Unmasked

by Stefanie London

  “How so?”

  “You want a big desk because you’re ambitious and your business is a huge part of your life. You want a big bedroom because you have a lot of shit to deal with and you need somewhere to be yourself.”

  His shoulders rose, fingers balled into fists by his side. “What does the bedroom have to do with being myself?”

  “Because you hide things when you’re out in the world. When you’re at home, it’s just you. You can stop pretending.” She smiled. “Maybe that’s why you moved into a hotel without finding a new place first. You know you don’t want to be who you were with Jenny, but you haven’t figured out what the next step looks like.”

  He gaped at her, unsure whether to laugh off her comments or immediately drag her back to his hotel room. Perhaps he too was guilty of underestimating Lainey; she obviously saw deep into him. She knew him far better than his ex-wife ever did.

  “You really do say some insightful shit.”

  She grinned. “I sure do.”

  As they approached the ice cream counter, Lainey’s attention locked firmly on the rainbow selection of treats. She tapped a finger to her lip.

  “What flavour are you having, Damian? I’m buying.”

  “No, you’re not.” He pulled out his wallet, but she slapped his hand.

  “I said I’m buying. You paid for this ridiculous dress and left the tags on. So I know you should be broke by now.” She winked at him.

  “Vanilla bean,” he replied. “Single scoop.”

  Lainey turned to the woman behind the counter. “I’ll have two waffle cones, single scoops. One rocky road and one caramel crunch.”

  “No vanilla then?” Why did she even bother asking?

  “You’re not a vanilla guy, Damian. I know that much.”

  “Does this mean we’re done with the amateur psychology hour?” he asked drily, accepting the two cones from the woman behind the counter as Lainey paid. “Which one do you want?”

  They walked away from the café, and she contemplated her options before plucking the caramel cone from him. Her tongued darted out to capture the ice cream and she sighed. “So. Damn. Good.”

  * * *

  Lainey and Damian walked along Southbank, past the busker in the Super Mario costume playing guitar and the chalk artist drawing people’s faces on the ground. They ate in silence, mouths working quickly before the sun melted the ice cream onto their hands.

  Damian tucked in to his rocky road with enthusiasm. And he’d wanted vanilla? She smiled to herself, remembering the way he’d hardened when she’d touched him during the apartment inspection. Vanilla was for guys with unsteady hands and fumbling fingers, and Damian wasn’t one of those guys.

  They came to a stop at a bench that overlooked the aging beauty of the Flinders Street station. It rose up, magnificent and unusual among the sleeker office towers in Melbourne’s skyline. The old building had character. Though weathered, it held a certain charm in its mustard-coloured facade and iconic green dome. There was beauty in its age and history, the scars of decades making it even lovelier than it would have been when brand-new.

  “Are you shocked that I know you so well?” Lainey asked, still looking out over the water.

  “You don’t know me as well as you think. One accurate psychoanalysis doesn’t change that.”

  “But you do hide from the world,” she pressed.

  She had an inkling that he covered up his true self for the same reason she relied on zany antics and a crap ton of eyeliner—for fear that people wouldn’t like what was underneath. She fought against a memory of being dumped because she’d dropped out of school.

  Not like she had a choice. School had been slowly stifling her—trying to stuff her into a box that was too small and too dark. She couldn’t seem to follow the rules that were designed for kids with long attention spans and the ability to make sense of numbers. Lainey’s skills lay in areas that weren’t marked on paper.

  Nowhere in the curriculum had she been praised for her ability to defuse a tense situation or cheer someone up. The fact that she could instinctively tell what colours would look good on people meant nothing. Not even in art class could her creativity flourish because, even there, the rules had stifled her.

  After that, she’d learned to be someone else. She wore short skirts and acted out. She attracted guys who didn’t care that she still counted on her fingers, guys who were only after one thing. All so she could call the shots. So she never again had to face the humiliation of being dumped because she wasn’t good enough for the longterm.

  “It’s something I have to do,” he replied, concentrating on his ice cream. It was torture watching his tongue and lips devour the treat with surgical efficiency.

  “Why?”

  He shook his head, and a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Things have happened that make me wary of putting myself out there.”

  “I haven’t done anything to criticise the way you are.”

  “Other than calling me boring or stodgy, you mean?” He took a bite out of his waffle cone. “What about that one time you said I was the Antichrist of fun?”

  Lainey’s cheeks burned. “Okay, so maybe I said those things. But it’s because...”

  “I’m no fun?”

  “You are when you allow yourself a little breathing space.” She shrugged. “You always act like it’s your job to protect everyone around you.”

  “It is,” he said without hesitation.

  “No, it’s not. I appreciate all the times you’ve bailed me out, I really do.” Lainey finished off her ice cream and put her hand on Damian’s knee. “But you need to stop worrying about everyone else and start worrying about yourself. Or else you’ll be a...what did you call yourself?”

  “A curmudgeon?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “I’m never going to stop worrying about you.” He turned and Lainey got the full force of his Blue Steel stare.

  Could he see right into her soul? Did he know that she was a woman who wanted to run away from her life? Away from the fear that she would forever be in one-sided love with him?

