Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  I gave her a look. “It's not,” I said, taking a sip of beer as I looked back at the view off the porch. “Anyway, I should really start thinking about what I'm going to do, I guess. This is a beautiful place.”

  Rob practically puffed up his big barrel chest. “Yeah, nice backdrop, isn't it? What do you reckon?” he asked me. “Will you be able to do something with that?”

  I considered it. “Yeah,” I decided. “Not right now, though. I need specific colours, so I'll probably do most of my paintings at sunrise and sunset. I should get some variety in the images, too. I've got seven to do, and it would be fantastic if they were all really different.” I looked back toward him. “Do you know any picturesque places I should go?”

  A big smile grew across Rob's face.

  I'd asked exactly the right question. Rob was fiercely proud of his new hometown, and couldn't wait to take us on a tour of the area. He went inside and brought a big map out onto the porch, holding it up and spending a good half an hour going over possibilities about where he could take me. By the time we had a route mapped out, Rob was keen to start straight away, except we'd all had a few beers by that point and no one was driving anywhere.

  “I'll stick to the beach here tonight,” I reassured him. “You can drive us around tomorrow.”

  Later, as the sun set, I took my laptop, tablet and two deck chairs down to the beach and set up camp on the sand facing the shallow red cliffs on the edge of the shoreline.

  Sarah and Rob were quite helpful and I thought they were just being really nice at first, before I realised that me being this far away from the house for a couple of hours was going to give them the opportunity to get reacquainted, so to speak. I accepted the deck chair from Sarah and then rolled my eyes at her. “Go on,” I told her, inclining my head towards the house.

  She grinned. “Sorry,” she said a bit bashfully. “It's been two weeks since I've seen him and I'm pretty up for it right now.”

  “Just make sure I don't walk in on it or you'll scar me for life,” I told her as she hiked up the embankment towards where Rob was waiting for her on the porch.

  She laughed at that, turning around and shouting, “Lies! I've got a great rack! You'd be completely turned on!” Rob didn't look like he was going to disagree with that as they disappeared into the house.

  I chuckled, settling down on the deck chair and turning all my equipment on. It was so weird to think of them tearing off each other's clothes in there. It wasn't like the mental images were terrible, though, just foreign. That's how relationships normally were, I guessed. When half of the couple wasn't secretly dealing with gender stuff and both partners were actually attracted to each other. I sighed, opening a blank file and plotting out some of the shapes I could see in front of me.

  I got the outline of the landscape and spent a few minutes setting up a colour palette for the sky, the sea and the cliffs. I'd sat back to just double check I'd got the hues right when it struck me where I actually was. I was looking at these cliffs, I wasn't just squinting at a screen with reference pictures on it. I was in the middle of fucking nowhere, painting beautiful scenery and, at least for now, someone was paying me to do it. I wasn't sure how long this would last with all the crap that was going down at work, but it was nice while it did.

  All of that felt so far away, though. Henry would be landing in Korea shortly; Jason and Diane and the rest of the asshole Marketing department were still in Sydney. Out here, with the gentle sound of waves breaking, it was easy to pretend none of it mattered and none of them existed. I briefly considered just chucking it all in and moving up here forever, but quickly dismissed that fantasy. Mum wasn't pretend, and she would never leave me alone if I did something so impulsive. I couldn't do that to Henry, either. I owed him an explanation of what was going on. And then there was work. I'd never find another job like Frost, ever. Every marketing student in every Australian university would kill for my job, and if I quit, I'd never get a reference and that was it for my career.

  I couldn't leave Bree, either. Not now.

  So while all of that was nice to think about, none of it was realistic. All my problems were still real, they wouldn't just disappear because I moved up here.

  I sighed. I'd been enjoying the peace right up until that point, but now all this quiet time to think was making me miserable. I stopped for a moment and looked down at my pocket where my phone was.

  It took me the space of about three seconds to decide to call Bree. She didn't pick up straight away, and I wondered if she wouldn't because I was calling the hotel phone. In the end, she did. “Hello, Min's phone?” she said, trying to sound mature. I found it endearing.

