Give Me Love (26 page)

Jared buzzed me up to the top level and led me in to a beautiful loft style apartment with double height ceilings, massive windows, a huge open style dining room, a kitchen, and a lounge room. The kitchen was right in the middle, separating the two rooms with wide caesarstone benchtops and stainless steel appliances. There were doorways off to the side, which I imagined led to the bedrooms and bathroom. Big glass doors led to an outdoor deck that was perfect for entertaining. The whole place was painted white with a feature red brick wall and decorated in
man
. No girly touches here. As I wandered through the room, I glanced at photos here and there in an effort to avoid looking at Jared and moved to one of the giant windows where I could view the famous Finger Wharf where Russell Crowe supposedly lived.

“Evie, who drove you here?”

I turned to face him and sighed. He looked tired, but even wearing just an old pair of faded jeans and a shirt with a big tear in it, he still took my breath away.

“Jared…”

“Evie, Jimmy is still out there. Shit. Just…don’t do that again, okay?” He sighed. “Drink?”

I latched onto the subject change. “Yes, please.”

He poured us both wine and led me over to the couch. Once I’d arranged myself comfortably, he took a sip from his glass, sat it down, and took hold of my hand.

“So, here’s the thing,” he began without wasting time on small talk. “Jessica was the girl I was going to marry.”

“Oh.” I snatched my hand away, thinking that maybe a bit of conversation beforehand would have been a good idea to soften that particular blow. “How lovely for the two of you. Am I standing in the way of that?” I asked.

Jared and Jessica had a much better ring to it. Their celebrity name would be Jarica, pretty in a sort of ghetto-ugly kinda way.

“No,” he said, grabbing my hand back. “She died.”

“Oh, Jared, I’m so sorry,” I blurted out, horrified at my insensitivity. “I can be such a thoughtless bitch sometimes. I’m sorry.” I gave his hand a squeeze.

He squeezed back before letting go to rub his hands down the front of his jeans. “That’s okay. You didn’t know.”

“What happened?”

He picked his glass back up off the coffee table and sank into the navy leather couch, fiddling with the stem of the glass rather than taking a sip. “I met her when she moved to Sydney from Perth. Her dad had been relocated for work. She was only a little thing with short blonde hair and brown eyes, but she was trying out for our high school mixed soccer team anyway. I was inside the six yard box and going for a hat trick when she got in the way and the ball slammed into her jaw and sent her flying. I got ribbed for months after that, but it certainly got her attention,” he said with a chuckle. “She asked
me
out after I’d bruised her jaw all purple and green, said she liked my powerful inside curve kick.”

I didn’t know anything about soccer, and for a brief, selfish moment, I felt jealous that this girl had shared something with Jared that I would likely never do.

“Anyway, we’d been together for three years, and about two years after we started uni, she began acting strange. Not ringing or coming around as much, being secretive, taking phone calls in another room. At the time, we were so busy caught up in part time jobs, assignments, and group study, I didn’t think too much of it. Then a few months later, she started getting really sick: tonsillitis, constant infections, tired all the time. When she came down with pneumonia and was hospitalised, they diagnosed her with a rare type of leukaemia.” He paused to take a sip of wine and ran his fingers through his hair. “It progressed so bloody fast. Three months later they said there was nothing they could do for her, that she had anywhere from two to four months left, and sent her home. It was awful and I felt like I couldn’t do or say the right thing.”

Tears filled my eyes at the pain in his voice, and I blinked them away, watching him rub a hand down his face. I couldn’t imagine what it was like to watch someone lose their life, right in front of your eyes, and know there was nothing you could do about it. Knowing the type of person Jared was, feeling useless would have cut him deeply.

“Apparently, it was time for death bed confessions, and she admitted to sleeping with someone else,” he said bitterly. “Not just some one night stand either. This was a relationship that had been going on behind my back for a whole year and only ended when he moved away.”

