Grease Monkey Jive (40 page)

“I love that, but I don’t like this – this silence. You’ve shut down on me.”

He shrugged, his lips flattened in annoyance. “I’m doing the best I can. He’ll go to gaol despite the lawyers, and there are two kids who have to grow up without parents because of what he did. It wasn’t enough he made my growing up hard; he had to go wreck the lives of two more kids. And I could have stopped it and I was... I have to... I can’t talk about it, Alex. I’m so mad I don’t know what I might do.”

That was the most he’d said about how he felt since the accident. And he wasn’t finished. “You think I’m shutting you out.”

“Aren’t you?” She knew the answer, but did he?

“No. Yes. Yes, I’m shutting you out of this. I’m sorry. I can’t do it any other way.”

Now she did touch him, bringing her hand to his face to stroke his brow. “You could trust me to help you.”

“I do trust you.”

“Then why won’t you let me help?”

He caught her hand and held it. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help.”

It might have been a protective measure, his cutting words, not that Alex felt wounded. She felt sorrow. He was still the boy who’d grown himself up and he didn’t know how to let her in. “You only need me physically.”

Dan folded her in his arms, one arm around her waist, the other holding her head to his chest, so she heard his voice as a rumble. “I want you physically. There’s a difference.”

“I don’t see it.”

“I told you I’d never get over wanting you.”

She lifted her eyes to watch him. He was holding her, but he was somewhere else. “But you don’t need me?”

“Nope.” She pulled back further. “Alex, Don’t look at me like that.” He shook his head. “Do you want me to lie?”

“I want you to trust me, talk to me, let me love you.”

Alex felt Dan’s sigh travel though her body and lodge in her belly like sour fruit. He was not going to let her in.

“My mum was killed by a drunk driver. My dad is a drunk driver who killed two people and made two kids into exactly what I once was. I don’t know how I’m supposed to deal with that and I’m doing the best I can.”

Dan’s eyes were cold, his voice was stiff, and though he still smelled like fresh sea salt the taste in Alex’s mouth was dread.

The first person Dan saw when he left the change room was Cooper. The boy was standing roughly in the spot where he and Alex had been caught on video. Dan had watched his pirated copy of that video countless times. He was rocked by the emotion that lit Alex’s face, the arch and flex of her body as it responded to his hands, her eyes flared wide, her mouth open, her breath coming in snatches. It never failed to affect him, drop his mouth open at the memory of it, and now, just being in the corridor, the scene of the crime, was getting to him. Cooper was a good distraction.

“Coop, how goes?” He clapped the kid on the shoulder.

“I’m nervous. I know you don’t watch the heats before you go on. I thought I should try that.”

“You know, mate, I just do what Scott says. Don’t look at me for wisdom. I’d have to say I’m a bit short on it lately.”

“What’s the story you’re dancing this time?”

“Can you guess?”

Cooper tilted his head, his eyes went up towards the ceiling, he straightened his lips in thought. “I reckon it’s a make-up routine. That’s what I’d do.”

“Make-up?”

“Yeah, you know how last time you were a couple fighting. Now it’ll be your make-up scene, you know all lovey-dovey, with a big dramatic kiss and all. It’ll be sick. Everyone’ll love it.”

Dan shook his head, “I wish.”

“No! You’re screwing with me? It’s a break-up story?” Cooper almost yelled in his excitement. “Awesome!”

Dan just nodded, Cooper’s enthusiasm wringing him out, like he’d been held down by a monster wave and was short of breath from the pummelling.

The accident, Jimmy’s demands, his warring uncles, trying to protect Alex from the fallout, it was all coming unravelled. There was nothing the lawyer could do to keep Jimmy out of a gaol term, his insurance wasn’t going to near cover the costs involved, the kids’ grandparents wouldn’t accept any help, and the whole business had shown Dan how wrong he’d been to try and wrap Alex into his life.

She deserved better. He was a dumb jock grease monkey, playing at being something better. He didn’t have the education, he didn’t have the connections, and she wanted to be needed and he couldn’t do that either. Needing someone only ended up hurting you in the end. But the worst of it, he wasn’t man enough to let her go, just kept holding on to her as though she was a kind of life raft. But that had to stop. After today, Scott would be back in matching shoes and she wouldn’t need him anymore. The fact they were dancing a break up story was like a kick in the guts, because they were living it too.

