Tigers on the Way

by Sean Kennedy

  “Very energy efficient,” I approved. “What are we celebrating?”

  “Getting you naked in public,” he mugged. “Do we need a reason?”

  “No. It’s very nice, is all.”

  “One of the benefits of having our own home.”

  “Well, if this is what I get to come home to, I wish we’d done this years ago.”

  Dec handed me a glass, which I hadn’t even seen sitting in the fernery. “We have the rest of our lives to make up for it.”

  “Really? It might traumatise the kids.”

  “We’ll organise lots of sleepovers for them at their Uncle Roger’s house.”

  “Good plan.” I nuzzled in closer to him. “Hey, if Nyssa has twins, maybe she should have to carry them double term and give us another nine months of pool shenanigans.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t think biology works that way.”

  I downed the last dregs of my champagne. “Promise me something.”

  “Another glass of champagne?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” He topped me up, and I was already feeling tipsy. “But that wasn’t it.”

  “What?”

  “Nah, you have to promise me first.”

  “Okay,” he said, without hesitation. “I promise.”

  “Good. Even though we’re becoming parents, I still want to be able to come home every now and again and find you naked.”

  “In the pool?”

  “Anywhere. Generally. But I have to admit you naked in the pool is a beautiful sight.”

  “So are you.”

  “Oh, stop it.” I laughed. “Okay, you can say it once more.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he murmured, trailing kisses along my shoulder.

  “Should I come back later?” called a new voice.

  Dec and I both jumped and turned to see Fran standing there with a bottle of wine. I yelped and hid myself behind Dec, who remained as calm as ever.

  “You might want to get dressed,” she said. “Because Roger will be traumatised once he comes in and sees you guys like this.”

  “Fran!” I yelled, my face pressed into Dec’s back. “Don’t you knock?”

  “You gave me a key!”

  “No, I didn’t!”

  “I did,” Dec murmured. “I also rang and told them I would be home today.”

  “Idiot,” I hissed.

  “Well, it was meant to be a surprise for you, not them.”

  “Don’t worry, I can’t see anything,” Fran told us. “The water’s too broken up by the jets.”

  “Bet you’re glad I wanted them now,” Dec said to me.

  I kissed him between his shoulder blades as an assent. “Turn away, Fran!” I yelled. “Turn away!”

  She giggled.

  “Is she looking?” I asked Dec.

  “Get out.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. We both jumped out, Dec wrapping his towel around his waist. Unfortunately, he didn’t bring one out for me so I struggled into my pants, going commando. When Fran turned around, I was pulling my shirt back on.

  “Wow, Simon, I haven’t seen you shirtless since, like, 2008. Have you been working out?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Ouch,” Fran said, unperturbed. “Looking good as always, Declan Tyler.”

  Declan flushed and grabbed my hand. “Let’s go and get changed.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” Fran called after us.

  “They’re worse than kids,” I told Dec as we headed for our room.

  Right now, he was inclined to agree.

  With the door shut behind us, things got heated again. Dec’s towel dropped, and his wet body pressed against mine.

  “We can’t,” I protested.

  My body seemed to differ.

  “Let me take care of you,” Dec murmured as he moved me over to the bed. “Just to make sure everything’s in working order for later on.”

  He wasn’t usually so cheeky. It was to put me at ease, as we had spoken of my apprehension about how everything would be once the stitches were removed. But I was already helping him get me out of my clothes.

  A QUICK shower and a change of clothes after, and Fran was actually too polite to say anything about how long we had taken upstairs. Roger seemed none the wiser, as he set about making drinks in the kitchen. The rest of us sat in the lounge chairs by the pool, and Fran dragged hers over to the water’s edge so she could trail her fingers along the surface. I felt something lumpy under my arse and realised it was the book I had been reading earlier in the day.

  “Did you know Brett Kirk got to have a private audience with the Dalai Lama?” I asked Dec, knowing he hadn’t had a chance to read that particular autobiography yet.

  “Who’s that?” Fran asked.

  “The spiritual leader of Nepal,” I replied without a beat.

  “Funny.”

  I looked over to her and failed at raising my eyebrow. “Frankly, I’m nepal-led you didn’t know that.”

  She gave me the finger.

  “Ex-player for the Sydney Swans,” Declan answered for her.

  “How come the Dalai Lama never asked for an audience with you?” I asked him.

  “He was scared you’d tag along.” He waggled his eyebrows at me as he swigged at his beer.

  Damn, we were all on fire tonight.

  Fran leaned over and grabbed the book to inspect the cover. “Eh. He’s kinda hot in a hippie surfer kind of way. He’d fit in at Nimbin.”

  “Nimbin doesn’t have a coast,” I informed her.

  “Oh, shut up.”

  “It’s in the middle of the mountains.”

  “I said shut up, you know-it-all!”

  I grinned and put the book down next to my chair.

  Roger emerged from the house, carrying a tray of drinks. “Did I hear Fran saying someone was hot?”

  “Kinda hot,” Fran specified.

  “Was it Declan?” Roger asked. This was a question Roger had asked many times over the years.

  Offended, I chucked a melting ice cube from my empty glass at him. “He’s not kinda hot. He’s all hot.”