  I altered my voice so it sounded really feminine. “Yes, hello, I'm looking for Min Lee.”

  She hesitated. “Um... sh—Min's not available right now. Can I take a message?”

  I smirked, propping the phone between my shoulder and my ear and filling in some of the colour of the cliffs. “Actually I'm downstairs in the foyer. I have a package marked for Min Lee. Perhaps you could come down and collect it?”

  “Uh, I guess? Okay, I'll be right there.” She hung up.

  I waited several minutes, and then finally I got a text message from her. “oh my god i know that was u AND UR TERRIBLE!!!!!”

  I laughed outright, and called her back. “That's for tricking me about spending three hundred on a phone,” I told her.

  “Oh my god, I hate you,” she said, and I could hear her giggling. “I was running everywhere down there and then I went up to reception and said, 'Did you see a woman with a package down here?' and they all thought I was crazy!”

  Imagining her doing that made me smile. “...Thought you were crazy?”

  “Oh, shut up, it was all your fault,” she said, and I heard the sound of the couch groan as she lay back in it, the handset still against her ear. “So how is it? Are you having fun? Where are the others? Weren't there other people up there with you? Wasn't Sarah up there with you?”

  I didn't know which question to answer first, so I just picked one. “Yeah, it's Sarah's boyfriend's place that I'm staying at,” I told her. “They're... busy right now.”

  “Busy?” She realised what I meant. “Oh. Oh!” She sounded smug. “So naturally you called me.”

  I... hadn't thought of it like that, but I supposed she was right. “Yeah.”

  I could almost feel her smiling through the phone. “Well, I wish I was there, then...”

  I stopped painting for a second, smiling myself. I wished she was here, too, but I doubted I'd be painting if she were.

  “So what's it like? Is it pretty?”

  I looked around me. “Would you like to see? If the TV can get MMSes, that is.” I took a photo with my phone and sent it to the number Bree had been texting me from.

  I heard a chime in the background, and Bree said, “I guess it can.” There was a pause. “Oh, wow, you're actually on the beach? Is it hot?”

  “Mid-twenties, now. During the day it was 30-something.”

  “Hot, mid-20s...” Bree said, and then giggled. “If I was there, I'd totally be wearing this bikini I have. My cousin got it for me in Brazil, it's not like a G-string or anything but there isn't much to it. Oh, and if you think my boobs look big in a bra, you should so see me in this thing.” I could hear the grin in her voice. It faded. “Dad won't let me wear it, though.”

  “Well, you could wear it up here,” I told her, fixing the opacity of the brush I was using.

  “That's bullshit, you'd never let me wear it, either.”

  I looked up from my tablet. “I wouldn't?”

  She was smiling again. “No way. You'd be all like, 'Oh, Bree, it makes me uncomfortable when you show that much skin. Please put your habit back on'.”

  She actually probably had a point. Although... I looked around me at the beach. Far up the other end of it near the centre of Broome I could still see some people swimming. Up this end, I was the only person. There were some other houses, bu
t they appeared to be empty so Bree could have probably have run around here wearing whatever she wanted. I stood by my previous comment that I wouldn't have gotten any painting done, though. “I'm by myself at the moment, so maybe not.”

  “It wouldn't make a difference, though, you'd still be uncomfortable.”

  I frowned, bleeding some colour from the sky down onto the water while I waited for her to continue.

  “Just so you know, I get why you're uncomfortable, and half of it has nothing to do with other people.” I opened my mouth and began to contradict her, but she interrupted me. “Maybe if you just looked, you know? Like, if you didn't keep saying 'oh, I shouldn't' and just actually did it because you want to?”

  When I was staring blankly at my tablet and trying to process what she'd just said, she quickly added, “Actually. Call me back later, okay? I'm going to figure this TV out,” and hung up.

