Lou stepped out of the cab, unsteady on her teetering heels. She turned to Sharni, and a low buzz of irritation zapped her as she realised that even in these pointlessly high heels, she still had to look up at her best friend, even though Sharni was, as ever, wearing sensible, flat cowboy boots. Cowgirl boots. In the city, Lou cultivated short friends.
A sixty-something man sporting the same put-upon air he’d worn for the last thirty years leaned out the taxi window, and gestured at the Queen’s Arms. ‘Be careful in there, girls,’ he warned, working hard to pull his lips back into a smile, but coming off looking even more worried. ‘Dunno why they picked that place for the reunion. All kindsa stuff goes on in there on Friday nights. And then, with the drought …’ He shrugged as though to suggest lack of rain could drive people nuts.
‘No worries, Mr Robinson,’ Sharni called, waving at him and treating him to one of her Geena Davis grins. ‘I’ll try to keep her out of trouble.’ She smacked Lou firmly on the bottom and Mr Robinson’s eyes widened as he shook his head, indicated carefully, and pulled away from Stone Mountain’s very own Gomorrah.
Lou scowled at Sharni before flipping open her compact and considering herself in it. Same straight dark hair. Same blue eyes, long nose, pointy chin, only her severe grey glasses were missing – Sharni had convinced her that contacts were the only option for this evening. Nothing about her face betrayed the way her stomach churned. ‘We aren’t thirteen any more. We don’t need to take advice from Mr Robinson.’
‘He’ll always be Ros Robinson’s dad. And I’ll always be Dessie Pie’s daughter. And he’ll always lean on Dad’s counter at the co-op, get his copy of the Stone Mountain Tribune and tell Dad he saw me smoking behind the netball sheds.’
Lou leaned around to ping Sharni’s bra strap. ‘You’re thirty-seven, for God’s sake. You can smoke wherever you like.’
Sharni rolled her eyes. ‘It was a metaphor, Lou,’ she grumbled. ‘I haven’t smoked since Year Ten. Picked a worse vice, didn’t I? Should have a national campaign against marrying cheating arseholes. No screening test for that kinda stupid.’
This was Lou’s cue. She dragged in a deep breath of warm Stone Mountain air as she prepped for her speech. She knew it would be the last pure oxygen she’d have for a while. She could already smell the familiar scents of home pumping out through the door to the pub. Beer, beef, Rexona and cigarette smoke. Stone Mountain didn’t go in for all that no-smoking hoopla, despite the new regulations – Lou liked to call it The Land That Time Forgot. She put her hands firmly on her best friend’s shoulders and pulled her around to face her. ‘Now, chiquita,’ she said, blinking rapidly to combat the irritating effect of the false eyelashes Sharni had also insisted she wear. ‘Remember, we had a deal. We only left the comfort and safety of Sydney –’
‘And the shiatsu,’ Sharni reminded her.
‘Yep, exactly,’ Lou said, still grasping Sharni’s shoulders lest her oldest friend do something rash before Lou could finish her speech. ‘We only left the comfort and safety and shiatsu practitioners of the coolest city in the world –’
‘Well … the coolest city in Australia.’
‘We only left the comfort and safety and shiatsu practitioners of the coolest city in Australia,’ Lou conceded, ‘because we had a deal.’ Her heart thumped in her chest as she said the words. The deal was important. She hadn’t been home in twenty years, because of that night. And she was only back now because of the deal – the only thing stopping Lou Samuels from fleeing in terror.
Well, the deal, and the fact that she absolutely could not be alone on this particular anniversary. She had to be with someone who understood, with Sharni – and Sharni had been determined to come to this reunion. She hadn’t asked Lou to come – she would never have done that – but just as Lou needed to be with Sharni, there was no way she was going to throw Sharni to the wolves (one wolf in particular). She could handle coming here. It was only one night. It had been a long time since she had let memories of home get to her. She had been positive they couldn’t touch her any more. Well, almost all the memories. And almost positive. Till she got here.
