Grease Monkey Jive (34 page)

“I would never have matched them together. I thought he was so not right for her, but now I’m kind of on his side.”

“Why does he need a side? Look at the way she is with him. If that’s not love, I don’t know what is.” Trevor used his mug as an imaginary sword and stabbed at the air. “Take that Brad and Anna.”

“She says it’s just lust. She’s in it for a good time, not a long time.”

Trevor’s mouth opened, his lips formed a circle. “No!”

Scott nodded. “Says he’s just a mechanic, he has no ambition. I did predict it would end badly.”

“Nooo!” It was a drawn out sound, a cow in pain. “I can’t look anymore. I have to think about this,” Trevor said over his shoulder, as he made for the kitchen.

When the track ended, Scott had to look away too. The heat in the kiss Dan and Alex shared made his face burn. She’d never looked like that with Phil, or the one before him, or anyone. She was in trouble and she didn’t know it.

When they came apart, he said, “Girlfriend, can I talk to you before you go?” He’d recruit Trevor to keep Dan busy if he had to. He wanted Alex to himself.

“If you drop me home, you can have me. I need to go see Gran and Mum tonight. They’ll be wondering if I’m still alive.”

Alex took a seat beside Scott on the bench and when Dan came over to say goodnight, the tenderness in this kiss made Scott’s stomach flip. He shouldn’t have looked, but they were right there in front of him, what was he supposed to do?

“Got one for me too, caveman?”

Dan laughed, “If I did?”

Scott blanched, he looked at Alex, “Yes, well. I’d run a mile, wouldn’t I? Or she’d scratch my eyes out, even if she is my best friend. Besides you’re not my type. Too...” he struggled for a word, and came up with, “wholesome,” and then smacked his forehead to indicate how stupid the conversation was.

Dan refocused on Alex, stroked a hand down her cheek, and Scott watched her tilt her face to his fingers. God, this was worse than he’d thought. He coughed. Tuberculoses didn’t have more phlegm in it and they separated, Dan finally quitting the room, shaking his head, his laughter trailing him out the door.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing, Alley cat?” Scott swung his booted foot casually off his crossed knee, but his question was anything but casual.

“What do you mean?”

“With that man.”

Alex projected her voice to an imaginary audience. “Ladies and gentleman, my best friend Scott Wallace, at his most obscure.”

“I mean that – what I saw tonight with him – the kiss, the thing with the hands, and your face. Argh! That’s not just burning fast. You’re in love with him.”

Alex said, “I am not,” but the pause she left, the quick look away, told Scott he was on the right track.

“That is a lie of convenience. You’re just telling yourself you don’t love him, and I have no idea why.”

“That’s because I don’t love him. I do love being with him. Oh God! I love that, but it’s not the same thing.”

“How about you explain that to me?”

“What’s it matter? I’m completely in control of this. I’ve learned from Phil. I’m not ever going to let a man dictate how I feel again.”

“You are in fairyland, girlfriend.”

“Scott, I thought you’d be happy for me. I’m having fun and it’s been a long time since I have.”

“I can’t be happy for you if you’re completely deluded.”

“But I’m not!”

“You can’t take your eyes off him.”

Alex flung her hands up. “Sue me. He’s gorgeous. Neither can any woman he meets. Neither can Trevor.”

“You light up when he’s around.”

“I like how he makes me feel. Why shouldn’t I? But that’s not love.”

Scott uncrossed his leg and stared down at his hated boot. “One more time for the dummies, tell me what is?”

“It’s not real, Scott. Love is a construct, its hormones, and right now my hormones have got it real bad for Dan. But it’ll burn off. And when it does we have nothing in common. There’d be nothing to build a relationship on.”

“That’s Mummy talking.”

“Yes it is and she’s right.”

Scott scowled. “You really believe that?”

“I do.”

“Does he know?”

“He knows I care for him. He knows I love being with him and I can’t get enough of him.” Alex rocked back on the bench, brought one knee up to her chest and hugged it with her eyes closed tight. “He can...”

Scott cut her off, put his hands over his ears. “La, la, la, la.”

“I won’t lie to him. I won’t lead him on.”

“You already are.”

