by Lily Malone
Her mum said they’d had dinner on Saturday night. She said Will had lost a lot of weight.
Bruno piddled on yet another tree and scratched his hind legs through the damp leaves at the side of the path, then he raced towards another scent trail in the scrub.
Taylor sighed. Will couldn’t go on like this. That much was clear.
When she got back to the city she’d go see him.
She was a psychologist, for crying out loud. If she couldn’t help her brother, who could?
* * *
Abe was ten minutes early and Taylor was trying to work out whether she should or shouldn’t wear a hat with her outfit. She met Abe before he could reach the door and he stopped just shy of the shallow steps of Ella’s porch.
‘With?’ Taylor put the hat on her head and struck a pose. Then she took the hat off. ‘Or without?’
Lines crinkled the corners of Abe’s eyes as he considered. ‘Dunno. I have to see it again.’
A silly grin on her face. A Goofy, Sloppy, Dopey, every-name-of-the-seven-dwarves grin, but she put the hat back on her head and tamped it down, adjusting her fringe.
‘With,’ she said.
The light in Abe’s eyes changed as he watched her, and that whole stand-to-attention thing happened inside Taylor as her body held its breath.
‘Or without.’
With the benefit of the porch height, she’d almost been on eye level with him, but Abe moved now as he mounted the steps, looking down on her where she stood, heart in her mouth, hat in her hand.
Abe took the hat from her and gently placed it on her head. He smoothed her fringe.
‘With,’ he declared quietly, voice so beautifully husky it made Taylor’s knees gooey. Was there a dwarf named Gooey? There should be.
‘You look lovely,’ he said.
He looked rather edible himself. ‘So do you.’
‘I aimed for lovely,’ he said, sweeping his hand down his front and making her giggle.
Was there a dwarf named Yummy, or Scrummy? He’d do them proud. He wore slim, straight charcoal-coloured jeans with a grey and white checked shirt. The darkest shade of the shirt was a few shades lighter than the jeans. The lightest shade of the shirt was the one that closely matched his eyes. The cloud-shade sky-shade that Taylor found impossible to name without saying ‘blue ice’, and how could she use ice to describe something as hot as Abe’s eyes?
‘Are you ready? Shall we go?’
‘Absolutely. Let me get my bag.’ She turned a fast circle and skipped into the house, feeling the swish at her knees as her dress moved too.
‘Have you put the cover on the cage?’ Abe called into the house behind her.
‘I’m about to,’ she yelled back, picking up the cover and placing it over the cage. ‘There you go, your Royal Highness, night night.’
Taylor grabbed her handbag, thought about it and called to the front. ‘Will I need a jacket?’
Abe hadn’t worn a jacket and her dress had long sleeves. It wasn’t wool, but it had a polyester/elastane mix that let it hug her curves. It would be warmer than cotton and they’d be warm inside the club … she really didn’t want to cover the dress with a jacket.
‘I think you’ll be fine. It’ll be warm once you’re inside. Always is.’
She locked up and slipped Ella’s key into her bag.
‘All good? Let’s go,’ Abe said, opening the gate to let her through, and then opening the door of his car for her while she settled in the passenger seat.
His vehicle smelled of aftershave, like the scent of clouds in a storm.
That, plus vanilla custardy goodness.
CHAPTER
14
‘Two beers, Jaydah, please, and a glass of the Ace’s High white,’ Abe said for the second time, leaning further over the bar so Jaydah could hear.
She nodded and moved away, hands flying over the beer taps. She brought two foam-topped beers to the bar and turned back to the fridge to pour the white wine.
It wasn’t the sound of people talking that made him have to shout. It was the sound of four women and a bloke who should know better, singing ‘Summer Loving’ from Grease.
‘You and Brix hogging the pool table again?’ Jaydah asked him as she handed over his change. ‘Let someone else have a go once in a while, hey? They drink more when they’re winning.’
‘They drink when they’re losing too.’
‘True, but their manners are better when they’re winning.’
