Leaving Jetty Road (4 page)

chapter six

Out of uniform

A
t exactly 4:30 the next Saturday afternoon, Sofia walks into the café.

She’s timed it perfectly. The last of the customers left a few minutes ago, and we’ve already finished most of the cleaning. The coffee shop has been quiet all day: it’s cool and windy, which apparently doesn’t help business; and besides, the customers are all practicing what Michael calls “post-Easter stinginess.” I’ve spent the last couple of hours idly polishing glasses and wondering what Josh and I will do together tonight.

(“We
will
do something, won’t we?” I said to him in the kitchen this morning, anxiously. He was rummaging around in the fridge, and he looked up at me irritably to answer. “Of
course,
Nat; why
not
?” I don’t think he realizes how unsure I still feel around him. Not about my feelings for him, I mean: what worries me is how he feels about
me.
I keep thinking I must’ve dreamt the whole thing up, you know?)

I don’t actually see Sofe arrive because I’m out in the kitchen, putting the tea towels into a bucket of bleach to soak overnight. The first I know that she’s here is when her voice, loud and cheerful, rings through the café: “Is it too late to get a coffee?”

I rush out. She’s standing at the counter with a short, dreamy-looking ponytailed guy by her side. I look him over curiously. Is this the famous Aquatic Centre Nick?

Josh and Michael—who are out there with them already (they were stacking chairs on the tables when Sofia arrived)—also look intrigued.

“You know each other?” Josh asks me.

Hastily, Sofe and I make introductions. Michael shakes hands with Nick, nods at Sofia. Then he turns to me genially.

“Off you go, Nat. I was going to let you go in a few minutes, anyway.”

I turn to Josh, suddenly uncertain. “I’ll see you in a while, then . . . ?”

The minute the words are out of my mouth, I realize what I’ve done. I stare at Josh, mortified.
Don’t tell Michael about us,
Josh warned me on the phone this week.
He thinks relationships between colleagues are unprofessional. You know how fanatic he is about work.

Now Michael glances from Josh to me, and then back again. You can see his mind ticking over, making connections, going
click-click-click.
I feel myself blushing. Josh pulls faces at me frantically behind his back and pretends to slit his throat.

Finally, Michael turns once more to Josh.

“I guess you’d like to finish up now, too, mate.”

It’s a statement, not a question. Josh clears his throat, nods. “If that’s all right.”

Michael shrugs. Then, miraculously, he smiles. “Go on, then, the pair of you.” He wags a scolding finger at us, and it’s impossible to tell whether he’s joking or not. “Just don’t make a habit of this, all right? You
don’t
have my blessing.”

He watches us go, his arms folded across his chest. He doesn’t say another word.

Outside, the sky looks threatening. Clouds loom over the sea at the end of the street, and the corner of an advertising poster on a streetlamp has come loose and flaps in the wind. We all look at each other, suddenly doubtful as our first idea—to go down to the beach—just kind of fizzles in front of us.

“Let’s go and get some chips at the fish-and-chip shop and take them back to my place,” Josh suggests. “None of you eats fish, right? I could fry up some eggs instead. There’s nothing like fried eggs with chips.”

It’s the first time he’s mentioned to me that he lives around here: up until now, I had no idea at all where his home was. In fact, it turns out that he lives in a townhouse a couple of roads back from the beach, on a side street on the other side of Jetty Road from the café. “A five-minute walk from here,” he promises us on the way to the fish-and-chip shop.

Afterward, as we walk back to Josh’s house, Sofe grabs me, makes me hang back with her while the other two walk on ahead.

“It’s a happening thing, hey—you and Josh,” she says. When I nod cautiously, she gives me a big, pleased grin: “He’s nice, Nat. He’s
cute.
”

You can say that again,
I think, looking at his tall, narrow back ahead of us with a sudden flush of pride.

As he unlocks his front door, I take a deep breath before following the others in, my heart suddenly awash with happiness. I can’t believe I’m here, in his house. I can’t believe he asked us here; I can’t believe he asked
me
here.

