Fly In Fly Out

by Evie Snow

  “He’s making himself pretty for the sharks,” Scott said.

  “Nah. They wouldn’t eat him. He’d be too full of hot air. He’d give ‘em indigestion,” Stephen added.

  “My time is wasting away here.” Corinne looked at them both before proving she was well and truly a Hardy by yelling at the ceiling. “Michael Hardy, if you don’t get down here in the next two minutes, I’m going to start charging you for my time. And it will not be family rates, young man.”

  Seconds later, there was the sound of muffled profanity and the stomping of feet on floorboards overhead.

  “See, gentleman. That’s how a woman gets things done.” Corinne gave them a smug look that turned pointed when it shifted to Stephen. “And she’d get things done a heck of a lot faster than certain nephews of hers if he allowed her to do her job.”

  Stephen huffed out a sigh. “I know, but just let me do this at my own pace, okay? I know what I’m doing.”

  “He knows who he’s doing,” Mike corrected as he walked into the room wearing a borrowed pair of Stephen’s board shorts with a towel slung over his shoulder. “We going? I’ve been waiting all morning.”

  * * *

  “So, has your clitoris sent you a postcard from wherever it went with the divorce settlement, or are you two talking again?” Amy asked nonchalantly, dipping a fry into a sinfully delicious bowl of mussels in white wine sauce.

  They were sitting in a shaded beer garden at one of Jo’s favorite pubs, which was only a few minutes from Amy’s work. After four days of hibernation, Jo had finally entered civilization again.

  Jo swallowed her mouthful of Leffe Blond. “Irreconcilable differences. We might need a third party to help bring us together again.”

  “Ah. An intermediary.” Amy leaned back in her chair and gave her sister a speculative look, pursing her vivid-pink lips. “Anyone in mind?”

  “With my job? Honey, they’re all eye candy and then they talk. It’s tragic. Surrounded by good-looking men every bloody day of my life, and ninety percent of them have the IQ of an amoeba. Actually, thinking about it, they might just look good because I’m stuck with them for so long in a small space.”

  “Bummer.” Amy shrugged philosophically. “But you’ve got friends out there, right? It’s not all bad, is it?”

  Jo shrugged. “It’s not, but most of the good guys are on my old rig. There’s not as much eye candy on this new rig, either.”

  “Hmm . . . I can see why you’d want to quit your job if the perving isn’t so good. You going to eat those fries?”

  “Nope. They’re all yours.”

  Amy dove in while Jo people-watched. “You know, half the problem is that all the men around here are too bloody short.”

  Amy snorted. “You’re fussy.”

  “Hell yeah.” Jo stretched out her long legs. “The last thing I want to do is spend the rest of my life looking down at a man’s bald spot.”

  “Hey!”

  “You’re a barber, that’s different.”

  “Yeah? Thanks. Anyway. Speaking of hair, namely luscious blond locks, how’s it going with Stephen?” Amy asked.

  Jo narrowed her eyes. “Where did that come from?”

  “Same place your bald spot comment came from. So, Stephen . . .”

  “Haven’t seen him at all. I wouldn’t even know he’s there except for the odd note. He’s not bad to have around really. Brought home some Italian for me the other day and left it in the fridge. Thought that was pretty nice.”

  “Yeah, that is nice. So was the hangover breakfast Boomba ate. Seriously though? You haven’t seen him?” Amy asked. “Where’s he been? Hiding in his room? Living under the stairs? You couldn’t have been that scary the other night.”

  “Don’t know.” Jo shrugged, making light of hours she’d spent wondering the same thing and hoping she hadn’t made an idiot of herself. “I think he must be staying over at his girlfriend’s place. I remember Scott saying she’s a restaurateur or something.” If her shrug was a little wooden, she was prepared to deny it to her death. “Don’t care.”

  “No? So all that talk the other night with Mike was about another Stephen that you had a crush on for years? Oh! I understand now.” Amy theatrically slapped her forehead and fell back in her chair.

  Jo groaned, covering her eyes with her hands. “Please tell me I didn’t get talkative?”