Sharni nodded, her long red curls bouncing off her Amazonian shoulders. ‘Check,’ she said, attempting to twist out of Lou’s grasp and bolt for the door, from where they could hear Jimmy Barnes screaming about the last plane out of Sydney. Lou knew just how Barnesy felt.
‘Uh-uh.’ Lou stamped her foot. ‘We’re not going in yet. I think we should recap the deal first.’
‘Really?’ Sharni whined, looking longingly at the door.
‘Absolutely,’ Lou said, holding her best friend’s shoulders fast and trying not to feel as though the world was sliding out from under her. ‘These things are dangerous. High school reunions. I’ve read about it. Nostalgia. Alcohol.’
‘Jimmy Barnes,’ Sharni sniffed as the song started to wind down.
‘Exactly,’ Lou said. ‘It’s a heady cocktail. Anything could happen.’
‘Okay,’ Sharni sighed. ‘Go for it, lawyer girl.’
Lou steadied herself on her brand-new red stilettos and held up her index finger. She felt ridiculous, trying to be serious lawyer Lou in the tight black dress that had seemed like such a good idea in the dressing room today, with Sharni screaming at her that she had to rock her smokin’ bod at the reunion. ‘One hour,’ she said, wishing they’d been able to get a plane out later in the evening. That would have been the safest bet. ‘In, out. Shake your impressive new booty in front of your shithead ex and then we get the hell out of there. Go find a nice meat-free Caesar salad somewhere, get an early night before we blow this popsicle stand in the morning. No excessive drinking. No dancing with dirty boys. No beef. No fighting with Shazza Maclean.’
Sharni’s face went red at the last rule. ‘She’s such a –’
‘Uh-uh.’ Lou made the zipper motion on her lips. ‘I don’t care what she is. You’ll just come off second best. Especially now you weigh about fifty kilograms less than her.’
Sharni nodded at the truth of it and then surprised Lou by leaning forwards and pressing a kiss on her cheek. ‘I get it, darl,’ she said, and Lou saw in her face that she really did. No-one knew better than Sharni how hard this trip was for Lou. But Lou was damned if she was going to let Sharni banish her demons all alone. ‘We’ll be good.’
Lou nodded back, her heart squeezing uncomfortably in her chest as she watched Sharni square her shoulders and toss her hair back over them. She was a tall streak of damn fine, and filled out those jeans like she hadn’t since Year Twelve. Matt Finlay was going to feel some bitter regret tonight, which was the whole point. Lou tucked her arm through Sharni’s and crossed her fingers behind her back.
‘We are grown-ups,’ Lou reminded Sharni, and maybe even herself as well. ‘We are evolved. We are …’ She paused, thinking of all that she and Sharni were now, all the things that separated them from Stone Mountain. ‘We are vegetarians.’
Sharni nodded, taking a deep sniff of the air. ‘Shame those steaks smell so good,’ she said wistfully.
Lou shook her head. ‘It was your idea, remember? Well, you and your shiatsu guy. Bad toxins. Meat makes you fat.’
‘And is murder,’ Sharni agreed, still sniffing the air greedily.
‘Exactly,’ Lou said, trying hard to ignore the barbecue smells.
‘No drinking, no meat, no dancing, no fighting,’ Sharni intoned, in that flat, hopeless voice she’d used as a kid when trying to learn her multiplication tables for the Friday quiz. As they walked through the door to a chorus of screams from five girls draped over the bar, Lou wished she hadn’t thought of those multiplication tables.
Sharni had never passed a single quiz.
It was midnight, and as Lou reached for another toothpick to try to dislodge a stubborn piece of gristle from the medium-rare Cattleman’s Best from her teeth, another tequila seemed like an inspired idea. It was sure to help her stop looking around, wondering if he was going to show. And it was sure as shit the only thing stopping her from running from this place, howling in pain and fury. Tequila was a miracle drug. One night every year, tequila could make her forget, hopefully she’d forget long enough tonight to get through this and drag Sharni home in one piece.
