by Jackson Lear
“Are you staying at your mum’s?”
Amanda groaned and shook her head. “No. I’m in Portal Close of all places.”
“Ha! Why?”
“Barry, Mum’s fella, is a carpenter, renovator, that kind of thing. You might know him if you’re ever at the cash register.”
“Which I am not.”
“Tubby guy. Handle bar moustache.”
“Shit. Yeah, I know him.”
“Good. So, he buys run down houses in the area, builds them up, sells some, rents some, so technically I’m house sitting for a while.”
“That’s gotta sting,” said Anthony.
“Yep. It’s a lot of suck. My mum’s hoping I’ll fall in love with the place with some sort of magical nostalgia dust and I’ll move back home.”
“Not likely?”
Amanda shrugged and stared at the table. “Could happen, I guess. Most of my stuff is still in New York. If I did stay it would probably be at the far side of town, over near where Patrick used to live.”
Anthony shook his head. “Patrick who?”
“From St. Bart’s.”
Anthony still wasn’t linking the name to a person.
“Josh’s cousin!”
Anthony snapped his head into a nod. “Ah, okay, yeah. That Patrick.”
“Yeah, he was only hanging around us for five years,” said Amanda, rolling her eyes.
“Nah, it was barely two.”
“Pretty sure it was five, sweetie,” said Amanda, before giving Anthony a wink.
“Oh, we’re back to winking now, are we?”
Amanda’s cheeks reddened against her control. “I don’t know, that one kinda got us into trouble a while back.”
“Well sure, we finished every sentence with a wink to each other. ‘Would you like more coffee?’ Wink. ‘I used to play the piano.’ Wink.”
“It was fun until Gemma caught you doing it to me.”
“She is a little territorial around you,” said Anthony.
“I may have put my foot in it when I said we should all just run off to an island in the Pacific and live free like hippies.”
Anthony shot through every memory he had and came up blank. “When the hell did you say that?”
“About half an hour before she told everyone she was pregnant with Tom.”
“Oh,” mumbled Anthony.
“You don’t remember? Has old age finally gotten a hold of your faculties and is holding them to ransom?”
“I’m six weeks younger than you, Sunshine,” glared Anthony. “And in England we say ‘got’, not ‘gotten’. You know, the way English is supposed to be said.” His glare turned to a cheeky grin.
“Yeah, six weeks less of being a smartass. Arse! Fuck.”
Anthony nearly guffawed.
“Give me a week and it’ll all come back to me.”
“Every time I see you your accent has an increasing twang to it.”
“Yeah, one of the perks of being well travelled,” said Amanda. “Oh! I forgot to say, Mum was eager to tell me that Josh has put on some weight.”
“A little. Not much. He’s working it off.”
“Well, Mum has her opinions. Are you guys doing anything soon? Group catch up?”
“We could get something going. Do you want the girls along as well?”
“Hannah and Gemma?”
“Yeah.”
Amanda shook her head quickly. “No. I mean, it’s fine, but no.”
“Don’t worry, they’re in full wedding mode. Do you remember Lucy?”
“Uptight Lucy who didn’t like it when I corrected her French?”
“Uh ... the Lucy who is average height, brown hair ...”
“Freckles?”
“Yeah.”
“Same Lucy,” said Amanda. “I thought she was already married.”
“She’s onto number two.”
“Well, good for her.” Amanda leaned back and saw Anthony smiling at her. “What?”
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, grinning from ear to ear.
“It is. Did you miss me?”
“I did.”
“Aww. You should totally come to New York. You would like it.”
“Guns, crime, health care ...”
Amanda shrugged. “Toronto, then.”
Anthony shook his head. “I have a family and trips like that are expensive as hell. But I was just thinking, we’ve known each other for thirty years and we’ve managed to catch up at least once every year, despite all the wacky places we’ve lived.”
“Oh please, don’t remind me,” said Amanda, sinking her head into her hand. “We’ve known each other for thirty years?”
“Yeah, which would make you–”
“Don’t you say it as well! I only just got over the fact that I’m not twenty nine anymore.”
“It’s been a while since you were twenty nine,” said Anthony.
“Yeah, yeah. But we’ve seriously seen each other every year?”
“Every damn year,” said Anthony.
“That’s more often than I’ve seen my parents. And university doesn’t count.”
“Because we were there at the same time?”
“Yeah, four years where we were bound to see each other.”
“You went to France for a year.”
“And you came to visit! You don’t remember sleeping on the spare sofa?”
“I don’t think I actually slept on that sofa,” said Anthony. “The first two times I was down we all stayed up for two days straight drinking shots of vodka and Red Bull.”
“The last time you kicked me out of my own bed!”
“It was only fair,” said Anthony. “Your central heating was broken and I was freezing my nads off. And I wasn’t going to sleep in a strange girl’s room. What would people say?”
Amanda shook her head as she looked over the years. “I woke up that night, sat straight up and wondered if I could sneak back into my room and grab my dressing gown without waking you up. Then I had this horrific image of catching you wearing one of my dresses and going through everything in my wardrobe one at a time.”
