Enjoy Your Stay

by Carmen Jenner

  I know him well enough to know this isn’t just about proving a point; this is about Jackson winning, but even I know he doesn’t really want the thing he thinks he does. He wants me. Not me and my baby. He wants Holly Harris the prick-tease, he wants it hard and fast, and without strings, against the kitchen counter, and he’s only in this room right now because he’s afraid of losing out to someone else. His ego couldn’t handle it.

  He told me he loved me, but if that were the case, he’d want what’s best for me and my baby—and that’s not him.

  “Jack, please, just get out. Please?” I beg, and break down into uncontrollable sobs. I don’t even care that it’s loud enough to draw the attention of the rest of the house. All I can do is clutch the pillow into my chest and cry.

  “Shit, Hols, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry, baby,” he whispers.

  “Just go,” I say, and he leaves as quietly as he entered.

  I PULL into the drive after spending the last hour and a half lugging my fat arse around Lismore looking for maternity clothes and ice cream. There’s a shiny black SUV parked in my spot, and I’m a little pissed, because I have a boot full of groceries, and an aching back, and the only thing I want to do is head inside and put my feet up while Coop strums his guitar and Snickers snuggles into my side. So when Jack comes tearing out of the garage like someone’s chasing him, I’m not a happy camper. We haven’t uttered a single word to one another since the other night in my room. I haven’t been able to even look at him without bursting into tears, or wanting to tear him a new one.

  “You don’t wanna go in there,” he says as he comes over, and pens me in against the door. “In fact, why don’t you and I go for a drive?”

  “What are you talking about? I just got home. I have ice cream, and my feet hurt, and I just wanna loaf around in my jammies and veg out. Whose car is that, and why the hell are they in my spot?” I ask as I move toward the steps.

  “It’s, um …” He begins but just as he’s about to finish the screen door opens and my mum and dad are staring back at me from inside my house.

  “Your parents arrived twenty minutes ago.”

  “Oh, hell no!” I say, and start back for the car. Coop runs down the stairs, and my parents come out on the veranda to gawk at me some more. My mother holds her hand against her face like she’s mortified at my condition and my dad? My dad squeezes her shoulder to comfort her.

  “Hols, just wait. I invited them here to talk—”

  “I’m sorry, you what? Coop, tell me you didn’t.”

  “I told you, man.” Jack folds his arms across his broad chest. “I knew she’d flip.”

  “I don’t even know why you’re here,” Coop says to Jack. I can see by his expression that he’s almost out of patience. “None of this concerns you, so why don’t you just go back to your tool shed and bang some nails into things?”

  “Everything to do with Hols concerns me.” He challenges him. “I told you this was a bad fucking idea from the start.”

  I turn to Jack, and accuse him. “You knew about this?”

  “Yeah, I knew about it, but I didn’t think this dickhead was actually stupid enough to go through with it.”

  “I can’t believe you invited my parents, Cooper.”

  “I ran into your mum at the store yesterday. It just kind of happened. I didn’t mean to, but, baby, I don’t see how this is a bad thing. Our kid should have grandparents in his life.”

  “Not those grandparents, he shouldn’t!” I begin walking towards the house, but then I remember my parents are there, and I kinda hate Coop a little for bringing those people into my home. They don’t deserve to be there, not after what they did to me. I spin around and let him feel the brunt of my anger. “They kicked me out, Coop. They found out I was pregnant, and all alone, and they gave me an option: kill my baby, or get out.”

  Okay, so maybe I forgot to mention that part to him. He looks stricken. In fact, he just took a step back, like I’d actually hit him.

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “Does it look like I’m shitting you?”

  “Hols, I didn’t know. I just thought it was time to mend fences.”

  “Yeah, well some fences should probably stay broken,” I mutter, as I see my mum walk down the steps towards me. She opens her arms, like she expects me to go running into them. I can’t remember the last time my mother hugged me. Even as a kid she was always too busy with dolls, and her stupid sewing luncheons. My mum engulfs me in her arms, and I stiffen as she wraps them around me. I’m planted firmly against her breast, which smells like expensive perfume and too much fabric-softener. It makes me want to gag.