A moment later, Sofe, Nick, and I are settling ourselves in Josh’s tiny living room while he bounds upstairs to his bedroom to get changed out of his work clothes. Coming back down again a couple of minutes later, he goes straight into the kitchen—which is separated from the living room by a row of waist-high cupboards—to fry the eggs. Nick has plopped himself on the sofa under the stairs, while Sofe and I sprawl out on the floor by his feet, gossiping away about school. Secretly, I’m spying on Josh while we chat: he’s taken his cap off and is now wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Somehow his legs seem even longer and leaner than before, his cheekbones higher, his jawline squarer. He looks even
better
than he does in uniform, if you want to know the truth.

Nick listens to Sofe and me talking with a cheerful, disarming smile on his face. He’s what you’d call laid-back, Nick: relaxed and easy to be with. He’s studying arts, Sofe told me recently—classics, philosophy, geography, a bit of astronomy: “Anything that sounds vaguely interesting, really, is how he puts it.” She grinned as she told me this. “He’s got no idea what he wants to do when he’s finished. He’s the
eternal
student.”

When Josh comes back into the living room with the food a few minutes later, Sofe goes and perches on the arm of the sofa next to Nick, to eat. Smiling up at her, he takes her hand and rests it in his. It’s a simple, natural gesture, you know? Not at all sleazy or possessive. He’s
definitely
one of her better choices.

Josh, meanwhile, comes and sits cross-legged on the floor next to me.

“So what are you planning to do next year, after you’ve finished your apprenticeship, Josh?” Nick asks, with his mouth full. “You going to open a restaurant or something?”

Josh stops eating, his fork halfway to his mouth.

“I’ve got this dream of running a fast-food health café one day,” he says. “Like an anti-McDonald’s, right?”

“Why?” Sofe asks curiously.

He grimaces. “I
loathe
McDonald’s. People go and buy their beefburgers and french fries and thickshakes there, and they don’t even give a thought to all those trees cut down in the Amazon rain forests to make room for grazing beef cattle. I want to make people
think
about what they eat.”

He has this emphatic way of speaking, Josh. You can tell when he’s passionate about something from the vehemence in his voice, you know? Like now. What
is
it, I wonder idly, that makes him so urgent about something like the environment? And what would it feel like, to be so
certain
?

But I’m only half listening to the conversation, to tell the truth, letting the others toss it back and forth between themselves. I keep getting distracted by Josh: his gold-blond hair and dark brown eyes, and the way his bangs, long and thick, fall over his forehead as he talks. There is
no
cap line on that perfect head of hair. While the others debate the merits of beefburgers, I edge slowly, sneakily, closer toward him on the carpet. If I can just get a little nearer, our knees might touch—

Sofe puts her fork down on her plate with a clatter, and stretches luxuriously.

“That was great, Josh. Thanks.”

She gets up from the sofa and starts to wander around the flat, looking curiously at things. On a small shelf over the gas heater, she finds a framed photo, which she picks up.

“Who’s this?”

“My granddad,” Josh says, pushing his empty plate away from him on the floor. “He died a few years ago.”

“Really?” She shoots him a sympathetic look. “D’you miss him?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes. He was a bit of a stubborn old bugger. He lived in this big old house in the hills, and refused to drive anywhere. Said we were given legs to get around on, not wheels.”

I reach over daringly and poke his thigh. “Now, who does
that
sound like?”

He has the grace to grin. “Yeah, my mother says I’m a lot like him. And I
don’t
think she means it as a compliment.”

Sofe’s still standing by the heater, holding the photo.

“After my granny died,” she says slowly, “I could have
sworn
I could feel her presence. For months afterward, I felt it.”

“Like a ghost, you mean?” I ask, intrigued.

She looks thoughtful. “Sort of. But it was more like she was just
there.
I used to talk to her, ask her questions. Then one day she just vanished.”

“Maybe she came to peace with her death,” says Nick.

She smiles at him. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Josh shifts restlessly next to me.

“Grief does strange things to your mind,” he says abruptly.

We all turn toward him.

“Well, that’s what it was, right?” he says, as if it’s obvious. “It was Sofia coming to terms with her granny’s death. That’s all.” He looks around at us unapologetically. “I don’t believe in ghosts, or life after death, or spirits. It’s all in the mind. It’s New Age crap, basically.”

