Getting Real

Over the next two days, Rielle tried to follow Rand’s advice to make peace, move on, get over it. She tried not to think about before, but Sydney was a poison, flooding her head with unwanted memories.

Maggie in the old yellow kitchen, peeling potatoes for a roast chicken dinner. Ben reading the newspaper, cursing the crossword. Peanut butter spread deep on thick-cut white bread with ice cold milk. Playing scrabble and making up words to try to win. Rand in his school band uniform, so not cool. Long days at the beach, blistered noses and peeling skin. The puppy called Strings they’d had to leave behind. And music. Always music.

The closer Sydney got, the more the toxic memories invaded her thinking and the stronger they were. Ben teaching her to sing; never the songs she wanted to try. Interminable piano lessons that robbed her of sunbaking time. Maggie making her clothes; never the style she wanted to wear. Boring nights in front of the TV; arguments about homework, queuing for the bathroom, getting caught sneaking out at night. And laughter and acceptance, and love and happiness. Before.

Before stole up on her, caught her out and took her breath away; left her startled and uncertain. Ceedee’s new outfit jolted the memory of her first sewing lesson. The smell of cooked bacon for the crew was a Mother’s Day breakfast feast. Glen holding stage plans was a flashback to the music room designed for the new house that never got built and Rand doodling lyrics was Ben at his crossword. Before.

Now, if she looked in the mirror, past the hairpiece and the makeup, past the violet eyes and perfect teeth, there was Maggie. And Maggie was long dead and for that there was no antidote.

Rielle buried thoughts of before in the deep melted brown of Jake’s eyes, in the warmth of his skin and the curve of his solid chest as he spooned her. She stoked her courage in his full-lipped grin, in the laugher in his voice as he teased her. When she felt the memories rise and panic lick the edge of her fear, she gripped Jake’s arms and when it threatened to overcome her, she sought relief in his hands and his mouth, and his body as he worshipped her.

But she didn’t talk about it. To talk about it might make it real; might unfurl the selfish thing inside her that caused the divide, made before have such a violent after. Made hiding the way she looked and felt was the only defence she had.

She knew that hurt Jake. Occasionally he let her see his sadness, his sense of not having all of her, of getting short-changed, because he kept nothing back. Not even the fact he didn’t understand, not even his anxiety for her—for them. His love poured out, rich, uncompromising and patient. He kept his promise and never pushed for more. He was constant and steady, a planet for her star, a man to tame her wolf, a J to curl around her finger with the A and the R.

For Jake, this was purgatory. This: watching Rielle’s wary eyes, the tension in her muscles, the frown that moved in and rented permanent space above her brows. Knowing she didn’t sleep, picked at her food, rehearsed til she dropped from exhaustion, had trouble focussing and got easily distracted. She was hesitant and reckless, boisterous and sullen and switched between those moods without warning. One minute creating some joke, the next screaming at a hapless roadie. Harry steered her crew away. Rand watched her closely and the band closed ranks around her. The crew reacted too. Her conversation with the poker players had its ripple effect. They worked overtime to keep her happy without complaint.

And Jake waited for her to choose; to blow apart and crumble or to harden and survive. She was capable of either, but she was only capable of doing it alone. She scowled at Rand and pushed him away; and only at night in Jake’s arms, under his lips, did she accept any kindness.

After that second night together she didn’t cry again. She clung and clawed and thrashed and called out, but there were no tears. That part was heaven. Horizontal there were no barriers between them anymore. Horizontal they soared. It was vertical they had a problem with.

In the daylight of the vertical world they boarded a flight for Sydney where they had a five day break and had agreed to a fourth sold out show. On the flight, Rielle hid her eyes behind sunglasses, and her state of mind behind partying with Rand’s new entourage. She drank too much, she laughed too loud, and she left nail marks in Jake’s hand from squeezing too tight. She thought he needed help to manage his flight anxiety, but the tension in his shoulders and the crawling unease in his gut had nothing to do with the heights he conquered, and everything to do with his fear for her.