She leaned forwards. ‘Whose shout is it, B-Jo?’
Billi Johnson, whose hair had stayed the same improbable shade of blonde since Year Nine, shook her head. ‘No far-kin’ idea, darl,’ she screeched over the latest Shannon Noll hit. Billi wrapped a glitter-dusted arm around Lou’s shoulders. ‘We should go dance.’
Lou nodded uncertainly, then held up a hand in the universal gesture of hang on a tick. ‘I’ve just gotta wee first,’ she said, standing up delicately from her stool. She had learned the hard way that her usual vault from sitting to standing was perilous in a mad-tight dress and wild heels. And without her glasses. And having discarded her contacts. And after eight tequilas. Or was it nine?
Billi laughed. ‘G’arn then,’ she said. ‘I’ll be waiting. I’ll request Acca Dacca, eh?’ The buxom blonde stood up and jiggled her impressive bosom as she did a passable version of ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’.
Lou walked gingerly down the long corridor towards the toilets. She badly needed to avail herself of them, but she also realised as she began the trek that she hadn’t seen Sharni for at least thirty minutes. Some time after the third tequila, they’d made a new deal. Just like Roosevelt. A revised deal, at least. The deal was that they would keep an eye on each other. Lou swallowed hard as she realised she’d reneged. This was bad.
Lou took a deal very seriously; after all, she specialised in mergers. Not for nothing did they call her the Deal-Making Diva back at Forster and Klein. She decided to make the world’s quickest pit stop before heading out for some reconnaissance. It was time to bring this ordeal to a close.
Of course, that was before she ran into Joanne Madison at the vanity. ‘Oh. My. Gawd. Louise Samuels.’
Joanne had lost none of her talent for stating the obvious. Nor had she lost that famous raptor-like stare, the one she would use to sweep you on arrival at school, and loudly announce any changes of note to passersby.
Nice perm, Louise. Your mum do it?
Did you finally start wearing a bra, four eyes? What the hell for?
Is that a zit or a boil?
Still the same Joanne. Except for one thing. No longer was she the tanned, long-limbed creature of light and beauty that stalked the playground, holding lesser mortals up to her more-than-human standards. It wasn’t that she was fat, or prematurely grey, or used-up, as one might have secretly hoped in one’s dreams, if one was exactly as shitty a person as Lou clearly was. She just looked … normal. Like some nice, normal, mother-of-three you might see at the supermarket, smiling benignly over a carton of cereal and making pleasant small talk with the cashier.
‘The very same,’ Lou said, forcing the corners of her mouth into a smile and stepping into the arms Joanne thrust towards her. She caught the stale whiff of cigarettes and Red Door. ‘You look great.’
That was what everyone had been saying all night. At first it had kinda been bullshit – there were a wide variety of ways people could fall into their thirties, and not all of them were pretty. But after a while, it had been true. People did look great. At least, it was great to see them. Even the ones who’d been small, or hopeless, or downright mean. Lou was surprised by just how good it was to see some of them. So maybe she could stretch herself to extend a little kindness to Joanne Madison.
‘Oh ta, sweetie,’ Joanne slurred. ‘I’m kinda hammered actually.’ Then she waved her hand at Lou. ‘You look good,’ she said. ‘Like, totally beautiful. Lucky you lost those hideous glasses. Hey, y’know what I remember most about you?’
Oh God. Did Lou really want to know?
But Joanne didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You were such a sweetie,’ she said. ‘Always smiling, always helping other kids out. Even the freaks.’
Lou thought maybe she’d remembered this girl all wrong, as Joanne sniffed and pulled a Zippo out of her handbag. ‘Especially the freaks, right?’ She tapped a cigarette out of an enormous box. ‘Speaking of, how is Podge these days?’
