This Is Now

by Maggie Gilbert

  ‘With what, drugs? Or anger management?’

  Sebastien nodded. ‘Yeah, all that. Jay dumping her didn’t just hurt her pride, it meant she was cut off. She’s been in rehab before. She’s there again now.’

  I felt like my brain had been dipped in cement as I tried to process this. As I thought back, so many little things that hadn’t meant anything started to add up to a different picture. Like how Anna seemed to be out of it after only a couple of drinks. Like the way she hung on Jay even though he didn’t seem her type.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

  ‘What, that my sister’s a druggie? That she’s been in trouble before for stalking, and assault? Why didn’t I want to share that with you, let me think. Oh, maybe for the same reason you never wanted me to meet your brothers, who deal in stolen car parts and drugs.’

  I scowled at Sebastien.

  ‘You make it sound terrible. They’re not that bad.’

  ‘Just because they don’t actually steal the cars or sell heroin to little kids doesn’t make what they do OK, Jess.’

  ‘I know. But I can’t help that.’

  ‘Neither can I. I thought when I met you that maybe Anna had finally found someone nice to be friends with, but I figured out pretty quick it wasn’t like that. She knew you were a way to get to Jay. But she didn’t expect him to choose you, not her.’

  You’d think that would make me feel less guilty about sleeping with Jay while he was doing Anna, too, but it didn’t. Even at the time I knew it was a rotten thing to do, and that Anna turned out to be a mentally unstable addict using both of us for her own purpose didn’t change that. I hadn’t liked the person I’d become, that I could do that to someone. To myself, to Jay, to Anna. In the beginning, to Sebastien. I might have justified it that we weren’t exclusive, but that was just bullshit. I wasn’t going to be that girl. I wasn’t going to get myself in that position ever again.

  ‘I’m really sorry Sebastien.’

  ‘What for? You’re the one that got hurt the most out of this.’

  I shook my head, feeling almost dizzy, as though a huge weight had come off my shoulders. It made some sense now; I hadn’t been able to work out why the cops had thought it was me. They wouldn’t even have known I was seeing Sebastien; I knew damn well I wasn’t a big enough fish for them to keep tabs on. The cops might like to get my brothers on a charge they could make stick, but even my brothers were small time dealers, a means to get top the sharks at the top of the chain, not that they’d ever talk anyway. I definitely wasn’t worth the paper work.

  ‘Anna tipped off the cops, didn’t she?’

  ‘Yeah. When everything finally came out she told our parents she trashed the place and just panicked, but she definitely sold the other instruments. At first they believed her when she said you planned it with her but eventually they believed me when I said you weren’t in on it. I’m so sorry you got dragged into this.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I don’t blame you. I don’t even blame Anna. Drugs mess you up.’ And that was why I couldn’t be with Jay, I realised, shocked almost speechless. I slowly moved to put the aluminium foil back in the cupboard, my stomach fluttering. I drew my line in a different spot to my brothers, and my mother, and even to Michelle and Jay. And that line had started to shift towards theirs, at least until I met Sebastien. Then it had started to move the other way. And I liked it better that way.

  Meeting Sebastien had shown me that the life I wanted wasn’t a fairy-tale, much as I bitched at him about that very thing. Sure, his parents were rich, and he had a valuable cello, but money didn’t buy talent or hard work. He hadn’t been given that cello to play because his parents were rich. And he wasn’t such a wonderful player because he’d been given the instrument. He’d earned it by getting good enough to deserve it, because with that cello he could do something extraordinary.

  I looked at him, and saw he was already watching me.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘You’re right. I can’t be a hairdresser.’

  His face leapt, a smile lifting his mouth. ‘Told you.’

  ‘I mean, I have to keep working here, I need a job. But I’m not going to apprentice. I’ll tell Michelle tomorrow, so she can decide if she still wants my help. She’d be better off to find someone else.’

  ‘Maybe she wants you,’ Sebastien said.

  ‘Yeah, she says so.’ I reached for my apron ties, thinking about how I needed to get home and do some work on my assignments before I got too tired to stay awake. If I wanted a real shot at getting into the best courses, I had to pick up my grades.

