~*~
"Matthew Seamus Davenport," I snapped that Friday afternoon. "If you say so much as another word I am going to bite you!"
Tempers were frazzled as the five of us, Jack, Matt, Simone, Tommo and I, were running late for our trip back to our hometown. The fact that Matt had been complaining non-stop for the last hour was not helping matters.
Matt looked at me with an expression that said, 'I'd like to see you try,' and, in the nick of time, Simone grabbed my arm and steered me out of lunging distance from my brother.
"Deep breaths now," she murmured calmingly. "We've got a long car ride ahead of us and if you kill him now he might begin to smell by the end of the journey."
"That's assuming we take his dismembered body along with us," I grumbled. "I was thinking of chucking him out the window on the highway."
"Well, it wouldn't technically be littering," Tommo said, hearing the end of our conversation as he put the last bag into the tray of Jack's Ute. "I mean he'd be biodegradable."
"The bones hang around for quite a while, though," Simone pointed out. "And, besides, I think a littering fine would be the least of our worries if we were pulled over by the police for throwing a body out of a moving vehicle."
"A dismembered body," I reminded her.
"Sorry, a dismembered body," she corrected herself.
"Don't humour her," Matt called over, slamming shut the boot of his car. "If she's encouraged she'll never shut up."
"Hark who's talking," I bit back and Simone and Tommo exchanged amused glances.
"So I think it's fairly safe to say the two of them won't be going up in the same car then," Tommo laughed, fastening the edges of the tarp covering the tray. "So what do you think? Her and Jack in the Ute, you, me and Matt in the car?"
"Sounds like the safest plan, all things considered," Simone agreed, her curls bouncing prettily as she nodded.
I had to restrain myself from leaping into the air and shouting, 'Yes!' at their suggestion as that might have given the game away…just a little bit!
Because the truth was I’d barely had a few seconds alone with Jack since Wednesday night, let alone a solid four hours. Thursday we had both had lectures and tutes, then he had worked late that night and I had taken the opportunity to stay at Simone's, catching up and indulging in some 'girl talk.' I'd gone straight to my lecture from hers and only returned to the flat an hour or so before we were due to leave.
I say due, that time was nothing but a distant memory now as the light faded and the street lights flickered on. At the rate we were going we wouldn't reach Bridunna until well past 11 that night. At least we were finally all packed and ready to go, we were just waiting on Jack who was still in the flat on the phone discussing some finer point of the scholarship requirements with someone in the know.
"How about you guys go ahead and we'll catch you up?" I suggested when we'd lounged against the cars for a good ten minutes. "Then maybe mum will have used up all her disapproval at our tardiness on you guys."
"Our mum use up her disapproval?" Matt snorted. "Chance would be a fine thing." Still, he wrestled open the back door for Simone (it always got jammed) and made his way over to the drivers’ side.
"See you there then." Simone waved and slid into the backseat, bracing herself as Tommo closed the door after her with a great bang before he too got into the car.
"Drive safe!" I called out to Matt as his car roared into life.
"I always do!" He yelled back before, with a great squealing of tyres, they disappeared off into the gathering gloom.
Why is it that boys get words like 'always' and 'never' confused?
I contemplated waiting down with the Ute for Jack, but before long, the air got beyond ‘a little nippy’ so I wandered back into the building. As I entered our flat I heard Jack say, "In terms of animation of space surely the most conclusive method is the sun?"
Smiling fondly (I loved it when he talked smart!) I threw myself down onto the couch and half listened to the intense conversation he was having with whoever was on the other end of the line. This was Jack at his most pure; sensible, serious to a fault and incredibly single-minded. I knew he would keep the other person on the phone until he had all the facts firmly arranged in his mind so there would be no room for error. He liked to know he'd done all he could to make sure things worked out and if they didn't he needed to know where things had gone wrong.
For all we'd basically adopted him, this boy was no Davenport, that's for sure. As a family we're more of a happy go lucky bunch although, of course, none of us had ever had our lives go as wrong as Jack's in quite such a spectacular fashion.
Speaking of which, I glanced over at the calendar and saw that it was the 10th of September and, therefore, 10 days until the six year anniversary of the accident that had so decisively destroyed his family.