“Oh, come on.” She dropped her knee and turned to face Scott. “Dan’s a big boy, he knows how this works.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“He might be a reformed player, but it’s not like he’s forgotten the game.”

“True. Presumably one player in the game has skill enough to recognise another then?”

“What are you getting at?”

“You think Dan knows the score between you because it’s in the player’s rulebook and he’d recognise another player at work.”

Alex bit down on her back teeth. “Are you calling me a player?”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing, playing with his affections?” Scott’s intonation was all innocent and upward trending, but his insinuation was card table bluff at 3am when the chips were down.

“No, it’s...”

“Well, if it’s not about the future, then you’re just using him and, girlfriend, that makes you a player too.”

Alex sat at the kitchen table watching Gran chop vegetables. “He’s cooked for me every night this week. Simple meals, but not rubbish either, always vegetables and protein.”

“My golly, Alex, that is good, isn’t it?”

“It makes a nice change.”

“Apart from Trevor, no man has ever cooked me a meal.”

“Oh Gran.”

Gwen flapped a hand in dismissal. “It was a generational thing. It was women’s work. Even though the top chefs were all men, it didn’t make husbands rush into the kitchen. You’re lucky it’s not so rare these days. You seem happy, my darling. It’s good to see. You know I never liked Phil, but I’d have put up with him for your sake if you said he was the one.”

“You know I don’t think there is a ‘one’.”

“Oh, that’s your mother talking.”

“No. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Why would we think that everyone has a perfect match for life? You only have to look at the divorce statistics to know it’s not true.”

“Again, your mother.”

“Gran, I’m old enough to have my own thoughts on the subject.”

“Well then, you’re old enough to be told you’re wrong.”

Alex smiled. “I know you’re a romantic, but it didn’t work for you or for Mum. Why would it be any different for me? Mum’s right. I need to be able to support myself, independent and free, and never rely on a man for anything. I made mistakes with Phil. I thought he was what I needed. I’m going to be more careful about Dan. He’s a lovely man and we can enjoy spending time together, but I know there’s no future in it. This time I’ll be the one in the driver’s seat.”

The more Alex talked, the more annoyed Gran became. She could tell by the way her grandmother wrenched the fridge door opened and then slammed the frozen chicken on the bench.

“Let me tell you something, my girl. It didn’t work for me because the man I loved with all my heart got sick and there was nothing to be done about it. I love your grandfather to this day, despite how bad things got when he came home from that ugly war.”

“Oh, Gran.”

“Don’t ‘oh, Gran’ me, it’s the truth. And your mother, you think she’s so independent, such the feminist icon. Oh, you don’t think I know about things like that, there’s a lot you don’t know despite that high priced education of yours. Your mother, she loved your father so much she’d never even glance at another man. Don’t you look at me like that. She’s an attractive woman. You think she didn’t have other men interested in her? She did and some of them were lovely, but she’d never think about being serious with them because she never got over your father.

“Now you can’t tell me that’s not love, twisted and perverted and not helping anyone, but when it hits you, there is nothing you can do about it but try to live with it and hope you can have that person in your corner for the rest of your life.”

Alex felt her shock register on her face.

“If you love this boy, you hold on to him. You try to make a go with him, and if it works or if it doesn’t work, that’s life, but at least you’ll know you’ve tried. If thinking that makes me a silly romantic, well I just don’t care.”

Alex was on her feet and around the table, wrapping Gran in a hug.

“You’re not silly. I never knew you felt that way. I never knew about Mum. I thought she hated men.”

“She kept it all separate from you. It was a long time ago any way. You were only a little kid when she last dated anyone. Don’t tell her I told you, she’ll only be upset. Do you love that boy?”

Alex released her grandmother to light the oven. “No.”

“Look at me and tell me.”

Alex opened a draw and pulled out a pan, then went back to the fridge.

“Alex?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know whether to believe it’s possible.” She abandoned her pretence of helping to prepare dinner. “I don’t know how to go about it. I’m so scared, Gran. I can only manage it if I tell myself it’s not true, but the more time I spend with him, the harder it is to convince myself I can ever let him go.”

“Oh my darling, tell me how he makes you feel.”

