It Started With A Kiss (5 page)

“
And that’s why you came
home?”

“
That, and the opportunity
to freelance. I’m going to work for myself, start my own business.
I’ve already got a few accounts lined up.”

“
Sounds like a plan.” Nate
picked up his beer and tipped the remains down his throat. He
placed the empty bottle on the table in front of him, a thoughtful
look crossing his face. “Was it my fault? Did us being together for
so long mean you ended up naïve?”

Georgie bit her lip. She’d never thought of
it that way. “Maybe. I never had another serious relationship after
us. Then Matt appeared, and I was so blinded by his charm I fell
for him hard. I thought he was the perfect man, everyone did. I
wouldn’t be as stupid again.”

“
And now?”

“
You mean, is there someone
else?”

“
Mmm.”

She so longed to tell him there would never
be anyone else, that he was the only one. Even if she hadn’t found
out about Matt’s philandering, she would have ended it. Being with
someone other than Nate didn’t feel right.

“
I’m single.
You?”

As Nate opened his mouth to answer, the sound
of a female voice from the other side of the alfresco distracted
him. Both he and Georgie turned to see who it was.

“
Nate! God, what the hell
are you doing? We were supposed to meet at the Bell Tower forty
minutes ago.” The girl’s auburn hair bobbed around her heart-shaped
face, as she leant over the alfresco wall to scold him. Her
skintight running gear stretched a little more, to reveal the
cleavage of two pert and rounded breasts, the kind Nate and Georgie
used to laugh about when they were seventeen.

“
I’ve been texting you for
a good half hour.” The girl stopped and straightened with her hands
on her hips, a disapproving frown taking up residence on her
otherwise perfect features. “Who is this?”

Nate picked up his phone to check the clock.
“Sorry, Lydia. I lost track of time. This is an old friend,
Georgie. Georgie and I grew up together. We bumped into each other
on the path and decided to have a drink for old times’ sake. She’s
only recently moved back to Perth.”

Lydia scrutinized the empty glasses and
plates on the table. She looked Georgie up and down, her steel blue
eyes stopping at the giant rip in the thigh of Georgie’s pants. It
was obvious she didn’t believe a word.

“
And you didn’t think to
message me? I would have walked over to join you, if you’d told me.
As it was, I only noticed you because I happened to be walking back
to my car and heard this dreadful laughing. I thought someone was
being strangled.”

Georgie suppressed a smile. That had been
her. She and Nate had been recalling other memories from their
childhood, funny ones. Nate always said she sounded like a foghorn
when she got going. But this was not the time to remind him of
that. Clearly, he was meant to be on a date with this girl, and
Georgie was interrupting.

Gathering her things, Georgie pulled a couple
of notes from the pocket of her pants and handed them to Nate.
“Look, I should be going, anyway. I’m going out tonight and I have
to get this river stench off and wash my hair. Tara will go
ballistic if I’m late. She has this whole OCD thing going on and
she can’t abide tardiness.”

“
Tara Ford? From school?
Are you still friends with her?”

“
Yeah. I’m going to her
boyfriend’s ‘welcome home’ cocktail cruise. It’s on one of those
tall ships; you know the ones down Fremantle? If I’m late she’ll
feed me to the sharks.”

“
Or make you walk the
plank,” Nate chuckled. “She always had a bit of an
attitude.”

Georgie pushed out her chair and stood. She
wanted to swap numbers or at least give Nate a kiss goodbye,
neither of which would be happening with Lydia standing over them
baring her incisors.

“
It was nice to see you
again, Nate.”

Very nice.

“
And lovely to meet you,
Lydia,” she added, not meaning a word.

“
You too,” Lydia replied,
equally uncaring. “Can we go now, please? In case you’ve forgotten,
we have things of our own to do.”

Nate stood as well, and leaving a pile of
notes on the table with Georgie’s, he hitched a leg over the wall
to join Lydia.

“
I’ll see you later,
Georgie.” He leant back across the bricks and Georgie thought for a
second he was going to kiss her cheek until Lydia stepped between
them and took a possessive grip on his arm.

