The Goodbye Ride (10 page)

“Mark said… he didn’t know anything… about
you being allergic to bees...” Owen bent, rested his hands on his knees and
squinted up against a sun now high in the sky. “The only thing we could find
was hayfever tablets...” He pulled a packet from the pocket of his shorts.

“False alarm I reckon, love,” Margaret said
cheerfully, patting Owen on the back. “It must have been a March Fly. I hate
those buggers. Phew, you look a bit puffed. Did you run all the way?”

“March fly? It’s June.”

“Nature is her own timekeeper, Owen.”

Owen’s mouth opened, then closed.

Liv put her hand to her mouth to hide her
giggles and turned to find her way back through her obstacle course, to her
place in the vine row.

****

“Let’s call it quits,” Margaret called
hours later, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I can finish up during
the week.”

Liv checked her watch. It was four-thirty
in the afternoon and she could almost smell a celebratory beer. All around her,
Margaret’s Folly had been tamed. Neat brown shoots stuck up from vines stripped
bare.

“Let me just finish these last two,” Liv
called, making a host of final, strategic cuts on three more metres of canopy,
before switching the Felco off for the last time.

She joined Owen and Margaret and the three
of them walked up the hill, collecting clothing, water bottles and tools as
they went.

“Thank you so much for your help, Olivia,”
Margaret said, standing by the Hyundai while Liv stacked pruning gear in the
boot.

“No problem,” Liv said, not quite knowing
where to put herself after she shut the compartment.

Owen had his hand on the roof near the
driver’s door, and his charcoal eyes were fixed on a spot somewhere above her
left eye. He was no help at all.

“Um. Owen?” Liv ventured. “The Duke?”

“Sorry?” Owen’s head jerked up.

“The Duke.” She repeated, feeling a bit
silly.

“Sorry. I was miles away,” he said.

Whoever wrote the
Wiki How
regarding
the transfer of a Ducati in return for a weekend’s pruning, Liv would have
welcomed their advice about now.

“Awkward,” Margaret said, flipping her hand
like a hip teenager as she turned for the steps. “You two sort it out. Thanks
again, Liv. We couldn’t have done it without you.”

Liv waved her thanks away. “No trouble.”

Owen moved closer and Liv lost sight of his
aunt’s retreating back and the camellia trees flanking the front steps. She
couldn’t see anything but the solid wall of his chest and the mesmerising rise
of his hand as he lifted it toward her face. “How can I think about transfer
papers when this damn chunk of hair falls across your eye like that? How can I
look at it without wanting to do…this.”

He tucked the stray hairs behind her ear.
Roughened fingertips skimmed her earlobe, caressed the skin of her neck and Liv
felt all the breath squeeze from her lungs. Could Owen feel her pulse? Surely
he could hear it?

“How should we celebrate all our hard work,
Liv?”

“I don’t care,” she said. And she didn’t.
Anywhere with him was fine.

“Should I surprise you?”

Liv had three pairs of jeans in her
wardrobe, including the pair she now wore. She hoped he wasn’t thinking of
anywhere too ritzy.
“I never really liked surprises.”

Owen’s eyebrows arched. “You’ll ride the
flying fox in the school playground but you don’t like surprises?”

“At least give me a clue about what to
wear. I can hardly drag out the party heels if we’re riding the bike again.”
That’s
if I owned party heels.

“You’d look good in anything,” Owen said,
banishing all thought of footwear from her brain as his mouth brushed her
temple. “You’d look
incredible
in nothing.”

The husky promise in his voice—his hot
breath on her skin—it turned her knees to jelly.

Owen breathed her scent, his nose in her
hair. He nibbled a path around her ear. A shudder racked her body and she
surrendered to the delicious things he was doing with his lips. Liv closed her
eyes, slid her hands up his bare arms,
great arms,
shaping the muscles
she felt there, loving the underlying strength.

It took a raucous whistle from the house to
break through Liv’s trance.

“Bloody Mark,” Owen muttered against her
jaw, lifting his head.

She took the chance to sidle sideways and
hook her fingers under the door handle, face flushed from a hot mix of
embarrassment and desire. Owen held the door for her while she settled behind
the wheel, glad to be sitting so he wouldn’t see her legs shake.

“Drag out the party heels if you like,
Lovely. We’re not going riding tonight,” he said, big fingers splayed loosely
against the window. “Tonight I want to end up somewhere with you that’s
much
more comfortable than the back of a bike.”

Chapter
8

He took her to a Thai restaurant in the
city.

The restaurant had lighting as soft as the
red vinyl booth seats and a wine list as long as the menu. Liv ordered laksa.
Owen opted for salt and pepper squid and chef’s special fried rice.

They debated the pros and cons of
Coonawarra Cabernet verses Barossa Shiraz, then Liv decided she wasn’t in the
mood for anything heavy and opted for Smallfry Wines’ Rosè.

“Think I’ll stick with beer.”

“It’s okay you know,” she teased, leaning
forward so that a curl of brown hair tickled her chin, offering him a sip of
the wine the waiter brought for her, all pink and glowing inside the glass.
“Real men drink Rosè.”

“I don’t like quiche much either,” he said.
But he took the glass, swirled it and took a sip before handing it back. His
eyes didn’t let hers go.

For once, Owen had dressed for the
occasion. He wore a long-sleeved pale green shirt, buttoned to just beneath the
crisp tangle of hair on his chest. Liv couldn’t look at his exposed throat
without wanting to bury her fingers in that emerging tug of curls.

She picked up her fork and leaned across to
spike a piece of Owen’s salt and pepper squid. The spice coating melted on her
tongue and her teeth cut through calamari flesh as if it were butter.