  “It was riveting,” Amy said with relish. “I sort of suspected you’d liked Stephen from the way Scott used to tease you, but the other night you could have put Celine Dion out of business with all the stuff you were spouting about the guy. You sure you still don’t want to jump into his pants? He’s tall. Taller than you.” Amy grinned, flashing the dimples in her cheeks.

  “I was drunk, Amy Blaine.” Jo groaned. “Besides, it’s rude to remind people of the stupid stuff they say when inebriated.”

  “Sorry,” Amy chirped, looking anything but. “Don’t worry. Mike let a few things slip I’m sure he’d rather were never repeated too. You remember?”

  “I vaguely remember something about acting, but the family doesn’t know about it. Why wouldn’t he want anyone to know?” Jo asked, trying to force some clarity into the blur that their night out had been.

  Amy just shrugged, looking entirely too innocent.

  “So how come you didn’t get all confessional too?” Jo asked, throwing her napkin at her sister.

  “I did. You guys just can’t remember.”

  “Care to aid my recollection?”

  “Not bloody likely,” Amy scoffed. “I’m enjoying the upper hand.”

  They paused their conversation to order some dessert. It was definitely a day for some crème brûlée.

  “I hope you’ve realized by now that the whole thing years ago wasn’t Stephen’s fault,” Amy said matter-of-factly the minute the waiter left. “It all worked out for the best anyway. Look at us. Fabulous, successful, and therapized. Simply marvelous.”

  Even if Jo wanted to pretend she didn’t know what her sister was referencing, she knew it wouldn’t work for long. “I know. Dad was just a time bomb waiting to go off. If it hadn’t been catching us coming home upset from the party, it would have been something else.”

  “Yeah. So . . .”

  “So?”

  “So do you still really have the hots for Stephen?”

  Jo burst out laughing, drawing attention from a nearby table of suits on their lunch break. “No! Who has the hots for anyone anymore anyway? You sound fifteen. Listen, Ames, if it wasn’t for your cat-allergic boyfriend—what’s his name?—I never would have seen Stephen again. Even if he has been trying to make up for being such an idiot, I don’t know him well enough to have the hots for him. And I was drunk the other night, so what I said doesn’t count. Got it?”

  “Ah.”

  “Ah what?”

  “Nothing. And my boyfriend’s name is Pete, as if I haven’t told you already. Or maybe I haven’t. Anyway. What’s this about you wanting to quit your job?”

  Jo stared at her incredulously. “You join the Spanish Inquisition?”

  Amy ignored her. “Has it got anything to do with them keeping you out there for four months straight? Four months! Aren’t they supposed to give you time off? I thought it’s in your contract,” Amy said, indignant on Jo’s behalf, her jaw set like a miniature general announcing imminent war.

  “Yeah, they are, but my new boss is an asshole. There was a screw-up and I had to stay and fix it. It’s not worth getting worked up over, Ames. The money was good for the extra time, and I’m home now.” Jo hoped Amy would leave it at that. The last thing she wanted to do was admit she’d slept with her boss years before his promotion in a moment of sex-deprived lunacy. He’d been a dud, and she’d told him as much after kicking him out of bed. In hindsight, she should have used a bit more tact, because he’d been gunning for her ever since. That’s what she got for going against her “Don’t Screw the Crew” rule.

  Amy opened her mouth to say
more before she saw Jo’s narrowed eyes and got the hint. “Want another drink, petal?”

  Jo nodded. “Lemonade, thanks.” She watched Amy wander over to the bar, her hips swinging in a red-and-white-striped wiggle dress, and wondered, not for the first time, how they could have come from the same parents. As she saw the men at the next table turn to watch Amy for entirely different reasons, Jo debated drawing their attention so she could give them a death stare but changed her mind. Amy had been getting this kind of attention since she was fifteen, and on the whole, she was oblivious to it.

  “So. I’ve been meaning to ask you a favor,” Amy said when she was back to set Jo’s lemonade in front of her.

  “Hmm?”

  “Can you come down with me to see Mum before you go back this time?”

  Jo sputtered in her drink. “What?”

  “It’d mean a lot to me, Jo,” Amy said earnestly, her eyes huge and pleading.

  Jo grabbed a napkin and blotted lemonade off her mouth, then the table. “Jesus. Next time you spring something like this on me, give me a bit of warning.”

