AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So, what do you think of Star and Trevor?”
Summer shrugged. “They’re okay. They tried hard to make things nice for me.”
I thought about how Star had made me coffee when I came to fetch Summer. She was dressed in tiny shorts with a tank top, the way she’d dressed when I met her as a young woman. It made me think of the Star I used to know, the way things had been between us when it was still good, before a baby and the shock of adulthood slammed into our faces.
I knew I was hard on Star, the way I was hard on most people, even myself.
“I like Evie,” Star had said, as I was sipping my coffee.
“Good,” I said.
“She’s young,” she said carefully. “But not too young,” she’d added.
“Trevor is a bit old,” I’d said. “But probably not too old.”
Star laughed. “You always were a bit of an arsehole.”
I laughed too. “Not just a bit. A lot, I hope.”
She shook her head. “You’re the only guy I know who would want to be called an arsehole!”
“It’s because it’s honest. I don’t care about pleasing people, I do what I want and like it or not, that is who I am.”
She nodded, poured herself some water from a special urn with leaves and seeds floating around in it.
“Trevor and I have been going to this couples therapist ahead of the wedding? He is an Eastern philosophy guru, very much into healing the inner child to become a fulfilled adult.”
I thought of my inner child and what it wanted.
I didn’t think giving ten-year-old me any airtime would be good for my adult self. I remember myself being quite a little shit at that age, going around pranking my brother, trying to scare my mother and giving her and my father much to think about. I was constantly in trouble, trying to break the rules, push boundaries. For my father, the lawyer, and my mother, a homemaker, I was a bit of a mystery. Why couldn’t I be a good boy like my brother? Just do what was expected of me? At some point, I thought it was expected of me to be the bad boy. Of course, then I got suspended from school and had to finish high school at a notorious city public school where I got to deal with different kinds of problems.
Star was oblivious to what was going on in my head.
“The therapist said we needed to love ourselves, to give ourselves the attention our parents never gave us.”
Such crap. I knew Star’s parents, they were lovely people. Ordinary, decent, it wasn’t their fault that Star, much like me, had wanted more out of life than they could give her. She, just like me, had rebelled against the order of her universe. It had gotten her into more trouble than she should have been. But Star was pretty and skinny, with an attractive pout that caught the boys’ attention early on. She knew how to use it too, partnering it with a sidelong glance from heavily-mascaraed eyes. Worked like a charm.
“Do you love Trevor?”
“Love is a very Western concept and it has come to mean so many different things,” she said, all serious, and I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. “We are thinking more of ourselves as two separate parts coming together,” she said in a sing-song voice.
“Like slices of bread in a sandwich?” I asked innocently.
A pained look came over her face. “That’s typical of you Tate, trying to break down what you don’t understand.”
But I didn’t want to fight with her.
“I’m glad you and Trevor are happy,” I said.
By the time I’d left with Summer, my mood had changed again. I wasn’t sure what I was feeling now, but I didn’t like it.
I was walking around the shops, waiting for Summer, when Evie called me.
“Where are you guys?” Evie asked.
“Summer is looking for some shop she heard about from Adam,” I said.
There was a moment of silence when neither of us spoke. The silence felt heavy, expectant. Like we were waiting to hear something. At the same time we started talking,
