by Tiffany Sala
She was starting a new job? How had I missed that?
Well, I knew a lot of people who were willing to tell me a lot of things, and Hobart was one damn small town, but there was plenty that could still go on under the radar.
I thought about it as I made my way to our group table. Luc and Callie were seated, as was Tamara; the empty seat next to her had a worn-looking jacket slung over the back. I bet he’d bought that to have something to make him look decent during his legal issues.
Suddenly Aileen’s voice was in my head, uninvited. Why do you need to speculate on that? It’s not any of your business. I almost told her out loud to mind her own business, which would have made me look really good to everyone around.
When I asked Tamara where Steven was, she curled her lip at me.
“Do you know he wants to blame me for him being stupid enough to start smoking? Like, it stresses him out too much when I expect him to listen to my concerns about my sister, who he apparently knew long before I did. Can you believe that?” Then her eyes went one way and her smile another, because she probably didn’t have much reason to expect sympathy from me. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d bothered to involve myself in group business. I preferred to think of anything that was happening around me with my friends as an ongoing soap opera, something to watch but not have to be personally invested in.
I was picturing Aileen again: this time, actual memories. Those times she’d come along to parties on invitation from Callie or Tamara and stood around looking like she, too, was watching everything happening around her as scripted entertainment on a station she didn’t even like to watch, but still she stayed. That was when she’d first come under my radar: I thought she was hot, but there didn’t seem like anything else to her… until she’d started needing to talk back to me.
Then I flashed on the one day of my life that stood out more vividly than any other: Aileen coming to my house to screw with me the way I’d screwed with her, and then sticking around in her cute little dress to help seal that deal with Cowen. Thanks to Aileen, I had more to move onto after this ridiculous evening than I’d ever given her.
I didn’t know any other girl who would stick her neck out like that. Who would put herself out to help those around her even when she hated what that did for her. When I’d had girlfriends, they usually resented having to wait if I took them out shopping and I wanted to pick out some new clothes too, as if only women were supposed to need to be resupplied. They seemed to spend a hell of a lot of time complaining to me about their friends, about the horrible expectations they had of them. That was apparently what a boyfriend was for to them. I didn’t have much time for girlfriends these days.
Suddenly I was wondering if those girls had complained to their friends about me. I’d managed to convince myself they must just know a lot of bitches, and that was why they had to have those conversations with me all the time. But maybe they were just as hard to please as their behaviour suggested, in which case they might have been having equivalent conversations with those same friends I thought they hated, playing all of their least favourite parts of me for jokes and sympathy.
What would they have most hated? My mind was back on Aileen, on the way she’d looked at me those times we’d crossed paths at parties and I’d told her a little about my plans for the future. I could remember the faces she’d made like she was in front of me that moment, and I thought I understood what was going on behind them: she wanted to be polite, but I seemed ridiculous to her. Maybe I’d spent so much time thinking about her body, top to bottom, I’d taken in something about the way she saw things. I was able to learn things about myself through her existence.
Now I cringed at an inspired vision of how she must have seen me back then. What a blowhard and a fool.
Tamara’s attention had already started to wander. “Maybe I can have a chat to Steven,” I said. “Give him a nudge onto the right track.”
I didn’t understand Tamara’s gaze at all, but it felt like she was trying to administer some sort of slap. “Do you think he would prefer to listen to you than to me?”
“Maybe. He’s more invested in looking good to you. With me, not so much need. We already know one another’s worst secrets.”
It was a lie, but it made her smile. “That would be great, honestly. Thanks, Axel.”
I would have to make sure I did have that word with him now before the night was over, or at the very least I would probably have my imaginary Aileen haranguing me while the real one was still in the room. Well, it could probably be arranged. Steven would just tell me to fuck off in short order, as Tamara probably well knew, so it wouldn’t distract too much from the impossible task I’d set myself.
Aileen, on the other hand…
When I sat down, I bumped shoulders with Ashleigh. Ash and I had technically come to the event ‘together’, telling everyone we were each other’s dates and both riding there in Callie’s car with Carlene crushed in between us, but we had an unspoken agreement not to actually interact much. Ashleigh just wanted to be able to point to the photos in twenty years’ time and tell her kiddies she’d gone with some man, preferably better-looking than the father of those kiddies. Well, if I had anything to say about it she’d be in for a real shock by the end of the night.
But seeing her at that moment turned out to be exactly what I wanted, because it put a very useful thought into my head.
“Ash.” I nudged her again. “You know Elizabeth Anderson, right?”
She gave me a look that made me happy I’d taken the time to bother her with this clearly distressing topic. “I know her. She came out of nowhere a few years ago and she’s being a real pain when it comes to poaching my uncle’s clients. Works for Cooper and Drawn.”
“Cooper and Drawn.” I hadn’t paid her much attention because Aileen didn’t seem particularly interested in the woman who’d abandoned her years ago, and she wasn’t the type to just use someone to get ahead… but that didn’t mean Anderson wouldn’t have offered her a job if she knew of something available. “Are they hiring at the moment?”
