by S R Silcox
Brooks pulls away from me and looks down at her lap. “Sorry,” she mumbles.
“Totally fine,” I whisper. “Totally.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
I bite my lip and nod. “Made me forget the storm.” Thunder cracks overhead. “At least for a minute.” I lay my head on Brooks’ shoulder and we reposition ourselves so she can put both arms around me and hug me.
She kisses the top of my head. “It’ll be over soon.”
We lay like that for a while, listening to the rain drumming down outside and every time the lightning and thunder pulses through the sky, Brooks hugs me tighter.
“Mum loved storms,” I say.
“Did she?”
“Yeah. She used to run outside in the rain and get soaking wet.” I smile at the memory of my mother jumping in puddles and trying to coax me outside to dance around with her. I feel a twinge of sadness that I didn’t do it more often. Maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid of storms now if I did.
“Tell me about your mum,” Brooks says.
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Tell me anything you can think of. Like, did she ever tell you how she met your dad?”
“At work,” I say.
“They worked together?” Brooks asks.
“Not really. Mum was a copy writer and she used to write Dad’s sales ads for him for the display houses he built.”
“Wow. Really? Was she good at it?”
“I guess so. It’s what she did for a job back home until she got sick.”
Brooks squeezes my hand. “I bet she was really good with words.”
“Yeah. She was great when I had assignments to do.”
Brooks chuckles. “I wish I had your mum when I was doing mine.”
I smile. “She was great at seeing the best in things too, you know? Like, a two-bedroom tiny house was a cosy cottage, or a main road was easy access to transport.”
Thunder booms again and I suck in a breath and tense up. Brooks squeezes my leg.
“What about people?” she asks.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if your mum was trying to sell Ben, for example. What would she say?”
I like how Brooks is talking like Mum’s still here, instead of in the past like everyone else does. I think about Ben on the beach yesterday, how chiselled his body is and how Nicki fawned over him. “She’d say he has good street appeal.”
Brooks cracks up laughing.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing. Sorry. What else would she say?”
“Um, chef’s kitchen?”
Brooks nods her approval. “Good one.”
“And maybe good for entertaining?”
Brooks laughs again. “I think you’ve nailed it. Wait til I tell him.” She leans her head on mine and runs her finger down my arm. “What about me?”
“You?”
“Why not? What would your mum say about me if I was a house?”
I glance up at her, and the way she’s looking at me, all soft and mellow, makes my skin tingle. I realise all of a sudden how little I know about her now, so I take a guess. “Rough around the edges,” I say. Brooks raises her eyebrows but says nothing, so I continue. “Inside is deceptively big. Discerning buyers only. Price on application.”
Brooks slaps her thigh and throws her head back and laughs. “Price on application. I love it. What about you?”
“Me?”
“Is there an echo in here? Yes, you.” She taps me on my nose with her finger.
I sit up and pull away from her, as much as I can in our current situation anyway. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” Brooks presses. “What type of house is Riley?”
I pick at my nails and Brooks takes my hand and squeezes. “Come on,” she says. “How would you get me to buy you?”
Her question makes me laugh. I take a deep breath. “Lacking street appeal. Waiting for the right owner. Serious buyers only.” I look back up at her, waiting for her reaction. Her expression has gotten serious.
She chews on her lip. “You know what I’d say?”
I shake my head.
“Classic Queenslander. Could do with some TLC. Knock down some walls to really open up.”
I know she’s trying to be funny, but I don’t think she has any idea how close she actually is about me. For some reason, hearing Brooks say that makes me tear up. I sniff.
“Oh, Rols. I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
“No, I’m not.” I wipe my eyes with my shirt. “Sorry.”
Brooks pulls me in closer and wraps me in a tight hug. “I’m sorry, Rols. We don’t have to talk about your mum anymore.” Her mouth is just above my ear and when she talks, her breath is warm on my skin.
“It’s okay. Really. I just miss her, you know?”
“Yeah. I know.”
I lean into her more and her arms tighten around me again. Thunder booms overhead but it’s not as loud as before. I close my eyes against it and just try to think about how good it feels to be with Brooks. The sweet smell of soap on her neck and the tang of whatever product she uses in her hair.
Brooks jumps up all of a sudden and hits her head on the sheet ceiling. I laugh. “What are you doing?”
She drops back down onto her knees, grabs my hand and pulls me up. “Come on,” she says, pulling me out of the fort and toward the door.
“Where are we going?”
“Outside,” she says.
I freeze. “Wait. What? It’s storming out there.”
She stops, her hand on the door handle, and turns to look at me. “Rols, it’s just raining now. The storm’s gone. Haven’t you noticed the thunder’s not so loud anymore?”
“I don’t care. I’m not going out there.”
Brooks sighs. She takes a step toward me, and takes both my hands in hers. She looks me in the eyes. She’s so intense. “Riley Fisher, it’s raining outside, and you just told me that your mum used to love dancing in the rain. Don’t you want to see why she loved it so much?”
I chew on the inside of my mouth. She’s not being fair and I reckon she knows it.
“Come on, Rols. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“We’ll catch a cold.”
“It’s still at least thirty degrees out there,” Brooks counters.
