by Jenna Cox
“Yet.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then sighed instead. “I forgot pasta sauce. Without sauce, it’s just spaghetti and meat.”
“Takeaway?” The wind howled like a fiend outside, and we both glanced at the windows. “Delivery?”
“Will anywhere even deliver in this? Plus, I wanted to do it myself, for Brendan,” I said and pouted slightly.
“Want me to ask him?” Izzy stood up from where she’d been leaning in the doorway and straightened her shoulders like she was readying herself for battle.
“Who, Damien? I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I don’t mind,” she said, and she fluffed her blonde hair and ran a fingertip along the edge of her glossy lips. She was readying for something, but it wasn’t battle. Or it was her own kind of battle, the kind she always won with her infallible weapon — feminine wiles. She even adjusted her cleavage. She meant business.
“You sure you want to break out the big guns for a jar of pasta sauce?” I said. I could clearly see her ‘guns’ too — the fabric of her strapless jumpsuit was tight across her breasts and I could see the peaks of her nipples. Even Damien wouldn’t stand a chance.
“This is not just a matter of pasta sauce, Kat,” she said, already turning to exit the kitchen. I followed her. “This is a matter of love.” She glanced over her shoulder at me and flicked her eyebrows once, pursing her full lips. God, how did she do it? Most of the time I thought of her as my free-spirited, slightly goofy best friend, but if she wanted to turn it on… fuck, even I’d be seduced by her if she wanted me. “If you’re cooking for him, it’s the real deal.”
I laughed self-consciously, then ducked into my own doorway to keep out of the way as she approached Damien’s room. I thought it best if I just stayed out of sight and let her do her thing — though I was still wondering if this was even a good idea. Once she asked, I really had no excuse. If he said no, I couldn’t plead ignorance. My dad always said it was better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission. But my dad never asked for forgiveness either, and why was I listening to him? So I peeked out of my doorway and watched the flirting master at work as Damien opened his door to her.
Instantly his face softened from it’s usual half-scowl at any interruption, and he went kind of fuzzy eyed. She murmured something softly, and he even smiled. Briefly, just a slight stretch of the corners of his mouth, but it was definitely a smile. Izzy was leaning against his door frame, playing with a lock of her hair where it lay over her shoulder, and I watched Damien’s gaze follow the movement right down to her breasts. Guys were so predictable. I rolled my eyes, but I was smiling. I felt kind of guilty still, but it was fascinating to watch.
Damien said something, too quiet for me to catch, and Izzy giggled and brushed his bare forearm with her finger tips. Then she made some appreciative noise and ran her hand up his arm, over his bicep too. She was enjoying this too much. I was worried she was going to forget to even mention the pasta sauce.
But she must have. After a little more conversation, I saw Damien’s eyes narrow slightly. But he was off kilter. Izzy had charmed him and dazzled him, and he looked at her like he was staring into bright headlights. Then he gave a slight shrug and nod, and Izzy’s hand was on his arm again as she gushed her thanks. I thought she was over doing it, but Damien smiled, warmly this time, and even I shivered as I watched the feeling reach his eyes as he looked at her.
Izzy was turning away with a flick of her hair, and she glanced behind her to check that Damien had retreated behind his door again, before skipping over to me, grinning and flushed.
“He said yes.”
“You mustn’t have mentioned it was for me.”
Izzy waved her hand dismissively. “I told him it was for you. He’s got nothing against you, really.”
“He was pretty ticked off last week, and he’s been avoiding me ever since. I didn’t think even you’d be able to bring him around.”
She pursed her lips smugly. “It’s nothing. Really, Damien’s not that bad—“
“I never said he was.”
“—He just doesn’t like conflict.”
“But he really likes you.”
Izzy narrowed her eyes at me, then glanced over her shoulder towards Damien’s door. “You think?” Was she blushing? I stared at her, watching a dizzying range of emotions wash over her face.
“Do you like him?”
“What? No.” She protested too vehemently, and I could barely hide the grin that twitched on my lips. “Don’t you have a room to set up and pasta to make?”