“Like the sun is shining on the dullest day. Like the air is fresher, like colours are brighter and anything is possible. He makes me feel smarter, stronger, more beautiful, and more hopeful than I’ve ever felt before. He makes me feel like I could fly if I wanted it enough and he’d be there to catch me if I fell.”

“Has he told you he loves you?”

“Not with words, but with the things he does for me. He’s so considerate. He’s so normal. That’s the hardest thing to get used to because he had a really rough childhood. I feel like I might not be able to breathe properly any more if he weren’t in my life. I’m so confused. He makes me feel weak for needing him. At the same time I’ve never felt so good for being with him.”

“You didn’t have an easy childhood either, and your mother was very tough on you.”

“Gran, that’s nothing compared to what Dan went through. You have no idea what he’s gotten past.”

Alex’s face was crumpled with anxiety now, and it was Gwen’s turn to hug. “The words are important, but they only mean something if they come after the facts, otherwise it’s all just nonsense.” She stroked her granddaughter’s hair as Alex started to cry, quiet tears of confession and relief, but also of uncertainty and fear.

“Don’t cry, my girl, you’ll work it out, it’s not so very hard. It sounds to me like you have some facts to deal with and a lovely man to help you deal with them.”

Later, when Alex lay in her own narrow bed, her head churned with new ideas. The knowledge that her mother dated and maybe wasn’t such a man hater, but a romantic herself, even the tragic kind, should have been enough to keep her mind turning for hours alone, but the idea she was in love with Dan kept her eyes pinned open and her thoughts in a disorganised whirl. There wasn’t much chance she’d sleep well tonight.

How could she not have known? How could she have denied it, as late as this evening with Scott and then Gran? Scott was right. She was a self-deluded fool, acting like a player because she was too frightened to face the truth. She was scared to death she was in love with a surfer boy, caveman, grease monkey, whose only ambition was the next big wave, and she had no idea what to do about that.

At 2am she went back to the kitchen and heated milk. Gran used to give her hot milk when she was a kid and couldn’t sleep. It was then she noticed a text message on her phone.

Miss u can’t sleep cause ur not here Jeff thnks I’m pathetic
.

It was sent at 1am and she pictured Dan, rumpled and tired, his hair a mess, a shadow of stubble on his face, in his own kitchen drinking hot milk with Jeff’s head on his knee. It was too late to reply, but she was still holding the phone when it pinged again.

Don’t care if pathetic can’t wait to see hold kiss lov u.

She stared at the last two words. Did the lack of punctuation and the truncation make them any less real? Did the time it was sent make it mean more or less? It was only a text after all, only meant playfully, and he didn’t know she was awake to see it. Yes, she decided. It was just middle of the night play at love, and fun for two.

She typed,
lov u 2
and then looked at the screen in panic. Play or not, it was too close to the bone. She deleted the message and put down the phone, then, disgusted at her own gutlessness, picked it up again and typed,
Don’t like men pathetic, except abt me. Go 2 sleep pls so I won’t feel guilty wearing u out 2morow nite.

The reply came back while she was sipping her milk,
Can’t believe ur awake go sleep will be as pathetic as u want whenever u want.

Alex was smiling, the last of the milk doing its job on her limbs, making them heavy with fatigue, the contact with Dan settling her nervous stomach, when the phone pinged again. This’d turned into the text version of one of those phone conversations where neither party wanted to be the first one to say goodnight and hang up. She thought he might wish her sweet dreams or riff on his pathetic nature or throw in a comment from Jeff, but she laughed out loud when she opened his message.

I like my women guilty.

Familiarity did not make it less of a freak show.

This time Dan knew what to expect from the disco ball lighting and Barry Barton’s dad jokes to the sequins, fake orange tan, and glow-in-the-dark teeth of the competitors, but it did nothing to help his sense of equilibrium. He felt unbalanced from the moment he entered the room to the sound of Rod Stewart’s
Sweet Little Rock ‘n Roller
.

Only Alex holding his hand made it possible for him to keep walking and talking like a normal human being. Alex made him feel like anything was possible, like they might score enough points to keep their competition hopes alive, like he might be able to make a new life for himself as far away from the image of Jimmy as possible, with a woman he admired. And wasn’t that a freaking miracle?