Getting Real

by Ainslie Paton

  “Ah Rie, you have no reason to be nervous. You do great and the punters love you,” said Bodge. The big lush. If he’d had long eyelashes to bat, he’d have batted them furiously.

  “It can get freaky out there and sometimes I get scared. I took it out on you, Bunk, and I’m sorry. I hope you’ll still want to do the show with me again, but I understand if you don’t.”

  What! Now she was talking about being scared.

  “Aw, Rie that’s cool. I’m happy to do it with you.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet you are,” muttered Teflon, his head shooting forward as the flat of Bodge’s hand connected with it.

  “Now boys,” said Rielle, using school teacher words but showgirl sass, one hand popping to her bouncing hip.

  “Why are you worried about Sydney?” asked Bodge, now under teacher’s gaze, stroking the back of Tef’s head in a mock attempt to soothe where he’d whacked.

  Yeah, this I’d like to hear.

  “Because it’s home. I don’t know. It’s not logical. I’m nervous about performing in front of a home crowd.”

  Bullshit! If that’s what she’s scared of I’ll go skydiving.

  “Ah that’s mad, Rie, Sydney will love ya,” said Lizard.

  “Let’s hope so.” She blew the poker players a kiss and gave him her hand. He held it like he wasn’t entirely sure who it belonged to.

  When Jake and Rielle had gone, Teflon said, “Why’s she scared of Sydney punters?” He shuffled the deck with a well practised riffle and bridge technique which was the only part of the game he was good at—that and the drinking. He expected Bodge to answer, but Bodge was staring at his empty bottle. “Is she nervous about family?”

  “Got none,” said Bunk.

  “Shit yeah?” Teflon felt the shadow presence of Bodge’s hand again. He spun around to look at the older man. “What?”

  “Fair dinkum, it’s true about you; nothing sticks, eh Tef? It’s rock legend. The dad, Ben Mainline, was a composer and musician—classical stuff. He was a yank. I can’t believe I have to tell you this. He was driving home from a concert, got hit by a semi. The mum was killed. Rie was fourteen, Rand sixteen. Ben took them back to the US and two years later he was dead from brain cancer. There was no other family. Those kids had to sing for their supper while they were still in school.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot.” Tef leaned towards Bodge, making a sacrificial offering of the back of his head which Bodge couldn’t resist. “So, why is she scared about Sydney then?” He started dealing, sliding the cards out one by one to rest in front of each of the players. Bunk picked each of his cards up as they landed; Lizard waited for his fifth to slide into place.

  “Reckon it might be ghosts,” said Bodge, and when he slammed his empty bottle on the table they all jumped.

  37. Panic Attack

  If only. If only. If only.

  Over the next two days, Rielle tried to follow Rand’s advice to make peace, move on, get over it. She tried not to think about before, but Sydney was a poison, flooding her head with unwanted memories.

  Maggie in the old yellow kitchen, peeling potatoes for a roast chicken dinner. Ben reading the newspaper, cursing the crossword. Peanut butter spread deep on thick-cut white bread with ice cold milk. Playing scrabble and making up words to try to win. Rand in his school band uniform, so not cool. Long days at the beach, blistered noses and peeling skin. The puppy called Strings they’d had to leave behind. And music. Always music.

  The closer Sydney got, the more the toxic memories invaded her thinking and the stronger they were. Ben teaching her to sing; never the songs she wanted to try. Interminable piano lessons that robbed her of sunbaking time. Maggie making her clothes; never the style she wanted to wear. Boring nights in front of the TV; arguments about homework, queuing for the bathroom, getting caught sneaking out at night. And laughter and acceptance, and love and happiness. Before.

  Before stole up on her, caught her out and took her breath away; left her startled and uncertain. Ceedee’s new outfit jolted the memory of her first sewing lesson. The smell of cooked bacon for the crew was a Mother’s Day breakfast feast. Glen holding stage plans was a flashback to the music room designed for the new house that never got built and Rand doodling lyrics was Ben at his crossword. Before.

