The Beauty in Between: Too Close (A Beautiful Series Novella) (9 page)

“Mum?” I
called. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing David.
Just go back to bed. Don’t you dare take that car Dan!” she yelled,
chasing my father out the door.

Balling my
hands into fists, I stormed toward the door and grabbed the metal
baseball bat we had sitting there in case the wrong kind of person
came to our door.

By the time I
got outside he was already in the driver’s seat of the car. All the
excitement I had felt over the car had now been replaced by the
anger and hatred I felt towards the man who was currently taking it
from me. The man who deserted us all those years ago.

Before he could
put the car in gear, I swung the bat, bringing it down on the
windshield with all the strength I could muster. I heard a loud
crack as the glass splintered in a jagged pattern.

I swung the bat
again, this time taking off the side mirror with a clean swipe,
causing the mirror to shatter, spraying glass up the concrete
driveway. He reversed the car as fast as he could, screeching the
tires as he straightened himself on the road. All the while, I was
chasing him down the drive, beating on the car and denting the
panels until he started to drive off, then with strength born of
rage, frustration, and hate, I hurled the baseball bat at the back
window, causing it to pop through the glass and lodge itself
inside.

“Fuck you!” I
screamed after him, standing in the middle of the road with no
shoes on and glass around my feet as I watched him drive away in my
car. At least I got to see the arsehole leave this time.

“Oh David,” my
mother said, her hand covering her mouth as tears threatened to
spill from her eyes. “I am so, so sorry.”

Instead of
talking to her, I ran. I was so keyed up that I didn’t even notice
the pain of the asphalt road on the bottom of my bare feet. I ran
straight to the one person I always thought of when something was
happening in my life.

I ran to
Katrina.

“Oh my god,
what’s happened?” she asked immediately as she opened her
window.

I suddenly
realised that not only was I shoeless, but I was shirtless as well,
standing outside her bedroom window in nothing but my boxers.

“My dad,” was
all I could say. Her face fell as she quickly undid the fly screen
and helped me climb inside.

“Oh David, your
feet!” she gasped, looking down at them. “Stay there, I’ll be right
back.”

I dropped onto
her desk chair with a thud and finally looked at my feet. They were
filthy and bleeding from the glass and jagged road I ran along.

Trina’s phone
started singing and dancing from the vibration behind me on the
desk. I picked it up and looked at the caller ID, noting that it
was my house calling. “Mum?” I said into the handset.

“Oh thank god
you’re there. Are you ok?”

“I’m fine mum.
I’ll come home in the morning,” I told her and ended the call. I
wasn’t angry at my mum at all. I just didn’t want to go back there
and talk about what happened with her yet. Right now, I needed
Katrina.

Trina returned
to the room with an old towel, a bowl of water and a first-aid kit.
She knelt down in front of me and laid the towel on the floor under
my feet and started to gently clean them for me, inspecting my cuts
for pieces of glass and debris before applying antiseptic and
bandages. I sat quietly and watched her work, fighting my tears the
entire time.

“Are you going
to tell me what happened?” she asked when she was finished.

“He didn’t even
want to see me Trina. He just came and took the car. He didn’t say
a fucking word to me,” I whispered as a couple of tears fell from
my eyes. I wiped at them, embarrassed that I was crying.

“It’s ok to cry
David. It's me. It's not like I’m not going to tell anyone,” she
whispered, rising up on her knees and wrapping her arms around me.
“It’s ok.”

I leaned into
her and let go, crying like a fucking baby. If anyone else had been
there, I would have been so embarrassed. But it was just Trina and
me, and this was the first time I ever let the fact that my father
took off on me and my mum get to me. I wasn’t upset over the car. I
really didn’t give a shit about it once I found out it came from
him. I cared that he had been to my house. He had spoken to my mum,
but he hadn’t even tried to see me.

Eventually, we
lay down on her bed together, and I told her everything about the
visit and how angry I was at him for leaving. She listened quietly
and held me, gently stroking my hair as I spoke. I don’t remember
at what point we fell asleep, but when I woke up, my head was on
her chest, and her arms were still wrapped around me.

