Outside Looking In: A Browerton University Book

by Truman, A. J.

  The lie would keep him safe. He couldn’t let on that he was Mariel’s son. Not yet. Not when he’d just started connecting with Franny and Walt. Maybe if Liam and his family liked Nathan, then they wouldn’t banish him from the farm when they realized he was a bastard child. A redheaded black sheep bastard.

  He worked through the morning, making sure to drink lots of water, which eased his headache. He finished by mid-morning and joined Liam back in the barn. He put a smile on his face and proudly proclaimed the farm shit-free. He’d never be able to spend more time with his new siblings and find out more details about his mother’s life if he was banished from Liam’s farm. This was the acting job of his life, and unlike his real acting career, he couldn’t fuck this up.

  Nathan stumbled back when he walked in on Liam in front of a line of sheep butts.

  “Am I interrupting?” he asked suggestively.

  “No. You are just in time. You can help me crotch.”

  “Crotch? Like…” Nathan pointed to his own crotch. “That kind of crotch?”

  “Yes. It’s called crotching.” Liam used a pair of shears on the backside of one of the ewes.

  “Huh. I’m surprised the gays weren’t the first to use crotch as a verb.”

  Liam waved him over with the shears. Nathan kneeled beside him.

  “Crotching involves cutting off the excess wool around a ewe’s udder and nether regions. If there’s dirty wool around the udders, it could pass bacteria to the lambs when they nurse. And cleaning ewes up in the vaginal area makes it easier to check on things when they’re giving birth.”

  “So you’re basically giving these ewes a bikini wax?”

  “I’m not sure what that is.”

  “I know women in London who shave their fannies before they go into labor, although they do it because they know their husbands are filming their birth. And some of them have a really cute doctor.”

  “To each their own, I suppose.” Liam shot Nathan a lazy smile that lingered in his own crotch. The ewe bleated as Liam sheared away. “Can you hold the ewe still? This will go much faster if there’s two of us.”

  Nathan stood over the ewe and held her on both sides. His hands trembled slightly as his fingers disappeared into her thick wool coat. He jumped back when she let out a noise.

  “You don’t have to clamp her in place. Be gentle.”

  “Right.” Nathan put his hands on her body while giving her some personal space, like the time in school he had to slow dance with a girl. “So, who’s Kelly Harmon?”

  The shear made a snip snip sound as it lopped off more wool. Nathan had a feeling he hit a nerve, but curiosity got the better of him. He had a bad habit of egging people on. It might’ve been another one of his addictions.

  “Is she a crush? She’s a pretty girl. I’m kind of over blondes, but to each his own.”

  Snip snip. Liam didn’t say anything. The shears spoke for him. Nathan couldn’t see his face, he was practically buried in the ewe’s snatch. Why would Liam be so embarrassed?

  “Is she an ex?”

  “Yes, and she’s dating my best friend. Former best friend. Now you know who Kelly Harmon is.” Liam had a dead serious look on his face as he motioned with his shears for Nathan to move to the next ewe.

  “That’s rough. Really rough. If you tell me where they live, I’ll gladly slash their tires.”

  “No thank you.” Liam snipped away.

  “Relationships are bollocks anyway,” Nathan said. “It’s like here’s this person that you say you love and would do anything for, and then the next day it’s like ‘So long. You’re dirt to me. Sod off.’ How does that make any sense?”

  Liam didn’t respond, but Nathan could tell by the softness of his snips that he agreed somewhat with that assessment.

  The ewe let out a bleat that Nathan felt vibrate in his hands.

  “You’re doing great. He’s almost done. Don’t hurt her!”

  “I’m not. She’s just being melodramatic.”

  “It will be over soon,” Nathan cooed to her. He found himself rubbing her sides as if he were a parent, and it seemed to calm her down. “Trust me, I know your pain.”

  “Oi?” Liam looked up.

  “I crotch myself on a regular basis.”

  Liam stopped mid-snip. “You do?”