“Having a bit of a secretary turnover I hear. Pretty normal over there, though. Drawn is a creep, needs a firm hand or his own hands start to wander.”
This had to be where Aileen was planning to work. She’d be confident she could manage the prick. Too trusting. It hadn’t even occurred to her to keep the information about her future job plans close, and she knew damn well she didn’t trust me. I couldn’t imagine how she was going to manage in that world… but then I thought about how she’d handled that creep Cowen, how she had me running all over the shop… well, maybe I wasn’t putting enough trust in her.
Ashleigh’s eyes on me were brighter than they’d ever been before. If I didn’t know her almost as well as the sister I was glad I never had, I might have thought there was fondness for me in that look. “I see. Elizabeth Anderson is connected to Aileen Anderson. That’s an interesting bit of information.”
Callie’s head had snapped around when she mentioned Aileen’s name, but she just bubbled over silently because she was too afraid of Ashleigh to confront her. I’d never understood why so many other girls were like that with Ash: honestly, it was bitchiness. I liked that Aileen had at least been meeting her head-on when they’d spoken outside that exam, whether or not she was happy about it.
“You need to keep your mouth shut,” I warned Ashleigh. She laughed at me.
“I don’t need to do anything, but I’ve got no reason to screw with her.” She gave me a smile that was brighter than her usual, too. “Good luck.”
I could almost see her picking up her attention and moving it elsewhere. Ashleigh probably held utter contempt for me too. It made me sick that I hadn’t seen this before. Or had I seen it… but not cared before? I knew I was not well-liked, but that seemed inevitable. People were always jealous of those who were destined to fly higher than they ever would.
Jealous of a guy whose mother wouldn’t even stick around f
or him? Who wasted a whole bunch of time trying to bring down a girl who posed no legitimate threat instead of working on his own damn ideas? I was just as bad as Aileen’s dad, just as capable of ruining my own chances…
Unless I could get her to give me another chance. When she was around, it seemed like everything could be turned around, the lapses in my judgement filled in by her good human sense.
I scanned through all the pink dresses in the room until I spotted her, sitting between Matt and another girl who had always seemed friendly with his new squad, Amy. She looked a bit wide-eyed alongside the sex sensation of Burgundy’s graduating class, but I could see how she was warming up as Aileen talked to her, falling under her spell it might be said.
I should have let Aileen talk more.
Now I was trapped for the moment, unable to enact any more of my plan while we were all forced to sit and eat the food I neither needed nor wanted. The caterers our school had picked up seemed to be able to produce two different styles of ‘meat and vegetables’ meals, and neither of them were appealing. Tamara and Ash had put in for the vegetarian option, which looked far better than whatever I’d been tossed. I didn’t even know if the meat I’d received was beef or chicken.
Once everyone was settled down at their seats I glanced back over at Aileen’s table. There was an empty seat there between Danny and one of the other girls, a space neither of them seemed interested in leaning over into.
I considered the potential of taking my plate and moving over to her table. My dessert might never find its way to me, but the potential outcomes of this situation were far sweeter anyway.
Steven and Tamara seemed to be getting along nicely now they had food to soothe their tempers, and with Aileen’s relations wth the other girls as they were there didn’t seem to be any way I would get caught out for over-promising and underdelivering, but I still found myself surveying the two of them a little more carefully than the rest of the table, waiting for a moment I could jump in. The only pair of comparable interest were Mic and Sophia, who had by all accounts come together, but it seemed more of an opportunity invite for Mic. He knew Carlene wouldn’t sleep with him no matter how much she enjoyed herself at the after-parties, and she probably wouldn’t keep quiet about it if he tried anything. Mic preferred a girl who could shut up, and Sophia wouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth—or wherever else he directed her to put her face.
I told myself it was none of my business and I shouldn’t get into it.
Furthermore… I looked over at Aileen, deep into her meal, occasionally laughing at something Matt was saying to her. It was ridiculous how much she looked the part of some bitch who should have been hanging out with the most popular group throughout her high school years, but somehow she knew better.
I should stay away from her table. If she wanted to have one nice evening out with some people she was comfortable with, I shouldn’t draw everyone’s attention back to her by putting the two of us close together. Yeah, I had this crazy idea of making her feel like the princess she longed to be… but as she’d pointed out to me, I’d already failed at that. I couldn’t go back.
And maybe that meant I wasn’t going to get that second chance I’d hoped for that night. Maybe she would slip away, set up her own life, and it would be impossible for me to get myself in. Well, that was what she wanted me to understand, wasn’t it? I didn’t have any right to her.
As Tamara started snapping at Steven over the way he’d finished eating his main, I stood. “Steve, can we go off for a chat?”
That had everyone at the table staring at me, because it was pretty obvious I only paid attention to Steven because Lucas cared about Steven, and if anyone had heard my offer to Tamara earlier, they would definitely have assumed I was trying to get on her good side with no intention of delivering.
Steven was giving me the weirdest look of all, but he shrugged. “Sure.”