  “We’ve missed you so much, Holly,” she says and I know this has to be for Coop’s benefit, because I saw her in the supermarket just last week and she turned and walked away from me rather than have our meeting become an embarrassing public spectacle. The weird thing was, when he and I dated, they weren’t too thrilled with that idea because “the music industry made next to no money and that’s not a solid foundation for a career”. Guess his fat bank account is a solid enough future for them now, huh?

  “Yeah, I can tell,” I mutter, and then my dad steps up and gives me a hug that’s every bit as awkward.

  “Look at you,” Dad says as he steps back to take me in. He glances down at my belly and then he quickly looks away, like he’s embarrassed to be caught staring.

  “I assume you’ve thought through of all your options?” Mum says. Yeah, she’s all rainbows and kittens.

  “I’m keeping him. There is no other option.”

  “Him?” she asks—and did she just fucking pale? My mother just turned ashen talking about her grandchild.

  “Honey, you know it’s not too late to consider adoption. There are hundreds of couples looking to adopt, and we can even help you get set up with an agency.”

  “She said she’s keeping it,” Jack pipes up from behind me.

  Mum glances over at him like he’s pond scum, or something she got stuck on her shoe. “Holly, you’re a nineteen-year-old girl.”

  “I’m twenty, actually. Had a birthday a month ago.”

  My mother just stares, her mouth gaping for a moment, and then she starts right up with the same crap again. “What are you going to do with a baby, Holly? You’re still a girl yourself.”

  “This is bullshit,” Jack says. “You need to leave.”

  Coop finally snaps out of his mental vacation, and says, “He’s right, you should leave. Holly and I are raising our baby together, and she’ll be taken care of.”

  I just stare at him. “Seriously? I’ll be taken care of? What am I, a fucking doll?”

  “Holly Harris,” my mum reprimands.

  “You know what? Fuck you, Mum. Fuck both of you. It’s time for you and Dad to shove your prejudiced bullshit up your arse, because this kid is mine. I’m not giving him up for anyone, and I can tell you that even if I lose everything, and him and I end up living out of a goddamned cardboard box, I’m still gonna be a better fucking parent than both of you combined. Unlike me, my child is going to know what a hug is, and what love feels like and just how fucking special they are. So, you take your big, fuck-off SUV, and get it the fuck off my property, because I have a tub of ice cream to eat, and then I have to put up some baby crap in the nursery where your grandchild is going to sleep.”

  “Holly,” Coop says sounding just like them.

  “Coop, go home. Jack, bring the ice cream.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I stalk inside, and leave everyone standing there in my wake, including Jack, who of course is laughing his arse off as he waves to my parents and follows me up the steps.

  It’s not until I’m inside and I hear their car drive away that I break down. I’m standing at the fridge, my head stuck in the freezer in an attempt to cool off, when I feel Jack come up behind me and wrap his arms around my waist. I stay stiff in his embrace for a moment and just breathe, willing the tears awa
y, and then he rests his chin on the top of my head and I break down. I let him spin me around and wrap me in his big arms, his flat, hard stomach flush against my round, soft one.

  “You did good, kid,” Jack says and I give a half-hearted laugh through my sobs. Then Coop clears his throat from the doorway, and Jack kisses my hair before pulling away.

  “Can I have a word?” Coop asks.

  “You can have several. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’s gonna tear you a new one.” Jack chuckles, and then turns to me, “I’ll be in my room until you need me.”

  I stare up at him and nod, wiping away tears that my parents definitely don’t deserve. “I meant what I said, Coop. I do not have a thing to say to you. Wait, actually, you know what? I do have something to say: screw you. You brought my parents here without talking to me first. Did you not stop to think there was a reason I wasn’t in contact with them? You think I want to be estranged from my folks while I’m pregnant? I’m terrified about this shit; it would be nice to be able to talk to my mum about it, but seeing as she’s a colossal bitch who gives the Ice Queen in Narnia a run for her money, that’s not going to happen. You brought my parents here, to my safe place, without talking to me, and opened up a whole fucking can of worms that had no right being opened.”

