Chapter 4
For the rest of the day I couldn't get lesson 1 out of my head.
The simplest touch can sometimes be the most effective? Well maybe when you have hands like Jack’s, but I couldn’t see myself giving guys tingles in their bellies with just a handshake. Do guys even get the tingles? Whatever, all I can say is that Jack has a great talent.
I arrived home from work that night, thankful that the Thursday was over as I only had one class on a Friday and no work, so it was basically the weekend for me. I hadn't seen Brad at all throughout the day, but I did have a lecture with Allison which had been a bit awkward.
I'd been looking forward to some lazing about in my pyjamas and maybe even another 'lesson' from Jack when I got home. Unfortunately, I had forgotten about 'the boys.'
I know technically there are only five of them, but when they're all together in a clump it seems like there are millions of the buggers. There's always one in the loo, another rifling through the fridge, two having a ridiculous argument, another three or so challenging each other to a drinking competition and at least ten others doing something they're not supposed to. Yes, I know that it is not strictly possible, but it damn well seems like it.
As I entered the flat they all looked up from the television and I was greeted by a chorus of grunts which, in boy land, passed as a greeting. I waved unenthusiastically in reply and headed to the kitchen for an apple. Someone once told me that an apple is more effective than coffee at waking you up and, since I hate coffee anyway, I've chosen to believe them. Just as I was about to take a bite of the wonderfully cold, crisp fruit (always keep apples in the fridge, no matter what people tell you) the phone rang.
"Phone's ringing," Matt offered helpfully from the couch. This was his ever-so-subtle way of saying that he wasn't going to be the one to answer it. I made a face at him and picked up the receiver.
"Hello?" I greeted, eyeing my apple enviously. I could virtually see its wonderful coldness seeping out.
"Darling, did you know that the Neanderthal's brain was bigger than modern mans’?"
I bit into my apple, after all I was going to need the sustenance. It was my mother.
"You don't say?" I mumbled through my mouthful. "And where did you pick up this spicy piece of gossip?"
"At my adult education class. I told you I learn such interesting things there, didn't I? Well it's true and Professor Clarence said that my views were thorough and insightful. He's quite good looking, you know. Not as good looking as your father maybe, but if I wasn't married, or if I had an unhappy marriage I'd get with him like a shot. I bet that's where he gets most of his girlfriends from. Oh, that sounds mean, doesn't it? I didn't mean to imply that he was so pathetic that…"
And on it went.
I slumped down at the kitchen table and continued to eat my apple. I got down to the core and was nibbling away at those gross bits that surround the seeds and she still hadn't stopped her monologue. I threw the core away and, as I did so, I caught Matt's questioning look.
'Mum,' I mouthed at him and he nodded sagely before turning back to the TV. I laid my head down on my arms with the phone resting next to me. My mum's voice was loud enough that I could hear every word she was saying, although I was struggling to put them into any kind of coherent order in my brain.
"…but I do think it'd be nice to do something big for a change. So what do you think?"
I jerked out of my almost catatonic state and put the phone back up to my ear, aware that this question wasn't rhetorical, and that I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
"I think it's a great idea, mum," I said jovially, hoping against hope that this was the right answer.
"Oh good!" I could virtually feel her beaming down the phone. "Now if we could only convince your father then I could start preparations right away. You'll speak to him, won't you? And tell him that you think it's a good idea?"
"Of course I will," I said with a great deal less certainty in my voice. Mum's idea of a good plan was often vastly different from my dad's and, subsequently, Matt's and my own. What had I leant my endorsement to?
"Excellent. Then you can bring your boyfriend, Brent is it?"
"Brad," I corrected her without thinking. Catching my mistake I quickly added, "But we've broken up."
"Wonderful! I'm sorry to say, honey, but I never really liked him. Shifty eyes. Or was that your brother's girlfriend? I can never keep track."
