“Are you okay?” I said.
He didn’t answer. He just stared out the window of the taxi as we drove to the house. I had a weird urge to grab his hand. It would’ve comforted me but if I did that, he’d only brush me away or maybe even freak out. And since when had I become a hand-holding type of person? Things like that usually bugged me. O’Malley would be right to freak out.
The taxi took us up the driveway. I held my breath. I’d seen the remnants of the house the night before but not up close. O’Malley didn’t react. There wasn’t even a twitch of a muscle or a flicker of his eyes, as though he was so shut off that the burnt out shell of the house didn’t register with him.
The house had been roped off and there were several officials there to make sure no one could get in. I bet normal people had to wade through a heap of red tape to get all the reports done but it looked like the officials were right on top of things for O’Malley. Piles of ash still smouldered with traces of smoke curling up into the air but Hannah had been right. My room and the kitchen hadn’t been completely burnt. It was the front of the house that had been destroyed.
A man holding a clipboard ran over to us but O’Malley waved him away.
I followed O’Malley to the recording studio at the back. He opened the door and cautiously went in as though he were afraid of what he would find. I followed him. That small room at the front wouldn’t hold anything. It was tiny and filled with crap. He’d have to get into that other room but it was padlocked and he sure as hell hadn’t had a key on him when he’d left the house.
I waited for him to give up.
Instead, he fumbled behind a box leaning against the wall and got a key. It’d been hidden there all along. He opened the padlock but stood back, waiting for something.
His shoulders slumped, as though the effort of opening the lock had been too much for him. Not physically but like he’d crossed a line.
We couldn’t stand in this musty room staring at a lock all day though. I’d have to go in first.
I took a big breath and removed the padlock then pushed the door open. I checked that O’Malley was okay. He looked pale and tried to give me a reassuring grin, which ended up being the most unreassuring thing possible.
I wasn’t sure if he was even more scared of spiders than I was or if it was something more. He definitely looked like he expected to see a ghost.
I walked into a big, open space. The walls and ceiling were covered with that foam soundproofing stuff. The floor had gross, nylon carpet and there was a huge window but not to the outside world. It looked into another room. I guess that was the booth where all the techie stuff happened. There was no door going into it. That must be in the front room but I hadn’t noticed it.
He was going to live there?
There was no bathroom and no… anything.
O’Malley stepped into the room, looking around at the space. There was definitely no ghosts but he peered around as though looking for something.
“I don’t think this place is liveable,” I said. “There’s nothing here.”
“So long as the water supply is working, we’ll be fine. There’s a toilet attached to the sound booth.”
Again with the “we”. But I couldn’t live there with him.
Even seeing the place hadn’t dissuaded him from his plan. I might have to spend the night there with him before he agreed that it was for the best to move out. Though where we’d sleep was another issue. Maybe my room was still okay, as it’d been furthest from the fire, and I could sleep in there.
We worked together to move the boxes in the front room, stacking them up against the back wall as best we could to get them out of our way and have access to the sound booth. Even though some of the boxes were open and the fliers visible, O’Malley didn’t mention a word about them. I didn’t know if he assumed that I knew about the band or if he didn’t care. I had no inclination to question him about his past anyway.
While we were clearing the room, one of the inspectors called out to us.
“It’s a mess alright,” the man said. “You’ll have to get it all cleared back to nothing and start again.”
“And my room?” I asked.
The man scratched his head. “The bedroom? Well, I’ll let you in to get anything you need but I can’t let you sleep there.”
“Huh? You’re kidding? But I can’t…”
“It’s up to you, love. If it were me, I’d be getting out of here and finding a new —” The man stopped and stared at O’Malley for a moment.
“Do I know you from somewhere? You look really familiar?”
O’Malley walked away without answering, his fists in a ball.
“Don’t mind him,” I said and followed the man into the house.
My room looked the same as it had when I left but Hannah had been right; the putrid smell of smoke had got into my clothes. It had gotten into everything.
“You’ll never wash that out. No matter how many times you try,” the man said. “I’d just chuck them if I were you.”
The things that weren’t ruined by the fire had become water-logged. I went through the drawers that were still intact. Even smoke-damaged, I needed some underwear.
The rest of the house was gone. Completely gone. If it was hard on me with my few belongings destroyed, it must’ve been hell on O’Malley. I’d want to get well away and start afresh but, if he was determined to stick around, I guess I could stick around for a bit.
I fought against feeling sad for O’Malley. I wanted to stay angry at him. I wanted him to know that it was all his fault but it seemed too cruel in the face of all the damage. It’d been a high price to pay for a stupid mistake.
“We’ll move the bed into the studio for you if you want,” the man said. “It’s not going to be much good though, I reckon.”
I nodded. The blankets were just gross. Even the mattress had a smell to it.
“Move the frame. Leave everything else. They can take it when they come to clean up.” I wouldn’t be able to sleep with the constant smell of the fire seeping into my dreams.
O’Malley stood around, pretty much in the way, while the men moved anything salvageable into the studio. Which wasn’t much. The smoke damage had been intense. When they’d gone, I sat on the floor.
