by Trish Morey
He must have sensed her guilt and her shame, because he jumped from the bed and caught her chin in his hand and forced her gaze to his. “Ava, you have nothing to feel guilty for. You were fighting for your own freedom. Your own existence.”
“I know.” She hesitated, her lip between her teeth. “Anyway, I fled straight to the airport. And straight to somewhere I thought was free, where I could hide. I flew to Melbourne. Moved to Sydney. I changed my name to Mattiske. I started a tentative new life as an artist.” She took a breath. “I need tea.” She ducked around him, heading for the kitchen.
“Is that when you got your tattoo?” he asked, behind her.
She snapped on the kettle smiling at the memory. “Yes. In a dingy tattoo parlour in Kings Cross. I was celebrating my escape. I thought I was free. And I was, although that didn’t stop me making bad choices.” She pushed her hair behind her ears. “I told you about my agent not working out?”
“Yeah.”
She nodded, thinking about Rene and all his promises. “Rene came into a café where I had some pictures for sale. He told me he was an agent and that he would make me a star.
“And for a while it was good. He got me into galleries. He sold my work. And at night he told me he loved me. But I never saw any money. It was always coming, he said, always clearing in a trust account. It never came. And in the end I discovered he had a wife and three children tucked away in western Sydney.
“Tea or coffee?”
“Ava—”
“No, you’re right, I guess you won’t be staying,” she said, putting a teabag for herself in a mug and filling it with the boiled water. “Talk about lurching from one disaster to the next.” She turned to face him, leaning against the counter. “But if it taught me something, it’s that I had to stand on my own two feet. You accused me of being made of Teflon, that I don’t let anything or anyone stick, and I guess that’s true. But that’s the way I have to be. I have to protect myself because there is nobody else to protect me.”
“I would protect you.”
“You say that now. But what I learned is that you can’t trust anyone, even the people you love, and the people who tell you they love you. That I can’t afford to trust anyone other than myself.”
“Not everyone who says they love you is out to hurt you, Ava. You have to believe that. I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“And how can I believe you won’t turn on me too? How can I believe you will be there for me, when I need it most? How can I trust you, when I can’t trust anyone? I’m broken, Caleb. I’ve picked myself up and put myself back together twice now, but the joins are still there. I can’t afford for that to happen again. I can’t go through that again.”
She watched him pacing the floor, running his hands through his hair, watched his beautiful self wrestling with finding a way to get through to her, knowing it was futile, and there was none.
He stopped and turned to her, his eyes pleading. “I’m not like those others, Ava. How do I prove it to you? How can I make you believe me?”
“That’s just it,” she said. “You can’t. I’m sorry, Caleb. This is why we can’t be together. This is why it has to end.”
Chapter Ten
She’d got what she wanted. Caleb had laid his cards on the table, each and every one of them, and she’d thrown not only the deck, but the table in his face. That was the risk he’d taken.
He’d known the odds and he’d accepted them.
It was done.
But it didn’t mean he had to like it. He hated it. Each and every bit of it. He hated that she had suffered so much at the hands of her own parents. He hated that she had been taken advantage of when she had so desperately needed reassurance and love and the chance to rebuild her shattered life.
No wonder she was so self-protective, betrayed first by the people who should have loved her the most, and then by an agent who’d cheated and lied to her. No wonder she set boundaries and made rules.
But he hated that she couldn’t see that he would never hurt her.
Restlessly, Caleb paced the confines of his flat. It didn’t take long to do a lap. There weren’t that many rooms and there wasn’t a hell of a lot to see. He stopped in the spare room and looked over his collection of bikes. He should take one of them and go for a spin. Later. He stopped in his bedroom, but all he could see was the bed and all he could think about was Ava, and the fact she’d never lie in it again and felt a physical pang that he’d never get to make love to her again. He ended up back in the lounge room but all he could see was that damned picture she’d given him that he’d propped up on the shelf. Of the frangipani flowers he’d given her, their petals bright and bold.
He picked it up and thought about the woman who had painted them. Ava, just as bold and beautiful as those perfect flowers.
And, ultimately, just as fragile.
His phone buzzed from the kitchen where he’d left it charging and for the moment it took him to sweep it up in his hand, he thought that maybe...
But it was Dylan. They hadn’t talked since before the bushfire, since that night at the Maylands. Barely a week but it felt like an aeon ago. He picked up, his brain mentally changing gears so he wouldn’t sound as hangdog as he felt.
“You sly, bloody dog.”
Caleb dragged in a lungful of air and pinched the bridge of his nose. Hard. Clearly his brother wasn’t ringing to compare notes about the bushfire. But he supposed this had to come sometime. “Well, hello to you too, Dylan. How’re they hanging?”
“Forget my bits, bro. You let me bang on about Hannie the other night, and all this time you never let on.”
“About what?”
“I didn’t believe it you know. Richo sent me this daft picture—”
Caleb turned to the magnetic “To Do” list on his fridge. Scrubbed off milk in number one place and wrote “Kill Richo!”