And there you have it. Perhaps the best example of the inner working of my mother's brain. According to her own admission, she can’t keep track between my boyfriends and Matt's girlfriends. Speaking of whom…I looked across the room and saw that my brother was now watching me out of narrowed eyes. What was his problem? Then I suddenly remembered that I hadn't told him about breaking it off with Brad or, more importantly, my reason for doing so and he must have overheard me. Crap, he looked pretty annoyed. Still, I didn't have to worry about this for too long as my mother had started up again.
"Have those daffodils outside your building flowered yet? I thought they would’ve, but your father seems to think it's too early."
Bam! Onto another train of thought, dismissing my boyfriend-less state in one swift movement. This is why I love my mother so much, she believes in three main codes of life: no histrionics about things in the past, life is too short for regret, and, her favourite saying of them all, move on!
"How's my favourite boy then?" She asked, taking another leap to a different line of thought.
"Oh Jack's fine," I said absentmindedly, still looking at Matt's angry expression.
"Good. Is he eating well?"
I smiled, my mother adored Jack and was constantly fussing over him.
"Yeah I think so, mum. Ask him yourself in a minute."
"Yes, but he knows how I worry so he might lie to me to set my mind at ease."
The thought of Jack lying to my mother was patently ridiculous, but as I wanted to speak to Dad before midnight, I agreed with her and asked for the phone to be passed over.
"Oh, of course, honey, he's right here. Love you," she chirped.
"Love you too, Mum," I said with a grin.
There was a pause and, over the scuffling noises as the phone was handed over, I could hear my mother telling my father not to talk too long as she wanted to talk to the boys. I rolled my eyes at her bossiness, my mum thinks she has a greater claim over us than my dad because she carried us in the womb for nine months. The fact that she didn't even meet Jack until he was eight doesn't seem to register.
As is probably blatantly obvious, our family follows the age old stereotype where the mum is closer to the son and the dad closer to the daughter. They even had an agreement before either Matt or I were born that Mum would get to name the child if it was a boy and Dad would name it if it was a girl. I was born on Christmas Day and my dad chose Natalia as it means Christmas in Latin. This was all very well for formal stuff, but I much preferred to be called Talia day-to-day.
Finally I heard Dad shush my mother, not a small feat. "Hello sweetheart." His voice sounded long-suffering although I knew he was just putting it on to annoy Mum.
"Hi, Dad." I smiled, bringing my legs up to sit cross legged on the kitchen chair. "How’re you going?"
"I'd be a lot better if your mum would just drop this anniversary thing. If I've told her once I've told her a thousand times I don't want to have a huge party, let alone one involving a massive tent in the backyard," he ranted.
Ah, so that was what I'd said was a good idea. Whoops.
"We've gotten to know an awful lot of people over three decades of marriage, and most of them are imbeciles. Why on earth would I want to be stuck with them in an expensive pavilion that's probably churning up my lawn?" He continued crossly.
"Because then you'll know where to organise the air raid?" I suggested playfully.
He chuckled. "Well there is that I suppose," he conceded.
We chatted for a bit, but, after a while, Mu
m's squawks in the background became too insistent and we reluctantly said goodbye.
"Tell Mum that I tried to convince you of the merits of a huge garden party for your anniversary, alright?" I joked and he groaned.
"If I have to be there so do you, missy, so I wouldn't get too cocky," he warned. "Take care."
"You too," I replied before shouting out, "Heads up Matt," and throwing the phone across to him.
He caught it and began to talk to Dad, oblivious of the racket his friends and the TV were making. I was just about to trudge off to my room to change when Jack came up behind the chair I was sitting on and leant down to whisper, "Somebody's in trouble."
I looked across to where Matt was still looking at me with an annoyed expression even though he was carrying on a perfectly normal conversation over the telephone. Sighing, I nodded my head. Considering Matt and I were super close, the fact that I hadn't told him I'd broken up with Brad had obviously made him pissed.
"Yep," I whispered back. "It looks that way, but I honestly didn't have time to tell him. Not to mention I would have spent the whole day expecting to hear that my brother had threatened to kill Brad and who needs that kind of stress?"
Even though I couldn't see Jack I could feel that his posture had suddenly stiffened. I craned my neck round to look at him and saw he was staring off to the side like he was deliberately avoiding looking at me.