She cheated on him? On
this
man? Disbelief and anger were conflicting emotions, and I tried to keep my thoughts from travelling down the path where it was wrong to speak ill of the dead. Oh God, this was why he didn’t trust
me!
That hurt. It fucking hurt knowing I was paying for something she’d done. But then wasn’t Jared paying for the actions of others from my past? Did that mean it hurt him too? I didn’t know what to think, but I did know I wasn’t the only person in this relationship carrying scars on the inside.

I took his hand back in mine, giving it another squeeze, encouraging him to finish.

“I felt so fucking stupid. I still do to be honest, thinking back on it makes my insides feel all twisted. How could someone be such an idiot to not notice something like that going on for a whole year?”

I shook my head in disagreement. “I think the question should be ‘Why was she such an idiot?' Did she ever say?”

He nodded. “She tried to tell me she was in love with the both of us and how could she choose? What was I supposed to do, Evie, when she told me? Be the asshole boyfriend who dumped his girlfriend of three years when she had maybe two months left to live? How was I supposed to forgive that before she died? I couldn’t leave her, and I felt so angry and sad and fucking stuck. I couldn’t tell anyone either. How could I when she had so little time left? She died about three months later, and I felt like a heartless bastard at the funeral when all I could feel was anger because the past year and a half of my life had been a complete lie.”

Leaning forward, I sat my drink down on the coffee table with a loud clank, and then I turned around and straddled his lap, running my palm gently down his cheek. “Jared, right until the end, you were with her. I can’t even imagine how it must have felt to do that, but I know you wouldn’t have forgiven yourself otherwise. Maybe she lost your respect for her actions, but you never lost respect for yourself.”

He slid his arms around my waist and locked his eyes on mine. “Thank you, Evie. I know my past is no excuse for overreacting the other night and storming out on you, but for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. It’s just…” Jared paused and let out a shaky breath “…you mean so much, so much more than anyone ever has, and that’s fucking scary.”

My throat grew tight at his words, and at that moment, my admiration and respect for Jared was immense. Shitty things happened to good people all the time, and it was how you dealt with it that mattered. Despite the emotional cost, Jared had acted with so much dignity and honour, it left me wondering what he saw in me. The way I’d dealt with the shitty things in my life was so very different. Jared knowing that
my
actions were disappointing and shameful was scary because then maybe I would lose his respect just like Jessica.

“You mean a lot to me too, Jared, and your apology? Taking the time to explain something so painful just so I could understand your actions is worth more than you realise.” His eyes remained on mine as I spoke and I rested my hands on his chest and pressed a soft kiss on his lips before pulling back.

“Jessica is part of your tattoo, isn’t she? A reminder about how being true to yourself is being true to others.”

He nodded, breaking eye contact and turning his head to stare at the darkening sky through the window. “Part of it. I hated that I felt like our time together was a lie, but it also made me realise I didn’t love her like I thought I did. Not because of her actions, but before that. Maybe I just wanted to love her, and if I had been honest with myself and realised that, then maybe the whole shitty mess wouldn’t have happened.”

“I think you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself. Of course you loved her. Maybe not in the way you think you wanted to, or should have, but sometimes it’s hard to know what it’s in your heart.”

At my words, his gaze returned to mine. “My mind knew, Evie. It just didn’t fucking tell me what I wanted to hear.” He hesitated. “Speaking of hearts….Are you going to tell me about Asshole Kellar now?”

“I’d probably have to start with Wild Renny first,” I muttered.

My stomach growled angrily, and I checked my watch to see that time had gotten away. Jared eyed my stomach before asking, “Wild Renny, huh?”

“Yeah,” I replied with a heavy sigh, not in the least looking forward to reciprocating the sharing process. “Maybe you could feed me first?”

“What would you like?” he muttered, staring at my lips.

His fixation was getting me hot. “You, for starters.”

The corners of his lips tilted up, and his green eyes glittered. “Yeah? I’m just the entrée? What’s the main course?”

