TWENTY
Zeus
We started something that neither of us know how to handle. But as with anything new, you persist and you learn from your mistakes, keeping on until what was once unknown and terrifying is as routine as tying your shoes.
I just hope the mistakes I make with Belle aren’t too major.
Belle occupies the bathroom now John has finished, leaving me to clear the breakfast dishes. She insisted on helping, but I shooed her away with a smack on the arse, reminding her this is how I repay the favour John has done me.
“Cerise moves in tomorrow.” Speak of the devil.
I still my hands in the soapy water. “That soon, huh?” I’d hoped to have a new place sorted and be gone before the bitch showed her face.
He slaps me with a scathing glare. “Didn’t mention anything earlier, Z, because I didn’t want you trying to talk me out of it.”
“You know it’s a terrible idea then?”
“Lay off.” He picks up a dishcloth and retrieves a plate from the drying rack.
“Does Belle know?”
“She will.”
“When?”
“In good time.” He sets the dry plate down, turning to face me front-on. “Not that it’s any of your concern.”
Arsehole. “Just want to know if I’m going to have a moody teenager to deal with at night is all.”
John appears to soften as he picks up another plate. “I’m going to tell her over dinner.”
“And if she doesn’t take it well? Doesn’t give her a lot of time to come to terms with it if Cerise turns up tomorrow.”
He stares at me a moment. Bastard knows I’m right.
“Tell her now.” I take my frustration out on the damn eggs baked onto the pan. “Give her all day to work through it.”
“You’re a fucking know-it-all, you realise that?”
I smile, aware he’s teasing from the tone of his voice. “Try to be. I’ll step out and give you both some privacy.”
“No,” he urges, seemingly humble. “Stay.” He lifts his eyes to mine. “She might want somebody to talk to about it if she gets mad with me.”
I give John a simple nod. Things have been tense between us the past week since that blow-up about Cerise. We’ve spoken, but only when we have to. Knowing my best friend since childhood could become so distant over a damn woman? Yeah, that hurt. But what stung more was the doubt it seeded in my mind about what I’m doing with Belle.
If this is how dark he can get about his ex-wife, what the hell will it do to us if he finds out I’ve started sharing a bed with his daughter?
The air immediately thickens as Belle enters the room, oblivious to what’s about to go down. John sets the towel down and looks across with worry in his gaze. I catch his eye and nod. He’s doing the right thing, giving her warning. Maybe to him Cerise moving in is a return to how things were, but for Belle, it’s a big deal.
The mother who walked out and abandoned her wants back into the family home, and it’s not because of Belle.
“Hey, sweetheart.” John steps up to where Belle reaches for the juice. “Got a minute?”
She looks around and finds me, worry in her eyes before she returns her focus to John. “Sure.”
I finish up with the pan and pull the plug.
“I’ve got some news I want to share.” John gestures for her to sit at the table.
Belle glances my way while I dry my hands off, as though to ask what’s going on.
“I’ll be out the back if you need me.” I hold her gaze as I say it, letting her know I mean her—if she need me.
“Thanks, Z.” John nods as I set the towel down and head for the back door.
Belle’s scent fills my nose as I pass her, my palm buzzing with the need to reach out and pull her to me, to kiss her. It’s a kind of suicide, holding your love inside. A pain that knows no equal.
My gut tightens as I step outside, the feeling that I’m abandoning her strong. My dove is about to find out she has to share her cage with a crow. A dark beast of a bird that does nothing but bring bad luck and thrive on death and decay.
I take a seat on the back step, raising my chin to the sky to look at the dark clouds that gather in the west. Maybe we’ll get a storm. Hopefully—it would help to lift Belle’s mood after she’s done talking to John.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I pull my phone out to scroll through to Jodie’s number. We might have left off on bad terms, but her attitude when I’ve seen her to deal with the house sale has been more relaxed than when she lost her shit at the café. Perhaps it’s not the best idea, but when you literally grow up in your best friend’s pocket with fuck-all other friends around, nobody understands the situation the same as your ex-wife.