  ‘And you believe her?’

  ‘Yeah of course.’

  ‘But you won’t believe me. When I tell you how much I want you?’

  I took my apron off and hung it on the hook beside the sinks, ready for Monday. I’d come in tomorrow to help Michelle and do some prep work, but I wouldn’t need it then. Of course if Michelle gave me the sack I wouldn’t need it again, but that didn’t bother me like it would have before. I didn’t think she’d sack me, at least not until she got an apprentice signed up to replace me. And that would be OK. I had enough in the bank to support me until I finished TAFE, and after that, well who knew where I’d be? One of the courses I’d be applying to was in Adelaide. Just the idea gave me the shivers, but in a good way. I could stay here for now, but it didn’t have to be forever. I’d finally proven to myself that I could go my own way and even when the worst happened, I could cope.

  ‘I believe you, Sebastien. It just isn’t enough. You’re right, I do deserve more. And I want it all. I want to go to Adelaide to the same institution that produces architects like Darry Ackles. I want to study the buildings there. And if I don’t get into that course, I’ll hopefully get into one of them. If not, it won’t be that long to wait until I’m over twenty one and I can try for entry as a mature age.’

  ‘That’s great, Jess. But why does that mean we can’t be together? I don’t understand.’

  ‘Whatever happens, I’m not going to be here for much longer. If I don’t leave, I might start thinking again that what I’m doing is OK, that it’s as good as it gets. I don’t like the person I was, Sebastien. And that’s the person you want.’

  ‘No, Jess, that’s where you’re wrong. I don’t care what colour your hair is or where you live or what you do, as long as you get to live your dreams and I get to share them with you. I can play the cello anywhere, it doesn’t have to be here. If you go to Adelaide, I will too. I love you, right here, right now, and I’d love to be with you while you find out who you’re going to be tomorrow, or ten years from now. Please, just give me another chance to prove it.’

  My face felt like it was on fire, and my eyes ached. I think I hadn’t blinked the whole time he talked.

  ‘You hadn’t said anything about love before.’

  ‘What? Of course I love you. Ever since I saw you standing there with my parents, so colourful you stood out even though you were obviously trying to hide. You are so beautiful, and you have no idea. You had no idea who I was, or my parents, or that we have a nice house, or even what it meant that I was playing there. It was like all you saw was me.’

  ‘It was like that,’ I said, heart thudding against my ribs.

  ‘Really? Because I thought that. I thought you felt it too, and that was why I had to be so careful not to scare you off. I had to have time to make you let me in behind all those walls you build to keep everyone out. I had to try to make you fall in love with me, like I had fallen in love with you.’

  He reached out then and slid his fingers down the pink stripe in my hair. My hand shook as I reached up and put it on his wrist. He froze, his eyes shifting to meet mine, and I could see he was afraid I was going to reject him again. Maybe I wouldn’t need to change the colours in my hair. Not for a long, long time.

  I believed him. And it was time I stopped trying to deny that. It was time to be brave, and tell him what I should have told
him so many times. I closed my fingers around his strong cellist’s wrist, and stroked his skin.

  ‘Before any of this happened, I’d told Jay I couldn’t be with him anymore. I didn’t choose him, Sebastien. I chose you. It was always going to be you.’

  Sebastien’s eyes darkened, and he threaded his other hand into my hair.

  I sucked in a shaky breath, and when I let it out, I let everything go.

  ‘I love you too,’ I said. Then I reached up to kiss him, like I’d been aching to kiss him since he walked through the door. With my whole heart. With everything I had.

  I didn’t know for sure if any of my dreams or plans were going to work out. But I knew I wanted to try. I wanted to design beautiful buildings and I wanted to build a good life for myself, In Adelaide, or Sydney, or wherever. A life that included Sebastien.

  It was so much more than I’d dared dream of.

  And it was more than enough. For now.

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  ISBN: 9780857991171

  Title: This Is Now

  Copyright © 2014 by Maggie Gilbert

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Limited, Level 4/132 Arthur Street, North Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2060.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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