Grease Monkey Jive (28 page)

She nodded.

“What I’m saying is you kinda had me on my toes there. Not skilled with crying friends.”

Alex turned fully to him. “Am I supposed to believe you’ve never had a crying girl on your hands before?”

“Crying girls, as in I caused them to cry – yeah, been there plenty of times.” He dropped his head, suddenly heavy with the memories of women with mascara stains on their faces, Katie among them. “But this was different for me, so I hope I did ok?”

She said softly, “You were amazing,” and he almost missed it over the sizzle of the bacon and the whistle of the kettle. She was so withdrawn now, cool and professional Alex, the change making him nervous in his own kitchen.

Alex served up hot buttery toast, scrambled eggs, and crispy bacon, and, with the food and coffee, they both started to feel a little more awake, a little more human. But Alex wasn’t saying much and Dan could see that she wanted to cut and run. He didn’t blame her.

At the front door, being quiet with each other blossomed into full blown awkwardness, the two of them trying not to touch in the narrow hallway, with Jeff tangling between their legs. Dan opened the door and stood back to let Alex through, Jeff choosing the moment to throw himself bodily across the doorstep.

“Out!” he snapped, making both Jeff and Alex start. Jeff retreated to the landing and Dan said, “Sorry.” He didn’t want Alex to go, but knew she would. She shouldered her bag and moved past him.

“Alex.” She turned back. “A friend would give you a hug right about now, if you’d let him?’’ He opened his arms just like he’d done in the hallway only a few hours ago. She hesitated, then walked into his arms and he folded her into a hug while she rested her forehead on his chest. As she lifted her eyes to look at him, he placed a soft kiss on her cheek, like the one she’d first given him. “Take it easy, Alex.”

She nodded and he released her. She stepped around Jeff and was gone, leaving Dan confused, concerned, and bloody grateful his farewell had included her proper name and not his habitual see-a-girl-off-in-the-hallway failsafe.

“There’s this bloke at work, he’s got this mate who’s a girl, and he’s got a steady girlfriend. And last night, the friend who’s a girl, not the girlfriend, has a sleep over. You with me? Anyway this guy wants us to believe it’s all innocent and nothing happened. It’s completely suss, if you ask me,” said Ant, downing his beer.

“It’s not suss,” said Fluke. “I’ve slept with a girl without fucking her.”

“Why!” said Ant, nearly swallowing the bottle.

“God, Ant. It’s not so far-fetched.”

“Not for you.”

“Sandy, she was my best friend at teacher’s college. We were flatmates, but there was no attraction. She had a boyfriend. She’s married to him now. We were just really good mates.”

“So what? You’d get in her bed?”

“She’d get in mine. We’d lay there and talk. It was great. Sometimes we’d just fall asleep. There was nothing too it.”

Ant was shaking his head in complete disbelief. “Only you, Fluke.”

Dan said, “And me,” and immediately wished he’d kept it to himself, but it was so fresh and raw and he was keyed up about seeing Alex in the next hour for their regular lesson.

“You wouldn’t have the rank stupidity or the self-control to have a girl in your bed and not molest the fuck out of her,” Ant scoffed.

“Well, I must, because I have,” he said, knowing he had to tough it out.

“You!” Ant exploded.

“Yep and she was beautiful too, and I... we just went to sleep.”

“What else were you going to say then?” asked Mitch.

Dan slow blinked. “I was going to say I held her and she went to sleep on my chest and it was nice, but you bastards would just think that was more lies.” He was remembering how nice it had felt, to lay with Alex and feel her relax and watch her fall asleep. If she hadn’t been so upset, it would’ve been kind of magical.

“Who was the chick?” Ant fired across the table.

“Never mind.”

“Nah, you’ve gotta tell us now,” Ant said, getting right up in his face. “Do we know her? Ah, just looking at you I know we do. Who was it?”

“Not was – Is. And that’s the thing, Ant. She’s a friend, so it wouldn’t be right for me to brag about it, now would it?”

“A friend?” said Fluke. “Like a girl who’s a friend? When did this happen?”

“When you lot weren’t watching. Thank God.”

She wanted to go back to bed, shout at her mother, skip her morning lecture, and pound something, anything, so hard it smashed to bits. But she only had to do one thing instead: think about Dan.

