Chapter 3
When I emerged from my room the next morning, Matt and Jack were moving around in the kitchen, staggering slightly in the way that all of us in the early morning are prone to do. I paused for a moment in my doorway, unseen by the boys, and happily surveyed the little scene of domesticity as they moved with the practised precision only those who are truly comfortable with each other can achieve.
As I watched, Matt got the orange juice and milk out of the fridge and, without even looking up from his task of filling two bowls with cereal, Jack slid two glasses across the counter to my brother. Matt filled the cups with OJ whilst simultaneously sliding the milk down to Jack who poured the milk over the cereals and sent the milk whizzing back down the line. Matt caught it just in time, put both cartons back in the fridge and then picked up the glasses to wander over to our little round kitchen table. Jack followed him with their breakfasts and they sat down and tucked in at almost exactly the same time, all without exchanging a single word.
I'd had a rotten night, waking up every hour or so and having to deal with the horrible swooping feeling of anger and embarrassment in my stomach when I realised why I felt so bloody awful. Watching two of my favourite people in the world go about this simple little routine, however, made me smile fondly.
I didn’t know what they would do without each other, I really didn’t. Matt needed Jack's steadying influence to stop him from being a real wild child and Jack needed Matt's crazy antics to stop him becoming submerged in his fondness for the serious. He hadn’t always been so grave, our Jack, but a tragedy when he was fourteen had made him grow up awfully quickly and he'd never been as happy-go-lucky since. In the way that everybody does in times of crisis, but especially teenage boys, he withdrew into his shell to protect himself from the pain and he still only rarely emerges. Still, with the support of our family, which had already pretty much adopted him anyway, he got through it and, much as I wish he'd never had to have gone through that hurt, the experience made us into the close little bunch that we are. Shaking off thoughts of the past, I allowed myself to actually get past the doorway.
"Morning boys," I sang cheerily, sauntering over to the kitchen to grab myself a bowl and trying to pretend I didn't see Jack start so violently at my entrance that he began to choke on his breakfast.
Matt helpfully thumped his friend on the back while looking over at me curiously. "And what happened to you last night, Natalia, sister dearest?" He asked. "You were asleep by the time I got home, what was up with that?"
I shrugged nonchalantly as I got the milk out of the fridge. "I had a hard day is all, and I just wanted to jump straight into bed."
Jack, poor thing, began choking even harder at that and I had to duck my head to hide the smirk that appeared on my face as I realised what I'd said. Double entendre, much?
"Dude, chew first, then swallow," my brother advised, fairly hypocritically considering the way he was shovelling his food into his own mouth. He turned back to me and said, fulfilling his brotherly quotient of the day, "but you're alright now, yeah?"
I took a seat opposite Jack and smiled broadly. "I'm fine. Jack’s going to help me with an assignment so I'm feeling pretty confident about things."
Jack glanced at me with eyes watery from the force of his choking. His expression clearly read, 'don't push it.'
"Cool." Matt finished his cereal and dumped his empty bowl into the sink. "Right, I'm off then. I should be back around five or so, oh, and the guys are going to crash here tonight, alright?"
I sighed heavily. The 'guys'. Otherwise known as Tommo, Micky, and Samsa. How terrible it must have been for their mothers who had given them the quite nice, ordinary names of Tom, Michael and Sam and had to watch as they were transformed into names that their friends could more easily grunt. Matt and Jack were known as, and it pains me to admit it, Matt-Man and Jack-Hammer or Hammer for short.
The realms of masculine stupidity really do know no bounds.
"As long as they don't prance around in my underwear again," I muttered remembering the last time they all came over en masse. I have to keep my clothes in a big chest of drawers and cupboard out in the lounge room because there is no space for it in my little room. Rifling through its contents while drunk one night the boys had found my bras. Some of my lingerie was stretched beyond recognition once I'd finally rescued it. Enough said.
Matt snorted with laughter as he grabbed his backpack and shook his head. "Nah, no worries," he said easily. "They learnt their lesson with the lecture you gave them the next morning, although I think that probably had more to do with their hangovers than your teacher voice. See you later." And he walked out of the flat, still chuckling.
Jack and I kept our eyes averted and stayed silent as we listened to Matt thunder down the stairs and then the unmistakable sound of his wreck of a car roaring into life in the car park. It was only when the screech of tyres alerted us that he'd pulled out into the street and properly gone that we looked at each other.
"So, how're you feeling…I mean really?" Jack asked, leaning forward over the table and looking at me seriously.
I twisted a piece of hair around my fingers self-consciously and gave him an uncertain look. "Not sure," I confessed. "A bit pissed off, a bit humiliated, but quite a bit hopeful." I checked to make sure he knew what I was hopeful about and, as I saw him awkwardly lean back in his chair, I knew he'd got my point.
