by Davina Stone
He scanned the group of girls coming towards him, a sea of laughing faces, then he spotted Avery a good head taller than the purple ponytail bobbing along next to her. He guessed that had to be Zammy.
Avery’s face was relaxed. He was good at reading her features; she looked happy, if a little too eager to please, like she was hanging off the other girl’s every word.
When she spotted him, her smile broadened into a grin, and she waved.
As they got closer, he realised where Avery had got the weird kohl habit happening with her eyes. Zammy’s were rimmed completely in black. She was wearing purple lipstick. Did they allow them to do that at school nowadays or had she put it on in the bathroom afterwards?
Then he caught himself. He sounded like a wrinkly old prune—another of the arsenal of insults Avery sometimes hurled at him.
He made sure he slouched against the wall, dug his hands deep in his pockets and tried for a cool grin in return.
“Hi trouble,” he said
“Yo, bro.” Avery lifted her hand in the air, palm facing him, which he realised he was meant to slap. He took his hand out of his pocket and held it up to her. A boy following her swivelled and looked at them as he passed. Suddenly Avery wrapped him in a bear hug. Why did he think this was for show? Not that she wouldn’t hug him, but this was a “hey look at me” kind of hug.
Zammy observed them with a sulky turn to her lips, and something inside him flipped like a fish on a line. Like this girl was going to be trouble for his little sister in a way he couldn’t quite put words to but knew in some deep recess of his being.
Avery tossed the hair off her forehead. “Zammy, this is my big bro, Carter.”
“Yeah,” said Zammy. She blew a bubble of gum, grape-coloured like her ponytail. It snapped and she reeled it back with her tongue and kept chewing, still watching him out of impassive eyes.
Carts shifted his feet. Christ, how could a sixteen-year-old be this intimidating?
“What you doing here?” Avery cocked her head at him.
“I thought I’d pick you up from school since I’m coming to dinner.”
“It’s not Wednesday.”
“I know. But Dad’s out tomorrow at some work function, so I told Mum I’d come Tuesday.”
“Zammy and I are going to the mall. To choose make-up for her party.”
“No worries. I can drop you and wait.”
“You’ve got a car?” Zammy’s eyes sparked sudden interest.
“Yep, sure do.” Carts was proud of his immaculate Mazda 6. He washed and vacuumed it most weekends, and it had just been polished. Another job he’d done on Sunday to get his head away from ejaculatory issues and Judith.
“Cool,” Zammy drawled. “It’ll give us more shopping time if we don’t have to walk. Can you give Boner a ride too?”
Carts blinked. “Who?”
“Boner.” Zammy smirked between chews. “His surname’s Bone. But he got the name for other reasons.” Her eyes challenged him. As if he was going to take the bait on that one.
Finally, a big youth with an angry looking rash of spots along his jaw joined them, and then another smaller one with close-set eyes who muttered that his name was Lewis. They all muscled into the back of his car, except Avery, who got in the front seat and immediately preened herself in the passenger mirror.
Carts supposed things could be worse.
He could be called Boner.
Sometime later he was sitting in Blue Heaven café waiting… and waiting. Ghastly tuneless elevator music piped out of an invisible speaker above his head. An elderly couple sat drinking coffee out of paper cups and staring into space with stolid-looking pastries in front of them. Babies and children screamed and were hushed by exhausted-looking mothers. A machine whizzed and creamy milkshakes were poured and handed to a seething mass of uniformed kids.
It seemed like the whole of St Catherine’s College congregated here after school.
Carts, sipping on a cappuccino, surveyed the group of teenagers moving as one. It was like they had an identity that was more than their individual selves, a group consciousness that made them somehow more powerful, like an army of locusts that descended on Summerside Mall every afternoon around three-thirty, stomping and munching everything in their wake.
Then he thought of Judith’s words about Avery, that maybe her flute wasn’t enough right now. He thought about his own longing to be accepted when he was much the same age as Avery. How the bullying had scarred him, not visibly, but at some deep level. Despite Aaron’s friendship, he’d never quite recovered, had he? Sure, he’d learnt to armour himself, but there were places where the soft parts of his soul still hadn’t healed. It showed in his failed relationships with women; in how he allowed Ron to keep abusing him at work.
It showed in his lack of adventurous spirit, his unwillingness to try new things.
Like learning to sail. It wasn’t too late, Judith had said. Could he step out from his safe little cave of collecting eighties LPs, and his evenings at the Shamrock? Except… he had—with taking up yoga, hadn’t he? He was proud of that. Damn proud, in fact.
He breathed in, muttered a couple of OMs under his breath, and wondered whether it would look too keen to message Judith. It was Tuesday, after all.
He picked up his phone and thumbed in, I’m with my little sis at the mall. She’s buying make-up with her friend. Talking it through with you helped.
His fingers hovered over the send icon.
Then, letter by letter, he deleted it from his cracked screen. He couldn’t risk any more pain right now.
When he glanced up his eyes snagged on Avery over near the drinks counter. She was leaning against a post with her skirt hitched up—he could tell, because her jumper had ridden up and you could see the bunched-up waist band. Carts’ eyes narrowed at her long skinny legs with the socks wrinkled down around her clunky Doc Martens… he guessed that was the look girls went for these days.
