by Jenna Cox
I bit my lip. “Yeah.”
His eyebrow quirked up. “This makes you happy?” He pointed to the side of his face.
“Not what happened to you.” I approached him, and got on my knees between his legs so I could look up at him. “Us. Isn’t that what happened last night? Despite everything — there’s still us. That makes me happy. Sorry if that’s selfish. I know you probably had a shit night—”
Brendan shook his head and caught my face between his hands, crushing me into a kiss. I slid my hands around his waist, under his shirt and leant into him. “You’re a daft git,” he murmured, breaking away and wrapping his arms around me. I rested my cheek against his chest and made a little wounded sound.
“Nice,” I said.
“I stand you up for a date, you walk into my dad trying to kill me and robbing me blind, I tell you I was going to pawn your earrings, and you’re all giddy and happy.”
“It’s good sex, what can I say?”
He laughed into my hair. That wasn’t untrue, but it wasn’t that, or not all of it. He had brought me home and stayed with me, and in between the sex we had talked and laughed half the night. That was the part I hadn’t even told Izzy yet, but that was the part that made me fizz with happiness down to my toes.
I felt Brendan shake his head. “Sorry for almost leaving just then. I’m not used to this.”
“To what?”
“Being a, you know, boyfriend and all.”
I grinned against his chest, then leaned back to look at his face. “It’s okay. I’m not used to being a girlfriend either. I won’t expect much if you don’t.”
“You want, like, the serious talking and shite, though?” His face was deadpan for a moment, and then I saw his lips twitch.
“That going to be too much for you? I know you’re all sex, all the time—”
He picked up my pillow and socked me with it. “You’re one to talk,” he said. I huffed indignantly and pushed him back on the bed; he was grinning and bracing as I grabbed the pillow off him. I straddled him to pin him down and lifted the pillow like I was going to whack him. But I threw it away instead and dropped down to kiss him.
“Just can’t help myself around you, obviously,” I said, fingering the hair at his neck while I looked down at him. The teasing grinning morphed into a smile of pure affection, and I felt my breath catch in my throat. I wondered if he was going to say it again, the L word and if I wanted him to or not. I’d held my breath for it all night, any time the mood got intense. But he didn’t.
I ran my fingers lightly over the bruised side of his face and the matted hair.
“Come into the shower, I’ll clean you up,” I murmured, then winked. But as we were getting up my phone buzzed on the bedside table. I glanced at it. “Shit, that’s Mum.” I stared at it, but didn’t move.
“You should take it.” I made a noise like a growl in my throat. “You haven’t talked to her since Friday — you should answer.” I scowled at him a bit more, but he was right.
“You get in, I’ll meet you in there after,” I said, climbing off him, and I slapped him on the bum as he got up and turned away. The phone had stopped ringing by then, but I picked it up and sat on the end of my bed, knees tucked up to my chest. Then I took a deep breath and hit redial.
“Katherine.”
“Mother.”
There was a pause. “How are you?” Her voice was hesitant.
“What’s happened?” I felt a sharp edge of panic in my chest. She never spoke so unsurely.
“Nothing. Other than what we already discussed.”
“Oh. What are you calling for then?”
“Just to check on you. Your father and I haven’t heard from you since your little display at the hotel.” Ah, there it was. The motherly condescension that I knew and hated. It felt like a relief, though, because it was familiar, predictable.
“I didn’t think there was much more to say. Your lives — your decision.”
“But that doesn’t mean we don’t care.” I would have felt warmed if I hadn’t known by the tone in her voice that something else was coming. “Or that we’ve waived our right to be concerned.”
“Mmhmm?” I said, rolling my eyes to myself. “And what is it that you’re concerned about?”
“Katherine, you know we try not to interfere in your life.” I barely stifled a snort. “So please tell me this boy was just some ill-conceived stunt to annoy us?”
“Working, is it?” I retorted, then bit my tongue. That wasn’t what I meant to say. It was just too easy to bait her.
