A Beautiful Star (Beautiful Series, Book 5) (17 page)

"So do all of you have kids?" I ask looking around the group of couples.

“We have one boy,” Katrina answers for everyone. “I’m not sure if I’m cut out for more than one kid. But Paige and Elliot have two and another on the way.” Paige smiles and holds up her bottle of water as if it’s evidence of her pregnancy.

“And I’m getting ready to announce my first,” Naomi explains with a smile. “I’m about four months along. So that’s what we’re going to be announcing in our Voyeur interview next month.”

“Oh wow, congratulations,” I say to both her and Theo.

“Thanks,” Theo says. “Knocking her up was tough, but someone had to do it,” he jokes, earning himself an elbow in his side from his wife.

“And as far as kids go for me and Marcus, well, we have Perry,” Lisa says with a wink, although I already know that she isn’t ready for kids, it’s something we’ve spoken about before. So I think she’s saying it more for the groups benefit than mine.

“I love Perry,” Naomi says. “Every time we look after him, I don’t want to give him back.”

And from there the conversation slowly shifts from kids to dogs, to jobs then memories. They’re all very lovely and they include me as much as they can, but their happiness is a little hard to be around and when I notice my wine glass is empty again, I excuse myself to go and get another drink, checking my phone on the way to the bar to make sure my mum hasn’t called and noticing that it’s only ten o’clock. 

“What will it be?” the barman asks and I once again ask for the house wine.

"I know you," a blond haired man notes, as I turn away from the bar with my drink in hand. I know him too, it’s Lachlan Hurst, the bass player in Matiari. I haven’t had much to do with him besides a few interview questions and noticing that he spends a lot of time enjoying the female company that many musicians are privy to. "You’re a reporter or something aren't you?"

"I am," I smile, taking a sip from my wine. "But I'm not here reporting tonight. I’m just he enjoying the show, which was really great by the way,” I add.

A big grin crosses his face as his eyes travel down my body. "Well, we do our best to put on a good show for beautiful women like you.”

I step away, reading the interest in his body language before he finishes complimenting me. It’s not that I find him creepy or sleazy, I’m just not ready for this. The moment his tone becomes flirtatious, it causes my stomach to twist uncomfortably.

“Well, you do a really good job. You’re all very talented. Excuse me though, I’m actually here with friends.”

He smiles and looks over to where I had been standing. “You don’t want to hang around with the married couples do you? They get a bit boring sometimes, talking about their home renovations and holiday plans. Why don’t you hang out over here, we’re a bit more fun.”

“I’m sure you are. I’m just…”

“She’s with me actually,” Brad says, slipping his arm around my shoulder in a brilliantly timed rescue.

“Sorry mate,” Lachlan smiles. “No harm intended, we were just chatting.”

“No worries,” Brad smiles. “We’ll see you around.”

He leads me back across the room to where everyone else is standing and releases his hold on me, giving me a wink when I say thanks.

After that, I stand in the group and I try to listen and participate, but really, I want to go home. Pausing during his conversation with Elliot, Brad gives me a curious look to which I shrug and point with my thumb toward the door to say I was thinking of leaving. He then excuses himself from Elliot and offers to drive me.

“I’m fine. I’ll just go and get a cab.”

“It’s the city on a Saturday. Let me drive you. I promise, I had that one beer with you earlier and that’s it. Besides, I’m working all day tomorrow and I was about to shoot through myself.”

“Are you sure?”

“Definitely. Say goodbye to your friends, and I’ll meet you at the door over there.”

He says a quick goodbye and a nice to meet you to all of the couples and then heads across the room to his friends while I do the same with this group.

“Listen, you didn’t get to meet them tonight, but my friend Stephanie and her husband Gary put these great BBQs on every couple of months or so, you should come, it would be nice to see you again,” Naomi says as she hugs me goodbye. “And I’ll definitely be calling to get you on the interview with Voyeur.”

“Thanks, that all sounds great. It was so nice to meet you all,” I say, saving my hug for Lisa till last.

“You did good for your first night out,” she smiles at me, squeezing me tightly. “I’ll give you a call during the week.”

