Page 111 of People Skills

‘Two weeks,’ Mum says. ‘I didn’t say it back for another two weeks after that. I had some dignity.’

‘How did you know so soon?’ I ask. And have the courage to tell each other, I want to add but don’t.

‘We were only twenty-three. We were young enough that it didn’t feel risky to just jump into things,’ Dad says. ‘Once you’ve been knocked around by life a bit, things can be harder.’ He squeezes my shoulder. ‘And I really did have a cockroach problem, I probably would have fallen in love with anyone who gave me a clean place to sleep.’

Mum elbows him.

‘You’ve definitely never mentioned the cockroach part before,’ I say.

‘Your father’s friends were very slovenly,’ Mum says. ‘And I was too young to know that you don’t take in a man who is running from something.’ She’s frowning at the TV, still clicking through options.

‘Sometimes it works out though,’ Dad says, kissing her cheek.

33

I STAY ALL of Monday and Monday night at my parents’ house and return to Barwon Bay on Tuesday morning. I go straight to the office, so I don’t see Xavier until Tuesday night. He texted me, a joke about promising to still lock up his phone, sent at 6.03 pm, and I wrote back noting the lock-up time had passed. We bantered a little. He didn’t mention the sex, or the conversation about it that we’re yet to have, and neither did I.

I thought I would come back from visiting my parents with a clear head, knowing what to do. But I’m more confused than ever. I need boundaries, I decide. I’m not going to sleep with him again until I know what is going on between us. But, the truth is, I don’t know what I want. My heart wants to be with him; my head wants to keep my job, and my life, safe. Because if Hillary finds out I’m sleeping with her son while she’s working to get him back with Lana, she won’t be happy. And things will be weird between us. She’ll freeze me out, or fire me, or just wait out my contract and then not give me a reference. It will all have been for nothing.

And this is all beside point, because I don’t know what Xavier wants. Probably just some fun sex for a while before he moves back to Melbourne.

I walk into the house, and I can hear him clattering in the kitchen. He hurries out when he hears me, looking flustered. He’s wearing an apron.

‘Hey,’ he says.

‘Hey,’ I reply.

I’m finding it hard to look at him. No, that’s not true. I’m finding it hard to do anything but look at him, and that’s the problem. I can feel every cell, every part of me straining to be near him. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.

‘Why are you wearing an apron?’ I ask.

‘I was baking,’ he says.

‘What are you baking?’

‘It’s a surprise,’ he says.

The apron is dark navy blue with brown leather straps and with the logo for Simone’s bar stitched in the corner. The way it hangs around his neck, slightly crooked, the way he’s messily tied it at the back, his grey T-shirt underneath, his shaved head—I can hardly stand it. I can feel desire racing through my bloodstream like I’ve just injected a drug. I am attracted to him in a way I have never been attracted to a man before. I want to photograph him because he’s so beautiful, I want to press myself into him until his body is indented into mine like I’m sand.

‘I’ll need to go into the kitchen at some point,’ I say, forcing myself to look at anything but him.

‘Give me five minutes,’ he says, turning around. ‘How are your parents?’

‘Good.’

‘Still trying to talk you out of living here?’

‘Always.’ I sit down on the couch, my legs jiggling.

‘What was their tactic to lure you back?’

‘The usual—British television and guilt.’

He’s talking to me from the kitchen, and it feels, on the surface, like maybe we can slip back into the way things were before. Yes. We can do it. The sex was a blip and going to my parents’ has reset things. I can do this.

He pokes his head around the corner of the kitchen. ‘Okay, you can come in now,’ he says.

I walk in, and it’s a bit of a disaster zone—bowls and pans in the sink, open packets of things sitting out—but the bench is wiped clean and sitting in the middle of it is a cake. Tall, multi-layered, and covered in chocolate ganache, with chocolate curls and wafers and honeycomb balls on the top.