I let it go for the time being, though I was intensely curious. But she was right, I had other stuff to do. Now that I knew the pasta situation was under control, I could leave that for a bit, since it didn’t take long. So I pulled Izzy with me into her room, which she was vacating for me for the night, and recruited her help in setting up my plan.
*-*-*
We were standing back admiring the effect when we heard a knock at the front door. I looked at Izzy, my eyes wide.
“Can’t be him,” I said. “It’s too early. Brendan’s never early.” I looked down at myself, in trackies and a grubby T-shirt.
“I’ll answer it and stall if it is him. You get ready.” She grinned at me, and patted me on the bum as I turned to head for my room. I felt giddy, like I was a school girl getting ready for my first ever date. Before I ducked into my room I glanced at Izzy sashaying down the hallway to the front door and wished I’d told her to put on a sweater or something. Not that I ever thought either of them would cross that sort of line, but Brendan was only human after all; Izzy’s assets made me look dowdy in comparison.
But she was opening the door, so I ducked inside my room. If it was Brendan, I at least wanted to make a half decent first impression tonight, and not appear in my current, disheveled state. But as I was closing my door, I heard Izzy gasp, and Brendan’s voice.
“Is Kat here?” His tone alarmed me, flat and slightly mumbled, and I was wrenching my door open again before Izzy even called me.
“Uh, Kat?” she was yelling, a little frantically, and the first thing I saw when I reentered the hallway, was her wide eyes facing me. Then she stepped to the side to let Brendan in, and I gasped.
“Oh, fuck,” I murmured, rushing to him. He was saturated, with flecks of what looked like snow in his hair; he stepped inside and the heavy front door thudded shut after him. I stopped a pace away, my gaze roving over him, returning again and again to the swollen, bloody split in his lower lip. My hands flailed around uselessly; I was afraid to touch him until I knew what was happening. “Are you hurt anywhere else? Was it your dad again?”
He shook his head and winced slightly at the movement. “My sister. And it’s just this,” he said thickly, trying not to move his lip as he spoke.
“Shit. Why? What… Izzy, can you grab that first aid kit from the kitchen?” She ran to get it while I led Brendan to my room, helped him strip off his wet jacket, and chucked him a dry towel, which he rubbed over his wet hair and up and down his arms. He leant over the sink and inspected himself in the mirror, turning his head side to side and experimentally stretching his lip.
“Fuck. She really got me this time,” he murmured. This time?
I sat him on the end of the bed while I grabbed a wash cloth and wet it. I dabbed around the cut, cleaning blood away from the area so I could see it better. This felt all too familiar. The bruise on his scalp was only just finally fading, the cut scabbed and healing, and now this. From his sister? She’d seemed feisty, but I hadn’t expected something like this. But what did I know? He never talked about his family.
Izzy came in with the zippered pouch that contained plasters and antiseptic wipes. I was still trying to decide if that was going to be enough, if we needed to take him to A&E instead. But I knew instinctively he wouldn’t want that, so I was going to try and look after it myself first.
“Maybe you should have studied nursing instead of marketing,” B
rendan mumbled from under the cloth I held to his lip.
I raised my eyebrows. “Why — you plan on needing medical attention often?” He didn’t say anything to that, and I chewed on my lip watching his eyes darken for a moment, still applying gentle pressure to the split. “I actually wanted to be a nurse once. When I was a kid.”
“But you chose marketing?” His voice was muffled around the washcloth.
I shrugged. Did I choose it? Or was it another one of those things I’d done while wearing my parents’ money-coloured glasses. I didn’t really have the energy to think about it right then. We lapsed into silence again as I gently tried to stop the bleeding.
“What happened?” I asked softly after a while. Brendan glanced at Izzy, who had parked herself in a chair nearby and was watching us with wide, curious eyes. But he didn’t ask her to leave. He just shrugged.
“Didn’t like being called a slag, I guess.” He ran his tongue along the inside of his lip and scowled at the pain while I stared at him.
