Saving from Monkeys (33 page)

"L followed by 'ove'?" I pressed, happy to concentrate on anything that wasn't Jonah's pained anger on behalf of his friend. "What happened to our promise to only do ‘ike’ at uni?"

"
’Ike’ just wasn't doing it for me anymore," she cut her eyes across to me crossly as she added, "something I assume you'll get once you stop trying so desperately not to think about it."

I gaped at her and she flung her arms up in frustration.
"Seriously, finish your exams and figure it out already." She grabbed up her coat and strode back over to the door and I realised, admittedly fairly belatedly, that it wasn't that she'd just
forgotten
to turn her annoyance off. She was
still
annoyed. She was annoyed at me.

I was on a roll today.

About to exit through the door she stopped, leaning back to look at me seriously. "I'm on your side, Rox, always, but right now I think you're due for a dose of clichéd advice, ready for it?" I wasn't sure I
was
ready, but she continued anyway, "Not everything's black and white." When I still looked dumbfounded she rolled her eyes. "Investigate your shades of grey, baby."

And then she was gone.
Awesome, exactly what I needed, more confusion swirling around.

The anger directed at me from both Jonah and Abi had scratched at my numb bubble, sliding in a sliver of pain that stung like mad.
Had I been thinking about Elliot? Yes, every second. Had I been thinking about how
he'd
be feeling? No, actually, not really. Seeing Jonah's fury, hearing him talk about Nan and saying that I'd abandoned Elliot had changed that…But
Elliot
had been the one to keep things from
me
!

The first inkling of what Abi had meant by shades of grey trickled into my consciousness, but I flicked it away uncomfortably.

I looked down blindly at my notes again until, bit by bit, they came into focus.
This
made sense. No mother undermining me, no best friend's boyfriend's cutting remarks, no esoteric advice from my best friend. No Elliot.

So, no, I didn't investigate my shades of grey
right then, I didn't have time. I had to study.

~*~

I smacked into the problem with basing my mental and emotional health on my ability to study for exams the minute my last exam was over. And I smacked into it
hard
.

I had aced my exams, I knew that, but I knew it in a detache
d, background noise kind of way that unsettled me right down to my core. Wasn't this supposed to be the point? Getting my education, being successful in that, it had been my aim my whole life. Knowing that I was a step closer to that and wanting to let out only the dullest of cheers, like a sarcastic emo waving a pom-pom, terrified me.

I almost felt like I had jetlag as I struggled back to my room.
A worthy simile as, if the lead up to the exams had been a journey, then I was at the destination and now I had to decide what on earth happened next.

To a certain extent this decision was taken out of my hands as I crested the stairs back at the residential building and saw Elliot sitting outside my door, dressed in jeans and similarly coloured top.
His lifted his head as I approached and, after everything, the overriding look in his eyes was one of wariness. Well then, there was no denying we had things in common.

"Hey there, Little Boy Blue," I said weakly. "What are you doing here?"

"You've just had your last exam, right?" He asked, getting to his feet and pushing that infamous flop of hair out of his face. "You needed a semi-solid brain for that and you didn't want to answer my calls, fine, but now we talk."

Yippee
, I thought to myself, but I didn't even sound convincingly sarcastic to myself.

I unlocked my door and went into my room feeling, even though he was at least a couple of steps behind me, like Elliot was breathing down my neck.

"So," I stopped and turned, standing between the beds, probably so I could use them as a brace if needs be, "tell me."

He didn't pretend that he didn't know what I was asking and I was grateful for that.
"Christmas before uni started I found your mum crying her eyes out in the kitchen," he said bluntly, closing the door behind us and leaning against it. No denying it, he knew how much I wanted to bolt. "When I asked her what was wrong she said that she'd told you that she could pay for uni when she knew she couldn't. You know how there was a run of stuff that happened round then? Car breakdown, hike in rent, all that? She'd had to go into her savings. She tried to get a loan, but her credit rating screwed her."

I could see he was working to keep his voice even and calm and I tried to follow this example as I asked,
"Why didn't she tell
me
this? I wouldn't have been-" I stopped, suddenly unable to finish the sentence. What wouldn't I have been? Upset? Angry?

No, I had to admit to myself that I would have been both of those things. But then that was normal, wasn't it? To have your dream dangled in front of you and then snatched away? If I'd freaked out it wouldn't have been directed at
Mum
, just the situation…right?

"So why did
you
get involved?" I demanded, beginning to feel as angry and upset as they'd obviously feared I'd be three years ago. "What business of it was yours whether I could afford campus accommodation or not?"

"I could help." Elliot still kept his voice flat, but his shoulders had tightened at my response. "I was planning on throwing my parent's money back in their faces, but I could do some good with it before I did. Your mum had
cared for me for years and she needed a hand. What was I supposed to do?"

"Talk to
me
about it!" I exclaimed.

"Oh, yeah," his tone was suddenly thick with sarcasm
, "because we were
such
good mates back then. How would that've gone down?"

"I would have said no," I said hotly.
"My choice."

He raised his eyebrows. "And you would've lived happily ever after, right?"

"I would've taken a loan, or gone to a different uni. I could've gone down the pregnant stripper route if necessary, none of it would have been the end of the world," I insisted through gritted teeth.