Dark red fury clouded Lou’s vision as she stared at the person she had pegged as a nice, ordinary woman a few seconds ago. She shook her head, pretending not to know who Joanne meant. ‘Um …’
‘Sharni Pie.’ Joanne laughed. ‘You know, “Sharni Loves Her Pie”.’ Joanne made quote marks with her fingers. ‘You guys were so tight. D’ya still see her?’
All the things Lou had ever wanted to say to Joanne welled up slick and potent in her mouth. But as they did, the swing doors crashed open and a short woman with a red mohawk and purple Doc Martens barrelled in. ‘Jo,’ she screeched. ‘Hurry up, ya dumb mole. I just got here and they’re playing “The Flame”.’
Memories of hundreds of school discos flashed through Lou’s brain. ‘The Flame’. It was always played as the night wore on and people started to couple off, needing an excuse to get close.
Red Mohawk turned to consider Lou as she dragged Joanne out. ‘Louise Samuels,’ she muttered. ‘Remember me?’
Lou peered at the woman closely. She’d discovered over the course of the evening that it took a special kind of stare to see the seventeen-year-old through the sedimentary layers of the last twenty years. It was a bit like looking at those magic eye pictures that had been so big in the early nineties: you had to kind of look through the face to see what was behind the layers of life experience, or maybe disillusion. But even trying her very hardest, Lou was drawing a total blank on Red Mohawk.
‘Sure,’ she bluffed. ‘How you doing?’
Red Mohawk wasn’t having it. ‘Nah, you don’t,’ she grunted in Lou’s face. ‘You don’t remember at all.’ She narrowed her eyes in challenge. ‘What’s m’name then?’
Lou thought hard. Go for something generic. Something common in Stone Mountain. And hope for the best. ‘Cindy,’ she said, smiling at Mohawk in a way she thought of as winningly.
The woman scowled hard and shoved Lou against the door as she spat, ‘Sharon Maclean’ into her face.
Dear God. Lou almost fainted on the spot. Shazza Maclean. The toughest girl in school, and Sharni’s nemesis. Exactly how many fights had those two had over the years?
And worse, Lou considered, how many of them had been over the so-so-so-not-worth-it Matt Finlay? Matt, who Sharni had chased unceasingly through five years of high school until she shed the layers of puppy fat in their senior year and Matt had noticed her. Matt, who Sharni had finally gotten to agree to marry her three years after they left school. Matt, who was a total babe and a total dickhead and a total letch all rolled into one.
Every time Lou thought about Matt Finlay, she wanted to kick something.
That damned boy had stolen seventeen years of her best friend’s life.
Lou had to find Sharni. Now.
Shazza Maclean looked every bit as focused and even more terrifying than she had twenty years ago. And if she saw Sharni before Lou did, there was bound to be trouble. Especially since Lou and Sharni had thrown their survival pact out the window the minute they had entered the Queen’s Arms, moseyed over to the bar and smelled the barbecue.
No drinking, no meat, no dancing, no fighting.
Lou ran her tongue over her teeth and tasted tequila and Cattleman’s Best. It was hard for anyone to be in this town more than ten minutes and not need a drink. It was about fifty million times harder for Lou Samuels. And everyone here knew why.
She left the ladies’ to search the cavernous bar for Sharni. She froze when she found her, vibrant red curls bouncing with abandon as she swayed to the old rock ballad on the dancefloor, pressed up against some guy who was probably feeling pretty damn lucky right about now.
There went no dancing as well.
