by Foster, Zoe
I hadn’t wanted to come. Col and Eric were hosting a small lunch for their closest friends, to announce gently that they were giving things another chance, and I had really, really wanted to be there for Col. But they hadn’t told me about it until this morning, figuring there was no chance I would be booked up on a Sunday. Fools! In the football world, Sunday is the busiest day of the week. If it’s not a game, it’s an airport drop-off followed by shopping with the girls, or an airport pick-up followed by lunch and a movie with Josh, or a club barbecue.
I tried to not see little non-Camel junior running around, with Ryan’s mushroomy nose and wide, flat forehead, and I tried hard not to look at Cassie, Ryan, Melinda or Camel in general, lest my eyes give something away, like the fact that Cassie had been sper-minated by the wrong man.
As per the Australian Barbecue Rule Book, the men were unable to move further than two metres from the barbecue for fear that a mystery sniper would pierce their skulls with a white-hot laser. They stood there in their uniform of thongs or trainers, sunglasses, long baggy shorts and colourful tight T-shirts, beer in hand, muttering about footy and ribbing each other constantly. Meanwhile, the host and her helper (in this case, Cassie’s mum Jan, a rotund woman in a floaty pink-and-white kaftan, who looked like she should be writing romance novels in a boudoir somewhere instead of handing out burnt sausages) ran inside and out with food offerings, stopping only to ensure everyone had some form of liquid in their hand at all times.
The ringless, childless girls were grouped together, wedged (the perfect barbecue shoes: height without spikes), blow-dried and glossed, drinking and smoking and talking about shopping and how amazing Melinda’s new tanning product was, while the drool-covered, dummy-wielding mums and their small human troops occupied another, much larger, table and talked about outrageous day-care prices and which four-wheel-drive was the best and how Yogalates was really helping them get their core strength back, as they broke off small sections of bread roll for their children. There were no wedges here, just sandals or ballet slippers, jeans, singlets and the standard enormous black sunglasses.
As usual, Paola, Steph, Lou and I sat together. Since Toiletgate, I had refused to look Melinda in the eyes – a shift that was scarcely of note, since we never really spoke anyway, but in my head was an extremely defiant move. Steph had cautiously mentioned earlier today that Tess and Melinda had gone around telling anyone who would listen that Josh and I were on the rocks after I’d fled the post-match party, and recounting the toilet showdown as a wonderfully entertaining anecdote. I hated the fact that Tess was able to orchestrate people’s opinions of my relationship with Josh and nothing could be done about it. Steph had then gone on to tell an epic story involving finding a text from some ‘slut called Ashley’ in Mitch’s phone last week, and the war that ensued. Mitch swore she had only texted his phone because she was having it on with Simon Willis, and Simon didn’t want his girlfriend to see the texts in his phone, so the idea was that Ashley would text Mitch’s phone instead. I was stunned by the amount of thought that had gone into the boys’ plan, disgusted with both Mitch and Simon, and shocked at how not-shocked Lou and Paola were at the story. Apparently, this kind of behaviour was neither new nor cause for uproar. Steph had eventually taken Mitch’s word for it, but only on the basis that he gave her ‘total access to his phone’ whenever she wanted it. I could offer nothing but frowns and disbelieving headshakes.
As Steph dispensed her anecdotal outrage, I snuck a look at Melinda, who had her usual sour face on. I wanted her to know she was a bitch, and that while I’d always known that, I now had an actual experience to justify my knowledge. She clearly resented me being here, and was working with Tess to ensure I was rattled. The worst part was that it was working.
I felt tougher with my squad. I no longer felt like the New Girl, especially since Brett Langton had shuffled a new girlfriend – Amber – into the fold. I looked at her, glued to his side, quietly trying to extract some conversation from Kate just as I had once done, and made a mental note to go and speak to her as soon as I’d handed out my goods. How things had changed in the past five months, I thought; I was now the lifeguard instead of the swimmer.
