A Girl Less Ordinary

by Leah Ashton

  What did he want her to say?

  She didn’t need more than one guess. He wanted reassurance that this was just fun. It was physical, and that was all.

  He didn’t want talk of expectations. Of wanting more. Definitely not about love.

  Love?

  That wasn’t a word she’d considered. And wasn’t about to.

  She liked him? Yes. Too much? Definitely.

  But love? No.

  She wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.

  If she was ever tempted, well... She only had the example of her father, and herself, to refer to. She could never allow herself to need someone like that. As her dad had needed her mum. As she’d needed them both—and Jake.

  She was never going to suffer the pain of lost love again.

  ‘This is nothing,’ she said, repeating what he’d said on the radio. She said it flatly, careful not to betray one skerrick of how she’d felt when she’d heard the words. As if the tiniest of daggers had slid between her ribs, and dangerously close to her heart.

  ‘Nothing?’ he repeated.

  She nodded. ‘It’s just something that’s good as long as it lasts.’

  ‘And how long will that be?’

  Ella knew then, instantly, that she should end it. Right now. Because the answer to that question, the one right on the tip of her tongue, was for ever.

  And how dumb was that? Jake didn’t want that. Couldn’t offer that. She didn’t want that either.

  She didn’t.

  But saying the words she needed to say to end this, to decide that this was the last time that Jake would hold her in his arms? She just couldn’t do it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, trying to sound cool and relaxed. ‘I guess we’ll know, right?’

  God. She was such a coward. All she was doing was dragging out the inevitable. He was going to hurt her. Again. It was only a matter of time.

  He nodded.

  Then he kissed her. And as always happened when he did, she forgot about anything else but how good that felt.

  * * *

  They’d fallen asleep.

  Ella woke to a looping snippet of a movie’s theme song, and she spent a few moments trying to figure out why on earth that might be.

  But, slowly, other details began to register. The rise and fall of Jake’s chest, only centimetres in front of her eyes. The flickering light throughout her lounge room, courtesy of the patiently waiting DVD menu. The cool air against her bare toes where they poked out from the bottom of the blanket.

  How lovely it felt to be lying in Jake’s arms.

  She had no memory of how they’d come to be sleeping together this way, with Jake’s back to the TV, and herself pleasantly squished between the fabric back of her sofa and the solid wall of Jake’s body. She was sure it hadn’t been a conscious decision, by either her or the man beside her.

  She’d watched him, taking advantage of the simple luxury. And it was a rare one—given they’d barely slept that first night together, and he hadn’t let himself fall asleep beside her since.

  So she saw the exact second he started to stir, and was waiting to meet his gaze when his eyelids slid open.

  It was dark in the room, despite the light thrown by the TV. But she could still see something in his eyes. Something indefinable.

  ‘Ella,’ he said, whisper soft. His hand touched her hip, then travelled ever so slowly downwards to the dip of her waist before flowing back up to her shoulder. Wherever he touched her body burned. Deep inside, she glowed. The whole time, he kept his eyes locked on hers.

  His fingers slid along her collarbone, touching bare skin where the scoop-necked T-shirt she wore gaped open. She

  shivered.

  Then he explored upwards, gently brushing against the cords of her neck, outlining the shell of her ear, skimming along her jaw.

  She sucked in a breath as he leant in close, but he paused, not quite touching her lips. When he pulled back from her, just a little, her eyes widened.

  ‘Jake?’

  The hand that had almost reverently touched her body had curled to cup her cheek, but now he released her, to trace the shape of her lips, the curve of her eyebrows, and then the slender straightness of her nose.

  He didn’t have to repeat what he’d said the last time he’d done this.

  He said he didn’t care if her nose had a bump or was straight. If her eyes were green or boring old brown. If her name was Eleanor or Ella.

  Before, she’d been quick to react, to lash out at the words she’d assumed were insincere. Throwaway words to make the ugly girl feel better.

  But here and now, in the intimacy of darkness, she let herself wonder, just for a heartbeat, that maybe the words were true.

  She tried. She did, but it was impossible. She just couldn’t believe.

  What she could believe was that something had changed. Altered.

  With this man she’d known for as long as she could remember. With this man who made her laugh, who made her body sing, and who made her sigh when he watched her with that look in his eyes. With this brilliantly smart yet more-than-often clueless man who frustrated her with the way he seemed to know her far better than she knew herself.

  With this man she’d only just realised, lying here in the almost darkness, that she’d missed so terribly.

  With this man she loved.

  The realisation didn’t even begin to surprise her.

  Was it only hours ago she’d been lecturing herself on the dangers of such an emotion?

  Of course she’d been right. Wise, even. Her life free of the complications and pain of need, and love and emotion, had served her well for a very long time.

  Changing tack here was misguided. Foolish. Reckless.

  It was all those things, and yet she was helpless to do anything about it.

  It was a cold hard fact. She loved Jake Donner.

  Because it was the only thing she could do, she kissed him. And when he kissed her back, the sensation was all-consuming.

  They kissed in a way that made their explosive kisses of the past fade by comparison. This was a kiss of heat, and of seduction—but also a kiss that spoke all the words that she could never say.