  “I didn’t know, Holly.”

  “Yeah, that’s just it. You didn’t know. Because you’ve never asked.”

  “Would you have told me if I had? Or do you only confide in Jackson these days?”

  “Jackson would never pull a stunt like that.”

  “Well, I’m sorry I’m not more like him. I’m trying, Hols. I’m trying real hard to be okay with this thing you have with him.”

  “Thing?” I ask, and then turn beet-red, because I’m reminded of the thing I had with him the other night in my room while Coop was out in the lounge room watching a movie. “I don’t have a thing with Jack. We’re friends. He’s—”

  “Your friend” —he puts air quotations around the f word— “I know. I also know that up until recently, he was a friend who you liked to fuck, so excuse me if I’m not rock-solid with having the dude around. I’m trying real hard to make us a family, Holly, but you have to let me.”

  “I think I’ve had about all the family I need right now, Coop.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I need a day or two to myself.”

  “To yourself? Or a day or two alone with Jackson?”

  “That is not fair—”

  “No, you know what’s unfair? Getting to be the sucker who tags along behind you when you’re tagging along behind him. You think I don’t see the way you look at him? Think I don’t feel the attraction between you? I used to be that for you; once upon a time, you looked at me the way you look at him.”

  “That’s not true,” I say, but he’s already heading for the door. “Coop.”

  “I’ve got some things I need to do back home, anyway. I’ll hop a flight to Sydney in the morning, and be back in a few days. I’m sorry I interfered with your parents. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “No, you shouldn’t have,” I say, and take my big-arse bowl of ice cream out to the lounge room.

  Shortly after Coop leaves, Jackson comes out of his room. He flops down on the couch beside me and steals my spoon, which he points at the episode of The Bold and the Beautiful I’d pre-recorded and says, “Oh look, he chose Brooke this week.”

  I laugh and snatch my spoon back, licking off the ice cream he hadn’t yet finished. “The woman with the golden snatch wins again.”

  “Yeah, but I reckon he’s doing the doc on the side. They have chemistry they can’t ignore,” he says, but he’s no longer looking at the TV. He’s staring straight at me.

  I turn and face him, and then whisper, “Yeah, I can see that.”

  For a moment our eyes are locked, and neither of us are moving. I don’t think he’s even taken a breath in the last thirty seconds, and then he leans forward. He pauses before his lips can meet mine, gauging my reaction. I close my eyes, and whisper, “Don’t.”

  Jacks shifts away like nothing happened, and then we settle into a comfortable silence watching the drama unfold on TV that’s not too dissimilar from our own.

  I PULL the sheet off Hols’ rocking chair and heft it up over my shoulders, so the longest side lays flat against my back. I carry it out of the shed and up the path to the house. Snickers goes off his nut inside. I glance at the window. Holly’s hanging from the curtain rod in the nursery. She screams, and flails like a fish on a hook, and if it were anyone else I’d be laughing my arse off, but she looks terrified. I drop the rocking chair and bolt inside.

  When I reach the nursery, Holly’s barely hanging by her fingertips. She could always just let go. The drop from the curtain rod to the floor isn’t that far. But her tiny legs can’t reach the ladder that she’s upended, so she’d likely fall and hurt herself, or the baby. I dart over and wrap my arms around her waist.

  “Let go, sweetheart, I got you.”

  She falls into my arms. I manoeuvre us around the ladder, and set her feet on the ground.

  “Oh my God, you’re a life saver.” Holly turns, wrapping her arms around my neck and pushing her belly into my lower abdomen. She glances down between us, and frowns. “Huh. Guess our bodies don’t really fit together anymore.”

  “Come on, Hols, we never let a little thing like a baby belly stop us before,” I joke, but her miserable expression tells me why that’s not a good idea. She steps away and surveys her half-hung baby curtains. “Why didn’t you just ask me to do this for you?”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d want to. You’re not exactly pro demon-seed.”

