Getting Real

by Ainslie Paton

  “Could I ask you for some advice before I go?”

  “Me?” said Trish with surprise, coming around the counter to take the kettle off the gas. “I’m sure there isn’t any advice I could give you that your own mother couldn’t.”

  “My mother is dead too. She died in an accident when I was fourteen.”

  That made Trish flinch. She spooned tea leaves into the pot, added the water and took out two cups and saucers.

  At the kitchen table with the teapot brewing between them, Rielle asked her question. “How do I make Jake understand how sorry I am for what I did?”

  “Did you break his heart, Arielle?”

  Rielle nodded and as Trish poured the tea, she tumbled the whole story out, starting with how they met in the gym and how she deceived Jake. Tracing through his kindness to her when she was troubled, his strength when she needed someone to stand up to her, and his ability to know the difference. She told Trish how he beat his fear of heights, and how he rescued her from her own terrors and then Rielle told Jake’s mother how much she loved her son and why she’d had to leave him so she wouldn’t continue to hurt him.

  When the scones were done, Trish made a second pot of tea and woke Mick, helped him to a chair in the sunshine and they talked some more. When Rielle left the Reed house it was with a head butt from Monty, a hug from Trish and a squeeze of her hand from Mick. But for all their kindness she had no answer to her question, no less anguish in her heart. All she had left now was retreat.

  Back at her hotel she called Bodge and packed her bags. There was no point staying. She should never have come in the first place. This was one fight she’d lost—deserved to lose. The heat of Jake’s anger, the rightness of it, wasn’t something she had a salve for. It burned and she deserved its brutal sting for how she’d thrown his love back at him and shut him out—how she’d soured his life and trashed his trusting heart.

  She was whole now. Whole enough to make a life as Rie or Arielle on stage and off; as the Ice Queen or something new; or simply as Maggie and Ben’s daughter. Whole enough not to need a disguise and to be able to bear her own reflection, but still only half what she might’ve been if she’d understood what she had in Jake before she pushed him away. Something full and right and rich and real. A reason to be wholly alive.

  Jake was set to go home and crash with a pizza when Mum rang. She needed low fat milk and a small carton of full cream, and he could spare the joke about one negating the other. She had a tuna steak and salad ready for him when he arrived, bearing groceries, and he was too tired to protest about not staying. And then he was glad he did, because Dad was still awake and keen to hear about the job.

  They talked shop, with Dad asking questions slowly, and with difficulty forming words, until Jake was unable to stifle his yawns. He had an early start and he was still catching up on sleep from what’d turned into a two night drinking binge after seeing Rielle.

  He tuned in to Dad saying something about a visit. Ah, a visitor, he’d had a visitor.

  “We both did,” said Mum.

  “Ah-huh,” he mouthed through a yawn, not even pretending interest.

  “Reee,” said Dad, drawing out the syllable. Jake assumed he meant some boring Reed cousin or other.

  “Arielle,” said Mum.

  “I said Reee,” said Dad.

  “What?”

  “Arielle came to see us today.”

  “What?” Jake said again, not taking it in. Rie, here at the house, talking to his parents? “What did she want?” he barked, awake now, suspicious and on guard.

  “She came to offer us help, money actually, for anything we might need for your father.”

  “For me,” said Dad. He rolled his eyes and put his weak right hand slowly up to his heart.

  “Money! She came to lord it over us with her rock star money. Unbelievable!”

  “No, it wasn’t like that at all. She was very sweet.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her we were fine but we appreciated the offer.”

  “She had no right to come here.”

  “She said you’d be angry.”

  “Yeah, well she’s right.” Jake was on his feet. Mum gave him her ticked off look. What did she have to be ticked off about? That fucking wolf woman had screwed with his life.

  “What happened between you two? She said she hurt you.”

  “Fuck, Mum. What were you doing, having a cosy fireside chat?”

  “Jake!” Dad called him on the swearing, sounding like his old self.