When I opened
my eyes, sore and swollen from a night of being upset, it took a
while for me to focus and realise that the door to Katrina’s room
was open. In the doorway stood Ethan, leaning against the frame
with his arms crossed and a very unimpressed look on his face.

I sat up and
held up my hand. “This is not what you think Ethan,” I told him
quietly, trying not to disturb Trina.

Katrina
stirred. “What?” she asked, her voice heavy with sleep as she
rubbed her eyes to get her focus. Suddenly, she sat bolt upright
with a gasp. “Ethan!”

“I should have
known you too weren’t just friends,” he seethed. Pushing himself
off the door frame and stepping into the room.

“No Ethan!
David is just a friend, nothing more. I promise you!” Katrina
rambled, climbing out of the bed and rushing toward him, placing
her hands on his chest pleadingly.

I swung my legs
out of the bed and went to stand, pain shooting through my feet as
I took my weight. “Shit,” I hissed.

“What the hell
happened to you?” Ethan asked, taking in the bandages around my
feet.

“You don’t want
to know,” I told him, pushing up and successfully standing this
time. “I’ll leave you two alone.” They moved out of the way, so I
could walk out the door. But Katrina grabbed my arm at the last
second.

“What about my
parents? I don’t want you in trouble.”

Pausing, I
laughed. “After all these years, do you really think they don’t
know?” I saw the look on Ethan’s face when I said that, and
instantly felt guilty for rubbing salt into a wound that was so
fresh for him. “I’m sorry. It's not like that… it’s….” I
started.

“Just go David,
I can handle this,” Trina told me, her face begging for me to shut
up. I limped my way into the kitchen and sat on one of the stools
around the breakfast bar, listening to the murmuring as Katrina
tried to calm Ethan down behind the now closed door to her
room.

Trina’s dad
walked through, dressed in his work uniform. For a second, my heart
stopped beating. I wasn’t sure how he’d react to finding me in his
kitchen so early wearing only my boxer shorts.

“Morning David.
What ungodly hour did you arrive at?” he asked, heading straight to
the coffee pot and pouring himself a mug. “Want one?”

“Sure, thanks.
So… you’re not annoyed?”

“At what? You
staying in Trina’s room?”

“Um… yeah.”

He placed a cup
of coffee in front of me and took the seat across from me. “Your
mum called us last night and told us what happened. We all figured
you needed a friend.” He took a mouthful of his coffee. “What’s
going on in there?” he asked, inclining his head toward Katrina’s
door.

“Ethan came
over and saw us asleep together,” I explained.

“Hmm, that’s a
hard one to explain.” He took another mouthful and then narrowed
one eye at me suspiciously. “Nothing did happen though – did
it?”

“No Mr Mahoney.
I promise that I have never touched your daughter.”

“Good. I trust
her judgement, but you teenage boys can be very convincing.”

“We’re just
friends Mr Mahoney. It’s all we’ve ever been.”

“Hmmm,” he
said, drinking the last of his coffee as he got up from his stool
and took his mug to the sink. “Well, I’ve got work. Do you have
clothes? Or did you come here like that?”

“Like this,” I
told him sheepishly.

“Alright, talk
to Carol. She’ll get you something of Tom’s to wear home.”

“Thank you Mr
Mahoney.”

“No sweat kid.
Just don’t do this every night.”

I sat in the
kitchen on my own for a while and finished the cup of coffee. It
wasn’t long before Mrs Mahoney came into the kitchen with a pile of
folded clothes and a pair of flip-flops and placed them on the
table in front of me.

“I was told you
might need these,” she said with a half-smile, before ruffling my
hair and tilting my head up by the chin. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m ok.
Thanks for these.” I said, indicating the clothes.

“It’s no
problem,” she said, getting her own cup of coffee and leaning
against the bench top to take her first sip. “Is that your
competition in there with Katrina?”

“Yeah, I think
me being here has caused a bit of a fight.”

“It’s hard
being best friends with the opposite sex. He wouldn’t have cared if
you were a girl.”