  “Believe me, I know,” Roger said.

  “Please leave me out of this,” Dec grumbled.

  “If Dec turned straight,” Roger said, handing his wife a drink, “Fran’d dump me in a second.”

  Fran rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, if you turned gay, you’d be heading for Simon in a second.”

  “Please leave me out of this,” I said, while Roger cried, “Eww!”

  “Hey!” Now Dec was offended. “If I turned straight, I’d turn gay again just to be with Simon.”

  “Aww, that’s sweet,” I said, taking his hand. “But can we please stop talking about ‘turning’ gay people? It’s starting to sound like a Liberal Party convention out here.”

  Dec grinned and kissed my hand.

  “Why don’t you ever do that in public?” Fran demanded of her husband.

  He clumsily took her hand and his lips smacked loudly against her skin.

  “Don’t slobber!” Fran wailed.

  Roger grinned and kissed her hand again.

  “That’s better,” Fran said. “Now do it again.”

  “They christened our guest room while you were away,” I whispered to Dec.

  He groaned. “Thanks. I really didn’t need to know that.”

  “There might have been more than the guest room. They’d often disappear, and I was too scared to check out what they were up to.”

  Fran was distracted from her husband’s courtly kisses. “What are you two muttering about?”

  “Brett Kirk,” I said, as Declan offered, “Homewares.”

  Wow, we had both given two very gay answers. I looked at Dec and could tell he thought so as well, as his lips pursed together so a laugh couldn’t escape.

  “Brett Kirk Homewares,” I said, without missing a beat. “He’s doing it in conjunction with Target.”

  Fran frowned. “You would think he would be
able to get someone a little more upmarket.”

  “I like Target,” Roger said.

  “No, you don’t,” I reminded him. “You like Kmart.”

  “Ahh.” A light of recognition passed over his face.

  “I like Kmart too,” I said in solidarity.

  “Our plates came from there,” Dec offered.

  “No wonder I like them.” Roger stared off through the door into the kitchen, as if he was about to go in there and start touching them lovingly.

  “They’re square,” Fran huffed. “I don’t believe in square plates.”

  “Whether you do or you don’t, they still exist.” I crossed over to her chair to hug her from behind, and she gave in willingly, laughing as she settled against me.

  “This conversation is bonkers,” she mused.

  That being said, it was the most refreshingly normal and banal one I’d had in ages. It was great.

  AS DEC climbed into bed, he nuzzled close to me, and his hands wandered down to a much more southern area.

  “What are you doing?” I murmured, half-asleep.

  “Just wanting to take a little longer than we had earlier. I’ve been dreaming of this all week.”

  Besides that beautiful little interlude in the afternoon, it felt like I had been waiting for so long as well. My body was responding in all the normal ways, for which I was thankful, as it had been one of my major fears after surgery.

  I rolled over so we were completely face to face. “We have guests.”

  Whatever words were coming out of my mouth, my body was thinking differently. And Declan knew, as he now had me in hand. “Doesn’t matter. We’ll be quiet.”

  I kissed him. “Yeah, sure.”

  Despite everything we had been through, this need for further intimacy was desperate. Or maybe it was desperate because of it. I had a strange want to prove myself to Dec, and I knew he wanted to show that whatever had happened, he still loved me and wanted me as much as ever. I’d had no doubts about it, but it seemed in the aftermath, we both wanted to make sure the other knew that fact.

  Even if Dec made me laugh when he said, “C’mon, don’t leave me blue balled, mate.”

  I snorted at the act he was putting on. “See, it’s not so bad for me now that I only have one.”

  He started peppering my chest with kisses. “Looks even better from here.”

  “I love how you get dirty when you have a drink in you.”

  He looked up and grinned slyly, proud of himself already for what he was going to say. “I can think of something else I’d much rather have in me.”

  At breakfast the next morning Fran told me she had heard my undignified cackle of response, so I guess we weren’t as quiet as we could have been in the dead of night.

  In fact, we had been bordering on raucous. Not so much during the act itself, but afterwards when lying back, our legs lazily intertwined and Dec’s head resting in the crook of my neck.

  “So, tell me,” I said. “Was I better with both balls, or has it changed with only one?”

  “Oh,” Dec said, pretending to ponder my query with all of the seriousness it deserved. “It was okay, I guess.”

  “Okay?”

  He yelped as my hand crept down and savagely twisted his nipple.

  “No, no, stop it! I give up! It was the best! The best ever!”

  I added a little more pressure. “I don’t believe you, Declan Tyler. I have ways of making you talk.”

  He began to laugh while also trying to pull away from my grip. “Fuck, that hurts!”

  I released him; he sat up, his nipple a sickly purple hue as blood returned to it.

  “Ow,” Dec moaned, rubbing his chest gingerly. “That’s going to leave a bruise.”

  “You deserved it.”

  “Kiss it better,” he demanded.

  I leaned over and did so. “I’m sorry,” I told it.

  Dec lifted my head and looked at me with such love, I could have almost cried. His lips met mine again, and although we took a little while longer, we were no longer in doubt about the workability of one ball in comparison to two.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “SO, HAS Simon told you about the ghost?” Fran asked Dec.