  “I like to keep things neat and tidy.”

  “I don’t need to hear this.” Liam focused on shearing.

  “You don’t trim down there?” Nathan asked.

  Liam didn’t answer, but the tops of his ears turned red. It was a delightful sight, much better than the grumpy snipper.

  “So you’re all natural then? Everything is in full bloom down under?”

  “Down under is Australia.” More red.

  “Or do you trim the mound but leave the balls and taint as the Lord intended?”

  “You are at work, Nathan! This is not an appropriate conversation.”

  “I think it’s very germane to the task at hand.”

  “You are crude. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “On occasion.”

  They moved onto the next ewe.

  “Just breathe,” Nathan told her. “You may want to buy yourself some pants because you’ll be a bit more sensitive to the wind down there.”

  “I’m going to throw you in the manure pit.” Liam tried to sound serious, but he was a shoddy dam holding in water.

  “Right. You need to concentrate. I don’t want you accidentally chopping off this poor gal’s cervix.”

  Liam tried to fight back a smile, but he couldn’t stop. His lips could barely hold in the laughter.

  “Is that a smile? I think that’s a smile. I think that means you find me funny.”

  Liam flipped him the bird.

  “All right then.”

  Liam got the silence he requested. Nathan held the ewes as Liam chopped. They made a good team. Nathan liked watching Liam work with each ewe. He was firm in his job, but he showed tenderness in how he handled them. He fixed his steely gaze on shearing, and Nathan imagined that look on him. It was a shame Liam was straight, pining over that blonde on his computer. A part of him thought Liam was going to kiss him on the couch earlier, but Liam bounced right off before anything could lead to anything.

  “Looking good bitches,” Nathan said to the row of ewes. He waited for a comment from Liam about how unprofessional he was, but it never came. They locked eyes for a split second, and Nathan wondered just how straight Liam was.

  He wasn’t going to try any funny business, though. As much as he would love to be one of those guys who fucks the boss, he wasn’t going to do anything else to jeopardize his relationship to this family. No matter how sexy those shears made Liam seem.

  Chapter 9

  Nathan

  After showering, Nathan lay on his bed with a warm washcloth on his forehead. His hands kept shaking, his head kept pounding. The aching of his muscles from manual labor amplified its pain. Damn withdrawal. It only got this bad in rehab, but he would eventually tough it out. (Or fuck it out.) It would pass like a storm. Eventually.

  He crept into the living room and put his hand on the cabinet. What if Mark or the kids caught him? Or Liam. He couldn’t take that chance. He summoned every ounce of willpower to hold out. The withdrawal would pass. He just had to keep busy.

  Nathan ambled through the house, up the stairs and past Mark and the kids’ bedrooms. With its lived-in furniture and walls piled with pictures, the Foster house was like a family hug in architectural form. The only pictures hanging in his dad’s flat were stiff family photos. He stared at the closet in the master bedroom, a closet used by his mum. Was there any of her stuff?

  He took a step into the room but stopped himself. His eye caught a row of framed pictures hung on the far wall. Each frame had one or two theater programs with a still of Mariel on stage.

  There she was as Desdemona in Othello, and as Nora in A Doll’s House, and as Elizabeth Proctor in The Crucible. My mum was
a star! She signed each program, her cursive loopy and playful.

  She reigned supreme among her castmates. In one picture, she toppled over vases with glee as Stevie in The Goat or Who is Sylvia? Another had her Roxie Hart in Chicago taking a bow with Velma Kelly. Nathan wondered if he caught the acting bug from her, if she had passed it down in her genes. He definitely considered himself more of a Velma than a Roxie, though.

  “You are beautiful,” he said to a candid picture of her backstage smiling at the camera. He noticed no program from London hung on the wall. He wondered if she dropped out of RADA before she could act. And then he thought about what she was doing in London for those months. It seemed like she didn’t come home to New Zealand or else Mark would’ve seen her knocked up. Did she wander through London by herself under I was born, and then left the bloody continent as fast as she could?