“Who dumps who?” asked Cooper.

“She cans my ass, Coop. A player can’t keep a good girl. If I can teach you anything, I can at least teach you that.”

Cooper said, “Awesome!”

Alex was standing in the corridor now looking hell sexy in a short gold dress with splits to her hips. Cooper squeaked a quick, “Hi,” to Alex and a “Bye,” to Dan and scarpered.

“You look,” Dan searched for a word and Cooper’s, “Awesome,” was front and centre on his tongue.

“You look pretty awesome yourself.” Alex slid her arms around his chest. “Do you think Ferdy has us framed again?”

“Be the last thing the stupid bastard does if he has,” Dan growled with more vehemence than Alex’s joking required.

She brushed her fingertips over his lips. “Are you ok?”

He was anything but ok. He was torn in two. He was weak and gutless, a rat caged in his family history and his own indecision. “I’m awesome.” That made her smile, but fleetingly. She kissed him softly. She knew him for a liar. That might turn out for the best.

When they entered the arena just before their appearance, there was a ripple of excitement in the audience. They were the crowd favourite and they were the last couple to dance tonight. Now they had to deliver, do enough to score another five points so Alex and Scott had a chance to stay in the competition for the finals.

This time there’d be no provocation. No third dancer, no tricks to confound the judges. Just a girl and a guy and the story of heartbreak. This time Dan was confident he could deliver what was needed.

Their entrance to the floor for the number was as two separate people, the intention to show that this was a couple with problems. They’d come together in the routine, but then ultimately fall apart and end as they’d begun, as separate people on opposite sides of the floor.

Waiting for their music to kick in, Dan steeled himself for this one last performance, part of him relieved to have gotten this far, but part of him devastated that this had to be the last time he’d dance with Alex.

He snuck a look at her when he was supposed to be in character and ignoring her. He couldn’t help it. She glowed in her gold dress, shimmered at the centre of his vision, made his pulse thump in his throat. She was acting the part, a saucy smile, a languid look, a pout, playing up to the audience. She was confident and totally captivating and he simply couldn’t look away.

In the seconds before their music started up, she caught him out. She turned and met his eyes and Dan was surprised the dry crack he heard in his head wasn’t audible to the rest of the stadium. In rehearsals, when she caught him looking she snapped off a comment about how pathetic he was. This time she mouthed a word. From half a dance floor away he thought it was, ‘awesome’ and the smile on her face when she said it lit a fire in his veins. He had three minutes and fifty-four seconds for it to burn out and sear the sense of her into his muscle memory. Three minutes and fifty-four seconds to breathe with her, touch her, and dance with her before the game was over.

They’d started out rehearsing this number to Kelly Clarkson’s
Stronger
, but Scott switched the track just days ago to Jason Derulo’s
Breathing
, so now as the opening notes sounded even the song choice was out to remind him what he was going to miss, this woman, this new life he’d tried on for size and failed to fit. He would miss it with every breath.

Three minutes and fifty-four seconds later it was only the applause that told him they’d done ok. His singlet was wet through, plastered to his chest. As the jilted lover he didn’t have to fake the heaviness he felt. He heaved a lungful of oxygen and looked around for Alex. She was breathing heavily too, her skin moist with a light lustre of perspiration, her body flushed with her triumph. She should’ve been facing away, should’ve held character, but in a dozen quick strides she was in his arms, moulded to him, folded in his heart.

It was a break-up routine, but he kissed her passionately, lifted her off the floor and cinched her body to his. It was a story of loss, but she dragged her fingers through his hair and laughed before she kissed him back, her exhilaration a hit with the audience who roared their approval.

They stayed on the floor, lost in each other as the other couples joined them for the judge’s results to be read. At the sound of Barry Barton’s voice, Dan released Alex, but he keep her hand in his and she stayed close to his side. There was this to get through.

