Getting Real

by Ainslie Paton

  Rie put her head on his shoulder again. “I think he really hates me now. He said some stuff about me still being a frightened kid.”

  Smart guy Jake. “And what do you think about that?”

  She put her hand in his. “Crap.”

  “Yeah, right.” Rand twisted his neck around to look at her. “Rie, the only reason you act so tough is because you’re so frightened. I love you with all my heart but I’ve never been able to talk you down off the ledge. I used to get really fucking anxious about that.” He drew a breath. There was no point telling her he still did. “Then I figured out you have to do that for yourself. If Jake can help you, well—”

  “He can’t help me.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Rand draped his arm over Rielle and snuggled her against him, tapped a rhythm on her bicep. Not the song playing, something else in his head.

  “No. Unless it’s got a stage, a mic, a pole, or a trapeze attached to it, I’m not sure of anything anymore.”

  “Well, here’s what I’m sure of. You might be my scared little sister, but you’re also the bravest person I know. You’ve never backed down from anything, so I reckon you’ll work this out. And if you need me, you know I’m here.”

  They sat quietly. The DJ had Megan Washington’s indie pop track I Believe You Liar spinning. And that was just spooky.

  Rielle said, “You know you’ve just about got your accent back.”

  “I know mate. Bonza eh.” He hammed it up.

  “So are you going to fuck Harry’s brains out?”

  “No,” he said, dropping back into his hybrid accent. “I’m going to take her to bed and make sweet love to her.”

  “Why do I get the crude descriptions and you get the romantic ones?”

  He released her and stood, he was still worried and he’d have to watch her, but for now she was ok. He gave a devilish laugh and twirled a fake moustache. “Because, my dear, you were raised by wolves and I’m a misunderstood poet.”

  26. Recognition

  Jake surveyed his travelling companions in the airline lounge and for the first time in his life, wasn’t partially crippled by the thought of flying. On a morning meditation and half a Zanect, he was in better shape than all of them.

  They were universally pale, bleary-eyed and struck dumb. Stu rested his head on Ceedee’s shoulder. How sipped strong black coffee. Roley had commandeered a row of seats and was stretched full length, an arm draped across his face. Rielle wore her sunglasses, and in another cluster of seats, Jonathan and the rest of Problem Children were in a similar state of anguish, caused by bright morning light, too much alcohol and not enough sleep. There was no sign of Rand, or Harry, but Jake knew Harry might fly separately with her crew.

  When Rand still hadn’t shown up thirty minutes before boarding, and wasn’t answering his phone, Jake crouched down by Rielle. He touched her shoulder. “Any idea where he is?”

  She lifted her head and coughed out a, “No.”

  He took in her self-inflicted misery. She must’ve hit the drink hard after he’d left. He should’ve felt vindicated, but he couldn’t stop the flash of regret. Was he the catalyst for her hangover this time? “How bad do you feel on a scale of one to ten?”

  She said raggedly, “Twenty-seven,” and he laughed.

  “Have you eaten anything?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Rie, you need to eat.”

  She pulled her sunglasses down her nose and squinted at him. “I might not ever eat again.”

  He saw bloodshot green eyes. Her real eyes without the contact lenses, the same hue and intensity as Rand’s.

  It jolted recognition.

  Green eyes, like the girl in the gym, who had a gap between her front teeth like Rand. And just like Rielle, Gym Girl had the build of an athlete and ink in her hairline. He stood up abruptly. He figured under Gym Girl’s sock there’d be a dripping red heart. Under her sweatband a stick figure. Under all Rielle’s multicoloured hair there’d be mostly blonde. And that green garnet in her nose could be removed. Either there was a mystery twin thing going on here or Rielle was Gym Girl without her armour.

  God! How she must’ve laughed at him, first in Adelaide and now here. Jake felt his temperature rising. He ground his teeth. What a fool he’d been to fall for her. Because despite her hard lines, her complexity, he had fallen for all her talented, exciting, changeable ways. He looked forward to the moments he spent with her, gloried in watching her, ached to touch her.

