DELLA

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Present Day

 

 

 

ME AGAIN.

Strange, huh?

I closed my laptop a few hours ago, intending to put aside my past and the emotions that are tearing me up inside, but I can’t sleep.

I can’t stop thinking about Ren.

Always Ren.

I want to cry to relieve the aching pressure in my chest every time I think about him, but all I can do is laugh in the darkness and try to expand my ribs to contain the ever ballooning need that will never earn what it wants.

Melodramatic enough for you?

Too much for me, and I’m the one living this soap opera.

You know, until that last chapter, I’ve never actually said those words out loud…

Those terrible words that tear away the curtain and light up the truth in blinding stage lights with orchestras playing sad strings and empty amphitheatres pitying the poor wretched soul admitting such a tragedy.

Never really allowed myself to admit what I’ve known for so long.

I’m in love with Ren Wild.

It looks even worse in bold, doesn’t it?

It looks like a life sentence that I can never be free of…which in a way, is exactly what it is.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment my childish affection turned to teenage crush turned to forever kind of addiction.

But what I do know is I will always love Ren.

I will always be in love with Ren.

And I also know I will never have him, and I’ll end up marrying some other man who doesn’t reach into my heart or has power over my every living breath like he does.

Anyway, enough of my present-day dramas.

You’re not here to hear about that…not yet, anyway. There’s still a fair piece of the story to go before I can share what I did yesterday or today or what I have planned for tomorrow.

Spoiler alert: I have no plans for tomorrow apart from ensuring my lies are hidden and my smiles are innocent, and my deep, dark desires are tucked far away.

Same as every day…nothing new, so I might as well give you something interesting.

Let’s return to Cherry River.

I ended the previous chapter talking about Ren being ill with chicken pox and kind of went on another tangent about Cassie (grr) and my idiotic behaviour (ugh).

Cassie…

My favourite subject, and yes, I’m being sarcastic.

I know I keep flogging this subject, and this is the last time, I swear, but when it was just me and her…I loved her. I need you to see that.

I wholeheartedly adored that girl.

But when it was the three of us…well…what can I say that I haven’t already?

Ren was mine.

Even as a kid, I’d known that. To a seven-year-old, my need for Ren stemmed from being the centre of his attention, the favourite in his heart, and confident in my place as first within his life.

Cassie threatened all of that.

And now, as an almost-adult, I can say she threatened my future too.

I didn’t know it then, but over the years, she and Ren got close—even when they weren’t sneaking behind barns or into stables to make out, they still had a fondness for each other.

Ren would often drop everything whenever she called on the emergency cell phone she’d make him have on the nights she’d sneak out with her troublemaker friends.

I’d tagged along with him for a few pickups.

Whenever that phone rang—way past midnight when John and Patricia believed their innocent daughter was safely tucked up in bed—Ren and I would ‘borrow’ the Land Rover and drive to wherever she was currently tipsy and partying.

She’d squeal my name, grab my hands as if I was her favourite person, then dash to the driver’s side and plant a big, wet kiss on Ren’s mouth.

I hated that, but I didn’t mind her floppy and giggly in the back seat, regaling us with tales of bonfires and who hooked up with whom that night.

She was hard work, but she made it enjoyable by including us in her escapades.

Ren and I would share a look from where I sat up front with him. He’d roll his eyes and whisper things under his breath only I could hear—copying her or mocking her—our own little game.

In a way, Cassie made us become closer.

We had something in common, and we all shared a secret that the adults didn’t know about. Even Liam didn’t know what his sister got up to at night, and I enjoyed being in the big kids group even if I didn’t understand what she meant when she used words like fucked and fingered.

During those conversations, Ren would turn on the radio and make me dance along with him. He’d drive one-handed while grabbing my arm with the other, distracting me with loud music from whatever naughty things Cassie was confessing.

Anywho, I did it again…I went on another Cassie tangent.

I’m not talking about her again for a while.

Ren.

I want to talk about Ren.

I better start by saying, he survived the chicken pox.

Obviously.

He healed faster than I did, bounced back to a boy full of health and was back on the tractor even before his skin was spot and scratch free.

Cassie returned to her popular world of friends and sometimes-boyfriends, and I was able to focus in school again, returning to the top of the class and hanging out with a girl called Celine who I swapped lunches with (she got chocolate while I got yoghurt…so naturally, I wanted what she had).

Life was good.

