Lovestruck

by Bronwyn Sell

  Josh’s hand slid to Amy’s waist and stayed there. A precaution in case of future death-defying dives, or something else? ‘Looks like your nan has found another victim. Isn’t that the drunk honeymooner?’

  ‘Turns out she was drinking for two because her husband didn’t show—for the wedding or the honeymoon,’ Amy said. ‘And I suspect she may be a willing victim.’

  Rosa popped to her feet to get a better visual. ‘That could be interesting. Harry certainly needs to move on.’

  ‘You two are as bad as Nan,’ Josh said, trying out the word ‘Nan’ without the ‘your’ in front. But then, he didn’t have living grandparents, did he? Amy’s stomach twisted. Between her stomach feeling sorry for him and her chest being pulled to him, she was agitating like an old-school washing machine. ‘The woman has narrowly escaped one ill-considered and ill-fated relationship—as all relationships are—and you’re trying to set her up with someone who’s also been burned.’

  ‘How do you know Harry’s been burned?’ Amy said, super conscious of that arm heating up her waist. A brother’s arm shouldn’t have that effect.

  ‘Your mum just said he had to move on. And it would’ve been a good guess, seeing as ninety-nine percent of the population has been burned at some point, and he’s older than eleven.’

  ‘And this is your hourly reminder that you are here for a wedding. You know—love and romance and happily-ever-after.’ She should probably set up her own hourly reminder on her phone. Beep beep beep: Don’t fall in love with your brother.

  Josh flinched, and suddenly removed his arm. He was looking down the table at Sanjay, who was frowning back. Amy wasn’t used to seeing Sanjay looking stern and parental.

  ‘Speaking of single people daring to set foot on the island,’ Rosa murmured. Amy followed her sightline to where Viggo was stepping onto the deck. ‘And my mother can’t take the credit for that one.’

  ‘Mum, are you blushing?’ Amy said.

  Rosa waved and Viggo winked at her. ‘Be there in a sec,’ he called. ‘Just need to say hi to the brides.’

  ‘You would blush too if you knew what I’m planning tonight,’ Rosa said, again in the undertone that everyone around could hear.

  Amy clapped her hands over Mika’s ears. Her niece giggled. ‘Mum! Don’t go there.’

  ‘She already did,’ Josh groaned.

  Rosa slapped her hands on the table. ‘Oh, Aims, I forgot. I was supposed to ask you if it’s all right to swap roomies.’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘I was thinking … we were thinking that maybe I could stay with Viggo in his villa.’

  ‘That’s cool with me,’ Amy said. Having her very own calm space to retreat to, amid the craziness? Bliss. But poor Josh, having to deal with the sound effects. She’d have to get him earplugs from reception.

  ‘Great, that’s settled then.’ Rosa looked at Josh. ‘I think Josh is all packed up?’

  ‘Ah yep, I am.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ Amy said. ‘You’re moving rooms too?’

  ‘I’m moving in with you?’ he said, like it was something they’d discussed. ‘I mean, I’ll be staying in the other room in your mum’s apartment. Not your room. Obviously.’

  She and Josh in the same apartment? Alone? She didn’t need telepathy to know that he was thinking the same thing she was. Bad idea. ‘You’re moving in with Viggo?’ she said to her mother. ‘You’ve known him a day.’

  ‘It’s not exactly moving in. I just don’t want a repeat of … last night.’ Rosa slid a look at Josh.

  ‘She’s not the only one,’ Josh murmured in Amy’s ear.

  ‘And this arrangement,’ Amy said, ‘will be for the whole week?’

  ‘I’m hoping we could make it to the end of a week, yes.’

  A week stuck in an apartment with Josh? ‘You just met this guy! What kind of an example is this to set?’

  Amy was being a hypocrite, of course. She’d known Josh for the same amount of time and she totally wanted to jump him. Which was why this arrangement could not happen.

  Rosa leaned in, a glint in her eyes. ‘I know this is hard on you, honey, but it doesn’t mean Mummy loves you any less. Mummies need love too.’ Amy scoffed and adjusted her grip on Mika. The kid was getting heavier by the second. ‘Look, I know it’s sudden,’ Rosa continued, becoming serious, ‘but last night I found someone I really connect with. And yes, this is just a beginning and it may not go anywhere, but I’m old enough to know that this feeling doesn’t come along often. And the few times in the past it’s happened to me, I’ve been too wary to take the risk. So …’ She laid her hand on her chest and took a deep breath. ‘I’m taking that risk. Caution to the wind, and all that.’

