Struggle: Beautiful Series, book one

by Anderson, Lilliana

  For a moment, her eyes searched mine then all of a sudden, she sprang into action, crashing her mouth into mine and sliding her tongue inside my mouth while pulling at my hair. I responded with equal fervour, pressing my body against hers as her leg wrapped itself around my waist.

  I threaded my fingers through her hair as our tongues explored each other’s mouths, the alcohol in my veins dulling my senses just enough so I didn’t think of the consequences of what we were doing, or the fact that we were doing it on the side of the street in the middle of the city.

  We broke the kiss momentarily, pausing to look at each other and check that this was actually happening. Trina’s drunken eyes were slightly glazed as she smiled at me, then coughed and turned her head to the side and spewed all over the pavement.

  “Oh god,” I muttered, holding her up while I watched her heave repeatedly on the ground.

  “I feel sick,” she complained between retches.

  I rubbed her back. “I know, baby girl. I know.”

  “I need sleep.” She closed her eyes and leaned against the wall again. I did my best to clean her up and hold her upright. Shit. She’s drunker than I thought.

  “Come on, Trina. I’ll get you some water.” Sliding my arm around her waist to support her, I started to walk with her again to the station.

  Her body leaned fully into mine as she struggled to walk. “Where’s David?” she mumbled, as her head rolled into my shoulder. “I’m supposed to wait for David.”

  “I’m here, Trina. I’m taking you home.”

  “How far away is home?”

  “It’s not far, baby girl,” I murmured, feeling the weight of the evening settle in my gut. I’d finally had the guts to do something and mean it. But, she was too drunk to even remember what I said.

  On the train ride home, Trina passed out on my shoulder, I started to think it was a sign. Maybe we were never meant to be.

  Twelve

  Trina didn’t remember much about that night. She claimed the last thing she remembered was downing the shots then dancing. “Everything else is a blank,” she said, giving me a wan smile in her hung over state the next day.

  “Probably for the best,” I said, handing her a Berocca and a couple of Nurofen. “It got pretty messy.”

  Swallowing the pills followed by the orange liquid, she laid back on her pillow. “I feel messy.”

  “I should let you sleep then.” I leant down and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “We’ll talk tomorrow when you’re feeling better.”

  Except we never did talk. Well, not about that night anyway. Trina never brought it up again, and I wasn’t about to remind her that I spilled my guts, told her how I felt in the most honest way possible before she threw up on the both of us. Destiny was obviously telling us something—quit blurring the lines.

  We fell into familiar patterns and our friendship seemed as strong as it ever was. I swore to never get drunk while dancing with Trina again, feeling the need to keep my wits about myself whenever she moved against me like that. At eighteen, clubbing was one of our favourite things to do. So, this new rule was an imperative addition to our boundaries, and it staved off the hangovers too. I was more than happy to stand by it.

  Since high school no longer took up my time, I pulled extra shifts at the supermarket, adding to my growing savings. It was earmarked for accommodation and uni fees in the coming year. A little stockpile of funds to pave my way to freedom. We were almost out of the western suburbs, away from the shackles of high school drama, on our way to bigger things. All we needed were our exam results and university acceptance letters to show up.

  On the day our Higher School Certificate results came in, Katrina came running over to my place and wanted to open them together. We sat across from each other and counted to three before ripping the envelope open and reading the contents to ourselves before swapping and reading each other’s.

  “Jesus David, what are you? Some kind of genius? You flogged me.” She beamed as she read over my results. “This is amazing. There’s no way you’ll miss out on Sydney Uni now. You did it.”

  “Your marks are great. You could still get in,” I said, hope in my words as I handed her back her results.

  She shook her head. “Not for Law. With this score, I only qualify for Law at UWS.”

  “It all depends on how many people apply. You could scrape in to Sydney. Or I might get knocked back. You never know.”

  With a smile, she placed her hand over mine. “You'll get in. I know you will. I’d love it if we both got into the same Uni, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “I think we’ll have to go to the same uni. With these marks, you’re gonna need me there so you can ride my big brain all the way to a finished degree.”

  “Get lost!” she gasped, laughing before she whacked me on the side of my head with the thick piece of cardboard that stopped the envelope from bending. I knew the moment I said it that I was going to get hit, so I was already braced for it, laughing in return. “You are the worst.” Whack.

  “Violence won’t solve your problems.” Whack. I laughed as she kept whacking me with the bit of board. “Only study and hard work.” Whack. With a swipe of my hand, I caught her wrist and snatched the card from her grip. “Oh, now you’re gonna get it,” I said, getting up to chase her as she jumped up squealing and ran out the front door of my house.

  “Don’t David.” With a huge grin on her face, she danced from side to side across one of the garden beds where I couldn’t reach her. I leant down and picked up the hose. “Don’t you dare,” she shrieked.

  I wiggled my brows then pulled the trigger, a jet of water that hit her straight in her face.

  “Argh!” She put her hands up to block the spray, trying to jump out of the way, laughing her head off as I continued to rain water down upon her. Finally, she sought shelter on the other side of my car and called, “I give up. I give up.”

