I ran my hands through my hair. “Mike, I… He never bothered me, all these years. He let me choose to come to him, even when he had to feel like what was done to him was so unfair. He isn’t asking anything, even now. I have to give him a chance.”
“You’re right,” Mike said. “Nothing’s more shitty in life than not knowing what could have been.” He meant something specific with that, obviously, and I really wanted to know what that was, but of course he didn’t share with me. “Just, I want you to know, if you ever decide you need help with that situation—or with the not-exactly-boyfriend situation, you can always give me a call. Any time. Don’t hesitate.”
I wish I could have hugged him, but of course we’d never done that—and I’d just remembered I wasn’t wearing any underwear still, which made me awkward. It was strange how something that was seemingly so wrong could so quickly come to feel normal.
Another knock on my door made both of us jump. Mike got up off my bed like he had been doing something wrong.
“That’ll be Ryan,” I said. “It’s not like Mum thinks she needs to ask. Come in, Ryan, it’s a party in here.”
Mike squeezed past Ryan as he stepped in. “I’ll let the two of you have some time to yourselves.” Probably keen to head off Mum most likely.
But once Ryan and I were alone together, he didn’t seem to know what he’d really come in to say. He scratched his stubble and then picked up one of my dolls and gave her an awkward squeeze before setting it down.
It was up to me to get this moving. I made sure my knees were held tightly together first. “Did you hear everything?”
“In this house?” Ryan rolled his eyes. “Is that really true, though? He never hit you? I mean you’re fucking basing your entire opinion of this event now on what he’s telling you?”
I would have expected him to go harder on the whole thing actually. Refuse to hear this side of the story completely. I thought I knew why he was like this, too.
“Did you actually see it happen, Ryan? Do you remember him ever hitting either of us?”
He grimaced. “I don’t know what I remember, Tam, it was such a mess. I definitely remember things being shit at home just before, with them yelling at one another all the time.”
Both of them yelling at one another. I was too tense all of a sudden to ask him to clarify, but I didn’t really need to. If he’d meant just Brad yelling at Mum, then he would have said it differently.
“I think I remember the three of us staying with Mum’s friend for a few days. Maybe just someone from the church who took us in. It’s a bit confusing.”
“But you don’t remember him hurting me.”
“Don’t properly remember anything but leaving, I know that happened for sure.” He was grimacing like he was working through a bad bout of food poisoning. “Why would she just lie about that? Like it’s beyond malicious.”
“Did you hear how she wouldn’t say anything, though? Like, there’s no reason for her to be like that… unless she lied.”
Ryan shook his head, groping around the vicinity of his pants pocket as if something he expected to be there wasn’t. Mum had really laid into him when she figured out he was smoking. Screaming and all. I hadn’t even realised; he clearly wasn’t doing it in the house and he must have been keeping himself pretty clean, but that was how it always was with her. Zero or a thousand. She’d done it to both of us. Ryan’s ciggies, my job… we weren’t fucking allowed to do anything outside of her idea for us. It was bullshit, a complete mess.
And I could see the thoughts in my head being reflected back at me through Ryan, right now. “What the fuck is going on, Tamara? What do we even do about this?”
“I wish I knew,” I said.
Chapter Twenty: Tamara
“Ay, Tamara! Where you going to in such a hurry? Got someone to see, huh?”
I was just glad Jason didn’t pick up and follow me as I ducked through an archway overgrown by trees and went through one of the teachers’ carparks to avoid further attention. I knew Jason pretty well because we’d sat close in a few classes over the years, but he was part of Rowan’s group, and for that reason I didn’t think I could really trust anything he did.
But maybe I was letting what I thought had happened with my father all those years ago colour my views of guys. Maybe Steven had been right, and Rowan hadn’t done something that made him irredeemable, just… ill-advised. Maybe I should have tried to call him out on it instead of turning into a puddle of distress.
My heart was going so hard as I crossed the tennis courts towards Steven’s car I couldn’t hear my own footsteps. I didn’t know if the same thing that had happened last time I’d gone to him there would happen again. I was scared that it might. Excited that it might. My head was a complete mess at that moment, but the whole thing was so much better to think about than the mess with Mum, I didn’t care so much.
I could see Steven staring at me from a distance as I approached. Whatever was coming, he was ready—and I, too, was ready, just as I’d been the day before.
I felt very different all of a sudden to my normal self. Seductive, not some confused virginal deer. I was pretty sure it was making me move differently, too. I was almost laughing as I stepped around the car and sidled in right under his nose, inserting myself between him and the car.
A wave of unease hit me then. I was practically telling him that I wanted the same thing to happen today that had happened yesterday.
But it was even more than that. I wanted other things he seemed less willing to give me: the truth about whatever had happened between him and that girl, an explanation for his interest in me… a name for what we were to one another. If I just knew: if I could label it as a bit of fun he was having with me, or something he was hoping to become more, then it seemed like that part of my life would at least be easier. I wouldn’t be so bothered by the guys laughing when I walked past and calling me dirty, the girls sneering at me like I was going to corrupt their boyfriends with my mere presence.
He was just staring at me. I didn’t know what his deal was, but it was pretty clear I wasn’t getting my wish that day.