Abe’s brow creased as he glanced back at the young crew who’d been trying to beat him and Brix at the pool table for the last hour. Two guys. One girl. ‘They members?’
Jaydah shook her head. ‘They all signed in as visitors.’
The chick was a better player than either of the blokes. ‘They not minding their manners?’
She shrugged, making her dark hair sway about her shoulders. ‘Nothing I can’t handle.’
‘Thanks for these,’ Abe said, minding his Ps and Qs as he picked up the drinks, balancing the beers and wineglass between spread fingers before walking back to where Taylor and Brix sat on bar stools surrounding a high table.
They weren’t talking. The music was way too loud, but earlier, before the karaoke got started, they’d chatted about the normal things: work, stuff they liked, stuff they didn’t like; how Taylor liked Chalk Hill; how long was she staying; had she been hiking in the ranges yet?
Brix did small talk easy. Like Jake. Like their father.
As he neared them, Abe paid more attention to the three people who’d challenged for the pool table and had so far lost four games. Their table had a bottle of champagne upturned in an ice bucket. The bottle was surrounded by empty beer glasses that Jaydah obviously hadn’t yet had a chance to round-up. If the boys were drinking beers, and the girl had the bottle of bubbles pretty much to herself, it was no wonder they were all on the way to being pretty darn pissed.
As Abe pushed the beer in front of Brix and slid the white wine to Taylor, the girl bounced up beside Brix, pool cue in hand. ‘Ready to lose this time?’ she challenged.
‘If you’re up for another hiding, no worries,’ Brix said easily, then he turned to Abe and winked, ‘Youngsters gotta learn when they’re in over their heads.’
Taylor took a sip of her wine and put it down. She rocked on her seat in time with the music, clapping her hand on her thigh. Thick metal bracelets shone on her wrist.
Her hat looked every kind of hot. No other woman in the club wore a hat.
‘You guys wanna break?’ the girl asked Brix.
‘You start. It’s your money,’ he said.
She put her money in the slot, and there was a crack as the pool balls dropped. The girl and the stockier of her partners gathered them up, setting them in a triangle at one end of the table.
On the stage, the lady running the karaoke announced a short break. Popular rock music issued through the speakers as the Grease karaoke quintet trundled from the stage, laughing and shrieking and still trying to make it sound like they were singing.
‘Do you wanna play this round?’ Abe asked Taylor as Brix stood to watch the action on the pool table.
He’d asked her before and she hadn’t been keen so it surprised him when she jumped off the bar stool and said, ‘Sure.’
The three players competing with them shared a triumphant look when Taylor approached Brix to stand at his side.
The girl, who introduced herself to Taylor as Lindt—like the chocolate—broke the balls wide, potting one of the smalls. She missed her next shot.
‘Ladies first?’ Brix said to Taylor, offering the cue.
‘Sure.’
‘We’re on bigs.’
Taylor chalked the top of the cue.
She marched up to the table, bold as brass, tipping her hat back so it didn’t impede her view. Even with her cute tan boots, her hips barely cleared the highest part of the rim. She leaned low over the table, skirt swishing softly around her thighs, and took a bead on
the cue ball, aiming for the yellow. Without any fuss, she drew her elbow high, and whipped through with the shot, making it crack. The yellow ball spun into the pocket, bottom right.
Taylor punched the air and kicked so that her skirt broke around her knee.
Brix raised his eyebrows at Abe. ‘Beginner’s luck?’
He shrugged.
Lindt’s eyes narrowed and by the time Taylor potted two more balls before narrowly missing her fourth shot, the blonde girl’s eyes were cold slits.
Taylor handed the cue to Brix, blowing across the black tip like the cue was the barrel of a gun.
Abe burst out laughing. They all did. Not Lindt, but the two blokes with her both nodded at Taylor and told her, ‘Well played.’
‘You’re a bloody bandit,’ he said to Taylor.
‘We could take lessons from you,’ Brix said from behind Taylor’s shoulder.