Lou peered into the crowd, trying to work out who Sharni was partnering. She didn’t really mind the dancing that much. After all, Sharni had always been a natural dancer; and now that she’d emerged from the chrysalis of the body forged by seventeen years of unhappy marriage into a magnificent red-haired Amazonian butterfly, she sure cut a figure out there. And what better way to make Matt Finlay sick with jealousy and his own stupidity than to shake her fine booty in front of him, at the very same reunion where he expected to play the starring role as the returned football hero? All Sharni Pie had ever wanted was Matt, babies, and to paint; and in the end, the selfish shit had denied her all of them. He’d moved her to the big smoke (which was the only thing Lou had to thank him for) with promises of fun and glamour (neither of which Sharni particularly cared about); dropped her into a secretarial job (on the basis art wouldn’t get her anywhere); and just like he had for most of high school, proceeded to ignore her as he built his business. Then he’d cheated on her with the girl next door, literally – the daughter of the sweet older couple who lived next door; a girl whose entire body would fit neatly into one of Sharni’s cowgirl boots. And who, as Sharni said, thought Jackson Pollock was a boxer. Yep, Matt had committed the heinous crime of not only cheating on his wife with a teenager, but with a teenager who didn’t care a single whit about art. And he had still thought Sharni would come back for more.
Well, Lou reflected happily, Sharni may be sweet and loyal but she was a long way from stupid. The best bit of Sharni and Matt’s marriage, as far as Lou was concerned, had been the day two years before when Sharni called Lou up to come and help her ‘redecorate’ his office. Man, it had been fun, taking Sharni’s precious oils and creating a passionate explosion of furious colour all over his monochrome workspace. Lou could still see the satisfied look on her best friend’s face as she had looked around, surveying their handiwork.
‘Still can’t believe I let the bastard take the room I’d planned for my studio and turn it into his study,’ she’d moaned, her bottom lip starting to quiver. ‘What the hell am I going to do now? I can’t go home to Stone Mountain.’
Lou had turned to look at her beautiful best friend, a smudge of green paint highlighting one perfect cheekbone.
‘You’re going to move in with me, of course.’ She’d grinned. ‘Bugger the North Shore, you’re coming to live in Paddington.’
‘Really?’ Sharni’s eyes had sparkled. ‘What about Pretty Pierre?’
Lou had thought about the French dentist she’d officially dedicated two years to getting to know. Slowly, of course; the way she did most things. Sharni knew that they had been starting to move in together – well, him, really, the way it sometimes happens, in stealthy, unplanned increments. Only problem was, Lou had recently realised that she didn’t know him any better than at the beginning. And that hard-to-know didn’t necessarily equal deep.
‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Lou’s heart had been light as the decision settled in her bones. ‘He moved out.’ Friends were friends and French dentists who specialised in being unknowable weren’t worth the trouble.
Sharni had covered her mouth in shock. ‘No! Why didn’t you tell me?’ Then she’d narrowed her eyes and considered Lou carefully. ‘When?’
Lou had checked her watch and grinned at Sharni. ‘Tonight,’ she’d said. ‘Come over about eight. I reckon he’ll be gone by then.’
Lou smiled at the memory as she focused on the present. She sidled around the edge of the dancefloor as the rock classic droned on, trying to get a better view of Sharni’s partner. She wouldn’t think about other memories from this pub, and this damn song. She knew the song went for about five minutes, and they could surely only be about two minutes in. They hadn’t even got to the guitar crescendo yet. Whoever Sharni was dancing with was just about as tall as her. Lou couldn’t make out much beyond his blond head, nestled in the crook of Sharni’s neck, obscuring his face. Lou skittered around the speaker stack, so she could flap her arms at Sharni to warn her about Shazza Maclean. Sharni was really leaning into it, though.
As she came level with the swaying couple, a scream of pure rage rose in her throat. Because there, in her best friend’s arms, was the same egotistical shit who had done her wrong for the last time almost two years before: Matt Finlay. As though he could hear Lou’s silent wail, he lifted his head and met her eyes, before winking slowly at her. The world seemed to narrow to this selfish, beautiful man, who had been King of Stone Mountain and was now working hard on being King of the World, dancing with her best friend. The best friend he had taken for granted, underestimated, mistreated and, finally, hurt beyond measure.