  Now he looked at her, pale and quiet, curled in her chair and saw the depth of her duplicity and the stupidity of his lust. When he shepherded her onto the plane, he took a perverse satisfaction in seeing how ill she looked and instead of paralysing fear, his anger kept him company on the flight.

  Rielle knew. Jake had worked it out. She’d seen it in his face when she’d taken her glasses off. The flinch of realisation, the snap of awareness. Now he truly knew her for the level of her subterfuge, her dishonesty and deceit. She was trapped in her own web of make believe with the one person she cared enough about for the truth to matter.

  She went to the bathroom and threw up, bent over in the cubicle, holding onto the walls, sweating, sick beyond the alcohol poisoning. Shaking with the discovery, she was desperate for Jake to understand why she needed her disguise and worse, to accept her for it.

  Back in her seat next to Roley, she could see Jake across the aisle. He wasn’t pale or perspiring. He wasn’t gripping the armrests and he didn’t have his eyes shuttered tight to shut out his fears. He was reading the in-flight magazine, sipping coffee, looking relaxed, like he didn’t have a care in the world.

  She turned her face to the window, stared at the whiteout of cloud, saw her own failures reflected back at her, and steeled her heart. She was a performer, he was an audience. She could make him understand her, forgive her, love her a little even. She’d think it through, work out a routine, rehearse it and stage it, and fucking well make him cheer her name.

  If only she knew how.

  Jake wasn’t the type of audience she was used to. He didn’t want a polished performance, he wanted natural and real, he wanted authentic, and spontaneous—all the things she was scared of, and had banished from her life. It was hopeless. She couldn’t have her life and Jake too. That was it. Harden the fuck up, she thought. What did you expect?

  She tucked her headphones in her ears. With a snort of irony she chose Sia’s album Some People Have Real Problems and the track Buttons, a song about seeing ghosts in everything. It seemed appropriate.

  Harry sat on the broad windowsill, wrapped in a soft, white hotel robe watching the flow of traffic out the window. This wasn’t the first time she’d missed a flight, but it was the first time she’d done it for less than professional reasons.

  Her less than professional reason was asleep. Sprawled across the king-size bed, half covered with the sheet. And what wasn’t covered—one long muscular leg, one ridge of hip bone and one incredibly well-muscled torso, inked with bright colours and geometric images that ran across his chest and over one shoulder—was enormously appealing.

  After the romantic wasteland of her youth, Harry had made up for lost time. She’d had trysts in various size beds, variously starred hotels, the back seat of a Holden Commodore, a public spa and, shamefully, in the disabled bathroom of a wedding reception centre. But nothing had prepared her for the excitement and mind jolting thrill of being with Rand.

  Getting to fourth base had been the singularly most delicious experience of Harry’s life. It bypassed three serious relationships, one live-in lover, one naughty ‘shouldn’t have gone there fling’ and, one proposal. It stood at the top of the heap of her wildest imagining and danced about waving a victory flag, whooping and yelling. Her body was still humming from the way Rand had touched her. And looking at him lying there, abandoned to her gaze, made her want to wake him, crawl all over him and do it all again.

  She was in deep trouble. Now there was no debating
it. This thing with Rand was so much more than a hot and heavy infatuation fuelled by their aborted teenage false start. It was a high speed bullet train, a supersonic jet—revving the engines of her desire, and roaring its way into her heart. And there was no getting off it. She was a passenger for life.

  Rand had been very clear that what was left of the dawn and the day was theirs. No phones, no limos, no airport, nothing that wasn’t already contained in the walls of his suite or couldn’t be brought in by room service. She hadn’t complained. She’d sent off a text to Ted and shut off her phone.

  Now she wanted to let him sleep. He must have been exhausted; the show, the party at Cherry and the intensity of their prolonged lovemaking had to have left him needing rest. It had left her so wired she’d been unable to sleep at all. She felt alive, awake and inflamed, nervously excited for more of his touch.