  I place my hands on her shoulders. I spin her around to face the window, and point to the rocking chair I dumped out on the lawn. “I’m pro Holly. That counts for something, right?”

  “You made me a rocking chair?”

  “Yep. It matches the cot. Though I’ll have to make sure I didn’t pulverise it when I tossed it away to come save your crazy arse from the clutches of the evil curtain rod.”

  Holly spins around. Her eyes are wild and wet with unshed tears.

  “Why didn’t you marry Chelcie?” she blurts out, and by the way she bites her lips, I can see she’s as surprised by that question as I am.

  “Why didn’t you run away with Coop to Sydney?” For a half-second we hold one another’s gaze. I’m the first to look away. I shrug and set the ladder to rights. “I don’t know, it just wasn’t right. Chelcie’s an angel; she just wasn’t my angel.”

  “I didn’t leave with Coop because I knew he was destined for bigger things than playing the Sugartown Hotel,” she admits.

  “And how’s that plan working out now?”

  “Hell if I know. He’s at a gig eight hours away instead of helping me hang curtains.” She gives me a sad smile and says, “Will you help me with these?”

  “Course.” I climb up on the ladder and slide the thick, blue, cloud-covered curtains in place. Then I jump down, and we go about unpacking baby crap from boxes, and setting up the nursery. I head back outside to retrieve the rocking chair I left behind, brushing off the grass, and using my shirt to remove a stubborn dirt stain from the wood.

  I place the chair by the window. Holly sits, rocks back and forth, absently running her hand over her belly. I watch her for a moment, the way her big green eyes stare out at the rain that’s just started to fall. Her gaze latches onto mine, and a tear slips free and slides down her freckled cheek.

  “Ah, hell. Don’t cry, sweetheart.” I take the few strides across the room and sink down on the floor at her feet. I lean my elbows on the arm rests, and push the hair back from her face.

  “Do you think you’ll ever want kids, Jack?”

  “Maybe one day.”

  “With the right girl?”

  “I already found the right girl, Hols.” I kiss her temple, and get to my feet. “I lost her to someone else.”

  I walk
out without looking back. If I have to see the regret in her eyes, I’ll start making promises I can’t keep. And that’s not fair to any of us.

  I GOTTA say, if I have to stare at another pie again, I’m going to go stir-crazy. Ana and I have been working our bums off, and every available surface in the kitchen is taken up by cooling pies for the fundraiser.

  We’re also babysitting, or at least, the boys were supposed to be, but they’ve pissed off down to the pub and left the poor kid to play with the dog. Snickers loves Sammy, though, so thankfully someone’s keeping him company.

  Sammy tears through the house, and crashes into the front door with Snickers not far behind him. They’re both yipping like puppies, and it’s grating on my nerves like having a tooth pulled without anaesthetic.

  “Sam, take it outside or I’ll separate the two of you,” Ana yells above the noise of some waily bitch screaming from the radio. At least I’m not the only one.

  “Thorry Ana Cabana,” he yells, and then flings the door wide open, darting out into the yard with Snickers following on his heels.

  “How’s he doing?” I ask, watching him through the window.

  “He’s okay.” She sighs. “Dad says he only asks for her at night if he’s had a nightmare. He dreams a lot about the fire, apparently.”

  “Understandable. His Mum did get barbequed by one.”

  “How are you doing after the parental incident? I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. With Dad leaving all this insurance stuff to me and the rebuild starting soon, it’s been complete chaos.”

  “It’s okay. I’m a big girl. I told them to fuck themselves.”

  “Thatta girl,” she says, and she winks at me.

  “And you and Coop, how’s that going?”

  “He had to stay in Sydney for a few more days. Apparently their manager isn’t happy with his disappearing act.”

  “He’ll be alright though, right? I mean, it’s not like they can fire him. The fans would go completely nuts.”

  “It’s so weird that you just said that.”

  “Who knew we’d have a rock star in the family, right?”