Wish List: City Love 4

by Belinda Williams

  Lauren met my eyes. “He hasn’t told you, has he?”

  “He told me you begged to move in with him after the accident because your parents were driving you crazy.”

  “No,” she said. “I moved in with him because I was worried he was going to kill himself.”

  Chapter 38

  Lauren didn’t wait for me to reply, which was just as well because I didn’t know what to say.

  “He drank like a bloody fish. Day and night. Lost his apprenticeship with the plumbing company he was working for at the time.”

  “He was an alcoholic?” I asked.

  “No. It was just the easiest thing to dull the pain. I’m still thankful he didn’t turn to something more hard-core, like drugs, or things could have ended up different. Have you ever noticed how he doesn’t drink much these days? Sure, he’ll have a beer when his mates are over. One, maybe two, but he lost the taste for it after that.”

  “But how could you have possibly looked after him? You were recovering from the accident.” My mind was reeling. Dave – solid, reliable Dave – so drunk he wasn’t able to care for his injured sister?

  Lauren gave me a wry grin. “That was all part of my evil plan. I played up my injuries. I became the poor, pathetic little sister in need of constant care so he had no choice but to sober up and look after me.”

  “But he said you suffered anxiety attacks? Nightmares?” The wine was churning in my empty stomach.

  Lauren nodded. “Oh. He was right,” she said, matter-of-fact. “I had to deal with all of those. They were nasty.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too, but I made sure I required lots of help adjusting to my disability so that by the time I was coping, he was too.”

  I sat staring at my feet, wondering why my toes felt numb. It could be the wine or perhaps I was going into shock? I believed Lauren, but my mind couldn’t seem to grasp that the man I had come to know, my quiet man of action, had needed rescuing. From his wounded sister, no less.

  “Do you want me to talk to him? Inflict some pain?”

  I blinked. “No. It’s OK. Let’s just let things settle down and I’m sure we can sort it out. I’m worried he might try to kill your father though.”

  “He won’t. I doubt he’ll even go over there tonight.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He’s angrier with himself right now than anyone else.”

  “Why?”

  Lauren dropped her arm from around my shoulder and gave me a sympathetic look. “He’ll have to tell you about that himself. Just give him some space for now. Come on. You need another glass of wine and a girly movie.”

  *

  The next day at work I still felt numb but somehow managed to go through the motions. It was fortunate I had two client meetings before lunch, otherwise I might have sat staring at the computer screen all morning.

  I still hadn’t heard from Dave, but that was alright, I reasoned. Judging by the amount of anger going on last night it would take him a while to cool down. But then based on my conversation with Lauren afterwards, I wasn’t certain being alone was the best idea after all.

  I jumped when my desk phone rang and shook my head at myself. It was reception. I picked up the handset. “Yes?”

  “Glen wants to see you in his office.”

  “OK. Thanks.”

  Oh goody. I’d avoided him all morning. The way we’d left things yesterday had been kind of open. As in, Glen still hadn’t decided whether my employment was required or not. I stood up with a deep sigh and walked to his office.

  I knocked lightly on his door and entered.

  He gestured for me to sit down. I eyed the seat warily, then did as requested.

  “I met with your boyfriend this morning,” he announced.

  “When?”

  “Before work.”

  I tried not to frown. I wanted to believe it was because Dave had a busy day but a little voice in my head suggested otherwise. Surely he wasn’t avoiding me?

  “I’m not going to pursue the matter any further, Cate,” Glen said. “Dave made it quite clear he initiated things and you’re not to be considered at fault in any way. He also mentioned that despite your feelings you were initially reluctant to get involved with him because he was your client.”

  Relief flooded my body until I felt swamped in it, my shoulders heavy under the weight of it.

  “I really wish you had told me,” Glen continued. “I wouldn’t have seen it as such a big deal, but when Michael called to inform me and I suspected you were being dishonest with me …well, you can see why I reacted the way I did.”