“
Come on.”

As Lydia bustled Nate away, Georgie felt a
stab of jealousy. It was as if the other girl had dug her pointy
nails into Georgie’s chest and jabbed repeatedly at her heart like
a witch at a voodoo doll. She’d had a similar feeling only once
before in her life, and that had involved Nate too.

Chapter 6

After the dreaded kissing incident at the
movies, things had been awkward for quite a while between Georgie
and Nate. She didn’t know why his feelings towards her had suddenly
changed. She assumed it was because all his mates were getting with
girls and being the unofficial leader of the pack, he felt some
type of obligation to lead by example, with her as the obvious
choice. After all, none of the other boys would dare go near her.
Not if they wanted their faces to remain attached to their heads.
To make matters worse, Nate had started to talk about the way girls
looked, about kissing girls or even doing other stuff. He was
always going on to his mates about it, like it made him a big man
or something. Georgie thought she’d made it clear he wouldn’t want
to be trying that stuff on her. She’d whack him with a cricket bat
before that would be happening.

By the time they reached fifteen, Georgie and
Nate had begun to have a Saturday night social life. Usually, one
of their friends would invite everyone over for a ‘gathering’ which
basically meant sitting around in someone’s family room watching
DVD’s or the boys playing Play Station while the girls talked about
hair and make-up and listened to music. Sometimes, they swam in
each other’s pools but they were rapidly getting to an age where
having your hair wet after spending an hour doing it before you
left home was no longer an option. So, the boys might swim or play
fight in the water and the girls would dangle their legs over the
edge and laugh at them. All except Georgie. Being the tomboy of the
group and the only girl who surfed, she didn’t give two hoots about
her hair getting messed up. Life was for having fun, not sitting on
the side of a pool trying to look pretty.

On the Saturday night in question, the gang
had assembled at Tara’s house. Her parents’ had a massive mansion
in City Beach with a rumpus room that led out onto the tennis
court, pool house and Olympic-sized pool. They were also less
strict with their supervision, which meant everyone liked going to
Tara’s best of all. Tara’s parents didn’t mind that the kids sat
around in the dark with the door shut, lighting bits of incense
they’d bought at the markets or sipping from illicit bottles of
wine stolen from their parents’ wine stash. They’d said on numerous
occasions that it was preferable to the kids hanging out in the
street, or being down at the park getting into trouble. At least,
in Tara’s rumpus room, they could keep a bit of an eye out.

The gang just finished swimming and everyone
had dried off when Tara announced she was bored. Tara was often
bored. Coming from a wealthy family didn’t mean she had more things
to do.

“
What can we do?” she
asked.

Michael, who’d finished sharing a stubby of
beer with Kyle, piped up, waggling his empty bottle in the air.
“Let’s play Spin The Bottle.”

Maggie Maloney rolled her eyes. Kyle did his
best to look disinterested and Tara looked at Michael like he’d
lost his mind.

“
Seriously, you are so High
School,” Tara said, but everyone knew she was already planning to
make the bottle stop in front of him. Tara had been dying to pash
on Michael for ages. He just wouldn’t seem to get the
hint.

“
But we are in High
School,” Michael pointed out. “People expect us to act
stupid.”

“
I’ll play,” said Jessica.
She hadn’t given up on Nate.

“
What about you guys?”
Michael asked, aiming his question at Georgie and Nate.

Nate shrugged like he didn’t care and Georgie
looked at the floor. She knew she’d been more clammed up more than
a limpet on a rock since the movies but, seriously, she had so many
things going on in her head and Nate was no help at all. Most of
the time she wanted to murder him. Last week, when he told her how
nice her hair looked, she’d poked him in the arm so hard with a
pencil, she’d left a bit of lead behind and it’d gotten infected.
He’d had to get a tetanus shot, which he’d not been impressed about
at all.

Everyone sat in a circle and Michael placed
the bottle in the middle. “Seeing as it was my idea, I get to go
first,” he said, looking pointedly at Tara.