  And damn, he wasn’t easy to ignore. She knew his skin would be firm and warm and supple under her fingers. She knew his lips would be soft and hard and wet and probing. She wanted to slide against the length of him and explore the patterns on his chest with her tongue. She wanted his hands in her hair, on her breasts and dragging on her hips. She hugged herself, pins and needles of lust coursing down her spine.

  She checked her watch, another half an hour and she would wake him. Another half an hour and she’d be crazy from waiting for him and imagining what he might do to her, what they might do together.

  She stared out the window and tried to distract herself. Think of work, the footage she wanted to show him, the ideas she had for their video shoot. Think of anything but how she craved his nearness, wanted to own his lazy smile, and get lost in the deep green forest of his eyes.

  She lasted twenty-two minutes, the longest twenty-two minutes she could remember, before she ran her palm over the rise of his instep, his ankle, up his shin to his knee. He was awake and making little growling noises in the back of his throat before her hand made it to his thigh.

  He stretched, arching his back, bringing his arms down to scoop her against him. “Where have you been?” he murmured, eyes still half lidded, voice low and croaky. “Why’d you let me sleep?”

  She braced her towelling covered elbows on his chest. “You needed to.”

  He sucked in a breath, eyes properly open now, his body twitching slightly under her. “Shit, I didn’t just crash out on you did I?”

  Harry smiled. He had, dropping beside her, rolling her into his arms, asleep in seconds, the energy totally drained from his limbs. But it hadn’t mattered in the slightest, because he’d crashed her into pure bliss first.

  His brows came together and his lips flatlined. “I’m really sorry.”

  “No need to be sorry. It wasn’t like I could take anymore, you ah, you—” she flushed, “—made me very happy.”

  He exhaled. The corners of his lips lifted. “Oh yeah, it’s all coming back to me now.” He pushed the robe off her shoulders, running his hands down her back, splaying his fingers over her hips. “Still, I think we might need more rehearsals to make sure we’re—” he grinned broadly, jerked her hips down against this, “—hitting the right notes.”

  If rehearsing meant spending more time being ravished by Rand, and delighting him in return, Harry was all for a rigorous, highly disciplined schedule of practice. “How much rehearsing do you think we need?” she asked, sliding her knees open.

  He said, “It’s a fine art,” tensing against her weight. “Too much rehearsing and you can lose all the spontaneity, all the surprise.” He snatched both Harry’s hands and pinned them hard to his side. She gasped and bit her bottom lip. “Not enough practice and I get scared.”

  “You scared? What do you get scared of?”

  He spoke softly against her lips, “Women like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “Yeah, clever, beautiful…” The thought dissolved as he flicked his tongue over her lips.

  He was humming, some pop tune. She might’ve picked it but he was also nibbling her earlobe. He found her mouth for the softest of kisses and she moved against him to let him know he had nothing to be scared about.

  27. Quick Sand

  Sharon didn’t try to hide her laughter when she met the group at the hotel. Jake made eye contact with her and since he was the only one able to, she cracked up.

  “For a bloke who’s terrified of flying you look good, Jake,” she said. “Maybe because everyone else looks so awful.” She counted heads and frowned. “No Rand?”

  Jake took the room swipe card she held out. “No, that’s going to be interesting.”

  They had three intense days ahead of them before the trucks arrived and Jake wondered how it was all going to play out. Rand was the glue that stuck this whole circus together, he was ring-master to Rielle’s star attraction and he was missing in action. Without him the lions might escape, the bearded lady start electrolysis and the big top catch fire.

  “Do we know where he is, boss?”

  Jake had a fair idea Rand wasn’t too far from Harry’s arms. “I’m guessing he’ll front up tomorrow,” he grimaced. “I hope.” He knew that left Rielle holding the bag with another media interview program which she hardly seemed well enough to do. She’d taken her room swipe and disappeared from the foyer while the others were still shuffling about.

  Over coffee in the hotel cafe, Sharon gave him an update on the itinerary for Melbourne, including the interviews, a TV broadcast appearance and a video shoot, all before the trucks arrived and the set was rebuilt for the first of three shows. Today was the last rest day the band had until Sydney, so apart from dumping on Rielle again, Rand had chosen his moment to play hooky with Harry well.