Lou pictured her fist connecting with his long, straight nose; a nose that hadn’t been so straight after five years playing local football, but that had been treated to the ministrations of the finest surgeon in Sydney. Lou didn’t blame her best friend for cosying up to her ex when she was supposed to be blanking him. Not really. Sharni had never been able to resist Matt, but she’d done a fine job of avoiding him as she’d pieced her life back together. And tonight, Lou and Sharni had broken all the rules that were supposed to keep them safe, so no wonder Sharni’s resistance had weakened. It was like Lou had said, these events were dangerous. All that nostalgia. They’d indulged in drinking, meat and now dancing. The deal had been there for a reason. No wonder good karma had fled. Meat is murder, and all that.
But, looking at Matt’s smug face as he cuddled up to Sharni, Lou’s clenched fist tingled. He pulled Sharni in closer, and ran his hands down to her buttocks, squeezing them proprietorially. But as he did, Lou saw something else: Shazza Maclean had also spotted the couple, and her face looked even more furious than Lou felt. It surprised Lou. Surely Shazza realised, after all these years, that Sharni had a higher claim on Matt, regardless of how badly Lou wished she didn’t. Then she realised it didn’t matter. She watched that fleshy little face wobbling under the red mohawk as she pushed through the dancers, and knew that for Shazza, Year Nine was all there was. She would be forever fourteen.
Lou just knew no fighting was about to bite the dust too.
Feeling as though she was moving in slow motion, Lou waded in to try to drag Sharni from the crowd before Shazza could. But the dance floor was thick with writhing couples, and Shazza had a headstart. As Lou shoved and elbowed her way through, Tommy Brideson stepped backwards onto her delicate red stiletto and crashed into her. In her tight dress and less-than-sober state, the impact unbalanced her and she fell to the hard wooden floor gracelessly. Then Tommy and his dance partner crashed on top of her, pinning her there.
It took a full minute before drunken dancers and partygoers could be peeled away to help Lou stand. When she managed to get to her feet, she caught the back of Sharni, just her red hair and tight jeans, disappearing out the side door into Biffo Alley.
She glanced around for Matt, but he was lounging against the bar, also looking in Sharni’s direction, but with amusement on his face. He had always loved to be the centre of a scene. Lou scowled as she dusted herself off and made for the alleyway. The question was whether Lou could get outside before Shazza did some serious damage to Sharni. It took precious seconds to get to the door, and as she pushed through it, she kicked off her shoes and took a deep breath.
The scene on the other side was not quite what Lou had envisaged. A struggling Shazza was being held tightly by a long, muscly streak of jeans and T-shirt that Lou recognised far too well, even after twenty years, while Sharni was trying to pull herself to her feet from the filthy ground. Lou should have reached down to help her up, but her muscles were frozen in place by shock, fury, and a dose of pure muscle-memory lust. Jeans and T-shirt raised an eyebrow at barefoot Lou and she was acutely aware of her tight black dress and false eyelashes. Then he opened the door to the pub and pushed Shazza through it, saying gently, ‘Now don’t come out again, honey, or I’m going to have to raise my voice. And you know I hate to raise my voice at a lady.’
The woman with the red mohawk called him an obscene name and Lou tried to imagine the last time anyone had called Shazza a lady. Then Jeans and T-shirt turned back and stretched out a hand to Sharni.
Lou was still rooted to the spot, trying to talk her brain into dragging itself out of its tequila-addled haze and take some initiative. Luckily, the long streak of memory didn’t seem to notice, as his attention was all on Sharni. ‘You okay, Sweetie Pie?’ The voice was as deep as the swimming hole on his father’s farm and held at least twice as many sinful memories as he invoked his pet name for Sharni.
The sound of it jolted Lou into action. ‘Sharni,’ she wailed, launching herself forwards and helping the hero of the hour drag her best friend up. ‘What did she do to you?’
