He kissed my head while his hands rubbed soothing circles over my back. “Shh … sweetheart. It’s okay.”
It wasn’t okay. It was far from okay. I hated him … until he was gone. And that’s when I loved him, and hated myself. Yeah, I loved him. I knew that now. Brad had been right when he’d said it earlier in the night. I just hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, because I’d always believed in the notion of insta-love; that two people could just connect so quickly and effortlessly. But I’d also believed that kind of love to be perfect and sweet, not heart-wrenching and a whole lot of fucking hard work. I mean, how could I love a man who’d just been screwing two other women and then who’d climbed into bed with me? It didn’t make an ounce of sense. But I did love him, and right then, there was no place else I wanted to be than in his arms.
Continuing to cry until I could cry no more, I pulled away, his grip on me tight. “Please let me go, Josh,” I whispered.
“Never,” he whispered back, his lips finding mine, his tongue delicately dipping into my mouth.
I sighed. Josh’s kisses stripped me. They left me bare and wanting more, no matter where, why or how he gave them. They just fucking stripped me.
Brad’s loud hog-sounding snore broke me from my temporary brain lapse, and I forcefully pushed Josh back. “No. I can’t do this. I won’t do this.”
“Just let me hold you, sweetheart. Please, just let me hold you.”
I shouldn’t have, but I did. I let him hold me until I fell asleep.
***
When I woke in the morning, my head was on Josh’s chest, his arm around my body, and Brad was nowhere to be seen. Seeing his bed empty, his bag gone … it hurt my heart. Waking up to find Josh in my bed and me draped over him could not have been easy for Brad. Then again, it was him who’d reaffirmed the ‘no strings’, and it was also him who’d said Josh would not return, but he had, so where else was he going to sleep?
Carefully peeling myself off Josh’s chest, I moved ever so slightly in the hope I would not wake him. I needed a shower, and a chance to freshen up before facing him in daylight. Confiding one’s feelings under the cover of darkness was so much easier than having to stare guilt in the face. And I wasn’t ready for that showdown yet.
As I slowly inched off the bed, I took in his peaceful position, how his top row of pearly whites was only just visible through the tiny slit of his open mouth. And how his wet hair had dried in bed overnight, giving him an adorable scruffed-up ’do. I wanted desperately to run my hands through the scruff. I reached out but then retracted my hand, thinking better of it. My hand had not been the last to glide through his hair and that made me feel ill. My hand had been elsewhere, as had his. This wasn’t right. Him and me now, just wasn’t right.
Standing free of the bed, I turned and headed into the shower, turning on the water and climbing in. Hot water pelted my skin, washing away traces of Brad and Josh. I felt dirty, no matter how much water cleansed my body. Bending over, I picked up the shower gel and squirted some into my hand so that I could lather myself up and attempt to feel artificially clean. It was better than nothing. As I placed the bottle back on the floor, the curtain was wrenched open, an absolutely livid Josh standing in front of me, still wearing his boxer shorts. He stepped into the spray of water and pinned me with his seething eyes.
“You fucked him?” he spat.
I took a step back, frightened. He was furious. “Wh … what?”
“Brad,” he yelled. “You and Brad fucked?” The empty condom wrapper from last night was thrust into my face.
I looked at it and blinked, needing a second to gather my bearings. Where the fuck does he get off yelling at me like this? And who the fuck does he think he is?
Snatching the packet from his hand, I got up and into his face. “Yes! We fucked. Right about the same time you were fucking not one, but two women. Perhaps I should’ve invited Noah into the bed as well. That would only be fair, right?”
His eyes flared with rage and he stepped farther into the shower, backing me up against the tiles, the shower’s spray sticking the satin of his boxer shorts to his thighs. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“What the fuck is wrong with YOU?” I said, stabbing him in the chest with my finger, eyes welling with liquid pain.
“YOU!” he yelled, caging me in. “Everything about you is what’s wrong with me. I didn’t want a woman in my life. All I wanted was to fuck and fuck them off. Then you come along, and now all I want is YOU!”