O’Malley paced the room.
“We have nothing. Literally nothing,” I said to him.
He kept pacing as though he hadn’t heard me then turned abruptly. He had a new determination about him.
“We can buy stuff. Online. They’ll deliver it.”
Then it hit me.
“No Wi-Fi! No food, no clothes, no furniture but, most importantly, no Wi-Fi. I can use my phone as a hot spot for a while but that’s going to be a pain. It’s as slow as heck. It’d take us five days to even put an order in.”
He squatted on the floor beside me. “Can’t you go and buy stuff? I’ll give you the money.”
Because I loved shopping so much? No thanks. It was amazing the change in the man when he wanted something though. That “sunshine through the clouds” smile was back, glowing up his face.
“You’re the one who wants to live here. You go shopping. I’ll go to a hotel.”
“Call Hannah. She can organise something.”
“She looked pretty busy when she left the house.” I tried calling her with no luck. “She’s in meetings all day.
“We’ve got everything we need here. It’ll be fine,” he’d said.
“Yeah, if you don’t want to eat or change your clothes.”
“We can do without it for one day. We can order pizza.”
“And where are you going to sleep? On this vile carpet. You’ll wake up with carpet burns over your entire body. If it’s a problem with money, I have a bit put by,” I said.
“Money is the least of my problems. I have stuff to do here. Important stuff.”
“Yeah, well I’m not exactly sure what this ‘stuff’ is? Can you elaborate? Since we have nothing at all here except some boxes of junk,
I can’t really see that your ‘stuff’ is a pressing issue. This is like living in a dystopian post-apocalyptic world and I’m not really into that.”
O’Malley shrugged.
“You can shrug but you’ll soon get hungry. You can’t live on moping alone.”
His eyes flashed. I wasn’t sure if it was a flash of anger or amusement but it sure bet the hell out of that look of defeat he’d had earlier.
He tried the puppy dog eyes on me again. Damn the man. He really needed someone to look after him but, to be honest, I was so not the looking after type. It was not going to work but for some stupid reason, I felt obligated to stay with him. I mean, we’d barely spoken to each other and when we did speak, it was angry yelling. But, after the fire, it felt like there was a bond between us.
“If you want me to stay, you go shopping. And I’m not making any promises about how long I’ll stick around.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
O’Malley sure didn’t like shopping. He kept glancing around as though expecting something to attack, and jangling the keys in his pocket incessantly. He kept adjusting his clothes too but I’m not sure if that was due to anxiety or just to them not fitting him properly.
“Let’s just get what we want and get out of here. This place is awful.”
It was weird for me to be the functional one who had all the shit going on. Compared to O’Malley though, I was holding it together fine. I had a list of what we needed and a plan of attack.
“Why do they have the lights so bright and the music so loud? It’s like a torture chamber.”
“Stop your complaining. It’s only going to make things take longer. First, we need beds. Well, you need a bed. I might need a new mattress and bedding.”
Hell, that made me sticking around seem like a permanent thing. I guess any stuff he got could be used in the house once it was rebuilt though.
We found the bed section. O’Malley walked up to the first bed he saw.
“This one, this one is fine. Just buy it and we’ll get out of here.”
I looked at the bed he’d picked.
“It’s a kid’s bed.”
“So?”
“So, do you really want to sleep in a Thomas the Tank Engine bed? The beds for grown-ups are down the back.”
He followed me to the adult beds.
“Lay on it,” I said.
“Huh?”
He actually waggled his eyebrows at me in a suggestive way. Whoa, that was kind of amusing of him but it also made me blush. I picked up a pillow from a stack, checking it out so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
“That’s what you’re supposed to do. To make sure it suits your back and stuff like that. You don’t want an uncomfortable bed.”
“Any bed in this shop is going to be uncomfortable. Being in this shop is uncomfortable.”
“Fine, but don’t complain to me about having a bad back. At your age, you have to worry about stuff like that.”
“At my age?”
Before I could make some snappy comeback, a sales assistant approached us, smoothing down his hair, with a barrel-chested pompous walk. He wore a bowtie. Not even ironically. It was a very spiffy bowtie. O’Malley and I exchanged a look.
“This is one of our most popular beds,” he said. “It’s got a superior spring system that is perfect for newlyweds.”
And then he winked.
Oh my god. Really.
The blush went from my feet to my hair tips. The man thought O’Malley and I did that? He’d probably seen O’Malley’s obscenely waggling eyebrows.
“Of course, the model with the solid bedposts is better if you are into –” he winked again, “— a little of the ‘fifty shades of grey’.”
“Stop talking. Stop talking now.”
I thrust my list at the man. I could not have him saying those things at me. I could never think of O’Malley like that. O’Malley. The grumpy, anti-social hermit. Sure, he was ripped and ruggedly handsome and had those eyelashes but – no way. No way at all.
O’Malley shot me a look.
I knew that look. I owned that look. It was the look of “get me out of here”.
“Hey, why don’t you just pick out the stuff we need. We trust you.” I told the salesman. “But we are NOT newlyweds.”
