Selling the Drama

by Theresa Smith

  Charlotte raised her eyebrow at him and smirked.

  "Anymore," he corrected. "Now, you're a really good girl."

  "Yeah, perfectly behaved."

  "Perfect indeed." Toby fiddled with the top button of her shirt. Pressing his lips to her collarbone, he kissed his way up to her ear. "I love you best." She sighed and melted beneath him. "Although, Jenna does have incredible legs and if she's going to insist on swimming naked when she visits, then-"

  Charlotte punched him again, right in the solar plexus. Struggling for breath, he rolled off of her.

  "Shit!"

  "Arsehole." She leaned over him, laughing merrily.

  "Totally worth it," he gasped out, reaching out for her once again, tracing his fingers across her smiling mouth, certain all thoughts of her argument with her mother were no longer at the forefront of her mind.

  The last dance of the year was being organised by Ellie, who had taken on the position within the student council as Social Coordinator. She was perfect for the job, both a born organiser and socialiser rolled into one. Charlotte, by default of being her best friend, was roped in to assist. The theme for the event was Guy's and Doll's, harking back to that gangster era from bygone days. Charlotte had no doubt Jake had played a role in picking that theme. Even so, the idea of wearing a flapper dress was enough to entice Charlotte to get involved with spirit. She loved glamour and had not yet had any real reason to glam it up for Toby.

  They went shopping together, mostly in second hand stores, managing to unearth a decent selection of items so they could put together fairly convincing costumes. Toby himself even found a trilby hat along with black and white loafers to compliment his pin stripe suit. Charlotte borrowed a long strand of pearls from her mother and some red high heels Iris claimed to have forgotten she even owned.

  "How can you forget you own shoes so gorgeous?" Charlotte chastised her mother, stroking the leather lovingly.

  Iris waved a hand in her direction dismissively. "Oh, for heaven's sake, I have so many things jammed in that wardrobe. I have no memory of half the things in there."

  "So, I can keep them then?" Charlotte asked hopefully, clutching the shiny patent leather peep toes close to her chest, almost salivating over them.

  "Yes, you can keep them." Iris smiled indulgently, looking at Charlotte in the mirror of her dressing table; she was sitting there in her underwear applying makeup in preparation for her anniversary celebrations with Royce. They were beginning with dinner, and then continuing on to a bed and breakfast out of town, planning to be away for the entire weekend. "So, how are things travelling along with Toby?"

  Charlotte threw herself down onto the couch, still cradling the shoes. "Good."

  Iris turned to her with a disdainful expression on her face. "Charlotte, please. Is that all you're going to offer me? Come on!"

  Charlotte laughed at her mother's mock disappointment. Why not confide in her? Iris seemed to be making an effort and that in itself was worthy of notice. Charlotte had never been all that good at holding grudges anyway, and while their argument about Jenna was by far the worse they had ever had, she was getting a little tired of being mad at her mother.

  "Okay. Very good. Like, orgasmic good." Charlotte grinned with satisfaction at her mother.

  Iris clapped her hands, a look of genuine delight coming over her face. "Really?"

  "Totally. He is artful with his tongue." Charlotte was not embarrassed about discussing this with her mother. It was a topic that she felt confident would not be passed on to her father.

  Iris was looking immensely pleased with this news. Go figure you could get her complete attention by talking about sex, yet things like school grades and plans for the future never warranted more than a perfunctory shrug. Charlotte smiled at her anyway; she would take whatever she could get from her mother. It was offered all too infrequently for her to be choosy.

  "I have to say, I'm a little impressed." Iris picked up her makeup brush and resumed applying her powder, catching Charlotte's eye in the mirror from time to time as she continued the conversation. "That speaks volumes to me about his feelings for you." Iris picked up a tube of red lipstick and began filling in the outline she had drawn around her lips.

  Charlotte nodded, stretching out onto the couch a bit more, her arm flung back over her shoulder in repose. "Don't I know it."

