Greetings from Sugartown (12 page)

Ana just shakes her head and starts up the hallway. I grab her hand and pull her into the bathroom with me, shutting the door with my foot, and penning her in against the wall. “Hey, what the hell was that?”

“What was what?”

“Your reaction,” I say, as I watch her face. She looks at the ceiling over my right shoulder, avoiding my gaze. “You thought I had someone here?” Her eyebrows shoot skyward.

“Someone other than Jack and Kick.”

“Honestly, I don’t know what I thought.”

“Are you kidding me with this shit?”

“I just …” Ana sighs and squirms in an effort to be free. “I’m not used to coming home to flowers and champagne, and you looking all flustered. I guess I—”

“—Thought I was cheating on you,” I finish.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” I spit out between clenched teeth. “This is bullshit, Ana.”

I step away to keep from unleashing my anger against the wall, or worse, her, but Ana reaches for my arm.

“I’m sorry. Things are just … hard right now.”

“Things are always hard, baby girl. Life is fucking hard. It’s sure been no picnic so far, and I don’t see it getting any easier. You either learn to roll with the punches, or you let it crush you in the clusterfuck.”

“What if the punches seem too much for one of us to take?” she asks, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

“What are you saying?”

“I don’t know. I’m tired and emotional, and I have a house full of people to feed.”

“I don’t give a shit about anyone else—they can fucking starve for all I care. You need to talk to me, Ana.” I slide my thumbs over her cheeks, wiping the tears away. “Don’t shut me out. Talk to me.”

“I just … I’m terrified of losing you.”

“Never gonna happen.”

“You say that, but—”

“Look at me,” I say, cupping her cheeks and directing her gaze up to mine. “It’s not ever going to happen.” She nods as I tuck her into my chest. “And you need to have more faith in me.”

“I do have faith in you.”

“No, you don’t. But I haven’t always given you a reason to,” I say, stroking her soft hair down the length of her back, and tangling my fingers in it. “I will though.”

I wrap my arms around her and hold her tight until we’ve both calmed down enough to consider facing the mania of our lounge room. Finally having a family worth belonging to is incredible, but sometimes I wish they’d all disappear long enough to give us some fucking breathing room. What started out as a night for me to spoil my girl ended up screwed every which way from Sunday because of those pushy fuckers.

You can choose your friends, right?

I
STAND
in the kitchen, chopping onions for dinner, and look through the stained-glass window onto the back yard. Tears roll down my cheeks, and the acidic onion tortures the back of my throat and sets fire to my sinuses. I sniff loudly, and wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand to rid the tears.

“Ana?” Kick’s presence makes me jump, and causes the knife to slip into my soft flesh.

“Ow, damn it.” I let the steel clatter against the chopping board as I dash for the sink to clear away the blood.

“Shit, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s fine, it’s only a nick,” I say, assessing the damage as the cold stream of water washes away the blood from the cut. I’m no stranger to pain—but sadly, before I met Elijah, the worst torment I’d ever suffered was a skinned knee, or an alcohol-induced migraine. Doesn’t mean this doesn’t hurt like a bitch. “Just a tiny cut.” I hold my finger up for inspection, and he nods.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s okay.”

“Is it? Were you crying just now?”

“Yeah, onions kinda kill me. Elijah usually does that part for me, but …” I shrug, as if the end of that sentence is self-explanatory.

“He isn’t here. He had a last-minute customer come in just on closing, so he told me to go on ahead.”

“He did?”

“Yeah, that chick from the pizza place … what’s ‘er name, Nicole? She brought her Mazda in; something about the engine needed tuning. Sounded fine to me, though.”

“Of course it was,” I mutter, and shake my head, and then I go back to chopping my onions. Though it’s not the fine slicing motion I had going before. The knife clangs against the cutting board, creating the perfect soundtrack to my anger.

Kick places his hand over my furiously chopping one. “Okay, why don’t you pour us a drink and I’ll do the onions, because someone is dangerously close to losing a finger, and I’m pretty sure we both need all ten of ours.”

I let go of the knife, and step away from the board. “Sorry.”

“It’s cool. There’s some tension there. She’s an attractive girl who’s alone with your man in the workshop. I get it.”

I blink at him in surprise, or rage, or I don’t know which. All I know is I wanna take my trusty kitchen knife and shove it through Nicole’s slutty vagina, but then I’d likely go to jail and have to buy a new set of knives. I head over to the fridge and pull a bottle of moscato, and a stubbie from the open door. Then I yank a large wine glass from the cupboard above Kick’s head, almost knocking him out in the process. I slam the glass down on the bench. From Kick’s wary expression, I know he’s as surprised as I am that it didn’t crack.

I fill the glass right to the brim, and down half of it in one shot.

“Shit, girl, you need to be slamming back something harder than wine if you’re that tied up in knots about this.”

“You know what? You’re right.” I swig the remainder of the wine and head to the liquor cabinet in the lounge room, pulling a bottle of Elijah’s favourite whiskey and two scotch glasses from the cupboard. I stalk back into the kitchen and pour us both a generous drink.

“He still drinking that shit? Jesus, I always said he had fucking Dom Pérignon taste on a water budget.”

“To Elijah, then, and his impeccable taste,” I say, and clink the glasses against one another before sliding his across the bench toward him.

“Look, you can tell me it’s none of my business—”

“It’s none of your business,” I say with a harsh smile, and take another sip before setting about frying the onions he just finished chopping.

