“Want to split the Basque cheesecake?”
Chase clutched his stomach. “I have CrossFit in two hours.”
“It’s the best cheesecake I’ve ever had. That is not an exaggeration.”
Chase sighed and she heard the resignation in his voice. She gestured to the waiter. “Could I please have a slice of Basque cheesecake to share?”
“Of course. Would you like wine or a little brandy?”
She glanced at Chase who looked seconds away from cancelling the cheesecake order. “Maybe just an espresso? Chase, would you like a coffee?”
He nodded gratefully.
“Two espressos, please.”
The waiter dashed away, and Mara felt a small stab of regret. She’d wanted one more drink to see her into the afternoon.
Chase tapped the manila folder on the table. “So, one last thing, I think you should come meet the Minister for Housing. If our enemies are going to appeal to ministerial offices personally, we need to do the same thing.”
Mara ran a finger over the paper tablecloth. It flecked with bits of yellowish bouillabaisse, but that was okay. That was one of the reasons she loved Phillipe’s. They didn’t waste money on linen tablecloths.
“Mara?”
She looked up. “I know meeting with the minister is important, but you’re so much better at this stuff than me. Can you just say I’m busy and I send my love or whatever?”
Chase rolled his eyes. “This whole organisation was your idea. You own it. I’m only here to earn a wage and finesse it for you.”
She’d sensed Chase building up to this conversation all throughout the meal. Now he leaned forward, his eyes shining like stars. “Mara, you’re the perfect face of HFA. You’re a beautiful, independently wealthy woman funding a housing organisation out of the goodness of her heart.”
“Chase, that’s just your way of saying ‘spoilt, airhead, social justice warrior with fake boobs.’ Which is the only thing anyone’s going to think when they meet me.”
“They will not! You grew up in government housing.”
“Only until I went to live with my grandmother.”
“Who rented! Now I don’t know how you made your money, but that doesn’t matter. I believe you when you say you grew up poor—”
“Because I don’t act rich?”
“Exactly. You’re too nice. Now, we need an empathetic narrative to get people to connect with HFA on an emotional level. You grew up on a shoestring, you worked in the aged care industry, you could barely afford to eat. That engages people, it makes them want to know more. And it doesn’t hurt that you give people something pretty to look at while you talk.”
Mara patted Chase’s hand. “Thanks, but I hired you so that you could tell people engaging stories. And you’re just as pretty as I am.”
“Yes, but my childhood involves tennis lessons, a holiday home at Big Bear, and my mother fucking the landscape gardener while my father was on vacation in the Maldives. I just don’t think that’s going to play as well to the working man, do you?”
Their coffee and cheesecake arrived, and Mara fussed with her fork, hoping Chase would drop the subject. She had no such luck.
“Give me a reason,” he said. “Just one good reason why you can’t be the face of HFA.”
She had it. The number one reason with a bullet. If she fronted the company, it would be days, maybe hours, before HFA was tainted from country to coast. But she couldn’t tell Chase why. She could barely say it to herself.
“I guess I don’t have a reason,” she said, picking up her fork and slicing a small piece of cheesecake. Phillipe’s cheesecake was sweet creamy perfection. She’d eaten it at least ten times but she still couldn’t put her finger on what made it perfect. It wasn’t a single element, it was everything. The crispy caramelised top, the crunch of the biscuit base, the velvet filling. She’d read somewhere that humans ate emotionally because of breastfeeding. It might be rubbish, but at times like this, it felt true. The Basque cheesecake was like mother’s milk. She ate her first bite slowly, licking the tines as she pulled the fork through her lips. Unbidden, she imagined Derek holding it for her. Good girl. Do you like that?
“Mara…?”
She opened her eyes to find Chase glaring at her. “Do you… want some cheesecake?”
“So, you’re just going to ignore me?”
She sighed. “No, but does this have to be such a big deal? I know you wish I was more public-facing, but HFA is fine. Why can’t it just keep being fine?”
