Chapter 15
“I WAS thinking….” I heard Declan murmur through some fuzzy part of my brain.
“And I was sleeping,” I groaned.
I felt my head shoved down into the pillow, and I struggled out from under his hand. “Okay, okay, I’m awake! Now.”
Satisfied, Declan rolled over, half onto my chest, which he tapped with his finger.
“Oww,” I said pettily.
“Baby,” he said, and it wasn’t a term of endearment.
I yawned and tried to give him my full attention. “What were you thinking?”
He looked a bit apprehensive, which I didn’t like at all. It usually means bad things are coming your way. “I was considering… buying some real estate.”
Huh. Okay, I certainly wasn’t expecting that revelation. “You already own an apartment.”
“Yeah, in Hobart. I was thinking of buying something here.”
My own mortgage was crippling me; I couldn’t even comprehend how someone could get or even want two. “How can you afford it?”
Declan suddenly was extremely interested in a button on the doona cover as he said softly, “Well, I’ve already paid off that apartment.”
I tended to forget he was Mr. Moneybags. “Ooooookay.”
“Look, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs—”
“Are you sure you’re a professional footy player?”
“Simon,” he said in all seriousness.
“Sorry. Continue.”
“So I’ve always been good with my money.”
“Please don’t tell me you have investments and stocks. I can’t go out with somebody who has that.”
A little smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. “I have investments and stocks.”
I began pummelling him with the pillow. “That’s it! We have to break up!”
He defended himself easily by grabbing the pillow and whacking me soundly. “My brother-in-law is an accountant! They know how to do these things!”
“Okay,” I said. “But why here?”
“Because I don’t have an anywhere here. I split my time in Melbourne between here, my folks’ house, friends’ houses, and hotel rooms paid for by the club. I have enough money that I could get a mortgage and buy a second place. I mean, I’m going to need one when my contract ends.”
“But that’s a while away.”
“Only one more season. It was a three-year contract.”
“So you want to come back and play in Melbourne?”
He nodded. “It’s always been my plan.”
“But will the Devils let you go?”
“After the amount of money they paid for me, and the little return they got for it?” he said, sounding for a moment like one of the many whiners who wrote in to the papers or called talkback radio to rant about his injuries. “I think they’ll be glad to get rid of me. Especially as they’ll then be able to tell the press it was a mutual understanding.”
I leaned my forehead against his. “After the op, they’ll be singing a different tune. They always do. Then it will be about how they saw you through the hard times, and it was all worth it.”
He gave me a sweet kiss. “Thanks. But I still want to come home.”
I imagined Declan here permanently, and it was a nice prospect. We wouldn’t be continually split and doing a part-time long-distance relationship. I pushed away Roger’s nagging voice with all his doubts from the night before. “Any other reason?”
He smiled ruefully. “I have to admit, you have a bit to do with it.”
“How?”
“Well, if I have my own place, people will expect me to be there. No more keeping up the pretence of staying with friends or having to fulfil expectations of being on tap at a big, fancy hotel. It means we would see each other more often.”
But there would still be pretence involved. I couldn’t say that, though. “Sounds good to me. Where would you buy?”
“Somewhere you’d hate,” he grinned. “The Docklands.”
I did groan slightly. The Docklands were even worse than where he was currently living in Hobart. Once again he would buying into a waterfront that had been yuppified out of its previously sleazy state into a preprepared secure community with no charm.
“Oh come on,” Declan protested. “We all can’t be bohemians like you in North Brunswick. Which, you do know, is becoming more gentrified every year.”
“I guess you need the security,” I admitted grudgingly.
He scoffed at this. “I’m not being mobbed on the streets.”
“No, but I could imagine why the Docklands would be more appealing to you.”
“Nice views too. You liked my view in Tassie.”
“It was the view inside that sold me more.”
He shook his head. “Nuff-nuff.”
I laughed, but conceded defeat. “Hey, if it means I’ll see you more, I’m not complaining.”
He whacked me again with the pillow. “Come on, it’s too nice a day to stay inside. Let’s go out.”
Out? Into the fresh air and sunlight and… outside?
“We’ll go for a run on the beach. Perfect cover.”
A run? He was thinking of making me exercise?
He laughed at the horror obviously etched across my face. “Surely you must have something you could wear?”
I DIDN’T think I looked the part of jogging companion. True, I had trakkie daks, but those combined with my Cons and a faded “No Blood For Oil” longsleeve from a protest during my uni days didn’t exactly sell me as someone who would be out running with Declan Tyler.
“You’ll do,” he said, trying not to laugh.
