Sliding Down the Sky (13 page)

“Hey,” he said, squeezing my shoulder carefully. “It’s okay.”

I didn’t dare look at him. It was bad enough that he had his hand on my shoulder, stopping me in my tracks. My head urged me to get out of there, but he had me physically bound to him, and I couldn’t move. I sniffed, nodding again as I quickly wiped my eyes.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m not usually like this.”

Not in front of people, anyway.

“It’s okay,” he said, gently squeezing my shoulder. “You don’t have to apologise.”

I ducked my head to quickly wipe my eyes, his hand falling away. As it did, I noticed his bruised knuckles.

“Freaked me out,” I said, because I owed him some kind of explanation.

“I bet it did.”

“It wasn’t what he… I fell, when he let me go. That’s how I hurt my arm. He didn’t really… hurt me. Not when he grabbed me, anyway. I mean, my pride, I guess. That took a beating.”

Was I even making sense?

“It was my own fault,” I clarified. “I fell wrong, the wrong way. I should’ve… I know better, I just wasn’t thinking.”

“You wouldn’t have fallen at all if he hadn’t grabbed you like that. Don’t blame yourself just because he was an asshole.”

I nodded. It was easier to agree, and I wasn’t going to stand there and discuss how embarrassed I was at not being able to defend myself.

“Are you okay, now?”

I wanted to laugh out loud, but I made myself look up at him.

Fake it till you make it.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

One more lie wasn’t going to hurt anyone.

“I still believe that love is all you need. I don’t

know a better message than that.”

– Paul McCartney

Callum

“Jack’s not home yet – he’s picking up the trailer.”

I nodded, making my way through to the kitchen anyway. “Well, then yeah, I’ll have a drink with you while I wait. Thanks.”

“Coffee?” Ally asked, and although I know it was meant to sound casual, it didn’t.

It sounded pointed. I turned to her, but decided at the last second that I didn’t want to go there right now. I had too much else on my mind to fight about this.

“Yeah, coffee’s good.”

I’d have preferred a beer, but that could wait until after Jack and I had cleared a trailer load of stuff out of the garage at Tom’s old place and brought it back here.

“Leo phoned earlier,” Ally said, getting mugs out and setting them on the kitchen counter. “He’s gonna be home all afternoon, so if you need a hand, he’s happy to help.”

I pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and sat down. “Great, because we can use all the help we can get. There’s a lot of stuff in there.”

Ally poured the coffee and handed me my mug.

“Thanks. So, where are you gonna put all this stuff when we get it back here?”

“I don’t know. Some in my studio I think, for now. The rest in the garage.”

“With all your grandmother’s stuff? Is there room?”

“I think so. We cleared some space.”

She leant her crutches against the table and carefully lowered herself into the chair across from me. Something was bothering her, and I didn’t think it had anything to do with lack of storage space.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “And don’t say ‘nothing’. I’m not that stupid.”

After spending a few moments playing with the handle on her coffee mug, she finally met my eyes, and I knew my instincts were right. It was written all over her face. I suspected what it was, but I wanted her to tell me anyway. It was important, if not to her, then to me. Jack had confided in me because he trusted me. I wanted Ally to confide in me, too.

“Jack told me about the baby thing,” I said, hoping that would open the gate for her.

She nodded, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly.

“So what happens now?” I asked.

“Honestly? I don’t know. We said we’d take some time out before we talked about it again.”

This was killing her, I could see it so clearly. It must be killing Jack, too, because the one thing in this world he wanted was for her to be happy.

“He loves you, y’know,” I said gently, as if she needed a reminder. “He just scared he’s gonna lose you. Right now, that’s all he can think about.”

She nodded, and her gaze fell, as if she was trying to protect me from seeing how much it hurt. Too late.

“He just needs some time to get used to the idea,” I said, hoping I was right.

“Yeah.”

She didn’t look convinced.

“You guys really need to talk about this. It’s not going to go away.”

She shook her head.

“I’ve said everything already. Now I just have to wait for him to decide that he wants a baby as much as I do.”

