Leaving Jetty Road

by Rebecca Burton

  Sometimes, though, I think it’s just because Sofe is there—because she’s a second friend, an alternative to Lise. That sounds weird, but what I mean is, I’ve always enjoyed meeting new people. At primary school, I had this series of short, intense friendships: In Year 3, Eleni Stavros was my best friend; in Year 4, it was Paul Hastings. In Year 6, for a few months, I hung around with Mandy Martin, who made me giggle and was always getting into trouble with the teachers, and who eventually, to my half-admiring dismay, got expelled. (No one ever knew why: she wouldn’t even tell me; and then her family just moved away.)

  It was the same with Lise and me, to begin with: I guess she was just my next new friend—only, unlike the others before her, she stuck around. I like that about Lise: her loyalty; the way she grows with you, instead of away from you. I just wish she was also more interested in other people: I wish she liked meeting them, wish she wanted to get to know them. Sofia, like me, does.

  Maybe, in the end, that’s what I like about going up to her house. I like the difference, the change of pace. I like the contrast. I like the change.

  chapter four

  Broccoli dreams

  “I’m going to ride to Perth next year,” Josh tells me the next Saturday at the Wild Carrot.

  I look up at him from the sink. “You got a motorbike?”

  “Nah. I’m going on my bicycle.”

  I stare at him incredulously. “But why?”

  “Why not?” he says, laughing at my astonishment.

  It’s half past three and we’re alone in the kitchen. The café is deserted (the “midafternoon lull,” Michael calls it), and Loretta’s sitting at one of the tables near the window, on her lunch break. Michael, having sent me into the kitchen to catch up on the dirty dishes, is standing outside, talking to one of the “regulars” on the pavement.

  This is the first day I’ve spent any time alone with Josh at all since I started working at the café a few weeks ago. To my surprise, we haven’t stopped talking since the moment I got in here at the end of the lunchtime rush.

  “I finish my apprenticeship at the end of this year,” he says now, taking a ball of scone dough out of the Kenwood mixer and flattening it slightly on the chopping board. “I thought a bike trip would be a good way to celebrate. I rode to Sydney the year I left high school, and ever since then I’ve been wanting to try Perth.”

  “That’s your idea of a celebration?”

  He has this way of looking at you while you talk, Josh—head tilted to the side, one eyebrow raised. I’ve noticed it before as I was running in from the counter to give him another order: it makes my stomach tremble. Now I turn away from him quickly, slide another rack of dirty plates into the dishwasher.

  “You just want to die of dehydration and muscle meltdown out in the desert. That’s what it is, really—hey, Josh?”

  He grins as he pushes the scone cutter into the dough, and the smile breaks up the wrinkle of intense concentration on his forehead.

  “How did you guess? ‘Young chef dies in tragic cycling accident 200 miles west of Ceduna.’ What d’you reckon?”

  What I reckon is, his dark brown eyes are just the color of chocolate, and the way he looks down at me from behind those thick blond bangs is driving me crazy. He’s so fit, so motivated, so gorgeous, so . . . all of the things I’m not. The real tragedy, if you ask me, is that he’s somehow got it into his head that it’s worth wasting time talking to me.

  “I’d rather bake a cake,” I say quickly. “Or curl up with a book for a few days.” I’m trying to let him know, before it’s too late, that I am definitely not interesting; I am definitely not his type.

  He bends down, opens the oven door, shoves in a batch of dough. “What kind of cake?”

  “Chocolate cake. It’s the only thing I can cook,” I explain, just to make it completely obvious how uninteresting and untalented I am.

  But he smiles at me, one eyebrow raised again. “With icing, right?”

  “Of course,” I say helplessly. “The icing’s the best bit.”

  I turn hastily back to the sink, start scrubbing away at the latest dirty pan. (If only you could put that through the dishwasher!) Behind me, I hear heavy, booted footsteps: Josh, coming toward me from the other side of the kitchen. He stops just behind me as I reach out for the hot water tap; he is so close that I can feel his breath, warm and even, on my neck. I stand still, taut, just waiting. Then—slowly, deliberately—he reaches out, puts his hand over mine on the tap.