  Now, if she looked in the mirror, past the hairpiece and the makeup, past the violet eyes and perfect teeth, there was Maggie. And Maggie was long dead and for that there was no antidote.

  Rielle buried thoughts of before in the deep melted brown of Jake’s eyes, in the warmth of his skin and the curve of his solid chest as he spooned her. She stoked her courage in his full-lipped grin, in the laugher in his voice as he teased her. When she felt the memories rise and panic lick the edge of her fear, she gripped Jake’s arms and when it threatened to overcome her, she sought relief in his hands and his mouth, and his body as he worshipped her.

  But she didn’t talk about it. To talk about it might make it real; might unfurl the selfish thing inside her that caused the divide, made before have such a violent after. Made hiding the way she looked and felt was the only defence she had.

  She knew that hurt Jake. Occasionally he let her see his sadness, his sense of not having all of her, of getting short-changed, because he kept nothing back. Not even the fact he didn’t understand, not even his anxiety for her—for them. His love poured out, rich, uncompromising and patient. He kept his promise and never pushed for more. He was constant and steady, a planet for her star, a man to tame her wolf, a J to curl around her finger with the A and the R.

  For Jake, this was purgatory. This: watching Rielle’s wary eyes, the tension in her muscles, the frown that moved in and rented permanent space above her brows. Knowing she didn’t sleep, picked at her food, rehearsed til she dropped from exhaustion, had trouble focussing and got easily distracted. She was hesitant and reckless, boisterous and sullen and switched between those moods without warning. One minute creating some joke, the next screaming at a hapless roadie. Harry steered her crew away. Rand watched her closely and the band closed ranks around her. The crew reacted too. Her conversation with the poker players had its ripple effect. They worked overtime to keep her happy without complaint.

  And Jake waited for her to choose; to blow apart and crumble or to harden and survive. She was capable of either, but she was only capable of doing it alone. She scowled at Rand and pushed him away; and only at night in Jake’s arms, under his lips, did she accept any kindness.

  After that second night together she didn’t cry again. She clung and clawed and thrashed and called out, but there were no tears. That part was heaven. Horizontal there were no barriers between them anymore. Horizontal they soared. It was vertical they had a problem with.

  In the daylight of the vertical world they boarded a flight for Sydney where they had a five day break and had agreed to a fourth sold out show. On the flight, Rielle hid her eyes behind sunglasses, and her state of mind behind partying with Rand’s new entourage. She drank too much, she laughed too loud, and she left nail marks in Jake’s hand from squeezing too tight. She thought he needed help to manage his flight anxiety, but the tension in his shoulders and the crawling unease in his gut had nothing to do with the heights he conquered, and everything to do with his fear for her.

  Jake woke before the alarm and turned it off. Rielle was asleep, curled on her side, her coloured hair streaming across the pillow, her glitter eyelashes resting heavily on the dark circles under her eyes. He wanted to fold her into his arms and listen to her heartbeat, but he wanted her to sleep more. He got ready quietly and left her a note to say he’d be back by 11.00 A.M. and hoped she didn’t wake to read it.

  He got busy with logistics, but all the time thinking of Rielle. When he got back to the hotel he hoped he might have the chance to wake her gently, but Rand met him in the foyer, and his thoughts went from pleasure to panic.

  “Did Rie say anything to you about where she was going?” Rand’s voice was sharp and his eyes wer
e darting.

  “No. I left her asleep. What’s wrong?”

  “I hired a Harley this morning. We were going to ask you to come out for a ride with Harry and me, but Rie’s taken off on it.”

  “You’re telling me she rides?” Of course she did, she’d been such an easy passenger and so at home on Bonne it made sense, and so like her not to tell him.

  “Yeah, she rides fine. It’s where she’s going that’s the problem. I’m scared she’s going to do something stupid. She’s turned her phone off. We have to go after her.”

  Fear stabbed instantly, sharply in Jake’s chest. He palmed the keys to the Triumph. “Tell me where I’m going.”

  On Bonne, Jake travelled quicker than Rand and Harry in Harry’s car. They were somewhere behind him. He was weaving in and out of traffic, overtaking easily, getting a jump on the lights, anything orange was green. He had half an eye out for speed cameras and cop cars, trying to estimate how much farther in front of him Rielle would be.