In fact, it was super good for the rest of the year.

During summer, I’d help Ren with his copious amount of chores around the farm, and in winter, we bunkered down just the two of us in our warm one bedroom.

I’m sure some days stood out where happiness was acute and misery was absent, but right now, I’m drawing a blank on anything super special to write about.

I don’t mean to sound as if life wasn’t amazing because it was.

Life on a farm was full of routine and new things every day.

Sunrise was our alarm clock, noon was our opportunity to stuff hungry bodies with delicious home-cooked meals, and evenings were spent with the Wilsons or ourselves.

The Wilsons gave me and Ren a safe place, and Ren gave his labour to ensure I lived a perfect childhood.

I couldn’t have been luckier.

And that’s why I’m going to start skipping forward to years I do remember clearly because, as much as this assignment is no longer for public reading, I don’t want to bore myself. Especially, when I have some juicy memories just begging to be written.

Let’s start with 2008.

The year started off awesome because it was just me and Ren camping in the hayloft in our old tent for New Years. It was smaller than I remembered and cramped, but we spent the evening eating candy, and Ren caved under pressure to tell me story after story.

He told me what he did during the days while I was at school. He painted pictures of himself saving a couple of sheep from a neighbour’s farm who had tangled themselves in the boundary fence. He regaled secrets of getting too hot hauling hay on his own and jumping naked into the same river where we all swam.

He made me laugh.

He made me fall asleep knowing 2008 was going to be the best year ever.

And in many ways it was, but it was also full of embarrassing moments as I started to grow up faster than before.

For the past year or so, I’d been acutely aware that older kids and even adults kissed, touched, and did things that I was curious about.

I’d wanted to ask Ren why watching him kiss Cassie made my tummy go queasy, but a curiosity welled to know more, too.

But I never dared.

I never asked the questions burning inside me, swallowing things like: ‘Why do you have different body parts than me? Why does Cassie rub against you like a moronic cat? Why does Liam have the same body as you but smaller? Do you rub against Cassie like a moronic cat, too?’

Silly things but things I desperately wanted to know.

Kids at school tried to educate each other thanks to overhearing parents talk, and so far, I’d gathered snippets about birds and bees and squirms infecting eggs and eggs being delivered by cranes which weren’t really eggs like chickens laid but babies, and sometimes babies were caused by other magic when daddies touched mummies where pee comes out and then she got fat.

It made no sense to my unenlightened child brain, and I was too embarrassed to ask Ren.

I was even too embarrassed to ask Cassie.

So who did I ask?

Probably the one person I shouldn’t as he was just as clueless as me.

I turned to Liam Wilson. Nine years old, boisterous but shy and still obsessed with lizards.

Including the lizard in his shorts.

And that was how Patricia Wilson found us one summer afternoon.

God, I’m blushing even now.

I can’t believe I’m about to write this down, but here I go…

Liam and I hung out but not all that often.

I liked him, but I found him so young and silly compared to the calm, collected reservation of Ren. Liam squealed and charged. Ren spoke with rough serenity and moved with assurance.

Ren was mature with his rough-stubble cheeks and strong muscles. Liam was juvenile with his baby face and twig arms.

But Ren was too perfect to sully with gross things like what I wanted to know, so I figured Liam would be the perfect teacher.

Basically, I asked him to show me his if I showed him mine.

Obviously, I know now why he was only too happy to oblige. It seems all boys are happy to get naked for the right incentive.

We clutched hands, heat blooming on my face and scandalous danger welling in my chest as we left the house where Patricia was tending to her roses and walked quickly to the shaded grotto around the pond.

There, we stood awkwardly until Liam pointed at my summer dress with splashes of purple and pink and told me to pull it off.

I remember the rush of naughtiness even then, quickly swamped by shivers of fear.

Hiding my quaking hands, I grabbed the hem and jerked the dress over my head and stood bravely with just my white knickers on.

He nodded all business-like and the severest nine-year-old scowl I’d ever seen, then unbuckled his shorts, shoved them down his legs and ripped off his t-shirt.

I’d seen Ren naked many times—not so much recently, but I had memories of thick legs, hair-covered thighs, heavy flesh dangling between them, and a stomach and back rippling with light and shadow whenever he moved.

Liam was a sapling while Ren was the oak.

He shrugged in his white underpants, almost identical to mine. “Now what?”

“I dunno.” I shrugged back. “Where are your squirms?”