“B—but I didn’t believe it could be you, not in a million years.”
“Good thinking. You know what Richo’s like. Always making something out of nothing.”
“Nice try and I might have believed you once upon a time. Before I saw the story in the local paper today. The one with the heading, Firefighter Bares All for Charity”.
Jeezus! In the pressure cooker conditions of the last few days, he’d forgotten completely about the photo. After the blow up with Ava, it hadn’t seemed important any more. “Actually, no,” Caleb said, feeling tension building in his head. “I must have missed that.”
“You ought to get yourself a copy. It’s a keeper. Although I would have called it, Firefighter Bares Ass for Charity.”
“Ha-ha.”
“And don’t fret, I’ll be sure to pick one up for the folks just in case you forget to get one for Mum’s scrapbook. I’m sure she’ll be happy to show all her lady friends at the retirement village.”
Caleb growled. God, he hadn’t thought about his mother and all her cronies seeing it. “I never figured you to be so considerate. Anyway, thanks, bro. See you later.”
“Oh, before you go...”
“What?”
“When’s the happy day?”
“What happy day?”
His brother did a rendition of the wedding march over the phone. A really bad one. Caleb rubbed his brow, which was really starting to pound.
“There isn’t going to be one.” And most definitely not now.
“What? I got the impression from Richo that you and this artist are pretty tight.”
“You know I’m done with the ball and chain route. Once bitten, twice shy, and all that. Get it through your head, she’s a friend, that’s all.” Though now, not even that.
“A friend who paints you in the buff after what looks like it must have been some pretty hot sex.”
“So I’m a good actor.”
“Good thing, because you’re a shit liar.”
“Goodbye, Dylan.”
“Hey, don’t be like that. You’re my baby brother! I’m worried about you, that’
s all.”
“I stopped being your baby brother when I beat you in that hundred metre race in year six, remember? So go worry about something else.” He killed the connection before his brother could further extend the inquisition and went and dug out his favourite road bike.
He wanted to push himself and feel the burn in his muscles from a gruelling hills ride, but the roads were still scarred and littered with debris from the fire, and besides, it would take him closer to the woman who didn’t want to see him, so he turned his road bike for the beach. Fast and furious would have to cut it.
He pushed himself hard, dodging parked cars and orange Metro buses as he pedalled hard down Magill Road towards the city, the cogs in his mind turning just as fast.
He’d always been lucky with the girls. He and Dylan had had fun pretending to be the other and playing tricks on the girls who’d never seemed to mind. Both the Knight twins were considered catches.
So lucky. Then he’d met Angie when a hairdryer at the hairdressing salon where she worked had shorted and started a fire, and he’d fallen hard and fast and he hadn’t give a damn about whoever his brother was dating after that, Caleb knew he’d found the one. He’d thought himself the luckiest man alive two years later when Angie had said, “I do”.
But apparently his luck had run out about then, because Angie, who’d married him knowing he was a firefighter started whining whenever he was on night duty or had a callout, telling him she could never make plans and it was no kind of life in which to bring kids into the world.
A truck roared by, spewing out diesel fumes. Damn right, it stunk. She’d known what kind of life it was before they were married, and he’d been staggered to think that somehow she’d just assumed he’d have a change of heart and decide to get some kind of boring desk job.
That’s when she’d given him the choice. The job, or her.
The sad thing was, by that stage, it hadn’t been hard to choose.
The heavy city traffic thinned on the other side, and he powered down Henley Beach Road toward the coast.
He’d thought his luck had changed for the better when he hooked up with Ava. A dream arrangement. No commitment, no ties, and the bonus was no whining about night shift or coming home stinking of smoke. Just hot sex and plenty of it.
He caught his breath in the salt tinged air at Henley Square, chugging water and munching on an energy bar as seagulls squawked overhead while he stared out over the summer beach scene with the long jetty over the turquoise blue sea of the Gulf.
He sure hadn’t meant to blow it by falling in love.
Dickhead.
He turned his bike for home, powering hard against the slight gradient towards the foothills where he lived, pushing himself harder until his muscles burned and his mind was blank and, for just a moment, one blessed moment, he could forget what he had lost.
One day at a time, Ava told herself while she cooked up a batch of red curry paste, refusing to give in to the sadness of knowing she’d never see Caleb again. She’d heard it took twenty-one days to break a habit and it was barely seven.
Through her kitchen window, she could see the world turning reddish gold under the westering sun. Inside, the air turned pungent with spice and heat as she ground the chillies, garlic, and spices in her pestle. She had a food processor somewhere in her cupboards that did the job in a fraction of the time, but today there was something satisfying about physically grinding the ingredients, pulverising the toasted cumin and coriander seeds, pounding down the lemongrass and galangal until the smooth paste came together. All she had to do was persist and be patient and it would come together.
Just like all she had to do was hang on, and day-by-day, this hollow ache in her soul would subside and pass.