Sylvia predictably raged. Alex had heard it all before. Men were not to be trusted. It was their nature to be self-serving opportunists. Romance was a construct designed to make women weak and dependent. Love was invented by poets, lust was just hormones. She had to admit in the light of the Phil affair, it all sounded reasonable.

Gran predictably made tea. She brought out the good cups and saucers and Alex wasn’t sure if that was meant to be cheering or her subtle way of celebrating the demise of Phil. She liked to think it was the latter.

She thought of Phil and felt nothing. At first she figured it must be numbness, the shock of absence. Any minute now the awfulness would flood in and leave her reeling like she had been in the early morning, half out of her brain with distress. But by her second cup of tea, she knew that wasn’t right. She wasn’t numb, she was angry with herself for being so taken in by him. In so many ways he’d shown he didn’t care, wasn’t really interested, and she’d chosen to ignore his signals. Did she think she could change him, make him more responsive? Yes, that’s exactly what she’d thought. She was thick with the stupidity of that choice, swollen with the comprehension she’d let a man be so important to her she’d compromised her own desires.

Two years. The tea leaves in the bottom of her cup would taste less bitter than the sour reminder she’d wasted so much time with Phil. She wasn’t going to waste a single second more.

An hour after she’d left Dan’s place, left the surprising nature of his care, he’d sent her a text.
RUOK?
Checking up. But she couldn’t be annoyed about that, he had every right. She’d rubbed the line right out, given him little choice but to deal with her hysteria any way he could. If she’d been designing a test for a man to pass, he could hardly have scored a higher mark.

She’d have had the same care from Scott, with more inspired catering and with tea laced with bite to help her sleep. And Scott would’ve understood as well, would’ve held her, soothed her, set her on her feet again, so why didn’t she go to Scott, in whose arms she’d played this drama out before, in whose response there was a guarantee?

That was the question she struggled to answer, and it made her feel slightly ashamed because the response was all bound up in the history of a kiss.

A kiss inspired by a hundred little touches, looks, and movements, and then germinated in a semi-dark corridor with a soft hug and a sharp slap, to be born quick with a safe touch to the cheek, then grown with the promise of lips meeting when no one was looking. A kiss fully matured, though staged and artificial, grafted on her heart to send shoots of light and heat zinging through her body whenever she thought of Dan.

The answer was hormones, pheromones, the science of the body, lust. And it had her in its clutches.

Alex didn’t go back to bed, shout, skip her lecture, or smash anything. She drank tea, dried her eyes, tucked her hurt pride back in its place, squared her shoulders, and thought of Dan. There was no reason for a line now, no reason not to scrub it out altogether and play a different game.

“Never did think much of corporate man, though he did have nice shoes,” said Scott and Alex felt his hug like home, familiar and comfortable. “How much should I worry about you?”

“Less than you might think necessary. I feel stupid for letting it happen, but I’ll be fine. I thought he was right for me, but he wasn’t exactly a barrel of laughs. I think it’s time for me to have some fun.”

Scott did a half squint, half eyebrow raise and looked slightly demented. “Should I be worried about that?”

“Only if I send up a flare.”

“Can you cope if I send one up now?”

“Sure.”

“I’m double-booked for a physio session. Can you take the beginners on your own? Trevor is going to do Advanced Latin and you can start Dan on the new routine.”

“Easy.”

Well, it would be, but all the students arrived on time except Dan, and Alex was suddenly nervous. What if he’d bailed? What if he’d taken one look at the mess she was last night and decided he wanted out? Dan, not Phil, had been the riff playing in her thoughts all day. It was almost inconceivable that he’d decided to quit now, but he was never late, not in all the weeks they’d been working together. She must have looked concerned because Mitch said, “It’s a funny story about Dan,” and Alex felt herself tense, her lack of sleep now a clear liability.

Mitch had his audience now. He leaned forward as though about to impart a secret, looked around the group, then threw back his head and roared with laughter. “His car broke down.”

Alex exhaled, felt her shoulders let go. He hadn’t run. He hadn’t quit. He was just late. She laughed too.

The mechanic arrived just as the laughter was settling.

