Set In Stone

by Ros Baxter

  Well, Lou reflected happily, Sharni may be sweet and loyal but she was a long way from stupid. The best bit of Sharni and Matt’s marriage, as far as Lou was concerned, had been the day two years before when Sharni called Lou up to come and help her ‘redecorate’ his office. Man, it had been fun, taking Sharni’s precious oils and creating a passionate explosion of furious colour all over his monochrome workspace. Lou could still see the satisfied look on her best friend’s face as she had looked around, surveying their handiwork.

  ‘Still can’t believe I let the bastard take the room I’d planned for my studio and turn it into his study,’ she’d moaned, her bottom lip starting to quiver. ‘What the hell am I going to do now? I can’t go home to Stone Mountain.’

  Lou had turned to look at her beautiful best friend, a smudge of green paint highlighting one perfect cheekbone.

  ‘You’re going to move in with me, of course.’ She’d grinned. ‘Bugger the North Shore, you’re coming to live in Paddington.’

  ‘Really?’ Sharni’s eyes had sparkled. ‘What about Pretty Pierre?’

  Lou had thought about the French dentist she’d officially dedicated two years to getting to know. Slowly, of course; the way she did most things. Sharni knew that they had been starting to move in together – well, him, really, the way it sometimes happens, in stealthy, unplanned increments. Only problem was, Lou had recently realised that she didn’t know him any better than at the beginning. And that hard-to-know didn’t necessarily equal deep.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Lou’s heart had been light as the decision settled in her bones. ‘He moved out.’ Friends were friends and French dentists who specialised in being unknowable weren’t worth the trouble.

  Sharni had covered her mouth in shock. ‘No! Why didn’t you tell me?’ Then she’d narrowed her eyes and considered Lou carefully. ‘When?’

  Lou had checked her watch and grinned at Sharni. ‘Tonight,’ she’d said. ‘Come over about eight. I reckon he’ll be gone by then.’

  Lou smiled at the memory as she focused on the present. She sidled around the edge of the dancefloor as the rock classic droned on, trying to get a better view of Sharni’s partner. She wouldn’t think about other memories from this pub, and this damn song. She knew the song went for about five minutes, and they could surely only be about two minutes in. They hadn’t even got to the guitar crescendo yet. Whoever Sharni was dancing with was just about as tall as her. Lou couldn’t make out much beyond his blond head, nestled in the crook of Sharni’s neck, obscuring his face. Lou skittered around the speaker stack, so she could flap her arms at Sharni to warn her about Shazza Maclean. Sharni was really leaning into it, though.

  As she came level with the swaying couple, a scream of pure rage rose in her throat. Because there, in her best friend’s arms, was the same egotistical shit who had done her wrong for the last time almost two years before: Matt Finlay. As though he could hear Lou’s silent wail, he lifted his head and met her eyes, before winking slowly at her. The world seemed to narrow to this selfish, beautiful man, who had been King of Stone Mountain and was now working hard on being King of the World, dancing with her best friend. The best friend he had taken for granted, underestimated, mistreated and, finally, hurt beyond measure.

  Lou pictured her fist connecting with his long, straight nose; a nose that hadn’t been so straight after five years playing local football, but that had been treated to the ministrations of the finest surgeon in Sydney. Lou didn’t blame her best friend for cosying up to her ex when she was supposed to be blanking him. Not really. Sharni had never been able to resist Matt, but she’d done a fine job of avoiding him as she’d pieced her life back together. And tonight, Lou and Sharni had broken all the rules that were supposed to keep them safe, so no wonder Sharni’s resistance had weakened. It was like Lou had said, these events were dangerous. All that nostalgia. They’d indulged in drinking, meat and now dancing. The deal had been there for a reason. No wonder good karma had fled. Meat is murder, and all that.