  Was that his way of apologizing for his accusations yesterday? I wasn’t going to be precious about it. After all, I had been dishonest about it, not blatantly so, but I had still lied by omission. “I understand, Glen.”

  “You’re a good planner, Cate. I hope we won’t have anymore hiccups like this in the future.”

  I shook my head. “Of course not.”

  “Leah will look after Dave’s account from now on.”

  “Thank you.”

  I got up and made my way to his office door.

  “And Cate?”

  “Yes?”

  “Romance is a nice idea, but a more practical outlook, like the one you apply in your work, would benefit you better, I think.”

  I forced a smile onto my face and returned to my desk, collapsing gratefully into my chair.

  One thing was definitely for sure. If I was receiving romantic advice from my boss, romance was well and truly dead.

  *

  By dinnertime I was certain Dave was avoiding me. And I was avoiding Lauren.

  “You said you’ve called him?” asked Scarlett, twirling a string of noodles onto her chopsticks.

  The familiarity of our favorite noodle bar made me feel slightly better. Slightly. Everything still felt wrong somehow, but I wasn’t feeling quite so panicked about it. “I left him a message after I spoke to my boss to thank him, and another two later today. He’s not picking up.”

  “You haven’t asked Lauren if she’s spoken to him?”

  “No. She might kill him with her one bare hand if she thinks he’s mistreating me any more than she already thinks he is.”

  “Messy,” Scarlett agreed.

  “Cate?”

  I turned to face Christa, who was sitting beside me. Despite the topic of discussion, I was grateful to be surrounded by my old girlfriends. In a last minute stroke of luck I’d organized an impromptu dinner. Even Maddy sat opposite Christa, watching us thoughtfully. She’d worked in the office today and Paul was at home looking after Ava.

  “Yes?”

  “I think you need to go and see him in person, whether he likes it or not,” Christa said.

  “Why do you think that?”

  She reached over and squeezed my hand. “Because he might not be saying much right now, but I think his actions are speaking for him.”

  I set my chopsticks down onto the side of my bowl, not feeling hungry anymore. “What are you saying?”

  “He’s protecting you, Cate.”

  “I don’t need protecting!”

  “We know that, but does he?”

  I looked at her despondently. “I don’t know, he won’t talk to me.”

  “I wouldn’t get too worried,” Scarlett interjected. “You always said he wasn’t much of a talker. Maybe you’re taking it too personally.”

  I twisted the napkin in my hands. “I know that. I’m not worried about that so much. I’m more worried about the part where I said I loved him and he asked me to go home.”

  “Oh,” said Scarlett.

  My friends fell quiet and we pushed our food around our plates instead of eating or talking. Things couldn’t be good if my news made my girlfriends go silent.

  “Cate?” Maddy said after a while.

  “Mmm?”

  “How far do you think he’d go to protect you?”

  We all turned to look at her.
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  “What do you mean?”

  Maddy shifted in her seat but her eyes never left mine. She cleared her throat. “Is it possible he thinks you’re better off without him?”

  Her words hung between us, and the constant chatter of the restaurant faded into the background as I absorbed their meaning. I looked to my other girlfriends for their opinions but they weren’t meeting my eyes. Christa’s noodles appeared fascinating, while Scarlett was focused out the window.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed, meeting Maddy’s sympathetic gaze. “He’s not going to call me back, is he?”

  Chapter 39

  It was inconceivable to me that the man who had driven me to my dying father’s bedside, who had held me when I wept, who had confronted my teenage nightmare with his fists, who had told me he needed me, would retreat silently from my life. But that’s exactly what he did.

  With each passing day, and every unanswered message, I felt the urge to confront him fade. Resignation became a drug, the kind which numbed everything until all I was capable of was going through the motions. Work, home, work, home. Repeat.

  “You need to see him.” Lauren’s demands turned to pleading. “Why don’t you see him?”