I watched on as Lou inspected her new earrings, trying not to look as though I cared too much about her reaction. I’d spent almost three full days making each girl’s gift, which was twice as long as it should’ve taken. But I so badly wanted them to be perfect, and for the girls to like them, and to actually wear them instead of saying they liked them but never taking them out of their little plastic baggy again, that I’d laboured over every tiny detail and colour and bead choice for far too long.
‘So you like them?’ I asked, nervously.
Lou looked me dead in the eyes, every inch of her face indicating that I had one hand under the table, delicately pulling her leg.
‘Are you for real? You’re an absolute star, babe; these are hot!’ As they so often were, Lou’s sentences were riddled with italics. ‘I’m gonna put ’em on now. Paola, hold this.’ Lou thrust her plastic wine glass into Paola’s free hand and started unwinding the huge diamond stud in her left ear.
‘You sure you want to do that? You don’t want to lose your studs …’
‘Pfffft, don’t be silly. Your earrings will look heeeaps better.’
I wasn’t so sure about that. The earrings I’d made her were Aztec-inspired turquoise, wood and fuchsia stacks with a beautiful gold drop at the bottom. They were better suited to a breezy white summery dress and a deep suntan, or a black ankle-length halter-neck dress and tan sandals, than her caramel top and black jeans. But if she wanted to wear them now, so be it.
‘Huh? Huh?’ Once she had them in, she turned each side of her head to Paola, Steph and me, eyebrows raised expectantly, lips pouting playfully.
‘Ummmmmm, they’re kind of the best earrings I’ve ever seen,’ said Steph, who until now had been texting away on her phone, stopping only to sip her red wine. She always opted for red if possible; she claimed it was medicinal, whereas white shouldn’t just be called ‘leg-opener’, but ‘leg-widener’, given the number of kilojoules hiding between the fermented grape juice. Steph had a thing about her weight, even though she had a sexy, swimsuit-modelly figure. She would be struggling to fill a size ten, but she was obsessed with being smaller, and was always slurping on protein shakes or green tea, and skipping lunch to go to the gym.
Paola clapped. ‘Okay, bored of her. Mine, please!’
Trying to play down how overjoyed I was that my earrings were a success, I handed Paola her parcel. She began to rip open the paper and then, catching a glimpse of her necklace, stopped.
‘¡Querido! Guapísima! Muchas gracias!’
We laughed; Paola always slipped into Spanish when she was excited. It sounded wonderful rolling off her tongue: sexy and romantic, and as if she were featuring in a foreign movie with Penélope Cruz or the girl from that Adam Sandler movie about the adorable Spanish nanny.
She unwrapped the necklace carefully, letting all the adornments glide out of the bag slowly so that nothing tangled. It was a three-tiered piece, with dark wood, muted gold and long, oval ivory beads. It was African-inspired. (There was no chance I was going to create something South American-looking – who’d give cowboy boots to a Texan?) As she placed it around her neck – she was wearing a delicate, low, white V-neck singlet, which would work quite well – I insisted on doing it up. I’d spent a lot of time on the clasp because of Paola’s new short hair – when she wore the necklace, it would be seen – and with three separate chains all linking back to one clasp, it had been an absolute bitch to make. I did it up and moved around to see it on her.
‘Baby, choove outdone yourself.’
Steph had her hand on her chest and was shaking her head. ‘Jean, that is sooooo nice. Honestly, it’s just beautiful.’
Lou stood back and took in the whole look. Taking her cue, Paola struck a pose. With her amazing figure, smooth olive skin, toned arms and pe
rfect breasts, my necklace did look amazing. I’d never seen any of my work look so good. Of course, being a model, it was her job to make stuff look good. But still, I felt proud.
‘Jimmy! Look what Jeanie made me!’ Paola yelled.
Jimmy was a few metres away, talking to Josh. He looked over and nodded, surprised.
‘You made that, Jeanie? Jesus, that’s pretty good.’
‘She’s extremely clever, my little Jeanie,’ replied Josh, looking at me, his blue eyes impressed and proud simultaneously.
Josh and I had had a strange week after the Tess thing last weekend. We’d talked it all over the night after my weird conversation with Cam, and I was glad, but something still felt unsettled within me. Josh had soothed me and reassured me that there was nothing going on with Tess, but I couldn’t ignore my gut, hard as I tried.