Z: Did you know John and Cerise are back together?
I send the message and tune my ears for anything coming from inside. Yet it’s as quiet as a fucking library in there, no indication of which way the discussion goes. My phone pings with a reply.
J: What the fuck for?
I chuckle at her blunt response. At least I’m not the only one who sees the bad in this.
Z: She got in touch a few months back, so he says. She moves in tomorrow.
Her reply is immediate; the dots dancing across my screen.
J: You’re still there?
Z: Yes.
Nothing. The absence of a reply, or even any indication she’s typing, speaks volumes. I set the phone down and take a stroll to the fence line, absently pulling out weeds as I go. Where do I see this relationship with Belle going? I started things, crossed that line selfishly without really thinking it through. I want her—always, but the logistics of that are something that can’t be handled without copious amounts of heartache: for John, for her, and for me.
My phone pings from the step. I glance up at the dining room windows as I return, but I can’t see anyone; they must be in the living room. The echo of a door sounds as I retake my position, followed by the rumble of John’s work truck as it starts.
Thunder beats a drum on the horizon as I open Jodie’s reply.
J: How did Belle take the news?
Such a simple question, but one I know would have taken her a hell of a lot to ask. She’s never liked Belle all that much, at least since Cerise left. You’d think a woman’s natural instinct to nurture and protect would kick in when she watched a child be abandoned by a parent, but not for Jodie. Strangely it was my instinct that drew me to the dejected kid playing on her own in silence, and all that happened for Jodie was she grew increasingly wary of Belle, withdrawing further from her the older she got.
My gut knots as the door behind me opens: it was Jodie who took that picture of me and Belle at the barbecue. Shit. How could I forget that?
“You can come back in if you want.” Belle’s voice is flat, scarily unmoved.
I turn as I stand, and pocket my phone. “What did he say?”
“You know she never once sent me a birthday card? Not even a phone call.” Her eyes are narrow and critical, but the pain is still clear.
“I know.”
“And now she wants to come back in here and take Dad like she’s entitled to him.”
I reach out and pull Belle to me with a sigh. She crashes into my chest, resistant at first, but her body soon settles against mine. “Sometimes you have to let people make their own mistakes, dove.”
“Didn’t he do that the first time?” she scoffs. “You’d think he’d remember.”
You would. John took Cerise leaving hard, leaning a little too heavily on the bottle as his way to numb the pain of betrayal. You’d especially think he’d remember how cold and tactless it was that the bitch brought her new man around to get her shit when she left.
“I wish I could do something,” I admit. “Watching your dad make the same mistake twice feels wrong, but he already shut me out when I let him know how I felt about it.”
“He doesn’t want to face the truth, does he?”
Her question strikes a bit too close to home. “I guess not. Sometimes it’s easier to live in the lie than acknowledge how painful the truth is.”
And as with any lie, there’s only so long you can keep it up before the web begins to unravel.
“Come inside,” Belle says as she pulls away. “I’m in the mood for a movie and comfort food.” She graces me with a sad smile as I follow her lead, hand in hers. “May as well make the most of the fact Dad’s headed out to organise shit for the bitch.”
She turns away, missing the worry that no doubt settles across my features. In a way, having Cerise move back in is needed; it forces us to face what this is that we’ve started. But in the same vein, I can’t help but feel unease at what else it means.
Distance makes the heart grow fonder, but what if distance for Belle and me simply clears the fog of lust and shows this arrangement for what it really is?
Wrong.
Controversial.
And ultimately, condemned?
If that’s the future for us, then I’ll go to bed tonight wishing for the miracle of a groundhog day. Because as much as Belle’s pain at her mother’s return makes my chest ache, I don’t want to ever let this day go.
I’d gladly live every day on a loop if one more step forward would mean an end.