“You called your sister—”
“No.” He growled. “That’s what she heard. I just told her to quit acting like she wasn’t worth better. And told her she couldn’t — ow, fucking hell—”
“Sorry.” I pulled the wash cloth away and grimaced. I hadn’t been concentrating and was pressing too hard.
“It’s my own fault. I should know better than to try and stop her doing anything.”
“Where is she now?” I ripped open an antiseptic wipe, but hesitated. I was thinking the split would be alright without stitches. It wasn’t bleeding too much. But I was pretty sure the antiseptic was going to sting like hell — I was considering using vodka again instead, because then maybe he could drink it at the same time.
“Out with some tosser. I don’t keep up.” He was glowering darkly at the other side of the room, and I took the opportunity to dab at the split with the antiseptic. Brendan hissed. “Farking hell. What are you doing to me?”
“Settle down, it’s just antiseptic.”
“Well it fucking burns.”
“Just hold still.”
I heard Izzy laugh, and we both swung our heads in her direction. “You two are so cute,” she cooed, and we scowled. She raised her hands and got up from the chair. “I’ll get out of your hair, then, since no-one’s dying. I’ll just get my dress out of my room, and then it’s all yours, alright, Kat?”
“Yeah. Okay, thanks,” I said, still frowning at her but trying to sound grateful, since I was forcing her out of her own bedroom.
“What did she mean, it’s all yours?” Brendan asked after she’d left. He was gripping the edge of the bed with white knuckles as I finished cleaning his lip.
“It’s a surprise.” He met my eye and just stared. “I’ll tell you if you want—”
“No.” His jaw flexed. “It’s alright. I don’t want to ruin it.”
“It’s nothing—”
“It’s okay.” He said it harshly, and I recoiled slightly, wincing. It definitely did not sound okay.
“What’s going on, Brendan?”
He wouldn’t meet my eye, just stoically looked away, staring at nothing while I stood awkwardly in front of him with a wad of antiseptic tissue in my hand, once again with his blood on my fingers. I tried to breathe slowly, to ward off the ringing in my ears and the anxiety clawing in my gut.
Brendan glanced at me and then away again, but it was long enough for me to see the depth of pain in his eyes; they were glassy and red-rimmed, and I thought I saw his lip quiver, though that could have been from the pain. I dropped down in front of him, and put my hands on his knees. Just waiting.
“I’m in trouble, Kat,” he murmured, and my heart palpitated unevenly.
“What do you mean?”
Brendan’s jaw clenched again a few times. “With money.”
“Didn’t you just get a new job?”
“It’s not enough. I’m behind — I think we’re going to get evicted, and I don’t know where to go.”
“You can stay with me if—”
“It’s not just me though, is it,” he said, passing a hand over his eyes and rubbing his forehead.
“Can’t I lend… or the earring? Why don’t you—”
“I already have,” he said, in a voice so low and quiet I almost missed it.
“Oh. It…it wasn’t enough?”
He shook his head, his jaw set tightly. I knew it wasn’t directed at me, his defiance. He was battling something inside himself. But I still felt distant and shut out. But he was telling me, I reminded myself. He wanted to tell me. So I stayed quiet, just ran my hands higher up his legs, drawing myself closer.
“What can I do, Brendan? I…I don’t know what to do.”
He glanced at me and then shook his head with a heavy exhale through his nose. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ll work it out. I always do.” He wrapped his arms around my neck and pulled me closer, so that my face was buried against his chest. I could hear his heart thudding beneath his damp clothes, feel him shaking. I didn’t know if it was from the cold or something else.
“I want to help,” I murmured. “I care about you, Brendan. There’s got to be something I can do.”
I felt him sigh, and he dropped his head down, resting his cheek against the top of my head. I wanted to look up at him but he was holding me tightly. “You already have. No-one has cared about me like you have before.” He said it heavily, and my chest felt tight. “That’s why I wanted to tell you—so that no matter what happens, you’ll know.”
