You Are the Reason (3 page)

In the ’50s.

“Who’s winning?” I asked Charlie.

“Freo,” he replied with a small smile.

I sighed. The Coolgardie Tavern stood in the suburb of East Fremantle. If the Fremantle Dockers won the derby, there was sure to be a wave of purple-clad supporters who would want to continue the party at their local pub. The club’s official gathering spot was a couple of streets over at The Left Bank, but the overflow would make its way to The Tav. Of course Charlie would be pleased if Freo won.

“Shit,” I swore to myself.

“Not a Freo fan, then?” said a voice at my side.

I grimaced and glanced at the woman beside me. My first impression of her was that she had escaped from some sort of pixie convention. Not that she was tiny. Just that she was cute in an adorable, big puppy-eyes type of way. Her short hair was dyed an improbable shade of red. The next thing to hit me was the sight of a bright red bow pinned to the side of her head. It reminded me of Maxine’s flower headband, and I smiled. “Sorry?”

“Not a Freo fan, then?” she repeated as I took in the rest of her outfit. It was all black-and-white-patterned checkerboard with a red belt and red bows on her shoulders. The dress was cinched at the waist, flared to her knees, and had probably been in fashion the last time my team won a premiership.

I stared at her painted toenails, visible through the toe holes of her dainty red shoes. “No. Melbourne.”

She wrinkled her nose and said with a hint of a smile, “My commiserations, then.”

I chuckled in spite of myself. A fan who can’t laugh at their own team when they can’t find their way off the bottom of the ladder needs serious money for the alcohol and drugs they require in order to cope with the humiliation. “Oh, yeah? Who do you go for?” I asked.

She shrugged a small shoulder and fingered her wine glass on the bar. “Sydney.”

I looked at her with skepticism. “Why? You from there?”

“No.” There was another small shrug to go with her answer. “But my grandpa was assistant coach there, back in the day. We’ve all been born wearing a red-and-white guernsey since then, and know the club song better than our own name.”

I laughed. She was adorable.

“Lee Brennan,” she declared and held out her hand. I shook it.

“Dave Pederson.”

She glanced around at the crowd and then took a step closer to me. “I’m supposed to be meeting someone here, but he hasn’t shown. His name’s Bobby. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?”

I cast my mind back over all the sexual encounters I’d had at the bar. I didn’t usually ask names, and the name Bobby didn’t ring any bells. But then again, most of the guys I went with were gay and wouldn’t be meeting a cute, little woman for a date.

“No. Sorry.”

She sighed and leaned back against the bar. “Oh, well.” She looked me up and down with her light brown eyes before she gave me a coy smile. “Buy me drink?”

She was cute—just not my type. Apart from the lack of a penis, she was so girly it made my back teeth ache. “Sure. But only so’s you know? I’m gay.”

I motioned to Charlie to refill her glass and watched her from the corner of my eye for her reaction. Her smile didn’t falter. “That’s okay. I don’t mind.”

She didn’t?
She turned back to the other patrons of the bar. The dance floor had started to fill up, and there were at least thirty people attempting to move in time to the music. Only a few managed it. Lack of sobriety or lack of ability. I wasn’t quite sure which.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked me.

“No.”

“Why not? You’re ultracute.”

I scoffed at that. In truth, I was pretty average—and that was the way I liked it. I liked that you couldn’t tell I was gay by just looking at me. I didn’t do the hair or the clothes. I was simply Dave. Six foot one, with a trim body, and short, spiky brown hair. Jeans and a T-shirt were my look. I worked in sales, so I was well groomed—no nose hair, fingernails neatly trimmed, nothing awkward piercing my skin.

But I never, ever, ever would want to think I’m
cute
. Lee was cute—she had the pixie thing going on. Maxine was cute—baby cute. Puppies and kittens and newborn lambs were cute. I was offended to think she put me in the same category.

“I’m not in the market for a boyfriend,” I growled.