"No, of course not," he growled in frustration, "but isn't your world better where you are?
Meeting Abi, killing it in your classes, coming out with a degree that every employer in the country will be impressed with? I thought that's what you wanted."

"It was. It
is
!"

The tight rein he'd obviously been keeping on himself suddenly slackened and he asked in exasperation, "So why are we having this conversation?"

"Because you've shamed me," I howled. "You have no idea what it feels like to know that you've been scuttling around behind my back making decisions for me. You clearly decided that I'm not a big enough person to deal with my mum not having enough money to provide for me, which is rubbish because I've been dealing with that my whole life."

He looked at me for a long moment and then let out a mirthless little laugh. "Great,
so long as you get to be the victim."

Was he for real?

"I
am
the victim," I pointed out, but he suddenly surged away from the door, standing over me as he almost shouted,

"No, you're the
one
person in this that everyone has tried to protect. Me, your mum,
my
mum, for God's sake, everyone's gone out of their way to let you keep your precious principles. And what's the difference here, by the way, between you thinking that my parents had paid for this place and you finding out it was me? You were fine with it being from my mum, but-"

"If you think I was fine with it then you're out of your mind!" I tilted my head up, refusing to be cowed by his close proximity. "I was
trying
to make it not matter. I was trying because I felt guilty that I'd judged the 'now' you, by how you used to be. Also, I thought that you had finally told me the truth, but no, Sinclair, I was
not
fine with it, I was
never
fine with it."

Bringing up the fact that he'd lied to me for so long seemed to check him momentarily, but then he scrubbed his hands through his hair and said, "Your mum asked me not to tell you, she
begged
me. You think I wanted to be responsible for ruining things between you two?"

"You're
not
responsible, though." God he was so
irritating
! Why didn't he get it? "You're not responsible for either of us, when are you going to get that into your thick head?"

A sudden silence fell and we glared at each other, both breathing heavily as if we'd run a 100 metre dash.

Unbidden, the thought of what Nan would say if she saw the pair of us basically panting in each other's company sprung to mind. Obviously she would have liked the heavy breathing to have been attributed to something a bit more lusty, but I think even us arguing would have amused her.

Thinking about Nan pulled me back from the edge as swiftly as if she'd reached down (or, let's face it, up) and yanked me away. I broke off my glare and looked down to pluck at my doona cover.

The days Elliot and I had spent together watching Nan slowly pass away, and the crushed hearts we'd experienced together afterwards merited more than this. They were worth pushing my anger aside for a moment, being a grown up and letting him see the other side of it; that I was hurt.

"Even leaving aside you choosing to make me your own special little charity project," I said, clenching my hands as they'd started to shake, "at some stage
over the last few weeks what I meant to you should have been worth more than some promise you made my mum."

He fell away from me as if I'd shoved him, his eyes dropping and searching the floor like he was looking for some loophole in my logic. He obviously didn't find one, and when he lifted his head again I almost found myself wishing he had. His frustration, exasperation and all other 'rations' I could deal with, his…humility was a whole other story.

"Yes, it should've," he said, sounding so different I wondered whether he'd had a Nan-related epiphany as well. "I'm sorry."

I sucked in a low breath, perhaps trying to counter the fact that the wind had been well and truly been taken out of my sails.
His expression told me there was more to come, so I was still holding that breath when he added, quietly, "But you know what? It'd be kind of nice to know that what I mean to you is worth more than your damn pride."

----------

It wasn't that he'd been expecting her to leap immediately into his arms and say that
of course
he was more important. Still, he would've preferred not to have her ignore what he'd said altogether.

But that's what she did, closing her eyes, before coming out with,
"I have to go home. I need to talk to Mum."

Her lack of an answer was like a kick to the guts
; if he'd been the dramatic sort he would've grabbed at his chest and staggered backward with the force of her dismissal. He wasn't, though, so he scouted round to try and find something to say in response.

Thinking to lighten the mood, he threw out,
"Do you need a lift?"

He saw instantly he'd made the wrong move as her eyes snapped open again, sparking furiously.

"
Seriously
? Were you even listening -?" She started to say and he jumped in quickly before she could get on a roll.

"Joke, bad joke," he explained, holding up his hands in case he needed to ward her off. "Catch the bus, walk for all I care."

She receded, the tiniest tug on her lips acknowledging his attempt at humour, and then said, "Right, so I'm off then." She seemed to freak herself out with these words and added in a rush, "I won't be gone long, though, it'll be a straight there, straight back thing. Then, you know, we can continue with all the super fun this confrontation thing has been."

He nodded, because what else was he going to do? He'd made his point and she was running away.

Still, because he hadn't touched her in over a week, and because he thought he was going mad because of it, he reached out and rested his hand on her upper arm. She looked down at the contact then quickly back at him as he gave a little squeeze then let go. That done, he let himself out of her room and started to walk towards the stairs, every step jarring. His good work on the 'keep walking, don't stop' front was blown to hell, however, when he heard the door open again and Rox say, "Wait a sec!"

He turned and she ran over, colliding into him with a thud and wrapping her arms around his chest. It was more of a face-plant than a hug, but her grip was tight.
Unsure which way the wind was shifting now, he hesitated for a moment, but then hugged her back, one arm around her waist, one hand cupping the back of her head.