  Walking around to her, I held up the end of the hose and pointed it at her. “Are you going to hit me over the head again?”

  “No, I promise,” she assured me, tapping the ground next to her to ask me to sit down. I complied, keeping a hold of the hose as I was slightly wary of retaliation. “It’s going to be OK if we don’t go to the same Uni, you know. If you get into Sydney, I want you to go. It’s the better school. And you’ve wanted to go there since we toured the campus. You’ll love it there.”

  “I guess.” I tossed the hose out of reach and straightened out my legs. “But this is the last few years of any sort of school we’ll do for the rest of our lives. I wouldn’t mind doing them with my best buddy.”

  She got up on her knees in front of me and placed her hands on my legs, looking at me seriously. “I mean it. If you get into Sydney, you need to go. We’ll still see each other. It’ll be fine.”

  “We'll see what happens first,” I said, looking out at the street.

  “David. You have to promise me.”

  “I’m not promising anything.”

  “You have to promise,” she insisted, giving me a stern look.

  “Or what?”

  “Or I won’t be your best friend anymore.” She sounded like a kindergartener.

  “How very grown up of you,” I said with a laugh.

  “Come on, David. You have to do what’s best for you. Promise me that.”

  “Fine. I promise.” That was easy to promise since being close to her was what was best for me.

  She gave me a triumphant grin. “Good. Because I don’t want to go to Uni with a drowned rat anyway.”

  “What?” I barely registered what was happening before a burst of water hit my face.

  With a devilish cackle, she stood back and continued to spray me until I was completely drenched. “That’s what you get,” she said when she was satisfied I was soaked through.

  I ran my tongue over my wet lips. “Little girl, you’re asking for a world of pain here.”

  “No, I’m not,” she yelped, dro
pping the hose on the ground and running down the street toward her house. I gave a half-hearted chase until she rounded the corner, then stopped, running a hand over my wet limbs as I listened to her laughter until it faded into the distance.

  Smiling, I shook my head. How am I supposed to leave that?

  With my decision made, I sloshed my way back home and pulled the pamphlet for Sydney uni out of my drawer. Without giving it another thought, I dropped it in the recycling bin. “UWS it is,” I said to myself.

  When the university acceptance letters came, I received two. One for Sydney Uni and one for UWS. As expected, Trina only got one. I didn’t even open the Sydney envelope and set it on fire instead. I wasn’t leaving her.

  Thirteen

  University was a whole other world. I loved that we were surrounded by like-minded people. There weren’t any cliques or hierarchies to contend with. Everyone was there to learn.

  Trina and I were both doing double degrees. Law was our primary focus. But, where she had chosen to do humanities, I had chosen to do commerce. We shared a couple of classes a week, but we weren’t together all the time. And the amount of study required was enormous. The library became my best friend.

  On top of uni, Trina had continued dominating her triathlon category and was asked to join the national team. She didn’t have a lot of time for a social life after that. When she wasn’t studying at the library with me, she was busy training. I was so proud of her.

  When I wasn’t studying, I immersed myself in Uni life, visiting the campus bar with friends every Wednesday and Friday and going to a few parties or clubs with them on the weekends. It was fun having a group to hang out with again. One filled with ambitious people who could discuss complicated concepts even while drinking. I felt like I was finally in my element. Where had university been all my life?

  Even though I knew she was in training, I always asked Trina if she wanted to come with us. It felt weird going places without at least inviting her. But she generally begged off, assuring me she’d ease up on training once Worlds was over. She was missing out on the fun part of Uni. But I understood how important her sport was to her.

  In a way, the separate social life was good for us. We’d reached a point in our friendship where we kept butting into the same brick wall. Taking a slightly different path gave us a different focus and took the strain off our frayed feelings. After that drunken night in the city when we’d admitted how we felt, I was painfully aware that there was more to us than just friends, but I did feel we were better together when we set those emotions aside. At the end of the day, I’d prefer her in my life as a friend than to risk losing her by complicating things with a relationship. I had no clue how to be the right kind of guy for her. Or if I could even handle a real adult relationship.

  My relationships had so far consisted of hooking up at parties and screwing each other’s brains out until one of us moved on. I was also really great at ending things the moment anything remotely ‘relationshippy’ took place—phone calls just to say ‘hi’, invitations to breakfast, overly familiar greetings in public. These things were a big no on my list and warranted the immediate cancellation of all things physical.

  I wasn’t being mean. And I wasn’t leading anyone on. I always made it clear from the start that I wasn’t interested in a relationship. It was just that some girls agreed to being casual and though they could change my mind later. Not gonna happen.

  Monica was my favourite girl within the circle I ran with. She only ever wanted me when she was drinking or in between boyfriends. When we saw each other at Uni, we’d say hi and maybe hang out a bit. But she never went up to Katrina acting like she owned me, and she never acted all clingy with me at other times either. We had a pretty good thing going on that satisfied us both, but then she met this guy, Jake at a nightclub. He was a tradie; a plumber or something like that. They got serious and our arrangement ended. So long, Monica.