“Know what? What do you mean?”
“That none of this was because of you. Or because I didn’t care.” His voice was thick and quiet. I just waited, my whole body taught like a wound spring. “I’ve got an older sister too, you know. But she takes after my dad. So she took off tonight and left me to deal with it.” He took a couple of breaths, like it was hard to get air into his lungs. “My family always goes mad when it snows.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because of…because of how Mum died.”
His mum was dead? I felt the shock of that ripple through me like an earthquake, and I felt sick. Why had he not told me that before? I tried to move but he held me fast. I slipped my arms around his waist and clung to him too, then, with nothing to say.
“That was the last time I remember feeling like a family, that ski trip. Mum had been saving for it for years. It was the only holiday we ever went on, and it killed her. Or my dad did, so the lawyers tell us. Not the car. Not the fucking car.”
My mind was whirling. I was trying to piece together what he was saying to understand it, but I felt hot and cold at once. His dislike of lawyers was starting to make sense. I, more than most, knew how good they could be at legally kicking you while you were down. I didn’t know what had happened in Brendan’s case, but it was plain how he felt about it, and that was all I cared about.
“I haven’t seen my brothers since they were taken away. They’ll be seven now. I haven’t seen them in three years. I could get them back now if I wasn’t such a fuck up. And if I wasn’t trying to pay off Dad’s fucking debts.”
I felt hot tears slipping down my face and blinked them away. Don’t cry now. This is not about you, Kat. I tried to grit my teeth, but they just chattered. I was shaking.
“I’m sorry, Brendan. I’m so sorry.” I didn’t know what else I could possibly say. He sighed harshly and sat up a little straighter.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to feel sorry for me. This is my life to sort out. I just… I just wanted you to know.” His grip on me had slackened, and I lifted my head out of the warm darkness against his chest, blinking at him blearily.
“I’m here for you. I don’t know what I can do, but — I’m here.” I love you. I wanted to say it out loud. I felt the force of it in my chest, creeping up my throat, wanting to blurt itself out into the space between us. But I swallowed it back. It wasn’t the time. I didn’t want him to think I was saying it out of twist
ed pity. And I didn’t want it to drive him away when he’d just opened up more than he ever had before.
He smiled at me with a humourless laugh, and rubbed and hand over his face. Then he winced and cursed, when he knocked the split on his lip. “You can do something for me — you can show me this surprise. Get it over with.” I tried to keep my face straight, to not look stung, but I must have failed. “Shit, I didn’t mean it like that…I just—”
“—hate surprises. Sorry — I just wanted to do something romantic. It’s stupid.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said and grinned. How did he do that? Push everything aside so quickly and make jokes? I frowned at him even as I was smiling. “So, what are we doing then?”
“Star gazing.”
He screwed up his face, then winced and I saw his tongue flick to the split in his lip. He looked to the window. “Uh, have you seen the weather?”
“Trust me. I mean, if you still want to do this…we don’t—”
“I want to, Kat.”
“Should we have tea first? I was going to cook — are you hungry?” I got to my feet, looking down at him. We’d gone to all the effort of getting Damien to agree to giving up a jar of pasta sauce. I may as well use it.
“Yeah. I’m starved actually,” he said, and took my out stretched hand to stand up. “Wait, you can cook?” he said. I shot him a look, but then grimaced.
“That remains to be seen,” I said. He laughed and let me lead him to the kitchen.
*-*-*
“Close your eyes,” I told him. We were standing outside Izzy’s door in the hallway, stomachs full of spaghetti bolognese — which had turned out surprisingly well, so I was a little too full for my liking. But it made me feel pleasantly warm and heavy and looking at Brendan made me long to just crawl into his arms. We hadn’t even had much of the wine and dessert either, deciding to come straight here. Brendan was still mildly anxious about it all. “Close them!”
His eyebrows dipped dubiously, but he complied and put one hand over his face. Then he splayed his fingers and peeked through them just as I put my hand on the door handle. I scowled.