“OK, have a great time. See you, Marcus.”

“See you, Sandra. Tell your mum hi.”

“I’ll do that. She’ll actually get a kick out of Marcus Bailey saying hi to her.”

“Well, next time Lisa comes to visit with Perry, I’ll come too, give her a big shock then,” he grins, leaning down to give me a kiss on the cheek, goodbye. I still haven’t asked him if he remembers me from that weekend a few years ago, but seeing how happy he and Lisa are now, I don’t think I want to bring it up. It’s old news now, and there’s no need to bring it up. Water under the bridge.

“Ready?” Brad asks, giving me a friendly smile as he waits for me by the door.

“I am. Thanks a lot for this, Brad.”

“Don’t mention it. I could see your eyes glazing over and that knight in shining armour complex I have saw an opportunity.”

He leads me to his black BMW and opens the door for me. “My lady,” he says with an exaggerated wave of his hand.

“Thanks,” I laugh, sliding into the curved leather seat and resting my head up against the headrest, letting out a long sigh, feeling glad that I’m not in the noise anymore.

“Clubs aren’t your thing anymore?” he asks.

“I don’t know. I used to love them. Especially The Basement. But, I don’t know…”

“Things change?”

“Yeah. Things change.”

For a while we drive in quiet, listening to the radio as he focuses on the road and I watch the illuminated streets as they flick past the window.

“Thanks for saving me from that guy earlier,” I say after a while.

“Don’t mention it,” he shrugs. “I wasn’t trying to hit on you either by the way, just so we’re clear and you aren’t worried that I’m going to try something when I get you home. I get that you’re still pretty hung up on that Masters guy.”

“How do you get that?”

“Just something about the way you are around people. It’s like you’re looking for someone.”

“Maybe it’s just because I’ve been grieving for my father.”

“Nah, it’s more than that. It’s like you’re looking for your light.”

“My light?”

“Yeah, you know–the person who makes you light up when you’re around them. You have it when you’re around him. It’s why I wasn’t shocked when we were seeing each other and you told me you’d become more than just friends.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, even though it doesn’t really mean much.

“Don’t be sorry, Sandra. Like we always said, it’s not like we were exclusive, so I don’t have any hard feelings. I do, however, hope that one of these days, I’m going to find my light too.”

He pulls the car to a stop outside my mother’s house. “Well, when you do, don’t do what I did. Don’t push them away.”

Giving him a hug to thank him for the lift, I exit the car and head to the front door, turning around to wave as I step inside the house as he’s waiting to make sure I get inside safely.

It’s only eleven, so I expect to find my mother awake, but she’s fast asleep on the couch with the TV still on, playing some weird YouTube funny video show. I laugh when it shows a man running scared when a kitten jumps out at him, then I pick up the remote and turn the sound right down and cover mum with a blanket.

Gently, I smooth my hand over her hair. “’Night mum,” I whisper. Then I tiptoe into the bathroom to wash off my make up and get ready for bed. And for the life of me, I can’t manage to fall asleep. I can’t stop thinking about Jonathan.

I admit it. I miss him. That much is true. I’ve been trying to ignore my feelings beneath the justification for why I pushed him away. I’ve tried to reason with my emotions that it was all for the best and that we couldn’t have made it. We couldn’t have survived. Our relationship was too young for the strain of grief….

But now, now I can’t deny it anymore–at least not to myself anyway.

I am still in love with Jonathan Masters. I am still as in love with him as I was that fateful day almost a year before now.

And as a result, I am ruined.

This is exactly why I didn’t want to start something with him in the first place. I could feel this pull between us and I knew. I just knew that if I let it go too far, that if I let myself feel something more than friendship for him, then I would be lost forever.

I always felt that if we crossed that emotional line from friends to lovers then something would happen to break us apart. I didn’t, however, know that it would be my own actions that would push him away. That it would be my own lack of faith in his feelings for me that would be the reason he’d be gone from my life.