I found myself listening in on his phone conversations. I bristled when he sent a text at 10.32 p.m. And I quizzed the girls on the boys’ schedules, so that I could catch him out if he said he was somewhere other than what the Bulls had laid out for him. Without even realising it was happening, I was becoming one of Those Girlfriends: paranoid, distrustful, interrogative. Everything I thought I would never be. And I hated it. My role in any romantic script had always been that of the cool, carefree, easygoing girlfriend. But that was before I was going out with a celebrity footballer with a loopy ex-girlfriend.
As it was the lead-up to the semi-finals, the papers were full of ‘Foxy’. He and his chiselled abs appeared in a ‘Hottest Footballers of the Season’ celebration, which stated, along with his height (181 cm), weight (96 kg) and favourite movie (The Departed), that he was single. I seethed about this in silence, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing me care about something as silly as what a national newspaper said about my boyfriend’s relationship status – as he apparently wasn’t in a relationship, and thus I didn’t exist anyway, HOW COULD I BE ANGRY ABOUT IT?
It was exhausting, this finals business. All Mum, Godfrey, anyone wanted to talk about was footy; even Ingrid had started to care. Obviously, along with the other girls, I was really looking forward to the season being over. Lou was pumped because … well, she would finally get pumped, as she put it. Paola was excited because she and Jimmy were flying to New York for a white Christmas. And Steph was off to Thailand for two weeks with Mitch. They weren’t alone: around eight other Bulls couples were going to Thailand or Bali for their break. The reasoning seemed to be that these places were close and cheap enough to offer a solid five-star holiday (and a solid tan) during which a girl could unwind with her footballer boyfriend after he had spent the last eleven months training for or playing a sport about which she cared very little but which dominated every aspect of her life, and during which – hopefully – she might acquire a large diamond set in a platinum ring. Steph was convinced she would be coming home with said diamond.
I believed this to be a dangerous expectation, considering neither she nor Mitch had blown out as many as twenty-three candles on a cake yet. But Steph was convinced it was going to happen. She’d seen a brochure for a jewellers on Mitch’s desk, which was apparently all the proof she needed.
Me, I was just looking forward to having time with Josh without the third wheel in our relationship: football. He still maintained that we’d be going to Greece, but everyone else seemed to think he would be picked to play for Australia in the test series, in which case we wouldn’t be going anywhere until the Christmas break, which consisted of ten days, at least five of which Ingrid would expect me to work. I was beginning to see the appeal of a quick flight to Denpasar.
‘May I see mine now, Jean?’ Steph was clapping excitedly in her chair, her newly bleached silver-ash-blonde hair bouncing around her face, as Paola and Lou discussed the merits of artisan wooden jewellery over ‘plain old platinum and diamonds’.
I pulled her earrings from my bag. They were delicate drops of thin silver circles intermingled with large, round chocolate-brown and tangerine glass beads that I’d picked up at an antique shop and that I’d been saving for myself; but, wanting to really impress the girls, I’d sacrificed the beads.
Steph gasped.
‘Oh – my – God. Ohhh! Goody! Goodygoody! I was so hoping you’d done silver for me, and you did! Oh, I love them. Look, guys, look at mine, aren’t they just glitz?’
Paola looked at Steph’s earrings for a moment, then, shaking her head, looked to me. ‘Choo know what happens next, right?’ She had one brow raised and one hand on her tiny hip.
I shook my head.
‘Choo get your leetle arse home, and choo make a whole bunch more like these, and choo start selling them in that shop. For big monies!’
I smiled, blushing. And, half-listening to Steph and Lou carry on – ‘ … would pay good money for these, you know … can never find nice jewellery for, like, night-time, and I don’t like that cheap costume stuff … don’t mind some of the stuff in Sportsgirl … would look so nice with that white dress of yours … ’ – I began to think that maybe I would.
ROUND 40
Scar Tissue vs Wedding Dates
‘Think I might just stay home tonight, actually, babe,’ I said, yawning.
