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She was in such trouble.
She paused on the crooked paving stones that bisected their front garden and shuffled her sketchbook to the opposite arm to free up her key hand. The January sun was already a tingling heat on the backs of her upper arms and it wasn’t even nine o’clock in the morning. Another scorcher of a day ahead. Glorious.
Unlocking the front door, she pushed it open. Jeeves, her black-and-white Spoodle, immediately came running, backside aquiver, sadly mauled toy duck clutched between his teeth, her own personal version of a rose-bearing suitor. Bending to rub his ears and his back, she went through the usual routine of greeting: thrice repeating her queries as to who was the good boy, admiring the duck and making a token swipe to take it away, always a crowd pleaser. She herded dog and duck back through the small carpeted hall to the living room, which they liked to call “open plan” but which was really a throwback to fifties architecture and a kitchen so small they’d had to divide the living space to build a new one. Throwing the sketchbook and her bag down on the kitchen counter, she dropped onto the smaller couch, a superbly uncomfortable brocade relic from Melissa’s student flatting days. Jeeves abandoned his coy courtship with the duck, jumped up beside her and leaned.
“Honeys, I’m home,” Sophy said, and yawned hugely.
From the plushy depths of the better sofa they’d bought two years ago, the one that had resulted in their eating cheese and vegemite sandwiches for dinner for the better part of a month, Melissa smiled at her.
“The heroine of the hour returns,” she teased. “How are you feeling?”
“And tell us,” said the lazy sprawl of lean muscle and impish grin at her side, holding up the morning paper. “Is it true that you single-handedly took on five masked assailants before succumbing to a grand mal seizure? Because considering that the closest I’ve seen you come to mortal combat is when that bee went down your dress at Christmas, I’m impressed. Truly.”
Sophy yanked the cushion from behind her back, threw it at Dale’s head and quirked a brow at Melissa.
“I thought you got rid of this pest months ago,” she said, grinning.
“He can’t resist me,” her cousin replied, deadpan. She picked up the discarded cushion and smoothed it. Melissa lived by the gospel of the pick up, smooth, straighten, dust, wipe and polish. Sophy lived by a system of scrawled post-it notes to remind her to change the sheets and clean the bathroom once a week. She usually remembered to do the washing when she woke up and couldn’t find any clean underwear. They had so far managed to live together for four years without excessive homicidal impulses on either side.
“I do feel her fatal fascination,” Dale agreed. “Or my radiator is shot and I need a lift to work.” His levity fell into an uncharacteristically solemn expression. “Seriously, though, Soph, you are okay?”
“Seriously, I’m fine,” Sophy returned. “It’s always horrible when it gets that bad, but it turned out to be more embarrassing than anything.”
“I don’t know,” said Melissa lightly, picking up her coffee mug. “I saw the footage on the news when I got home from the hospital last night. The hot security guy must have been a bit of a consolation.”
Sophy choked on the finger of toast she’d just snitched from her cousin’s plate.
“What?” she managed around a cough, licking a smear of margarine from her thumb. Jeeves leaned closer.
“The sandy-haired cutie who looked like Tom Hiddleston.” Melissa made a noise of approval. “I totally would.”
“Uh, ex-boyfriend. Right here,” Dale said dryly, and both women ignored him.
“Oh. Right.” Sophy forced a smile. “Yeah, I guess.”
Casting around quickly for a new subject, she noticed that her cousin’s wavy blonde hair had gained four or five pink streaks since she’d left the hospital the previous evening.
“Nice to see you were so prostrated with anxiety that you managed to dye your hair,” she said, snorting.
“Done out of love, poppet, done out of love,” Melissa drawled unrepentantly. “Were you all right getting a lift home with Lisa this morning? I could have come and got you.”
“No, it was fine. Lisa lives out by the medical centre anyway and she was heading in for a class at nine.” Sophy stole the last finger of toast. “Is there any more bread? I’m starving.”
“I did the shop yesterday while you were swooning your way into the headlines. Your artery-clogging loaf of white is in the pantry. Enjoy your premature death at sixty.” Melissa shoved Dale’s hand away from her coffee mug and rose to her feet. “Didn’t they feed you at the hospital?” she asked as she took the empty plate to the dishwasher.
“Oh.” Sophy thought back to the night before and Mick Hollister’s expression when he’d got up to leave and had finally noticed the contents of her dinner tray, the quiche not improved by having sat around for two hours. He’d handed her the sack of Thai food without a word and vanished from the room with that characteristic purposeful stride before she could protest. It had been her favourite: chicken stir-fry with cashew nuts, in quantities that could feed a small family. “No, they did.” She shook her head and rallied her fleeing wits. “But breakfast was at about six o’clock this morning. It was two Weet-bix and they forgot the milk.”
Melissa and Dale departed for the tourist bureau where they worked, in a flurry of arm touches and admonishments to spend the morning in bed. Sophy, who until that moment had fully intended to pack up her stuff and head straight to campus to start prepping her new piece, suddenly felt exhausted in the wake of the extroverts.
Walking wearily into her bedroom, she scooped up yesterday’s discarded clothing options, flung them over her desk chair, pushed a dog-eared Harry Potter book out of her way and flopped down on the bed. The sun shone red against her closed eyelids. She always got the sun in the morning; Melissa’s room trapped it in the afternoon. She opened her eyes and enjoyed the sensation of coming home after the long, sterile night in the hospital. She had always loved this room. The house belonged to her aunt and uncle, who had since moved to a large modern homestead ten minutes down the road by Lake Hayes. When she and Melissa had been growing up and before they’d started boarding school at thirteen in Dunedin, the nearest city, she had spent the afternoons at her cousin’s home while her parents were at work. This had then been the spare room. They’d taken it over with toys and forts and lip-synched to the latest pop songs, secure in the perks of being only children with no brothers on hand to witness the humiliation.
In the fundamentals, the bedroom hadn’t changed much. The wallpaper was still a pink floral nightmare better suited to an elderly spinster’s nightgown and the lightshade was a fantastically fringed homage to the seventies. Her current student budget didn’t lend itself to extensive renovation, although she and Melissa had been in total agreement that a splurge was necessary when it came to the brown shagpile carpet.
“It’s like somebody skinned Chewbacca,” Melissa had said with a shudder.
Sophy shoved a pillow behind her head and glanced at the bedside clock, wondering if she could fit in a decent nap before she had to be on campus for lunch. A warm furry presence appeared at her back, drooly chin resting on the curve of her waist, tail beating the bedspread with rhythmic thumps. Tucking her hand under her cheek, she closed her eyes again and began to drift.
She managed not to think about a pair of kind grey eyes for an entire six minutes.