"Did you see Brad today?" He asked, still keeping his voice low as if he didn't want the others to hear us.
"No, why?" As he continued to avoid my gaze, I sighed heavily. "Jack Morgan Whitby what have you done?"
Before he had a chance to reply, a high-pitched phone ring erupted shrilly from somewhere quite near us. Swearing softly, I reached down under the table for my bag. I dug through the layers of trash until I found the sparkly blue phone (I painted it with nail polish at a boring party) and answered it.
"Hey, Simone. I'm about to extract some sort of confession from Jack so could you make this quick?" I asked having noted the caller ID.
"Quick it is," my friend agreed; I do love her so, no questions just straight to the point. "Did you see Brad this afternoon at all?"
"No," I answered succinctly. That was the second time in a matter of seconds that I'd been asked that. I smelt a rat.
"Yeah, well, I'm not surprised. After this morning he's probably going out of his way to avoid you," she said, sounding positively gleeful.
"Why? What happened this morning?" I asked, conscious of the fact that Jack had left my side and was just now slipping into his bedroom and closing the door quietly behind him. Suspicious much?
"You didn't hear? Everyone's talking about it. He was warned off you! Apparently this morning he was telling his friends that you were frigid, but he was still going to…um…bed you before the end of the year." My guess is that it had been a word other than 'bed' and Simone was censoring it a little. "Anyway," she continued hurriedly, "your brother overheard him and threw him against a wall. Apparently Brad was fairly wetting himself and it was only his friends pulling Matt off that stopped there being a major fight. It's nice how your brother looks out for you."
"Yeah, it's just great," I said sarcastically. "Especially when I get two brothers for the price of one."
It seemed that my theorising had to be turned on its head. Matt wasn't angry because he didn't know about the break up, he was angry because he'd had to find out about it through gossip. And Jack wasn't guilty because he had done something himself, he was guilty because he knew about Matt making a scene and he hadn't told me. Oh the drama!
"But the other reason I called was to tell you that Brad called me about ten minutes ago," Simone continued and my eyes widened in astonishment.
"Really?" I asked. "What did the scumbag want?"
"He wanted to apologise, he said he couldn't call you directly because you'd just hang up, but he wanted to apologise for sleeping around and then dissing you to his friends." She spoke quickly obviously wanting to get the message out as soon as possible.
"Oh yeah?" I said coldly. "And what did you say?"
"That no-one messes my best friend around and, if he ever treated another woman like that, I would get you to tell the entire campus that the only reason you never did it with him was because you don't sleep with morons with bigger dicks on their heads than anywhere else."
I cheered at her response. Sometimes Simone comes up with these beautiful little put downs and she delivers them with the speed and cutting of a whip crack.
"Oh that's too bad," I exclaimed. "I did that already. Hey do you want to come over, Simmy? The guys are here and I think I'm going to need some feminine support this evening."
"They're all there? Oh that's nice when you're grieving!" She sounded very indignant, what a sweetie.
"You make it sound like someone's died," I chuckled. "So I'll see you in a bit?"
"Definitely."
Jamming my phone into my pocket, I uncurled myself from the chair and slunk past Matt, who was busy trying to disentangle himself from a conversation with my mother, and into Jack's room.
I shut the door behind me and put my hands on my hips. "You could have told me, Jack," I said accusingly, without any sort of preamble. He looked up at me in surprise and then slowly shut the text book he'd been flipping through.
"Told you what, exactly?" He asked slowly swivelling around in his desk chair so he could look at me more easily.
"That Matt had attacked Brad, I mean it does concern me somewhat. And why didn't you stop him? Were you there?"
His brow crinkled as though he was confused about something and then he very slowly nodded his head. "Yeah I was there," he said cautiously, as if he wasn't very sure about that fact. "But I didn't stop it because Brad deserved it."
"Well, at least Matt didn't hit him," I said, trying to look on the bright side.
"Yeah, there is that," Jack agreed, but he didn't look too happy about it.