  He slid back into his chair. “Well, I’m sorry, but this is just—”

  Mum put her hand over Dad’s as it lay on the table. “So that’s what’s wrong with him.”

  “There is nothing wrong with me.”

  “Bullshit,” said Dad.

  “Mick!” Mum pulled her hand back, and Dad grinned, lopsided. He’d gone the power swear word and was happy about it.

  “All right, so I got hurt. It happens. It’s no big deal. I’m certainly not going to talk about it. I don’t want anything to do with her.”

  “She says the man that went with her, the other singer, he meant nothing to her. It was just so that you’d give her up.”

  Jake scowled. “Yeah, well it worked, Mum. I gave her up months ago.” His parents exchanged a look he couldn’t read. “What now?”

  “We’re not going to interfere but—”

  “If you weren’t going to interfere, Mum, there wouldn’t be a ‘but’ in that sentence.”

  “Let her finch,” said Dad, stumbling on the word ‘finish’, shaking his head in frustration.

  “We just think if you’re still this angry—and don’t you say you’re not,” said Mum in a rush, holding her hand up to stop him cutting in. “Arielle must still mean something to you.”

  “It doesn’t matter what she means to me, Mum. She’s not someone I can trust.”

  “Sad,” said Dad.

  “Are you sure it’s not worth trying again?”

  “Mum!”

  “Okay, I get it. I’ll stop now, but—”

  “No ‘but’!” Jesus Christ!

  “All right, if you’re sure?”

  “Mum!”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t fuck up, Jay.”

  “Dad!”

  “Mick!”

  Dad looked at Mum and laughed. Jake threw his hands up. He’d eaten too much, he felt sick; and indigestion, disgust, or fury burned in his chest.

  “She wants you to know she’s sorry.”

  “Yeah, she told me. It’s friggin’ easy to say isn’t it?” He stood. He had to get out of here. “Thanks for dinner, Mum. I reckon you should take your matchmaking shingle down now. I don’t need your help.”

  “See you out,” said Dad, glancing briefly at Mum. He leaned on the table to pull himself upright and shuffled up the hall with Jake. At the front door, he tapped Jake’s heart with his strong left hand. “She here?”

  Before the stroke Jake would have toughed that question out, fired back some slick retort. But now, looking at his father, knowing how close they’d come to losing him, and how hard he was working to recover, he couldn’t fudge it. He nodded. There was a hardness in his heart that pained from not having Rielle in his life.

  Dad moved his hand to Jake’s face. “She here?”

  Jake nodded again, closed his eyes. He saw one of a hundred images of Rielle that had free reign in his thoughts, heard the music of her laughter, felt the sensation of her touch. “It’s no good, Dad.”

  Dad folded his last three fingers back and popped his thumb out, forming a pistol shape with his good hand. He fired it against Jake’s temple, mumbled “Fuckwit,” and pulled him in for a tender hug using both arms—one tight and strong, one loose and weak—before releasing Jake, swaying slightly from the sudden shift in balance.

  Jake reached out to steady him. “You can’t just use swear words, Dad, you have to use whole sentences.”

  “A new
me.” Dad laughed. “And you?”

  “I guess I have to use whole sentences too.”

  49. Real

  At home with the rental beige paint and the semi-regular ant trail, Jake knew he wouldn’t sleep. He called Bodge, woke him up, and wasn’t sorry about it.

  “Where is she?”

  “Mate, I’m not sure I—”

  “Where is she, Bodge?”

  Bodge breathed a flubber of air down the phone. “Look, last time I got involved in this, things didn’t go so good.”

  Jake stood at the sink and looked out the window, as if by looking into the night sky he could find Rielle himself. “You could say that. I want to know where she is.”

  “Nah, can’t see the point, Reedy. You made it pretty clear there were no second chances. She leaves in the morning anyway.”

