Clusterf*ck

by Ash Harlow

  Still, by the time we pull up at Oliver’s I decide I can start being a total prick tomorrow. I cut the engine and turn to Ginger. “I want to apologize for last night,” I say.

  “Why?”

  “Because I behaved badly, and—”

  “I’m cool,” she says, and that’s the moment when I see she’s not. She’s brave, but she’s not cool with what happened. Fuck.

  She opens her door before I have time to get around to do it for her, and she’s out on the street, bending in to speak to me. My T-shirt gapes and I can see her breasts. She catches me looking and gives me a look like a headmistress who’s caught a boy misbehaving.

  “I’ll bag up your clothes and leave them in your mailbox. Thanks for the coffee, and the lift home. See ya.”

  “Ginger.”

  “Yes, Luther.”

  “I like you. You’re a fine person, but I’m not—”

  “Yeah, I get it. It’s not me, it’s you.”

  “In this case, that’s the truth.” Fuck, I sound like an even bigger asshole than I really am.

  The door closes and I watch until she’s through the gate.

  I wait another minute on the street to make sure she gets into the house properly. That’s what I tell myself I’m doing, anyway. Really, I’m considering going after her.

  Fuck it. I can’t leave it like this. She’s being brave and feeling like crap all because of me. I release my seatbelt just as my phone chimes with a message. The preview on the screen is enough to make me refasten my seatbelt.

  Rachel needs you.

  12 ~ GINGER

  I push open the laundry door and Merkin, Darcy’s young cat, flies at me and grabs me around the ankles. I pick her up and she bumps her face against mine, giving me a few seconds of pseudo-affection before swatting at my hair and tugging a large piece out of the haphazard knot I made back at Luther’s.

  Pseudo-affection. My new life.

  “Merkin, ouch, let go.” We wrestle briefly before I lower her to the floor. She sprints off down the hallway and is playing with a cloth mouse, tossing it into the air and stalking it by the time I reach the sitting room.

  The house feels odd without Darcy and Oliver here. Its emptiness makes me feel like an intruder, so I’m glad for the distraction Merkin provides. Crazy cat. I need all the distraction available to stop me from curling up in a chair and spending the day obsessing about last night. My stomach grumbles and there’s a dull ache in my head from too much champagne.

  I make toast and more coffee and go out to the patio. I’m still wearing Luther’s clothes and I pull the neck of his sweatshirt up over my nose and inhale deeply, hoping for a trace of his scent, but all I get is lavender laundry detergent. The sun is out, but there’s a stiff, cool breeze and I take the bottom of the sweats and tuck them over my feet to keep warm. There’s something comforting about being warmed by his clothes, but I wish they hadn’t been freshly washed.

  So much to think about. The wedding was perfect. I’m so happy for Darcy because she pulled herself out of a dark place and found love with a good man. Luther is a good man, too, but I don’t feel as if I’m going to find love there.

  There’s this heaviness inside me. I feel like I’ve blown my one opportunity to make Luther see me as girlfriend material. I should never have thrown myself at him, but playing hard to get hasn’t worked either. Five years of working up to this moment, and the entire plan backfires because I’d saved my virginity for him.

  I have to move on, somehow. He’s made up his mind that there is no future for us, and I’m not going to become a stalker, or start harassing him and showing up at his office. You can’t influence love and if the connection’s not there, then there’s nothing I can do about it.

  Except, there is a connection. I guess it’s just wired wrong.

  Well, I’m not going to turn myself into a sad spinster, who still lives with her mother at forty.

  I decide to adopt Luther’s attitude. I’ll scowl right back at him instead of following him around like a puppy, tongue out, tripping over his feet, hoping for a pat or a kind word to get me through my day. No place here for doormats.

  I pull up my schedule on my phone. I’ve got a busy week ahead. Darcy calls me Waitapu’s Personal Assistant. I’ve never had full-time employment but I’m on-call at a variety of businesses to help out. This will hopefully end as Darcy’s PR company grows and she has more work for me.