  He didn’t have time to dwell on this question because he heard the front door open. Nathan scrambled out of the master bedroom. He waltzed down the stairs just as Franny came up them, her face a red, blotchy mess.

  “Hiya,” he said as she brushed past him. “Franny?”

  “I’m good,” she said in that mucus-clogged voice one gets mid-cry. She went into her room and closed the door.

  Nathan turned to go back downstairs, but paused on the top step. He knocked on her bedroom door. “Franny.”

  “I said I’m good.”

  “We both know that’s bollocks. Do you want to chat?”

  A few seconds later, she opened the door. Her cheeks puffed with redness and were streaked with tears.

  “I’m going to get you a washcloth.” Nathan darted into her bathroom and pulled a cloth from the linen closet. He soaked it in warm water under the sink.

  “A warm washcloth on the forehead is like a bath for the brain,” he said as he dabbed her forehead.

  “Thank you.”

  He wiped her cheeks. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “It’s these girls at school. They made fun of my hair. I dyed my hair brown because they made fun of me for being a redhead.”

  Nathan had been there plenty. “Let me guess. They called you ginger, or carrot top, or firecrotch.”

  “Firecrotch?”

  “Because…” Nathan tried to slyly nod south, but Franny was not picking up. “Because down there…it doesn’t matter. People are naff.” Nathan found, though, that the men who called him firecrotch were the ones who couldn’t wait to fuck him. “Some wanker will probably call you it in university, so be prepared.”

  He smoothed his hand over her hair. The red roots shimmered under her dyed brown hair, reminding him of the first reaches of sunrise. “My cousins loved to make me angry because they wanted to see a redhead lose it. They would hide my mobile, steal food off my plate. When I was little, they told me that redheads were God’s mistakes.”

  “Maybe I should chop off all my hair,” Franny said. “Uncle Liam says I should ignore them, but that’s difficult when I see them every day.”

  “If I can give you some brotherly advice. I mean, brother-like advice.” Nathan pulled up his feet and sat cross-legged on her bed. “It’s not about ignoring them. You have to believe you’re better than them. And you are. They’re jealous of your natural red hair. Red is in! Amy Adams, Julianne Moore, Jessica Chastain, Prince Harry. They want to keep you down, but don’t let them. They can spend their miserable pathetic lives talking about you. You have better things to do. So much better things to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “You need to figure that out. I got into acting in local theater. I focused on that. I made new friends.” Nathan also focused on drinking and hating the world. He had to learn this lesson on his own. He didn’t have an older sibling to impart this useful advice, but at least it wasn’t going to waste.

  “Thanks, Nathan.” Franny hugged him. Her fruity perfume filled his nose. He hesitated, but then hugged her back. His body vibrated with warmth. He breathed in this moment.

  There was something very natural about the hug, even though they quickly realized that they barely knew each other.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Nathan waved it off. He hopped off the bed. “We need to do something about this hair.”

  “I think it’ll grow out in a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks?” Nathan couldn’t let his secret sister go through another day with two-toned hair and a bad dye job. “Nope. Come with me. We’re going to do something about that.”

  * * *

  That night at dinner, all eyes were on Franny. She practically swept into the living room, her vibrant, revitalized red hair swishing about her shoulders in a chic, shoulder-length bob, her baby blue cotton dress fanning about her legs. Nathan could’ve watched this all night. His heart grew a million sizes. He had once worked at a soup kitchen as part of community service, but he found this much more fulfilling.

  “Franny.” Liam’s stood up from the couch, slowly, as if he were regaining muscles in his legs.

  “You look awesome,” Walt said, unable to inject brotherly sarcasm into his comment.

  “Good as gold,” Liam said, still gobsmacked, which Nathan enjoyed.

  “Thanks!” she said modestly.

  “She could be a model in Paris or Milan.” Nathan joined them in the living room.