After spending the night around so many happy couples, I found myself confronted by what I’d done to my relationship with Jonathan. I was wide-awake, all night, re-running every detail of our time together in my mind. And there was one thing I couldn’t stop seeing. It was that look on his face when I told him to go. That look when I took away the last of his hope. Every time I saw that look in my mind, I felt a deep pang in my stomach. I know that feeling well now, it’s the pang of regret.

If I could turn back the clock and somehow undo pushing him away, I would. But now that so much time has gone, I have no idea what to do. I fear it’s too late. I fear I chased away my soul mate, and as a result, I’ll never feel whole again.

***

“What the hell is she doing?” I ask my empty room the next morning when I hear strange noises coming from the lounge room. The sun has barely been up for an hour and I still haven’t slept, so I take the noise as a sign that I should give up and go out to see what’s going on.

I find her sitting in the middle of the room with all the cupboards open and piles of vinyl records, music CDs and DVDs surrounding her as well as three large boxes labelled ‘keep’, ‘store’ and, ‘charity’ with black felt marker in my mother’s scrawl.

“Good morning. I didn’t wake you did I?” she chirps, flipping through a few vinyls and placing them in the ‘charity’ box.

“What are you doing?” I ask with a frown, confused as to why she’s throwing dad’s things away.

“I watched a show about organising and downsizing last night. It’s prompted me to go through the whole house and pack things away. I think it’s time to sell the house and get something small for me. I might even get a dog or a cat or something.”

“Aren’t you allergic to pet hair?”

“Oh, I’ll manage. They have pills for that sort of thing you know.”

“Stop mum, you can’t throw that away,” I cry, reaching out to stop her throwing away dad’s collection of Beatles vinyls that he painstakingly collected over the years because he thought that their music didn’t sound right on CD.

“Well what am I supposed to do with it, Sandra? Make a vigil? Mourn him as terribly as I did in the beginning for the rest of my life? He wouldn’t want that.”

I take the albums from her hands. “Well, he wouldn’t want this either.”

“Then I’ll tell you what, you keep the ones you think are important and we’ll give the rest to charity, okay? They’re just gathering dust here, sweetheart, better to go to a collector who would actually use them.”

Nodding, I hug the albums to my chest and then slide them into the box marked ‘storage’, feeling that that was that best compromise for now.

Then I sit on the ground beside her and begin sorting through each pile one by one.

“Are you sure you want to move, mum? This has been your home for so long,” I ask.

“I know. But your father has been gone for almost a year now, and I’ve mourned here, and come to realise that staying here is like living with his ghost. I can’t stop feeling sad here, and he wouldn’t want this for me. I need to find a way to move on and live for the both of us,” she explains, flipping through another stack of old vinyl album covers that haven’t seen the light of day since I was a kid. “He had wonderful plans for us to travel when he retired. So, I think I owe it to him to see everything he wanted us to see together. I think, wherever he is now, he’d be happy if I did that,” she nods, sliding the records into a box marked ‘charity’. I wince a little, seeing them go, but I’m beginning to understand why this is important to her, so I put my own feelings aside and try to understand her. I may have lost my father, but she lost her soul mate, and I need to do whatever I can to ease the burden on her heart.

“Yeah, I think he would be happy if you did that,” I agree, beginning to flip through our massive CD collection and remembering each album being played in this house over the years. “Oh god, remember this one?” I say, holding up
The Best of Cat Stevens
. “I remember dad bringing it home and then blasting ‘Wild World’ and ‘Cats in the Cradle’ all the time.”

Reaching out, she takes it from my hand and looks at it smiling. “You know, this was his favourite album. He always said that it told the story of life.” Opening it up, I see her brow furrow as she finds a DVD inside. “What’s this?” she says, holding it up to show me.

On it, it says ‘Play this
only
if I’m gone’ in my dad’s writing.

“Oh my god,” I gasp, reaching out and taking it from her hand and racing to the DVD player to insert it, my hands shaking as I wonder what it could possibly be. As I step back from the TV with the remote in hand, I look over at my mum who is wiping her hands on her pants repeatedly as a worried look sets upon her face. “Do you want me to play it?” I ask, and she nods glancing at me quickly but keeping her gaze glued to the screen.