  Then Jake was standing, barely breaking contact with her lips as he scooped her into his arms. He carried her, effortlessly, to her room, where they tumbled, together, onto the softness of the bed.

  A tangle of limbs, and a tangle of emotions.

  * * *

  The next morning, Jake woke up early. Just before dawn.

  Ella lay, curled against him, her hair fanned out across her pillow and spilling onto his.

  One of her hands rested gently on his chest. As he breathed he watched her hand rise and fall, rise and fall, over and over again.

  His heart beat against her fingertips, hard and fast. Far harder and faster than made sense for a man who was lying naked in bed with a beautiful woman.

  Or maybe it made perfect sense.

  Ella shifted, then stretched, her lashes fluttering open.

  She smiled as she tilted her chin upwards to look at him. ‘Hey,’ she said, all sleepy and sexy.

  His chest felt tight.

  He’d been gutless. He’d come here to end things, but the instant he’d seen her, it had seemed impossible.

  So they’d both pretended that this was, just as he’d said, and she’d said: nothing.

  But that lie had been exposed in all its glory that last time they’d made love. He couldn’t even begin to describe what that had been, but it certainly wasn’t nothing.

  He’d thought he could do this with Ella and it wouldn’t mean anything. That it wouldn’t get complicated.

  He’d been wrong.

  He needed space.

  ‘Jake?’ she asked as he extracted himself from under her with little finesse. He switched on the bedside light, the sudden brightness shockingly stark.

  ‘I’m going to go for a walk,’ he said.

  ‘What? Now?’
<
br />   He squinted at the clock radio on her bedside table. 6.04 a.m.

  ‘I’ll go buy the Saturday paper,’ he said, as if that explained everything.

  He snatched up his jeans and shirt from her bedroom floor, dragging them on in rough, automatic movements.

  Ella sat up, tugging the quilt up over her breasts. ‘Come back to bed,’ she said. ‘It’s dark outside.’

  ‘It’ll be light soon,’ he said, not looking at her at all.

  The room was silent save the sound of Jake dressing.

  ‘You’re running away,’ Ella said suddenly. A statement.

  ‘No. I’m getting the paper.’

  But he was running. In a way. At least for a while. Maybe longer.

  ‘I like space,’ he said. ‘Silence.’

  He couldn’t do this any more. He was uncomfortable. Uneasy.

  He needed time to think.

  Jake looked at Ella once more before heading for the door. That was a mistake.

  She watched him with the strangest expression in her eyes.

  She was the Ella of the night before, on the couch, who had gazed at him, who had smiled at him, and who had kissed him in a way that had simultaneously touched him—and terrified him. In a way that had him desperate to run away right this minute. But that last night had had him entranced.

  ‘Stay,’ she said softly.

  But he shook his head. A second later, her gaze turned flat. Neutral.

  She straightened her shoulders in a subconscious action that was heartbreakingly familiar.

  ‘Fine,’ she said, in a totally different tone from before. Not quietly sexy, but instead bright. Almost cheery. She yawned, then actually grinned. ‘Right. I’m going back to sleep. Can you grab a carton of milk while you’re out, too?’

  Ah. He knew what she was doing. Suffocating that little glimpse of vulnerability with a pasted-on smile and words that were as false as they came.

  She was back in her Ella armour.

  He didn’t let himself think about that. Think about what that meant, what she’d revealed before she’d rebuilt her sparkling façade.

  Space. He needed space.

  Then he walked out of her room, out of her apartment, and onto the deserted footpath outside her building.

  Then he walked. Walked, and walked and walked.

  With his mood matching the darkness of the sky.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WITH an inoffensive little click, Ella’s apartment door shut behind Jake.

  Something louder—gunshot loud—would’ve been more appropriate, given the way her body jolted beneath the layers of sheet and quilt.

  Then she was alone, in awful, horrible, absolute silence.

  Tears stung her eyes, and she could taste them in her throat, but she was not going to cry.

  She swallowed, and stared hard at the ceiling, refusing to let those tears fall.

  She wasn’t going to cry for Jake again.

  Once in a lifetime was enough.

  Unfortunately, her heart seemed incapable of similar once-in-a-lifetime rulings. There was no denying it now. It hadn’t been her hormones confusing lust with love in the heat of the moment—although she badly wished it were.

  She’d fallen for him again.

  Ages ago, probably. Maybe when he’d turned up on her doorstep ready to do almost anything to share with her something he thought was special. Or even earlier, when they’d laughed together in the middle of the street.

  Maybe she’d never stopped loving him.

  She tried to sleep, but it was impossible. In the dark, in the silence, and without Jake, she felt terribly, terribly alone.

  So she got up, turned on the radio. Had a shower. Threw out the discarded pizza boxes from the night before. Checked her email. Cleaned the dishes in her sink. Made the bed.

  When she finally ran out of things to do and Jake still wasn’t back, she plonked herself on the couch and switched from the radio to Saturday-morning music videos as her silence-filler of choice, and planned what she was going to say when Jake, finally, came back.

  He was going to end it. He was walking out there trying to figure out some nice way to break it to her.