  If that was true, and he wasn’t sure he trusted Bodge, then he had no choice. “I have to see her tonight.”

  “Don’t be a fuckwit.”

  He growled at Bodge. “That’s the second time I’ve had that advice in the last hour. I think I get it.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you get it. She’s different you know. I dunno how to describe it. I’d say older, but without the rock chick gear, she looks younger. She’s better. It’s like she knows who she is and doesn’t have to act it out anymore.”

  Jake left the sink, walked into his bedroom, “Bodge, I need to see her,” he came back out again. “I need to talk to her.”

  “I dunno if that’s such a good idea. You made it clear it’s over.”

  He pressed the top of his head into the hallway wall, leaned into it. “It’s not over. God help me, it’s not over.” He gave his head a thump on the plaster. He needed some way to relieve the pressure. There was silence on the line. “Bodge, are you there?”

  He could hear Bodge talking on another phone in the room. He couldn’t make out what he was saying. He waited, frustration kicking a football in his gut, and when Bodge came back on the line he said, “She’s coming to you, Reedy. Good luck.”

  Anxiety waited in the flat with Jake. It wrapped its arms around his chest and squeezed to make him short of breath. It beat against his head to make his thoughts scramble, it made his confidence a weak thing cast from flimsy fabric. She was coming to him; here to the flat, to the ants and the flickering bulb; to his life, far less glamorous, far less rich and full of possibility than hers.

  He didn’t have a clue what to say to Rielle. No idea if he could get past the hurt of her rejection and the knowledge she no longer needed him. No idea how not to be a fuckwit and screw this up.

  When he opened the door to her, he saw the Rielle of his dreamscape. She smiled and colours changed, taking on a brilliance he’d not been able to see without her. In her eyes was the promise of something near to holy; in her body, the concept of heaven. And when she spoke he heard the most seductive music calling to his soul.

  She said, “Hello Jake,” just like they were simply old friends meeting up again, like he might happily welcome her.

  The loss of her, the change in her, struck him with the unrelenting force of all his old fears and he forgot how to manage them, forgot he’d wanted to see her. He felt the ground cut out from beneath him and panicked, fucking it up by snarling, “What do you want from me?”

  Hearing the coldness in Jake’s voice and seeing his defensiveness as he blocked the doorway, Rielle armed herself with a deep breath and steeled herself with courage to see this one last unexpected chance through. With Bodge’s phone call, retreat suddenly became advance. But now, hearing Jake tense and bitter, she was struck again with how much she’d wounded him and how little her apology would mean. It winded her so her voice came out small and uncertain.

  “I want to tell you how sorry I am about what I did to you.”

  “A little late with that aren’t you?” He forced the words out through a tightly clenched jaw. “Anyway, I heard you at the pub. And I then got it again from my fucking mother. Did you tell her you fucked me over before or after you offered her money?” he snapped, then grinned savagely when she flinched. “Never mind, you’ve done your duty. I heard you. Go home.”

  Rielle stood in a circle of light in the passageway outside Jake’s flat. She thought he might slam the door on her. She stood her ground. Anything less than making him understand she was sorry was unacceptable, anything more was unfathomable.

  “You haven’t heard me.”

  “I heard nothing from you for ten months and now I’ve heard enough.”

  There was ice in his stare; there were knives in his truth. She toughed it out. “You wanted to see me. I hoped we might talk.”

  “What can we possibly have to talk about?”

  “I think you have a lot to say.”

  A muscle in Jake’s cheek jumped. He stood with one hand grasping the doorjamb, one fist furled rigid by his side, the knuckles white. He closed his eyes. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  Rielle moved fast. She ducked through the door frame and under Jake’s arm making him spin around to face her, making him slam the door and shout, “You can’t be here,” at the same time he was ensuring she stayed.

  “Why?” she shouted back. This was where she wanted to be, facing his anger, taking her punishment.

  Both hands came up to his head. “Because I can’t take this. I can’t take you.”