  "Indeed." Iris began to work on her eye makeup. "Sex is the pinnacle of a good relationship. While I won't embarrass you by going into details, it's what has kept my relationship with your father alive for so long. We love so many things about each other, but there are things of course that we also find irritating. Sex nullifies these things; it returns us to each other, and is the very reason why we work so well."

  Charlotte considered this silently, allowing her mother to complete her makeup routine without further interruption. When she was done, Iris stood, crossing to the wardrobe, emerging moments later with two dresses held in her hands. "Which one?"

  "The navy. It has cleavage. Dad will be panting by the second course."

  Iris grinned at her, hanging the green one back in the wardrobe. She stepped into the dress, approaching Charlotte so she could zip her into it. Charlotte rose from the couch, obliging. Her mother spoke to her over her shoulder. "Toby is very like his father, not only in appearance."

  Charlotte stepped back, startled at the change in topic. Before she could come up with any response, Iris turned to her, holding her hand out in front of her to prevent Charlotte from saying anything.

  "Just hear me out. I know this is not something he would like to hear. He hates his father, and I understand that. But once, a long time ago, his father was not an angry man. He was fun, and handsome, and romantic. He was so smart. It never surprised me that he became a doctor. I don't know what went wrong along the way. I don't know what changed him." Iris turned away from Charlotte and crossed over to her dresser, lifting the lid on her jewellery box, sifting through the contents absently.

  Charlotte frowned at her mother's back, not fully comprehending what Iris was inferring. "So, what are you saying? That Toby will turn out like his father no matter what he's like right now?"

  Iris sighed deeply. "Of course not. You take leaps and bounds from nothing Charlotte. I'm just saying that Toby reminds me of his father. That's all. I don't believe that genetics determines behaviour. The way we behave is all down to choice. Look at Jenna for example. If genetics were the sole determination of our behaviour, she wouldn't do one stupid thing after another with no apparent evidence of her ever learning from her mistakes. She'd be like you and I wouldn't have a thing to worry about."

  Charlotte rolled her eyes but let the comment slide, not wanting to argue again with her mother about Jenna. Besides, she really wanted the red shoes her mother had just given her, and not even a defence of Jenna was worth risking those beauties.

  Iris picked up a strand of pearls and fingered them lightly. "It's very sad for me, knowing what their life turned out like. I'm sad for both of them because even though Toby's mother was my best friend back then, I had a soft spot for his father. It's probably why I care so much about Toby. Because he was theirs. I remember his christening day so clearly. They both seemed so much in love. It was very remiss of me to lose contact with them like I did." Iris sighed and dropped the pearls back into the jewellery box, snapping the lid shut and whirling to face Charlotte.

  "I love him," Charlotte declared. It was so easy to say this to her mother. Why couldn't she just come right out and say it to Toby? There was something wrong with her. Perhaps she had too much of Iris's ambivalence within her. Perhaps she was just a coward.

  "I'm sure you do. He has that quality about him. There are some men that women find very hard to resist, no matter what their sins." Iris crossed back to her wardrobe. "I think I might grab a cardigan. It could get cold up in the mountains. I'm not sure what time we'll be back on Sunday," she called lightly, from inside the walk in.

  Charlotte smiled to he
rself at that. "Okay."

  "Not before lunch, at least," Iris added.

  "Have a nice time, Mum."

  "Oh, I will darling. You too."

  Charlotte left the room then, the red shoes dangling from her fingertips. She shook her head, thinking not for the first time about how odd her mother was. Seriously odd.

  "You look incredible."

  Charlotte finished applying a heavy layer of dark red lipstick before glancing over to the door where Toby was leaning casually, looking in at her with a grin on his face. She gaped at the sight of him. "Far out! You look amazing. Like an actual gangster." She tossed the lipstick aside and strolled over to him, placing her hands onto the lapels of his jacket. "Al Capone, eat your heart out!" Winking, she rose up onto her toes so she could place a kiss on his neck.

  "Charlotte! You have that red lipstick on!" Toby tried to pull back but Charlotte was done, the lipstick mark in place.