“Katherine. Please don’t make me have to take this further.” I frowned.
“Take what further?”
“Do you want me to say it outright?”
“Yes. For God’s sake, yes, just say what you mean.”
“We forbid it.”
“You forbid it?”
“You must not see that boy anymore.”
“His name is Brendan, and I’ll see him if I want to. What makes you think you can forbid anything?”
“We are still your parents, Katherine. And we pay all your bills. You are still to abide by our rules.” I hated myself for how nervous that made me.
“You don’t even know him, Mum.”
“I know his type, and that is enough. This is not the sort of boy you need.”
My jaw was tight and the hand that was not holding the phone clenched into a fist as I tried to hold back everything I really wanted to say. Instead I stayed silent.
“Katherine?”
“I’m not going to stop seeing him, Mum.” My voice was low and flat, and I felt the twisting anxiety in my gut begin to knot painfully. I knew my parents. I knew the next threat that was going to come out of her mouth before she said it.
“I thought you might say that. Well, if you are choosing to withdraw your obedience, then we may have to withdraw our financial support.”
I breathed heavily out my nostrils. “So where would I live? You’d rather me drop out of uni, than let me see a guy you don’t like? What happened to wanting to make sure I felt secure, huh?”
“Drop out? No — we wouldn’t stop paying for your tuition or your essentials. We’d just limit your credit card use. We’re not monsters, Katherine. Even your father. He might screw me out of as much as he can in the divorce, but he’d never leave you dry.” She gave a harsh, humourless laugh. “What do you think of us?”
I shook my head. “Fine, then do it.”
A few beats of silence passed, and my head throbbed.
“Katherine, be reasonable. You’re willing to put this rift between us over some boy?” I stood up from the bed abruptly; even though she couldn’t see me, it made me feel like I was standing over her, standing up to her.
“He’s not just some boy. I care about him. I’m not going to cow to your ridiculous threats.”
“You care about him? Katherine, you’re so young. You might think you know what you feel, but you don’t. Trust me.”
“Why would I trust you on anything to do with love? You and Dad clearly don’t understand it.”
The was a pause, and then her voice came tight and quietly. “Love?” I swallowed.
“Yeah. Maybe. Maybe I am in love with him. I don’t know yet.” I felt strangely close to tears. “I’ve got to go. Do what you have to, Mum, I don’t care anymore.”
I hung up before she could respond. Then I exhaled harshly and threw the phone on the bed. It hit the corner of the mattress, bounced, and tumbled to the floor, face down on the carpet.
“Alright?”
I looked up sharply; Brendan was standing a few steps away, by the bathroom door. I couldn’t even remember hearing the shower turn on let alone off again, but he was standing there, wet and glistening, with only a towel around his hips.
“Yeah. I don’t know.” How much had he heard?
I stooped to pick up my phone. It hadn’t seemed like a hard fall, but when I turned it over, the glass had a diagonal crack in it, a sl
ash, right across the screen.
“Fucking brilliant.”
“What?”
“It broke.” And then I laughed. And kept laughing, a maniacal sound, standing up to just collapse onto the bed clutching my stomach. Brendan came and sat on the end of the bed, waiting until I’d calmed down and stopped rolling around in painful, hysterical spasms.
“Did I miss the joke?”
I blew out a breath and shook my phone at him. “It’s just ironic. The day I break my phone is the first time in my life I probably can’t afford to buy a new one.”
“Since when can you not afford it?”
I pressed my lips together, lying on my back, and looked up at him. Then sat up and ran my fingers through his wet hair, raking it back from his face. Did I tell him? Hadn’t I just been telling him that this was what a relationship was, the serious talking and all that? But I felt sick just thinking about the conversation with my mum.
“It’s nothing.”
“Tell me, Kat.” He was looking at me so intensely that I wondered if he didn’t already know. Maybe he had heard the conversation. But either way, he was waiting for me to say it.