  Our arrangement wouldn’t have been worth mentioning if it wasn’t for the fact that Monica’s relationship with Jake was the reason Trina met her next boyfriend.

  We’d gone almost two years without the interference of another man in our friendship which was perfect for me, but not so great for Trina who wasn’t the best at casual relationships. For Trina, sex needed to mean something.

  When her training tapered down, and she started coming clubbing with us, it wasn’t a huge surprise that she started dating again. A few guys had taken her to dinner or a movie, but nothing became serious until Jake brought his mate Christopher along and she caught his eye.

  Besides a tiny flare up of the green-eyed monster, I couldn’t find anything wrong with him. He was taller and broader than me with dark hair and a welcoming smile. What I noticed most was that he was completely respectful of her. He bought her drinks, listened to her intently, danced when she wanted, and even asked if he could kiss her when he was about to leave. If I had to write down a list of all the things a man for Trina would need, Christopher would tick most of those boxes and I’d sign off on him. But that list of positive attributes couldn’t account for the uneasy feeling I was experiencing.

  It wasn’t jealousy. I’d already recognised that spike in my heart rate and pushed it back down again. No. This was something else. Something about the guy felt…off. And I didn’t know what.

  “Wow,” Katrina said, touching her flushed cheek when she joined me after he’d left. “That guy was something else. A gentleman. I mean, who asks for a kiss in this day and age?”

  “I don’t like him,” I told her flatly.

  “Oh, come on, David. He was amazing. And you haven’t liked a single guy I’ve dated, so your opinion hardly counts as non-biased.”

  “I’ve liked all your boyfriends. I was friends with Ben, and I played basketball with Ethan. He was cool.”

  Placing her hands on her hips, she looked at me. “That’s how you felt before I started dating them. Then you beat the crap out of Ben and insinuated to Ethan that you and I sleep together all the time. Do you think you could just play nice for change?”

  “Of course I’ll play nice. But I’m not gonna lie. There’s just something about the guy I don’t like.”

  “You’re probably just jealous because he’s bigger than you,” she teased.

  “Yeah. I wish I was a muscle-bound meathead. That's why I spend so much time pumping iron at the gym,” I replied, sarcasm dripping from my words.

  With a giggle, she placed her hands on either side of my face and looked into my eyes, growing serious. “I have never said a word about the girls you have chasing after you all the time. Please, if he calls, don’t go all protective big brother on me. Just be nice and let me try to have a normal relationship for once. Can you do that for me? I really like him. ”

  Looking away, I swallowed my objections then nodded. “I’ll be nothing but nice, I swear it.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed, releasing me and smiling my way. She was so pretty when she smiled, and I felt a bit like a douche for raining on her happy. I had to trust her judgement.

  Fourteen

  The moment Trina and Christopher started dating, I knew it would put a strain on our friendship. Trina’s boyfriends always did. It was one of the primary reasons I was against relationships. They took up too much time and led to possessiveness on both sides with Trina caught in the middle. I’d played the third wheel during her year long relationship with Ethan, and that didn’t work out so great. I didn’t want to be in that situation again so I did my best to be her friend when she needed me while keeping my distance from her relationship. Still, Christopher became possessive. Any time we were out in a group setting, he held her like she might run away and never let her out of his sight. I was barely even allowed to touch her. A brief hug hello or goodbye was the most I could get in. I felt sidelined around them. But she was happy, so I let it go.

  I still didn’t like him.

  I wished I could pinpoint one particular thing about Christopher that gave me
the creeps, but I couldn’t. Outwardly, he was this charming, well-liked guy. Trina’s mum thought he was wonderful. Her dad would spend hours talking to him about cars and sports, and Trina was over the moon with his attentions.

  As a couple, they even looked fantastic. She was really athletic from her years of training—golden tan, golden hair—and with his darker colouring and olive complexion, they complemented each other perfectly. The boxes kept getting ticked but I couldn’t shake the unease, meaning I couldn’t relax around the guy.

  The only person who seemed to be in agreement was Katrina’s brother. Tom seemed to have a permanent scowl on his face whenever Christopher was around.

  “Just look at him,” he said with a lowered voice. Christopher was helping Mr Mahoney light the barbeque while we cleaned off the outdoor setting from the storm a few nights before.

  “You don’t like him?” I asked.

  Tom shook his head. “He puts on this perfect boyfriend act. But it’s all fake.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “He smiles too much.”

  I actually laughed. “Smiles too much?”

  “Yeah. Like he’s playing a role, manipulating everyone into believing he’s this great guy. I mean, no one finds John Mahoney’s stories that funny.” He tipped his chin towards them as Christopher laughed too loud and slapped Mr Mahoney’s back. Tom was right. No one found Mr Mahoney funny. “How can none of them see through that?”

  “I don’t know, mate. I didn’t like him the moment I met him,” I replied. “Whatever it is he’s doing, he’s good at it. They all think he’s amazing.”

  Tom and I kept watch through the kitchen window as Christopher walked inside the house and took the tray of meat from Mrs Mahoney. It was like watching one of those happy family TV shows, where no one can stop smiling at each other.