Josh and I were out the front of my place in his new gunmetal-grey Range Rover. Mike ensured he had a fresh car every few months; with so few kilometres on them, they could still be sold as new. As the engine quietly purred, Josh looked at me curiously.
‘Jeanie, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I answered in a fashion that implied there were sixty-seven things wrong but I was playing that fun game often played by people owning ovaries where he had to guess one of them before I would admit to it.
He sighed. ‘You’re not still upset about Tess, are you?’
‘No, no, no. Don’t be silly. I’m fine. Just tired.’
He paused, still staring at me, me still staring directly ahead.
I was about as good a liar as I was a footballer. He saw straight through me immediately, reaching over to grab my hand and pulling me around to face him.
When I looked at him, I couldn’t place quite what I felt. It was a mixture of wanting a little more from him, but knowing he was doing all he could to reassure me. I was angry with myself that I was letting Tess get to me. And if I was brutally, pathetically honest with myself, Cam had confused me. Had I changed? Did I deserve better? Was I starting to get tangled up in the cars and the parties and Josh’s fame, failing to see the smoke and mirrors that enveloped it? Was Josh just an avenue to an easy lifestyle, and actually more trouble than he was worth? I’d never had so many issues and insecurities in my relationships with regular, non-spotlight guys.
I was also pissed that I hadn’t been with Col today. Plus, the talk at the barbecue had all but confirmed Josh would get picked for Australia and be away for two months. Like a cheap polyester skirt, everything seemed to be slowly unravelling.
‘Jeanie, something’s up, I know it is … Can you please let me know what’s going on up there?’
I gulped, trying to avoid his eyes. Impossible. And as soon as I glimpsed them, all wide and gentle and concerned, I felt the lump in my throat rise. Oh, this was absurd. I had no reason to cry. I had to get out of this car or who knows what would fall from my lips. Someone had taken over my ship, and I had a feeling it might be Captain PMS.
‘Josh, everything is fine, really. I just had a big week staying up to work on those pieces for the girls and —’
‘They were amazing, my Jeanie. You’re so incredibly talented. Maybe now you’ve seen how much the girls loved them, you’ll be inspired to make more?’
And what was that supposed to mean? If it hadn’t been for him and this stupid football world, I would’ve had a whole collection in the shop by now! Inwardly huffing and puffing, I resolved to calmly remove myself from the car and then go about my blow-up, alone.
‘I think I should go. I’m … tired and snarky. See you tomorrow, ’kay?’
I loo
ked at him fleetingly. Bad idea. His expression – with his eyes aimed at the gearstick, and his brows bunched up in confusion – was one of unease and sadness. I kissed him quickly on the lips, then opened the door and got out. It wasn’t till I reached the front door that I heard him speed off.
I walked in to find the Happy Couple on the sofa. My, how quickly things can change, I thought, recalling a time not long ago when it was Col who would return home to an occupied sofa.
Eric stood quickly when I walked in, straightening himself up and pulling his shirt back into place.
‘Hey, WAG-hag,’ Col said absently.
‘Hey, Col, hey, Eric.’
‘Hi, Jean. How was your barbie?’
‘Yeah, it was okay.’
I put my bag down on the dining table and took off my – Col’s – leather jacket.
‘How did it go today?’ I said to anyone who felt like answering.
Col, who now had her head resting on Eric’s lap, looked up at him, her smile gooey, her face soft. He returned her gaze with a knowing smile, and began playing with a rogue curl that had fallen onto his wrist.
‘It went really, really well,’ she said finally.
Eric carefully lifted her head and stood up again, excusing himself to go to the bathroom. Col propped her head on her hand and looked at me.
‘You look fug. What’s up your arse?’
I slapped on a fake smile and shook my head. ‘Nothing. So, tell me about today. I’m so sorry I missed it …’
‘Price I pay for having a sister who’d rather hang with thugs and their trophy wives.’
I bit my tongue. I found that comment incredibly inflammatory, even though it was just Col being Col, but I didn’t want a fight.
‘So,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘who came?’