Something wasn't quite right. Jack looked ridiculously uneasy and I could’ve sworn he was lying about something. He was fidgeting something shocking and I’d just opened my mouth to ask him what was wrong, when the door burst open and Matt appeared, still holding the phone.
"Your turn Hammer and, for God’s sake, don't ask her about Professor Clarence, I already hate the man."
Jack grinned and took the phone. "Mrs D! How are you?" He began, his voice fairly dripping with affection. His face was transformed from being creased with worry to open happiness. Seeing him so cheerful made some of the tension in my body melt away and I smiled fondly as he wandered out of the room, listening intently to my mother's prattle in a way I'd never seen anyone else manage to do.
I was brought sharply down to Earth, however, as it was my brother's turn to close Jack's door in preparation for a confrontation. "Anything you want to tell me, Natalia?" He asked sardonically and I sighed loudly.
"Don't call me that. But yes, I broke up with Brad yesterday. And I'm sorry you found out like you did, but if you sit down and behave nicely I'll tell you all about it."
He rolled his eyes and I could tell he wasn't really angry just a bit hurt. Of course, due to masculine pride, he couldn't really express that. He brushed a sweep of hair out of his face, instead, and glowered at me. "I'm not going to like this story much, am I?" He asked very perceptively.
Shaking my head I led him over to the bed where we both sat down and I proceeded to tell him everything that had happened the day before. Actually, scrap that, I didn't tell him everything. The bit where I forced his best friend to become my teacher in matters of the physical I left out for obvious reasons. I felt a hard little knot forming in my stomach as I lied by omission. Damn my closeness with my brother! Lots of people I know have no qualms at all about lying left, right and centre to their siblings.
By the end of the story his fists were clenched, just as Jack's had been when I'd talked to him about it, and I was suddenly thankful that I hadn't told him earlier because he probably wou
ldn't have stopped at throwing Brad against the wall.
"You should have told me before," he said tightly and I gave him a quick one-armed hug in apology and then bounced off the bed.
"Come on, let's join the others," I said to distract him from his anger. It seemed to work as he followed me without complaint back into the living area to see that Jack was still on the phone over in the kitchen. Micky, Tommo and Samsa, meanwhile were still sprawled comfortably on the couch and armchairs, completely oblivious to the emotional upheaval going on around them.
Tommo had been friends with Jack and Matt since grade eight and the three of them had met the twins Micky and Samsa in the first year of uni. Tommo was my favourite of the boys; I’d even had a major crush on him for about six months in grade 10. Thankfully I got over that and nobody except Simone knew about it. See, sometimes it is good that boys are oblivious! Tom is Maori and, although he was born in Australia, it’s fun to tease him about the faint New Zealand accent he inherited from his parents. He has a shaved head, which he swears lends him an aerodynamic advantage on the footy oval, dark brown eyes and a penchant for tattoos. Maori symbols circle his upper arms and are present across his shoulder blades in that greeny ink that looks so good against dark skin. I may have moved past my crush, but there was still no denying the boy was fine!
Micky and Samsa are twins, but not identical. Micky hates me and the feeling is entirely mutual. He once told me that when the boys were hanging out they didn't need 'no f-ing chicks hanging around.' Misogynist to the max that one. Despite his nasty personality Micky plays the guitar beautifully, even I couldn’t deny it. Both him and Samsa are shorter than the other three and have the same shade of blonde hair, although Sam swept his up into a ridge along the centre of his head with copious amounts of gel, whilst Micky left his hair pretty well alone.
Sam is like his brother in many ways, but his jokes are not malicious and he doesn't have a problem with women at all as far as I can see. He's usually too busy talking about sport to notice who he's conversing with, male or female. He's the captain of the uni football team which is where he and his brother met Tom, Jack and Matt. I've always thought that he and Simone would make a good couple, but there have been so signs of anything like that emerging yet.
Speaking of Simone, as Matt and I re-entered the lounge room and settled ourselves in front of the television which, for some unknown reason, seemed to be playing an Italian movie without subtitles, there was a soft knock on the door.