Anthony shrugged. “I might have done that.”
“Did you really?”
“No. I was sure you would come wandering in and catch me.”
“Ah.”
“But I don’t think I ever would’ve done it. After all the girlfriends and now with the wife, I’ve never tried on any of their clothes.”
“Never even their underwear?”
“No.”
“You’re missing out,” said Amanda.
“The other day I was sorting out the laundry and it dawned on me. There’s going to come a day when I won’t be able to tell my wife’s knickers from my daughter’s.”
“It’s only underwear.”
“Still troubling. Yours was the first bra I actually saw on a girl.”
Amanda felt a bewildered laugh coming along. “You what?”
Anthony gave her a deadpan nod. “You had just come back from boarding school. My parents brought me over to your place to say hello. Your mum wasn’t too happy about that. You came downstairs in a new bra and jeans and you loudly proclaimed to your mum, ‘There, I’ve tried it on and I still don’t like it.’ You took one look at me and my parents and didn’t even flinch.”
“I got grounded for that,” said Amanda. “I didn’t know that was your first time.”
“Well, you know, I wasn’t exactly a player when I was fourteen.”
“Riiiight. That was around the time of the Catherine Shievers thing, wasn’t it?”
Anthony nodded. “Still no word on that.”
“And typical Mum as well. I had almost managed to sweet talk her into letting me go to school in St. Bart’s, but hell no. As soon as Catherine disappeared I was back in boarding school in Brighton.”
“But at least I can thankfully say it wasn’t the last time I saw you in a bra, either.”
Amanda returned Anthony’s gr
in. “No, I’m sure it was not, given the number of vodka shots I’ve had over the years.” She squirmed, trying to think through the memories. “Did you ever see me ... wait, yeah, we all went skinny dipping in Spain.”
Anthony looked up to the ceiling and a smile spread from ear to ear. “Good times.”
“And you were chasing what’s-her-face. Stef.”
Anthony laughed as the name came back to him. “She thought I had a thing for you.”
“You know what I remember about that? I was driving up there in the girls’ car and we were trying to figure out what you guys would be talking about. They all knew I had known you since forever so I told those skanks that you lot were probably talking about us.”
“And we were,” Anthony said, with a solemn nod.
“Too bad for you that Carla missed her flight because she was as horny as fuck back then.”
“We knew. But it did even things out. Four guys, four girls.”
“Yeah. And everything we talked about in the car got replayed later that night in ‘I have never ever’, which is a stupid game.”
“You’re right. Kings is much better.”
“Yeah. And with ‘I have never ever’ you do two or three rounds where it’s all fun and games, like, ‘I have never ever been on a plane,’ then it just becomes three hours of sexcapades until someone passes out because they’ve got half a bottle of Smirnoff in them. ‘I have never ever had a threesome,’ see who drinks up and find out who is either lying or who actually had one. But the thing I remember most about that was Stef and Valentina were sitting next to each other whispering through the whole game. One of them managed to ask it in a way to get, ‘Who here likes someone else who is also here,’ and then the other immediately asked, ‘Who thought they would hook up with someone here.’”
Anthony gave her another nod. “I remember that well.”
“And everyone took a drink. We were all trying to figure that out in the car on the way up to the house and those bitches were asking me for all the insight on you and Josh, as though I had some psychic connection and knew what you two were thinking.”
“I was thinking I was twenty and wanted to get laid.”
“And they didn’t buy that,” said Amanda. “They wanted to know which of you guys was going to ask them out.”
“Maybe Stef,” said Anthony. “And it was a miserable drive back, I’ll tell you.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. “No question there. I thought they were catty before but holy shit they were nasty after not getting any.”
“It wasn’t any better in our car,” said Anthony. “Hot tub, booze, foreign country, and everyone was just cock blocking for the whole weekend. I could’ve slept with at least three girls that trip!”
Amanda kept her eyes locked on Anthony as she prepared a follow up question.
“Okay, two girls,” said Anthony.
“What? Which one was I?”
“You were the iffy third.”
Amanda dropped all pretence as her mouth fell open in surprise. “I was an iffy third?”
“I don’t mean you were my third choice, no. Just out of four girls I was sure that, given the right circumstances, I might have been able to schmooze three of you.”
“I don’t remember much schmoozing.”
“Towards you?”
“Towards anyone, really.”
“Well, I kinda pooled all of my energy into Stef.”
“No you didn’t.”
Anthony had to do a double take at Amanda. “Huh?”
“As soon as Valentina got into that hot tub your attention shifted.”
“Everyone’s attention shifted.”
“Oh, I know. Life was generous to her and she knew it. You guys were funny, trying your hardest to sit there hiding your erections while she was there wearing nothing, casually looking away. You did all right on the way back, though.”
Anthony shook his head again. “How do you mean?”
Amanda twirled her hands about, trying to deflate the tension as much as possible. “So they were rating every one of you, saying who had the best personality, who would be best in bed, and you ... did better than the other three.”