"So you're still keen on…that then," he faltered crossing his arms defensively.
I nodded. "It wasn't just the ramblings of the broken-hearted, I honestly and truly want to learn about…that. And I'm not doing it simply to get back at Brad, I promise."
"It wasn't so much the getting back at Brad that I was worried about, but the getting back with Brad." He frowned. "If we do this, and I'm only saying if," he added as he saw my face light up, "you're not going to go running straight back to that prick are you?"
"Yes, Jack," I said sarcastically. "Because I'm sure there's some part of my self-respect that he hasn't had a chance to carve up with a chainsaw, and it would be a shame to walk away from this with any sense of dignity left at all." I shook my head. "This is for me, get it? I'm sick of having to constantly watch myself around guys in case I give some sign that it would be alright for them to go for it and then having to run a mile to get away from them."
"In that case it's not yourself that you have to watch, it's them," Jack countered. "And it's a bloody good thing that you do run a mile from most of them."
I stood up and almost threw my bowl on top of Matt's in the sink before whirling to face Jack again. "Look," I bit out, "as sweet as the whole protective thing is, I already have an older brother for that sort of nonsense so you can lay off. I'm not asking you to teach me how to tell the difference between a decent bloke and a bastard. Apart from the Brad glitch I'm pretty good at knowing the distinction between the two without any help from you. What I need to learn from you, is what to do once I've found a decent one."
OK, so maybe I should have been trying to be nicer to him considering the circumstances, but, honestly! He'd been pushing my limits with the whole 'running back to Brad' thing and if I let him get away with being patronising during the preliminary negotiations then he'd think it was OK to always treat me like an imbecile. Like my mum always says, 'If people know what you want, there's more chance of you getting it.'
There were a few moments of silence and then Jack blew a long breath threw his lips and stared down at the tabletop. I knew what two warring factions were doing battle inside his head. He could help me, therefore protecting me from other guys whilst, in all probability, ruining the close friendship dynamic that ran between the three of us in the flat. Alternatively, he could not help me and pave the way for my full on emotional breakdown culminating in, yet again, the ruination of the close friendship dynamic that ran between the three of us in the flat. Whatever he chose to do, things were never going to go back to the way they used to be.
Damn, but I
was a bitch.
Suddenly he got to his feet, the chair he'd been sitting on scraping back noisily on the floor and making me jump.
"I'm going to regret this for the rest of my life," he muttered.
And that was as close to a yes as I was ever going to get.
I bounded over to his side and grinned up at him. "You're a star, Jack."
"I'm an idiot is what I am," he disagreed, shaking his head. "Look, let's sit down for a sec and sort some things out, rules and that. I'm still not entirely sure what I've got myself into."
I agreed and we walked over to our crummy, saggy couch and settled ourselves at either end of it, Jack looking as if the distance wasn't nearly great enough. Well that was going to have to change for this whole thing to work...
"Right then." He ran a hand through his short dark hair. "You want me to, er, accustom you to touching and that …um…stuff, yeah? God, I can't believe I'm saying this."
I ignored the last part. "I just want to get used to it and, I don't know, enjoy it a bit maybe." I looked up at him through my eyelashes. I wasn't trying to be coquettish, I was just trying to avoid looking at him directly.
"And how…" He coughed uncomfortably. "…how far do you want to go?"
I went bright red. Without the hysteria of last night this really did seem like the stupidest idea. I mean talking about this kind of thing with Jack was…kind of gross.
"Let's just play it by ear, shall we?" I suggested, backing down a little from my earlier position. It didn't mean that I was still wasn't up for, well, everything, but in the glaring light of day, it just seemed too distasteful to spell it all out.
He looked somewhat relieved at this small reprieve. "OK then, I'm going to lay down some rules." He got to his feet once again and started to pace around the room. "Rule number 1, what I say goes. If I say we're not going to do something because you're not ready, or whatever, then we're not going to do it. You're going to follow my lead, alright?"
I opened my mouth to protest. No, that was not alright! If that was the case he'd just say no to everything! He caught my eye and held my gaze for a long moment. "I'm serious, Tally, you're a bit weird at the moment so I think it's best if I’m the one to lead the - what do you want to call them? - lessons?"
"Fine," I said sulkily. In any case I could agree to his stupid rules now and then argue my case later on if needs be.
"Rule number 2, no dating. I won't and you won't. That way we can at least try and keep this whole thing from diving completely off the cliff of morality."
Why did I get the feeling that he wasn't completely convinced about the merit of my idea? Still, this second rule seemed sensible so I nodded in agreement.
"Rule number 3, no mind-altering substances during lessons."