  It was almost like I didn’t hear her. He didn’t love me. What had he said? Don’t even think that. Not for one second. And if he did care for me but was acting this way to protect me like my friends had said? Then he didn’t know me at all and somehow that hurt even more.

  Sometimes I experienced a glimpse of my old self. Romantic Cate would have reacted differently. She would storm into his house and demand an explanation for the sake of love, because love wasn’t something you gave up on. That was before. This Cate was older and wiser and not about to risk herself in that way. Oh, it had been sweet for a short while, but I’d let my feelings run away with me. We were too different, that was the truth of the situation, and I couldn’t believe I’d been so stupid to almost lose my job over him.

  Sharing an apartment with Lauren became difficult. Not because she was being pushy. Every time I looked at her I saw my heartbreak reflected in her eyes, eyes so close to Dave’s it physically pained me to look at her. My being there was costing her too. Her previously close relationship with her brother was at risk and I was the cause.

  I started sleeping on the couch at Scarlett’s inner city apartment most nights. It was farther from work, but it suited me. After a few weeks Scarlett told me to move in. She was leaving for the UK with John in a couple of months and planned on living with him before they departed. I told her I couldn’t do that. I’d only just moved in with Lauren and it didn’t feel right to move all my things again. Scarlett just shrugged and told me it made no difference – the place was fully furnished – and I could stay there until they left for the UK, which was how I found myself all alone in her apartment.

  I told Lauren I was staying with a friend and she didn’t take my absence well, but the guilt I felt at never being home was easier than seeing her every day. Lying in bed the first night alone in Scarlett’s apartment, staring at the loft ceilings, I started to feel better. The room felt cavernous – so different from my own space – and I was surprised it didn’t feel empty. The lack of my things felt comforting, too. I only had my clothes and a few other essential items and it was strangely freeing. I wondered what I’d been worried about. I hadn’t wanted to live alone after Christa moved out but now I realized it would be good for me.

  I’d told my girlfriends I didn’t need protecting, but maybe there was always a small part of me that felt I did. I’d let Heath protect me. I’d let my girlfriends protect me. And I’d let Dave do the same.

  That was why it was completely crazy I was doing this.

  “Relax, Cate. You don’t need to grip the steering wheel so tight.”

  I glanced at Max, and then back to the racetrack. “Oh, I don’t know. Tight is good.”

  He reached over and gently pried my hands off the wheel. “No, it’s not. Trust me. Good driving, confident driving, is all about being calm and smooth.”

  Nice in theory but when my heart was pounding hard enough to beat a hole in my chest, calm was harder to achieve.

  “Take a deep breath, and when you’re ready, head back over to the starting point and we’ll try it again.”

  I did as he instructed and directed the Porsche over to wait with the other cars. “I can’t believe you’re letting me use the Porsche.”

  “It’s a women’s driver training day, you’re not racing. I can handle you bumping into a few cones but just avoid the wall OK?”

  “Would you be this calm if it were Christa?” I asked.

  “Hell, no. She’d be laughing too much. At least you’re taking this seriously.”

  That was an understatement. It was our turn again. “Alright, here goes.”

  I planted the accelerator and shifted up a gear, then another, and when we reached the set of traffic cones, I trod on the brake.

  “Don’t be scared,” Max instructed over the sound of the anti-lock braking kicking in. “You’re not going to break the pedal.”

  I pushed down harder and was genuinely amazed when the car came to a neat stop between the traffic cones laid out, and my foot didn’t push through the floor.

  “I did it!” I cried, then twisted to look at him. “I did it!”

  Max nodded. “Yep. Now do it again and accelerate faster and brake harder.”

  I flashed him a bright smile – my first genuine smile in a long time – and knocked it back into first gear, so we could return to the starting point.

  “Thank you so much for doing this with me, Max. I really appreciate it.”

  “You don’t have to thank me for taking a day off to spend in a car, Cate. Hardly a chore. What made you decide to do it anyway?”

