DAVE
Out in the hall, Dave hesitated. Was he being too hasty? He might be crap at reading women’s signals, but he was sure that Vanessa had wanted to kiss him too. Maybe she’d only taken the call so she could give Stafford the flick? He was heading back to the living room when he heard her say into the phone, ‘Who, that? Um, it was no one.’
Her words hit Dave like a train. He turned and walked out of the house, shutting the front door behind him. As he headed for the Volvo on autopilot, his mobile rang. He answered it through a fog.
‘Hello?’
‘Dave, hi. It’s Heather Fitzpatrick.’
Dave tried to feign normality.
‘Heather. G’day. How are you?’
‘I’m good. I’m just ringing ’cause I left my sunnies at your place.’
‘Bugger.’
‘Yeah. I’m blind as a bat without them.’
Dave hadn’t noticed any sunglasses, but there were still piles of stuff everywhere from Saturday, including a used piñata with Donald Trump’s battered-in face, which he couldn’t quite bring himself to chuck out.
‘Anyway,’ Heather was saying, ‘I was wondering if I could come over and pick them up?’
‘Sure. Or I could drop them off at your work?’
‘But I need them first thing. Can I come tonight?’
Dave was a bit surprised, but he was in too much disarray to argue.
‘Okay. Sure, come on over.’
‘I guess your sunnies must be prescription, if you needed them this urgently?’ Dave said.
He and Heather were sipping wine in his living room and sharing the remains of a Sara Lee blueberry strudel that he’d found in his freezer.
Heather shook her head. ‘I don’t really need them,’ she revealed matter-of-factly. ‘I only left them here so I’d have an excuse to come over again. I wanted to ask you out.’
For a second Dave thought that he’d misheard. Come again? Two hours ago he was a pariah and now he was an object of desire? That couldn’t be right.
Heather smiled. ‘It was pretty lame. I should have just asked you at the party.’
So he hadn’t misheard. Dave found himself briefly lost for words.
‘Am I freaking you out?’ Heather asked.
‘No,’ he rallied. ‘Not at all.’
Heather’s honesty was refreshing and you’d have to be a goose not to find it flattering. Dave was a goose, but not quite that much of a goose, and let’s face it, a bit of flattery wouldn’t go astray right now.
‘So would you like to have dinner with me?’
‘Cool.’
Talk about a reversal of fortune. They smiled at each other across his card table. Heather had an elfin face and a petite frame that made her look a bit like a fairy, but she was one of the more pragmatic Redback parents. ‘You’re not the best player in the team,’ Dave once heard her tell her son Josh after he missed a goal, ‘and you probably won’t ever be, but that doesn’t mean you can’t work hard and make yourself valuable.’ A couple of the other mothers had looked askance, but Heather was unapologetic. ‘Josh is good at piano and I make sure he knows that,’ she said to Dave, ‘but there’s too much kid adoration these days. I don’t believe in blowing smoke up anyone’s arse—not even my children’s.’ Dave thought that was pretty hard to argue with.
When she’d presented him with a new tracksuit on behalf of the parents he’d been touched by her efforts, but he’d never suspected she fancied him. But, then, why would he? He was the mug whose wife had dumped him for a woman and who’d then distinguished himself by falling for someone who thought he was ‘no one’. Vanessa’s words had cut him to the quick and, left to his own devices, he was sure he would have retired from the dating field wounded, but here was Heather not two hours later and she clearly had other ideas. As he noticed a cute little cleft in her chin, he made a conscious decision to go with the flow and see where this took him—he’d wasted way too much time already pining after Vanessa.
Heather put down her spoon and declared that she could make a better blueberry strudel herself.
‘I love baking. It’s so clean-cut. If you follow the recipe it works and if you don’t, it doesn’t. Simple. Do you like baking?’
‘Haven’t done much of it, but I’m an enthusiastic consumer.’
‘Good.’ Heather raised her glass. Dave raised his too. They clinked, and then conversation turned to their excess baggage. Apparently, Heather’s ex-husband Rob was a businessman who travelled a lot for work. ‘He promised he’d get a non-travelling job so he could help me out more with the kids, but he never did, so I chucked him out,’ she explained. ‘He was always raving on about how we were the most important thing to him and I’d say, “Prove it, mate,” but he didn’t.’ She shrugged. ‘Actions speak louder than words.’
Amen, thought Dave. Why did so many people (i.e. women) find that concept so hard to grasp?
As Heather downed the last of her wine, Dave wondered what it would be like to kiss her. He was pretty sure he’d soon find out.