  His heart was racing, not from the adrenaline rush of the ride, but from the thought of her hitting that part of the highway alone. Rand had only given him a quick sketch, but what he now knew made him feel heavy with dread for Rielle. She was somewhere ahead of him, her head full of ghosts and recriminations, speeding to confront the moment that changed her and Rand’s lives. Rielle had at least an hour’s head start on them. But she didn’t know they were chasing her, so it was possible she’d stop somewhere and break the ride, though Jake didn’t think she would. She’d been waiting for this moment since Adelaide, probably longer—probably since she was fourteen. He swerved around a truck hauling gravel and took the next corner hard and fast. He was travelling well above the speed limit, knowing it was worth any fine and losing his licence if it meant he could get to her before she arrived at the crash site.

  If only.

  The thrum of the bike between Rielle’s thighs was reassuring: a reminder she was powerful, she was alive, not beaten, not weak, not dead. She was conscious of the scar over her hip; it seemed to throb and itch beneath her jeans. Ridiculous. She knew it was her imagination, but it seemed to ache more the closer she got to Halo Bay.

  After taking it easy, getting a feel for the bike when she started out, she was going too fast now, and she knew it. But she’d waited too long to do this, and there was no point waiting any longer. She needed to see it. If she was ever going to get past it, she needed to face it in the daylight, so it no longer bled black fear into her dreams.

  It wasn’t like she expected to see anything when she got there. No tyre tracks, no police tape. There’d be no stench of petrol, no smell of burning rubber, no flashing lights or wailing sirens. No wreckage to mark the event. No floral tributes to signify something bad happened there. It would be an empty stretch of bitumen, a narrow, twisted, two-lane piece of highway, now bypassed by more modern four-lane additions.

  The cops had called it a death trap. They’d said there were regular fatalities on that stretch of road and there were signs up warning drivers to take care. But signs couldn’t stop a stupid kid from arguing with her mother or losing her temper and angering her father. Signs did nothing except witness what happens when a father, tired from working, and a mother, frustrated by her daughter’s stubbornness, stop paying attention to the road for a few seconds, just long enough for a truck to batter them til they all fell about alive, dead, dying or surviving for no good reason.

  There was a reason for Rand to survive unhurt, physically anyway. He was smart and wise and pure and made the world around him a better place, but why did she live? She was angry and scared and hollow and not even comfortable in her own skin.

  Her blood loss alone would’ve been enough to kill her had the ambulance been a few minutes slower to arrive. But no amount of haste was going to keep Maggie alive and, as it turned out, no amount of trying would stop Ben’s cancer taking hold either. So why was she the one humming with a life she didn’t know how to live—saved?

  When she drove out of the four-lane highway and saw the narrow stretch of road by the coast, it was like some malevolent force threw a net of suffocating darkness over her. She nearly lost control of the bike, veering wildly onto the grass verge, and copping a horn blast from a driver behind her.

  It didn’t look remotely familiar. It’d been a moonless night and windy, a fine mist of sea spray floating over the road. It was fine and sunny, a perfect picnic of a day now. But it made her heart pound painfully against her rib cage, made her mouth taste bitter. Something was strangling her, wrapping her chest in tight restraints, intent on drawing the breath out of her. She was choking. She fumbled with her helmet, casting it aside and stretching over the tank of the bike to try and ease an inch of air into her lungs.

  If only. If only. If only.

  Years of that phrase singing in her head. Years of it dripping poison in her ear. Making her bury herself in work, fight herself every day to be better. If only she’d been a better person then. A better daughter, a better sister. If only she’d been more respectful, listened. If only she’d minded her parents. If only she’d not been so headstrong, so fucking stubborn. If only she’d understood that life was fragile, that consequences were forever.

  If only. If only. If only.

  Rand would’ve had a normal life. Ben would’ve loved her still. They’d have been a family.

  And she’d be able to face her real self in the mirror.

  If only.

