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Birthday
Then
“Fred?”
Lips nuzzle my ear and I shiver, wiggling myself closer, wrapping my arms tighter, hooking my legs firmer.
“I told you. It sounds wrong coming from your pretty mouth.” Freddy rolls us so he is on top of me, and I wrap my jean-clad legs around his waist. The touching, kissing, and whispering in the dark has been going on for hours, so many levels of good I can’t compute them all. Every time I go to ask him a question: like what he has planned for my birthday, or what we are doing tomorrow evening, he distracts me with wicked goodness.
It’s eleven o’clock. I snuck down the stairs and let him in after Mum and Dad went to their separate bedrooms. It’s a good thing they sleep soundly because Freddy was barely through the door before he had me wrapped around his night-chilled body, kissing me with a passion our hours of separation had only intensified. When he pulled away, he gave me a shy, almost apologetic smile as he picked up my hand and led me up the stairs to my bedroom. Once the door was shut, he reeled me back in and made me burn all over again.
As promised, Freddy turned up after his race last weekend in once piece, a big smile on his face as he rode out a winning high. I caught onto his emotions, blocking out the negativity my mother had whispered into my mind as I stood waiting by the net curtains for the silver truck to turn up. The whispers turned into shouts of dispute, when after I’d seen him into the house, I announced Freddy was going to be taking me away as a birthday treat. It was Mum who reacted the worst. Dad didn’t seem that concerned about me; more for my mother, who went near ballistic after I made my plans clear. Freddy is now banned from the house, which is only slightly problematic.
Tonight is not only the eve of my birthday, it’s also the eve of Christmas Eve, a sucky day to celebrate the day of your birth if ever there was one. Dani and I would normally spend it together, but I haven’t heard from her. Freddy is spending tomorrow with me and then spending two days with his family before taking me away. Every time I think of us going away somewhere alone together, my stomach takes flight with the wings of a colony of butterflies. I want to talk to Dani about it, tell her how excited I am, how nervous I am, but her words from our argument the other day are still stinging in my ears. Truth is, I wouldn’t know what to say after walking away from her. I don’t want to apologise because I don’t think I was in the wrong, but at the same time, I know we always spend the Christmas break together and I can’t help wondering what she is doing without me.
Freddy can tell I’m distracted from his kiss because he pulls away and looks at me, his finger tracing along the edge of my lips. “You miss your friend. Just admit it and tell her.”
“No way!” I pout, which makes him swoop down and kiss me again.
“Why don’t you tell me what the row was about? Then I could give you some of my worldly advice.”
“Worldly advice?” I giggle, but my mirth is quickly cut off as a stinging wave of tears threatens to spill. I don’t know what to say to him. Do I tell him I was having a crazy rhetorical argument with my best friend on the off chance he may feel like spending forever with me? If I tell him, then he will know what I’m feeling, and even I’m too scared to put a name to it at the moment; even if I have an inkling of what that name would be that it could be something, some kind of something. It can’t be. It’s too soon.
I open my mouth and blurt. I tell him all about her saying that if I decided to stay local so I can be with him, I will end up being like my parents. I tell him she thinks I am being crazy, and the whole time I speak, he stares at the ceiling and contemplates my words.
He’s going to think I’m a crazy nutcase. I am a crazy nutcase. No one changes their future after only a few weeks together. That’s the stuff films and books are made of, not real life.
“What happened to your parents?” he asks.
It’s not quite the question I am expecting, and I cringe at the fact that out of my outburst, it’s my parent’s unhappy marriage he has focused on. “I don’t know, Freddy. They met young. When I was small it all seemed okay, well to me it did; then one day my mum just got this edge to her. Nothing was good enough, not me nor my dad. She became separate from us. Now she and Dad live separate lives under the same roof. I think they only stay together for me. But the truth is, I wish they wouldn’t.”
Freddy reaches his hand and brushes his finger across my cheek, a featherlight caress. When he moves it away, I see it’s damp from a captured tear.
Sitting up, he pulls himself into a cross-legged position in front of me. “That’s sad.”
“I guess when I was young, I used to think maybe it was me, you know, that ruined their marriage.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t know. I think there’s something wrong with my mum, but it’s impossible to talk to her, and when I’ve approached Dad, he’s always had an excuse ready at hand.”
Freddy picks up my fingers, weaving them into a knot with his own and raising them to his mouth, nudging his lips against my knuckles. “I think life is what you want it to be. Your mum and dad could have made it different if they’d wanted it to be.”
“What sort of life do you want, Freddy?” Too late, I ask the question before I can stop myself, holding myself back from smacking my forehead in stupidity as soon as the words are flying into the air.
He contemplates his response and the deafening silence makes my feet bounce and my heart bang against my ribs. “I don’t know. I thought I had it all set, but now maybe I’m starting to see things different.”
My banging becomes so loud he must be able to hear. Boom, boom, boom. “In what way?”
“I thought I would be happy following in my dad’s footsteps. Now I don’t know if I want more. Something of my own.”
For the longest time we sit still on my quilt, watching each other. I try to read his expression, but I can’t decipher it as easily as I want to, it’s in a foreign language I can’t translate for sure. Finally, he laughs and runs a hand through his hair, his eyes dancing. “This isn’t possible is it, Amber French?”
“What do you mean?” I literally can’t breathe now. It feels like my whole future could hang on this very moment. On the very next breath that I make. I pull air in, squeezing it into my chest cavity, ignoring the slick of my palms that are too hot against his.
“Us, this thing we have going on. It’s not what I ever expected, but now it’s here, you’re here, I don’t want anything else.”
“Bleugh.” My throat is so swollen, my heart hammering, my palms so sticky, it’s all I can manage.
