by Nina Kenwood
‘Coming?’ Lucy calls over the sound of the waves.
‘In a minute,’ I say, pretending that I just love wading in the shallows by myself.
Lucy and Zach swim out, and I sit down in the wet sand, where the last of the small waves reach, and let the cold water run over my feet and legs, recede, and run over them again. They are having shoulder fights now, one person sitting on another’s shoulders and trying to knock another person off someone else’s shoulders. Lucy is on Zach’s shoulders and she squeals as she falls into the water. Alex is on Owen’s shoulders. He gets flipped backwards into the water and surfaces laughing. He looks at me, and yells something out, I think, but I can’t hear him, and then he’s pulled back into the game.
They seem to be rotating through all the options, so I know what’s coming. Vanessa gets on Alex’s shoulders, and my heart races. He grips her thighs (her lovely, lovely thighs) and they laugh as she fights against a girl on Owen’s shoulders. She yells at Alex, and he yells back at her, and they are both grinning, and Vanessa knocks the other girl off Owen’s shoulders. Alex lowers Vanessa back into the water and she slips off and dives under in one smooth motion. I’ve never felt more repellent or more pathetic in my life.
I should swim out and join in. I should strip off my dress and not care about what I look like. I should joke, laugh and flirt, and show Alex the best parts of me. I should be the Natalie from last night, the Natalie who kissed him. But I’m stuck here in the shallows, watching, too scared to go out there.
I can’t do this. I’ll never be able to do this.
What the hell was I thinking? Outside of the bubble of sharing a bed at night, Alex and I don’t work. I can’t frolic with his bikini-clad friends on the beach, I can’t go to bars and do whatever people do at bars (drink I assume, but what else, there must be more to it). I just can’t handle any of it.
This realisation builds up inside me like an uncontrollable storm, and suddenly I can’t stand it anymore. I get up and walk back to our towels, pick up my things and keep walking, all the way back to the beach house. Somewhere along the way I start crying, which makes me feel even more pathetic, and I feel even more sorry for myself, which makes me cry even harder.
I would give anything to be someone other than me, just for one afternoon, just for a goddamn minute.
16
Two Strikes
That night, Lucy and Zach assume we’ll keep doing the same thing as always and swap beds. It’s our last night in Queenscliff. I agree, because what else can I do, but I am feeling sick about it.
Alex doesn’t come back to the house until late. I hear him come in when I’m standing in the bathroom brushing my teeth. He chats to Mariella and Sal for a few minutes, laughs about something, and walks into his room. He sounds happy. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or bad one.
Lucy and I lie in bed and talk until we’re sure Zach’s parents are safely asleep. Then I tiptoe down the stairs, passing Zach on his way up.
‘You okay?’ he says, pausing and looking at my face.
‘Yup.’ I force a smile.
A whole new idea has occurred to me. Alex wasn’t interested in hanging out with me today. I’ve overthought this whole thing. Maybe he was bored and just wanted to hook up. Maybe? Definitely. God, I’m so naive. I am a distraction, a way to fill in time, a stand-in, an it’s-dark-and-I’m-horny-so-she’ll-do hook up. He probably thinks we’re going to have sex tonight.
By the time I’ve reached the bedroom door, I’ve worked myself into a state and I’m furious. It feels so much better to be angry than sad.
‘Hello, stranger,’ he says, as I slip into the room. He’s trying to be cute.
Oh no. Not tonight, buddy. I will not be tricked by cuteness. ‘I’m not having sex with you,’ I say. The words burst out of my mouth, a little louder than I intended. I don’t often say the word sex out loud, I realise in this moment. Other than discussing it with Lucy, I haven’t had many occasions to say it to another person. Certainly not in the context of me having, or not having, the sex in question.
‘Keep your voice down,’ he hisses in a panic.
‘Well, I’m not.’ I put my hands on my hips. This part of relationships, being mad about something and in control, feels like the part I can probably do quite well.