But there was a peace there too, as if baring her soul and speaking it aloud had released the log jam of self loathing. Nothing could change her past, but the truth was out there. It was almost as if the gorge’s eucalyptus scented air had swept inside her aching soul and chased away the darkness.
Oh, it had lost her Caleb, but it was better this way. One thousand times better to let him go now. One thousand times better than to incur the savage slash of betrayal. She knew all too well how that felt. She was never going back to that dark place again.
Even if it meant a little pain now. That was all it was.
It would pass.
In time.
Chapter Eleven
One shift rolled into the next and February rolled into March. Nominally autumn, though that didn’t mean the mercury couldn’t still reach dizzy heights and that the threat of bushfires was over. There would be no end to the bushfire season until April thirtieth, and only then if there had been good solid rains and the bushfire threat had dropped below severe. Only a few years back they’d had a bushfire in the Adelaide Hills in May. Ridiculous, once upon a time, but after a string of dry years, there was no reason the bush couldn’t burn given half a chance, no matter what the month.
But for now the weather had moderated, temperatures hovering in a band between the mid-twenties to mid-thirties Celcius. Perfect weather for sitting on your ass at home watching telly. Not. He didn’t want to spend yet another night doing that.
“You wanna come to the Maylands tonight?” Caleb asked Richo, as they changed into civvies at the end of their shift.
Richo grinned. “Not likely. I’ve got a date with Gillian. We’re taking in a show at the Fringe before heading out somewhere for dinner.”
“Oh.” So he was still seeing Gillian. Well, at least something good had come out of Ava’s exhibition. Not that it helped Caleb. And he’d already learned Tina and Matt had plans when he’d asked them. It seemed everyone else in the world was getting shagged.
“Mate,” Richo said, shaking his head and with a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve got to get out more. There’s a whole Fringe Festival going on out there. Mad March in Adelaide, and you’re sitting around looking hangdog all the time. You’ve got to get over her, and the only way to do that is to put yourself out there. If I were you, I’d be carrying that newspaper clipping of you and that painting around in your back pocket and showing every chick in the bar. They’ll be falling over themselves to tear your clothes off.”
“Thanks,” he said, for what was probably good advice, except he didn’t want just any chick at the bar. He wanted Ava, except she didn’t want him.
Pointlessly, he checked his phone again. Nothing. He hadn’t heard from her in two weeks. That probably meant he could give up on this pathetic hoping she’d be changing her mind. That probably meant it was final.
Yeah, Richo was right, he ought to get over her.
If only he knew how.
Ava dropped into the blessedly cool air of the gallery ten minutes early for a scheduled “Morning Tea with the Featured Artist” session, to find half the two dozen or so seats already taken and Evan brimming with excitement. “I’ve got two pieces of good news for you,” he said. “Twenty-four of your pictures have sold! How’s that? And there’s still a week of the exhibition to run!”
“That is great news,” she said, needing the boost to her spirits more than she’d care to admit. She’d never been a fan of the meet the artist type sessions where for an entire hour and a half she had to pretend that, instead of being the introspective painter who liked to work alone, she had to perform as Ava Mattiske, the outgoing artist, who loved nothing more than doing a Q&A on her art and influences. She would much rather her art speak for her.
Besides, it was so hard to appear fresh and interesting, especially now when she was having trouble sleeping properly at night. “What’s the second bit?”
“I’m not telling you.” Evan winked conspiratorially, waving to the women who had just entered the gallery. “Not until afterwards. But you’re going to love it, I promise.”
“Oh, okay.” She saw the women sitting down. “I might just get a glass of water.”
“Ava? Are you all right?”
She put a hand
to her temple where a dull ache throbbed in a vein. “I’m not sleeping well. It’s the heat.”
“You don’t have air conditioning?”
“Just a fan.” Spinning around and ultimately going nowhere. She hadn’t turned it on since that night.
“Take your time. I’m sure your audience will wait. And then the really good news, and I promise you’re going to feel a lot better.”
It was two hours before the last of the audience had ceased with the questions, and left, two hours of studiously not looking in “that” corner where a certain picture was hung, although there were also two more red dots on her pictures by then, so the session had been worth it.
“It’s the Federal Department of Agriculture,” he said in a conspiratorial whisper after the morning tea attendees had given their thanks and were gone. “They want to commission you, for an entire series showcasing Australian fruit.” He mentioned a figure that was their starting point and her mouth fell open.
“You’re kidding me?” A commission like that would pay her way for the best part of a year, but not only that, would get her art in front of the entire country. Who knew where that could take her?
“You need to talk to them, Ava. And you seriously need to get an agent,” he told her, nodding. “You don’t want these offers being communicated through me. I can’t help you like an agent could.”
“I know,” she said, knowing in her head what he said was right, but she couldn’t bring herself to commit. Who to trust when she’d gone so wrong before? “But thanks so much for fielding the enquiries.”
“Oh,” he said, as she was on the way out. “And your firefighter friend’s picture is up to three thousand six hundred dollars. How good is that?”