  For the next month I’m helping out at the local school with their after-school daycare. I enjoy that. The children are fun, and I know most of the parents. I also do a couple of hours a week at the school helping in the art class, which I adore. Darcy’s paying me a retainer to keep an eye on her email and phone enquiries, and they’re paying me to house-sit, which is ridiculous. I’d have happily done that for free but Darcy insisted she’d have had to pay for Merkin to stay in a cattery anyway. Tuesdays and Thursdays I’m scheduled to work mornings at the charity bookshop, and I have some work helping Gail at Oliver’s company, Tradewind Yachts, so my week is full.

  My phone rings. Immediately my silly mind leaps to the idea that it might be Luther. It’s not. It’s my mother. I don’t feel like dealing with her, but she’ll keep calling so I might as well get it done with. I accept the call and she’s speaking before I even get the opportunity to say hello.

  “I thought you’d have called by now to tell me how your friends’ wedding went.”

  “It was beautiful,” I reply. Mom responds with a sound suggesting she thinks that’s highly unlikely.

  “Are you coming to visit today?”

  “I’ve got a lot on,” I tell her.

  “I’ve run out of milk.”

  “Mom, you could walk along to the store. It’s a lovely day, and it would get you out of the house—”

  “My knee, Virginia. You know I can’t walk that far. Of course, if you don’t want to help your mother out then I expect I can manage with black tea.”

  There’s nothing wrong with her knee. She hurt it months ago, but it’s healed. She’s even had an MRI to prove it’s okay, and the doctor told her the best thing she can do is use it. But the only thing she uses it for is to guilt-trip me into running around after her. So, as usual, I agree to pick up some milk and drop it around. I end the call by telling her there’s somebody at the door, and I toss the phone aside, annoyed that she’s reduced me to lying.

  I finish breakfast, then change into my cycling clothes. Luther’s sweater and sweat pants are folded and bundled into my backpack. His T-shirt is on the bed and I pick it up and hold it to my face. The cotton is a faded-out deep blue, soft and worn. I fold it, but put it under my pillow rather than in my backpack. I’ll keep it as payment for the expensive panties he ripped off me. He said he’d replace them, but I can bet he’s forgotten that promise already.

  My bike, helmet and cycling shoes are in the corner of Oliver’s insanely tidy garage. My car died recently, so the bike is my only mode of transport until I earn enough money to buy a replacement unreliable piece of crap. What’s funny is that the bike is worth more than my car. It’s my pride and joy. A full-suspension mountain bike with disk brakes which I bought almost brand new. It looked as though it had never been used.

  I’m going to take Mom some milk because it’s easier to give in to her than battle it out. Then I’ll deliver Luther’s clothes back to his mailbox, and head up to the mountain bike trails to flush out some endorphins to cheer me up.

  The bulk of the residential area of Waitapu is flat. Most of the houses are lovely, and quite a few more are super-gorgeous. I turn into the street where I grew up. This area isn’t so flash. The houses are old, cheap, and not well built. A lot of them are nicely maintained, but this isn’t the area of Waitapu you show the tourists. I turn into the unpaved driveway of home.

  The roof of the house is covered in silvery lichen on the south side which never sees the sun. The downpipe has separated from the guttering again and I pull an old lawn chair over to stand o
n so that I can reattach it. I just wish Mom would be more proactive about things like maintenance. Town-supply water never made it to this corner of town so we have a large concrete tank which we use for collecting water from our roof. If the pipe is disconnected from spouting, we don’t collect water. It’s that simple.

  I make a mental note to come back with some gaffer tape and see if I can do a better job of keeping the pipe and spouting connection secured.

  I take the milk from my backpack and leave the pack and clothes outside. If Mom sees the clothes it will raise ugly questions, which at best will be a demand to “Make him come and pick them up. Don’t run around after men. Look where that got me with your father…”

  Fact: she never ran around after my father. Perhaps if she’d shown him an ounce of love he would have stayed instead of leaving with my sister.