  “Shouldn’t wash dishes under a running tap, Nat,” he says softly. “It wastes water.”

  His fingers guide mine, switching the tap off. Then he stands there, looking down at me. Not moving away. Not letting go of my hand.

  I will melt. I am convinced I will melt.

  After work, instead of heading toward the nearest tram stop, which is just up the road, I wander down Jetty Road toward the terminus, by the beachfront. I’m not ready for home yet. There are too many good things to think about from this afternoon; and, besides, if I can’t wipe the stupid, happy grin off my face, Tim will be merciless all evening.

  I walk past the terminus outside the hotel on the esplanade, across the brick-paved plaza and the beachfront lawns. There’s a low stone wall that fences the esplanade in from the beach, and I go and sit on it, feet dangling over the other side. Music from the hotel drifts toward me, loud, pumping, insistent. People wander past toward the jetty, licking ice cream—an old lady talking to a younger woman, probably her daughter, who is pushing a stroller; a skinny man with dreadlocks, tugged along by his scruffy-looking dog; a neatly dressed couple, each holding one hand of a fat, short-haired little kid with Down’s syndrome. The sea lies pearl-blue, like satin under the pink sky, and three pelicans glide above the water, in formation.

  “Hey—Nat!”

  I turn around. It’s Josh, striding toward me past Fasta Pasta and the hotel, waving.

  “So I’m not the only one who goes to the beach after work,” he says, dropping his voice as he comes closer.

  “I wanted to see the sun set first, before the tram gets here.”

  He cocks his head at me. “No driver’s license yet?”

  “I’ve got the license. My brother just won’t let me use the car.”

  “Oh, well,” he says. “Catching the tram saves fuel, anyway, right? Which is always a good thing.”

  Oh, hell. Not only is the guy fit, gorgeous, and motivated—he’s also a greenie. Now I know I have absolutely no chance with him at all.

  “Anyway, it’s lucky I saw you here.” He sits down on the wall beside me, swings his legs over as he hands me something in one of the takeaway containers from the café. “I’ve got some leftovers, from lunch. I noticed you didn’t have much of a break—unlike Loretta.”

  I lift one corner of the lid, smell the contents. “Mmm—yum. Broccoli.”

  He looks at me, amused. “You like broccoli?”

  “It’s not like I’m a health freak or anything,” I say hastily. “It’s just, ever since I went vegetarian, I’ve had these huge cravings for broccoli. It’s really weird. I even dream about broccoli sometimes.”

  Josh kicks his heels against the wall, his long legs dangling. “Broccoli dreams . . .,” he says musingly.

  I take a bite, feeling his eyes on me.

  “This is delicious. It’s a stir-fry, right?” He nods. “D’you have any other broccoli recipes, by any chance?”

  “How does broccoli pesto sound?”

  He loves cooking, Josh; you can see it from the way he works at the Wild Carrot. Me, I get sick of frothing milk for all those cappuccinos. (It’s especially hard on hot days; apparently it’s to do with the lack of protein in the dry summer grass or something. When there’s less protein in the grass that the cows eat, the milk doesn’t froth: it just stays flat.) Michael, meanwhile, buzzes around impatiently, bursting through the swinging doors, shouting out lunch orders, glancing at the clock a hundred times an hour, muttering under his bre
ath. Loretta grumbles under her breath, too, but for different reasons. She stands at the counter, shifting from one slow, bored foot to another, taking orders from the customers, yawning as they make their choices and sort through their wallets for the right money.

  But Josh—Josh hums as he works. He chops onions, slices meats, stirs things in pans, his forehead knotted with concentration, his movements deliberate, economical. To look at him, you’d think he was taking all the time in the world—and yet he’ll be finished making a focaccia before Loretta’s even had time to spoon the froth onto a cappuccino. He exudes energy: a constant throb of it, warm, colorful, alive.

  I watch the pelicans in the air, their wings stretched and pink-tipped from the sun. Then I say curiously, “Have you always liked cooking?”