But there was another look happening that he really didn’t like. It was the one the boy with Avery was giving her. And the fact that he wasn’t a boy as such. He had slicked-back blonde hair and a foxy face. What worried Carts more was, he wasn’t wearing school uniform. Instead he was dressed in oil-stained jeans and a denim jacket. He was the type of guy a girl of sixteen might think was kind of cool, but by Carts’ summation, he was at least eighteen or nineteen.
Carts frowned as Avery’s hand came out and gave the guy’s arm a playful punch. He leered—yes, that was definitely a leer—then leaned forward and whispered something in Avery’s ear. She wiggled her shoulder into him with a giggle then pulled back, batting her eyelashes.
Foxy face gave her another lascivious grin, and Avery tossed her head and sashayed back to Zammy in the milkshake queue. Even from here Carts could tell she was blushing.
The interlude made unease jackknife in his gut.
That guy was no school kid.
And frankly, his intentions did not look honourable.
Not. At. All.
When he finally rounded up his band of four and got them back to the car, Carts couldn’t stop the troubling thoughts about foxy face in the denim jacket. By the time he’d dropped off the rest of the gaggle at their respective homes around the suburb, it burst out of his mouth. “Who was that bloke?”
“What bloke?”
“That one you were talking to in the denim jacket.”
“I don’t talk to blokes. A bloke is a weirdo who hangs around small children.”
“Exactly my point. Who was he? He looked too old to be at school with you.”
He shot her a glance. Avery’s eyes rolled. “You’re giving me Mum vibes.”
“I’m just looking out for you, that’s all. I didn’t like the look of him.”
“FreakinhellwhatisYOURproblem?”
How did Avery manage to create single words out of what was normally a sentence? It must be something to do with her flute playing, because she didn’t even need to draw breath.
“Who is he?”
“If you must know, he’s Zammy’s brother’s best mate. His name’s Duke.”
“What’s he do for a living?”
“None of your business.”
“Tell me.”
“He works for a car mechanic, as an apprentice. And for the record, he’s really, really nice.”
Carts grunted. “He better not be at Zammy’s party.”
“Or WHAT?”
“Or I’ll have to rethink whether getting Mum to agree to let you go was the right decision.”
Avery’s squealed protest pierced his ear. “AreyouforREAL! A-hole.”
He winced. “Aves, cut it out. And the rule is I pick you up at 10 pm.”
“Noooo! Everyone will think I’m pathetic if I leave at 10.”
He prevaricated. “10.30, no later.”
“11.”
“10.45.”
“10.55.”
It was time he laid down the rules. “Avery. I’m this close to reneging on the whole deal, and you won’t go at all. It’s now gone back to 10 pm. No arguing.”
She turned the full force of her glare on him. Carts kept his eyes resolutely on the road. He was congratulating himself on winning this one, feeling quite proud of his assertiveness as he drew up at the traffic lights, even thinking he’d make a bloody brilliant parent, when he made the mistake of glancing at her.
Her little nose screwed up.
Then she flipped him the bird.
Chapter 9
The phone hadn’t stopped all morning.
“Can I offset the cost of my running shoes because I jog to work?”
“What about deducting my takeaway coffees?”
“Can I negatively gear my new campervan? That counts as an investment property, right?”
Then there were the complaints about Ron he had to field.
“Ron hasn’t done my last two BAS statements.”
“The tax office said Ron hasn’t sent through the A240ZB4 form yet.”
“Ron NEVER returns my calls…” and on and on.
The only remedy was to leave his desk and make himself another coffee. He wasn’t even over the hump of the week. Instead of getting closer, Friday night yoga and seeing Judith seemed to be moving further and further away.
He shouldn’t think about the Judith situation. It made him feel like crap.
Instead, he thought about the Avery situation. Which also made him feel like crap, but marginally less so.
Last night’s family dinner had not improved on the mall incident.
It had started when Mum remarked on Avery’s nails, which were painted in different shades of metallic grey, and she’d turned to Dad and said, “Will you look at her nails, Adrian? They look like she’s hit them with a hammer.” Silence from Dad. “Can you add your weight to this? Back me up, for once.”
Dad glanced over at Avery’s hands, then returned to neatly piling mashed potato on his fork. “You’re worrying your mother, Avery.”
Avery gave them both the stink eye and muttered, “You can divorce your parents, you know.”
Carts knew exactly why Avery had grey fingernails. To be honest, he quite liked the one on her thumb, it had a translucent sheen to it. It was meant to match her dress for Saturday. The dress Mum knew nothing about. He sighed and shoved a piece of broccoli into his mouth. Mum looked from his dad to him, clearly exasperated by the lack of male support.
“Okay, what’s your opinion, Carter? Surely you don’t think it looks nice, do you?”
“I don’t mind the one on Ave’s thumb so much,” he muttered.
Mum glared. Probably she was pissed off because Avery hadn’t done her flute practice tonight. If things escalated from here, there would be a stand-off that would do a spaghetti western proud. “C’mon, it’s not the end of the world, is it?” he said.