I cried and placed my hands on his chest. I needed distance. “I gave you me. YOU gave me back.”
“I didn’t deserve you.”
“You still don’t.”
Silence.
He stared at me, eyes darting, then he dropped to his knees. “I know. But I’m a selfish prick and I want you anyway. I want you back. The way you were. I want the Cori you gave me before.”
“She’s gone, Josh,” I said, looking to the ceiling—anywhere but him—tears falling. The unbearable hurt was suffocating. “You destroyed her. I destroyed her.”
“No,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist, hugging me to him. “That’s bullshit. You’re not gone. You’re still here.”
Crying, I cradled his head to my stomach. “I can’t do this anymore. I hate you. I hate you for what you’ve done. I hate you for not loving me.”
He looked up, a smile swimming on his drowned face. “I do love you,” he said quietly, pulling me down to sit on his lap. “I do. Every time I look at you. Every time I touch you. Every time you smile and every time you frown. I love you. I just don’t know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with that.”
Running my hands down his face, I kissed his wet lips, sobbing into his mouth. “You don’t do what you’ve been doing. You don’t do that. Anything but that.”
“I know,” he said, nodding. “I know that now.”
Josh and I sat on the shower floor, tangled in one another’s limbs until our tears ran dry. I wasn’t sure for how long, or if the rest of the cast and crew were waiting. We were both selfish arseholes, embroiled in our own tormented farrago of love and hate. And that needed to stop. It needed to stop now. Today.
“This needs to end, Josh,” I whispered.
“I know.”
My heart sank. As much as it pained me, us being together in the manner that we were poisoned everything around us. I nodded, kissed his head and stood up, exiting the shower to get dressed and endure yet another heartbreaking day.
***
As Josh and I walked to the bus, I pulled my sunglasses over my red, puffy eyes. There was no doubt everyone on that vehicle knew what had happened overnight and this morning. They were a tightly-knit group with mammoth mouths. Nothing was kept secret.
Sucking in a deep breath, I held it when Josh’s hand slipped into mine. My feet stopped. His didn’t. Our arms stretched. What is he doing?
“Josh? What are you doing?”
“Sweetheart, when you said ‘this needs to end’, I wasn’t agreeing to us. I was agreeing to the bullshit. I was agreeing to not knowing what we are. I now know, and so do you. Some serious shit was said in that shower this morning. Serious shit I take … seriously. Like you telling me you love me, and me telling you the same. That sticks.” He placed my hand over his heart. “That sticks right here. And when it sticks, it stays.” Josh lightly tugged on my arm, pulling me to his lips where he held me tightly and kissed me deeply. I melted in his arms and saw stars in the daylight, something only Josh could have me do.
Powerless.
He rendered me powerless in the most wonderful and terrifying way. And I now realised that was exactly how it should be. Love should be pain immersed in comfort. It should be fear wrapped in courage. It should never be easy.
Pulling away, his lips parting from mine, our breaths once again becoming our own, I blinked and found his smiling face through my darkened glasses. But they weren’t rose coloured … not anymore. They protected me, and provided
the security I needed to see clearly. They let me see Josh in a whole new light.
“I want it to stick. So you show me how it sticks.”
He clenched my fingers with his and continued to the bus, but I wasn’t finished, burying my heels into the ground. “But if it doesn’t, Josh. If it doesn’t stick, that’s it. It never will. Do you understand?”
He lifted my hand to his lips but didn’t kiss it. He just closed his eyes momentarily and breathed me in. “Yes, sweetheart, I do.”
“Okay then. Let’s go face the music. Oh, and Josh, do not touch a blond hair on Brad’s head. You hear me? I instigated what happened last night, not him. And if it weren’t him, it would’ve been some random arsehole.”
The pain in his eyes was palpable, because he knew it was retaliation on my part. But I was not about to let him wear that pain solely. I had to wear it, too. “What’s done is done. We move forward or we don’t move at all,” I said, rotating our wrists so that I could kiss his hand.