  We were sitting in the dining room, having breakfast. Roger had just made a run to the local cafe across from Piedimonte’s. He shot her a warning look as he threw a bag of pastries down on the table.

  “What?” she asked.

  “He told me,” Dec said, simply. There was no judgement in his voice, and I was thankful for it.

  I was making coffees, and I pretended the flush on my face was due to the steam from the machine. When it was bright early morning sunlight, it all seemed ludicrous. And none of them had been present for the creepy old psychic. She’d been very convincing in the moment.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  Dec frowned at Fran’s question. “I don’t really know.”

  “That’s a bit of a cop-out, isn’t it?”

  “Do you?” he lobbed it back.

  “I think I do.”

  “You do?” Roger asked.

  “Well, I know you do,” Fran replied.

  Roger shuddered as if someone had walked over his grave. “They shouldn’t be messed with, that’s for sure.”

  Declan studied him closely, searching for a joke.

  I knew it wasn’t one. Our year six camp was in a small mining town south of Melbourne that had since become a ghost town. Public schools loved cheap accommodation, and that was why those of us who had a government-funded education usually wound up camping in some of the spookiest run-down shanties known to man. I shit you not, Tim had been forced to stay in an old country hospital the year he went on school camp. Not all of the nurses had made it out alive, according to local legend, hanging themselves in what became known as the “nurse’s hallway to hell.” Charming.

  But my year’s camping site was the old pub of an even older gold-mining town. The second floor had dorm rooms that the itinerant miners had lived in when the town was bustling. Eight kids shared bunk beds in each tiny room, so we were practically lying on top of each other. Roger and I had chosen bottom bunks near the window so we could talk throughout the night without getting caught. I had woken our second night, which was odd as I was a pretty heavy sleeper. I didn’t need to go to the loo, and I was willing to drop right back off again when my eyes adjusted to the dark and I saw Roger staring at me, his eyes wide open with terror.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  It took him a moment to compose himself. “There was a man. In here.”

  “It was probably Mr. Robinson or Mr. Davey,” I said, referring to the teachers who had been forced to accompany us.

  Roger shook his head. “It was an old man.”

  “It was a pervert?” I felt a tiny thrill at the realisation of having been in mortal danger.

  “No. Or, maybe. I don’t know. But he didn’t have legs.”

  “He was in a wheelchair?” How the hell hadn’t I heard that?

  “No, dummy. It was a ghost!” And with that, Roger fell asleep. I always admired how quickly he could drift off.

  The problem was he left me awake and alone for the rest of the night, convinced I was going to be sucked into another dimension like Carol Anne in Poltergeist, a movie my mother loved watching again and again despite the terrors it awakened in Tim and me. We didn’t think our parents would be brave enough to travel to “the other side” to save us. For one of their prized pieces of Essendon memorabilia, maybe.

  Anyway, we were adults now, right?

  “I’m sure you were really scared, hun,” Fran said to Roger and took his hand. “But it didn’t do anything to you, did it?”

  I was waiting for her to add “because ghosts aren’t real,” but she didn’t.

  “I just don’t like the crazy old woman stalking Simon,” Dec said.

  “She wasn’t stalking me,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time.

  �
�She knew an awful lot about your life,” Fran said, siding with Dec. Of course she would. She and Dec liked to be the A-Team against mine and Roger’s kooky and spooky Z-Team. No doubt they thought themselves to be the “adults” in their respective relationships, having to put up with their demented man-children.

  “Doesn’t mean she’s a stalker,” I said. “All of that info is public knowledge.”

  “It’s still stalking if it’s done online,” Fran countered.

  “But is it?” I asked.

  “Yes!” Fran and Dec yelled together, and Roger mumbled an assent a few seconds later. So much for loyalty.

  “Once again,” I said calmly, “all publicly available information.”

  “But confronting you in a public place is stalking.”

  I rubbed Dec’s arm, as if it would quell the agitated beast. “She’s probably going to have to do it more than once for it to qualify as stalking.”

  “She could have been following you and you wouldn’t even know it,” Fran said.

  “You think I’m that unobservant?” I asked all in attendance.

  This time all three assented immediately. There was no delay for Roger. His defection was complete.

  “Buy me a can, and I’ll pepper spray her next time,” I suggested. “Before she even gets the opportunity to speak.”

  “Maybe I will,” Dec said.

  “Yeah, you do that. That will look great in the papers. Local Woman Attacked by Ex–Footy Player in Supermarket. Another controversy!”

  “You said you would be carrying the pepper spray!” he fired back. “And trying to have a family isn’t a controversy!”

  “Not according to your buddies on The Footy Show.”

  “They’re not my buddies.”

  “More alcohol, Roger, please.” Fran gave him an imploring look.

  He grimaced, watching us. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “We’re not fighting,” I told them.

  “Of course we’re not,” Dec agreed.

  (We kind of were. But only a little.)

  The thing was, most of the time our disagreements blew over easily. And this one did as well. I don’t think Dec really believed I was being stalked, but who knows, maybe once a kid came into the equation, his threat about the pepper spray would become a real one?