His nose wrinkled. “Squirms?”

“You know, the things that make mummies fat, and then birds deliver babies.”

“You’re weird.” Pointing at my knickers, he commanded, “Maybe you have squirms. Take them off and we’ll see.”

“You take yours off, too.”

He nodded sharply, hooking his fingers into his underpants waistband. “Okay. One…two…three.”

We both shoved down our underwear and kicked them away at the same time.

I stood barefoot.

He stood in his socks.

We stared at the differences in our bodies, moving closer in fascination.

“It’s so small.” I reached out to touch the worm-like thing between his legs. “Ren is bigger. Did yours shrink?”

He batted away my hand, poking his finger in my nipple. “You have no tits like Cassie. Did yours shrink, too?”

I looked down at my flat chest, so much like Liam’s and not at all like Cassie’s fullness. An awful pressure of inadequacy filled me, of fear that I was deformed, of terror that I needed what Cassie had to make boys like Ren notice me.

My shoulders slouched. “I don’t know how to get tits.”

Liam sighed. “I don’t know how to get a bigger worm.”

His melancholy matched mine, and I found a kindred soul. Wanting to cheer him up, I smiled. “It’s a nice worm, though.”

He returned my smile with a trace of self-consciousness. “Thanks.”

We looked at the ground, exhausting our ability of conversation and not sure what to do next. Then I had an epiphany which well and truly got us into trouble.

“Liam?”

He looked up. “Yeah?”

“Do you know about kissing?”

His nose wrinkled again, but this time his whole face joined in, scrunching up like a prune. “Eww. Mummy and Daddy do it, but it’s gross.”

“Cassie and Ren do it,” I confessed. “And I don’t like it.”

“I don’t like it, either.” He stuck out his tongue as if he’d tasted something nasty. “Yucky.”

“Want to try?” I gulped, cursing the words but also eternally curious.

“What?” He backed up again, his worm bouncing. “Nuh-uh. No way.”

“Just one. Don’t you want to know?”

“I know already. It’s gross.”

“I know but how gross?” I followed him as he stepped deeper into the grotto; his socks soaking up the damp ground and my bare feet skating over slippery leaves. “Don’t you want to know why they keep kissing if it’s so gross? Don’t you want to know why they seem so happy afterward?”

I rubbed at the fist wrapped around my heart.

Happiness was never something I’d begrudge Ren, but happiness from kissing Cassie drove me into a painful place that I couldn’t untangle.

“I dunno.” He finally stopped, not that he had anywhere else to go. His back pressed up against the weeping willow, its fronds all around us like a magical fairyland. “Why do you want to know?”

“’Cause I’m sick of not knowing. I want to know everything.” Brushing aside a frond, I stood directly in front of him.

He eyed me warily. “I want to go back.”

“We’ll go back after a kiss, okay?” I hated that I was the younger one, but I was the teacher in this. I didn’t like it. Here, I was seeking answers, and instead, I was giving them to him instead of the other way around.

“One kiss?” He looked at me sceptical. “Then I can go?”

“Yup.”

“And you won’t tell anyone my worm is small? ‘Cause if you do, I’ll say you have no tits.”

“Deal.” I stuck out my hand, glad he made us promise because I didn’t want that secret getting out. Tits were something older girls had, and I wanted so much to be an older girl.

I was sick of being in the dark and categorized as too young to know.

Liam placed his hand in mine, and we shook hard. Still touching, we brought our heads together while our naked bodies stayed put.

He puckered his lips.

I copied.

He sucked in a breath.

I copied.

Our lips met in a flurry of pressure.

It was over.

It’d been the same sort of kiss Ren had given me time and time again. There were no secrets, no answers, no wisdom to be found.

“Again?” I asked, tugging him forward, bitterly disappointed but determined not to stop until I understood why others seemed to enjoy it so much.

“Ugh, you said only one.” Liam exhaled, yanking his hand back. “This sucks.”

“One more and then you can go.”

“Promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” I drew an X on my flat chest.

“Fine.” He leaned toward me, looking bored.

I leaned toward him, trembling eagerly.

And just as our mouths met a second time, our little experiment was shattered.

“Liam! Della! What on earth do you think you two are doing!?”

Liam squealed and took off.

And all I could do was turn around and stare at Patricia Wilson’s sandal-covered feet, naked as the day I was born and still just as lost.