  He nods. “Even when I was a kid. I used to cook pancakes to cheer my mother up when she was feeling down. She’d eat them all up, right?—and then blame me for making her fat. Can you imagine?” He grins. “Then I got halfway through Year 11 and thought, hey, I’m onto something here. Cooking for people makes them feel good. Everyone likes food, right? And anyway, I hated school. So I left, and three weeks later I started my apprenticeship.”

  “What about your parents?” I ask him. “What did they say?”

  “Oh, my mother hit the roof when she found out,” he says, shrugging. “My stepdad was okay about it, though: he said it was good to get a trade. Anyway, they couldn’t stop me.”

  I have to admit, I’m impressed. I can’t imagine wanting to do anything so badly that I’d fight my parents over it, leave school for it. Well, I can’t imagine wanting to do anything badly, period.

  There is no way I could ever say this to him, of course. In fact, right now, looking sideways up at Josh next to me on the stone wall, I realize there’s a whole lot I can’t say. Like—the way his hand touching mine on the tap this afternoon made me feel. Like the way he seems so colorful, so full of conviction, so driven. Like how when he smiles, the freckles seem to dance on his face.

  I take a deep breath and look away, back at the pelicans, which are floating now, their feet propelling them invisibly across the water. Next to me, Josh swings one leg back over the wall so that he’s sitting sideways, facing me.

  “Hey, Nat—”

  “Yeah?”

  He touches my knee, rests his hand there lightly. “What’re you thinking about?”

  I can feel my whole body stiffening again under his touch. “Nothing,” I say quickly.

  “Mmm,” he says. “Yeah. Right.”

  “It’s true! I was miles away.”

  “So you were thinking about something.” He smiles.

  I don’t answer.

  His fingers brush across my cheek, once, twice. “Your face—” he says wonderingly.

  My cheek tingles where he touched me. I open my mouth to speak.

  “You’ve got such a beautiful face, Nat. So open. So honest.”

  I stare at him incredulously.

  “You’re hallucinating,” I say gruffly. “You must’ve been drinking too much of that wheatgrass juice.”

  The freckles are dancing on his face again. “You reckon?”

  “Everything has side effects, you know. Even wheatgrass.”

  “Then all I can say is, I like the side effects,” Josh says, laughing, and he pushes the brocaded cap back on his head, leans over, and kisses me.

  It isn’t the first kiss I’ve ever had and it’s not a long one. But his lips brush warm against mine, and his breath is sweet and close.

  I’ll never be able to wipe the grin off my face now. Tim, I am at your mercy.

  chapter five

  “Movie girl”

  Josh doesn’t call. All week he doesn’t call. I hang around in my bedroom after school, not ringing Lise, not ringing Sofe, yelling at Tim if he heads for the phone. I’m sure I gave him my number.

  By Saturday morning, I’m a mess. How the hell am I going to walk back into the Wild Carrot? Was it all just one big mistake?

  I think about calling Michael, telling him I’ve quit. But I can’t; I know I can’t. This weekend is Easter—the busiest weekend of the year, he told me the other day. I can’t just leave him in the lurch like that. Gloomily, I change into my work clothes and plod down to the tram stop.

  But by the time I arrive, the café’s already frantically busy. There is no time to talk to anyone; there’s no time to do anything, in fact, except slip on my apron and get over to the cappuccino machine. Between frothing milk and clearing dirty tables, I barely even see Josh all morning.

  By lunchtime there’s a queue at the counter that stretches halfway to the door. People stand, waiting—hot, sticky, irritable in this last burst of intense autumn heat. In the kitchen, the exhaust fan hums, the fly-zapper snaps, the dishwasher shudders. Michael charges through the swinging doors every ten minutes, dumping piles of dirty plates in the middle of the sink, scattering knives and forks and scrumpled-up napkins all over my neatly stacked dishes: “Table one, table one; they’ve been waiting half an hour—”

  I mutter imprecations at the sink. “He told me to stack the dirty plates tidily, and then what does he bloody well do himself?”

  In the middle of all of this, Josh finally wanders over to me at the sink, dirty saucepan in his hand. My heart skids and thumps, just from looking at him. His apron is covered in grease and tomato stains, the cloth cap falling slightly to one side, and he’s humming again. He looks askance at me as he puts the saucepan down on the draining board, his head to one side.

