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I wanted to laugh at that. Did I see him much? I hadn’t seen him since Mum left him. Well, there’d been once about a year later when we’d all pretended for one short week that Paris and I were going to split the holidays between our parents. Mum had picked us up from the airport, taken one look at our hunched shoulders and told Rocco that if he wanted to see his children then he’d have to visit us. Unsurprisingly, Rocco hadn’t visited.
“Nope,” was all the answer I mustered for Piper.
“Sorry, if you–”
Despite the uncomfortable topic, I tightened my arm around her shoulder. “No apologies, Barlow.”
“Okay. If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine.”
“Eh, there’s just not much to talk about. He gives me money in lieu of love and expects me to worship him.”
It was beyond Rocco why I didn’t love him unconditionally. In his mind, he gave me everything. Money. Cars. Prestige. Insults. Criticism. Back hands. He just couldn’t fathom why I hadn’t taken him up on his offer to move me to Sydney and finish my schooling in a place that would ‘straighten me out’. And this from the man who said even the harshest of military institutions wouldn’t be able to put me on the straight and narrow.
“He’s rich then?” she asked.
I huffed a humourless laugh. “Like fuck. How else do I have my car? He gives me an allowance and, if I need more, I just ask him. Mum, annoyingly, won’t let me help out with the mortgage. Dad pays the minimum, but he could do so much more. Still no matter how much I try, she won’t let me.” I couldn’t help myself sighing. “Something about it not being a kid’s job.”
And I understood it wasn’t, but I could have wheedled a small fortune out of Rocco. Paid off Mum’s house in full in no time. She’d never argued about him paying the minimum in child support. He was a big shot lawyer with a million connections, what would be the point? I’d tried arguing for her, but Rocco’s knuckles had put a stop to that.
“She loves you,” Piper murmured and I had to remind myself what we were talking about. When she put it like that, life didn’t seem so bad.
“She does,” I agreed and we fell into companionable silence.
I knew my mum loved me. It wasn’t a question that she loved me, and not just because she was supposed to or because she felt a need to fill a gap that Rocco had left wide open. She loved me. She saw through everything that made me who I was and, even though I disappointed her on an hourly basis, somehow still loved me. I knew I didn’t deserve it, that she deserved better, but I was a selfish bastard at heart.
After a while, I realised Piper was tapping her foot along to the music and I realised I was singing along softly. Neither of us were in a hurry to fill the silence. The void wasn’t something that needed filling. The void we’d found ourselves in was more like a safe place than a deserted prison.
I felt her take a breath in like she was about to say something but, before she could, rain broke over us. She tensed and yelped. I felt myself laughing and pulled myself to standing. I held my hands to her and she took them so unhesitatingly, blinking the rain out of her eyes. Looking at her, I could have forgotten it was raining.
As I pulled her up, her momentum didn’t stop and she crashed into my chest. My arms went around her instinctively as she flailed a bit. She opened her eyes as she looked up at me and I knew I was smiling at her like a prize idiot.
I just couldn’t help it. She was just so utterly kissable. And coming from a guy who didn’t kiss, I felt like that was saying something. But she’d always been kissable to me. I didn’t know why. Why her? What was it about her that drew me in? That made me so…addicted to her. I wanted her. Not just her body against mine. I wanted to know her mind, her heart, her soul. I wanted to kiss her. Nothing else. Just one kiss.
I had to break the tension before I did kiss her.
“You scream like a girl, Barlow,” I teased.
“Yeah, and I’m sure you scream like a real man,” she sassed me right back and I laughed.
Something in me softened as we looked at each other. I was a guy who’d usually find a joke to crack about bullshit like that, but not with her. Not about the way I felt when I was with her. Something about her made the words different. They weren’t just a mockery, an insult, weakness. They were something more. As bitter as they tasted on my tongue, I couldn’t bring myself to be the usual arsehole about it.
Lightning flashed in the sky above us and that seemed to pop whatever moment we were swept up in. She pulled away from me slowly and went to pick up her blanket.
“Here,” I said.
She passed me the blanket. I took her hand, still completely acting on instinct with her, and we rushed back towards our houses until we standing on her back verandah. I felt exhilarated and knew my smile was unnecessarily warm and sincere. I shook my wet hair from my eyes and looked down to see a similar expression on her face.
“I enjoyed tonight, Barlow,” just popped out of my mouth, but I didn’t regret it.
She bit her lip as she nodded. “I surprisingly don’t hate spending time with you, Lombardi.”
That made my smile widen. “Maybe it won’t be raining tomorrow night.”
“Yeah, maybe.” She looked down as though she was hiding a smile.
“I guess I might see you then,” I offered, not knowing why it was hard to just say good-fucking-night.
“You might.”