One of the opposing blokes took a turn, potting one ball. Then Brix missed and sunk the white, giving Lindt two shots. She sunk two balls, missed on her third, and as she moved around the table to rejoin her teammates, she spat at Taylor, ‘Play a bit do you, Nanna?’
Abe stiffened. Brix couldn’t have heard, probably because his eyes were on the bar checking Jaydah.
Taylor said easily, ‘I’ve done my time around a pool table.’
When it was her turn again, she stepped up to the table, potted her first two shots and nominated the far corner pocket for the black. She sank it first go, giving Taylor and Brix the win. Hugs all round between the Honeychurch–Woods threesome, and three opponents scratching their heads, hunting through their pockets for change.
Behind Taylor, Lindt berated her partner for his miss, arms flapping and chopping fast as an Italian butcher.
‘You partner Taylor this game,’ Brix said to Abe. ‘I’m gonna go check on JT.’
Brix wandered towards the bar and Abe put his arm around Taylor, liking how she felt. Her shoulder nestled into the groove where his ribs joined his upper arm. The brim of her hat bumped his neck. He tugged her in tight and then wrapped his left arm around her as well to give her a squeeze.
‘Hey,’ she protested, pushing at his forearm. ‘I’m not a teddy bear.’
‘You’re a shyster,’ he said.
‘You’re just lucky I was playing on your team, not against you.’
He had to give her that.
Lindt crossed towards them with a two dollar coin between her fingers, making the coin wink in the lights as she tilted it back and forth at them. ‘Go again, old timers?’
‘Hey, come off it,’ Abe said, his arm still around Taylor’s shoulders. ‘I’m not that much older than you.’
Lindt nodded at Taylor. ‘Yeah. But she is.’
Taylor rocked gently back into Abe’s chest, letting him feel a whole lot of soft curves in sweet places. He wasn’t sure if she did it deliberately until he saw the gleam in Lindt’s eyes.
‘I guess you’re not used to being the second best lady pool player in the pub?’ Taylor said sweetly.
The younger girl’s lip curled and she turned away, putting her money in the slot, setting up the table. Lindt broke, and Abe picked up the cue and chalked the tip, whispering to Taylor, ‘Bravo, Doc.’
Then the song changed.
The pool table, Lindt, Taylor, the Club: everything shrank as if Abe was looking at it through the large end of a long funnel. The white noise dimmed, and the song burst loud through it, and Abe was in a different bar, with a different girl.
He’d had an eye on her for a while, the brunette with the sad eyes holding up the far corner of the bar. She wasn’t with anyone, and she didn’t look like she was waiting. He didn’t see her check her watch or her phone for the time, not once. She asked for a martini, ate the olive first after stirring it through the drink like a kid might stir a coke with a straw.
She’d come in late. The kitchen wasn’t taking more orders. He’d let the front of house staff go home.
She wore a red leather jacket over a blue shirt with a lazy floral print, and dark blue jeans. The jacket had zips on the cuff and she played with those, pulling up, down, between sips.
He asked her why she looked sad, and she’d startled on the chair like she couldn’t believe he’d spoken to her. Like, maybe, no one ever spoke to her.
He couldn’t believe that. The girl was gorgeous. Hair all long and tousled around her shoulders, like she’d just got out of bed.
‘It’s the song.’
‘What about the song?’ Abe couldn’t really claim he’d ever listened to it, though the tune was on the radio all the time. Something about a church. Seemed like all the lyrics were to do with the church. Bible bashing song if he’d ever heard one.
‘It’s a sad song,’ she’d said, raising eyes the same rich brown as the bar he’d been cleaning three minutes earlier. ‘It wouldn’t be right to listen to this song and be happy.’
He picked up her empty martini glass. ‘Let me make you something that will cheer you up. On the house.’
He paid the music more attention as he mixed the drink but he had a hard time working out the lyrics. The tune had a haunting side to it for sure, kinda like the song hurt the bloke’s throat just in the singing.
