I stand in front of the sink and run the tap. I don’t splash water on my face because I’m wearing enough eyeliner to be an emo poster child, but I do place my shaking hands beneath the stream and get lost in the feel of the cool water over my fingertips. Then I dry them on an embroidered hand towel and stare at my reflection. Unhappy girl. The same girl I’ve seen for the last twenty-one years. The same worthless, fucked up junkie I’ve stared at in the mirror every day since I was a teen. I close my eyes and swallow back tears so they won’t ruin my makeup.
A thought occurs to me then. I’m in a bathroom alone. Adeline doesn’t know I’m a junkie, and she had no idea I was coming, meaning she also had no time to put away any medication she may have lying around. Spurred on by the promise of escape, I yank open the cabinet as if my life depends on it. There isn’t much to choose from: lotions, a pre-packaged spare toothbrush, some tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner, and little hand soaps in the shapes of flowers. And then on the top shelf right at the very back I find what I’m looking for: Nurofen, Panadol, Panadeine Forte and OxyContin.
Blessed be the rich with back problems.
I pull the oxy out and open the box. There are three tablets within. It’s not coke, but it’s enough to take the edge off. Maybe if I took the Panadeine Forte with an OxyContin, or maybe I could just pop a couple of the Panadeine now and hide the oxy in my bra until later. I stare down at the boxes before me, and then I do the unthinkable—I place them back in the cabinet, neatly stacked the way I found them, or as close to it as I can get. My hands are shaking as I quietly close the cabinet and hurry to the door before I can change my mind. I yank the handle and barrel into Tank. I give a startled cry and jump back as though he just hit me.
“Find everything okay?”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “Thanks.”
I know that guilt is written all over my face. He glances behind me at the bathroom, the unused toilet, and then finally his eyes roll over the cabinet and back to me. I’m waiting for him to say something, anything. To accuse me of taking his mother’s drugs. And even though it would be a totally valid argument, I hate that this is the first thing he thinks. I hate that I’ve given a reason for him to think this way. I hate that he knows me well enough to know that I’m not above stealing drugs from an old lady who needs them.
“Anything you wanna tell me?” He crosses his arms over his massive chest. I mimic the gesture.
“No, Tank. I don’t have anything to say to you at all.” I attempt to push past him but he grabs my arm and yanks me back, and while the sudden jolt to my already wired system comes as a shock, the tenderness with which his thumb smooths over my arm is just as surprising. “You’re hurting me.”
He grins and tilts his head to the side, searching my expression. “By doing this?” he asks and his thumb moves in smoother, more purposeful strokes over my flesh.
“Let’s just get this shit over with,” I say, and then regret it as I’m turned and shoved up against the wall.
“This is my mother’s house. This ‘shit’ is a meal she prepared for us, and you are her guest. Show some fuckin’ respect, or I’ll put you over my knee and spank you until your arse is red raw and can no longer sit at a table to enjoy a meal.”
I suck in a deep breath and close my eyes, ignoring the way my pussy aches to have him do all of those dirty, wicked things he just promised. “I didn’t … I didn’t mean it like that.”
I glance up, wanting him to believe me. I wish he hadn’t brought me here, but I’ve got nothing against Adeline. I feel raw and vulnerable, exposed, and for once oddly chastened by his disappointment, rather than angered by it.
Tank surprises me by reaching out and tracing his calloused fingers over my cheek. “You make me crazy, you know that?”
No. I don’t know that. I didn’t know that was possible, to drive Tank crazy. He’s always so calm, and so … stoic. Nothing fazes him … ever. So to hear him confess this makes my stomach twist all up in knots.
For a few weeks when I was very small, I’d had a babysitter come take care of me when my dad was out on a job. Josie would let me stay up to watch TV. One night she’d put on a scary movie and when I’d told her I was frightened, Josie confessed that she was too. That had frightened me even more because if the responsible adult was afraid, then there was something to be worried about.
Tank’s expression gives me that same feeling. He looms over me and very slowly, leans in. We’ve kissed thousands of times before. Sometimes when we were hidden away in his room at the clubhouse all we’d do was kiss—much to my disappointment at the time. I never understood that. Until now. And now, things are infinitely different.
“What are you doing?” I ask. Tank’s warm breath washes over my face and I stare up at him, waiting for an answer. Searching his eyes for something, anything. But they’re no longer fiery and intense—they’re cold as stone.
Adeline clears her throat. “Dinner is ready.”
Tank straightens, but for a long time he doesn’t take his eyes off of me, and then he shakes his head and says, “Coming.”
He turns and walks out to the dining room, and I lag behind.
What the hell just happened?
When I enter the adjoined lounge and dining room, I have a perfect view of the beach. The day may be cool, but the water is a crystalline cerulean.
“Your house is beautiful,” I mutter, though truth be told it is more to myself than to Adeline.
“Thank you, but its Jonah’s house. I just take care of it for him.”
“Do we have to go over this again, Ma?” he says, and for the first time I notice he’s sitting at the head of the table, sipping … is that sparkling water? “The deed is in your name. It’s your house.”
She rolls her eyes and gestures to the leg of lamb before him. “Be a dear and carve that, Puddin’. Poor Ivy will starve to death listening to us bicker.”
“Ma.”
“Sorry,” she says, picking up her own wine glass with sparkling water and sipping it.
“Puddin’?” I ask, warily, afraid he’ll shut down the conversation because he so rarely tells me anything about his past. All this time I’ve known him I had no idea his mother was even alive, much less that he came to visit her every Sunday. “Why puddin’?”
Adeline laughs. “From birth to puberty Jonah was … on the larger side. Not solid like he is now, you understand, but chubby. Bless his little heart. The kids at school gave him such a hard time. They used to call him all sorts of things: Tubs, Cake, Doughboy, Jonah the Whale.”
I risk a glance at Tank. His jaw is clamped shut, and the little muscle in his cheek twitches the way it does when he wants to hit something. He’s hating every second of this, but he doesn’t warn her to stop.
“He wasn’t overfed, of course,” Adeline continues. “We were poor. Jonah’s father liked to gamble, and we scraped together what meals we could. We had a game we used to play when Wayne was out drinking with his buddies; we’d tear the room apart looking for change. He always got so happy when he found our buried treasure—that’s what we called it. His little face would light up and we’d add it to the collection of coins we kept hidden away from his father.
“When Jonah was at school I’d gather those coins together and use them to buy whatever offcuts I could find at the butcher for our next meal. So despite being horribly poor, Jonah was fat. And not just a little fat; he was huge for such a young thing. When he’d smile, you could barely see his eyes. They’d get lost in the creases around them.”
“Jesus, do we have to take a trip down memory lane?” Tank says, that little muscle in his jaw popping out. She looks at her son, and though he might be fully-grown and could bench-press her easily, she still has her “Mum look” down pat. “Ma, Ivy doesn’t need to hear every emasculating detail of my childhood.”