“Hurry the fuck up, you two. If I wanted to watch some sappy love scene, I’d watch The NotePad or something,” Noah shouted from the doorway of the bus.
“It’s The Notebook, you tool,” I muttered under my breath, laughing.
Josh flipped him the bird and walked to the bus, handing Baz our bags before climbing on board. When I made it to the top of the steps, I gave everyone an apologetic smile, finding Brad toward the back of the bus in a seat on his own. Deep down I hoped it was because Lucas was overly pungent, but I knew it was because I’d crushed a small piece of his heart, regardless of what he’d told me.
I was evil.
Like that hunter who shot Bambi’s mum.
Turning to Josh, who was standing behind me, hand on my hip, an obvious indicator to all that we’d sorted shit out, I told him I wanted to sit with Brad for the short distance it would take us until we stopped at the Big Banana for lunch. The clicking of Josh’s jaw told me he didn’t like the idea, but he was just going to have to deal with it. I needed to talk to Brad. Needed to know where his head and heart were at, and needed to know we were still friends.
Leaving Josh at our normal seat, I wandered up to where Brad was sitting. “You mind if I sit?” I asked.
He shook his head but didn’t give me any words. I wanted his words, and I was going to get them.
Sliding into the seat as if I would any other time, I decided I had to treat Brad just like I always had, so faced him and commanded his attention. “I’m not going to apologise, because I know your dick doesn’t like that.”
The corner of his mouth lifted slightly, so I continued, “I don’t want to upset your dick. I think I’ve done a pretty good job of upsetting your dick’s owner. The thing is, I’m very fond of your dick’s owner, and it kills me to think that what happened with your dick and my vagina would jeopardise that. I know I should’ve thought of that before your dick and my vagina met, but the thing is, at that very moment, I wanted them to meet,” I said, biting back a laugh as I plunged my pointer finger into the hole I made with my other pointer finger and thumb. “And I’m not sorry they did. Sometimes dicks and vaginas are better as friends tho—”
“Cori, shut up with the dick and vagina talk, will ya?”
I snapped my eyes from the blur of cars that I’d subconsciously focussed on to his face, which was both a mixture of sheer annoyance and amusement. “Oh, sorry. I was just trying—”
“I know what you were trying to do, but please stop saying the word vagina. I don’t like it.”
I bit my lip to refrain from laughing. God, he was adorable. “What? Why?”
“Never mind. You sort shit out with Josh?” His tone turned serious.
“In a way, yes. He showed up a few hours after you climbed out of my bed. I was too exhausted both physically and emotionally to fight him. Instead, I cried in his arms, and call me fucking ridiculous or insane, but it felt right.”
He nodded and looked out of the window.
“He also knows we had sex last night,” I whispered, leaning in.
Brad quickly turned in my direction again, then preened his neck like an ostrich to look over the top of the seat in front of him. “Don’t worry. He’s not going to touch y—”
“I don’t need you to protect me, Cori,” he interrupted, giving me a small scowl. “I’m not afraid of the fuckhead.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Hey! I’m not saying you are. But you’re not getting into fights over me anymore. I do have a say in that. You want to punch on for any other reason? Fine, do it. But not over me.”
“You’re a stubborn little bitch when you wanna be, aren’t you?” he asked with an impressed smile.
I smirked. “You better believe it. But you think I’m stubborn? Wait till you meet Em.”
“Em?” he asked, furrowing his brow.
“Oh yeah! I forgot to tell you all. My best friend, Em, is visiting me while we’re on the Gold Coast. She’s taking a week off work.”
He pursed his lips. “How’d you wrangle that with Patsy?”
“I showed her Em’s picture,” I said, waggling my eyebrows. “Patsy said she was cute.”
Sitting there, talking about Em to Brad, couldn’t have been more perfect had I consciously set it up to begin with. The two of them would get along like a house on fire. It was just simply ideal. Yes! Em loves blonds. Em loves the beach. Surfers surf at the beach. Perfect!