  "There." She smiled at him, putting her finger onto his lips. "Every gangster worth his weight should have a lipstick mark on him somewhere. Especially one as hot as you."

  Toby caught her finger between his teeth, nibbling at it lightly. "You realise, on account of this being a school function, that I'm not going to be allowed to have my hands on you at all, much less my lips. I hope we don't have to stay long."

  Charlotte laughed, retracting her finger from his mouth. "Party pooper. There's always sneaking outside."

  "True." He looked her up and down appreciatively. "Those shoes are very sexy. Are you wearing stockings?"

  "I am." Charlotte lifted her skirt to mid-thigh, exposing the lacy garters she was wearing to hold them up. "Check it out. Mum has the coolest gear."

  Toby groaned. "Now I have to keep picturing that sight in my head without being able to touch you."

  Charlotte smiled once again, inching the skirt even higher. "I have no underpants on. Just the stockings." Dropping the skirt, she stalked past him, a wicked grin on her face as she ducked just out of his reach while passing him by.

  "You are killing me."

  Charlotte discovered fairly early on in the evening that being the sidekick of the event organiser attracted no perks whatsoever. It did however, attract a whole load of labour, running back and forth, restocking the drinks, putting out the rubbish, lining the bins with new liners, getting more drinks, back to the rubbish. It was exhausting and the red shoes, they were not helping. Charlotte dispensed of them within an hour of arriving, along with her sexy stockings, stuffing all of it into her bag in a corner of the kitchen, too exhausted and hot to lament their removal.

  "Where is the rest of the committee? Surely we're due for a shift change." Charlotte whined at one point to Ellie, who in all honesty, had not stopped for a single moment all night either and was looking worse for wear on account of it. Ellie's beautiful champagne coloured dress had a dark spreading stain on it from a spilled can of coke and her eyeliner had smudged from sweating so much.

  Ellie looked away, a sheepish expression coming over her face. "I might have forgotten to draw up the roster."

  Charlotte gaped at her, stunned. "You're shitting me, right?"

  "Nope."

  "Ellie!" Charlotte cried out in frustration. "It's so hot! And I haven't even danced once yet!"

  "Tell me about it! Neither have I and my underpants are soaked."

  Charlotte laughed at that, taking a large swig of water from her plastic cup. "I am never helping you again! But, I will do this next rubbish run, because I feel a little bit sorry for you," she offered. "Your dress is far more trashed than mine, and that is very sad."

  Ellie smiled gratefully at Charlotte. "Thanks. It should be the last one. The drinks are all finished now and there's only forty five minutes left. No one should have to come back here at all."

  "Why don't you go and dance? Find Jake." The boys had been helping out all night long, but it had been more than a half an hour since they had last put in an appearance.

  "I'll wait for you and we'll go together. He'll be out in the side foyer sneaking rum into his coke or something equally as stupid as that, Toby acting as a look out for him. He's taken the whole gangster theme to the brink of course, replicating it right down to the concept of prohibition, sneaking alcohol into the venue as if it's a speakeasy instead of a school disco. I'll laugh my head off if he gets caught and suspended." She rolled her eyes, still smiling though, her obvious affection for Jake hard for her to deny, even in his idiocy.

  Charlotte smiled in agreement and hoisted the big bag out of the bin, tying it off at the top. Slipping out the back door, she wound her way up the darkened path towards the back of the building where the dumpsters were kept. Lugging it over the edge, she let the lid fall down with a bang, taking a moment to wipe her hands off onto her dress. Thank goodness it was black and you could not actually see any of the smears on it. She shuddered to think what was all over it after tonight. Heading back up the path, Charlotte breathed in the cool night air, enjoying the feel of the chilled concrete under her feet. It was monstrously hot inside the building.

  He hit her with a force that left her pinned against the wall of the building, one of his arms held tight across her throat, the rest of his body locking her into place roughly. Her eyes began to water as he applied more pressure against her throat, her breath now shortening out painfully. Looking right into her eyes, he smiled, a leer that made her feel physically sick. Sweat trickled down her body, her stomach lurching with every difficult breath. Her panic magnified when she saw his other hand rise, the glint of metal catching her eye. His smile widened, her fear evident and subsequently pleasing for him to witness.