  Inside, the house smells of last night’s takeout meal. She claimed there was no reason to cook for one person, and, of course, I’d be eating my fancy food at that fancy wedding I was attending.

  Mom’s sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing gown, furiously working her way through a book of Sudoku puzzles.

  I ready myself for today’s disapproval.

  “Hi, Mom. Here’s your milk.” I’m amazed at how adept I’ve become at the fake cheerful tone.

  “Show me,” she says, pen poised to strike another number into a blank square.

  I hold up the bottle and watch her with the skill of a seasoned detective. It’s what you get from a childhood of studying her body language to get a fast read on her mood.

  “That’s green label, low fat.” Her mouth is twisted with disapproval.

  “Because green—”

  “Last time you bought me full fat, because you said it was better for me. Now I’m not sure what to think.”

  “Mom, you told me the full fat milk made your tea taste horrid and that from now on we were to only have green label.” I try to keep my voice level because this is one of her typical double-bind conversations which I can’t win.

  “I expect I’ll have to use it now because it’s the only milk in the house.”

  “Would you like me to take it back to the store and exchange it?”

  She looks at me over the top of her glasses, disbelief in her wide eyes. “And make Mr. Singh think I raised an idiot who can’t even buy her mother a carton of milk without getting it wrong. No. No, I don’t think so.”

  I bite my tongue and place the milk in the fridge. I expect my silence makes her think that’s another victory for her. I hope her satisfaction is good company for her this afternoon.

  “I fixed the spouting,” I tell her. “The downpipe was hanging off again. We really need to get a plumber in to fix it properly.”

  “Certainly, dear. What else would you like? An extension? A deck? Exterior repaint?”

  “A plumber is maintenance, not a luxury. If the downpipe is detached we won’t collect water when it rains,” I explain, even though she knows all of this.

  “What’s this ‘we’ business? I thought you’d moved out.”

  “I’m only housesitting for a couple of weeks.”

  “Well, I’m not running a hotel, Virginia. You can’t just come and go as you please.”

  If it was as I pleased, I’d go and never come back. There’s a stack of dirty dishes on the counter top, so I run water in the sink. I’ll do the washing up, then leave. She’s annoyed with me because of the wedding. She doesn’t like Oliver, or Luther, or anyone else in Waitapu who has made a success of their life. She wants to keep everyone at her level. Progress and change scare her, although she’d never admit it.

  She carries on with her puzzle. “Mrs. Baxter’s daughter is taking her to Fiji for a vacation.”

  “That’s nice,” I mutter, wondering where the sting will be in this tale. “If I had the money, Mom, I could take you to Fiji.”

  “Yes, I know you would, but it’s not something we have to think about because money has never flowed in this family. I don’t even have a passport.”

  I should have seen that coming. “Right, I’m off. I’ve got a busy week so I’m not sure when I’ll visit.” I bend to kiss her cheek while she adds the final number to her block of squares and flips the page for a new puzzle.

  “Too busy for your mother now ...”

  God, she’s such a cliché. She’s still telling the empty room what an appalling daughter I am when I close the front door. I push my fingers into my temples and massage them for a bit before I pull on my helmet and fasten the chin strap. Nobody understands why I put myself through this, but in the end, she’s still my mother, and I’m all she has.

  I ride hard to Luther’s. The terrain is flat and I’m in top gear, transferring my frustration through my pedals. The main part of the ride is along the coast. The tide’s high, and the wind has risen so the entire bay is white capped. Around the point I hit the wind head-on, the muscles in my thighs asking for a lower gear. Suck it up. I turn into Luther’s street, more of a lane, really. Ormidale sits imposing on its own private point. The mailbox is set in an enormous rock wall built at the same time as the house, about a hundred years ago. Probably longer. I stuff the clothes into the box and I’m just climbing back onto my bike when I hear the whir of the automatic garage door rising.

  For some reason I feel like a trespasser, and I ride off, keeping my focus on the road ahead.