  Tears ran down her face, but she wasn’t crying. She couldn’t make a sound, except to wheeze. Her vision had narrowed to a fuzzy grey frame, and a pinprick of light. Her arms were too weak to pull the bike back on its stand and she could no longer hold it upright with jelly legs. She crashed over sideways and was pinned beneath its weight until, sobbing, she was able to drag her leg out from under it and curl on the grass in a tight mass of pain and panic.

  She wasn’t hurt, but she was dying.

  Right where she should have—twelve years ago.

  Dying from this guilt she’d never shift, never be strong enough to get clear of.

  And dying hurt. It made her head spin. It made her limbs shudder. It formed a ball of intensifying pain in her stomach with stinging tentacles that put an ache in her legs and turned her hands into fists made of stone.

  And it was taking a long time. Too many razor-edged breaths eked out from her strapped tight lungs, too many acid tears fell on her face, too many words ripped like parachute cords from her mouth. A litany of her crime, a song of her sorrow, falling, falling, taking her down, until suddenly she heard other words, another voice; familiar, fond, calling her back, making it safe to come home.

  Strong arms reached for her. Murmurs soothed. Comfort encased her, warmth gave her hope.

  Jake.

  “Breathe with me, Rie, breathe with me; it’s okay. It’s a panic attack. You’ll be all right. I’m here with you; nothing bad is going to happen. Breathe with me, baby.”

  He was on the ground with her, curled around her body, holding her close, her back to his front, his voice in her ear, his hand on her heart. He spoke softly and stroked her arms til she could feel blood move in them again, til she could open her hands and hold his, til she could take a full breath and another and another, til the sobs came and her agony poured from her body in a new born screaming torrent.

  “I killed her. I killed my family. I did it. It’s my fault.”

  She was sucked into a black hole of self-blame and lost to the world, but Jake rocked her through it, lifting her to cradle her in his lap. Gentling her with soft caresses, his hands on her face, his lips on her cheek. And he stayed through the ugliness of it, through the stripped bare, painful truth of it and he never drew back and he never let go.

  Rielle looked in Jake’s eyes and saw that he understood. She pressed her wet cheek to his and knew he forgave. But none of her healing full breaths brought absolution; they brought a craving to forget.

  She wrapped her arms around him and tried to clim
b into his skin. She pressed her lips to his jaw, then her hands to his head, fingers in his hair. And when he shifted, readying to help her stand, she stopped him. She found his lips, stole a kiss he was reluctant to give, then another and another until his reluctance didn’t matter, until it no longer existed and neither did her pain. It dissolved in the taste of his mouth, the play of his tongue and the scent of his skin. And in its place was the flame of desire. It ignited in her and she burned him with it. Consuming him with her need to forget.

  And he scalded her right back.

  He’d found her. All Jake knew was the blessed relief of holding Rielle’s body close to his. Her mouth was a miracle, her hands on him, a communion. Her satiny skin and her gasps of passion were entirely holy to him. To stop from tasting her, from worshipping her, from loving her, would be sacrilege.

  Lust raged inside him while he sucked her kisses and rocked her hips, his focus narrowed to the divine press of her glorious body and the soaring heat surging through his limbs. His awareness blunted, his good sense shot all to hell. In this act he was damned and he exalted in it.

  But there was no suitable penance for getting so deeply lost.

  Rand’s presence, his voice, his hand on Jake’s back brought sense, brought the crash of shame.

  “Rie, what happened? Are you all right?”

  Rand was on the grass beside them and Rie’s sobs began again at the sight of him. He was white faced and his eyes were bloodshot. She scrambled into his arms, crying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” in a strangled voice that throttled Jake’s heart.

  He got to his feet, shaken to his core by the knowledge Rie believed she’d caused the accident and that by coming here, she’d faced down her greatest despair, the event that shaped her life.

  He backed off, leaving brother and sister to their shared pain. He’d never have understood it if he’d hadn’t started his own therapy. But now he got it. He understood that the only way you could get past your worst fears was to crawl inside them, wear them like a skin and let them squeeze you until you found the will, the help, the strength to walk through them and be free.