Oh. My. God.
Tash couldn’t move. Patrick. Patrick of Maddy, of her childhood, of the beautiful people, was going to kiss her. In the kitchen. With her arms covered in suds and an evening’s worth of hard-earned sweat on her face.
No way should this be happening. No way. But from the instinctive lean of her body towards him, from the fiery fizz igniting her every cell, from the excited, stupid yearning in her soul, Tash’s traitorous heart was going to make it happen.
His finger, so tender on her chin, began to draw her face upward.
Tash closed her eyes. She’d temporarily lost her mind, he had to be more drunk than she realised and this had to stop. Now.
‘Please, Patrick.’ She breathed the last word with an ache. ‘Don’t.’
Immediately Patrick stepped backwards to sag heavily against the benchtop, his knuckles pale as they gripped the hard edge. Tash could feel the embarrassment radiating off him like heat. Her stomach tightened with anxiety that her rejection had somehow made his sorrow worse. She had to though. Patrick wasn’t in a strong emotional place at the moment and kissing her wouldn’t help.
It was unlikely to do Tash much good either.
‘I’ll go,’ he said.
She kept her tone gentle. ‘You don’t have to.’
He made a noise that was a kind of half laugh, half bitter sound, then sighed and rubbed his forehead before raking his hand through his hair. ‘Yeah, I think I do.’ Barely making eye contact, he twitched something resembling a smile and shoved off the bench. ‘Thanks for a good night. I’ll see you round.’
He took a step, stopped and stared at his shoes, his brow deeply furrowed. A second passed, then two, as if he was deciding between escape and a need to say more. Then he shook his head and walked on. Tash watched his heavy trudge, her belly still tight and her blood pulsing hot.
‘Hang on,’ she said, following him around the bench. ‘How are you getting home?’
‘Walking.’
‘You can’t walk. It’s nearly six kilometres!’
‘Do me good.’
‘Patrick, no.’ She stayed his arm. The muscles were granite-hard with tension. His gaze flitted everywhere but at her. ‘I’ll drive you.’
Finally, he made eye contact. ‘You’re probably more over the limit than me.’
‘Wrong. I’ve been too busy to drink. I had one glass of champagne at the start of the night and a shot of liqueur, but that was an hour ago. I’m fine.’
She gave his arm a squeeze and reached for the sideboard and the bowl where she kept her keys. She jangled them in front of him. ‘Come on.’
Patrick hesitated then followed.
Outside it was giggle central. Ceci and Thom had made up some sort of drinking game with the inflatable stools that involved perching on them with wineglasses to their mouths, and pulling the air plug out. Tash caught them halfway through a deflation. She watched with amusement as each tried to keep their balance on the collapsing stools and thanked her lucky stars she’d earlier insisted that they swap to plastic glasses.
Thom was first to lose balance, red wine spilling down his front and splashing his chinos. Ceci fell on her arse soon after but bounced straight back up to perform a triumphant dance.
‘Best of three!’ yelled Thom, plonking his glass on the pavers and diving for another stool.
Tash glanced at Patrick but he was oblivious, staring blankly towards the road with his fists rammed into his pockets.
‘You children carry on,’ she called, cutting the countdown midstream. ‘I’m just going to drop Patrick home.’
‘Take your time,’ said Ceci. ‘We don’t mind, do we, Thom?’
‘Nope. There’s still …’ He attempted to count stools but got lost. ‘Heaps to go.’
Tash rolled her eyes. Those two were going to be very ill come morning.
Patrick’s knees were bent up comically high in the confines of Tash’s little car, even with the seat pushed back to its limit.
‘They’re not designed for people like you,’ she said as he struggled to get comfortable.
‘Good for the city, I guess.’
‘Very. Mostly I catch public transport. I meet more interesting people that way and see more. You’d be amazed how many fruit-laden trees I’ve spotted while riding the tram.’ She guided the car out of the carport and put it into gear. Patrick’s ute sat lonely in the moonlight behind the flat. ‘I can drive it over in the morning, if you want to leave me the keys.’
‘It’s okay. I’ll get Mum or Dad to drop me back.’ He stared out the side window, his finger on the pane as though he was about to trace letters.
Tash glanced at him, assessing whether to offer something more than words—a light hand on his knee, a quick squeeze of his fingers—but kept her hands on the wheel. With her own confused feelings, more contact wasn’t a good idea.