  ‘Mum, are you getting The Pull?’

  Rosa double-blinked, her hand still on her chest. ‘Oh my stars, I think I am.’

  ‘The Pull?’ Josh said.

  Amy practically whiplashed. ‘Nothing,’ she said, but her mother spoke over her.

  ‘Aims has this theory that if you meet The One, you get a feeling in your heart,’ Rosa said, oblivious to Amy’s subtle throat-cutting gesture. ‘How do you describe it, Aims—two magnets pulling together?’ She rubbed her chest. ‘I really think I’m getting that.’

  ‘It’s silly,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t think that anymore.’

  ‘You mean since we talked about it last night? What’s changed?’

  Amy widened her eyes and filled them with meaning, but her mother never had picked up on signals like Carmen did, which was what had made them so useful growing up.

  ‘You don’t mind swapping rooms, do you?’ Rosa said to Josh.

  ‘I hadn’t even really unpacked. It took me a full minute to throw everything back in the bag,’ he said, as if the inconvenience of repacking was the only issue at stake here. And maybe, for him, it was.

  ‘Wait, this is happening tonight?’ Amy turned to Josh. ‘And you already knew?’

  ‘Viggo checked with me before I came out tonight. He’s a great guy, Aims,’ Josh said, again completely misinterpreting her concern.

  ‘But …’

  ‘But?’

  But are you okay with us?

  Not that there is an us.

  There’s just an overreacting me.

  And that overreacting me was being selfish, thinking only of herself and the deranged to and fro in her head. Her mother was right—she deserved a shot at love.

  ‘But nothing,’ she said. ‘It’s fine.’

  Josh nodded toward Mika and smiled a whole new delicious smile Amy hadn’t seen before. ‘She’s asleep.’

  Yes, Mika was being cute as a cute thing, but Josh … Oh the humanity. Was that a fatherly smile? Too gorgeous. His focus was drawn to the other side of the table, and he laid a hand on Amy’s forearm. A heads-up touch, she realised. Viggo had returned and was kissing Rosa on the forehead. Forget the heads-up on Viggo. Amy needed a storm warning system to alert her to incoming touches from Josh.

  She looked at Mika’s puckered face. Her niece always turned back into a baby when she slept—the rosebud lips, the round cheeks. Yeesh, between aunty hormones and regular girl–boy hormones, the atmospheric conditions raging in her body could power a small town.

  ‘I guess I should find a chair,’ Viggo said, looking around. The dinner service had begun and the pavilion and deck had filled with guests.

  ‘There’s plenty of room on the other side of the table,’ Rosa said, gesturing at the two centimetres of space on the bench beside Amy. ‘Amy and Josh can squash up.’

  Josh scooted along a fraction, stopping just short of Geoff’s footy teammate. Amy followed, but not far enough before Viggo planted down, almost sitting on her, and forcing her to choose who to sit in full hip-to-knee contact with—future stepbrother or future stepfather. Ugh, stepfather was way worse, and that was the only reason she went with Josh, who lifted Mika’s dirty feet onto his lap because that was how goddamn sweet Mr No-Relationships was.

  Viggo and Rosa le
aned across the table toward each other and began talking in hushed tones. Amy wasn’t about to eavesdrop, but their excitement was cute—tweens planning a sleepover. But not.

  ‘Hey,’ Josh murmured in Amy’s ear, leaning in even closer than the circumstances necessitated—like the night wasn’t hot enough. ‘I have no skin in this game, so it’s not my decision. She’s your mum, not mine. And Viggo’s my dad’s best mate. I’ve known him nearly my whole life and I can vouch for him. If they want to have some fun, I’m good with it, but not if you think it’s going to make things awkward between you and me.’

