Being Kalli (13 page)

Saturday would have been a bad day if not for the fact I woke up to a text from Nate saying he’ll come over that night. Half an hour before he arrives, I towel dry my damp hair and stare down the line-up of hair treatments. I decide on my smoothing spray and run over my hair with the straightener to give it a perfect finish and a nice gloss.

Gloss!
I sound like some romantic fussing over her look for a date.
Am I glossy or glitzy enough?

I part my hair
in the middle and let it hang loose, so it comes just above my waist. I pull out and put away my sparkly royal blue eye shadow twice. That screams date, and I want to look more like gorgeous Miranda Kerr, just woken up from bed—screaming spectacular without trying at all. I shake my head, and dig back the eye shadow in the makeup bag. I layer on the mascara thick, work blush on my cheeks, and trade a lip-gloss for a lip-balm natural look.

Then I repeat that this is just a casual catch up.
Just play it cool.

Running around in my bra and undies ten minutes before Nate’s arrival, I throw on my leggings and a sleeveless top cropped just at my waist. In the mirror I take in my long body, my eyes drawn everywhere
they need to be, the hint of a bare stomach, and leggings, always a favourite. Then I run to the heater and crank it up so I’ll have no excuse to cover up it all with a big coat.

At the sound of a car pull
ing up in my driveway, I tell Mum to chill at the back of the house, and to take the boys to play drawings or blocks, or practically anything that will keep them busy.

I turn the TV on, flick to the music video channel and chill on the
couch, one knee bent, my arm resting on it. Nate knocks on the door, and I tell him to “Just come in.”

He looks so right it knocks my breath of air
away. I cover it with a chuckle, like
Oh hey, you’re here
, but I don’t know how that looks. He’s in washed-out jeans, and a fitted V-neck T-shirt with some grungy bands around one of his wrists. I look up to his face, and feel everything as usual. Same electrifying pale eyes. His effortless brown hair. Same smooth skin with a hint of stubble.

By the time I say, “Hey, come sit,” and pat the spot next to me, I can only hope it hasn’t been a
moment too long.

He falls into the spot
by my side, his shoulder grazing mine. He leaves it there and it feels so warm and cosy.

“Oh, hey,” I say again, leaning right over him to kiss his cheek
, hi.

This stuns him, but I feel him relax and he rests a welcoming hand on my
upper arm as he kisses my cheek back. His sweet woody-scented aftershave is in every breath I take. Eyes closed, I just want to stay leant over his body, my hand at his shoulder, his on mine, and feel a warmth that settles through me, unlike anyone who’s ever touched me has. There’s heat and then there’s warmth, and Nate is definitely warmth from head to toe.

A shiver tears down my spine.
Damn body has given me away.

“You cold?” he
says.

I pull back and force a smile. “Nah, all good. Let me get this thing for you.”

I come back into the living room, hearing Seth’s voice howling laughter and Tris whining
noo
to, I assume, Mum. As much as I love watching them play and laugh and cry, I pray they won’t come here.

Nate doesn’t notice me
arrive initially. He’s leaning against the back of the couch, hands dug in his pockets, not all to interested by whoever is almost naked on TV. Then he does look up, sees me hiding his “thing” behind my back like I’m a cheeky three-year-old and I can’t help but grin. He fights to keep a straight face, too.

“Okay,” I admit
, sitting, “it’s yours now, but I had to make it to get you here.”

His face is inquisitive, certain
ly not giddy, so I power on.

I pull the photo book
around into my lap and turn my back slightly, facing his front so we can both look at it the right way. Of course, this means he’s more to my side and behind, which I try to not think about. I also decide to breathe through my mouth, because without seeing him front on, and imagining what his expression is like, breathing in his sweet, woody scent is too much.

“
Here,” I begin on the cover page.

“
This is a book full of all the reasons why I appreciate you.

“
This first image is our group before school camp. You’d just eaten chilli noodles for a bet so your cheeks were flamed up, your eyes watering, your throat too tight to explain your pain, but I knew exactly what was happening to you by the various stages of pained looks in your eyes. I felt bad laughing since your eyes were red and glassy from the chilli, so I caught you around your shoulders and held you like a little kid just as the teacher took the one and only photo of us before we set off on the bus. We are trapped hugging forever on camera there, now, and I remember that was much better than a stiff smile like everyone else. I laughed and when you asked why I was shaking, I told you it was because I smelt some chilli from you and it made me feel weird.”

When I finish the story of that first photo, I
’m let down. I imagined a scenario where Nate shifted his knee behind my ass, the other one splayed out, so I would be between his legs. But I didn’t
expect
it, which makes the letdown easier to forget.

He hasn’t actually moved
, except I can feel his presence looming over my shoulder a touch more. The back of my neck warms while I pause and contemplate him internally, followed by my skin breaking out in goosebumps.

Nate picks up my arm, studies it
, and then rubs away the bumps there.

Purposely, I don’t look. I am falling in love with these
grabs at events all over again and don’t want to be the one to assume, ruin whatever we’ve got here.

I flick to one of a knot in a tree trunk.
“You had just joined the Photography class and I begrudgingly signed up too, since I didn’t really have a choice but to keep you company, you said. The first shoot, we went out into the yard and took photos of all the interesting things we loved. You said you loved that knot because the rest of the trunk was so smooth and perfect, and the knot was messy and shapeless and rough and spoke to you.”