I wondered what would happen this year. Matt had always thoroughly shielded my parents and me from Jack's antics on the night of the 19th, but I knew this year was going to be different. How would I react to Jack bringing home some girl like Kristin, maybe even Kristin herself, to help block out the pain? I had no idea. I wasn't naïve enough to think that it might be different this year because of our arrangement. After all, the rule was no dating and I was sure the debauchery which took place on the 19th could in no way be construed as that.
Well, I told myself sternly, I would just have to wait and see what happened and, if he needed to bring a girl back to the flat and…well…go for it hell for leather, then that would be what would happen. I would just have to be mature about it and understand that it was something that Jack found necessary to do to escape from the hurt.
I dragged my mind away from thoughts of the night of the 19th then, because, after all, I'd never been particularly good at being mature about things. I thought, instead, about how good it would be to go home and do nothing for a couple of days. I know I complained about the loss of my weekend, but as Dorothy so elegantly put it, there's no place like home.
I heard Jack wrap up the phone conversation and I rolled over onto my stomach, grinning lazily at him over the armrest of the couch.
"All sorted?" I asked as he chucked the phone down onto the kitchen counter and gave a little shrug.
"I got my questions answered, yeah," he said in the repressed tone which indicated he was mulling over something. I stayed quiet and watched him as he put his thoughts into all the little boxes he obviously thought they needed to go into.
Eventually he looked up and smiled. "Sorry I kept you guys waiting. Are the others still out in the car park?"
"God, no!" I exclaimed. "They would have died of hypothermia by now if that was the case. No, I sent them on to try and dispel some of mum's wrath."
"Chance would be a fine thing," Jack snorted and I laughed.
"You and Matt spend way too much time together."
Jack shrugged again as if to say, 'yeah, so what?' and then there was a pause.
It was fine at first, Jack is pretty succinct with his conversation most of the time and so pauses are kind of the norm. However, this pause stretched on and soon I realised that I had no idea what to say to him. This was somewhat disturbing as talking shit is a particular skill of mine. To cover my awkwardness I sat up and fussed around with my shirt, twisting it around, trying to make the neckline sit better.
"Tally?"
I looked up, the hem of my top clutched tightly in my hands. Jack was leaning against the dining table, his eyebrows raised in question at my strange behaviour.
"I…uh…I don't think this top is hanging right," I said, pretty pathetically.
"OK," Jack said slowly, his tone making it clear he thought I was nuts.
I sighed and released my top. "And I don't really know what to say," I admitted. "I mean, we kissed, so what happens now?"
Jack straightened and, walking over the couch, he crouched before me. "What do you want to happen now?" He asked seriously.
Completely unbidden, an image su
ddenly popped up in the front of my brain. An image from my dreams. An image with a decided amount of entwined naked limbs in it. I immediately went bright red, bit down on my lip and hid my eyes behind my eyelashes. When I looked up again it was to see Jack smirking at me, clearly with a pretty good idea what I'd been thinking.
"Well that settles that then," he chuckled before standing up, and offering me a hand. When I took it he hauled me up off the couch and straight up against his warm chest, releasing my hand only to wrap both his arms around me.
"Smooth move," I laughed, putting my arms loosely around his neck and looking up at him.
"Sweetheart, you ain't seen nuttin' yet," he growled in an appalling American accent that would have made me laugh even more if my mouth hadn't been put to use moving against his in the next moment.
I would have been quite happy to stay as we were for the rest of eternity (I mean that's why we have noses right? So we can breathe whilst engaging in a good old pash?), but after only about five minutes or so, Jack pulled his mouth from mine and gave a hoarse little laugh.
"We'd better stop there or we might not make it to your parents tonight at all."
I felt a little shiver of excitement at the idea and tucked my head into the crook of his neck before replying, "Would that be such a bad thing?"
Jack shook his head. "No, you're absolutely right, let's just stay here," he said, reaching past me and grabbing his phone. "So why don't you just go ahead and call your mum and explain to her why we won't be coming?"
The very idea sent another shiver through me but it wasn't such a good feeling this time.
"Point taken," I said pulling away and pouting exaggeratedly. "But I'm starving, I can't do the four hour drive without having tea first."
Jack reached up a finger and gently pushed my protruding bottom lip back into my mouth. "We'll stop for something on the way," he promised me. "And, if you're a very good girl, we might even get you a child's meal that comes with a toy."
So Much to Learn Page 25