I squirmed on his lap. “Well…” I drawled out.

“Wait,” he chuckled. “Let me guess, Mr. Chow’s?”

I blinked at him in surprise. “How did you know?”

He gave me an exasperated look. “Coby does happen to be one of my closest friends you know. He told me all about you and your Mr. Chow fetish.”

“Yeah? Well who doesn’t have a Mr. Chow fetish? Besides, I heard all about the fetish the guy who works at Mr. Chow’s has for your ass,” I nodded knowingly.

He tugged at the knot of hair at the nape of my neck so it unfolded down my back in a mass of waves. “Who doesn’t have a fetish for my ass?” he joked, his fingers threading through my hair.

Later, after dinner arrived, we sat at the solid oak dining table drinking iced tea and eating honeyed chicken with a side order of steamed dim sims, steamed vegetables, and rice.

Jared pointed his chopsticks at me. “Wild Renny.” His eyes bore into me, prompting me to spill.

I swallowed my mouthful of chicken, feeling my insides tie themselves in knots. “Right,” I mumbled, wondering how to begin.

Jared knew my dad had disappeared and Mum died, but he didn’t know the full story, so that’s where I started, telling him how Ray had deserted us, Mum was always working hard, the car accident, and my party.

“I don’t remember the months after Mum died much. You know that feeling you get when you’re just waking up? When you’re not quite conscious but you can feel your dreams slipping away? I felt like that. Constantly. That was when I met Lorenzo Rossi, or Renny.”

I took a swallow of tea as Jared sat across the table, chewing thoughtfully and watching me as he listened.

“He was the typical bad boy, eighteen, longish black hair, black eyes, tattoos, and a black Triumph Thunderbird motorcycle.”

Jared nodded. “Sweet ride.”

“I know, right? By that point I was starting to lose the surreal feeling, that dreamlike state I’d been drifting in, and that meant anger was slipping its way through. I didn’t like being angry. At the time, I didn’t realise it was perfectly normal to feel anger at a parent for dying and leaving you behind. I just knew that it was there and that I didn’t understand it. Being on the back of Renny’s motorcycle took me back to that dreamlike state, and going back there felt so good. It felt even better at night. I could tilt my head back and watch the stars, feel the wind in my hair and everything twisting around inside me would disappear.”

I pushed the vegetables around on my plate a little to make it look like I was eating them. “Trouble was that being with Renny didn’t make anything better. It kinda got worse. The anger wouldn’t go away, and it was like the more I pushed at it, the stronger it got.” Tears worked their way from my throat, and I swallowed them back down. “It just wouldn’t let go, and I hated myself for it.”

I took another sip of my drink to compose myself. “Renny introduced me to tequila, which at the time I thought made those night time motorcycle rides feel even better. Coby tried to pull me out of it, but he wasn’t a dad and he was dealing with losing Mum too. Nothing I ever did back then was fair to him. God, I knew the way I was acting was wrong. Even at the time I knew, but I couldn’t stop, and Renny made me feel so good after everything had left me feeling so bad. Six months of skipping school, disruptive behaviour, and drinking excessively ended on a four day drunken bender where it was all I could do to remember my own name. Coby and Henry had tried ringing and messaging constantly, but I didn’t even notice, and my phone eventually died. The bender finished with an evening motorcycle ride down Melbourne’s Highway 31, tequila bottle in one hand, the other wrapped around Renny. When I felt the bike swerve I was suddenly airborne…” Jared closed his eyes as though to brace himself “…and while I don’t remember anything after that, the accident investigation report suggested Renny simply went off the road. I was lucky, Jared, that I actually woke up in a hospital. Lucky to be alive. Renny managed to walk away, and he did it so well that he checked out of the hospital the next day without even a backward glance.”

Ray leaving, Mum dying, and then knowing Renny walked away so easily had hurt like nothing I could ever imagine. I swallowed the feelings of abandonment the memories still managed to evoke.