  “Why?” she baited him.

  “You know why.”

  Rielle had her hands on her hips, her wolf woman warrior pose, ready for anything. Ready to bleed if that’s what it took to prove herself to him. “If I’ve already broken you, what harm can I do now?” Her voice was hard, her own anger, born of fear, now coming to the surface.

  Jake stood with his back against the door, the tension in his shoulders popping the muscles in his neck and arms.

  “Rand once told me if I broke you I’d have to pay. Well, here I am, Jake. Make me pay.”

  In one blink he was in front of her, aggressively towering over her, forcing her to jerk her head up to see his face. “Are you seriously trying to kill me?” he shouted, face contorted.

  She looked into his eyes, so dark and hard. “I’m trying to explain.”

  “I thought I got you. I was so fucking wrong. I thought you were a goddess, but you’re a heartless bitch.”

  She sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “You were cruel and deceitful and vindictive.”

  “I was all that and I’m sorry.”

  “You took away all the things that made sense to me.”

  She said, “I’m sorry,” and she’d keep on saying it until he heard it and understood it. Jake was breathing heavily as though his lungs were full of water, as though he might drown in his anger. “You stole my sleep, you gave me endless nights.”

  “I wanted you to forget me. You weren’t supposed to love me so much. I’m sorry.”

  “Fucking hell. How could I forget you? You were my fixed point, my sanity.”

  She said, “I didn’t understand and I’m sorry,” and she’d keep on saying it until he let her love him again, even if it took the rest of her life. She had no idea what else she was meant to live for.

  Jake was being a fuckwit and he knew it and he couldn’t stop it happening. He wanted to shake Rielle til she rattled. Shake her til everything he loved about her was sprayed all over the floor where he could stamp on it, crush it once and for all, and never need to feel like this again—like he was being ripped in two, like he might never be a whole man again.

  “You—” There was a roar building in his head and heat filling his body. He couldn’t look at her anymore, look at the tears filming her eyes or watch her breath coming in snatches as he beat her down with his words. He recognised how close to tears he was himself and turned away. “I can’t forgive you.”

  Rielle stepped up close behind him. He could smell her perfume, not the complex fragrance of cosmetics, something simpler and softer. She put her hands against his back
and God help him, he shifted his weight into her palms.

  “I’m sorry, Jake. I get it.”

  His voice shook when he said, “I wanted to forgive you. I thought I could. I don’t have it in me.”

  She slid her hands around his waist and his head dropped forward. “I’m sorry.” It was a whisper caught in her sob.

  He put his hands on top of hers. She must’ve thought he was going to peel her off and fling her away. She braced, but he pressed his hands down, running them along her arms, grasping her elbows and dragging her closer to him so she was pressed against the length of his body. It was torture. It was heaven. It was hell.

  “If I can’t have you, I can’t forgive you,” he said. And when he felt her shudder, he released her arms and turned to look at her. “We can’t do this, Rie.”

  “What do you want?” She sobbed as he stepped away, curling in on herself, hugging her sadness.

  “I’m like an idiot kid.” He pulled at his hair in frustration. “I want something that’s not real. I want what we’d started to build.”

  She straightened up. “What if you could have that?”

  He growled. “I can’t. It was a lie. It was just another performance to you.”

  “No, that’s wrong. It was never about that with you. I loved you. I still do. It’s why I ran. It’s why I’m here.”

  She lied—she had to be lying still. Jake kept his voice low, kept his eyes on her, trying to read the truth in her face. “You’ve changed. I can see you’re stronger now. It’s hard for me to imagine how you remade yourself. But I know you don’t need me anymore, if you ever did.”

  Rielle’s chin lifted. Her face was wet, ravaged by tears. “You’re right. I don’t need you, but I want you. I choose you. I’m not whole without you.”

  All the fight had leached out of him. All his anger deadened. “I told you, I don’t have anything for you.”