  But, looking at Matt’s smug face as he cuddled up to Sharni, Lou’s clenched fist tingled. He pulled Sharni in closer, and ran his hands down to her buttocks, squeezing them proprietorially. But as he did, Lou saw something else: Shazza Maclean had also spotted the couple, and her face looked even more furious than Lou felt. It surprised Lou. Surely Shazza realised, after all these years, that Sharni had a higher claim on Matt, regardless of how badly Lou wished she didn’t. Then she realised it didn’t matter. She watched that fleshy little face wobbling under the red mohawk as she pushed through the dancers, and knew that for Shazza, Year Nine was all there was. She would be forever fourteen.

  Lou just knew no fighting was about to bite the dust too.

  Feeling as though she was moving in slow motion, Lou waded in to try to drag Sharni from the crowd before Shazza could. But the dance floor was thick with writhing couples, and Shazza had a headstart. As Lou shoved and elbowed her way through, Tommy Brideson stepped backwards onto her delicate red stiletto and crashed into her. In her tight dress and less-than-sober state, the impact unbalanced her and she fell to the hard wooden floor gracelessly. Then Tommy and his dance partner crashed on top of her, pinning her there.

  It took a full minute before drunken dancers and partygoers could be peeled away to help Lou stand. When she managed to get to her feet, she caught the back of Sharni, just her red hair and tight jeans, disappearing out the side door into Biffo Alley.

  She glanced around for Matt, but he was lounging against the bar, also looking in Sharni’s direction, but with amusement on his face. He had always loved to be the centre of a scene. Lou scowled as she dusted herself off and made for the alleyway. The question was whether Lou could get outside before Shazza did some serious damage to Sharni. It took precious seconds to get to the door, and as she pushed through it, she kicked off her shoes and took a deep breath.

  The scene on the other side was not quite what Lou had envisaged. A struggling Shazza was being held tightly by a long, muscly streak of jeans and T-shirt that Lou recognised far too well, even after twenty years, while Sharni was trying to pull herself to her feet from the filthy ground. Lou should have reached down to help her up, but her muscles were frozen in place by shock, fury, and a dose of pure muscle-memory lust. Jeans and T-shirt raised an eyebrow at barefoot Lou and she was acutely aware of her tight black dress and false eyelashes. Then he opened the door to the pub and pushed Shazza through it, saying gently, ‘Now don’t come out again, honey, or I’m going to have to raise my voice. And you know I hate to raise my voice at a lady.’

  The woman with the red mohawk called him an obscene name and Lou tried to imagine the last time anyone had called Shazza a lady. Then Jeans and T-shirt turned back and stretched out a hand to Sharni.

  Lou was still rooted to the spot, trying to talk her brain into dragging itself out of its tequila-addled haze and take some initiative. Luckily, the long streak of memory didn’t seem to notice, as his attention was all on Sharni. ‘You okay, Sweetie Pie?’ The voice was as deep as the swimming hole on his father’s farm and held at least twice as many sinful memories as he invoked his pet name for Sharni.

  The sound of it jolted Lou into action. ‘Sharni,’ she wailed, launching herself forwards and helping the hero of the hour drag her best friend up. ‘What did she do to you?’

  Sharni lifted her head and shook away her wild curls and Lou saw a vivid red mark already darkening to a bruise on one of her cheekbones. Sharni reached up and touched it experimentally. ‘She hit me,’ she said, sounding a little lost. ‘Before I even had time to get ready; as soon as I was through the door. That’s just plain dirty, isn’t it?’ She appealed to her rescuer on this last question, and Lou well understood why. That boy, now that man, had more experience in fights – clean and dirty – than anyone they knew, possibly than all the people they knew added together.

  He nodded in response, managing to convey both authority and disgust. Lou prised her best friend away from h
im and wrapped her arms around her, sitting down on a nearby rubbish bin to steady herself.

  ‘Oh you poor baby,’ she crooned. ‘What a crazy bitch.’

  Sharni buried herself in Lou’s chest and nodded, starting to sniffle. ‘My own fault,’ she whimpered. ‘Divine retribution.’ She let Lou pat her back for a minute and took a deep breath. ‘What the hell was I thinking?’

  Lou had a whole lot of things she wanted to say, like: You weren’t thinking or you wouldn’t have danced with that shithead, let alone followed Shazza Maclean out into Biffo Alley. But a best friend knew there was a time for ‘I told you so’s and a time for patting. So she kept patting and studied Sharni’s saviour over her friend’s quivering curls.