  You and me. Nearly an us, and possibly an acknowledgement that what had almost happened at the cove wasn’t all in her imagination. If only she were the kind of straight-up girl who asked the tough questions. Are you okay with us sharing an apartment for a week when I’m pretty sure you’re feeling for me a little something of what I’m feeling for you? And, more to the point: What exactly are you feeling and what are we going to do or not do about it? But when you were always the woman who guys saw as ‘just a good friend’, you didn’t go there anymore, on pain of rejection, because you’d only get hurt and embarrassed and it’d confirm everything you knew about yourself and your relative (un)attractiveness as a proper girlfriend.

  ‘Aims?’ Josh prompted, since she’d been staring at an ant navigating the wood grains on the table for a good minute.

  ‘Does your dad know about the room swap?’ she said, knowing perfectly well from the conversation she’d overheard that he didn’t.

  ‘Don’t think so. I haven’t told him, and it was all arranged in the last hour or two. He’ll be fine about it, but I don’t want to worry him. You know what dads can be like.’

  ‘Sure.’ Actually, Amy didn’t—not in that way. Her dad let his girls walk all over him. He and Rosa had always let them find their own boundaries, for better or worse. And if the worst that had happened so far was this cherub conked out in Amy’s arms, that wasn’t so bad. ‘He told me some stories about you this afternoon after you left the bay,’ she said. How to bring it up without bringing it up.

  ‘All bad, I trust.’

  ‘Pretty bad, yep.’ All involving Josh trampling on women’s hearts.

  He gulped his beer. Now that she’d brought the subject up, she didn’t know where to go. She’d hoped he’d pick it up and run with it. Maybe she’d hoped he’d defend himself—he hadn’t found The One, he’d made mistakes but learned from them, his dad saw only what he wanted to see. The ambient noise filled the space between them, which was more a metaphorical space than a physical one. Really, Sanjay’s warnings should have brought her to her senses. One step further along the road to seeing Josh as a buddy, one of her many flawed friends who loved and left, kissed and told, played the field, cheated. The polar opposite of what she wanted in a partner. But Amy had heard something else in Sanjay’s stories—a sad tale of a lonely boy, and then a man who, for whatever reason, ran from love. A man who could probably use the support of, yes, a sister—the uncomplicated and platonic support of a sister.

  ‘If you’re waiting for me to deny it all,’ he said eventually, picking at one corner of the beer label, ‘you’re out of luck. And Sanjay doesn’t know the half of it.’

  ‘No judgment here. You’re my brother. Not my anything else.’

  ‘Stepbrother,’ he said quickly, and Amy was definitely not going to dwell on what that crucial clarification or the speed at which it was delivered might or might not mean. ‘Sanjay thinks I choose not to commit.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me that exact thing about yourself last night?’

  ‘I said I can’t commit. Huge difference. It’s not a conscious choice, it’s just the way I am. Relationships don’t sit right with me, so I’ve learned not to get that far and not to leave any doubt, for the benefit of everyone involved.’

  Anyone can change.

  Said every woman who went after an inaccessible man, only to find herself heartbroken. Including Amy. Several times.

  ‘But I’ve also learned to make it absolutely clear to the woman right from the start. And hey,’ he added, leaning back, ‘apparently you’re like some champion windsurfer and snorkeller?’

  Her stomach clenched. ‘Um, what?’

  ‘Why would you say you couldn’t do either?’

  ‘Uh, just didn’t want to show off?’

  Viggo interrupted—bless him, because it was obvious Josh didn’t believe her—to ask for Josh and Amy’s dinner order, and keyed it into his phone notepad. ‘Apparently, the last person to the table has to take the order,’ he said.

  Rosa gave a sharp nod. ‘A longstanding family tradition.’

  ‘And has to pay for it,’ Amy said. ‘Sorry.’ She shrugged, in an I-don’t-make-the-rules way.

  Viggo looked down the tables. ‘Really?’

  ‘She’s kidding,’ Rosa said. ‘Tonight’s on the house anyway.’

  Viggo stood and Amy gratefully shuffled away from Josh’s thigh. Thigh, thigh, thigh. Mika’s dimpled ankles bumped off his lap.

  Once Viggo had left earshot, Rosa leaned forward. ‘Are you sure you don’t mind about the room swap, Josh? This sudden family must be daunting for you. We can be quite full-on.’

  Quite?

  He looked down one side of the tables and up the other, taking in every person like he was memorising the seating plan for a later test. ‘It’s a dream come true, I swear. Only, I’m not appreciating it like I should. Just tired, I guess. I am so happy to be sort of a part of your family.’ He clinked his beer with Rosa’s wine and held it up to Amy. His Adam’s apple journeyed down and up. ‘Sis?’