  "I have thought long and hard about what I was going to do to you. There were so many options. And then it came to me. The perfect way to get back at you for ruining my fucking life. The perfect way for you to remember me." His face loomed closer, his breath washing over her in stale hot waves. She flinched, unable to pull back from him, the wall directly behind her head. She wanted to scream out in terror but her voice had left her, the fear so intense within her, his arm constricting her throat in a way that made it difficult to even breathe, much less contemplate making a sound. He pressed his mouth against hers and bit down on her bottom lip, hard, his teeth breaking the skin, the taste of her own blood hitting her tongue. She struggled against him then, unwilling to yield to him, to just allow him to have his way with her, whatever that way was going to be. But he was stronger and had her pinned to his advantage, not her own. She found her voice though as she felt the point of his knife break the surface of her skin just below her ear. Screaming with terror more than pain, piercing the night air with its sound, adrenalin propelling her to kick out at him with renewed vigour. He slashed at her, tearing her neck open from the base of her ear down to her collarbone, the pain of it blinding and rendering her mute once again.

  "Not so fucking pretty now. You have ruined my life you stupid bitch and I am going to cut you to-" Porter slumped to the ground, releasing Charlotte immediately. She put her hands up to cover the bleeding cut along her neck, the pain as rich as the blood that was pouring out. Ellie stood in front of her, a large rock with jagged edges held up almost delicately in her hand, her eyes wide with terror.

  Without hesitation, Ellie dropped the rock and launched herself at Charlotte, putting her own hands up over the wound, her eyes filling with tears, loud screams for help, somebody to help, emanating from her lips. Charlotte fell against Ellie, crying uncontrollably, unable to hold herself upright any longer, terror having turned her legs to liquid. Ellie's hands stayed firm against her neck all the while, her presence a reassurance Charlotte absorbed with a neediness that was visceral.

  Footsteps could be heard running up the path. Ellie turned in that direction, her voice cutting out, "Somebody call an ambulance! Hurry!"

  Charlotte wavered a little, Ellie's face swimming in and out of focus, her body feeling heavy and light all at the same time. Another pair of arms caught her around the waist,
scooping her up firmly and while she could no longer see anything in front of her, she could smell it was Toby, could feel it was him and it calmed her, the knowledge that he had her. She would be alright now, as long as he had a hold of her, she would be alright.

  Toby would never say it out loud, but out of the four of them, Ellie was by far the best one to have done the deed. She was the only one with no connection whatsoever to the arsehole, merely a girl who had happened upon him holding her best friend at knife point, panicking, picking up a rock and braining him, all thoughts and motivations channelled only towards helping her friend. That she had actually managed to kill him in place of only knocking him out, well, that was a stroke of dumb luck like nothing else. Toby had no fear of Ellie being held accountable; he had the tape with Porter's threat on it to provide to the police and had in fact already offered it to one of the officers questioning Ellie, who was so innocently innocent in her statements, someone blind and deaf would be able to tell she had acted entirely without malice.

  Charlotte had thirty two stitches in place from the spot where her ear connected with her jaw running in a long line down to her collarbone. She had also needed a blood transfusion and was currently in recovery while Toby sat in the emergency waiting room, Jake beside him holding fast to Ellie's hand, who looked so shocked Toby wondered if she might need medical attention for herself. The police officer who had been questioning Ellie informed Toby he had reached Iris and Royce at their accommodations and they were returning first thing in the morning.

  Toby looked up at him. "Thank you. So, what happens now?" He indicated in Ellie's direction with a sideways nod of his head.

  The officer glanced over at her briefly before shaking his head. "Nothing. It's pretty clear what happened. I file my report, and from there an inquest will be held where Ellie gives her account of the events, and Charlotte too if we require it; but after that, the case will be closed. End of story."