I left him to finish dressing as he continued to towel his hair dry. I fed Maggie, and on my way out of the kitchen was reminded of the light flashing on the base of the phone. Roger’s message. Or it could be Fran. I sighed dramatically and pressed the button to listen to it.
“Hey, Simon, it’s me,” said the life of the party himself. “I just wanted to ring and apologise for what I said. You know I meant well, although Fran says it isn’t an excuse. Can you call me back? Oh, and if Declan is still there, I’m sorry, mate. Hope you don’t hold it against me.”
“You have to call him back,” Declan said, coming up behind me.
“No, I don’t.” I pushed the delete button a little more firmly than I intended. “It’s not that simple.”
“It would be if you called him now. Leaving it will make it worse.”
“Later,” I told him. “We’re going for a run.” I almost shuddered; I couldn’t believe I could say that so casually and still live.
Declan shook his head sadly. “You are such a stubborn shit.”
He sounded like Fran when he said that. She sure didn’t kiss like me like he did, though.
DECLAN looked the part at least. His trakkies were formfitting and tucked neatly into his four hundred dollar sneakers. He wore a singlet under his lightweight longsleeve, ready to be discarded once he worked up a sweat. A baseball cap was pulled low on his brow, and large wraparound sunglasses were in place to hopefully obscure his features.
Together, we were one of these things is not like the other one.
We drove a little further down from St Kilda Beach, where there would be fewer people and the sand wouldn’t be a minefield of discarded syringes. Declan grinned at me easily before he started stretching to loosen up. I stood still, wrapping my arms around myself to try and ward off the chill winds, watching him perform some arcane sacrificial rite.
“You have to loosen up first,” he instructed me. “Or else you’ll feel it more later.”
There were so many places one could go with that comment, but I asked, “You’re not seriously expecting me to run, are you?”
“I thought that was the point,” he said amiably.
“I thought I would just find a café and read the paper while you got your jollies pounding the sand,” I replied.
“Then you thought wrong,” he said sternly.
Declan had suddenly gone from boyfriend to the PE teacher from hell in all of twenty seconds. Cowed, I began imitating his stretches. My muscles began protesting almost immediately. He swung his leg easily over a park bench so he could bend over and flex his toes. I struggled to do the same move and almost fell over.
“You’re just acting up,” he scoffed.
Unfortunately I wasn’t, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to admit to it and shatter his fantasies.
Declan clapped his hands together. “Let’s go!”
I could hear the blood pounding louder in my ears than the actual crash of the waves against the sand. I thought of strokes and heart attacks, of the medics being summoned to the beach and being mentioned in the papers as “and friend” again, with a photo of Declan looking concerned, but distant. Immediately I was panting, and wishing for a shark to suddenly grow legs and waddle out of the surf to eat me and put me out of my misery. In fact, I would have willingly thrown myself into its mouth.
Declan jogged easily, not having even broken a sweat at this stage, his long lean legs propelling him forward with seemingly no effort. I had to yank at the waistband of my trakkies as they kept threatening to slide down and trip me over. The sand, damp with the tide, kicked up divots as I ran. Declan’s feet skipped over the surface: Jesus walking on the water.
“Time to pick up the pace!” he called over his shoulder.
Pick up the pace? I was already at full speed.
He sprinted away, his firm arse acting as a beacon to lure me further. I stopped, bending over with my hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath back. Declan quickly blurred to a vague shape in the distance while I hacked my lungs up. Once I could breathe again, stars still shimmering in my vision, I began walking, so that if he returned he could see that I hadn’t given up completely. A few other joggers passed me by in both directions, and I was embarrassed by an elderly couple who had to walk around me as I was slowing them down. Their extremely fat golden retriever still breathed far easier than I did.
After some time, a jogger in the distance revealed himself to be Declan. He was sweating a bit now, as he ran back towards me. I smiled at him sheepishly; to show off, he continued to run backwards in circles around me as I walked.
“Didn’t have to worry about this undercover thing too much, did we?” he asked. “I turned around, and you were nowhere to be seen.”
“All part of my master plan,” I said innocently.
He shook his head. “Why don’t you go and get coffee, and I’ll meet you back there? I’m just going to run a bit further.”
“Sure.” Anything to get me out of the exercise regime.
Declan started sprinting off again, and this time it was my turn to shake my head at the thousand and one better things that could be being done with this time. I headed towards the café across from the car park. After ordering two lattés to go, I headed back to the beach, a little way down from the main thoroughfare of people and parked my butt on the sand with a dune as my backrest.