  “Did you dye your hair again?” Liam asked.

  “God, no,” Nathan said. “I told her the only things she should buy from a drug store in a box are condoms, cigarettes, and pregnancy tests.” Liam shot him a look, which gave Nathan a small thrill. “This afternoon, we went into Wellington and got her hair transformed by a professional.”

  “And then Nathan took me shopping for a new outfit!” Franny twirled in her dress once more. This time, Liam was not gobsmacked. Far from it.

  “Is that a Burberry dress?” Liam asked. “It has that plaid pattern.”

  “Good eye. How do you know Burberry?” Nathan asked. Was Liam not as heterosexual as he presumed?

  “My ex was very fashionable.”

  Oh, right. The blonde who broke his heart.

  “Franny?” Mark came out of the kitchen and put the main course on the table. He looked like he was about to drop it when he saw his daughter. The look of sheer joy on his face as he watched Franny bounce around nearly made Nathan choke up.

  “What do you think, Dad?”

  “You look…” Mark put his hand on his chest for a second, and Nathan realized that with her flowing hair, she looked like her mother. Their mother. “You look so beautiful.”

  “I feel beautiful.” Franny smiled at Nathan, who was still on the verge of choking up.

  “Nathan, a word?”

  Before Nathan could ask what that word was, Liam was pulling him into the bathroom. It was not the first time Nathan had been in the bathroom with another man, but he doubted things would go the same way this time.

  “Did you buy her those clothes and that new hair?” Liam asked. It was a small bathroom, and they did their best to keep their bodies from touching. Up close, Nathan noticed the lighter flecks of brown in Liam’s beard.

  “I didn’t buy her new hair. I fixed her existing hair.”

  “It looks expensive. It all does.”

  “So.” Nathan shrugged.

  “Why are you buying my niece designer outfits and taking her to professional salons? You only met her a few days ago.”

  Nathan wasn’t going to let Liam make him feel weird about this. He didn’t care if this was proper or not. “Because I wanted to. She looks smashing. She feels smashing.”

  Liam studied him for a moment with those probing eyes that could’ve stripped him naked right then and there.

  “Sweet as.”

  Nathan was not expecting that response.

  “That was very nice of you.”

  “You’re welcome. Did you pull me into this bathroom just to tell me that, or was there something else you wanted to do?”

  On cue, the tips of Liam’s ears went
red. Blush even filled up the part of his cheeks not covered by hair. Gotcha.

  “It’s dinner time, Liam.” Nathan left the bathroom.

  * * *

  After dinner, Nathan and Walt cleared the table while Liam drank a beer on the couch and Franny searched through old DVDs under the television. Nathan tried not to smell Mark and Liam’s beers at dinner. He was not a fan of beer. It just made people burpy and saggy. Hard liquor was for classy alcoholics. But still, beer was better than nothing.

  Nathan watched Walt clear the table, stacking the dishes and bundling the utensils. He had never cleared a table before, hadn’t even watched the maids do it. He copied Walt’s technique.

  “Ughhh,” Franny hissed from the TV. “The remote still isn’t working, and I put new batteries in it, too.”

  Nathan felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he got a flash of stepping on it during his drunken haze his first night in New Zealand. It had only been on the floor because he knocked into the coffee table. He was a sloshed bull in a china shop.

  “You’re turning red,” Walt said.

  Nathan noticed his cheeks in the mirror. “Let’s bring these dishes into the kitchen, shall we?”

  In the kitchen, they placed the dishes next to the sink and began loading the dishwasher. Mark wiped down the counter.

  “Nathan,” he said in a low voice. “Whatever you spent on Franny’s hair and clothes, I want to pay you back.”

  “No, not necessary. It wasn’t much.”

  “I insist.” Mark looked back at the kitchen door that led to the dining room. “I haven’t seen her that happy in months.”

  “That’s payment enough for me.”

  Mark cocked his head at him. “I’m serious.”