“Okay then,” he says. “Ana, he’s crazy about you.”

“I don’t wanna hear it, Kick.”

“I mean, she’s hot, but come on, have you seen a mirror lately … or ever?” he adds that last part in a whisper, as if he’s embarrassed to say it.

“It doesn’t matter. I don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Okay, then you don’t wanna know that I’ve never seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you. You’re all he thinks about. The Ethan—” He shakes his head. “—the Elijah—God, it feels weird calling him that—I know, or used to know, would have laughed at the thought of settling down, of screwing just one woman—”

“You know, this really isn’t helping.”

My phone rings, and I glare accusingly at Elijah’s face as it flashes up on the screen. It’s a shot I took while he was lying in bed. He has bed hair, sleepy, sultry eyes, and he’s sticking his middle finger up at me. This is perhaps my favourite photo of him—he’s so perfect in his imperfections. I kinda hate him right now. I slam the phone back down on the counter, and meet Kick’s quizzical stare. “You not gonna answer that?”

“Wasn’t planning on it. No.”

Kick picks up the phone and presses answer. “Hey, man. No, she’s here, she’s just got her hands full with dinner. Yeah, I’ll put her on.” He holds the phone to his chest and smiles at me boldly. “Ana, your husband needs to talk to you.”

I glare at him, and snatch the phone from his outstretched hand. I cover the receiver and whisper, “I hate you.”

“You’re welcome,” he mouths back with a cocky smile.

“Hi, honey.” My voice is overly perky. I wonder if it’s coming across Elijah’s end of the line as strained as it feels.

“Hey, baby girl,” Elijah says, and he sounds the way he does when he walks through the door after a long day. I feel my anger soften, before the thought of him and Nicole in the workshop eats me alive with jealousy again, and turns my heart to acid-like bile in my throat. “I gotta stay back late. You okay there at the house by yourself with Kick?”

“Yeah, I’m actually getting help with dinner. It’s a nice change,” I retort.

“What’s up with you?”

“Nothing. I gotta go, dinner’s about to burn. I’ll save you a plate,” I say in my cheeriest voice.

I don’t know whether it’s the heat from the stove or the fact that I just downed half a bottle of wine in ten seconds flat, along with a really large glass of scotch, but I feel hot and itchy, and yeah, kinda dizzy. I stumble on my way to retrieve a wooden spoon from the drawer, and catch myself on the counter before falling.

“Maybe you should sit down and let me do that.”

“I got it, thanks,” I say, and turn back to my onions to find they’re pitch-black and smoking on the stove. “God damn it.”

I remove the pan from the heat, but I forget my pot-holder and scorch my palm in the process. I let out a long stream of expletives, and run the burn under cold water, turning my face away from the mushroom-shaped cloud of steam coming off the pan in the sink beside me.

“Fuck, Ana, are you okay?”

I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain. “Yeah. That will teach me cook when I’m angry.”

“So, takeout then?”

“Ha ha.”

“I’ll get the menus.”

“Anything but pizza,” I call out as he walks off to round up our options for dinner.

“You got it.”

“C
HRIST, THAT’S
my cue to leave,” Kick says, as the opening credits for
The Notebook
begin to roll.

I gasp, and stare at him in mock horror. “What’s wrong with
The Notebook
?”

“Nothing if you’re a pansy-arse lady-boy.” He laughs as he pours me another shot. “Or a woman.”

“I’ll have you know, Cade and I watched this film a number of times, and I’m pretty sure even he got glassy-eyed.”

“As I said, pansy-arsed lady-boy.”

“No. Uh-uh. I’m not buying it. I dare you to watch this film and not tear up.”

“What’s the bet, then?”

“A hundred bucks,” I shout, and line up our shot glasses for another drink. I’m still furious with Elijah, and we’re a quarter of the way into his precious scotch. He’s gonna be pissed, but I don’t care. Maybe I’ll let him tie me down and spank me.

And now I know I’m well on my way to Tipsytown.

“See, now I just feel bad, because this is gonna be the easiest hundred bucks I ever made.”

“We’ll see. The last man to wager with me lost everything.”

“Yeah, but I’m guessing he’s okay with the hot piece of arse he won in return.”

“Sometimes I wonder.” I let out a heavy breath that blows a wayward piece of hair out of my face. “Okay, how about we play a little game to make this interesting?”

He pauses with his drink halfway to his lips, and eyes me speculatively. “What kinda game?”

“A drinking game. I played this with Holly once and we were paralytic within minutes—”

“Did she get naked?”

“Come to think of it, yes, yes she did,” I say, as I point my finger and tilt my glass towards him in salutation. “Drinking almost always ends with Hols taking her clothes off.”

“Well, shit, we should invite her over more often.”

I roll my eyes. “She does not need any more encouragement.”

Kick leans forward, resting his elbows over his knees, and rubs his palms together. “Well, if we’re gonna do this you had better hit me with the rules.”

“Okay, you must skull every time the following things happen: One:
The Notebook
is shown or read from; two: Noah takes his shirt off, has his shirt open, or is in some form of undress. Three: every time they argue, scream at one another, or just generally piss one another off. Four: anytime Noah’s dream house is shown or mentioned. Five: anytime someone rows a boat.”

Kick laughs. “What?”

“You’ll understand later. Now, because we’re already five minutes in, I think we should take two shots just to get started.”

“You realise you’re kinda a lightweight, and you’ll likely pass out way before me, so you should probably just hand over that hundred bucks now.”