Sharni lifted her head and shook away her wild curls and Lou saw a vivid red mark already darkening to a bruise on one of her cheekbones. Sharni reached up and touched it experimentally. ‘She hit me,’ she said, sounding a little lost. ‘Before I even had time to get ready; as soon as I was through the door. That’s just plain dirty, isn’t it?’ She appealed to her rescuer on this last question, and Lou well understood why. That boy, now that man, had more experience in fights – clean and dirty – than anyone they knew, possibly than all the people they knew added together.
He nodded in response, managing to convey both authority and disgust. Lou prised her best friend away from him and wrapped her arms around her, sitting down on a nearby rubbish bin to steady herself.
‘Oh you poor baby,’ she crooned. ‘What a crazy bitch.’
Sharni buried herself in Lou’s chest and nodded, starting to sniffle. ‘My own fault,’ she whimpered. ‘Divine retribution.’ She let Lou pat her back for a minute and took a deep breath. ‘What the hell was I thinking?’
Lou had a whole lot of things she wanted to say, like: You weren’t thinking or you wouldn’t have danced with that shithead, let alone followed Shazza Maclean out into Biffo Alley. But a best friend knew there was a time for ‘I told you so’s and a time for patting. So she kept patting and studied Sharni’s saviour over her friend’s quivering curls.
He shrugged and made for the door, stomping on a still-lit cigarette. ‘Looks like that’s my exit cue,’ he said. ‘Fights I can handle. Tears?’ He shrugged. ‘Not so much.’
Lou just nodded, trying to stop her eyes from greedily eating up every dirty, wild, delicious inch of him. Gage Westin. He looked different, but the same, like the last twenty years had honed him into a grown-up version of the exact blend of casual rebellion he’d always been. Some people grew up. Some people grew old. Gage Westin just grew sexier.
His jeans were dark denim and fit his legs like body paint. His white T-shirt was devoid of adornment, bar the biceps that brazenly filled the sleeves, the hard pecs that stretched the soft cotton across his chest, and the dark hair that peeked above the collar like an indecent invitation. His almost-black hair was characteristically too long; his chin was too stubborn and even though she couldn’t see them in the dim light of the alley, she just knew his eyes would still be too damn green.
Lou sighed as she watched him make for the pub.
Some crushes you outgrew. Some crushes you out-thought. And some crushes were determined to haunt you till the day you were laid, cold and lonely, in the ground.
But this, of course, had been so much more than a crush. Gage Westin had been Lou’s first love. And her first lover – if one night counted.
Five minutes later, Mr Robinson was clucking his tongue as Lou helped Sharni to lie down on the backseat of his cab. ‘Oh my lord,’ he muttered, turning around and cruelly flicking on the internal light to get a better look at Sharni’s shiner. ‘What did I tell you girls?’
Lou fought hard against the urge to tell the old gossip to mind his own business, but instead she shut the door gently and made for the other door. As she did, a firm hand grabbed her and spun her around, pulling her into the shadows beside the dismal little cab rank.
‘What are you doing?’ Her voice should have been firmer, more authoritative; not the croaky whisper that slid through the surprised O of her lips.
‘Just waitin’ out here to check you two got away okay,’ Gage said. ‘Sharon’s not the fastest learner.’ He shrugged. ‘Had t’make sure she didn’t come back for round two.’
Lou nodded. ‘Cool,’ she managed, stretching her lips into a smile. ‘And you know …’ She motioned to the cab. ‘Thanks. For helping Sharni out there, in the alley. You arrived in the nick of time.’
‘Oh,’ he said casually, leaning back against a tree like he had all the time in the world and Mr Robinson hadn’t already started beeping his horn. ‘I’d been there a while.’
‘Oh,’ Lou repeated, like a shocked fish. ‘In the alley.’
He nodded, his face dark in the shadow of the tree.