The natural athlete that was Declan Tyler™ didn’t waste any time in covering the ground that had taken me a good while to cross. And instead of plonking himself down next to me, he took a few moments to stretch once more.
“You’re so fucking professional,” I teased. “When are they hiring you to do a workout DVD?”
“Piss off,” he ragged back, stripping off the longsleeve and throwing it in my face. “You have the stamina of a chronic invalid with emphysema, and you don’t even smoke. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
As he finally sat beside me, I asked in a low murmur, “Would you rather have a jock boyfriend who could run with you?”
He took his coffee and shook his head. “If it’s not you, no.”
I tried not to be distracted by his golden shoulders, even when relaxing they were bunched with toned muscle that I could never hope to achieve. These were the same arms that held me when I slept, I marvelled. “Would you rather I became a jock?”
Declan laughed. “Then you wouldn’t be Simon.”
That was a scary thought.
“Would you rather have an arty wanker boyfriend?” It was now apparently Declan’s turn to play the game.
“No,” I said honestly. “I like the differences between us.”
We watched the waves, and their wake inched closer towards us as we sat in comfortable silence. I could tell he wanted to put his arm around me as we watched the ocean, sitting there like any normal couple. I wanted to put my arms around him as well, and let his head rest in my lap. The few people that passed us paid little, if any, attention to our presence. Maybe we were too paranoid, but Declan’s celebrity helped foster that. Mind you, we were sitting on the beach on a typical Melbourne’s winter day—it wasn’t like we were sitting al fresco at a café on Brunswick Street where all the sensible people would be.
As it always was with us, our time together ended too quickly. Before we even realised it, it was time to drive back to my place and for Declan to shower and pack before heading out to the airport.
“Call Roger,” Declan said as he kissed me good-bye.
“You call him,” I said childishly.
He shook his head and kissed me again. “Speak to you soon.”
The house seemed empty without him in it. I turned on the stereo, loud, to fill the leftover space.
I DIDN’T call Roger back, of course, although he tried three times that afternoon. I did answer when Fran’s mobile number displayed on caller ID, but it was Roger’s voice through the earpiece so I hung up immediately. A few minutes afterwards I received a text from her saying that she hadn’t put him up to it, and would I please call her at work tomorrow?
I had an early night after checking in with Declan, who had arrived home safely and was preparing to go out to dinner with Abe and Lisa. “Wish you were here,” he said breezily, and I found myself feeling horribly lonely.
So I was determined that I wouldn’t be stupid and shut Fran out again just because Roger was being a dick. She sounded surprised when I called her at exactly a minute past nine.
“I haven’t even gotten a coffee yet,” she said ruefully. “Have you?”
“Yep, and it’s wonderful.”
“Bastard. You must have gotten in early.”
“I did.”
And then the awkward pause. I slowly turned in my chair to watch the crowds still streaming out of Flinders Street Station below me. It was always surprising how many people seemed to be late for work every day. Of course, I was making a gross generalisation—maybe they all didn’t start at nine. But I was sure a fair few of them were late.
“Simon?”
“Sorry, I was distracted. What did you say?”
“Just, I’m not sure if I should bring up Saturday night or whether we should just pretend that nothing happened.”
“I don’t think I can pretend nothing happened.”
“Meet me for lunch?”
It was a busy day for me, but I had to agree so she wouldn’t think I was pissed with her. “Sure.”
“Great.”
“Fran?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not going to try and bring Rog, are you? In some misguided attempt to set things right?”
She took a deep breath. “Hon, I’m not stupid.”
I shouldn’t have doubted her. It was dim-witted of me. “Okay. See you at one.”
“YOU’RE lucky I didn’t turn up with a camera crew,” I said easily as I sat before Fran.
She grimaced. “Alice Provotna again?”
“Yeah, I’ve got meetings all day. She thinks they’ll be interesting. Our definitions of that word are not one and the same. And she seemed to think this was a business lunch.”
“Thank God you put her off. How did you convince her?”
“I told her you were my mistress,” I teased.
“Hopefully not on camera, just in case any of my family ever get to see it.”
“What, you don’t think we’d make a great couple?”
She raised an eyebrow. “My family would agree.”
“Well, knowing your husband—”
“Hey!” she warned.
I put up my hands in surrender. “Sorry. I had to get one cheap shot in.”
Fran shrugged and picked up the menu even though I knew she had already chosen what she wanted before even arriving at the restaurant. “I’ll give you one.”
“All the rest will be earned, though.”
“Let me just say though, Simon, he is really upset.”
“Boo fucking hoo.”
She glared over the top of the menu. “I said only one cheap shot.”