  The feeling slammed her in the chest with the force of a freight truck. Sure, she’d thought it so many times before—that she had a thing for Damian. An insatiable, unending schoolgirl crush on her best friend’s handsome older brother. Harmless...until it wasn’t.

  Love. How was it possible to love someone who didn’t love you back? It was cruel that humans had been designed that way. She tugged on the hem of her dress, paranoid that her fear and devastation were shining out of her.

  “You don’t need to cover it up, Lainey. I saw it all last night.” His words hitched, his voice rough and ragged around the edges.

  Was he referring to her body or to the unwieldy mix of terror and desire warring inside her?

  She swallowed, her hand lifting to cup the side of his face. A light stubble showed along his jaw, and her thumb swiped against his lip to capture a tiny smear of chocolate. The only movement he made was the quickening of his breath, hot against her hand. He kissed the pad of her thumb, then caught her hand and pressed his lips to the inside of her wrist.

  Darkness engulfed his eyes, grey irises shrinking until there was nothing but a mere rim of it around two bottomless black holes. “I hide because I’m afraid that I might hurt you.”

  Lainey puffed out her chest, chin tilted up to him. “I won’t let you hurt me.”

  She wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Because if she allowed him to crash through the careful fence she’d set up around this encounter, he’d railroad her heart until it broke for good. This was just sex—fulfilment of a fantasy. And that was all it could ever be.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LAINEY SAT IN the middle of her room, surrounded by boxes. They were labelled—not with descriptions of the items inside, but with names. Im
ogen. Corinna. Mum. She’d divided her not-so-worldly possessions into two piles—keep and discard. The keep pile was further sorted into boxes for the person who would appreciate the items most.

  For some reason, it reminded Lainey of a will reading. She was going, and all that would be left of her was an insanely large shoe collection and her childhood set of The Powerpuff Girls on VHS. She should have appointed an executor for her stuff. That way she could whisk herself off to London and leave someone else to deal with it all.

  She popped the lid on a dusty plastic tub that was packed to the brim with memories—her grade-six polo top with all the signatures of her friends written in puffy fabric pens. A tattered-looking friendship bracelet with the silver beads containing the initials C, L and I. A photo album wrapped in a My Little Pony pillow case, the cover dusted with pink glitter from some stickers that had shed sparkling particles all over the place.

  She flipped it open and grinned. The first page had three almost identical shots of her, Corinna and Imogen in some awful-looking hipster jeans with super-wide belts, strappy metallic halter tops and silver lipstick. In each photo, one of the girls was making a silly face while the other two laughed. They’d never been able to get a shot with the three of them looking good all at once. The Goof Balls, her mother had called them.

  Lainey flipped through the album, her heart sinking with each page. Through every up and down, these girls had been by her side. Through every terrible hair phase, every eyebrow-plucking accident, every celebrity obsession and every tearstained heartbreak, Imogen and Corinna were woven into her life. There was no part of Lainey’s history that didn’t include them.

  She flipped to the last page and found a loose photo. The image caused her heart to stutter. Scrawled in pen was a date ten years ago. New Year’s Day. Lainey had still had her natural mousy hair then, and it hung down to her waist without a kink. On her head she wore a plastic tiara with “Happy New Year” in glittering letters. She held a giant slice of watermelon.

  But her eyes weren’t on the camera or the food. They looked up to Damian. He’d been in his early twenties then, muscular and tanned. Yet his face was soft and free, his grey eyes crinkled with laughter. The emotional scars hadn’t yet turned his jaw to stone.

  The memory shot through her like a firework—she’d gone to Corinna’s place to celebrate with the McKnights. They’d bought a watermelon and hacked it into pieces. Damian had been a little hungover and thus, not paying attention, he’d bit into the melon and a pip had shot across the table and hit Imogen square between the eyes. They’d laughed until tears had streamed down their faces.

  Lainey didn’t remember staring at Damian, but the open adoration was captured brilliantly in the photo. On the back, she’d written “if only” and the date in purple ink.

  If only he hadn’t let Jenny ruin his heart. If only they hadn’t wasted the years since his divorce with her being too chicken to tell him how she really felt and him looking at her as though she was too young, when she wasn’t.

  “Is it safe to come in?” Corinna asked as she and Imogen poked their heads into Lainey’s room. “Are we likely to die under an avalanche of stilettos?”

  “It’s safe.” Lainey found her throat tight, the words struggling to slip past the lump blocking her airway.

  “What’s wrong?” Corinna’s smile disappeared as she kicked off her work pumps and dropped down cross-legged next to Lainey.

  “Ah, you’re taking a trip down memory lane.” Imogen bent down and picked up the album, flipping through and laughing. “Oh, God, Corinna. What were you thinking with that hair?”

  She turned the album around and Corinna cringed. “I look like a skunk with those chunky highlights.”

  Lainey swallowed against the lump in her throat and forced herself to smile at Imogen. “So, what’s the latest with your sister and Dan?”

  “Ugh, don’t ask.” Imogen shook her head. Ever since the ball, she’d been quiet about her mission. “It’s a mess.”

  Corinna raised a brow. “Why?”