Aiming the remote, I hit the play button and within a few seconds, my dad’s face appears on the screen causing my mother to gasp with a quick intake of breath.

As large as life, he’s there in front of us, smiling as he runs his hands over his thick head of hair before he speaks. “Geez, I feel a bit silly right now. But I’m hoping that both of my girls are sitting together, watching this right now, and I hope that you weren’t cheeky and found this too early and are watching it while I’m at work or something. But I guess that’s the risk you take when you do this sort of thing…Anyway, the purpose of this video is supposed to be because I’ve died, and I wanted to leave something behind for you to find when you felt strong enough to start going through my things.” He clears his throat and adjusts slightly on his chair before he continues.

“The other day, your mother made me watch this movie called
P.S I Love You.
She said it was based on a book like all those Nicholas Sparks movies are. But I don’t read so I don’t know who the author is. It wasn’t Sparks, but it was bloody depressing enough to be one of his ideas but then the end was kind of nice, so...I’ll have to remember to look it up. Because I know it’s a book…anyway, I’m going off topic. So, in this movie, the husband dies and he leaves all these letters for his wife as a way to say goodbye. So it’s kind of like he’s still there. I cried like a bloody baby through half of it, but it really got me thinking about how much I love you two and how devastated I’d be if I lost one of you and what would happen if you lost me. So, I thought I’d make this one video for you to find–I don’t like the idea of a whole year’s worth of letters, because I think that would really make it hard for you to grieve like it did for the girl in the movie. But anyway, I wanted to sit down and tell you how much I love you both and that if you are going through my things because I died doing one of those stupid things your mother is always telling me not to do, or if I just got sick and didn’t make it, then maybe you’re ready to see this ugly mug one more time and hear me talk about how much I love you and what I would hope for your futures. Because I’ve got to say, my biggest fear, is that both of you will stop your lives because Mad Maddie isn’t coping and Sandy wouldn’t want you to be alone. I can see that would happen because you’re both so close, and while I think that’s great, I would hate it if Sandra didn’t find her own love and life because she was too scared to lose them. And then I would hate it if Maddie stopped being the light in the world that she is every day just because I’m not there to share it with her.

“So, without waffling on for too long, what I wish for you both is this. Live, my girls. Live without me and be
happy
. Know that I want you to smile, every single day. I want you to think about the moments we shared, and I want you to laugh instead of cry. I want you to
love
.

“For you my beautiful Sandy, that means that you’ll have to risk getting your heart broken. You think your dear old dad doesn’t know these things, but I see you. I see how you struggle to trust. But really, in the grand scheme of things, what’s a little heartache? It just means that you experienced love in the first place and that’s really worth the risk in my opinion.

“And to you my darling, Madeline, as much as I hate to even consider this while I’m alive. If I’m not with you anymore, then I want you to find a way to open your heart again. I want you to go out in the world and when you’re ready, fall in love again. I’ll be happy in the afterlife only if you’re happy in your life. So please, both of you. Find your happiness.”

He presses his lips together and gives a nod to the camera. “That’s all,” he says, before he reaches forward to switch it off, static crackling as the picture shakes and he grumbles, “How do you turn this bloody thing off? Oh…there.” And that’s when the disc ends.

Reaching out, I take my mother’s hand in mine as she looks at me with tears streaming down her face. “You okay?”

She nods. “Play it again,” she whispers, and I hit play, handing her the remote as we both sit together on the couch and look up at the screen as my dad tells us how much he loves us and how much he wants us to be happy. Over, and over, and over again. Then, when we finally stop watching, I go into my room and before I can change my mind, I pull out my phone and send Jonathan a text before I can think long enough to change my mind.

I know this is probably way too late to even matter. But I need you to know that I was wrong to send you away. I should have trusted in what we had and I shouldn’t have thrown away our happiness because of my own guilt. I’m sorry, Jonathan. And I meant it when I said that I will always love you. I just needed you to know that. Red xx

Then I switch of my phone, almost as afraid of getting a response as I am of not getting one at all, and I head back out to my mother to finish cleaning up the lounge room, in preparation of her new life – of both of our new lives.