  I pulled up behind the line of other drivers waiting their turn to do the braking technique exercise. “I guess it was Dave.” I was surprised that saying his name out loud didn’t hurt so much anymore. “I’ve never really done a lot of driving. Being with Dave reminded me how bad I was at driving manual and he gave me a few lessons. I wanted to keep going with it. Plus it’s time to invest in my own car.”

  “What are you thinking of buying?”

  I laughed. “Well, a Porsche would be nice, of course, but I need to be realistic. Something more affordable, like a Mazda MX-5 maybe.”

  Max nodded, looking impressed. “You’re going to go sporty? Nice. I’m pretty sure there’s a car club for the MX-5s. You could do some track days.”

  “One thing at a time.”

  Max gave me a grin. “You never know, Cate, you never know.”

  *

  I called my new MX-5 ‘Swift’. Not after Taylor Swift, although I had been known to sing along a little too loudly to her songs. Swift was so named because of her brisk pace. Naming her had less to do with Dave’s influence and more to do with the fact she was my very first car. I’d never owned a pet either, so tragic or otherwise, the name Swift was here to stay.

  Swift had a sparkling white paint job that shone in every light and I became rather attached to her, finding excuses to drive places whenever I could. I discovered what it meant to truly enjoy a car for the first time. She was my transport, but also my stress relief. She allowed me a sense of freedom and joy, and I surprised myself by joining the car club Max had mentioned.

  I’d just arrived home from a day excursion with the club. Our procession of Mazdas had journeyed to the Hunter Valley and back, and I was so exhausted I almost didn’t see Lauren waiting by my front door.

  “How did you get in?” I was aware I sounded rude but it was a security building for one, and it had been weeks since I’d seen her. Her presence was a reminder of everything I was trying to forget.

  “I snuck in with another person,” she told me unapologetically. “Cate, we need to talk.”

  I pulled out my keys and waited for her to move so I could unlock the door. “No, we don’t, Lauren.”

  “Yes, we
do.”

  I turned so I was facing her. For the first time, I noticed her eyes. Red rimmed and bloodshot. I withheld a sigh. “What’s happened?”

  Her lower lip trembled. “He’s leaving. He’s told Dad he doesn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore, Mum included, and he’s selling the house.”

  “Well, I can kind of understand—”

  “No, you don’t understand! He’s not buying the business. He’s going to give the company notice. He’s leaving Sydney altogether.” She wiped away some tears with the back of her hand.

  It was pretty drastic, I had to admit. “Maybe he needs a fresh start,” I suggested, still not entirely sure how I felt about the news but determined not to get emotionally involved.

  “No! That’s not it at all. He’s running, Cate. Don’t you see?”

  This time I did sigh. “Perhaps he needs to run, Lauren. Did you ever consider that?”

  I stiffened when she grabbed my arm. “You don’t get it. He’s running because he thinks it’s Nadia all over again.”

  “Nadia? Your best friend who died in the car accident?” Oh God, I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear this. Every time I came into contact with someone in his family I became privy to some new secret or tragic news. It made my upbringing seem uneventful.

  “He didn’t tell you, did he?” The stubborn set to her jaw made it pretty obvious she was about to tell me, whether I liked it or not.

  “Just spit it out, Lauren.”

  “Nadia was my best friend, but she was also Dave’s girlfriend.”

  Chapter 40

  I stared at her while I tried to process her words. The girl driving the car who had died was Dave’s girlfriend? The knowledge settled on me reluctantly. Of course. The girl who was ancient history. I recalled the guilt, the blame that flared in his eyes every time the topic came up. Not only had he almost lost his sister, he’d lost the girl he’d loved. And he’d been unable to tell me.

  I sighed. “Do you want to come in?” I asked Lauren. That seemed the least I could offer, given her latest revelation.

  Lauren shook her head. “No. I want you to come with me to Dave’s.”