‘Here.’ He pushed the drink across the bar and watched her hands as she took it. Fine, long fingers, nail polish the same red as her jacket, and he held his breath like a teenager, waiting to see what she thought of it, wanting her to like it.
She smiled politely. ‘That’s nice. What’s it called so I can ask for it again?’
‘Dirty Pirate.’
‘Really?’ This time, she smiled like she meant it, flashing even white teeth as well as dimples. ‘Thank you. It’s very nice.’ Then she glanced around the bar and asked him, ‘Do you get off work soon? Do you want to join me?’
‘I can get off anytime I like. This is my bar. I own the place. I’m Abe.’
‘Good for you. How cool to own a bar.’ She put the drink down. ‘Nice to meet you, Abe. I’m Amanda.’
And when she’d held out her hand, he’d made a vow to himself that he’d do everything he could to wipe that sadness from her eyes so he could see her smile again.
‘Your shot, Abe,’ Taylor said, cue dipped in the hand she held towards him.
Can’t have been the first time she’d said it.
‘Sorry,’ he muttered, trying to put the weight of music, words and especially the goddamn chorus out of his head.
He’d take ‘Summer Loving’ and Grease, Olivia in those black tight pants, over this God-awful song any day of the week.
This song took him into a dark cave and left him there, buried up to his neck in memories, shovel after shovel of sand shutting light out of his space, leaving him bleak, cold, miserable and empty.
He lined up his shot and thought he’d potted it, but Lindt told him gleefully he’d sunk one of their balls instead.
Even when the song finished, Abe’s head was right back where the singer started, notes dark and brooding: mournful, hurting, aching.
Taylor had to remind him when it was his shot. Her eyes assessed him, not with the gaze of the woman, but with the eyes of the doctor.
Even Taylor couldn’t save their arses and they lost. Lindt just about cartwheeled around the table after the win and Abe envied her the gladness. He could go some gladness.
‘Drinks all round,’ Lindt said to her mates. ‘Then you want another game so we can show youse it wasn’t a fluke?’
She dug around in her pockets for coin. The two men with her did the same.
‘Another game, Abe? Or have you had enough?’ Taylor asked him quietly.
He made an effort to come back to her. He really did. But it felt like his neck was one of those super-long coils—one of those springs he’d played with as a kid—and his head was in the next room—hell, it was in the next damn town—and it would take all the energy in the world to wind it back to its proper place, where it should be, above his shoulders.
It started small: a needlepoint of acid burn in the pit of his stomach. But it grew, cells multiplying like plague, spreading, corrupting the cells all round it, till there was a writhing tongue licking inside him, wanting to get out. He had to get out. Find some clear air.
Abe lurched from his seat and Lindt’s sloppy smile fled her face. The blonde girl shuffled back and the startled movement cut through the haze in his head.
She thinks I might hit her.
The thought made him feel sick.
‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, rubbing his forehead.
‘Abe?’ Taylor’s voice. Very far away.
‘Here,’ Taylor reached around him to thrust a twenty dollar note at the girl. ‘Don’t worry about paying it back. Thanks for the pool. We’re not gonna play anymore.’
‘No kidding,’ Lindt said heavily, not taking her eyes off him as she stuffed Taylor’s money in her pocket and retreated to her friends.
Everyone was watching him.
Watching him like he was going nuts, and the pressure in his head made him want to howl.
He put his hand to the small of Taylor’s back and propelled her forward. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
* * *
It was her fault things had gone so far and now Taylor wasn’t sure what to do.
Abe’s fingers pressed hard in the spot beneath her left shoulder blade, pretty much frog-marching her out of the club. She’d left her wine untouched, not that she cared about that. She counted herself lucky Abe had given her two seconds to grab her handbag.
He pushed through the glass club doors like they were made of paper, and banked hard right, away from the carpark and cars. Away from the lights and the throb of music, and people who thought they could sing ‘Fortunate Son’, but couldn’t.
She should have seen it coming, but she’d been enjoying the pool game and she’d liked the attention she got by being good—everyone had been happy to see her move around the table, potting every shot she lined up. Showing off.