Anthony leaned forward in complete surprise. “I did? How?”
“You stood up in the hot tub. I don’t know if you were almost ready for take-off or what, but the girls noticed. So did the guys. It suddenly became a one sided victory and the victor was you.”
Anthony’s cheeks ran flush as he tried to hold back a nervous laugh. “Sorry, I just went momentarily deaf ... say that again?”
Amanda smiled at Anthony as though he already knew the obvious. “You were big. They noticed. Everyone noticed. And you were the only one who had shaved, so I guess that helped.”
A stupid grin came over Anthony’s face and he nodded like he had just received a knighthood. “Well, yeah, it helps a little. Except for that whole getting laid part. What I needed was a good wingwoman.”
“That would’ve helped.”
“Yeah.” Anthony sat back for a moment, working through the fourteen year delayed compliment, then something dawned on him. “Wait, back up. Everyone said they were interested in someone at that house and everyone said they wanted to hook up with someone there. Who were you after?”
“It’s been fourteen years, I can’t remember who I was into for one weekend in Spain,” said Amanda.
“You remember every other detail fairly clearly.”
“I remember Stef was into you, Valentina was into Marcus, Flick was also into Marcus.”
“Spill. Who were you into?”
She hesitated for a little too long.
Anthony sat up higher as the world seemed to crash to the ground. “Me?”
Amanda held her eyes onto the table between them. “A little bit.”
“And you’re still embarrassed by that?”
“Not entirely. I did say I liked Marcus but that was a lie. He was just the token good looking guy and I didn’t want the girls to know that I had a crush on you back then.”
“Why?”
“Because in the car they kinda claimed you.”
Anthony leaned back in surprise. “I see.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s kinda strange then.”
“Why?”
“Josh had a thing for you.”
“I know. He charmingly and drunkenly told me.”
“He did?”
“Only once, though.”
“You never thought about you and him?” Anthony asked.
“Not romantically. I thought about the mechanics of it. ‘I’m lonely, let’s see if I’m compatible with anyone I already know,’ that kind of thing. Or, ‘If I had to date a friend, who would it be?’”
“And it was not Josh?”
“People asked enough times that I had to think it over. Don’t get me wrong, he’s one of my best friends and I’ve had a couple of dreams about him, but I never felt a spark.”
“So you had a crush on me?” Anthony asked.
“If you’re going to keep hounding me on this one you’re going to need to buy me a drink a lot stronger than a chai latte.”
“Will do. Tonight I’ll mix you up one of the best martini’s you’ve ever had.”
“I might tell you then,” said Amanda.
“Just out of curiosity, how long was this crush for?”
Her eyes drifted over Anthony as a smile crept into place. “I’m pretty sure by the way you’re asking me that I wasn’t the only one with a crush.”
“Oh, I’ll say it flat out loud.” Except an eternity seemed to pass as Anthony remained silent.
“Something on your mind?”
“Sorry. I just had an image of my counsellor screaming at me.”
Amanda held back from the next round of compliments and buried them for later. The mood had changed. Maybe it was enough flirting for one day. “So how are you and Gemma?”
“You asked me that already.”
“I
know. But I just told a long story so it’s your time to share.”
“We’re doing okay.”
“Good,” said Amanda, offering Anthony a smile.
“It won’t be as interesting as thinking back to Spain.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Anthony leaned in and told Amanda every little detail from his sessions with Samantha. He was also well aware of what Gemma would say if she ever found out that he had confessed every secret of theirs to her arch-nemesis.
10
Daniel
Daniel was at his desk playing Lurkers while Ian lay on the floor with his laptop propped up on a pillow. They were clicking frantically on their keyboards and mice, trying to defeat the zombie onslaught.
“We need Warrick for this,” said Ian, without lifting his eyes from the screen.
“Just watch my back as I go in here,” said Daniel.
“You have a shotgun?”
“Chainsaw.”
“What about grenades?”
“Three of them,” said Daniel.
“So use them.”
“I might need them later.”
“If you die again I’m not saving your arse. I’m going to let you come back as a zombie because Warrick is our healer.”
“We can take these guys on ourselves,” said Daniel. “If I can get to the flamethrower in the back of this room ...”
Music was blasting from Emily’s bedroom next door. It sounded like she had just discovered The Cure. Every so often the screams of the zombies were in time with the music from next door, which always put a smile on Ian’s face. Emily had taken to listening to music only while her dad was at work, as last week he told her he bought that album back when he was her age, something which cast a long shadow over the band’s cool factor.
Ian was staying the night. His mum was having a few friends over, which usually meant that Ian had to come downstairs and introduce himself while the adults remarked on how much he had grown. Then they would ask how school was going. Eventually they tried to think back to what they had been up to when they were his age and that always led to a few suggestive jokes as though Ian was too young to understand. But now that it was the school holidays Ian was able to stay at Daniel’s house for the night and was spared from having to listen to his mum groan yet again about how difficult it was find someone decent in a town as small as Luxford.