As I come out of that photo, I flick the page, to turn to the next photo Nate took from early on in his photography days, but his hand comes out of nowhere and stops the page from turning. He holds his hand to the film cover
, the photo on that page, where I’ve taped the picture to the side and decorated two opposing corners with some designs to fill the space.

“You know,” Nate says, “there’s beauty in the imperfect sometimes.”

So close—to good or bad—I don’t want to turn and change this. Not seeing him, but feeling him behind me, smelling his scent now I’ve allowed myself to take him in. I fight the urge to turn to jelly and collapse.

I place my fingers over each corresponding finger of his
on the photo. Both of us begin working our fingers together, rubbing shapes onto each other’s skin.

I dig my head into my chest cavity.
“I never wanted to do that with him.”

“How could you? I thought
…” Pause. His breath, sharp. “I thought I heard some people fucking in the toilets or something and then when I heard talk spread …”

I know
, I think. Don’t tell me how it felt like your heart was torn up, stomped on and eaten by acid. I put it all on myself and felt the exact same thing when I realised what the fuck I’d done.

“I want to pretend it never happened. But did you really? Did he do that to you against the wall? Did you touch him? Anywhere? At all?”

“I kissed him, we made out for a moment or two but I swear I didn’t touch him. Just over his jocks. He just … did that stuff to me.”

Nate grunts, the result of gritting his teeth. “Okay.”

I don’t dare ask for more explanation.

“I don’t expect you to understand how my head works, because I’m still trying to figure out why I did it, but I didn’t even want to touch him.”

Nate’s lips come to my ear, and he traces my skin with his lip. “Back up,” he whispers.

I shuffle back, but he catches my waist. “No, not like that. Back up to the part where you said you don’t know why you did it and you didn’t want him.”

Nate doesn’t drop his hands from my waist, and this proves overwhelming. I can’t think or utter a word in response.

“I’ve never wanted him.”
I go on. “I’ve actually never liked any guy in that way. No one, until you. Stupidly, I assumed handling you as I did all those other guys was expected and normal and usual, but you’re not any of that.”

I hang my head,
again. I feel for his hand at my waist, and hold mine over it to feel his skin. Nate tries to turn me to look at him, but I still can’t. This could go bad or good, and looking might make him see the dirty whore I am. The ruined person inside. But he’s too strong for me, so I close my eyes and twist.

Before I open my eyes
I need to finish my thoughts, before I feel this is real and shut up about my feelings as I’ve always done.

“You’re the first boy I’ve liked, and I had no idea I liked you. Like is
n’t even right because I’m just …”

I open my eyes and see the want in my thoughts mirrored in his gaze. I hold
out my hands and they won’t quit trembling.
How stupid!
I clamp my hands on each other, but still feel it.

I don’t realis
e the shakes are gone until some time passes.

“I feel everything with you. I’m sorry it took years to get close, weeks to feel so intensely about you, and an instant to hurt you in the worst possible way.” I look up
, my gaze direct, and say, “But I was running away from me, not you, and I hate that I had to fuck up to realise I like you.”

His eyelashes flutter, and his
forehead creases.

“
What did you say?”

“I like you, and more.”

“I needed to hear that before. Like, shit, we weren’t together, but we had something, ya know? To me, that something didn’t need to be said. I felt something with you.”

“Me
… too.”

Nate shakes his head, chuckles once. “You didn’t feel the same way about me as I did for you, if you could do that.”

“That’s the thing.” I stare into his eyes, feeling how I’d rather just dream and be lost in them than whatever train wreck I cause every time I say something. “I knew we had more. I felt it, because I knew I was fucking it up. I didn’t want to hurt you, but I’m used to hurting me, and so I kept hurting me. I didn’t know what the hell to do with everything I felt for you, because I didn’t realise I was repressing.”

“That’s
… God.” I think I hear him whisper as he draws his big hands down his face. “I came here to listen to why you did it and walk out.”

“
Don’t go,” I tell him. I beg him. I’m reduced to pleading, and I know it won’t work because begging puts a person off more, but I’m desperate, wanting to just bear hug him so he can’t leave.

I draw the line before there, though.

“I have to,” he says.

And leaves.

• • •

Sitting at my desk, I have shamelessly spent the last quarter hour doodling hearts on sticky-note pads, my
uni diary and other papers. I go back and erode the edges to give them a grunge look, and my latest one has a spear through it, and it leaks lead blood. My hair is pinned behind my ears, and after a while I feel tension between my eyebrows where I must have had them scrunched for too long. The air has been still and invisible, like a portal that keeps me in my own world and other comings and goings separate.

As soon as I hear a knock at my door, I unhook my hair from my ears to
frame my face, but it’s just Mum.

I expected that
.

She asks if I want to come on a shopping day with her and the twins, and I agree, telling her to just chill out and I’ll ge
t their stuff ready and whatnot.

“Want a shopping trip? Mu
m wants to buy you some monster trucks. I told her you guys would love it?”

My unsure voice has Seth and Tristan pleading.
I get Seth into a printed top with a little hoodie. Tristan couldn’t care less, so I put him in jeans and a plain, long-sleeved shirt.

When I come back from getting the boys ready,
Mum’s softly snoring. I tell the twins to shush and get their favourite fruit bars and tubs of sliced fruit in juice for when the time comes and they’re starved to death. When I’ve packed a little paper bag I toss it in my handbag, and they sink to their knees on the rug, building structures with their blocks.

I
sit on the tiles beside Mum on the couch. She looks peaceful resting, but must sense me there and her eyes snap open, jolting me back.