Chase crossed his arms. “Okay. Here’s what’ll happen if the Minister for Housing decides what we’re doing is price gouging and passes a bill to make it functionally illegal. First, we’ll spend millions fighting the decision, then money will get tight. We’ll try to stay solvent by selling the houses and land we already have at market prices. ‘No developers,’ you’ll say, and that’s fine. That leaves boomers, people with rich parents, and minor celebrities like Derek Hardiman. You know, the idiots we’re trying to stop from scooping up every viable property in this city?”
Mara wished Chase hadn’t said his name. This was bad enough without hearing the man dominating her dreams referred to as a ‘minor celebrity.’
Chase picked up his espresso, his long fingers threading around the cup. “Then once we run out of houses, we’ll have to let staff go. Claire, Tegan, and Amir first. Then Cassidy. Then Christopher. Then Himeko.”
Mara winced.
“Then we’ll go under. We’ll liquidate HFA. You’ll lose every dime you spent building up the company and I’ll go back to corporate consulting. It’ll be like we never existed in the first place.”
“Chase, that can’t happen!”
He slapped the table. “But it will! If we don’t find a way to fight back, it will!”
The couple nearest to them looked over in surprise. Mara ignored them. “There has to be another way. I can’t be who you need me to be.”
“But why? Tell me. Make me understand!”
But she couldn’t. It would be the end of everything. With a shaky hand, she cut herself another piece of cheesecake.
“Fine.” Chase stood. “I’m going.”
He pulled out his wallet, his motions jerky. “I’m paying, by the way. I don’t need you to pay for everything all the time.”
Mara stared at her plate. “But I like paying.”
“No, you think you need to buy my love.” Chase turned to leave, then paused. He rested a single finger on the table. “It’s hard to be your friend sometimes, you know that?”
He strode away without looking back.
Mara reached down for Pan and with a cold throb remembered she’d be in doggy daycare until six. She’d signed her up for an all-day session thinking she and Chase would spend the afternoon together. She took another bite of cheesecake, but it tasted sickly. She stood, leaving it and her coffee on the table, feeling like she’d abandoned a kitten.
It was windy and wet on Collins Street. Businessmen and women swirled past in dark coats with umbrella heads. She wasn’t dressed for the rain in her Baum und Pferdgarten mini dress and stripey socks, but she couldn’t go home. She wandered to Louis Vuitton and stared into the display window. It was full of chain print t-shirts and arty smallgoods. She hovered in the doorway, but it was a path she’d trod too many times to believe it would make her feel better. Anything she bought today would be tainted by her and Chase’s fight. She’d never wear it and eventually, it would all end up in thrift shops.
You think you need to buy my love.
He was right, but not for the reasons he thought. Chase grew up wealthy, but he didn’t know how it felt to be able to buy anything, anything in the world without blinking. Mara knew. In her early twenties, she’d bought so much she’d seen priceless things turn to meaningless sand between her fingers. She’d worked hard to reclaim her love of beautiful things. It was a rich girl’s problem, unrelatable and almost repulsive, but she’d done it. She’d found a way to have money and still like herself—at least most of the time. But she also needed to pay for things, extravagantly and without exception. That way, she knew she wasn’t some horrible rich person hoarding her wealth.
She walked past Gucci and turned down Russell Street. It was silly to be walking the city in the rain, but she didn’t know what else to do. Her fridge was already full of leftovers. She didn’t want to read. She didn’t want to exercise and if she called someone to hang out, they’d want to know why she was upset. She could have a bath, but the chances of doing that without masturbating to the video of her going down on Derek were slim to none and she couldn’t keep masturbating to Derek’s video. She’d already done it at least a hundred times. So many she knew every frame and sound by heart. The drizzle around her galvanized into fat raindrops. She lifted her bag over her head then remembered it was Chanel and tucked it under her arm. She spotted a tiny café and ran to the entrance. The cashier gave her a bored look. “What would you like?”
She glanced up at the menu. “Could I please have… a glass of red wine?”
He nodded, gesturing to the small, scratched tables.
She sat as the heavens opened outside the window. She watched the rain pour and the people run past, pleasantly entombed in this small, comfortable place. No one knew where she was, and no one cared.