  “I had to get someone else involved. A guy from work who knows him.” Her cheeks flushed pink. “But I feel like he’s trying to hold it over my head. I never should have asked him to help me.”

  The pink flush turned darker still, and Lainey had a feeling there was a whole lot more to the story than that. But there was one thing she knew about Imogen—she’d only talk when she was ready.

  Pushing her for information never went down well.

  “Are you taking all your albums with you?” Corinna asked, turning to Lainey.

  “I can’t.” She shook her head. “No space.”

  Imogen patted her arm. “I can babysit them for you.”

  “I thought I’d be okay with all this.” To her horror, hot tears pooled in Lainey’s eyes and no amount of furious blinking would chase them away. They splashed onto her cheeks and rolled toward her chin. “Am I making a huge mistake?”

  “No.” Corinna put an arm around her shoulders. “Not if you’re going to London rather than running from Melbourne.”

  “How can I do one without the other? It’s two sides of the same coin.” She sniffed and swiped the back of her hand along her cheek.

  “If you’re going somewhere, it’s a forward-momentum thing—you’re chasing an opportunity or an experience. If you’re simply leaving Australia because you want to run away, and London is where you happen to land, then it’s not moving forward, is it?”

  “Do you remember that day?” Lainey asked, scooting over so the three of them could sit together in the small space between her bed and her closet.

  “Yeah, I feel like I still have an indent in my head from that damn pip,” Imogen said drily.

  Corinna laughed. “How could we forget it? We had that slip-and-slide thing in the backyard and you decided to take the cat on it.”

  “I did!” A heartfelt laugh burst from Lainey’s lips. “She scratched the hell out of my arm and wouldn’t go near me for months. We were so stupid back then.”

  “We?” Imogen asked in mock indignation. “Speak for yourself. I knew that was a bad idea at the time and told you as much. You were too busy trying to impress Damian and his mates.”

  “Not his mates,” she said with a sigh. Worry coiled tight inside her. She’d never seriously admitted to her feelings in front of Corinna before. All the previous times she’d covered the words with bluster and exaggeration. “Just him.”

  Guilt gnawed at her. This was the only thing she’d ever kept from Corinna, without at least having the intention to fess up at a later date. How had she thought it possible to walk away and act like none of it ever happened—the ball, the weekend with Damian? Dragging Imogen into her lies?

  “I told him once to stay away from you,” Corinna said, wrapping an arm around Lainey’s shoulder. “After the divorce. I said if he ruined our friendship I’d never forgive him.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think he took me too seriously. But I saw how he looked at you then.” Corinna sighed. “And I was jealous. You two always had this spark and I knew you had a crush on him and, well, all the boys had crushes on you. Ever since we were teenagers.”

  “They did not.” She rolled her eyes.

  “That summer you dyed your hair white-blond and got your braces off, I don’t think I’ve ever been more jealous. Everyone looked at you, and I was still in my ugly duckling phase.” She adjusted the glasses on her nose. “After he split with Jenny, I caught Damian watching you when you came over for a swim, and I was furious. It was so stupid, but I wanted someone to look at me like that. In hindsight, I wish he’d ended up with you instead of her.”

  “I slept with him.” Lainey blurted the words out, unable to carry the guilt a second longer. Then the fear of knowing she’d crossed a line whipped through her—confessions could never be taken back.

&nb
sp; Corinna sat up straighter and snapped her head toward Lainey. “When?”

  Imogen bit down on her lip, her eyes swinging back and forth between her friends. But she didn’t say a word.

  “Recently.” Lainey swallowed. “I had it in my head that since I was leaving...”

  “It might be your last chance?”

  “Yeah.”

  Corinna’s expression was hard to read, but she didn’t look as though she were about to fly off the handle. “And you’re still leaving?”

  “Sex doesn’t change that.” She waited for Corinna to make her usual fake-disgusted reaction, but her best friend was uncharacteristically serious.

  “Is that all it was?”

  “Do you even want to be talking about this? It’s your brother.” The tears prickled her eyes again, and Lainey tipped her face upward, begging them to stop. “I know how you feel about something happening between us. I thought you’d be furious.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t see it coming a mile away.” She brushed her thumb over the photo. “Honestly, I thought one of you would have caved earlier than this.”

  “You’re really not mad at me?” Lainey asked.

  Corinna shook her head. “Like I said, there’s always been something between you two. And I know now that sometimes you can’t help who you fall for. Joe wasn’t the man I thought I would end up with.”

  “You seem so perfect together.”

  “We are, but I had it in my head that I’d marry some ambitious lawyer type. A career guy who wanted the great Aussie dream.” She shrugged. “Instead I met a schoolteacher who wants to move to the beach and have a veggie garden and a couple of chickens...and I couldn’t be happier.”

  “You two are total opposites.” A strange expression washed over Imogen’s face. “It’s nice. Balanced.”

  The pressure slowly eased out of Lainey’s chest. Keeping secrets from Corinna had been weighing her down, forcing the spring out of her step. But worse still was the growing fear that running away to London would do nothing to ease the ache in her chest. That no matter how many continents and oceans she put between them, Lainey would never be over Damian.