  “You all right?”

  It’s the first time we’ve spoken to each other properly all morning—which makes it the first time since he kissed me last week at the tram stop. Definitely, I tell myself now, that kiss must have been a mistake.

  “Nat?”

  “Yeah. Yes. I’m fine.”

  He laughs at the scowl on my face, clasps his hand around my wrist. “You need a movie tonight.” His fingers stroke the inside of my wrist, slowly. “Nat? You’re a movie girl, right?”

  I swallow, hard. His fingers send shivers down my arm.

  “I love movies,” I admit finally, grudgingly. “Especially sci-fi.”

  “Sci-fi it is, then,” he says, and moves back to the stove.

  There is no explanation, no apology. No Sorry I didn’t call you, but—

  I should ask him, I tell myself over and over, staring at his back. I should at least say something. But it’s no good: at the touch of his skin on mine, all my anger has just vanished.

  I mean, what could I say, anyway? I’m just so glad it wasn’t a mistake after all.

  By the time I get off the tram on the way home after the movie, I’m just about bursting with happiness. I have to tell someone about my day. I’ll call Sofe, I think, and grin wryly in memory at her comment about “men in uniform.”

  But when I walk through the back door, past the laundry room, and into the kitchen, Mum’s there, waiting for me. (She knows, of course, where I’ve been: I rang after work to let them know I’d be home late, and got Dad on the phone.)

  “How was it?” she asks eagerly. “What does he look like? Has he had a girlfriend before? How old is he?”

  Something about her excitement instantly deflates me.

  “It was good. He’s nice. You’d like him.”

  “You’ll have to have him over for dinner.”

  I groan. “Mum. I’ve only just met the guy.”

  She’s always like this, my mother: she wants to know everything. When I was a kid, I used to confide in her heaps. She has that social worker’s way of drawing things out of you, getting you to talk. Making you feel like she’s your friend, not your mother.

  But these days, it feels like the reason she asks all those questions is so that she can take my stories away from me and make them all right. Mum wants so desperately for everything to be all right for her kids; she longs for us to have happy endings. (The thing is, we generally do: just not always in the way she wants
us to.)

  “What about Lise?” she asks me now. “Does Josh like Lise? He’s got to be all right if he likes Lise.”

  That’s another thing about my mother: she has this weird thing about Lise. In fact, they have a weird thing about each other. When we were younger, I used to feel like Lise came over to see Mum, not me. Whenever she visited, Mum would come up the hallway to my room and stand in the doorway, chatting. She’d say something to Lise and Lise would answer, and the bizarre thing was, she wasn’t shy about it. Maybe the social work stuff works better on Lise than on me; sometimes I’ve wondered if there are things she’s told Mum that she hasn’t even mentioned to me.

  “Such a sweet girl,” Mum would always say after Lise had gone. “I hope—I just hope—”

  I don’t know what she hoped.

  Then again, Lise herself lost out in the mother stakes. She’s what you call nervous, Mrs. Mawson. Neurotic. The kind of person who won’t let her kids have pets because of the hair they’d shed on her furniture. Maybe it’s hardly surprising Lise talks to Mum instead.

  Anyway, whatever—as far as Mum’s question about Josh goes, I’ve barely even talked to Lise about him.

  I’ve tried. I started to tell her, one day, about the Wild Carrot Café—about Michael, and Loretta, and the milk that never froths. Then I said—just casually, you know?—“I’ve met this gorgeous guy there—”

  “That’s nice, Nat,” she said distantly, not even waiting for me to finish.

  I thought she might ask me for more details—anything, really: the color of Josh’s eyes, or what his full name is, or what kind of food he cooks—but she didn’t. She didn’t ask a thing.

  So I shut up. She made me feel kind of self-centered. Childish, almost.

  Now, thinking about it, listening to Mum burble happily away at me in the kitchen, I realize that I’ve never really talked to Lise about this kind of stuff. Up until Year 11, I hadn’t actually met anyone I was keen on. I’d had crushes on football players and actors, of course—but not anyone real; not anyone who was in my life. By the time that happened, Sofe had come along, and it’s been her I’ve gossiped to about it ever since, not Lise.