  The dial tone beeped in my ear. I took my mobile from between my jaw and shoulder, blinked at it, and then put it back in my pocket and kept painting while I thought about what she'd said. It seemed important and I had a feeling I should have paid attention to it, but I also really needed to paint as much as possible before the sun set and I was running out of time. I took a couple of photos with my phone just to preserve some of the detail, and then blocked in as much colour as I could before it was too late.

  After the light I needed had gone and I was packing up, I heard the back door to the house open and shut and Sarah emerged with something in her hand. She saw me looking at her and raised it so I could see: it was a bottle of alcohol. Her hair was wet from the shower and she looked much more relaxed as she staggered down the embankment and offered me the bottle.

  I smirked at her, showing her my hands were full of my electronics. “Feeling better?”

  “I'm feeling great, thanks,” she told me, drinking from the bottle since I couldn't take it. “A bit guilty about the fact you were down here working while I was inside getting my rocks off, but I figured Johnny Walker will make me feel a lot better about that if I came out here and shared him with you.”

  I laughed. “Now that's my kind of threesome,” I told her. “Can you help me get these onto the porch, though? I don't want to get sand in them.”

  She did, and then we both sat down on the edge of the embankment with the daylight fading, passing the bottle between us as the sun disappeared over the ocean.

  “I can't believe you're actually here,” Sarah said eventually, after a minute or two of quietly regarding me. “A month ago I could hardly get you out of your house, and now you're here in my boyfriend's backyard in the middle of nowhere, drinking with me.”

  It really hit home when she put it like that. “Yeah.” Even I could hardly reconcile myself with the person I was a month ago; with the woman I thought I was a month ago.

  Sarah chuckled at my one-word answer. “So eloquent.” She took the bottle from me and had a couple of mouthfuls. “You should have brought Schoolgirl. It would have been a riot, she's great.”

  I smiled at that. “Yeah,” I repeated, and then realised I still wasn't pulling my weight in the conversation. “I was talking to her before. It would have been nice to have her here, even if I'm still with Henry...”

  Sarah poked me with the bottle as she was passing it back. “Just call him up and tell him it’s over, Min,” she said as I took the whiskey from her and had some more. “Trust me, the bandaid method is the only way, it hurts like hell if you peel away at it slowly.”

  I grimaced, half because I'd had a really big mouthful of straight whisky and it burnt, and half because of what she'd said. “He's actually visiting my mother in Korea over Easter.”

  She made a face. “Ouch.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. You see my dilemma? My mum personally invited him because she loves him. And she will never, ever accept me dating Bree. Or me as anything else except her daughter. I'm not exaggerating, either. She will never accept either of those things.”

  Sarah watched me. “So you're not going to do them?”

  I sighed at length. “No, I guess I am going to do them,” I said. “But I just haven't figured out how I'm going to handle her yet.” I thought more about it and shook my head. I didn’t even know how I’d broach the subject with Mum. It didn’t really make sense to me, either; I couldn’t figure out how Bree and I had become so involved with each other, and so quickly. Too quickly, maybe?

  “What if I'm making a giant mistake?” I asked, and Sarah looked quizzically at me, so I elaborated. “With Bree. She's so young, and I can't even figure out if we have anything in common.”

  Sarah snorted. “Yeah, I know that argument. Not so much the young one, but Rob and I literally have nothing in common.” She grinned ear to ear. “And I love that big, stupid beefcake. He's the nicest, most down-to-earth guy I've ever met and the sex is fantastic. I hope I end up marrying him.”

  I looked across at her. She and Rob were different. Sarah was the type of smart that approached actually being intimidating, and Rob… well, he wasn't. “Don't you worry about that, though?” I really struggled to put it nicely. “That you'll miss having really intellectual discussions with someone?”

  “Nope,” she said resolutely, and then looked sideways at me. “I know you've kind of walled yourself in at home with Henry for the last three years, but you actually don't have to just choose one person for the rest of your life and you're not allowed to talk to or have anything to do with anyone else. Rob's my partner. We do partner-y things together, and what he can't give me I'll just come to you guys for.”

  I sat back and thought about what she'd said. “That's actually really deep.”