  At least this time she wouldn’t suffer quite the same humiliation. She hadn’t told him she loved him.

  Not in words, anyway. In thirteen years she’d at least learnt that.

  But it was still going to hurt.

  It already was.

  She jumped as her little apartment filled with the sound of the door buzzer. She leapt to her feet. There was absolutely no point in delaying the inevitable. She needed to treat this like pulling off a Band-Aid. If she was quick, it would be less painful.

  Right.

  By the time Jake made it to her floor, she’d pulled open her front door and was waiting for him.

  The second he stepped inside, she spoke, aiming for pure nonchalance. She could do this. ‘Jake, you know how we said last night that we’d know the right time to...’

  She kept speaking faster and faster, the words cascading like rapids over rocks, fast and violent. But suddenly the waterfall of words trickled down to nothing.

  What Jake held in his hands had as good as wrapped fingers around her throat. She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

  Then she blinked. Blinked again. Reached up automatically to push her glasses up her nose before remembering she hadn’t worn them in years.

  But surely her eyes were playing tricks on her?

  Jake held a single page of the newspaper out to her, but she couldn’t make herself take it from his hands.

  Frozen, glacial, horror overwhelmed her.

  She took a step backwards only to smack into her lounge-room wall.

  ‘Ella? It’ll be okay...’

  Jake reached for her, but she had no interest in his touch. Instead she staggered past him to collapse on an armchair, immediately putting her head between her knees.

  This could not be happening.

  ‘Hey,’ he said, his voice low and presumably intended to be soothing. It failed. ‘I know this is a shock, but if you read the article, it’s not that bad—’

  Her head snapped up. ‘Not that bad? Jake, it’s a full-page article in Sydney’s biggest newspaper. And it’s about Eleanor.’

  ‘It’s about you and me,’ Jake clarified. ‘We weren’t quite as discreet as we’d hoped, and someone did some digging. They found out we used to be friends. Found a few old photos.’

  ‘Found a few old photos?’ she repeated, knowing this was verging on hysterical behaviour but incapable of anything else. Any which way she looked at this, this was a disaster.

  Of epic proportions.

  ‘It’s actually surprisingly accurate,’ Jake said, still frustratingly, ignorantly calm. ‘Just the facts. It could be a lot worse. I’ve had whole articles written about me based on lies.’

  He was so unaware.

  ‘Don’t you get it, Jake? Accuracy is the problem. I thought I made it clear how hard I’ve worked to move on from being Eleanor. No one in Sydney knows about her. I’ve told you that. No one knows how sad and pathetic she was.’

  ‘You’re doing it again, talking like Eleanor’s a separate person.’

  ‘She is,’ Ella said, matter of fact. ‘Of course she is. Look at me.’ She looked down at herself in her skinny jeans, loose singlet and bare feet. ‘Well, me dressed properly. With my hair and make-up done. Me at meetings, at parties, at nightclubs. When I was Eleanor I could never have done any of that.’

  ‘Of course you could. You do already. You’re still Eleanor, Ella.’

  She shook her head, trying to figure out words that could possibly explain. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t remember what it was like for me at high school. When I was just Eleanor, I was invisible.’

  No, it’d been worse than that. She’d been seen—noticed—and summarily rejected. Again and again.

  She couldn’t comprehend becoming that girl again.

  What was everyone going to thin
k? Her friends? Her clients?

  ‘I’ve worked so hard,’ she said. ‘And now it’s ruined.’

  She looked up when Jake deposited one of her dining chairs directly in front of her, and took a seat, his elbows resting on his thighs as he leant forward.

  ‘You think you’ve been exposed as a fraud,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Because I have,’ she said immediately. ‘My whole life is built around Ella. Not Eleanor. Eleanor undermines everything I’ve worked so hard to achieve.’

  ‘You’re not, you know. A fraud. It’s just like you told me, and you tell your clients. You’ve become your best self—a confident, more stylish version of Eleanor. But you’re still you. That’s clearer to me every day.’

  ‘I’ve changed,’ she said. ‘I’m a different person. I have a life, and friends...’

  ‘Friends that don’t know anything about your past though, right?’

  Ella didn’t like the censure in his tone. What right did he have to criticise her?

  She stood up abruptly, then stalked across the room to the window, keeping her back to Jake. ‘This is all your fault, you know. You and your stupid hermit tendencies. If you weren’t so damned reclusive, no one would give a stuff about your personal life.’

  ‘If you weren’t so ridiculously in denial about your past, you wouldn’t be in this situation, either.’

  He was right behind her, and she spun around to face him. He looked tall, and broad, and frustration edged every muscle in his body.

  ‘And you think living up on that mountain in your turret isn’t ridiculous?’

  ‘This conversation isn’t about me,’ he pointed out.

  ‘But of course it is,’ she said. ‘Thirteen years ago we were both pretty much the same. Poor. Unpopular. Socially inept. But you took one path with your life, and I took another. Given you seem to think your method is superior to mine, then, yes, I do think this is about you, too.’

  ‘It’s far more sensible to just ignore a society that judges so much on the superficial. No one valued me until I had money and fame through my work. I’m not interested in buying into a world that will treat people that way.’