Taking the bottle between his fingers he spun
it on the carpet. The emerald colored glass came to a slow halt in
front of Tara who muttered, “If you think I’m letting those manky
lips of yours near me, you’ve got another thing coming, Michael
Hemming.” Which was code for, ‘get over here right now and give me
my prize’.

The group watched with interest as Michael
crawled across the carpet, stopping in front of Tara. His face was
very close to hers. His eyes were glittering with teenage desire.
“You sure about that, Tara? I mean, rules are rules. And the rules
of this game say I have to kiss you.”

Tara gave an exaggerated groan. “Oh,
alright.”

And with that, Michael proceeded to see how
far down her throat he could stick his tongue. Georgie watched on
flabbergasted. How could they kiss for so long without drawing
breath? It had to be bad for your brain to be oxygen deprived for
so long. Not that that would affect either of them.

“
Get a room, you two,” Kyle
joked. He’d been timing the couple on his watch before calling
‘time out’ after five minutes.

Behind Tara’s back, Michael gave him the
finger.

Then it was Kyle’s turn. After declaring
openly the previous week that all girls stank, he couldn’t go back
on his word by enjoying the kiss, so when the bottle stopped in
front of Maggie Maloney, he crawled across the floor and pecked her
on the cheek. Then, looking very sheepish, he scuttled back to his
spot, his face redder than a tourist who’d spent a week at the
beach without sun block.

“
Lightweight,” said
Michael, who’d just come up for air. “Let’s see if Adams can do any
better.”

Nate swallowed and took a swig of beer from
his bottle. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and lazily
sauntered to the center of the circle. “Hope you girls are ready,”
he joked. Then, he picked up the bottle and gave it a hefty
twist.

From the other side of the circle, Georgie
watched the bottle’s progress without breathing. The air was
trapped so far down her throat it felt like a balloon was lodged
there, one pop and she’d be dead. God, she had to stop this. She
couldn’t let Nate get with another girl. It wouldn’t be right.

The slower the bottle rotated the more upset
Georgie became. She didn’t want Nate to kiss anyone else; she
wanted him to kiss her. She’d always wanted that, it was just that,
when they were at the movies that day, she’d felt pressured and not
quite ready. She gazed across the circle, hoping to catch his eye,
hoping he’d say he’d changed his mind and wanted to pull out but he
didn’t. His face was intent on that bottle and where it would stop.
The only sign he gave that he might not be as cool as he portrayed
was the tapping of his toe against the carpet. Nate always tapped
when he was nervous.

When the bottle stopped, its neck was
pointing to Jessica. Moving as if to his death, Nate began the slow
crawl to Jessica’s side.

Georgie was distraught. She’d been willing
the bottle to stop anywhere but there. Everyone knew how much
Jessica crushed on Nate. Once he got close to her, she’d wrap him
in those boobs of hers and he’d be lost forever.

But what could she do? If she jumped up to
save him, she’d look stupid in front of her friends and they’d all
know her true feelings. Her and Nate been friends for so long,
nobody would believe it if she suddenly stood up and declared she
loved him. Not after the pencil thing. They’d think she was an
idiot.

Nate had reached Jessica. She was preening
and giggling and showing off like she’d won first prize in a beauty
contest. “Oh Nate. I always knew we were meant to be together,” she
simpered, as she licked her lips and adjusted her clothing to give
him a better view. “It’s fate…. Nate — Fate. Get it?”

I’ll give her fate, Georgie thought. It’ll
hit her right between the eyes when I throw that bottle at her
head.

Nate was puckering up. Jessica had her hands
on his chest, pulling him towards her by the scruff of his t-shirt.
Georgie’s hands were clenched in fists. It was either that or rip
every hair from Jessica’s perfect little head.

“
Stop!”

Oh no, had that come out of her mouth?
Georgie looked around hoping that it hadn’t, or if it had that
nobody had heard, but judging by the way everyone was gawping at
her, she’d obviously said it. And rather loudly at that.

“
What’s wrong?” Jessica
asked, which was a load of old twaddle because she knew very well
what was wrong. She was about to play tonsil hockey with Nate.
Georgie’s Nate. It was unthinkable.