  Amy shrugged and swirled a finger through the froth on her beer while Jo fought a familiar stab of ancient guilt. They both felt responsible for leaving their mum alone with their dad, and recently, it had fallen on Amy to drive down to visit with Shirley Blaine in secret while their dad was at work. Jo hadn’t seen her mum for years, not since Shirley had caught the bus up to Perth and stayed with Amy for a week. If Jo had her way, she’d never set foot in George Creek again, but this was Amy asking.

  “Is the old man going to be there?”

  Amy shook her head. “He wouldn’t do anything even if he was. Mum says he’s behaved himself since we left.”

  “Yeah, that doesn’t mean the thought of seeing him doesn’t still make me feel like hurling.” Acid roiled in Jo’s stomach as she rested her elbows on the table, giving Amy a long-suffering look as her body recoiled from the emotional imprints it still harbored from years of beatings, the last one being the worst. “You know, this really isn’t the relaxing, stress-free lunch I was hoping for.”

  Amy put her hands on the table, leaning forward. “Come on, Jo, it won’t be that bad. We’ll leave first thing in the morning and get back before dinner. Please.”

  Jo buried her face in her hands, her voice muffled. “You’re going to be a pain until I say yes, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” Amy bit her lip and, if possible, made herself look even more pitiful.

  “What day?”

  Amy’s relief was palpable, a wide smile wiping away the worry lines on her brow. “Tomorrow’s good. I’ll have Myf come in and take care of the phones. She sold about half of her paintings at the show, but I’m pretty sure she could do with a bit of extra cash.”

  Jo sighed. “Alright. Call me before you come. Getting out of bed that early while I’m on holiday is going to be a bitch.”

  Chapter 4

  Jo hated the three-and-a-half-hour drive down to George Creek, the town where she’d spent the first sixteen years of her life known as “Rabies” Blaine by the local bullies. She hadn’t returned since the night she’d left, and she’d never deluded herself into thinking a return would be easy. Her dad was still here. Still living with her mum. Still working for the Hardys. Jo’s long-held fear that he’d hurt Amy and her mum was still present and getting stronger the closer they got to their destination.

  She rolled down the window of Amy’s battered pink Mini Cooper and looked out, feeling queasy to her stomach.

  The smell of the warm earth and the gum trees, the sight of grapevines and dairy cattle parked under the odd peppermint, and the sound of flies buzzing everywhere used to represent home to her, but now they just left her feeling like she was traveling back to a not-so-pleasant past. She hated the sight of the town’s flower-bed-lined main street, the old green feed store, and the bright-yellow Shell station.

  Every familiar face she saw through the car window triggered memories of the miserable years she’d spent here and just how desperate she’d been to leave. Oh, she’d known a few good people. They weren’t all bad. But most of them didn’t live in George Creek anymore. They’d gotten out like she had, and all that was left were the dregs.

  They passed the square brick façade of George Creek High School on the edge of town. Built in the seventies, it was still shadowed by a giant karri tree at its entrance, but some idiot had painted the bricks a spearmint green. The scent of eucalyptus, sunbaked basketball courts, and bore-watered grass brought back a wash of memories that threatened to drown her, leaving her feeling sixteen and powerless again. She hated that. She hated this place for making her feel that way.

  They drove for another ten minutes, passing an ornate stone wall with “Evangeline’s Rest” spelled out in granite, and then turned into the same nondescript driveway Jo and Amy had walked down every time they’d gotten off the school bus. She’d walked down it the day Stephen had stood up for her to Jeff Rousse, the bully who had made Jo’s childhood hell. It was the same driveway she’d walked down every school day after he’d left for boarding school, leaving no one to stop Jeff from bellowing taunts at her back from the bus window. She could almost hear them now . . .

  Amy’s Mini crunched over the gravel driveway and Jo and Amy’s childhood home came into sight.

  Not much had changed about the Blaine house in fourteen years either. The white paint on the gray wood was even more faded, and the porch steps had rotted away so much that someone had piled up bricks instead, but that was all. Ken Blaine was obviously still too proud to accept Rob Hardy’s repeated offers to spruce the place up. Jo had only ever met Rob a few times, but he’d always been kind. Her dad had always tried to prevent her or Amy from socializing with the Hardys for fear they’d spill the beans about his problem with booze.

