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The sound of movement. Reece standing. “Are you going to be a handful when you’re sixteen?”
“No.”
“You’ll be like all my sisters rolled into one. Smart, too good to be true, tricky and a gobble guts.”
“Can I play with your sisters?” Mia’s feet were on the floor too.
“They’re a bit big for you.”
“No. They aren’t. You’re a bit big for me and you play with me.”
Reece laughed. “You’re smart already.”
“Can we wake Mum now?”
“I’d be surprised if she’s not already awake.”
Reece was moving towards the kitchen. Audrey lay on her bed looking at the ceiling, her face a wreath of smiles. Mia followed Reece and the last thing Audrey heard was, “But we were quiet.”
That night Reece cooked steak. Mia was overtired and crazy. She knocked a full carton of milk into the fruit bowl, and had a tantrum when she wasn’t allowed biscuits. She wouldn’t talk to Audrey during her bath and went to bed with the sulks.
When Audrey finally closed Mia’s door, the kitchen was clean and the house was empty. She showered, dressed for bed, tried to read. It was still early. She heard Reece come in from his run and go to the guest room. His runners squeaked on the floor. She heard his bedroom door open and close, the shower in his ensuite turn on.
Minutes later, during which she did nothing except picture him standing under the hot water, soaping his ripped body, it turned off. She heard him go to the kitchen. He unstacked the dishwasher. He opened the fridge. She had no idea what the book on her ereader was about, but she knew Reece was drinking ice-cold water in the kitchen, wearing old track pants washed silk soft. She was acutely aware of every movement he made.
He went back to his room. She went back to the start of the chapter, but she might as well have gone back to the start of civilisation. She was a prototype person, crawling out of the mud, climbing the trees, losing her wings. Inexorably pulled towards a biological destiny that insisted she’d found a mate, and he was down the hallway waiting for her.
She got out of bed. She was wearing a set of pyjamas Esther bought her for Christmas before Mia, when they still did Christmas as a family. The elastic around the waist was dodgy and there was a tea stain on the front. She changed into a pale coffee coloured silk nightgown. She’d owned it for years and worn it once, for herself. It had spaghetti straps and a lace insert in the bodice. It was elegant and sexy at the same time, though it had once fitted much closer. She thought of Les because she didn’t want to think about what she was about to do. Les, who was prepared to risk humiliation in the name of her physical self. Audrey would make no such risk with Reece.
She ducked through a spray of floral scent. She didn’t have a headache. She felt rested. She felt warm with anticipation when she didn’t have a temperature and the night was cool. She put her hair up in a messy bun held by a soft band. There was still a faint tingling in her legs, but then her whole body was alight with sensation. She remembered she needed to take control at the last moment and that was almost the end of the adventure.
She’d stopped ovulating when she got sick, the sudden dramatic weight loss, the illness generally, but she still needed to be careful and she still needed to be safe, and if she was going to initiate this, it was her responsibility. At the back of her stocking drawer there was one condom. It was like a warning sign. One. It would be older than Mia plus pregnancy, plus some. It was a month off expiry. Another sign. She tucked it in her palm and walked down the hall. She cracked Mia’s door and looked in on her. She was a dark-haired cherub in a nest of stuffed toys.
Reece’s room was at the back of the house. There was pale light shinning underneath the door. She knocked. When he answered she opened the door and walked in.
“Audrey, what’s wrong?”
He’d been looking at something on his phone screen. He sat in bed, back against the wall, legs out straight under the covers. No shirt and the muscles in his abs laddered from the way he was sitting. He put his free hand down on the covers and she figured he slept naked and what she’d done by coming into his room like this was so extraordinary he was worried she might strip the covers away from him.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
He looked golden in the low watt light from the bedside table. His hair was still damp from the shower, slicked around his ears. He took a breath and his chest expanded to three times the size of the universe. What was she doing?
“Audrey?” He smiled, confused, and tossed the phone on the table.
She moved forward till she was in the middle of the
room. He watched her like she was an apparition, one of Mia’s monsters he might need to chase away, his eyes romping over her body, her bare feet and legs. The nightdress stopped mid-thigh and so did his gaze. Then it skipped to the lace at her chest. Her nipples were tight furled and easily visible. There wasn’t much detail left for his imagination to fill in.
“Ah.” He wet his lips. “I like that.”
“I hoped you would.”
“What are we doing, Audrey?”
She held out her hand, the condom square in her palm.
He blinked, twice. “Oh fuck, are you sure?”