The way he says it isn’t rude, exactly: it’s more
dismissive
than anything, I guess. Still, I’m surprised. Me, I’d be too afraid of hurting Sofe’s feelings to put it quite so bluntly.

But she just shrugs.

“It’s not New Age,” she says to him matter-of-factly. “Granny was just
there.
I
know.
”

She does know, too. You can see it in her face. She has no doubts at all about what she’s saying.

Josh looks at her long and hard. I watch him carefully, suddenly holding my breath. All at once, there’s something going on between the two of them—something I can’t quite interpret. Something weird. He
likes
her, I think, my heart sinking: I mean,
really
likes her. As in, now that he’s met Sofe, he likes
her
and not
me.
He likes the way she challenges him, the way she holds her own.

Then I wonder why I’m so surprised.
All
the guys like Sofia better than me.

But when I examine him more closely, I realize that’s not what it is at all. The expression on his face isn’t one of admiration: in fact, it’s one of dislike—strong, fast-growing dislike. As if he thinks she’s
stupid
or something. I stare at him, astonished.
No
one dislikes Sofe.

“What do
you
reckon, Nat?” Josh says, looking away from her to me for support.

As he says this, his knee finally brushes against mine, and for a moment all I can feel is our knees touching through our clothes. Incredibly, he doesn’t move away. I am instantly, helplessly paralyzed; for a moment, I can’t even speak to answer him.

“I don’t know,” I say at last, looking honestly into his eyes. “I’ve never seen a ghost myself, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist, you know?”

“Exactly,”
says Sofia.

She smiles at me, triumphant. But to tell the truth, I’m barely aware of her anymore, and Josh, too, appears to have forgotten her. He’s looking at me, and me
only,
not bothering with the conversation about ghosts. In fact, he’s stopped talking altogether. Our knees stay touching, and his eyes bathe my face, and I am warmed all over by those eyes. I feel like I’m
glowing.

You know what? I could bask forever like this under his gaze.
Totally
forever.

Afterward—long afterward, when Nick and Sofe have gone and Josh and I have fooled around in the kitchen for as long as we can, pretending to wash the dishes—he offers to walk me back to the tram.

I hesitate, not wanting, despite everything, to make assumptions.

“You don’t have to. I can get there by myself. I mean, I’m not trying to
force
you—”

He shakes his head, squeezes my elbow. “Don’t you think I
want
to?” He puts his finger on my nose, presses it teasingly. “You’re
not
forcing me, Nat, okay?”

Outside, in the street, we walk together for a few moments, not talking. Josh’s steps are long and loping; without saying anything, he shortens them so that I can keep up. I smile up at him gratefully, and he smiles back, and for some reason this reminds me of the totally
unsmiling
way he looked at Sofia earlier in the evening.

“You don’t have much use for Sofe, do you?” I say as we wait at the traffic lights.

“She’s all right, I guess.” He pauses. “I’m sorry, Nat. I know she’s your friend. I’m just not
into
all that spiritual stuff.”

I think about this.

“She had a pretty hard childhood, you know? Her parents split up when she was a kid, and now her mum’s a single mother.”

“And?”
he says, like this has no relevance to what we’re talking about at all.

“And—well—”

He sighs impatiently. “She’s not the only kid in the world whose parents split up, you know.”

“I know.” I take a breath, wanting to stay loyal to her. “I just think it’s good that she’s so positive. I think it’s good she
believes
in stuff.”

He doesn’t say anything for a while. We reach the roundabout in front of the hotel, cross over to the terminus. There’s a tram waiting there already, its engine off, the driver sitting inside, reading a paper. Josh and I go and stand outside the cement shelter, under the streetlamp.

“My parents split up, too,” he says, finally. He looks away from me, puts his hands in his pockets. “I was ten years old. My dad started screwing around with this woman from work when I was seven. It went on for three years.”

“Three
years
?”

“Oh, everyone knew about it,” he says bitterly. “I knew; the kids at school knew; the neighbors knew.
Mum
knew.” He crosses his arms against his chest, looking at the ground. “She went around with this stupid, wet look on her face for three years. She used to burst into tears at the drop of a hat. And then, when Dad finally said he was going to leave her, she had a
nervous breakdown.
”