She drove slowly on the gravel road, not because she was scared—although wildlife was always an issue thanks to the protected zone surrounding Baron’s Swamp—but because she wanted a chance to talk about what had happened between them. Tash needed to stop this, whatever this was, before it damaged them further. They were friends. Anything else would be for the wrong reasons—his loneliness, her lust—with the likely outcome a friendship in tatters.
Except Tash had slept with Thom and they were still friends. Good friends. Her experience with Thom was different though—a one-nighter of silly laughter-filled sex with no hang-ups and definitely no expectation of anything further.
Springbank was in darkness. Tash watched Patrick out of the corner of her eye as they passed. He gave Maddy’s home a quick glance then rested the side of his head against the window with his eyes shut as though trying to block the image.
The turnoff to Wiruna came too soon. Tash braked near the house and turned off the ignition. The engine tick and their breathing was the only sound in the quiet. She shifted to face Patrick. He was staring through the windscreen, seatbelt undone, one hand on the door. The porch light filtering through trees left strange shadows across his face.
‘Patrick, look at me.’
He swallowed and met her eyes.
‘It’s okay.’
He shook his head and stared back at the windscreen.
Tash reached for his hand and threaded her fingers through his. ‘It wouldn’t be right. You know it wouldn’t. You wouldn’t forgive yourself because of Maddy.’ She smiled and tried to lighten the tension. ‘It’s not because you’re not devastatingly attractive.’
‘I suppose that’s some consolation. I was beginning to think you only went for blokes like Thom these days.’
‘Oh.’ Heat washed her neck and cheeks. ‘So you heard about that.’
‘Hard to miss. It was on your Facebook page.’
‘Not exactly. I made breakfast for two, that was all. Ceci was the one who made it obvious.’
‘You could have deleted her comment.’
‘I could have, but that’s not how I run my social media. Besides, I have nothing to be ashamed of.’
He said nothing for a while. ‘So you and him …’
‘Friends.’
He made a ‘huh’ noise. ‘Convenient kind of friendship for Thom.’
‘For both of us.’ She shifted straighter, annoyed at having to defend something that didn’t need defending, least of all to him. ‘Look, sleeping with him was an aberration. We were both feeling crappy over … stuff. A night of drowning our sorrows ended in bed. Big deal. Like we’re the first people to ever do that. The world didn’t stop spinning because of it, and neither did our friendship.’
‘So it won’t happen again?’
Annoyance flared. At what point had this conversation U-turned into being all about her? She wasn’t the one with a fiancée and a screwed-up heart.
‘Who knows what could happen next time I’m drunk and in need of a bit of comfort?’
Patrick regarded their still-tangled fingers. Slowly, he raised his eyes. Even in the poorly lit car there was no missing the question in them.
‘Oh, Patrick.’ Gently, she extracted her hand from his. ‘Please don’t mistake compassion for something else.’
For a breath he stared at the space where their hands had been, then suddenly he was out of the car.
Feeling awful, Tash followed. Patrick was standing at the edge of the garden with his fists in his pockets, staring at stars that seemed as infinite as his sorrow. Tash wished she could hold him to her and never let him go. She wasn’t handling this well, and worse, she’d lied. Suppressed below her compassion was desire, and it was yanking on its chains hard.
‘Would it be so bad?’ he asked, looking down to search her face. ‘Me, I mean.’
‘No, I’m sure it’d be wonderful. But I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know why. You still visit her every day. You slide your ring on her finger and you talk and you care. You still believe, Patrick. That’s why.’
‘And if it weren’t for Maddy?’
There was the impossible question. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what the point would be, and I …’ Tash didn’t need the heartbreak. With Patrick there’d be no pretending it was all a meaningless fling, no jokey fun like with Thom. With a man like him it’d be real. For both of them. ‘This isn’t long-term. My future is elsewhere, yours is here.’
He breathed out and rocked back a little on his heels, his focus once more on the velvet sky. For a long time he didn’t speak. Tash’s skin began to goosepimple in the cooling air but she didn’t want to leave him.
He blinked several times as though clearing his eyes. Then he rubbed his mouth and dropped his arm heavily. ‘I miss my life.’
‘I know. And I feel for you, I really do. But you have to understand I am not, and never will be, your Maddy substitute.’ She placed her palm on his back. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not as much as me, Tash. Not as much as me.’
And with a long defeated sigh, he headed for the house.