The young man placed her wine at her elbow. It was thick and cheap, but Mara drank fast. She’d been doing that too much lately. Needing escape. Yet, trapped with no friends or witnesses, the numbness that had hovered over her for weeks settled like a veil. Chase was mad at her, HFA was doomed, and after almost a month of ignoring Derek, she was at her wits’ end.
Any way she looked at it, there was no hope for them. If she didn’t contact him, their relationship would end. But if she did, it would still end. Maybe in a year, maybe in ten, but Derek would get bored and leave again and she’d have blown apart her quiet, lovely life for nothing.
But as the wine seeped into her veins, she wanted to feel something. Something big. Something that would shock her. She unlocked her phone and tapped out a single sentence.
Can we meet up?
She’d saved his number the night he’d given it to her, hating herself. She selected it now with clammy fingers and hit send. She threw her phone into her handbag, seized her wine, and drank like it was an antidote.
Her bag vibrated. She froze. It vibrated again. She opened the lambskin leather and grabbed her phone. It was him. She answered the call. “Hello?”
“Hi? Mara?”
His voice was rough and warm like tree bark in the sun.
“Mara?”
“Hi. Yes. Hello.”
She was tipsy. When had that happened?
“I’m so glad you messaged. What are you up to? Do you want to hang out?”
“I… yes,” she said through a slightly thick tongue. “Do you want to meet at the Sofitel?”
“Tonight?”
“Now. Today.”
“Fuck, I’m in a meeting. Then I’ve got gym ‘til five.”
Mara felt like crying. “Okay, I should—”
“No! Don’t go!”
She pressed a hand to her damp forehead. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to screw you around. I don’t even know why I’m calling.”
“It doesn’t matter why you’re calling. Where are you? Can’t you hang around and wait for me?”
She huffed out a laugh. “I already did that, remember? It was awful.”
There was a loaded silence. Mara clapped her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why—”
“It’s okay. I know I was a cunt and I’m sorry for shutting you out, but—”
“That doesn’t matter.” God, what was wrong with her? She’d wanted a hook-up, now she was making accusations. “Derek, I’m sorry. You go back to your… Did you say you were in a meeting?”
“Yeah, this thing for Adidas.”
“Oh. You left a meeting with Adidas to talk to me?”
There was a strained silence. “Baby, maybe I haven’t been making myself clear. I’d leave a meeting with the guys from Pearl Jam to talk to you. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to talk to you.”
Mara rested her chin in a cupped palm. That was the problem with Derek. He was the key to her past, the good and the bad, and talking to him made her feel it all again. The things she tried to leave at The Dark House.
“Baby, please don’t push me away.”
“Derek…”
“Little Miss.”
He said it exactly the way he used to, the words unlocking deeper doors inside her, releasing butterflies and demons alike.
“I know I fucked up but I’m so sorry. I need you. There’s never been anyone since you.”
She reached for her wine and found it empty. She’d been an idiot to do this. He needed. She needed. It was never enough. “You don’t get it.”
“So, make me understand,” he said, unknowingly echoing Chase.
And because she was drunk and she’d started all of this, she tried. “I can’t cut out the good parts and leave the rest behind.”
“But I’m not asking for that.”
Heat flushed through her body. “No, that’s what I want! Remember how other people can want things?”
Another strained silence. She chewed her thumbnail and fought the urge to apologise.
Derek sighed. “Mara? Why’d you call?”
“Because I wanted to hook up, I guess. But you’re busy, so it’s fine.”
“You wanted to fuck, huh?” His voice had changed. Become deeper. Older. “You want to be my pretty plaything again?”
She pressed her thighs together. “Don’t you have a meeting to get to?”
“Howard can wait.”
“Who’s Howard?”
“My manager. What are you wearing?”
“A dress and socks. You have a manager?”
“Yeah. Is it a little dress? And long socks?”
“Maybe…”
He growled into the phone. “I wanna see you.”
“Well, you can’t, and I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to control me with sex.”
“Yeah, and you’d hate that, wouldn’t you? Maybe I should come find you, throw you over my shoulder. Kidnap you.”
Mara’s insides shimmered, the alcohol in her stomach turning into gold.