He blanked Barry out; he glazed over the faces of the other couples, dimming his awareness of their reactions to their scores. He willed himself to go numb, to focus only on the feeling of having Alex at his side. In his near anesthetised state he missed Barry’s deadly drone intoning their score. But Alex repeated it – a seven, more than they needed, more than they could’ve hoped for. It washed past him and he didn’t snap to until Anna grabbed Alex to hug her and he felt Brad’s hand on his back.

It was over.

He didn’t wait for Alex. He left the floor, ignored Scott and the boys, and made for the change room. Now there was just one more thing to do and it gave him two left feet and indigestion from the black weight in his gut. If he’d known this is what it would feel like to love someone you couldn’t keep, he’d never have tried to change. The old way where things were clearly temporary was better. No one got this cut up.

He was under the shower, running the water hot and hard, when he heard Cooper’s voice call from just outside in the change room.

“Dan, that was awesome! That score is enough that Alex could still win. Totally out of this world wicked.”

If he didn’t answer, maybe Copper would go away. He put his head further under the stream, closed his eyes, and let the water fill his ears, but he still heard the indictment Fluke threw at him.

“You’re about to do something stupid!”

He turned the tap off, wrapped a towel around his waist, but stayed inside the shower area. “No. I’m about to correct a mistake.” His voice echoed, too loud against the damp tiles, not loud enough to stop the argument coming.

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

Dan brushed past Cooper, wide-eyed and big-eared, and Fluke, red-faced and scowling, and moved into the change room.

“You’re going to fuck it up, aren’t you?”

“I’ve already fucked it up. I should never have let this happen.”

“There’s something seriously wrong with you. If you let that woman go, you’re a complete dumbass.”

“Fluke, you told me right at the start, when Mitch was seeing invisible arrows and I was already roadkill over her.” He slapped his open hand against his locker door. “You told me this was no good.”

“I told you your dog days were over and she’d dump you soon as look at you. I figured you’d get your heart broken for the first time. Not for one frigging minute did I think you could change, that you could hold onto a woman like Alex, that you could deserve a woman like Alex. That you’d be stupid enough to dump her.”

“That’s just it. I can’t change.”

“What the fuck, Dan? That’s bullshit. You can. You did. She’s in love with you.”

Dan struck the locker again, harder this time, with a furled fist. It made a clanging sound. It made Cooper jump.

“She doesn’t know who I am.”

“Fuck!” Fluke screamed. “Wake up!”

Cooper started again and Fluke barked at him, “Who the fuck are you?”

Cooper opened his mouth to answer, but Dan said, “He’s a witness to my fucked-up-ness, to the fact that I’ve been asleep. I hoped I could make Alex happy, but I can’t give her what she needs. She does not need me.”

“Is this about Jimmy?”

“Yes, it’s about Jimmy and it’s about me. I’m too much his son to make it work with Alex. In the end I’ll drag her down and hurt her. I don’t want to hold her back. I don’t want her to mess up her life and if I don’t leave her now, I will.”

Fluke was rigid with anger. This was worse than what Dan had done to Katie, worse than what he’d ever done to anyone. Dan had that look on his face he got whenever he’d had to deal with some crap in his life, ice cold and plaited steel band tight. He’d been wearing that look since Jimmy’s accident and Fluke hoped having Alex would make a difference. That Dan would fuck up so royally hadn’t entered his head till he saw him come off the dance floor. Then he’d known he’d pull some screwed up shit.

“You’re a fucking lunatic!”

“I was a lunatic to think anything could be different, but you’re spot on about one thing Fluke. I did get my heart broken and it fucking serves me right.”

They faced each other across the change room, one fiery from hair to fist and barely articulate, the other slayed open by emotion but coldly rational.

“Have you got any idea how this is going to wreck her?”

“I wrecked it with her weeks ago and you know it. Now all I have to do is blow her off.”

“Fuck, I hate you right now.”

“That’s ok, mate. I hate me too.”

“Ok, what was that about?” said Alex, when Dan appeared in the corridor. He should’ve been elated like she was. Scott was near trashed with excitement and Trevor had been speechless when he’d embraced her. Even her mother had been full of teary smiles and hugs. What a time for her to choose to attend. But Dan had just disappeared. Maybe he’d wanted her to have the moment to herself, maybe there was a reason he’d cut out like that. But she was nervous, light-headed, waiting for him to answer.