“We’ll get wet, and you don’t have any spare clothes.”
“I’ll borrow some of yours.”
“It’s almost eleven at night.”
“I still don’t see your point.”
I don’t move.
Brooks lowers her voice, so it’s almost a whisper. “Come on, Rols. Just come outside for five minutes and if you hate it, we can come back in.” She takes a step back, and pulls me a step forward. She slides the door open behind her. “See? It’s not even windy anymore.” She smiles at me and the way she looks at me, her eyes soft, one eyebrow raised, the corners of her mouth turned up just a touch, it makes my stomach flip. I give in and let her lead me outside and into the rain.
The rain is now more like a shower, and by the time we walk around the side of the pool and onto the grass at the back, we’re both soaked through. She turns to face me and walks backwards. “Okay?” she asks. I nod.
We stop in the middle of the yard. “Not so bad, huh?”
I shake my head. “What do we do now?”
“We dance,” Brooks says, and starts swinging my arms and jumping around.
“There’s no music,” I say.
“It’s in your head. Remember what your mum used to do? Do that.”
I close my eyes and lift my head to the sky, feeling the rain on my face, and I picture Mum the last time I saw her dancing in the rain and I start to move. I see her laughing and twirling in front of me, the long dark hair of her favourite wig sticking to her face. Reaching out for me trying to coax me out with her, and I start to cry. My tears mix with the rain falling down my cheeks and I forget the storm. It’s ju
st me and Mum, dancing in the rain like I should have so many times.
I open my eyes. Brooks has stopped dancing. She’s standing there, soaking wet, watching me intently. I smile at her and she smiles back at me and my breath catches in my throat. I step over to her and press my lips onto hers, and she kisses me back. And we stand there in the rain, dripping wet, in the blue glow from the pool, and it’s amazing.
Twenty
Brooks
My alarm jolts me awake the next morning and I fumble around on the floor under Riley’s bed trying to find my phone before she wakes up. I finally manage to turn the alarm off, but not before Riley groans and stretches beside me.
“What time is it?” she asks groggily.
“Too early for you. Go back to sleep.” I lean over and kiss her on the cheek and then duck into the bathroom to get changed out of the shorts and shirt I borrowed from her last night and back into my own clothes. When I come back out, Riley’s splayed across the bed on her stomach like a star fish and has clearly fallen straight back to sleep. I stand for a moment, watching her slow steady breaths, her hair a mess over the pillows. She looks so cute in her Hello Kitty pyjamas. I wish I could climb back into bed with her and snuggle again but I have to get home and get ready for work, and with any luck, I’ll get back before Ben wakes up and can give me shit for staying out all night. Although I can’t wait to hear how his night went.
Sneaking into Uncle Pete’s has never been easy, thanks to the squeaky front door. If you open it slowly, it squeaks loud enough to wake the whole house up, but if you open it fast, it doesn’t squeak at all. Turns out it doesn’t matter either way, because when I get to the kitchen, Ben’s already up and cooking breakfast.
He looks up and before he can even open his mouth I say, “I waited out the storm at Riley’s place and I fell asleep, so it was just easier to stay.”
“Right,” he says. He dumps whatever he’s been mixing from a bowl into a pan.
“What’s for breakfast?” I ask.
Ben sprinkles herbs into the pan. “This is not for you.”
“A cooked breakfast. That’s unusual.” And then it hits me. “Oh my God. Ben!”
He glances over to the hallway. “Shh,” he says. “You’ll wake her up.”
“No wonder you didn’t call or text me last night. You were too busy.”
He points a wooden spoon at me. “Like you can talk.”
“Hey,” I say, putting my hands up. “Riley and I fell asleep waiting out the storm. You on the other hand—”
He cuts me off. “I, on the other hand, slept on the lounge.”
“You did not.”
“Take a look if you don’t believe me.” He points to the lounge room, so I wander over and take a look. Sure enough, there are blankets and pillows on the lounge, and it does look like someone might have slept there.
“Are you sure you didn’t just do that for my benefit?” I ask, wandering over to the pantry to get my cereal.
Ben just smiles at me. “How about we call it even. You just fell asleep with Riley and I slept on the lounge.”
“Okay then,” I reply, but I’m still not sure he believes me. Which means maybe I shouldn’t believe him. I sit at the breakfast bar and watch him cook. I do the same thing at the Hut sometimes when they’re not busy and Ben’s on the grill. His hands are so fast, cutting stuff up and then tossing it into the pan. He’s making an omelette. Pretty easy to make (even I can make them) but pretty spectacular when you’re trying to impress someone if you do it right. I watch as he tosses spinach and tomatoes on top and then sprinkles cheese on right at the last minute. Then he eases the omelette across the pan and flicks the corner up so that it folds over on itself. He looks up at me and grins. He used to practice that for ages until he got it just right.
“Show off.” I laugh and finish off my cereal. “I have to get ready for work,” I say, dumping my bowl into the sink. “I’ll catch you tonight, and you can tell me all the goss.”
“Looking forward to all your goss,” he says with a wink.