“I’m picking her up at the airport tonight. Wanna come?” I asked nonchalantly, hoping he’d take the bait.
“Hang on … hold ya titties. So let me get this straight. We fuck and the very next day you try to palm me off to your best friend?”
I shrugged. “Yes. I guess so.”
“That’s fucked, Cor.”
“No. Not really.”
“How the hell not?”
“Because I know, after fucking you, that you will be perfect for her. Had I not fucked you, I wouldn’t know this.”
“That’s a lame explanation.”
“I know, but it works.”
He laughed. “It does. So you gonna show me her picture?”
The bus pulled to a stop at the Big Banana. I leaned over Brad’s lap and looked out the window at the giant yellow phallus-shaped monstrosity and smiled. Excellent! “Nope. I think it’s best you get the Em effect in person.” I pecked his cheek and whispered in his ear, “You are amazing. Thank you. And I promise, Em is amazing too. You’ll like her more than me.”
I stood up, ready to head off the bus and get snappin’ with my camera. Brad followed and whispered in my ear as we walked down the aisle, “She’s got a lot to live up to then.”
I smiled to myself. Oh don’t you worry. She will!
We spent a couple of hours at the Big Banana, and I wasn’t going to lie, it was stranger than that time when Happy Pants were in fashion … you knew it wasn’t right, and you knew why, but you just let it go and embraced it because everyone else appeared to be doing the same thing. That was kind of what happened during the day, as the cast and crew knew something was up between Josh, Brad and I. But whether they knew the details, I wasn’t sure. Maybe they were thinking it was the aftermath of Brad getting me up on stage. Regardless, they just smiled at the events that unfolded while we were at the theme park.
And boy, were they insightful events. Brad and Josh had battled it out on the mini golf course, a golf ball being (not)accidentally hit into Josh’s back. They’d ice skated and (not)accidentally tripped each other over and taken each other down, and they’d gone to war during a laser tag session where Josh found himself in a headlock and Brad ended up being pinned to the wall … by the neck … while I stood there and laser tagged both of the stupid fuckers. Needless to say, I won. They lost.
Laser tag queen.
If anything, I’d learned from our trip to the Big Banana that men were weird creatures—wonderful creatures, but weird. If Em had slept with my boyfriend, we’d probably never speak again. Why? Because most women hold grudges
like they’d hold onto a pair of Louboutins at a seventy-five per cent off sale. They’d never let go no matter how hard they tried. Whereas men fought it out, fists to face. And once that had happened, they’d down a beer and talk shop again.
Weird.
But their way was probably a better course of action to take, because after all the childish drama Brad and Josh had participated in, together with some stern words from Josh to Brad about never touching me again, they were mates … or as matey as they’d ever been. Josh and I, on the other hand, still needed to talk, more so than we had this morning, and I was hoping we’d be able to do it later that night.
“What time does her flight land again?” Brad asked from his position in the back seat of the Holden Commodore we’d hired for the week.
I looked at my watch and cringed. We didn’t have much time to get to the airport. “In less than twenty minutes.”
“Stop driving Miss Daisy, dickhead,” Brad said to Josh, lightly hitting him on the arm, “and step on it. Cori doesn’t want to keep Em waiting, do ya, Cor?”
I smirked.
So did Josh.
But I could tell he didn’t like Brad’s stab at his driving by his clenched fingers on the steering wheel and the biting of the inside of his bottom lip. I liked it when he bit the inside of his lip—it cast frustration over his features. It was sexy and endearing, and it had me wanting to take that lip of his into my mouth and bite it for him. Mmm …
“So, Cori, what colour hair has she got? I can help you look out for her when we get there. Airports are crazy busy, you know?”
Snapping out of my lip-biting daze, I playfully glared at Brad. “Nice try, but I’m not telling. You’ll have to wait and see,” I said, turning up the radio. “I love this song.”
Josh glanced in my direction, one eyebrow raised. “You like songs about payback, don’t you?”
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