The waiter took our orders, and I could no longer hide behind my menu-shield. It was time to come out swinging. “So, he’s bloody upset? It can’t be all about him. He attacked us.”
“I know, but he knows he’s screwed up and now he wants to fix it.”
“And I want to lick my wounds for a little while.”
“Get Declan to do it, and maybe it’ll speed up the process.”
I glared at her.
“It’s a joke, Simon. We used to be able to do that.”
I took a sip of my water, something to distract me so that I didn’t blurt out a friendship-ending insult. “Well, I’m not feeling very funny at the moment.”
“You have to forgive him sometime.”
“I know, Fran. We’ve been friends for over sixteen years. This isn’t the end of it. But I need some time at the moment. I just can’t pretend everything’s hunky-dory just because he’s feeling guilty and wants it stopped.”
She nodded. “It’s just he’s my husband. So I have to defend him.”
Dammit, her bright eyes were getting to me as she was sincerely trying not to cry. “I know, Fran. But how you’re feeling at the moment, that’s what I feel about Dec. I have to defend him because of what Roger said.”
She reached over and took my hand. “I get it. How is Dec?”
“He’s fine. Defending Roger as much as you are, surprisingly enough.”
“That’s why I like him.” Fran gave a delicate sniff, trying to compose herself. “He’s very fair-minded.”
“Maybe too much,” I agreed. “I’m still trying to find his faults.”
“He has them,” Fran laughed softly. “We all do.”
“I guess he did try to torture me yesterday with the run on the beach.”
Fran began to choke. I pushed a glass of water towards her, and she hurriedly took a gulp. “You… run… beach?”
“I didn’t last very long.”
“I bet. Still, I wish somebody had had a camera,” she said in awe, as if I’d just told her I’d spotted a Tasmanian tiger loping along with Declan.
I grinned at her and suddenly felt the empty space at the table that was Roger. Even when he wasn’t here, he was still between us.
“No matter what happens, or as long as it takes,” I said, “let’s not let it affect us, Fran.”
She frowned. “You’re scaring me with a sentence like that.”
I sighed. “Maybe I’m being melodramatic. But I just don’t want us to fight.”
Fran twisted her napkin into a little stress ball and smoothed it back out to begin all over again. “We won’t. But sooner or later, if things aren’t resolved, we probably will.”
On that ominous note, our food arrived. For the rest of our lunch hour together the subject of Roger was studiously avoided.
HOWEVER, it was the first thing Declan brought up when he called me later that night.
“No, I haven’t spoken to Roger. But I did speak to Fran.”
“I guess that’s something, at least.”
“She doesn’t want us to fight, but she thinks that the longer things go on like this between Roger and I, the more our friendship will eventually get pulled into it as well.”
“She’s right,” Declan said, refusing to sugarcoat it.
I sighed. “I know. But I’m so pissed off at him at the moment I can’t even look at him. I’m scared I’ll just punch him out.”
Declan laughed. “You?”
“Hey!” I protested. “I can be pretty scrappy when I want to be.”
“I just hope you punch better than you jog.”
“Yeah, well next time you see me, just try me.”
“Now you’re getting kinky on me,” he teased.
“Would you like me to be? I’m surprisingly good at tying knots. It was the only way I got any peace when Tim was about eight.”
“I would be too scared you would have a perverse fit and leave me for hours while you go catch a movie.”
“Sounds like you’re heading into fantasy territory, not me.”
He ignored that. “Seriously, Simon, call him.”
Back to that subject. “In a couple of days. Give me time to cool down.” Desperate to change the subject, I went for the mundane to replace it. “So what did you do today?”
He sounded a bit hesitant. “I, uh, had physio, a team meeting… and then I went to get measured for a suit.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. For the Brownlow.”
“Oh.” Realising I was quickly heading into a territory of jealous in which I didn’t want to stray, I tried to sound light as I asked, “What colour?”
“What colour?”
“Yeah. The suit. What colour?”
“Normal, traditional black.”
“You know, you could try something different.”
He laughed. “Trying something different gets you noticed more. That’s what I try to avoid, remember?”
I remembered the premiere night of the Triple F last year when I had worn an emerald green suit purchased from an op-shop on Sydney Road. There was a reason why Jess was going to the Brownlow instead of me.
Damn. I had let the silence go on for too long.
“Hey, Simon?”
“Yeah?”
“We didn’t really talk about it, before I left. About the Brownlow.”
“What else is there to know? I thought we covered it all.”