"Yeah, 'cos you see me injecting heroin on a daily basis," I snorted. "Be serious, Jack."
"That description includes alcohol," he said simply and my eyes widened.
OK, that changed things. Yes, I didn’t like to drink at parties, but the very occasional make-out sessions with Brad had been helped with a bit of beer. Oh God, it sounded awful put like that, but I'm trying to be truthful here. I don't mean I had to get completely sloshed for him to come near me, but a little outside help to relax was always appreciated.
"Have you got that then? There's already enough people in the world who use alcohol as a precursor to sex, but you're not going to be one of them, understood?"
Man, but he was taking this rule thing seriously!
"Yes sir, anything else?" I asked clasping my hands together in my lap and looking up at him innocently.
"We don't tell anyone," he replied quickly and I nodded fervently.
"Well that's a given. Anyway, it's not like people would believe us anyway."
"Yeah well, let's not test that theory, alright?" Jack suddenly sat down on the couch again staring fixedly down at his hands. His last words had been no more than a mutter. I could tell there was something else he wanted to say, but he couldn't find the words to express himself.
For once in my life I sat quietly and waited for him to pull the words together.
"One other thing…" he finally began, and I nodded encouragingly even though I was a little apprehensive about what aspect of the situation had been just too uncomfortable for him to be able to spit out.
"You know how people who…um…play more interesting, ah, sexual games have a safe word?" He asked, stuttering and coughing his way through the sentence.
"What, like if they get scared or whatever they say a random word which means whatever is going on should stop?" I nodded, hoping this wasn't part of his planning for the 'lessons'. "Yep, I'm with you. Some word like…sheep!"
Jack sent me a little lopsided smile at the last bit, but became serious again almost immediately, one of his distinguishing personality traits. "Yes, like sheep, except I'll take anything. Any sign that you're not comfortable, any look, movement, or word and everything stops. I won't hurt you, Tally, I’m not going to do that."
Have I mentioned that I absolutely adore Jack? Well I do.
"I know you won't hurt me, that's why I came to you for help." There was a pause as I delighted in the true loveliness of my brother's best mate, but then I moved on. "Right, so, sheep it is then," I said cheerily, glad that that seemed to be the end of his list of rules. "So just a recap then, no disobedience, no dating, no drugs, no telling anyone and no you hurting me. I think I can deal with all that."
I bounced off the couch preparing to go into the bathroom for a shower, the second essential step in my morning routine after breakfast. Jack stood up as well, however, and called me back before I high-tailed it into the bathroom.
As I turned around, I saw that he had his right hand stuck out towards me. "Shake on the rules," he said calmly.
Dratted boy had probably picked up on my hesitation over the first rule, darn and blast it! I reluctantly took his hand and shook it quickly. As was my usual habit I went to let go quickly, but his grip on my hand tightened, not so much that I wouldn't be able to pull away if I struggled, but enough to let me know that he had control of the situation. I looked up at him in surprise and was taken aback by the force of his gaze on me. His blue eyes, so rarely shown to me fully, firmly caught my gaze. It was the first time in a long while that Jack seemed fully present, his eyes neither hooded nor slightly averted as was so often his wont. And, my God, when Jack Whitby let himself be, he was one hell of a presence!
His hand was warm and firm and…absolutely huge! I don't know why I'd never noticed before, but I might as well have had doll hands the way his completely enveloped mine. They were nice, his hands, clean, well cared for, but slightly rough in that 'I am man, man will not moisturise' kind of way.
Hmmm, was it my imagination or was I getting tingles in the belly and warmth in my cheeks? Christ! Jack, because he is neither stupid nor blind, noticed my reaction and the slightest hint of a smile curled the corners of his lips. Was he laughing at me? Surely my sweet Jack didn't find my discomfort amusing? Although, now I think about it, discomfort wasn't really what I was feeling...
Just as I was about to open my mouth and ask Jack what he was doing he leant down until his mouth was close to my ear and his cheek was almost resting against mine.
"Lesson number one," he said quietly, his voice, for some reason, making the tingles in my belly shoot up in a burst towards my throat, "the simplest touch can sometimes be the most effective."
He pulled away, but I stayed frozen. Seeing my stunned mullet impersonation he really did smile. With a chuckle he released my hand and then grabbed his bag off the floor.
"See you later, Tally," he called out over his shoulder, walking towards the door and then exiting it with a final wave.
As the door banged shut I finally relaxed. What the hell had that been all about? Getting that little bit of frission going with someone was as simple as a handshake? Well that was easy! Why hadn't I managed to figure that out before? Shaking my head t
o clear it of the last bits of Jack-induced fuzziness I headed for the bathroom.
Better make that shower a cold one.