We waddled off to the mostly empty dance floor, edging around the table full of bogans much happier with their lot than Callie had ever been, who had clearly preloaded and were unable to hide it in the quality of their jokes, never of much of a standard to begin with. They might as well be happy tonight, because all the best days of their lives were past them now. That was me being a bitch again of course, but it was the truth.
We took the spot on the floor opposite to the group of girls who were pretending they had so much to gossip about instead of admitting they didn’t want to be eating in front of one another. “Right,” Steven said, “what the fuck.”
I told him I’d promised Tamara to have words with him about his smoking, and he laughed so hard he broke into an actual smoker’s cough.
“I’m not even fucking smoking that much, I just go around the back and light one up every now and then, have a puff and put it out for next time because they’re expensive as fuck and I don’t even like them, but it makes Tamara mad.” He smirked. “And that’s fucking hilarious.”
I had never realised before that moment just how much I didn’t know Steven, even though he was around most of the time. I knew how much of a fuck-up he was, but that was different to knowing what made him tick one-on-one. “You ever thought of getting a girl who doesn’t hate your guts?”
“Nah, man, she loves me for sure.” Steven puffed up all smug, like he probably wouldn’t have been able to do if he’d smoked all of those cigarettes Tamara suspected him of.
“Well, you’re a peculiar pair.”
“We’re all fucking weird in this world, man.”
I thought about Aileen, keen to have a man bend her over and make her arse burn, so long as she didn’t have to accept him telling her what to do. “I think you’re right,” I said.
We headed back to our table, because desserts seemed to be coming around just as everyone was drifting off to dance.
When I got back to the seat where I’d left my jacket, I froze.
My dessert seemed to have arrived early: Aileen, wearing my jacket across her shoulders and folding one leg over the other in that irresistible woman way, in my seat. Callie and Tamara seemed to have fled, but Ashleigh was still there, looking fired-up the way Ashleigh only ever looked when the topic was feminism or the likelihood of her finding her way onto a local council by the time she was thirty-five. Lucas was still there watching them too, which told me even without the other details that this was an interesting interaction.
Aileen stopped what she was saying as soon as I came to a halt in front of the table. Too early for her to have seen or heard me, but somehow she knew I was there.
She looked up at me, and smiled. “I wasn’t expecting to see you around again tonight,” I said, because apparently I still couldn’t resist the urge to get in the last word. What kind of big-mouthed moron was I?
“I was just over here picking Ashleigh’s brains, since I’m going to be taking on a job in a law firm and she’s had a lot longer to get used to working in that world than I have.”
“A law firm, huh.” She knew I had no idea about that job, at least the last time we’d spoken, and she was giving me all the information now. “Following my advice, then. I told you I thought that career would suit, didn’t I?”
Her face went almost pink enough to match her dress. “Well I’m not going to go straight off and become a lawyer, of course. Just a secretary. Maybe I’ll never get to that point. But it’s a way to meet people in that world if I do, and I have an opportunity other candidates don’t: my mother is a lawyer in the firm I’ll be applying to. It’s not like I’m guaranteed to get a job, but it’s going to help.”
“Of course you’re going to get the job,” said Ashleigh. “And you’re going to become a lawyer too, right by my side.”
On Team Aileen, one hundred percent. How long had I even been away from my seat? Ten minutes?
I couldn’t help continuing to keep things light. “Obviously you needed the lingering traces of brilliance that emanate from my jacket to get you through this important conversation.”
> “I was cold,” Aileen returned. “And I thought it might be appropriate to engage in a show of asserting my authority over your real date for the night.”
Ashleigh chuckled. I tried not to squirm because it would just make me look stupid when she obviously wasn’t serious.
Something seemed to have changed with Aileen since we’d talked only a meal ago, and I was hoping it wasn’t her alcohol consumption levels, but the signs were not great.
“Hey, I think there’s a balcony somewhere around here we’re allowed to go out on,” I said. “How about some fresh air?”
She stood right away, like she’d been hoping for or expecting that suggestion. She really had no idea how to keep anything under wraps.
I found I couldn’t keep my curiosity under control any longer either, once the two of us were walking away. “Right, Aileen: how much have you had to drink?”
She grimaced up at me. “Did I look like I’d been drinking before? Or do you think I smuggled a flask in somewhere in this dress, or my purse maybe, and I’ve been taking covert sips to balance out whatever the heck abomination I just ate?”
“You have a point,” I said. “So what’s happened?”
Aileen took my arm, like she was claiming me. It was the kind of possessive movement I did like from a girlfriend. If I could have that and none of the other bullshit…
I was definitely caught up in the air of mystery she was projecting right now. But, of course, instead of dragging it out she told me everything.
Chapter Twenty
I was set in my mind and happy about it, too, until I saw Matt’s face. He was staring over at the table Axel was sharing with my friends and their boyfriends and assorted others, his lip quivering in a different way between every bite.
Now, I didn’t think Matt was in love with Axel. But that moment of confused wondering brought up two thoughts in my head: that Axel must have been a really decent friend once upon a time for Matt to still be somewhat loyal to him even through all the threatening to ruin his life…