‘What are you even saying?’
‘I. Will. Not. Have. Sex. With. You.’ It’s easier to say the second time. I’m getting good at this.
‘There was no part of my mind that thought we were having sex tonight,’ he says, sounding a little horrified at the thought.
‘Oh,’ I say. That’s a little offensive. I mean, I would have at least liked him to think about it.
‘So you can calm down.’
‘I am calm.’ There is nothing more unattractive than a guy telling a girl to calm down. That’s two strikes against Alex tonight and I’ve been in the room for less than a minute.
‘Okay,’ he says. He sounds a little scared.
I lie on the bed, but don’t get under the sheet.
‘Are you mad at me?’ he asks, eventually.
‘No,’ I say, because admitting I’m mad at him seems like I’m admitting I care more than he does, and everyone knows the person who cares the least is the person who wins. (‘Wins what?’ I can hear my mother asking, in the way she does when she thinks I’m being ridiculous but she wants me to reach that conclusion myself. ‘Wins at life, wins at self-protection, wins at surviving the utter hell that is liking someone,’ I yell back at her in my mind.)
But then I change my mind. This is our last night together in this bed, potentially our last night together forever, and I’m so mad at him that it’s making me crazy.
‘Actually, yes, I am mad at you. I’m mad at you because you’re ashamed to be seen with me,’ I say, as loud as I dare. I can hear how dramatic I sound, but I don’t care.
‘No, I’m not,’ he says, sounding indignant.
‘You ignored me today!’ I whisper-shout.
‘What? You ignored me!’ he whisper-shouts back.
‘I came to the beach, and you didn’t come anywhere near me.’
‘I waved at you, twice, no, three times, and then the next thing I knew, you were gone.’
‘That’s not what happened.’
‘That’s exactly what happened.’
It’s actually quite thrilling to be in a middle-of-the-night argument with a cute guy, but I wish we were disagreeing over something more exciting than waving at each other on the beach.
‘So, what? You thought you would wait for me to swim out to you and your friends and introduce myself and start playing Frisbee?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’ He sounds bewildered. He hasn’t the faintest clue.
‘That’s not how this works.’
‘How what works?’
‘You want me to make all the effort when I’m…’ I can’t find the words. Surely he understands this part: that the less attractive, less popular, less experienced, less everything person should not have to be the one to put themselves out there.
‘Never mind,’ I say.
‘I want to know,’ he says, and his voice is soft now.
‘Why did you kiss me last night?’
‘Because I wanted to. And if I remember correctly, you kissed me too.’
‘Right. But were you just bored and filling in time?’
‘Filling in time?’ He sounds incredulous. ‘If I wanted to fill time, I would have just gone to sleep,’ he says, laughing.
It’s all a joke to him. It’s all easy to him. He kisses so many girls in so many beds, he doesn’t need to over-analyse the situation.
I roll onto my side, and I hear him sigh and roll onto his side, so we have our backs to each other. I play mindlessly on my phone for a while, and then a message pops onto my screen.
It’s from Alex.
— Turn over
I turn over, and he’s looking at me.
‘I don’t like that you’re mad at me,’ he s
ays.
‘Okay,’ I say.
‘That’s a new feeling,’ he says.
‘You’ve never had someone mad at you before?’ If he truly believes that, he’s in for a shock.
‘No, it’s a new feeling that I care that you are mad at me. You specifically.’
‘Oh.’
‘I should have walked over to you at the beach today.’
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘I’m not very good at this kind of thing,’ he says.
I nod as if I know what he means, but really I’m thinking, what kind of thing, exactly, are we talking about here? Are we talking about dating, or romantic feelings, or liking someone, or talking to someone the day after you kiss them, or dealing with someone else’s insecurities, or just social interactions in general?
‘Me neither,’ I say, which no matter which thing we’re talking about, is bound to be true and probably an understatement.
‘I’m sorry about today,’ he says.