“Yeah, you’d like that. I could tie you to the bed and everything. Keep you like a little pet. Would you like that, baby?”
“I think I’d die of malnutrition. You sound too busy for a pet.”
“I’m not. Anyway, I’d just buy you a bunch of cakes and let you watch as many girly TV shows as you want. You’d be sweet.”
She shook her head, trying not to smile.
“Come over to my place tonight. I’ll fuck you ‘til you’re screaming.”
Mara’s face flamed, heat climbing her neck and wrists. “It’s too late. Maybe we can just be well-wishers or something—”
“Fuck that. I’m never gonna see you and not want to tear your clothes off. And I’m never gonna wish you well with another bloke. I’m gonna wish he’d die in a car crash so I can fuck you at his funeral.”
“You’ve had me. Twice.”
“It’s not enough. There’s still something between us and you know it. I want another shot. I want you to be my girlfriend.”
The heat drained from Mara’s face. Girlfriend…
“Hello?”
“I’m still here. Derek, I don’t want to be your girlfriend.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s girlfriend,” she corrected. “I don’t date. I don’t have romantic relationships.”
There was a pause. “You’re not fuckin’ serious?”
“Ask anyone I know.”
“How can I? I don’t know them.”
“Then take my word for it. I don’t date. I haven’t for years. And I told you I hadn’t slept with anyone for years when we first hooked up, remember?”
There was a pause. “So, what? You’re… celibate?”
“I’m not celibate. I’m just happy on my own.”
“Right. So me fucking you…?”
“Sex isn’t the same thing as love, Derek. I’m pretty sure you already knew that.”
He sucked air through his teeth. “Is that how it’s gonna be, Little Miss?”
She hated herself for thrilling at the nickname. “What are you going to do? Spank me over the phone?”
“Don’t tempt me. So, you’ve just given up on meeting anyone?”
“I haven’t given up. I’ve made a calculated choice to invest my time in friendships.”
“Friendships?”
“Yes, I have a lot of great friends and a…” She almost did it again. Mentioned Pan. She gnawed at her thumbnail.
“So, you don’t want to get married?”
She laughed. “Since when do you care about getting married? You used to say your parents should’ve gotten divorced on their honeymoon.”
“I still say that. But it’d be different with us.”
She sighed. “You really haven’t changed.”
“Of course, I haven’t.” His voice dropped a decibel. “I know you’re horny, princess. Wait a few hours and Daddy’ll come give it to you.”
“Were you listening to anything I just said?”
“Yeah, you don’t want to date. And I want to be your boyfriend and buy a house with you and have kids and get married. So, now all our cards are on the table.”
“Right.” Mara’s head was pounding. “I think I should let you go.”
“I think we should hook up.”
“You keep thinking that.”
“I haven’t been with anyone since I saw you on the street.”
“Congratulations…?”
“I’m not trying to pump up my own tires. I want you to know how serious I am. Me not sleeping with anyone is a big deal.”
Mara couldn’t help snorting. “To who, Derek?”
Her ex-boyfriend growled like an angry bear. Good. Was she supposed to be grateful he wasn’t going on a sex rampage or something? Outside, the rain had stopped. The air in the café felt stuffy and the windows were thick with condensation.
“I’m going,” she told Derek. “Have fun at training and with Adidas and stuff.”
“I won’t. Don’t wait too long to message again.”
“If I message again.”
“You know, I’ve been looking for you for years, M. Ever since I got that picture.”
Mara froze in the process of grabbing her bag.
“I should have called you right away. I should have driven to Albury to fuck you that night, but I was injured. It was pre-season and everything was hectic and by the time I remembered, you’d gone.”
Mara closed her eyes.
“I’ve still got the picture. I look at it all the time. I never stopped thinking about you. I never stopped wishing I could talk to you.”
“Okay,” someone said distantly. Her, she realised. She was talking.
“I’m gonna let you go now, baby. But I’m here. And I’ll be waiting. Whenever you’re ready, come find me.”
The line disconnected and she wandered to the counter to pay for her wine, feeling both better and worse that they’d spoken.