She didn’t back off. I liked that. “Oh, well. What sort of guy do you go for?” she asked in a conversational tone. I rolled my eyes and didn’t answer. She was sweet, and I didn’t want to disgust her by telling her my type was simply someone with a penis who would bottom for me. She didn’t drop the subject. “Who? The guy on the door?”

“Sav?” I questioned. “No. Apart from being straight—which me and my nose
now
know—I’m not really into the muscle scene.” I once had a guy who was. The day he overpowered me and pinned me to the bed, grinning and telling me he was about to have a piece of my arse, was the day I kicked him out of my house and never saw him again. If I were going to open my arse for a guy, it would be because I loved him, not because he held me down and forced me.

“What about him?” she asked, motioning to an attractive little thing on the edge of the dance floor.

I looked him over. He was good-looking and definitely gay. The rainbow on his T-shirt proclaimed it loudly. He had short, bleached hair and cute little rosebud mouth that reminded me of Maxine. My interest spiked. I could definitely see him as a bottom boy. “I wouldn’t say no to that,” I replied to Lee.

“Go for it, then,” she encouraged.

I put my tongue back in my head and gathered my best flirty grin. “Okay.” I glanced at her glass, which Charlie had refilled, but she shooed me off.

“Go on. Thanks for the drink. Have fun.”

So I went for it. He was encouraging, and I worked it hard—for twenty minutes. I tried to get him to follow me to the toilets, outside to the alley, to my car, or even to my house. But he didn’t bite. Finally he kissed me on the cheek, waved good-bye, and left with his friends.

Shit.

I returned to the bar and found Lee still sitting there, with no sign of Bobby.

“Struck out?” she asked sympathetically.

“Yeah,” I grumped.

“Oh, well. What about him?”

The guy she pointed out was encouraging too. He was throwing me interested glances, so I smiled back and watched him flush red. He was older than me and had the “librarian” look going on, but it was sexy. He could read me Dickens any day. I licked my lips in his direction and wondered if beneath that nerdy exterior he was into kinky shit. He almost melted.

Until his boyfriend came over, kissed his lips, entwined their fingers together, and totally cockblocked me.

Shit!

“Err….”

I’d forgotten that Lee was watching the whole thing. She looked embarrassed, but I’m pretty sure she was laughing at me.

“Shuddup,” I snorted at her, and she giggled.

“Whoops. I’ll buy you a drink this time,” she said.

“No, it’s fine.”

But she did anyway. We chatted while the first of the celebrating Fremantle fans began to trickle through the door. It turned out she could point out a gay guy at fifty paces. She told me to go and try the Asian-looking guy in the corner, and I scoffed that he wasn’t gay. She wagered me a drink that he was, and I lost the bet. He flirted back at me for five minutes. Then he told me he was a born-again Christian, and wasn’t giving it up for any guy until they’d been dating a minimum of six months.

Lee was also right about the guy in flannel with the tattooed arms (who told me he was gay but was taking a break from the sex stuff while his heart mended), the emo guy (who told me he couldn’t be with a guy again until his therapist told him it was okay), and the startlingly thin guy in a suit. I almost ran back to Lee when the man told me he would love it if I would come home with him, as he would like to see me tied to his kitchen table while he dribbled hot wax over my chest—and filmed it for his website.

Each time, Lee bought me a beer to commiserate me striking out yet again, and I bought her another glass of wine to admit that I was wrong once again and that my mark
had
been gay.

Finally, at about eleven o’clock, I had yet to score and I was drunk. So was Lee. She didn’t mention Bobby again, but he obviously hadn’t shown his face.

“You never did tell me what sort of guy you go for,” Lee said as we sat with our heads together. She was shorter than me, but the barstool brought her up to my level.

“I didn’t wanna be crude,” I told her.

She waved her glass around airily. “Fuck it, Dave. We’re both fuckin’ drunk. Who cares about manners?”

My inebriation agreed with her. “I’m gay,” I said. “I like guys.”