Work is quiet so I spend most of my time unpacking the new boxes of stock and daydreaming about where I should take Riley on a date. I mean, here’s the thing. Riley and I used to sleep in the same bed when we were kids all the time. It’s just something you do when you’re little, right? And I know we kissed last night, but that could have just been Riley freaking out from the storm and not realising what she was doing. There was that kiss in the rain that she instigated. I smile at the memory of that one. But still, I need to find out whether Riley will kiss me under normal circumstances, like when there’s no storm around.
The other problem is, I have no idea whether Riley’s ‘out’ or not. I mean, everyone knows I’m out. If they didn’t before then the rainbow flag incident at school a few months ago made sure of it. But Riley? I have no idea if she’s out to herself let alone anyone else, so I need to be careful, just in case. Roper’s is such a small town, and I am well aware of what some people think of me, and I’d hate for Riley to be associated with the bad me. And then there’s her dad, who I’m sure would freak out completely if he found out about me and Riley last night. I’m not exactly his favourite person at the moment. He may have won the development war, but I caused him a few wounds in the battle and although my protesting days are over, I doubt he’ll forgive me too easily for causing him so much trouble.
I’m racking my brain trying to come up with a place to take Riley, or something to do which is kind of a date but could be taken either way when Reece comes out the back and says, “You’ve got a visitor.”
I jump up and grin.
“What are you so happy about?” he asks as I rush past him.
“Nothing,” I reply and head over to the counter, where it’s not Riley who’s popped in, but Rosie. I try to hide my disappointment. “Hey, Rosie. What’s up?”
“Hey, Brooks. I just came in to see if you wanted to give me a hand tonight.”
“Oh yeah. For sure. Did we get any in last night?”
“No. I think the storm kept them away. We’ll see how we go tonight though.”
“What time do you want me over there?”
“Around nine. I’m heading over early so I’ll meet you over there. Usual spot.”
“Great,” I reply. “Oh, hey. Can I bring a friend?”
Rosie shrugs. “Sure. The more the merrier.” She smiles and waves. “See you later.”
“See you.” I wave back and watch her weave her way around the clothes racks. I need to call Riley and make sure she’s okay with being out so late, and I realise that I don’t actually have her phone number. I wonder if Reece talked Riley into a loyalty card last week? I log into the computer at the counter and drill own into the customer database. Sure enough, Riley’s details are there. I don’t want to think about whether Reece got these details for himself. I’m just glad he got them. Now I know it’s against company policy to access customer details for our own personal gain, and I also know that every keystroke we do is recorded, so I tag Riley’s customer card with a note that says I’m calling her to follow up on a question she had about new stock coming in, and then I write her phone number down on a piece of paper and head out the back to the stock room. I dig my phone out of my backpack and take a deep breath before I punch in her number. For some reason my mouth has gone dry. It rings and rings and then just as I’m about to hang up, it goes to her message bank. I close my eyes as I listen to Riley’s voice telling me to leave a message and then when it beeps, just in case Reece is listening in, I say, “Hey, Riley. It’s just Brooks from The Surf Shop. Can you call me back when you get the chance? On this number would be great. Thanks. Bye.”
I hang up, and smile to myself. I’ll bet no-one’s ever taken Riley on a date like I’m going to tonight.
Twenty One
Riley
It’s mid-morning by the time I get out of bed, and the only reason I get up in the first place is because Jason comes in to wake me up to see if I
want to go paddle boarding with him. When he sees the remnants of the box fort Brooks made last night, he says, “Do I want to know why you built a fort?”
“Safety from the storm,” I reply. I’m impressed that he actually recognises what it is. He doesn’t ask anymore questions, thankfully.
He just says, “I’m heading down to the beach in an hour or so, so if you wanted to, I could teach you how to paddle board.”
“Actually, that sounds pretty good. Just let me get changed and have something to eat.”
“Sure,” he shrugs. “I’ll see you inside.”
After he’s gone, I do a quick tidy up before I head to the bathroom to have a shower. The place looks like a bomb’s hit it.
Jason’s making coffee when I get over to the house.
“Where’s Julie?” I ask.
“She’s off on some meditation retreat. She left this morning.”
“Oh. Is Dad at the office today? I was going to go and see him, since I keep missing him at home.”
“He’s working from home, actually,” Jason says. “He’s in the study. You should go see him. He asked about you at breakfast this morning.”
“He did?” I wonder whether he mentioned our argument.
“Yeah. I think he wants to take you over to the island to show you the site.”
I start to head down the hall and Jason says, “You should take him this.” He holds up a coffee mug. “He’ll be ready for another one.”
“Thanks.” I take the coffee and head down the hall.
The door to the study is open, which I take as a sign that Dad’s not overly busy, so I knock on the door and then step inside. Dad’s office is pretty sparse but there’s paperwork and folders piled up on every available bit of floor. He has a desk that looks out over the garden at the side of the house, and there’s a bookcase in one corner and two-seater lounge on the opposite wall to the desk. Apart from that, there are pictures of houses and house plans all over the walls. I guess this is where he does most of his work judging by the mess. He turns when I come in and smiles at me. He’s got his phone to his ear and he holds up his finger and mouths “Just a sec.” I nod and take a seat on the lounge.