"Come in," I yelled wondering why Simone didn't just walk in like she usually did. However, as a head of mousy brown hair poked through the open door rather than Simone's strawberry blonde curls I realised it wasn't my best friend. I suppressed a groan as I saw that, instead, it was Haley who lived downstairs with her elderly aunt.
When I'd first moved in I'd tried so hard to like this girl, but it was too ruddy difficult! She always completely ignores me and gravitates immediately to the boys. If she ever comes over and they're not at home she immediately leaves, but if they're present she pretends that we're the best of friends as an excuse for her continued visits. I can't believe that Jack and Matt can't see straight through her superficiality, but she's caught them hook, line and sinker.
I personally don't think she's much to look at, but she certainly has that wide blue eyed, pink lips thing going for her although any girl could tell at a glance that they were achieved by cleverly applied make-up to make it seem like it was natural. Her light brown hair was pulled back into a loose plait today and she wore a little white pleated skirt with a loose, blue chiffony type top and white sandals on her feet.
"Hello," she said, smiling shyly (completely fake, I'm sure) around at the tumble of boys surrounding me.
"Hiya, Haley," Matt grinned, pushing Tom off one of our squishy, patchy armchairs with his foot to make room for her. Tom got up and promptly tipped my brother's chair so he fell out and Tom settled himself in the vacated spot. As you may have guessed, considering the amount of people we have around, there are never enough chairs. I saw Matt eyeing my bean bag and grabbed hold of it determinedly.
"Don't even think about it," I warned him and Haley laughed prettily as if I had just said something incredibly witty. Man she's annoying.
Just then the door opened again and Simone bounced into the room, her grey eyes sparkling. Seeing me she skipped over and threw herself down beside me on the bean bag, making me rise up as the beans shifted.
"Hi all," she grinned and the boys grunted at her like they did with me.
Jack finished talking on the phone and, after bringing a kitchen chair over for Haley, settled himself on the floor beside Matt, completing the group. So there we were, the eight of us forming a sort of motley friendship crew. In my opinion Haley didn't really belong, but the boys had kind of adopted her so we were stuck with her.
We fell into a companionable silence as we all watched the foreign movie and I soon figured out that we were watching it because the Italian women in the film seemed to have something against clothes and threw them off at every opportunity. Still, it was oddly absorbing, especially after the twins started adding their own commentary and the plot began to revolve around a woman called Hotchick and her love of two hunky men called Sam and Michael.
At one point in the movie the love interest grabbed hold of Hotchick's hands and gripped them tightly as the camera zoomed in. Unable to stop myself, I glanced sideways at Jack and, as if he could sense my gaze on him, he turned to look at me. Ever so slightly the corners of his lips lifted up in a little smile and his warm eyes danced with amusement.
Uh oh, there were those damn tingles again…
Feeling my cheeks beginning to burn I quickly got up, well as quickly as you can get up from a beanbag, and hurried over to the kitchen.
"Anyone want a drink?" I called out to give myself an excuse for virtually running away from the group.
"Yeah, I'll give you a hand," Jack said.
Oh crap! So much for getting away from him.
Opening the fridge, I grabbed a six pack and starting breaking the cans out of their seals. I popped the tab to drink one myself, but Jack's hand closed around the can and pulled it away from me gently.
"What?" I hissed, annoyed. "I can have a beer; you're not teaching me at the moment, are you?"
"Aren't I?" He said in a low voice grabbing a couple of the other cans. Something in his tone made me lean back against the counter and, observant little bastard that he is, he saw the result of his words and grinned widely.
"Lesson number 2, Tally," he murmured. "Sometimes no touching is necessary at all."
To which I could only reply, after I had a moment to collect myself, "Yes, very educational, but not exactly the point."
He looked amused and seemed like he was about to say something else when Micky's voice suddenly intruded upon our little moment.
"Oi! Stop whispering over there and bring us the bloody beers!"
Thank God the Italian woman had taken off her top again, causing somewhat of a distraction, because Jack and I looked distinctly guilty. We quickly rearranged our features into pictures of innocence and brought the drinks back to the group. It would have been fine if only we'd thought to remember that naked breasts, on the whole, only entrance males…