The little sales guy’s eyes lit up like Christmas lights, as if his dreams had all come true. He obviously thought it would mean a huge great commission payment for him.
“We just want the mid-range stuff. Nothing too fancy,” I added.
O’Malley and I sat down on a couple of recliners, waiting for the guy to come back.
“What was all that about?”
I didn’t want to explain to O’Malley that the guy thought we planned to share the bed. He could work that out by himself.
“We really should buy these recliners,” O’Malley said. “They are deceptively comfortable. This one has a massage function.”
“Have you seen the price of them? You might have money to spare but I think we should just get the necessities.”
Someone had to be sensible about things, although he was right. They were pretty darn comfy.
O’Malley got bored, so we wandered over to look at homewares. He picked up a red bowl.
“I want this. You can have the yellow.”
“Screw you, I want red.”
“Red is my colour. If you don’t want yellow, you can have green.”
“Then our bowls will look too Christmassy. I’ll just get a red one too.” I picked up the matching red bowl.
“No.” He snatched the bowl out of my hand. “If we have the same, we won’t be able to tell them apart. Just have the yellow. Yellow’s a great colour.”
“Yellow sucks. I should have red because my name’s Ruby. You can have yellow because it’s a Tex colour.” Then I realised I wouldn’t be sticking around for too long and it was really stupid to be having an argument over bowl colours. It wasn’t like he had red bowls in his old house but who knew, maybe he’d had a red bowl when he was a kid and it was comforting to him.
“Okay, I’ll have the yellow one, but I’m having the red plate and you can have the yellow.”
He actually pouted at that.
“That will get confusing. We can’t just swap colours. We need a system.”
“I guess. We should get the blue and green too in case we have guests.”
Then we both looked at each other and laughed because, what guests?
“You know, Ruby, you are really pretty when you smile.”
Whoa, that caused a whole whirl of confusion in me. For starters, he thought I was pretty. But did that mean I looked like a total pig-dog when I didn’t smile? Maybe it wasn’t that much of a compliment. Maybe it was actually an insult. And, anyway, what right did he have to even bring my looks into the discussion? I was his employee and we had that whole distance thing working for us.
But, he thought I was pretty.
“There you are. I’ve been scouring the store for you.” The salesman looked at us with our multi-coloured crockery. “Bring that over to the register and we’ll get everything sorted together.
We had a stack of stuff. Enough to live temporarily, anyway. Even though he’d stuck to the list and not gone overboard, I nearly fainted when I saw the price at the end. That was more than I earned in a year.
I checked through it all to make sure he’d gotten us the portable Wi-Fi device. That was the main thing I needed.
“I don’t have the big ticket items here but they’ll be delivered with everything else. I picked out some bed linen for you since you didn’t have anything specified.”
“How are we paying for this?” I asked O’Malley. “Do you have any cards? Any cash?”
O’Malley looked at me blankly. Really the guy had no concept of the real world. He’d left the house with nothing but that guitar. Surely his wallet would’ve been more practical. It’s not like he’d have had a wallet in his back pocket on account of he’d had no pants on.
<
br /> “You have money, don’t you?”
“Not that kind of money,” I hissed. I didn’t want the shop assistant to know we would have problems paying.
“We could call Hannah. She’ll sort things out.”
Then I remembered he’d given me the credit card to buy groceries. Lucky. I got it out of my wallet and handed it over. The guy said the stuff couldn’t be delivered until Thursday so O’Malley offered him a shitload more money and suddenly the delivery schedule cleared up. It freaked me out that he thought he could just hand over money and get what he wanted. It seemed wrong, like cheating the system and jumping the queue. But then, we really did need that stuff as soon as possible.
“Okay, there’s a clothes shop down the street. We need to go there next.”
I actually didn’t care that much for myself but O’Malley definitely needed clothes. He could buy himself some pyjamas too if we were going to sleep in the same room.
The clothes shop was one of those hipster places where everything is made to look like it’s second-hand. I browsed the shelves and found some extremely expensive underwear. I would rather pay top dollar then go to more shops. At least it was better than the smoky pair I was wearing.
O’Malley trailed behind me, like a lost puppy. I really didn’t want him watching me sort through the undies for my size.
“Can’t you go and look at some stuff for yourself? You need clothes.”
He didn’t say anything but looked forlorn. Surely he’d bought clothes for himself before in this life. I wondered about the Julie of his tattoo. Maybe she had done his clothes shopping for him.
I scooped up a couple of pairs of the My Little Pony knickers and scrunched them up under the t-shirt I had in my hands so they were more discreet. Then I headed over to menswear. When it came to buying clothes, I was probably more clueless than O’Malley. I had no idea what made a pair of jeans worth $400 compared to a $40 pair I could get elsewhere.
“Can I help you?” A bored goth chick popped up beside us. She gave O’Malley the once over then straightened up her posture, pushing her boobs forward. “Well, hi.”
“He needs clothes. Some jeans and a couple of t-shirts. Jocks and socks. Shoes.”
Rock You (Fallen Star Book 1) Page 6