‘Cross the road, would you? Just cross the road, Meg! You know you want to.’
‘Get over it, Nick. She’s not going to cross the road,’ Louise groaned.
Louise and Georgie were watching Sleepless in Seattle with Nick. They should have known better.
‘If she crossed the road now and they met, that would be the end of the movie,’ Georgie explained.
‘And that’s bad, how?’
‘Shut up.’
‘No one asked you to watch this, Nick,’ Louise reminded him.
‘I just keep living in hope that a chick flick will make sense one day, but it never happens. They’re all . . . oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Stupid.’
‘Okay, vocabulary man, you just don’t get it, do you? It’s all about building sexual tension,’ Louise explained. ‘That’s what gets you in and keeps you in.’
‘It’s like suspense in an action film,’ added Georgie.
‘Oh please,’ Nick protested, ‘do not try to compare action films to this clichéd, senseless tripe.’
‘Of course, because action films always make complete sense and never resort to cliché,’ Louise remarked snidely.
‘Just so you realise.’
Georgie laughed. ‘Yeah, like when seven thousand people are shooting at one guy with automatic weapons and they all miss and he turns around with a single handgun and mows down half of them.’
‘Honestly Georgina, you always exaggerate every single thing a million times out of proportion,’ Nick chided.
‘And tell me, why do they always run upwards when they’re trying to get away?’ Louise mused. ‘Up stairs, up towers, up ladders – how do they think they’re going to escape from the eightieth floor?’
‘Keanu Reeves manages.’
‘Yeah, with a million dollars worth of special effects.’
‘This movie could use some special effects,’ Nick grumbled.
‘What kind of special effects could you use in this movie?’ Louise scoffed.
‘They could blow up that stupid perfect houseboat, and with any luck, Tom Hanks along with it.’
‘What’s wrong with Tom Hanks?’ Georgie cried. ‘He’s so sweet the way he grieves for his wife. It’s so heart-rending.’
Nick pulled a face. ‘They should have called him Tom Hankerchief, he’s such a baby. Get over it already, Tommy boy, she ain’t coming back.’
Georgie and Louise both threw cushions at Nick at the same time.
‘Hey, watch it, Thelma and Louise,’ he protested. ‘The odds are always against me around here. Where’s your boyfriend anyway, Georgie? I need an ally.’
‘I told you, he’s in Perth.’ Georgie checked her watch. ‘Actually, he’s probably on his way back right now, or maybe not. I always get the time difference muddled.’
‘You don’t see much of him on the weekends, do you?’ Nick commented. ‘He hasn’t got a wife and twelve kids tucked away somewhere, has he?’
‘Oh yeah, that’s right, I forgot to tell you.’ Georgie rolled her eyes. ‘The thing is, he has to travel a lot,’ she explained. ‘And he works at least part of every weekend.’
‘Does that bother you?’
She shook her head. ‘I have to work part of most weekends too. And we see each other lots when he is home.’
‘He turns up at the shop every second day,’ Louise chimed in. ‘Always with something for her, usually flowers. The beautiful, expensive kind.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, they’re not the kind you get out of a bucket at a service station.’
‘What’s wrong with the kind you get out of a bucket at a service station?’ Nick asked defensively.
‘Nothing,’ Louise replied offhand. ‘Who wants coffee?’ she said, picking up the remote to pause the video.
‘You know, the bar keeps getting raised,’ Nick complained. ‘It used to be enough to remember to buy flowers every once in a while. Now it has to be the right kind of flowers.’
‘You don’t have to bring me any kind of flowers,’ Louise assured him, leaning over to kiss his cheek. ‘I love you just the same.’
‘She doesn’t mean that,’ Georgie confided as Louise walked over to the kitchen to put the kettle on.
‘You think I don’t realise that?’ Nick sighed heavily. ‘I can see having Mr Big around is not going to be so good for me. When do I get to meet him anyway?’
Georgie shrugged. ‘It’ll happen when it happens.’
‘Oh, okay, you two still cruising? No names, no pack drill?’
‘It’s not like that. As a matter of fact,’ she said dreamily, hugging her knees, ‘we know everything about each other. We talk and talk, sometimes I think we’ll run out of things to say but we never do.’
‘I don’t get it,’ said Nick. ‘How’s it so different to any other relationship?’