He reaches over and takes my hand, interlaces our fingers, and cradles our joined hands against his chest. Then with his other hand, he traces his fingers up and down my arm. It feels so nice that I make an involuntary murmuring noise.
It had never occurred to me before tonight, before this very moment, that there could be tenderness like this when you are with someone. I’d always thought about kissing, and everything that comes after kissing. I thought about passion, and ripping off clothes, and sweeping everything off a desk or a table so you could go for it on a horizontal surface. Or negotiation, of testing boundaries and seeing how far the other person was comfortable in going.
But I never thought about how nice it would be to just have someone touch you softly and gently. I guess I never thought a boy would want to. I thought it was sexy stuff or nothing.
Alex spends a long time gently tracing his fingertips up and down my arms, and it feels as nice as anything I’ve ever felt before.
17
What Have You Done?
‘Get up, boys,’ Mariella shouts and bangs on the door.
Boys, I think, groggy, not comprehending. Why is she calling Lucy and me boys? The times we have both stayed over together in the past, she never wakes us up like this. She gently taps the door. She says things like, ‘Don’t want to waste the day, darlings,’ and ‘I’m making pancakes especially for you both,’ and ‘The shower is free and there’s still some hot water left.’
The door bangs again. Alex groans.
I sit bolt upright and kick him.
‘Shit,’ I hiss.
‘What?’ He speaks at normal volume, and I kick him again.
‘I forgot to change beds last night.’
He opens his eyes, blinks a few times, looks at me.
‘It’s fine,’ he says, ‘You can go now. She’s gone upstairs I think.’
‘Which means I’ll run straight into her when I go upstairs.’
‘Pretend you are coming out of the bathroom.’
‘What if she just passed the bathroom and saw it was empty?’
‘You’re overthinking this.’
‘I’m not—’
I stop talking, because there are footsteps coming back down the hallway. I flop back onto the bed and pull the doona over my head. I try to make myself as flat as possible.
The door swings open.
‘I said, get up, boys. You’re on breakfast duty this morning.’ Mariella likes to appoint tasks to her sons in a very military way. She has a chore wheel at their house, and she spins it each week to assign tasks for each son. Zach complained after he got the bathroom four weeks in a row and the integrity of the chore wheel was called into question.
In my house, there is no chore wheel. Dad does most of the cleaning during the week, and Mum and I usually clean together on Saturday mornings while listening to a podcast or our official Saturday Morning Cleaning playlist on Spotify. (Both of us have to approve a song before it can be added to the list, and we have to both agree to skip a song before it can be skipped.) In my worst, most friendless, most acne-prone years, cleaning the house with Mum was actually something I looked forward to every week.
I wish I was cleaning with Mum right now. I wish I was basically anywhere but in this bed.
‘What’s Zach doing?’ Mariella says.
I hold my breath.
‘What do you mean?’ Alex says, sounding disinterested and croaky and like it was any other morning. He’s a better actor than I realised. Lying to his mother might be a regular occurrence for him, though. I don’t know if this is something I should be worried about or not. Either way, now is not the time to think about it.
‘Why isn’t he on the trundle?’ she says.
‘His back got sore,’ Alex said.
‘That bloody spring. I don’t know why you boys didn’t just share from the beginning.’
‘Well, we are sharing now, so…’
There’s a beat of silence, and it seems like we did it, we got away with it, and everything will be fine.
‘Zach, get up, please.’
‘Let him sleep, Mum. I’ll do breakfast.’
Another beat, another moment where I think we’ve got away with it, but Mariella knows her sons too well. She knows Alex would never be so considerate to his brother.
‘Zach, up.’
I keep lying there, my face scrunched, praying to every god or goddess I’ve ever heard of to be teleported out of here.
‘He can’t get up,’ Alex says. He still sounds calm. He hasn’t resorted to praying. He thinks we can wriggle out of this.
‘Why not?’ Her voice is closer. She’s right beside me. I try to breathe in the way I imagine a sleeping teenage boy would.