  He shrugged and made for the door, stomping on a still-lit cigarette. ‘Looks like that’s my exit cue,’ he said. ‘Fights I can handle. Tears?’ He shrugged. ‘Not so much.’

  Lou just nodded, trying to stop her eyes from greedily eating up every dirty, wild, delicious inch of him. Gage Westin. He looked different, but the same, like the last twenty years had honed him into a grown-up version of the exact blend of casual rebellion he’d always been. Some people grew up. Some people grew old. Gage Westin just grew sexier.

  His jeans were dark denim and fit his legs like body paint. His white T-shirt was devoid of adornment, bar the biceps that brazenly filled the sleeves, the hard pecs that stretched the soft cotton across his chest, and the dark hair that peeked above the collar like an indecent invitation. His almost-black hair was characteristically too long; his chin was too stubborn and even though she couldn’t see them in the dim light of the alley, she just knew his eyes would still be too damn green.

  Lou sighed as she watched him make for the pub.

  Some crushes you outgrew. Some crushes you out-thought. And some crushes were determined to haunt you till the day you were laid, cold and lonely, in the ground.

  But this, of course, had been so much more than a crush. Gage Westin had been Lou’s first love. And her first lover – if one night counted.

  Five minutes later, Mr Robinson was clucking his tongue as Lou helped Sharni to lie down on the backseat of his cab. ‘Oh my lord,’ he muttered, turning around and cruelly flicking on the internal light to get a better look at Sharni’s shiner. ‘What did I tell you girls?’

  Lou fought hard against the urge to tell the old gossip to mind his own business, but instead she shut the door gently and made for the other door. As she did, a firm hand grabbed her and spun her around, pulling her into the shadows beside the dismal little cab rank.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Her voice should have been firmer, more authoritative; not the croaky whisper that slid through the surprised O of her lips.

  ‘Just waitin’ out here to check you two got away okay,’ Gage said. ‘Sharon’s not the fastest learner.’ He shrugged. ‘Had t’make sure she didn’t come back for round two.’

  Lou nodded. ‘Cool,’ she managed, stretching her lips into a smile. ‘And you know …’ She motioned to the cab. ‘Thanks. For helping Sharni out there, in the alley. You arrived in the nick of time.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said casually, leaning back against a tree like he had all the time in the world and Mr Robinson hadn’t already started beeping his horn. ‘I’d been there a while.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lou repeated, like a shocked fish. ‘In the alley.’

  He nodded, his face dark in the shadow of the tree.

  Lou looked at the cab and knew she should wind it up. There were a million reasons she should not be talking to this man. And the fact that she had stood him up almost twenty years ago to the day was just one of them. But man, it felt good standing in the orbit of his pheromones. ‘How come?’

  ‘Couldn’t decide whether to go in. Don’t even know why I came. Not really.’ The way he said those last two words were telling. He shrugged again, but Lou knew why he had come and knew what she had been waiting for, all night. But man, it must have hurt him. Gage hated crowds, just one of the reasons he’d never made it to school much.

  ‘I get it,’ she said. ‘School reunions. One of those very bad ideas.’ She wanted to prompt him some more, but she was worried she might seem too interested. Which she was. She gestured at Sharni in the cab again. ‘So anyway, better get rolling.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, peeling himself off the tree. He approached her, all height and heat and smelling like hay. He stopped just in front of her, too close, closer than anyone else who hadn’t seen you for twenty years would dare. But Gage never got the rules. ‘You look good, Louise Samuels,’ he drawled, lifting a hand to trace the side of her face with one callused finger. ‘You look real good. The same. But different.’ He leaned in and inhaled deeply. ‘You smell good too.’

  Lou’s tummy fluttered at the delicate touch, her brain telling her to make for the cab, her body telling her brain to mind its own damn business. The finger that was at her cheek traced her bottom lip.

  And still she didn’t pull away.

  ‘Girls always smell good,’ she said quietly. ‘You of all people should know that.’