“Laugh it up,” Dan said, walking into the centre of the group. “I’ll remember this when you need new spark plugs or your alternator chucks it in.” But he was laughing too, and the sight of him moving among the group, exchanging a private word here or there, made Alex’s heart swell. She wanted to pull him aside, look in his eyes, and read his thoughts.

“It was just too good,” said Mitch. “Like a plumber with a blocked toilet.”

“An English teacher with an illiterate kid,” Fluke chimed in.

“An accountant with a tax problem.”

“A dentist with a cavity.”

“I thought you weren’t coming?” Dan’s regular partner Jenni pouted.

“Couldn’t drag me away,” he said, but instead of looking at Jenni, he burned Alex with the intensity of his gaze.

Organising the class was easier than organising her thoughts, than stopping herself from making any excuse to touch Dan, to correct him, to reposition his hand, or tighten his frame. His presence on the floor was like a magnet, drawing her eyes when she should’ve been focused elsewhere. He wasn’t a beginner anymore, so he didn’t need her attention like the others did. There was no real reason for him to be in the class any longer, but he stayed to keep the numbers even, to hang with Mitch and Fluke, to win the bet and finish what he started.

Every time she cheated and sought his eyes, he was looking back at her. It made her look away, their eye contact a sport of thrust and parry, a precursor to something more sustained.

Dan watched Alex trying not to watch him. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he liked it. He’d worried about her on and off all day, under engines and hoods, on the phone to wreckers and manufacturers. For once the long hold on an insurer’s help line was a respite. He could daydream with impunity, think about the way she fit in his arms and in his bed without fear of doing himself damage with a dropped tool or a wrong part number ordered.

Something between them changed last night. He’d been scared she’d retreat, go cold, withdraw from embarrassment, and hide behind her teacher role. He was happy to be her student but there were other things he wanted to learn: the contours of her face, the delicacy and strength of her body, the thoughts behind her eyes. But rebound was a place he had no desire to visit.

Towards the end of class Dan saw a sudden flare in Alex’s eyes. She gathered herself, the muscles across her chest tightening, her shoulders. He followed her gaze and his sight was arrested by a man in the doorway. Dressed in an expensively cut grey suit, Phil had a worried expression and an enormous bunch of flowers in his hands – Phil, the cheat. Phil, the liar. Phil, the ‘lucky to get out of here alive’ if he so much as looked like he might upset Alex.

She was moving now through the class, to what? Confront Phil? Reconcile with him? Dan wanted to shout at her not to let the bastard suck her in with his sudden appearance and his armload of forgive-me blossoms. He held his breath and watched.

The rest of the class took it as a signal to take a break and scattered, most of them leaving the room. It might’ve been polite to do the same and give Alex her space, but there was no way Dan was going anywhere until he could read the wind. Taking his signal, neither Mitch nor Fluke moved any further than the bench at the side of the room.

Phil spoke first. “Alex, darling, I’ve been worried sick. You wouldn’t answer my calls. Are you alright?”

Alex stopped a few feet in front of Phil and stood, legs apart, arms folded tight across her body. “I’m fine. I’ve got nothing to say to you. You need to leave.”

Behind her, Dan breathed out.

“I’ve left her. We can be together, honestly be together.”

“You’re incredible, Phil. You can’t possibly think I would have anything to do with you now?”

“I love you, Alex. I’ve always loved you. It was just complicated. I always meant to tell you about her, but I didn’t want to upset you. I knew once I left her it wouldn’t matter. We could be together.”

“We will never be together.”

“Darling, you’re not listening to me. I’ve left her for you. Isn’t that what you want?”

Dan saw Alex shift, take a step back away from Phil. “I want you to leave.”

“Darling, you’re upset. I understand. Let’s go someplace more private where we can talk.”

“Please leave, Phil.” Steel and ice in her voice.

Phil held his hand out. “I’ll leave if you come with me.”

Alex said, “Go,” and Dan walked up and stood behind her, close enough to touch, close enough to get to Phil before he could get to Alex. “Mate, you heard what she said. She wants you to go.”

“Back off, grease monkey. This has nothing to do with you.”

Dan heard Mitch make a growling sound as he came and stood on Alex’s right. He looked at Fluke who grinned. There was no point in him getting up too – it’s not like they needed any more muscle on display.