“Mum just threatened to cut off my credit card if I didn’t stop seeing you.”
His face was unnaturally blank for a few moments, then a cloud seemed to pass over him. “What did you say?”
“What do you think I said? I told her to fuck off.” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Okay, so not in those words. But I told her to do whatever she has to. I don’t care.”
“You kind of do care, though,” he said, watching my face.
“I don’t,” I protested.
“You do. You’re shitting yourself.” He grinned and rose to lean over me, pushing me back onto the bed again.
“Only a little bit,” I said and bit my lip. He kissed me.
“Poor little Daddy’s girl has lost her money. Might have to live like a pleb like the rest of us.”
“Hey.” But I was grinning then, and writhing has his lips trailed over my collarbone, tickling me. “But seriously, I know this is going to sound awful, but — I don’t know how to live without money.” It wasn’t even going to be completely without money — if they even went through with their threat. They’d still pay my living costs. But I was still shamefully terrified of what the change might mean.
“I can teach you a thing or two.” Brendan lifted my top and starting kissing his way down my belly.
“I bet you can,” I said and sighed as he reached my trackies and started sliding them off. He stopped kissing just below my belly button, and was silent for a moment. I looked down at him. He seemed to be lost in thought against my skin. “What is it?”
His eyes were glowing when he looked at me. He licked his lips once, but whatever words were on the end of his tongue, he held them back. Then he just grinned and leaned back down to take hold of my knickers with his teeth.
“Don’t rip them,” I said, lying back and closing my eyes. “I might not be able to afford new ones.” Then I felt his fingers looping into the fabric, and a jerk accompanied by the sound of tearing lace. I shot up, staring at him. “Brendan!”
He grinned. “All I heard was ‘rip them’.”
I laughed and shook my head, then reached out and yanked the towel off his hips. “You’ll pay for that.”
“I don’t have any money either, remember?” he said, and I was momentarily surprised by how easily he could joke about it. I gripped his arms and pulled him up until his naked body hovered over mine.
“That’s fine. There are other ways you can pay me.” I flicked my eyebrows. Between us I saw him throb, and I reached down to take hold if him, ran the silky hardness through my hand and watched his eyes drift closed. The pulsing pressure inside me was not just between my legs, though that was strong and hard to ignore. I felt the impulse to say something. To tell him how I felt. But I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just excess emotion, the intensity of everything that had happened. I was afraid and wanting something to cling to, I knew that. So I couldn’t put that out there with him if I wasn’t sure it was real.
I just kissed him instead, opened my legs to him and moaned as he pushed into me. But as the friction of our bodies sent heat crashing over me in waves, I knew I was fooling myself. I’d known it from the first time he had come up to my room, and he had fucked me before we barely knew a thing about each other. Even then, I had known it wasn’t just fucking. It wasn’t just sex between us. Every time I let him in, a little bit more of my heart was melting.
I opened my eyes as he thrust, and found him looking at me too. We panted together. I wanted it to be real. I wanted to believe what I thought I saw there.
But I still couldn’t say it, even though it wanted to burst out of me with more force than even the explosion of white heat in my body. I thought it would fade, as the aftershocks rippled over us, and we lay dozy and tangled in each other and the sheets. But it was still there, the thought, the word, burning a hole in my chest. And because I felt drunk on him, I actually started to say it.
“Brendan—”
“Kat—“
We both spoke at once, and then laughed. “You go,” he said quickly, and my heart thudded. I glanced up at his face from where my cheek rested against his chest. I tried to think clearly. I couldn’t decide if it was just my imagination making me think he’d sounded relieved that I’d interrupted him, that made me think his body had stiffened a little, like he was nervous. Maybe I was projecting, since those were all the same things I was feeling.
I turned my face away again, running my fingers over his flat stomach, staring without seeing at his skin. “How much did you hear before?”
“Of your phone call?”
“Yeah.”