“This sure beats what my mother had on the
menu for Sunday night,” she said, and
bang,
every atom of oxygen in the
restaurant squeezed from the room. Liv’s shoulders slumped back against the
booth’s vinyl padding.

Owen spiked a fat prawn from his plate of
fried rice and offered it to her on the fork. “You have to tell me what’s going
on with your parents some time, Liv,” he said quietly.

She bit at the remnant of prawn tail to
loosen it from the meat, tasting garlic and coriander and an underlying hint of
what might have been soy, or salt from unshed tears. “They get back from
Melbourne tomorrow afternoon.”

“Why is that such a big deal? I’m sure
they’re not ogres.”

She knew it was going to come out then, all
of it. She knew by the sting in her eyes and the vice that threatened to crack
open her ribs.

“No. They’re not ogres.”

Liv swallowed the prawn before it became an
immovable lump of cardboard in her throat, and returned Owen’s fork.

“I’ve been living with my folks since just
before Christmas. I used to rent a cottage out near the football oval.” That
was as far as she got before her nose started running and she had to duck under
the table to find a tissue in her handbag. “God I’m hopeless.”

“That laksa must have some kick,” Owen
said.

“It’s not the laksa.”

“I know. I’m trying to give you an out.”

“Such a gentleman.” Liv blew a long, wet
stream of snot into the white square.

“Hell yeah, and look at you. Such a lady.”

She giggled through the tears. She couldn’t
help it. He had a knack for making her world better. “Thank you.”

“No problem. You were explaining something
about your parents. At least, I
think
that’s what you were doing.”

“My parents hit the roof when they found
out about Luke—at least, my father did.” She dropped the wad of tissue in her
handbag.

“
You
knew he was gay, right?”

“I guess I’d always known, way back since
school. Luke didn’t want me to say anything. All Luke ever wanted was for dad
to be proud of him and all dad ever wanted was for Luke to be
normal,
like him.”

“So you were living at home when they found
out...” Owen prompted.

She nodded. “I heard my folks arguing…
well, I heard my dad arguing, mum’s never been much of a fighter. I was
studying late. I came out of my room and I heard my dad shouting at mum that
someone told him they’d seen Ben and Luke riding the Ducati together. Riding
double.
”
She emphasised the word, putting the same raw disgust in her voice, that she
remembered hearing in her father’s.

“Dad said: ‘They go riding together
every
Sunday. Our son’s a
faggot,
Alison. They ride double on that bike.
Double.
When
I
was a boy I only wanted
girls
behind my bike.’”

Owen sat forward in his chair, eyes dark
and deep. “Why didn’t Luke move out? Couldn’t he and Ben have lived together?”

Liv reached for Owen’s hand and gave it a
squeeze before she let go. “Thank you for saying that. You don’t know what it
means to me that you don’t act like my brother was some spider that crawled out
from a rock.”

Owen scooped a forkful of fried rice and
shrugged. “I’m no saint, Liv.”

“Luke never had any money. He wasn’t the
kind of guy who could get by on a wardrobe full of tee-shirts and three pairs
of denim jeans. My parents paid his university fees—they paid mine too but I
paid them back.

“A week after dad found out about Ben, he
made Luke sell the Duke. He told anyone who asked it was because if Luke had to
contribute his own money towards his university fees, he’d take his studies
more seriously. But we knew dad was trying to stop the Mannum rides. He did it
for control.”

The waiter came to ask if they needed anything
else and Owen said no and waved him away.

“My dad’s not a bad man, he’s just
old-fashioned. You know? If Luke had been anyone else’s son, it would have been
okay. He just didn’t want
his
son to turn out gay.” Liv could feel her
nose clogging again. “Damn. I’m out of tissues.”

“Hold on.” Owen got out of his seat and
walked across to the cashier. He picked up a handful of white serviettes off
the counter and brought them back. “Here. Blow.”

“Ugh. Gross.” But she took it because
sniffing was worse. Then she had to figure out what to do with the soggy mass.
No waiter deserved to pick
that
up.

“Here.” Owen held out his hand.

No way.
Liv scooted out of her chair. She collected the mush
of tissues and serviettes, wrapped a dry serviette around the lump, dropped it
in her handbag and told Owen she’d be right back. Threading her way through the
tables to the Ladies’ toilets in the back of the restaurant, Liv dumped the
pulpy wads in the bin. When she put her handbag over her shoulder, it felt half
a kilo lighter.

In the mirror, her eyes weren’t too bad,
though her nose was red. She blew it again and splashed cold water on her face,
then she tried a few running repairs with a concealer. When she’d finished, she
searched her face for any sign that would tell her she regretted sharing her
family’s dirty laundry with Owen.

Another woman came into the Ladies’ room
and smiled sympathetically. “That chilli sure has a kick.”

“Doesn’t it,” Liv agreed.

Nope.
No sign at all.

She walked back into the restaurant,
feeling lighter than she’d felt in years. Like a woman with a brand new
haircut.

****

Owen paid for the meal. He would have paid
for the coffee and cake at the café they walked to afterwards, but Liv insisted
dessert was her treat.

He could see her at the counter, charming
the pants off an Italian waiter. The guy handed Liv a table number on a silver
pole, smiling at her like she was sweeter than all the sugar in his cake
cabinet.

Liv ferried the table number back to where
Owen sat, trying to keep his knees and elbows within the confines of the table
and chairs. The place was jam-packed and there was a queue at the front door.
The heaters were on and with the crush of patrons, it made it bloody hot.

“I got you chocolate fudge brownie with
cream
and
ice-cream,” she said, settling in her own seat and looking far
more comfortable there than he felt. “The waiter said it’s the best in the
house.”

“I think he thought
you
were the
best in the house.” He smiled to keep the comment light, nudging her shin with
the tip of his shoe.