  She clinked. ‘Bro. And you are part of our family, no “sort of” about it. As well as my new roommate and housemate, so if that’s not being part of the family then I don’t know what is.’ She sipped. ‘And this way you might be able to get more sleep.’

  ‘Cheers to siblings and sleeping.’ The whites of his eyes gleamed in the low light. ‘But not together. I mean, not in the same sentence. Or the same bed. Room.’

  ‘Stand down, soldier. I know what you mean—and don’t mean.’

  ‘Great,’ Rosa said, ‘I’m glad that’s settled. Because I’ve already had a room attendant change the sheets on my bed for Josh. I thought he’d be more comfortable there than on the sofa bed.’

  ‘You already …?’ Amy began. She forced an exhale. The battle had been lost before it’d begun.

  By the time Viggo returned, a shuffle on the other side of the table had made room for him next to Rosa, so Amy and Josh relaxed a little—in Amy’s case, a lot, since she no longer had to keep her quad braced so Josh wouldn’t feel her flabby bits. They fell into the same easy conversation as they had last night, on the boat trip, at the cove—until her (and his?) attraction had muscled in and made things knotty. Tonight, that wouldn’t happen. He was her brother and he was happy. And she was happy to see him happy. And that was enough.

  As the evening ticked on, everyone except the two of them swapped seats as people came and went—she was weighted down with Mika, and Josh seemed content to remain in his spot. Occasionally, his gaze would wander around the table with a hint of wonder, which she got a kick out of. He really did fit into the family like he’d always belonged—holding his own with the cousins’ jokes, answering Nan’s thinly veiled questions with evasive respect, debating footy with Viggo and Rosa. But mostly, she loved it when the dynamic cycled back to just the two of them, an evolving, free-ranging conversation about everything and nothing. He made her think, he made her laugh, he made her care—ugh, so much. With everything she learned about him, with every clue he dropped about his past, she cared more.

  Just as a good sister should.

  18

  All through the evening, Mika slumbered in Amy’s arms, out cold—well, out hot. During Viggo’s funny and surprisingly sweet toast to the grooms, Amy’s left arm and back began to ache. By the time dinner arrived, her internal thermometer had cranked to deep-fryer temps. She
ate her fish and chips one-handed—after Josh cut the fish into bite-sized pieces, bless—but fended off all attempts by her family to relieve her of Mika. She’d endure hot coals before she gave up her aunty cuddles. Cuddling a sleeping child? That there was liquid love. Solid love, in fact. And fortunately, Amy was more appropriately dressed tonight, in a black (of course) Bardot top from her mother’s wardrobe, and thin black pants, because even the occasional squall that blew pinpricks of rain under the deck roof only brought relief for a minute or two at a time. She dictated a mental note-to-self: for Christmas hols, pack tanks and shorts.

  As the gathering got noisier, she found excuses to stare at Josh whenever it was socially acceptable—when they were talking to each other, of course, but also when he was talking to anyone else and she was pretending to be absorbed by the conversation. Really, she was mostly busy inserting Josh into her parallel fantasy life in which he didn’t write her off as just a good friend, in which he wasn’t about to be her brother, in which they’d later walk hand-in-hand through the resort, the warm air caressing their skin. They’d stop to look out over the moonlit bay, he’d turn and take her cheeks in his cool hands, and they’d kiss, finishing off what they’d almost started that afternoon, and then that sweetness would turn into something more urgent and—

  ‘Aims?’

  ‘Sorry, what?’

  ‘Do you want dessert?’ Josh was holding a menu. ‘You floated away again.’

  ‘Tired, I guess.’ Delusional, more like. That kind of romance didn’t happen to her even with guys who weren’t about to be related. She looked down at Mika, who was flushed deep red and sheened with sweat. ‘I think I’ll skip. This little one needs a proper bed before we both get heatstroke.’ Amy yawned at the thought of bed. She navigated her legs over the end of the bench, spun and stood, her quads complaining in chorus with her arms and back. Her muscles would feel this in the morning. She adjusted her hold and Mika groaned and sleepily looked up and around, her hair curled tight with the humidity.