  Luther roars past me in a dark SUV, windows tinted, and I have no idea whether he recognizes me or not. The rumble of the engine fades as he turns onto the main road. Luther has this entire life that I know nothing about, even though I know things as intimate as what his tongue feels like, licking me to an orgasm. Somehow, it feels the wrong way around. I know so little about him even though I’ve known him for years.

  13 ~ LUTHER

  I could do the three-hour drive to Auckland with my eyes closed. The traffic’s light. There’s only a smattering of weekenders who come to the peninsula through winter so the roads aren’t clogged, and the sightseers are quick to pull over when they see me bearing down on them in their rearview mirrors.

  From the moment I made this arrangement for Rachel I knew the day would eventually come when I’d have to step up and be a bigger part of her life. It’s inconvenient, and my life’s about to alter in ways I never imagined. Rachel’s, too.

  Jesus, Nessie. Still causing me trouble all these years later. She’d laugh at my predicament. At least, I hope she would.

  The timing of the call, though, having just driven Ginger to Oliver’s house, spooks me. It’s like there’s somebody up there pulling strings, because putting Rachel right into the picture jerks me cleanly away from Ginger.

  We’re all so fucking connected. Thinking about Rachel naturally brings Nessie to mind. Thinking about Nessie reminds me I have to keep my hands off Ginger. Last night was a gross error of judgment that cannot be repeated.

  I didn’t fuck her, though. There’s no comfort in that thought because if Ginger hadn’t thrown her V-card into the mix, I’d have spent half the night with my dick buried in her. The intent was always there. Guilty of stupidity as charged.

  I expect Ginger will tell Darcy, and Darcy will tell Oliver, and Oliver will take much pleasure in ripping me a new one. But there’s this one thing that bothers me. The only regret I have is that I didn’t fuck Ginger. Didn’t take that opportunity because it’ll never come around again. And I like her, a lot. She has no idea how much I think about her, how I’ve smoothed her life in little ways she’ll never discover.

  Shit, this is a clusterfuck.

  By the time I reach the motorway it’s jammed with traffic. The last forty miles of the journey, from the Bombay Hills at the southern border of Auckland to the North Shore where Rachel lives, takes almost as long as the previous hundred. This is why I don’t live in the city, and it’s also why I usually fly rather than drive.

  Ninety minutes later I finally pull into the leafy Devonport street where Rachel lives. The villa i
s nice, large, on a big plot of land. It’s completely renovated, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and beaches, shops and good schools close by. I know all this because I own it, and these things were important to me when I purchased.

  Rachel’s on the front veranda to greet me. Strawberry blonde hair, tinged with rust red. It goes more blonde in summer, darkens up a little in winter, just like somebody else I care about. I push those thoughts from my mind as I exit the car, stretch the stiffness from my legs and straighten, just in time to catch the whirlwind as she leaps into my arms.

  “Luther!”

  “Hi, beautiful.” I hold her tight, my nose buried in her hair. I love the way she smells.

  Small, chubby hands cup my face. “You’ve got a scratchy beard. Why didn’t you shave?”

  “No time to shave when I want to be with my favorite girl.”

  She giggles. “Grandma’s made a cake for you. It’s the one with carrots. Horses eat carrots. We went on a kindergarten trip to a farm and I fed a carrot to a horse. Today I ate all of my lunch, and an apple, so I’m allowed some cake, too. But not a cup of tea because I’m too little. But I can have water with bubbles in a teacup.”

  I carry her into the house, down the wide hallway and into the open-plan kitchen and living room that spills onto a large back garden. There’s the swingset and climbing frame I had installed. A pink bike that sparkles with so much glitter and metallic paint it can probably be seen from the International Space Station rests against the apple tree.

  Rachel wriggles down and runs around the side of the house to the clothesline. “Grandma, Luther’s here,” she shouts, hands cupped around her mouth like a cartoon character.

  Jean Carson appears carrying a basket of laundry. She sets it down to hug me. “I’m sorry, Luther,” she says quietly.

  “Don’t, Jean. This day was always going to come.”