The silence seemed to throb in my ears until he answered. “Just the end of it.” I chewed on my lip. Then I shifted so that I was leaning on my elbows on the mattress and looking down at him.
“Is this still just a bit of fun for you?” I asked, keeping my voice as light as I could, but not quite able to look him in the eye. “I mean, it’s okay if it is. I just—”
“Kat.” I shut my mouth. “Haven’t we already talked about this?”
“Have we? I mean, we joke about it. I’m just never quite sure.” My throat felt constricted and my heart was banging like a drum. Why was I even doing this? I was frantically searching my brain for a way to backtrack, to retract everything I had said and settle back in the glowing languor I had just done my best to chase away. But Brendan’s eyes were tracking over my face, and I watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. The world seemed to be in slow motion.
“I’m not good at this, Kat. Well I wouldn’t know if I was, since I’ve never really done it before.”
“Me neither, remember. I told you I’m not expecting anything. I just—” My chest felt so tight I briefly wondered if I was about to have a heart attack. I swallowed to get some moisture back into my dry mouth. “I just feel a lot of things that I don’t know what to do with. And it would kind of fucking hurt, if I go any further with this and you don’t feel the same.” I looked down and blinked back the hot pressure behind my eyes. “Maybe this is why I normally don’t do relationships.”
Brendan lifted his hand from where it had been resting on his stomach, and brushed a wisp of hair back from my cheek. “I don’t think this was ever just fun for me, Kat. I wouldn’t have even come up here that first time if it was. I wouldn’t have crossed town in my underwear. I wouldn’t have let you come in my house.” He swallowed thickly, and I just watched him. “Maybe I don’t do it right. Maybe it just seems like it’s all about sex or something. But this is the only way I know how to relate. This is what I know. Fuck, I don’t know exactly what this is, Kat— it’s just something I haven’t felt before. And, I don’t know…I think maybe I could fall in love with you.” He’d been staring at the ceiling as he spoke, but now he looked back to me, searching my face. “Is that enough? A maybe?”
&nbs
p; I bit the inside of my lower lip and gave him a small smile. Nodding, I bent to kiss him. “Maybe is perfect.” And his arms closed around me as I dropped down to nestle into his side again. I couldn’t stop myself smiling, and I wondered if I was the only girl in the world to be so ridiculously thrilled with a ‘maybe I could love you.’ But I was.
ten
FEBRUARY 14TH. THE most pressurised day of the year for new couples. Do we ignore it, embrace it, mock it? Leave suggestive fliers around the place that hint at which particular event of debauchery we’d like to attend?
I did the latter. I didn’t really do it consciously — I’d vowed to myself to always be direct with Brendan, to not play games. We did best when we were direct, like our ‘maybe’ conversation, and telling the truth about our lives.
Like him being honest about the reasons he’d had to work almost non-stop the last week or so, and hardly had time to see me. That it was purely about needing the money, and not about needing the space. And that when he called me late at night to crawl into my bed, it wasn’t a booty call, just the only spare moments he had between jobs and study.
But as honest as I might vow to be, vulnerability always creeps in. In some ways the fact that we were both new to doing the ‘normal’ relationship thing was a weight off, because it meant we had no preconceived ideas about what it should be. But at the same time, we had no rules either. No protocols to follow. And so as Valentine’s day crept up on me, I couldn’t decide what to do about it. I didn’t want him to feel like he needed to buy me anything, or was failing at boyfriending by not being able to afford to take me to dinner or something. Really, would that even be what I would want?
A lot of my friends were single, including Izzy, whose Salsa guy hadn’t at yet transitioned into anything more official than a hook up. The events of choice for people like her were all happening in nightclubs, and Izzy kept less than subtly hinting that she wanted me to come with her. So really, I could blame Izzy for the suggestive fliers, because she started it by doing it to me. Since I hadn’t been able to decide what the best idea was, I just took them into my room and left them laying on my desk and bedside table to see if Brendan would say anything first.