  She looked at me for a second, and then laughed. “I love how this is a totally new concept for you. ‘I can talk to more than one person? Really?’.” She took the bottle from me and had another drink. “I bet you were one of those people who had just one best friend all the way through school and barely talked to anyone else.”

  I didn’t say anything, I just pressed my lips in a tight line.

  She looked across at me. “No? Did I get that wrong?”

  “Yeah.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Wow, sorry,” she said. “I just couldn’t really see Uptight Girl Min relaxing and socialising with a group of people, my bad.” That actually really hurt, and she panicked when she saw it in my face. “Wow, okay, that sounded really nasty. I didn’t mean it as an insult. I meant it as a genuine observation.”

  I knew she didn’t mean it as an insult, but it was really close to the bone and it took me a few moments to recover from it. ‘Uptight Girl Min’ didn’t relax and socialise.

  “You’re right, though, Sarah.”

  Sarah spent a few seconds frowning at me. “I feel like there’s a lot more to this,” she said. “If you want to tell me, that is, especially after I was just accidentally a total bitch. It’s okay if you don’t.”

  I wouldn’t normally have said anything. I actually was tempted to joke about it, but I didn’t. The alcohol was starting to get to me, and Sarah was giving me her full attention, too. Against my better judgement, I ended up just saying it. “I didn’t have any friends in high school,” I told her. “I used to be friends with this boy in primary school, but a couple of years into high school he stopped hanging around with me.”

  Sarah was at least careful about treading more lightly this time. “Why? Did you just kind of… you know, drift apart?”

  I shook my head. “I was really unpopular, and I guess it’s hard to be associated with someone like that.”

  She sat back, blowing a stream of air through her lips. “Wow…” she said. “That really, really sucks.”

  “It did.”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled, and Sarah very pointedly passed the bottle to me. I took a few mouthfuls from it.

  When I swallowed, she asked, “Did they pick on you for some specific reason? Like, were they jealous because you’re really smart or something? I had some kids teas
e me at the beginning of high school because I skipped a grade and I was younger than them.”

  I wished it had been something like that, I thought, remembering what had happened. I never talked about it, though. I could barely even bring myself to think about it most of the time. The only reason I could come up with as to why I was doing either right now was that I’d had far too much Scottish whiskey and it was interfering with my ability to know when I should keep my mouth shut.

  “It wasn’t jealousy,” I said, handing the bottle back to her. “Nothing like that. I mean... it kind of makes sense now when I think about it now. On my first day at high school, I wore my PE uniform because my dress was too big. I’ve always been pretty tall and I guess I was a tomboy, so yeah… one of the girls in my class thought I was a boy, and she kept slipping me notes and making loud comments to her friends about how cute she thought I was. I was way too shy to correct her.”

  Sarah was listening so intently she had forgotten it was her turn to drink. I felt like my only option was to continue, so I did.

  “Anyway, after Mum had taken in my skirt and I came to school in it…” I shook my head. “Her face when I walked into the classroom... She was so angry, and all her friends were laughing at her and teasing her about it.”

  “And so she started teasing you,” Sarah finished, finally taking that drink. “What stuff did they do? It must have been really terrible, right? I just used to get called Doogie Howser. I hated it at the time but it didn’t scar me or anything.”

  I wished it had only been light name-calling. It hadn’t been. “Well, it started off as really juvenile stuff, like teasing me about the fact I liked my uniform baggy, or saying I should join the Chinese basketball team. The original girl really homed in on the fact I was a tomboy, though, and she and her bitchy friends would tape coupons for push-up bras, ads for breast augmentation and things like that to the outside of my locker. One time after swimming my bra went missing, and I found it on the skeleton in the science room, and then as I was taking it off someone said, ‘that’s not Min’s bra, there’s no way that surfboard girl is a B-cup’. I didn’t want to go to PE after that. I always got into heaps of trouble for skipping it, but I didn’t care. I just couldn’t take all that crap anymore and I was sick of hiding and crying and everything and I just couldn’t do it.”