Chapter 6
"Soggy fish and chips in newspaper, you sure know how to treat a girl," I told Jack as I kicked my shoes off and rested my feet up on the dashboard of his Ute. I reached into the greasy newspaper resting on my lap and pulled out an oily chip which I proceeded to eat with relish.
"Yeah, I'm all class." Jack reached over and plucked a piece of battered fish out of the warm depths of the package.
We gazed out of the windscreen at the deserted beach and lashing ocean waves beyond. The feeble sunshine from earlier that day had long since departed, leaving us with low grey skies emitting a soft drizzle. Perhaps not ideal beach weather, but it ensured there was no-one about as we sat at the lookout eating lunch.
Munching away happily and wiping our greasy hands on our trousers we whiled away 15 minutes or so in companionable silence. Once the fish and chips were finished, I wound down the window and threw the scrunched up newspaper into a nearby bin with perfect precision. It sailed in cleanly and I gave a little cheer.
I turned to Jack. "High five!" I laughed and he obligingly slapped his palm against mine.
"Nice shot, Jordan."
We descended once more into a drowsy silence, listening to the gentle patter of drizzle as it hit the roof of the Ute, watching the scraggly grass surrounding the lookout and banks of the beach wave back and forth in the light wind. The dreary scene out of the windows succeeded in making the warm interior of the battered old Ute seem particularly cosy and comforting.
Caught up in the fuzzy moment I lifted my eyes up to Jack's face and smiled at him fondly. If I was expecting a smile in return I was sadly mistaken, however, as he was looking out of the front windscreen with a completely blank expression and so completely missed my glance. Seeing him looking so far off I suddenly had a strong desire to pull him back from whatever internal thoughts he was focussing so heavily upon.
It frightened me sometimes how serious he could get in the quiet moments. It had been six years since he'd lost his mother and his younger brother and sister in the horror crash which had left our small town reeling, and everyone, but my family, thought he had moved on. Personally I don't know how anyone could think that. How do you move on from something like that? However, as much as I respected his right to continual grieving it simply wasn't healthy the way Jack cut himself off from those around him and sometimes, when he was looking as he did at that moment, I sometimes got scared that one day he wouldn't come back at all.
"Jack?" I said quietly, not wanting to startle him, but determined to get his attention. "Want to know something weird?"
For a moment I thought he wasn't going to answer, but then he seemed to return to himself and he turned to me with a small smile. "Always," he replied, the tiniest hint of amusement creeping into his voice.
Glad to have succeeded in pulling him away from his, no doubt melancholy, thoughts, I allowed myself to say something I'd been working up to since the beginning of the year. "I missed you."
He seemed to focus more fully upon me and his brows creased in confusion. "When?" He asked. "We live together, when would you possibly have had time to miss me?"
"Not now, you idiot," I laughed. "When you went away to uni without me. I missed you like crazy for two years. You and Matt both."
Which, all things considered, was a bit of an understatement. I had thought I was going to go mad without Matt and Jack around back then. It had been like a rug had been pulled out from underneath me. Everything changed. When I woke up in the morning and went to sleep at night the house was quiet, no thunderings up and down the stairs or doors slamming. There was no racing to school with Jack and I hauling Matt along. No recess or lunch meetings where we would swap our food around because, as a basic rule, mum had decided the lunches we had packed weren't acceptable and replaced our packets of chips with soy burgers or, once, a can of whipped cream. And, although not particularly fond memories, no more afternoons when the three of us would hide underneath the house when Jack's dad came round demanding his son return home.
Going from living in a chaotic, bustling, bursting at the seams house to one in which you could hear the clocks ticking was a very disconcerting experience. I got used to it, of course, I'm not saying I drew myself into a ball of misery for two years, but it wasn’t the same. Mostly I spent less time at home, finding solace in the continued anarchy present at Simone's house and, when the hole the boys left felt too gaping, I would catch the bus up to their flat.
I should have known better than to think that Jack wouldn't have noticed how despondent I felt at being left behind. He shifted slightly in his seat and then sent me one long look which told me, without doubt, that he knew I had missed them. That look made me feel as if he had taken up residence inside my head and had therefore known what I was going to say before I'd even said it. It was disconcerting, but, I realised with a start, I had done the same to him only seconds before. Hadn't I known what was going on inside his head and wanted to pull him away from it?
"Missed us?" He said quietly. "And yet weren't you the girl who cheered as we drove away saying, if I remember correctly, 'hooray for the banishment of the terrible twosome'?"
I rolled my eyes, as much as I should have known that he knew I missed them I should also have known that he wouldn't let me get away with too much sentimentality. "A blind monkey would’ve been able to tell that that was just me masking my feelings. You knew I was just putting up a front," I accused him.
He shrugged. “Maybe, but I suppose a blind monkey wouldn't have missed that we, that I, missed you too." There was something in his voice that told me that, despite having ‘blind monkey’ in the sentence, he was being very serious and I felt my cheeks beginning to heat up.
I couldn't believe I was getting embarrassed again, seriously, it was ridiculous! I didn't need to be awkward around Jack. He was Jack! To cover my embarrassment I laughed lightly and shook my head.
"Sorry buddy, but that doesn't count," I told him sternly. "You can't say that you missed me too practically right after I say it. It makes it seem insincere. There has to be a time delay otherwise it doesn't count."
"Who says?" Jack asked.
"Everyone, it's a well known rule."
He nodded gravely. "I'll wait a while then."
Well, that hadn't been quite what I’d had in mind, still, I had definitely brought him out of his shell for a while there. Silence descended once more, but I felt that I still had Jack's attention and the cab felt smaller for it.
After another ten minutes or so, Jack straightened up and turned the keys in the ignition. "We should get back," He said simply and I nodded in agreement.
We drove the fifteen minutes it took to get back to the flat in silence, but, after Jack had expertly manoeuvred the Ute into the parking space next to my car and I was just about to hop out, he reached out and caught my hand in his.
I looked at him in surprise, but didn't move, inwardly I was relishing in the heavy warmth of his palm on the back of my hand.
"Tally," he said quietly in a tone that made me feel as if it was the whole of me being cupped in his palm as opposed to just my hand. "Lesson number 3. Make sure he's in your head before he's in your pants."
Which, considering my earlier musings about his ability to see inside my mind, was more than enough to send shivers down my spine.
"OK," I said, my voice sounding more like a croak than my usual, confident, speech.
"And be sure to let me know when I can safely tell you I missed you," he added before getting out of the car and beginning to stride towards our building.