  Gage laughed in a way that made her sure he was thinking about all the girls he’d learned that with. ‘They sure do,’ he agreed, still tracing her lip. ‘But none of them smell as good as you.’

  Lou was suddenly very hot, and realised just how much she’d had to drink. This should not be happening. Twenty years ago she’d realised, one hot and wild encounter too late, that this was a very bad idea. And nothing was any different now.

  ‘I wonder if you taste the same,’ Gage said very quietly, in that low drawl that was his trademark. She wondered the same thing. She wasn’t the girl he’d seduced that night – that girl disappeared the very next day. Would he taste all the things that had happened? Would he kiss her and know all her secrets?

  Gage dropped his arm to put his hands on her hips. ‘So tiny,’ he said, saying the words close to her ear, breathing in against her hair as he did. ‘And I’m not used to seeing you in a dress.’ He picked her up by the waist and moved her like she was some kind of doll, a shop mannequin, ignoring Mr Robinson’s incessant honking, and placing her down next to the old jacaranda tree. ‘Come over here so we can talk.’

  Lou was pretty sure ‘talk’ was a euphemism. Gage never did talk much. And the way things were going, it looked like nothing had changed.

  He brought his body very close to hers and nudged her against the wide trunk of the tree with his hip. The tree was hard up against her back as he picked up her two hands and held them in one of his, stretching them high over her head and pinning them against the rough bark. Her chest arched towards him, her nipples sprang to life in the tight dress, her skin pimpled in response to the nearness and heat and smell of him, and still she didn’t move. He leaned down, so close she could smell his skin. No trace of cologne or soap; he smelled like sweat and clean laundry and something sweet. He smelled like sin.

  Then he used his free hand to grasp her chin, pulling it up so she was looking into his eyes, and kissed her. Those full, determined lips pressed against hers, parting her lips with his tongue and licking all the secret places of her mouth.

  In the last two years, Lou had only been kissed by Sharni (on the cheek), Pierre the French Dentist (badly), and an amorous Santa Claus at her firm’s Christmas party (who so didn’t count). And none of those kisses had prepared her for this. The last time she had been kissed this well had been twenty years ago and it was no wonder she had fled like the wind from it back then. Because it was the kind of kiss that you get lost in – not just lost in time and place, but lost in another person. It was a kiss that took all the pieces of your identity and common sense, and scattered them like petals on the breeze, right at the same time that it anchored you in the brutal, beautiful moment.

  It was a kiss to undo you. And Lou wanted more.

  Chapter

  2

  Stuck in the middle with you

  Something bitter and furry had taken up residence in Lou�
�s mouth, and she couldn’t understand why her body was so gracelessly squinched against the mattress of a rock-hard bed, in a room with too much sun, and why someone had let a thousand combine harvesters loose in there as well. She was almost sure that if she opened her eyes, all the pieces of this confusing puzzle would slide seamlessly into place, but she was equally sure eye-opening might induce other horrors, like confirming that the slumbering throb at the back of her brain was in fact the beginning of the kind of migraine she hadn’t had since she’d left Stone Mountain for good twenty years earlier. Better to lie here and hope the sun, the noise and the pain might go away all by themselves.

  Five minutes later, consciousness had punctured the drowsy film of early wakefulness enough for her to make sense of some of the puzzle pieces, but she still wasn’t quite woman enough to open her eyes and face them head-on. She’d worked out her bed was so hard because she wasn’t, in fact, ensconced in her chiropractor-approved ensemble, in her lovely three-bedroom terrace house in Paddington; she was instead staying at the Welcome Inn on the wrong side of the river in Stone Mountain, The Land That Time (and pillowtop mattresses) Forgot. The combine harvester noise was coming from Sharni, who was snoring like a sixty-year-old grizzly bear in the same bed Lou was occupying (which state was also responsible for Lou being squinched against the side – Sharni was a notorious bed hog). Lou’s tongue felt like the bottom of a budgerigar’s cage because she’d overdone the tequilas the night before – an error of judgement also responsible for the nascent migraine toying with her so mercilessly.