Mum snorted and stabbed at her steak. “If you have to paint your nails, Avery, why can’t you stick to a nice normal colour. Like pale pink.”
Avery rolled her eyes and slid her elbow along the table, chin cupped on her hand. “What’s the point of that?”
“Don’t talk back. And sit up straight, you’ll get indigestion.”
Avery’s face looked like a squeezed lemon and Carts flicked back his hair and gave her a warning glare. Avery bit her lower lip and he could see the effort she was making to keep from back-chatting.
To avert disaster, he turned to Dad. “You haven’t said how your interview went?”
“Oh, you know, so, so.” Dad’s brows wrinkled and the wrinkle carried into the smoothness of his bald head. Dad’s hair used to be thick and dark like Carts’. Ten years ago, Dad’s parents had died in quick succession, and he’d been made redundant from a lecturing position, and his hair all fell out in great big clumps. Now he reminded Carts of a cone-head cartoon, his features disproportionately low in his long head. Alopecia, the doctors had said. He’d even lost his eyebrows, which he’d finally had tattooed on at Mum’s insistence.
At least Carts wasn’t going to inherit Dad’s baldness. All the rest of the Wells men had good thick heads of hair, as his mum would wistfully remark from time to time.
“With it being a new super department, I’m probably not quite dynamic enough.” Dad’s face turned grim. “I don’t fancy my chances against Rodney Fell in Physics, to be honest.”
Mum stood up and piled up the plates, and Carts jumped up to help her. “I can always take on more teaching.”
“That won’t pay the bills, Rosemary,” Dad said sadly. “Or for Avery’s year in Paris.”
“Well, that’s not an issue, is it?” Mum said crisply. “At this rate she won’t be going anywhere.”
A black cloud hovered over Avery’s head, but she thankfully kept schtumm and the rest of the evening passed without further mishap.
Taking a slug of strong coffee, Carts realised his stomach was churning with the worry of it all. Or was that the caffeine? It occurred to him that he needed to do something about his stress levels.
Inspiration hit. A mid-week yoga session would be just the ticket.
Usually, he went on Fridays and also attended a class over the weekend. But with taking Judith to dinner his pattern had been messed up.
Back at his desk, he pulled up the yoga timetable on Google.
His eyes widened. Special session Wednesday 6.30–8 pm.
Introduction to Tantra with Fern Bliss.
Tantra? Wasn’t that how Sting used to sustain sex for hours?
This could be the answer to his prayers.
Eagerly, he read through the description.
By opening to both our sensual and spiritual being through breathing and awareness of the five senses, we can fulfil our own and our partner’s needs more fully. Come and learn the elements of Tantra and how to work with the Chakras to fulfil your sensual and sexual potential.
With Fern Bliss.
He loved Fern’s classes. She had a voice that inspired trust and a deep state of subliminal relaxation.
He floated out of her Friday sessions and afterwards, because he was relaxed, he’d been so much better at chatting with Judith than when they were facing each other over a fancy-schmantzy dinner. And the timing was perfect. He’d be able to go home, change and get there no problem, providing he worked his ring off for the rest of the day.
When he arrived at yoga, a few people were gathered on their mats. He scanned the room, because for a moment he worried that Judith might be here too. But she probably didn’t need Tantra, did she? Judith clearly knew what she was doing in that department. Christ, that lucky ex of hers—what was wrong with him? Judith had not said much about the split; he guessed they’d grown apart. He knew this guy’s loss was his gain, but how the fuck could you ever get tired of kissing Judith?
He was rolling out his mat when Fern glided towards him. “Namaste, Carter,” she said with a beatific smile, palms joined in a prayer gesture. “How lovely to see you here.”
Carts bowed hi
s head and placed his palms together.
“Namaste Fern. Do I need anything specific for the session?”
“Just the usual props and an open attitude.” She studied him. “I think you’ll get a lot out of this session, Carter.” Her clear blue eyes bathed him in empathy. Fern might be younger than him in years, but she was an old soul. She saw through the masks you hid behind, to the very core of your being. Hopefully, she didn’t see absolutely everything, he thought as he sat down and crossed his legs in his somewhat bastardised version of the lotus position.
Finally, the candles lit, the scent of incense wafting through the room, Fern sank down on her mat at the front of the room. Her gaze scanned the assembled participants. “Let’s OM to get started, shall we?”
Carts closed his eyes, put his palms together and lengthened his spine, imagining a thousand petalled lotus flower rising from the crown of his head.
The resonance of three chanted OMs filled the room.
He let the sound move through him, all his awareness focused on being present in this moment. Slowly he opened his eyes and took in his fellow yogis, all eager and ready to learn.
He felt centred. Peaceful.
“Welcome everyone to tonight’s special session.” Fern’s voice resonated through the room. “Are you ready to explore the magic of Tantra?”
Judith was clearing up the occupational therapy department before leaving work when her phone rang. She put a patient’s damp papier-mâché pig carefully to one side before locating her phone in her pocket.
“Hi, babe.” Pippa’s voice bounced down the line. “How’s things?”
“Things are…” she forced enthusiasm into her voice, “okay.”