She tilted her head, thinking about it. ‘I don’t know, I guess it’s that I don’t ask him when I’ll see him next, or when he’s going to call. I don’t interrogate him about where he’s been when we’re apart. And that goes both ways. We just don’t make any demands of each other. And then every time he walks into the shop, or I pick up the phone and it’s him, it’s just the biggest thrill. Like he really wants to be with me or talk to me – he’s not doing it out of obligation or because I asked him to or because it was expected of him.’
‘Who’s for coffee?’ Louise called from the kitchen.
They both raised their hands.
Nick looked across at Georgie and smiled. ‘Well, he seems to be making you happy.’
‘He is. He’s absolutely perfect.’ She let out a deep sigh. ‘Except for the sex.’
Nick covered his ears with the cushions thrown at him earlier. ‘Not hearing this, do not want to know about my sister’s sex life. In fact, would rather not be aware my sister has a sex life.’
‘Don’t be such a prude.’
‘Listen, I’m your brother, I’m supposed to lynch men who want to sully your virtue.’
‘Yeah, if we were living in the Dark Ages,’ Louise pointed out, carrying a tray over and setting it down on the coffee table.
‘Anyway,’ Georgie sighed, ‘you don’t have to worry, we’re not having sex.’
Louise and Nick looked at her simultaneously, wide-eyed.
‘We haven’t really had the opportunity, I guess,’ Georgie went on. ‘We usually have lunch together, or sometimes if he’s going to be too busy through the day he picks me up in the morning and we go out for breakfast. Otherwise we have drinks after work, maybe an early dinner. He can never stay out late, he always seems to have global conference calls or a late meeting or an early flight in the morning, that kind of thing.’ Georgie paused. ‘But I still think it’s a bit odd. He never even comes up to the flat.’
Louise was thoughtful. ‘Are you sure there’s no wife and kids?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she scoffed. ‘What is it with you two tonight?’
‘Well, it’s a little ridiculous that he can never stay out late, like he has a mother waiting up for him. Or a wife.’
‘He’s not married,’ Georgie insisted. ‘I asked him the first time we met. He wouldn’t lie to me barefaced.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I trust him, he hasn’t given me any reason not to.’
Louise sighed loudly, pouring herself a cup of coffee.
‘I know you think I’m gullible, Louise,’ said Georgie, ‘but I don’t want to go through life being suspicious of everyone’s motives. I don’t want to believe people are that sinister.’
‘She has a point,’ said Nick. ‘Women always think more is going on with guys than there really is most of time. Like when a bloke says there’s nothing wrong, he generally means it. Whereas when a woman says there’s nothing wrong, she means anything but. Just because you’re all devious, you think we’re the same.’
‘I’m not devious!’ Georgie protested.
Nick patted her arm. ‘Sorry, of course you’re not, sis, there’s not a devious bone in your body.’
Louise glared at him. ‘Well?’
He cleared his throat. ‘I used the wrong term. What I was trying to say is that I think women assign complex motives to men a lot of the time. And I’m here to tell you we’re not that complex.’
‘Think about it, Louise,’ Georgie added, ‘if Liam was married and having an affair with me, do you think I’d be complaining about not getting any sex?’
Louise sighed. ‘Good point.’
‘Maybe he has performance anxiety,’ Nick suggested.
‘What?’
‘Women think men never have any insecurities when it comes to sex, that they’ll always be more experienced. We don’t know as much as you think we do. It can be pretty daunting the first time.’
‘How would you know?’ Louise frowned.
‘There was a first time for us, remember?’
‘But how many other first times?’
Nick blinked at her. ‘I lost count.’
She whacked him on the leg.
‘Ow.’
‘Excuse me, Punch and Judy, could we come back to my problems for a minute?’ said Georgie. ‘Nick, are you suggesting I seduce Liam?’
‘Yes,’ he nodded, before shaking his head frantically. ‘What am I saying? No, definitely not!’
‘What?’
‘Would it be too much to ask that you never have sex, for your brother’s sake?’
‘I hate to break the news to you, brother, but the horse has already bolted from that stable.’
‘But you’re not old enough.’
‘Idiot,’ Georgie laughed.
Nick dropped his head onto Louise’s lap and covered his face with a cushion.
‘Imagine what he’s going to be like with the girls,’ Louise groaned.
He sat up again. ‘I’m not worried about the girls,’ he said calmly. ‘I realise that one day, when they’re old enough,’ he paused, taking a breath, ‘I’ll simply have to lock them in their bedrooms and throw away the key.’