Jake woke before the alarm and turned it off. Rielle was asleep, curled on her side, her coloured hair streaming across the pillow, her glitter eyelashes resting heavily on the dark circles under her eyes. He wanted to fold her into his arms and listen to her heartbeat, but he wanted her to sleep more. He got ready quietly and left her a note to say he’d be back by 11.00 A.M. and hoped she didn’t wake to read it.

He got busy with logistics, but all the time thinking of Rielle. When he got back to the hotel he hoped he might have the chance to wake her gently, but Rand met him in the foyer, and his thoughts went from pleasure to panic.

“Did Rie say anything to you about where she was going?” Rand’s voice was sharp and his eyes wer

e darting.

“No. I left her asleep. What’s wrong?”

“I hired a Harley this morning. We were going to ask you to come out for a ride with Harry and me, but Rie’s taken off on it.”

“You’re telling me she rides?” Of course she did, she’d been such an easy passenger and so at home on Bonne it made sense, and so like her not to tell him.

“Yeah, she rides fine. It’s where she’s going that’s the problem. I’m scared she’s going to do something stupid. She’s turned her phone off. We have to go after her.”

Fear stabbed instantly, sharply in Jake’s chest. He palmed the keys to the Triumph. “Tell me where I’m going.”

On Bonne, Jake travelled quicker than Rand and Harry in Harry’s car. They were somewhere behind him. He was weaving in and out of traffic, overtaking easily, getting a jump on the lights, anything orange was green. He had half an eye out for speed cameras and cop cars, trying to estimate how much farther in front of him Rielle would be.

His heart was racing, not from the adrenaline rush of the ride, but from the thought of her hitting that part of the highway alone. Rand had only given him a quick sketch, but what he now knew made him feel heavy with dread for Rielle. She was somewhere ahead of him, her head full of ghosts and recriminations, speeding to confront the moment that changed her and Rand’s lives. Rielle had at least an hour’s head start on them. But she didn’t know they were chasing her, so it was possible she’d stop somewhere and break the ride, though Jake didn’t think she would. She’d been waiting for this moment since Adelaide, probably longer—probably since she was fourteen. He swerved around a truck hauling gravel and took the next corner hard and fast. He was travelling well above the speed limit, knowing it was worth any fine and losing his licence if it meant he could get to her before she arrived at the crash site.

If only.

The thrum of the bike between Rielle’s thighs was reassuring: a reminder she was powerful, she was alive, not beaten, not weak, not dead. She was conscious of the scar over her hip; it seemed to throb and itch beneath her jeans. Ridiculous. She knew it was her imagination, but it seemed to ache more the closer she got to Halo Bay.

After taking it easy, getting a feel for the bike when she started out, she was going too fast now, and she knew it. But she’d waited too long to do this, and there was no point waiting any longer. She needed to see it. If she was ever going to get past it, she needed to face it in the daylight, so it no longer bled black fear into her dreams.

It wasn’t like she expected to see anything when she got there. No tyre tracks, no police tape. There’d be no stench of petrol, no smell of burning rubber, no flashing lights or wailing sirens. No wreckage to mark the event. No floral tributes to signify something bad happened there. It would be an empty stretch of bitumen, a narrow, twisted, two-lane piece of highway, now bypassed by more modern four-lane additions.

The cops had called it a death trap. They’d said there were regular fatalities on that stretch of road and there were signs up warning drivers to take care. But signs couldn’t stop a stupid kid from arguing with her mother or losing her temper and angering her father. Signs did nothing except witness what happens when a father, tired from working, and a mother, frustrated by her daughter’s stubbornness, stop paying attention to the road for a few seconds, just long enough for a truck to batter them til they all fell about alive, dead, dying or surviving for no good reason.

There was a reason for Rand to survive unhurt, physically anyway. He was smart and wise and pure and made the world around him a better place, but why did she live? She was angry and scared and hollow and not even comfortable in her own skin.

Her blood loss alone would’ve been enough to kill her had the ambulance been a few minutes slower to arrive. But no amount of haste was going to keep Maggie alive and, as it turned out, no amount of trying would stop Ben’s cancer taking hold either. So why was she the one humming with a life she didn’t know how to live—saved?