“True,” I said,
standing up and taking my cup to the sink. “Listen, I’m just going
to put this stuff on and get out of here. They obviously need some
time to talk.”

“Alright dear.
Look after yourself ok, and tell your mum I said hi.”

“Ok, thanks Mrs
Mahoney.”

***

When I went
back home, I needed to have a big chat with my mum about what had
gone down the night before. She kept promising to get me another
car, but I told her not to. It wasn’t important. I knew she felt
really bad, but I assured her it wasn’t her fault. She was trying
to be nice. She couldn’t have known that he’d be such a jerk about
it.

We were sitting
down staring numbly at the television when we heard a knock on the
front door, and Katrina stepped in. “Hi Mrs Taylor, David. Do you
think we could talk?”

Nodding, I
stood up, ignoring the pain in my feet to walk with her toward my
room, waiting for her to go inside before following her.

“What’s
wrong?”

“He dumped me,”
she told me before bursting into tears and flinging herself at me.
I caught her in my arms and held her, rubbing her back and shushing
her until she calmed down enough to speak.

We sat down on
my bed, and I gave her some tissues to dry her eyes and blow her
nose. “Is it because of me?”

“No… Yes…it’s
both of us really. He can’t handle the fact that you slept in the
same bed as me and can’t imagine that we haven’t been screwing each
other this whole time.”

“So he’s
throwing away a one-year relationship because I slept in your
bed?”

“He’s been
jealous of you for a long time. He thinks we spend too much time
together. He says it’s not normal for a girl and a guy to be as
close as we are without you know…”

“I’m sorry
Trina. I really am,” I told her, and I truly meant it. I knew how
much she cared for him, and I hated that I had come between
them.

“It’s alright
David. I think I’m going to swear off guys from now on. What’s the
saying ‘Boyfriends come and go, but friends are forever’?”

“Yeah, I think
that’s it.”

“Well, that’s
the way it has to be I think. If a guy can’t handle the fact that
my best friend is another guy, then I don’t want to know them," she
sniffled.

“Hey, why do
you think I don’t date?”

Before the
school holidays ended, and we started our final year of high
school, my mum surprised me with yet another car. This time it was
a bit of a bomb, an old red Celica wagon. It did the job. On the
weekends, I would take it over to Katrina’s place, and her dad
would teach me how to fix things on it.

Surprisingly to
me, even though she’d broken up with Ethan, Katrina continued to
train for triathlons. She was good at them too and even tried to
get me roped into it occasionally. I was happy to train with her a
couple of times a week, but I didn’t have any interest of competing
like she did.

School was
shittier than ever. You’d think that by year twelve, we would have
all figured out how to get along, but there was still this great
class divide which meant Cassie and Co continued to rule the school
and did their best to make everyone else feel like crap.

Katrina and I
claiming that we were close like family had come back to bite us on
the butt. Cassie had started referring to us as the ‘incest twins’
after word had somehow gotten back to everyone after Ethan had
found us in bed together. She came up with this elaborate story
about us actually being related, and the gossip mongers grabbed
hold of it.

There were a
lot of whispers, a nice amount of graffiti adorning the walls in
the toilets and the usual jibes when enough people were watching to
get a laugh. I don’t know what it was about Katrina and I hanging
out together that was so fascinating for people. Although, I guess
when you’ve got someone like Cassie, who has it in for you,
anything is possible.

Once again,
there was no point denying anything. They would think what they
wanted to anyway. It just meant that Katrina and I separated
ourselves from everyone more and more.

We cut
ourselves off and quit the whole ‘group’ scene all together. We
just couldn’t be bothered anymore.

Katrina put a
lot of time and energy into her training, which in the long run
paid off, because she got selected to race at Nationals and came
close to making it on the Australian team.

I watched every
race she competed in, except for the interstate ones, and I
couldn’t have been prouder of her.

In our last
term of school, everyone was getting ready for the HSC exams which
would determine what courses we’d get accepted in at university.
There was so much talk about what everyone was going to do about
their futures that finally, Katrina and I weren’t really a concern
to anyone anymore.