoken to him since you got me out of there… Listen, I have to go and talk to mum, I need to tell her I’m sorry for being a bitch.” I stood up to leave and finish this conversation. Christopher wasn’t a subject I liked to stay on for too long.

  “Alright, I have to go and meet someone anyway.”

  “Of course you do; you man whore,” I joked with him.

  He smiled and kissed me on the cheek, “I’ll see you later, be nice to your mum.”

  “I will.”

  David headed for the front door, calling out goodbye and thanks for dinner to my mother who was in the kitchen washing the dishes.

  I walked over to her and put my head on her shoulder, “I’m sorry mum.”

  She stopped what she was doing and leaned against the sink sobbing, “You’re right,” she choked out.

  “No I’m not.”

  She turned around to face me, “But it’s true Katrina, if I hadn’t encouraged you to move in with him when he asked, it never would have happened.”

  “You don’t know that, it could have happened anyway. Mum, I’m sorry I said what I did – I don’t blame you. I don’t blame David. I only blame him. That’s it. Mum, I just snapped because I don’t want to talk about boys and dating right now. I’ve got enough on my plate as it is. I will date again when I’m ready, and I will do it on my terms ok?”

  “Ok,” she sniffed, “and please don’t move out. I missed you when you were gone, and I’m glad to have you back.”

  I gave her a hug and grabbed a tea towel to dry the dishes. “Where did David go?” she asked.

  “Oh off to meet his current girl for a quickie I think,” I told her nonchalant.

  “Katrina! Why do you have to be so crass?" she chided, flicking bubbles at me to make light of the situation.

  I grabbed some and flicked back at her laughing. “Because I like seeing your face go all pink!”

  The tension broken, we fell into easy conversation about anything but relationships.

  Chapter 5

  I woke with a start the next morning way before my alarm was due to go off after a night filled with unsettling dreams. Giving up on sleep I decided to head to the pool for training early.

  I flicked on my bedside lamp before I swung my feet out of bed, catching my reflection in the mirror – I was a mess; my blonde hair was sticking up all over the place, and I had a crust from drool at the corner of my mouth. My normally clear blue eyes were dull and bloodshot with dark circles underneath them, and my golden tan looked pale causing my scar to look an angry red instead of the pink it had begun to fade to.

  I pulled out a baby wipe and cleaned my face, discarding it before I raked my hair back into a ponytail. I squeezed the cream I used to help fade my scar onto my finger and rubbed it in – it was getting better; you could barely notice it when I was wearing makeup, or if I had my hair out, I was lucky that was the only facial scar I got.

  Sighing to myself, I quickly put on my bathers along with a pair of shorts and a hoodie jacket. I padded quietly into the kitchen and grabbed a banana as well as my training bag before I slipped out into the cool morning air.

  I usually trained with a squad so the coach could help me with my stroke as swimming was my weakest leg but being there this early I would miss them. I hadn’t even checked if I could come at that time, something I wished I had considered before driving there.

  Thankfully, they let me in and after a quick chat with the coach; I was allowed to join the squad in the water. I spent two hours swimming up and down the pool trying to clear the fog out of my mind.

  I had lied to David the night before, I had seen Christopher, he had come to the hospital after David had gotten me out of the flat, and I had promised not to press any charges, as long as he wasn’t home when I went to collect my things.

  He had broken down and cried, begging me not to leave him. If I hadn’t been laying in a hospital bed, I might have changed my mind, but I wasn’t interested in risking a repeat performance. I wasn’t really sure that I could survive another one.

  He kept sending gifts and would call me to beg me to take him back, and I did cave and meet him once for coffee, but it was just to say that I needed him to stop with the gifts and the begging, it was over. Now he only called occasionally to say he missed me.

  I probably should have told someone that I saw him, but I feared that if David, Aaron or my father knew they would follow me and kill him.

  Once I was too exhausted to think about my problems, I dragged myself out of the pool and went into the change rooms to shower before heading off to uni.

  ***

  David met me on my way to the lecture rooms. “Hey babe! Did you sort everything out with your mum?”

  “Yeah I did, thanks. What’s with calling me ‘babe’? Isn’t that your generic name for the girls you date so you don’t have to remember who you’re with?” I teased as I elbowed him playfully in his side.

  He reached his arm around my shoulders and hugged me to him good-humouredly. “I could never forget you Katrina – you’re the sole reason I get up every morning,” he told me solemnly.

  “You’re an idiot,” I laughed. “Did you get all of your reading done?”

  “Yes! And my eyes are burning from working so hard – seriously; it's a full-time job keeping up with them! I might have to take a speed-reading course or something.”

  “You know, if you didn’t spend so much time at my place or going out with your girlfriends – you’d find it a lot easier.”

  “This is true my dear Trina, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and mine wants good company in the form of my best friend and good sex in the form of a willing but not too clingy partner.”

  “Eloquently put,” I told him as we rounded the corner and entered the lecture room to take our seats, David turned around and started chatting up the girl sitting behind us, and I unpacked my things and turned my mobile phone to silent.

  After the lecture we had a short break which we spent in the library – me studying, David socialising; he drove me mad with this as I worked so much harder than he did, and he’s the one that got the better marks. Almost every assignment came back with a Distinction or High Distinction for him while I tended to get Credits with the occasional Distinction thrown in when I was lucky.

  After the library, we parted ways as we both did double degrees. My other degree was Humanities and David’s was Commerce, so this was an area where we both had to go solo.

  “We still painting the town red after work tomorrow night?” he asked me before heading off.

  “Absolutely, I want to go to check some of the bars out at Darling Harbour.”

  “Sounds like a plan, I’ll pick you up from your work, and we’ll walk down together.”

  “Cool, see you then.”

  “Bye Babe,” he said mischievously.

  “Har har har, go to class,” I told him as I watched him walk away laughing to himself.

  Chapter 6

  It was Friday, and I was at work again; the conversation of the day was based around Friday
drinks and where everyone was going afterwards. I told Kayley and Albina that I was going to stay for maybe half an hour and then go out with David to Darling Harbour.

  “We’re going to Pontoon," said Kayley. “You should come too.”

  “Who’s David? Your boyfriend?” asked Albina.

  “No he’s just a friend,” I directed at Albina, “and yes we might stop in to Pontoon,” I said to Kayley.

  I decided that after the altercation I had had with Bianca on Wednesday that I might actually go to the gym upstairs and do some weights instead of running again.

  I had my bag over my shoulder and was waiting for the lift at lunch time when I saw Elliot walk around with his running gear on. He noted me with my work wear still on and gave me a questioning look.

  Maybe half a dozen other people were waiting for the lift to go down and knowing he didn’t like feeding gossip, I just pointed to my gym bag and indicated that I was going up. He nodded slightly in acknowledgement as the elevator pinged and the doors opened on its way down. Impatiently I pressed the up button again, when I stepped back I nearly stood on Elliot’s foot.

  I spun around startled and placed my hand on his rock-hard chest to steady myself; I had assumed he got on the lift with everyone else. “What are you still doing here? Couldn’t you fit in the lift?” I asked confused, slowly forcing my hand to move back to my side instead of letting it caress the smooth skin that was showing at the neck of his singlet, like it wanted to.

  “I thought I’d come up too, are you using the treadmills, the bikes? You’re not doing a spin class or aerobics are you? Because I won’t join you doing that.”

  “I’m doing weights,” I informed him, taking a step back to gain some distance so I could breathe. I looked at him quizzically, wondering what his game was.

  “Alright, weights it is,” he agreed while watching the numbers of the elevators. “What?” he asked when he saw the way I was looking at him.