She was a smart cookie. She knew, just as I did, that it was more than just the pregnancy that was the issue.

I didn’t envy her position, or his. There was no doubt that this relationship thing was full of compromises, and sometimes there were no clear-cut rules. Sometimes, someone was going to get hurt no matter which way you swung it.

“How can I go forward when I don’t

know which way I’m facing?”

– John Lennon

Sass

I hadn’t worn my prosthesis at all the day before. Today, I was easing back into it slowly, an hour on, an hour off. The swelling had gone down and my arm was feeling much better, but there were still some residual red marks on the skin that I was keeping an eye on. I couldn’t afford to take any chances. There was no way I was going to show up at work without it.

Although my arm was healing, my pride and my confidence were still tingling from the sting of what had happened. I thought I was safe at the bar, with Leo there right beside me most of the time, but my little straw house had come tumbling down around me. I kept thinking back over it, and I couldn’t understand why I didn’t fight harder, why I didn’t just throw the guy off, or wrench myself away from him, or do something – anything – differently. I think it came down to the shock. He’d taken me by surprise, further evidenced by the fact that my gut reaction was to put both hands behind me when I’d started to fall backwards, even though I knew better than to do that.

I couldn’t get Callum out of my head. I kept coming back to one thing: why? Why was he bothering with me? Why me? Couldn’t he see the kind of baggage I hauled around with me? It felt as if it was written all over my face, yet he either couldn’t read the signs or he was ignoring them. Why?

I wasn’t good at relationships, even before the accident. It was just never a priority for me. I didn’t need to have a boyfriend to feel complete. I liked one night stands. They were quick, simple and there was no baggage. Everyone was a winner. My life was complicated, and busy, and I didn’t have time to pander to someone else’s needs.

A lot of things had changed in the past year, but my gut instinct to stay away from relationships hadn’t. My life was still complicated, and the baggage was now enough to fill an aircraft hangar. I couldn’t add someone else’s needs into the mix – I had enough trouble keeping on top of my own.

Then Callum showed up, spilling coffee all over my born-again-virgin status.

He had me thinking about this stuff again, when it had been relegated to the darkest recesses of my mind for so long. I kind of hated him for that. I wasn’t ready for it.

I stood at the window in my bedroom, watching as the three of them unloaded boxes from the garage into the trailer hitched behind Jack’s car. I’d taken my prosthesis off again to give my arm a break and I massaged the muscles in my forearm gently, hoping to help the circulation.

I took care to keep hidden behind the curtain, watching. They worked easily together, Leo, Jack and Callum. It was odd how Leo seemed to have taken a shine to Callum. My brother wasn’t exactly the trusting type. The friends he had were mostly ones he’d known since he was a kid, or friends from his playing days. He wasn’t a collector of people. He held his friends close and he was extremely loyal. Gemma was the outgoing one – she had a tonne of friends, whom she was in touch with often. I guess it was just Leo and I who were careful who we attached ourselves to. Our circles were small and tight. Trust was earnt and took time.

“Why don’t you go and ask them if they need refreshments?”

I hadn’t heard Gemma come up behind me. I held my arm close across my chest, all too aware that my prosthesis and the silicone liner were lying on the bed between us.

“What?”

“If you need an excuse to go and talk to him, I mean.”

I shook my head, keeping my back to her.

“Who?”

She stood there for a moment, and I wondered why she didn’t just leave. I wished she would.

“Is your arm still bothering you?”

I nodded. There was no point in lying about it.

“Do you need to see the doctor?”

“No.”

“Okay,” she said gently. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

I shook my head, and she sat down on my bed.

“You know you can talk to me, right? About anything, including your arm.”

Holding my arm close to my chest, I turned my head to see her holding my prosthesis. She glanced up at me, shrugging.

“It’s a lot lighter than I thought it’d be.”

She didn’t look in the least bit uncomfortable about holding it, or talking about it.

“It freaks Leo out,” I said, before I could stop myself. “I don’t think he’d like it if he saw you holding it like that.”