  It turned out Jo’s mum, Shirley, hadn’t changed much at all either. She was still an older, harder-featured version of Amy. Her hair was bottle blond now instead of natural, and the million tiny lines around her mouth from the cigarettes she smoked back-to-back, probably even in her sleep, had deepened, but those changes didn’t really draw Jo’s attention. Not after she noticed the familiar stilted way Shirley was moving around the kitchen and grimacing when pouring boiling water into a teapot. Nope, not much had changed at all.

  Their mum had either a few broken ribs or a hell of a lot of bruises under her neat white blouse and loose linen trousers.

  Feeling fury bubbling in her gut, Jo sat on the cracked orange Naugahyde of a kitchen chair and listened to Amy’s nervous chatter about her business and their mum’s gossip about what had gone on around town since the last time Amy had visited.

  Unlike Jo, Amy had reconciled herself with the fact that their mother had never left their dad. Jo hadn’t. She didn’t have much to say, and Shirley didn’t have much to ask, so Jo just sat there, gritting her teeth, waiting for it to be time to go so she could get home and call her father. She didn’t want to see him, but she’d bloody well call him. She wasn’t a kid anymore, unable to pay her mum back for all the times Shirley had gotten in the way of Ken’s fists when Jo had been too small to make herself scarce. No, she and her mother might not have seen eye to eye on anything over the years, but that didn’t mean Jo was going to stand for this.

  To break up the tension on their return trip, Amy flicked on the local radio station, which was still inexplicably playing the same five songs it had bored people with for the last thirty years. Their mutual relief when Amy pulled up in front of Jo’s apartment building was palpable. After a quick hug, Jo uncurled herself and climbed out of Amy’s tiny car, feeling a little bad about her mood until she remembered how her mum had looked earlier. She waved goodbye as the pink Mini pulled away with the music turned up loud again and then walked up the stairs to her apartment with a heavy tread.

  All she had to do now was call her dad, and then she’d sleep for a year straight. She put the key in the door and turned it, only to fall forward as it
was opened for her.

  “Gnh,” Stephen grunted as she landed against his chest, shoulder first, no doubt knocking his lung capacity temporarily down to zero percent.

  “Oh god,” Jo exclaimed. “Sorry.” She righted herself using his shoulder as balance, jerking back at the feel of warm, bare skin. He smelled of washed man, sun, and salt—a nice smell, a welcome smell. She would have fallen over again if he hadn’t caught her hand and held her steady.

  “Don’t be,” Stephen said before letting her go and taking a step back. She fidgeted as he took in her pale face and the no-doubt-huge black circles under her eyes. “Everything okay? You look like you’re going to pass out on me again.”

  Jo began to reply but was distracted by the sight of his bare chest. The man was wearing just a low-slung pair of board shorts on a body that would give her palpitations if she didn’t see well-muscled guys on a regular basis at work. She leaned back a bit, trying to take in the view of nicely shaped pectorals with a smattering of blond hair. He had a nice stomach too. Toned but not too defined. Just right. She wanted to feel if those muscles were as hard as they looked.

  “Jo?” He reached out to steady her again by placing his hands on her waist.

  “Yeah. Yeah, sure.” She ran a hand through her hair, feeling like a clumsy idiot. “Sorry.”

  “Heard you the first time,” he said, eyes crinkling in amusement. “I just got back from the beach and was going to order pizza. You want something?”

  Jo felt her cheeks heating up at all this attention. “Yeah, that’d be great.” She pulled away and dropped her green canvas handbag by the door. “I just have to make a call first. I’ll be with you in a minute.”

  Her phone was dead, so she picked up the landline phone and walked towards her bedroom. At the last minute, she changed direction and swerved into the bathroom. Locking the door and sitting down on the toilet lid, she braced herself to talk to her dad for the first time in fourteen years. Her hands were shaking as she dialed the number she’d gotten off her mum under the guise of wanting to apologize for not seeing him. Just saying the words had left her feeling ill, but her mum had believed her. Shirley had always had a blind spot when it came to Jo’s dad. Even after he kicked the crap out of her, Shirley would still tell Jo and Amy he was a good man and couldn’t help it. Well, he could bloody well help it now. Jo would make him.