  Jake was about to take a bite out of a blueberry muffin when his phone rang. Rielle. He thought about sending the call to voicemail. He hit the receive button instead.

  “Jake, I can’t talk any of these bastards into doing these interviews with me. Can you arrange a security guy to cover me?”

  “Are you sure you’re cool to do the interviews?” He was surprised she wasn’t calling to cancel them.

  “Self-inflicted wound. No excuse, I’ll be fine.”

  He hesitated. He could have security and the tour publicist cover it easily, and it was obviously what Rielle expected but it didn’t feel right. He knew Rand would prefer him to accompany her like last time. “I’ll go with you.” Spending time alone with her wasn’t his idea of a good time. He kept seeing her face, freckled, fresh and natural, fringed with soft blonde hair, not the face she’d ever willingly shown him.

  He read the silence that followed as a strong chance of getting off his self-imposed minder’s duty. He was thinking about the other things he needed to get done when she said, “That would be great. Thank you.”

  Immediately after they’d agreed the on the meeting details and hung up, Rielle dialled back. Jake had a mouthful of muffin and Sharon picked up for him. “Hi Rielle, Jake has just walked away for a moment. Can I help?” That was smooth. Jake took another bite of muffin and Sharon hit speaker the handset so he could hear.

  “I know Jake offered to take me to the radio interviews but I think he’s got enough to do without babysitting me.” He exchanged a look with Sharon. Too right he did. “Can you ramp up security instead?”

  Jake nodded. This was a bonus. Sharon said, “No worries, Rie. Leave it with me.”

  About half an hour and two coffees later, Sharon said, “Woman on a mission, look out.”

  When he looked up, he scored a megawatt smile from a freshly showered and changed Ceedee. Wearing tiny shorts and an equally little top, Ceedee wanted to go shopping, and she wanted him to go with her.

  “Please Jake, just for an hour,” Ceedee pleaded, putting her hands on the table and leaning in close to him. She smelled like mint and rainforests. “I know exactly where I want to go. One shop on Chapel Street. Just one little bitty shop, Jake. Please.”

  He sat back and tried laughing it off. “Go rouse, Stu. He can play pro
tector.”

  Ceedee huffed. “He’s still drunk. I don’t want anything to do with him, and I don’t want some muscle man either. I want you, pleeease,” she wheedled, with much blinking of thick black false lashes.

  Jake could see Sharon eating her lips to stop from laughing. If Ceedee had been flirting any harder she would’ve been across the table and in his lap. Shopping was above and beyond. There was just no way.

  “We could have some lunch, honey. It’ll be real nice,” she said, with a hair toss.

  Then nearly left her stilettos behind when she jumped as Rielle said, “Are you ready, Jake?”

  “But Rie—”

  “No but. He’s taking me to do the interviews. You know, the ones you were too sick to come to.” Turning to Jake she said, “Right?”

  He wasn’t sure which of these hells would be better to avoid—time alone with the duplicitous, irritated Rielle or being a patsy for the flirtatiously manipulative Ceedee. He pushed his chair back and stood. “Right.” He looked at Ceedee, while he waved security over. “John will take you shopping for as long as you want.” Ceedee’s pout was quickly replaced by a big smile when she caught sight of John. One patsy was obviously as good as another.

  He gathered his phone and papers and shoved them in his satchel, delaying even looking at Rielle. When he finally did, he was surprised by her expression—wistful, as though she’d lost something she treasured. Whatever her look said, it was a long way from the impatience or sass he expected.

  In the car they were quiet until she said, “Sorry. She was going to use you to get back at Stu. We’ve got enough trouble without that.”

  “I know. It was pretty obvious that’s what she was up to.”

  “I suppose you’re going to tell me you didn’t need to be rescued.”

  He laughed. “Oh, I needed to be rescued. Never could turn a pretty woman down.” He was aiming for cavalier, to give the impression he didn’t care if Ceedee used him, but judging by the way the hire car driver’s eyes caught his in the rear vision mirror, he figured he sounded like some lame-ass wannabe player instead.