‘He’s sick,’ Alex says.
‘Sick? In what way?’
‘Feeling sick. Ill. Under the weather.’
I contemplate faking a cough, maybe a slight groan. No. Too much.
‘Alex, what is going on? Is Zach drunk?’ Mariella’s voice goes up an octave.
‘No, he’s not drunk. It’s a rash, I think. And a sore throat. Looks contagious—’
Mariella pulls back the doona and I open my eyes to her face peering into mine.
‘Natalie!’ she says, and nothing else. I think it’s the first time she’s ever been speechless.
18
Confessions
‘Mum, it’s not what you think.’ Even now, in the most embarrassing moment of my life, Alex is calm and relaxed. Though, he is talking a little faster than normal. The hole he needs to get us out of is getting deeper.
Thank god I’m still sunburnt, because I am blushing harder than I have ever blushed in my life.
‘What do you think I think it is?’ Mariella says, hands on her hips.
‘You think there’s something going on between us.’
‘There’s not,’ I say, sitting up, finding my voice. It doesn’t occur to me to tell even a hint of the truth. Lying seems the only option.
‘Did Zach ask you to swap beds, Natalie?’ she asks.
‘Yes,’ Alex says, betraying his brother in less than half a second.
‘No,’ I say, at the same time. We glance at each other.
‘It was my idea,’ I say.
Alex raises his eyebrows.
‘I thought Zach and Lucy would prefer to share a bed, and I don’t care where I sleep, so I suggested we swap,’ I say.
Mariella is squinting, watching me. Then she turns on her heel.
‘Let’s see what Zach has to say,’ she says, and she leaves the room in a flurry of outrage. I know Mariella well enough to know she quite enjoys a flurry of outrage, but usually I get to listen to her story about the person or persons who have inspired the outrage, rather than be one of them myself.
‘I messaged him,’ Alex says, pulling his hands out from under the doona.
‘Saying what?’
‘Mum run.’
‘That’s helpful.’
‘Actually, it says “num rum” because I t
yped it without looking.’
‘Oh god.’ I hope Lucy is dressed when Mariella walks in. I pull the doona back over my head.
‘Is she really mad?’ I ask, making a little hole between doona and pillow to speak out of.
‘She’ll be mad at me and Zach. For breaking her “no sleepovers in the same bed” rule. She’s paranoid about her home being turned into a den of underage sex.’ Alex yawns. He sounds like he’s been down this path before.
‘We’re not underage.’
‘Underage in her mind is anyone under thirty. Also, she hates lying.’
‘Well, we are telling the truth.’
‘No, we’re not. You said there’s nothing going on between us.’
‘I panicked,’ I say and, I want to add, We haven’t clarified what is happening between us, is it something, and if it is something, is it the kind of something you mention to mothers?
‘You’re eighteen. I’m nineteen. It’s none of Mum’s business what happens in this bedroom.’
‘Right,’ I say, but I’m not as confident as he is in this assertion. This is Mariella’s house and I obey all kinds of other rules she has. Also, I don’t feel like an adult. Or at least, not the adult Alex is describing, one who has a sex life and is confident in her life decisions.
I get out of bed and I catch sight of myself in the mirror.
‘My sunburn looks worse today, somehow.’
‘You look cute.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘Like a tomato.’
‘Tomatoes aren’t cute.’
‘A cherry tomato.’
I sit back down on the bed. I want to go upstairs and change out of my pyjamas, but I’m too scared of seeing Mariella again. Alex is still lying in bed, watching me.
‘I can’t believe I fell asleep and forgot to swap back,’ I say.
‘Well, so did Zach.’
‘I hope Mariella isn’t too mad.’
‘You know Mum. Overreaction is her favourite kind of reaction.’
‘Lucy’s mum will be furious,’ I say.
‘Lucy’s mother is not here,’ Alex says.
‘Your mum might tell her. And it’s the principle of the matter. The lying.’