“I don’t think it’s that,” she sighed. “It just hurts him, to think about you being hurt like this.”

I sat down on the bed beside her, careful to tuck my arm into my side, away from her. She was probably right. If the situation had been reversed, it would’ve hurt me to see him like this.

“Want me to take a look?”

I looked over at her. She wasn’t Aria. She would see this through an adult’s eyes, not a child’s.

“No, thanks. It’ll be fine.”

On the rare occasions I couldn’t wear my prosthesis while they were around, I always wore a cotton liner on my arm and made sure my sleeve was rolled all the way down. I wasn’t just going to shove my bare arm at her now, even if she wanted me to.

“Hey, I’m a mother,” she said, with a smile. “I’ve been puked on, peed on, changed dirty diapers, wiped snotty noses and had regurgitated food spat out into the palm of my hand. I think I can handle seeing your arm.”

I shook my head determinedly.

“It’s okay, really. But thanks.”

She nodded, but she didn’t look entirely convinced. She should be thanking me. I just saved her from a real-life horror show.

“Are you still taking the painkillers?” she asked.

“No. I just took them on Tuesday night, so I could sleep. I haven’t taken any since.”

“I don’t think you should leave it any longer than another day or two. If it’s no better, we’ll take you for a check-up.”

“We? I can go by myself.”

“I know, but I thought you might want some company? I don’t mind. In fact, I’d rather go with you, then I’ll know what to do, too.”

She and Leo were so different. She reached over and took my hand in hers, squeezing gently. I could barely stand to look at her, I felt so unworthy.

“Hey,” she said. “Don’t forget to stop and look back every now and then. You’ve come so far, even in the past few months. You should be proud of that. You’ve lost so much, I can’t even begin to imagine how that feels. Just do me a favour and go easy on yourself, okay?”

I stared at her hand, holding mine.

“I’m trying.”

“I know you are. We can both see that. I’m just worried that your expectations are too high for right now, y’know? It’s gonna take time. Some things are gonna get easier, I know it. You just have to be patient.”

That was easier said than done. It’d been a year and I still felt like I’d learnt nothing. What happened on Tuesday night proved it.

“Do you want to talk about Callum?” she asked.

I glanced over at her, frowning.

“Why would I want to talk about him?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I just thought you might want to, since you’ve been standing there watching him ever since he arrived.”

I pulled my hand out of hers and began picking imaginary lint off my thigh.

“Y’know it doesn’t suit you, playing coy,” she said. “I’ve seen you get up on stage in front of… “

She didn’t finish her sentence, but we both knew what she was going to say. A cold shiver crawled up my spine and I willed my body to stand firm as the shadow of my former life passed over us both.

“You know what I mean,” she finished quietly.

Yeah, I knew what she meant.

“It’s not that simple,” I mumbled.

“What’s not that simple? I’m just suggesting you talk to him, not move in with him.”

I frowned at her, frustrated because she seemed to be so smart sometimes, yet so dumb too.

“You’re kidding, right? Why the hell would he want anything to do with me, when he could have any woman he wanted? There are a tonne of them out there with two working hands, he could take his pick. I bet any one of them would be a lot less hassle than me.”

“Everyone’s got baggage, Sass. The older we get, the more we have. That’s just life, y’know?”

I huffed out a half-hearted laugh. This conversation was getting way too personal.

“Yeah. Baggage. That’s my specialty alright.”

“No one’s perfect. Remember that.”

Well, I was a hell of a long way from that, that’s for damn sure.

“Why is this so hard for you?”

I looked over at her. Where should I start?

“I mean, he’s interested, that’s pretty clear. And he seems really nice. He was your knight in shining armour the other night, by all accounts.”

“I don’t need a knight in shining armour,” I snapped.

She didn’t deserve that, and we both knew it. It wasn’t her I was angry with.

“I don’t do relationships,” I said, softening my tone in lieu of an apology. “I never have. I didn’t know how before, and I sure as hell don’t know how now.”

She exhaled slowly, shrugging.