Lou looked at the cab and knew she should wind it up. There were a million reasons she should not be talking to this man. And the fact that she had stood him up almost twenty years ago to the day was just one of them. But man, it felt good standing in the orbit of his pheromones. ‘How come?’
‘Couldn’t decide whether to go in. Don’t even know why I came. Not really.’ The way he said those last two words were telling. He shrugged again, but Lou knew why he had come and knew what she had been waiting for, all night. But man, it must have hurt him. Gage hated crowds, just one of the reasons he’d never made it to school much.
‘I get it,’ she said. ‘School reunions. One of those very bad ideas.’ She wanted to prompt him some more, but she was worried she might seem too interested. Which she was. She gestured at Sharni in the cab again. ‘So anyway, better get rolling.’
‘Uh-huh,’ he said, peeling himself off the tree. He approached her, all height and heat and smelling like hay. He stopped just in front of her, too close, closer than anyone else who hadn’t seen you for twenty years would dare. But Gage never got the rules. ‘You look good, Louise Samuels,’ he drawled, lifting a hand to trace the side of her face with one callused finger. ‘You look real good. The same. But different.’ He leaned in and inhaled deeply. ‘You smell good too.’
Lou’s tummy fluttered at the delicate touch, her brain telling her to make for the cab, her body telling her brain to mind its own damn business. The finger that was at her cheek traced her bottom lip.
And still she didn’t pull away.
‘Girls always smell good,’ she said quietly. ‘You of all people should know that.’
Gage laughed in a way that made her sure he was thinking about all the girls he’d learned that with. ‘They sure do,’ he agreed, still tracing her lip. ‘But none of them smell as good as you.’
Lou was suddenly very hot, and realised just how much she’d had to drink. This should not be happening. Twenty years ago she’d realised, one hot and wild encounter too late, that this was a very bad idea. And nothing was any different now.
‘I wonder if you taste the same,’ Gage said very quietly, in that low drawl that was his trademark. She wondered the same thing. She wasn’t the girl he’d seduced that night – that girl disappeared the very next day. Would he taste all the things that had happened? Would he kiss her and know all her secrets?
Gage dropped his arm to put his hands on her hips. ‘So tiny,’ he said, saying the words close to her ear, breathing in against her hair as he did. ‘And I’m not used to seeing you in a dress.’ He picked her up by the waist and moved her like she was some kind of doll, a shop mannequin, ignoring Mr Robinson’s incessant honking, and placing her down next to the old jacaranda tree. ‘Come over here so we can talk.’
Lou was pretty sure ‘talk’ was a euphemism. Gage never did talk much. And the way things were going, it looked like nothing had changed.
He brought his body very close to hers and nudged her against the wide trunk of the tree with his hip. The tree was hard up against her back as he picked up her two hands and held them in one of his, stretching them high over her head and pinning them against the rough bark. Her chest arched towards him, her nipples sprang to life in the tight dress, her skin pimpled in response to the nearness and heat and smell of him, and still she didn’t move. He leaned down, so close she could smell his skin. No trace of cologne or soap; he smelled like sweat and clean laundry and something sweet. He smelled like sin.
Then he used his free hand to grasp her chin, pulling it up so she was looking into his eyes, and kissed her. Those full, determined lips pressed against hers, parting her lips with his tongue and licking all the secret places of her mouth.
In the last two years, Lou had only been kissed by Sharni (on the cheek), Pierre the French Dentist (badly), and an amorous Santa Claus at her firm’s Christmas party (who so didn’t count). And none of those kisses had prepared her for this. The last time she had been kissed this well had been twenty years ago and it was no wonder she had fled like the wind from it back then. Because it was the kind of kiss that you get lost in – not just lost in time and place, but lost in another person. It was a kiss that took all the pieces of your identity and common sense, and scattered them like petals on the breeze, right at the same time that it anchored you in the brutal, beautiful moment.
It was a kiss to undo you. And Lou wanted more.