She frowned and blinked owlishly. “Duh. But what sort of guys? You’re allowed to have a type, even though you’re gay.”

She was swaying drunkenly, and truthfully, I wasn’t that steady either. “I don’t. About a type, I mean. As long as they’ve got a penis and will bottom for me, I don’t really care.” I took another mouthful of drink and thought that over. “Actually, they don’t even have to bottom. If they’re willing to suck me off, that will do.”

I was slurring my words, and Lee nodded until her head bumped onto my shoulder and stayed there. “I’ll suck you off, if you want.”

“But you’re a girl. And I’m gay. Gay means no girls. G-A-Y stands for Girls Are Yucky.”

The beer was making me dumb.

“I’ll still suck you.” She was giggling into my neck, and with the last bit of reasoning I had, I pulled her off her chair and staggered to the door. She was too cute to go around offering to suck just any guy, so I had to get her out of there.

I asked Sav to get us a taxi, and sat down on the bench outside the bar. Lee slumped beside me with her legs spread wide in a very unladylike manner. She leaned against me.

“Where’re we goin’?”

It took three goes before my hand connected with her shoulder. I tried to pat her gently, but it came out more of a slap. In my drunkenness, I couldn’t find the energy to care.

“I’m takin’ you home. Your home. When a cute li’l girl like you starts off’rin’ to suck off gays, it’s time to go home.”

W
E
DIDN
’
T
make it to Lee’s home. Somehow my address was the only thing I could remember for the taxi driver. With my last bit of sobriety, I managed to find my keys and unlock my front door.

The ride home had made me drunker as my body processed the alcohol in my stomach, whereas the taxi ride had sobered Lee a little.

By the next morning, I could remember her ushering me into my bedroom—and that was about it. I had vague memories of saying, “Don’t get lipstick on my dick.” I didn’t recall her reply to that.

And I couldn’t even ask her. By the time I surfaced at 10:00 a.m., she’d gone. But there was proof that I’d taken a woman home with me. On my bathroom mirror was a heart drawn in red lipstick and the words
Thx, xxxx, Lee
.

She even put in the punctuation.

After I found the note, I checked my dick for lipstick. There was none. But that didn’t mean that we hadn’t managed something sexual. I scowled at my reflection and hoped that we’d used a condom. There were some pretty nasty STDs that were—

With dawning horror, I remembered something that I’d never had to think about before. There was something that Lee could catch from me that I didn’t need to worry about during my usual homosexual encounters.

An image of baby Maxine floated in front of me as I flew out of the bathroom and began to frantically search my room. I checked the floor, the bedding, the rubbish bin, and the toilet bowl, and didn’t find any used condoms. I didn’t find any open condom packets either.

I searched the rest of my house and even stumbled outside and checked the rubbish bin, but there was nothing. Either we hadn’t had sex, or we had and not used….

Oh, fuck.

Pink swam in my vision. Pink ribbons, pink headbands, pink rosebud mouths, pink bottles, pink blankets, and little white outfits with pink flowers.

Oh, double-fuck.

I had no idea of how to contact Lee, and with abject dismay, I sunk down on the edge of my bed. I didn’t know what to do—apart from wait for the letter asking me to provide a DNA sample. In about nine months.

On the bright side of the equation was the fact that my mother would be pleased she was getting a grandchild. But the dark side of the equation…. Well, I didn’t have enough time to list all of the items, starting at child-maintenance payments and ending with Jake laughing until he pissed his pants.

I scrubbed at my jaw and decided to put the issue behind me. I couldn’t do anything about it until the next Saturday. Then I would make sure I was at The Tav early, just in case a cute pixie decided to show up.

T
HAT
WEEK
at work, I noticed about thirty pregnant women—which was about thirty-two more than usual. I even asked a mate whether there had been some sort of pregnancy boom about eight months before. He looked at me strangely and offered to buy me a coffee—double espresso—if I needed it.