“I just wanted to say… the whole damn thing has been crushing me. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been discussing plans with Jess, and I wanted to tell you, but to tell you the truth, I was scared to.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t the way it should be.”
His voice pained me, it was low and passionate and heartfelt, and I hated we could only be so open with each other when we were so far apart physically.
“I know, Dec.”
“I should be making these plans with you, trying to talk you out of whatever crazy thing you would be trying to wear—”
“What do you think I would try to wear?” I asked, interested in spite of myself.
“Probably something bright purple or one of those old-fashioned coats that make you look like a vampire from one of those Anne Rice books before she found religion.”
Hmm, purple. Or a Victorian coat? The man knew me, it seemed.
“I wouldn’t do that to you at the Brownlow,” I teased him. “Maybe at the premiere night of the Triple F.”
He laughed. “That’s probably normal dress at that event.”
Sadly, he was correct.
“I knew you would say you would understand,” he continued, “but I know it still hurts.”
“It does, a little bit,” I admitted. “But like you say, I understand.”
“I guess I just thought if I didn’t talk about it then I wouldn’t have to confront it with you.”
“Yeah, that always works.”
“Anyway, I’m sorry about it.”
“Don’t be. Just talk to me from now on,” I told him.
“I promise. And hey, thanks for setting up that segue. How about you do the same with Roger?” he asked, not at all subtly.
“Good night, Dec.”
“Night, babe.”
Damn, he did the babe thing again, beating me to the punch. It would have sounded daft if I had repeated it back to him, so I just had to let it be. For now.
THE next few days were filled with continual pleas from Fran and Declan to give in and speak to Roger. I, of course, let those pleas fall on selectively deaf ears. Until Roger turned up at the office.
It was close to five, Nyssa had already left because of a “dental appointment.” I had locked up and was coming out of the lift when I ran right into the friend I was currently kind-of-feuding with.
“Hi,” Roger said, kind of dopily.
“Yeah, hi,” I replied, just as dopily.
“I, uh, came in to pick up Fran but thought I’d try and catch you as well.”
That irked me. “How nice to be your afterthought.” I started walking through the lobby doors and out onto the street beyond.
“Hey!” Roger protested, not that far behind me. “In case you’ve forgotten, I have been trying to talk to you.”
“And in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve been ignoring you.”
“And how long is that going to go on for?”
“I don’t know. As long as I feel like it.”
We had reached the intersection of Swanston and Collins, where I normally caught my tram. The streets were already packed with people rushing to go home.
“Where are you going?” Roger asked as I stopped to wait for the pedestrian light to cross over the tram tracks.
“Home.”
“I said I would give you a lift.”
“And I’d rather catch the tram.”
To tell you the truth, I was feeling a little perverse pleasure in tormenting him. It was payback for how I felt on Saturday night, dishing it back to him. He looked genuinely hurt that I was refusing after days and many overtures to try and deal with the problem.
“Fucking Declan Tyler,” he fumed. “We never used to fight like this, until he came along.”
“He isn’t the problem,” I said pointedly.
“Oh, and I am?”
“That’s what I was implying.”
The pedestrian crossing started beeping, and we all swarmed over towards the island in the centre of the traffic. There was no sign of my tram yet, but I hoped it wouldn’t be too long.
“You can hate me right now,” Roger said, “but there’s a part of you knows I’m telling the truth, and you don’t want me bringing it up because that means you’ll have to think about it some more. And that will destroy this little Disney fantasy you’ve currently got in your head.”
Fuck him. I knew it wasn’t a fantasy life; I was the one goddamned living it. All I could do was stare at him coldly.
“Got nothing to say?” he asked.
Thankfully, I could see my tram at the next stop, slowly making its way towards ours. “Thanks for your support,” I said. Not the best comeback ever, but there was enough venom in my tone to press the point.
He leaned in to me so he wouldn’t be overheard by the other waiting passengers. “Good luck watching your boyfriend preen with his beard on TV next week.”
Wow, that was remarkably bitchy for a straight man. I didn’t say anything, and Roger stood there staring sadly at me for a moment before walking away.
I can’t say I thought there was an air of finality about this confrontation, but as I got onto the tram and watched him through the window as he made his way to Fran’s building I certainly felt like things would never be the same between us again.
But I’m melodramatic that way.
Later that night when Declan rang I let it go to the answering machine. Despite me telling him that we should talk, I didn’t think I could share how empty I felt right then.
In the morning when he called again, I would fob him off and say that I was tired after work and slept like the dead and be evasive about answering questions about Roger. I was a hypocrite, and all I wanted to do was Rip van Winkle my way out of this whole mess which I had just made worse.