Natural Attraction (11 page)

Silence descends on the room.  Ominous silence, the sort where you think you can hear sound waves in the air.  My head
starts to hurt the silence is so loud.

Rebecca and
Teagan stare at me, their mouths open and spoons suspended in the air halfway between their bowls and mouths.  Ro has even stopped grinning.

I hear what sounds like a grunt come from
Jax’s direction and I turn to face him.  I do this just in time to see him drop his spoon in his bowl as he grabs wildly for a serviette to cover his nose.  Knocking his cutlery flying he grabs one, holds it up to face and starts laughing so hard I see some soup come spurting out his nose.

It is at this point that Ro’s
grin returns in full megawatt style and I see her dimples depress as she started laughing too.  She even throws her head back and bellows.   This in turn sets Rebecca and Teagan off and I am left gob smacked at the cacophony of laughter belting through the room.

“No shit, you tried to fry eggs in their shells?”  Jax sputters as he tries to settle his laughter down.

“True story that.”

I look down at my bowl feeling like a freak show. 

Great way to make an impression. 

When will I learn to keep my mouth shut?  I stir dejectedly at my soup as the laughter in the room abruptly halt
s and I feel the focus of four sets of eyes on the top of my head.  Perhaps now would be a good time to use the bathroom.  I need to get out of here.

“Ashleigh, did no one ever teach you to cook sweetie?” I hear Ro ask softly.

Now there’s a loaded question.
 

How am I going to answer this one without looking like even more of a freak show?

Why would I have needed to learn to cook when my parents had always done it?  Then when I’d finally moved out of home at the tender age of twenty-four, I’d gone sick living on take-away for months.  This had then meant that I gained weight, lots of it.  Then I had had to lose it all again living on Weight Watchers meals. 

Now I simply either ate out at restaurants for my main meals with friends, or if home alone, I zapped a Weight Watchers meal in the microwave.  Essentially, my life didn’t include a
need
to cook.

“Um…  No.” I squeak.  “There has not seemed any point to it… 
At this stage.”  I add quickly hoping not to offend the line-up of MasterChefs sitting around me.

“I see,” Ro says studying me carefully and looking thoughtful.  “What do you mean by no point to it?”

“Well, I live on my own and it hardly seems worth cooking for one.  That is until I change my living arrangements, for some reason…   Or another.”

I quickly glance in Jax’s direction to see him staring pointedly at me with a small grin on his face. 
The light shading of a dimple showing on one cheek.

“Until then, I don’t need to cook.”

“Well that seems like a good enough explanation for me!”  Ro announces cheerfully, looking around the table with a look that suggests no one should mention
that
subject again.

“Now let’s get a wriggle on eating this soup.   The mains should be just about ready to come out of the oven any minute now.”

“Mains?!” I squeal.  “Isn’t
this
mains?”

“Oh no my dear, this is just the appetizer, we always eat three courses,” Ro tells me with a serious look on her face.

“Crikey, I’ll be eating Weight Watchers meals for a month.” I mutter under my breath as I start paying more attention to my soup.  I also quickly transfer the large chunk of herb bread that Teagan has placed in front of me onto Jax’s plate.

I look up again to see Rebecca now grinning at my food transfer tactic.

“So Ash, tell us about you and your horse.” 

I relax a little realizing Rebecca is being kind and trying to steer the conversation into much safer waters. 

Thank you Rebecca.

I send her an appreciative smile and launch into an explanation of all my activities with Maverick over the past weeks.  I also explain that Jax is going to help me ride him as well. 

The conversation seems to be going along easily, with everyone asking me polite questions now and then.  I cheerfully recount my many new experiences with Maverick until the point where I mention my accident.  Once again silence descends on the room.  I sense Jax stiffen beside me.

This time I know it is not the same
preraucous laughter type silence that I experienced before.  This time the silence feels ominous, black and heavy.

“Um, sorry, but what I did I say this time?” I ask cautiously, looking around the room. 

Teagan quickly looks down and Rebecca quickly swings her eyes to Ro.  Ro in turn looks towards Jax who shrugs his shoulders at her with a blank look of indifference on his face. 

“She fell off and hurt herself,
badly?”
   Ro is directing her question straight at Jax.

“Yeah she did.” Jax replies, deadpanning.

“And now you are helping her with her horse?”  Ro rapid fires at Jax again.

Her eyes shrink on her face as she pins him with a stern look that starts to make me nervous.

“Yeah, I am.”  Jax deadpans again.

Ro swings her face back to
Teagan, her face softening as she says, “Are you okay sweetheart?”

It is then that I notice the pained look that is shadowing across Teagan’s face.  Her eyes burn with a wildfire that scares me and I sense she is on the verge of tears. 

She looks towards me, then over to Jax and finally back to Ro. 

“I’m fine if he is.” She lifts her chin towards Jax.  “We have to move on and we can’t keep living in the past.”

“Agreed.”  Jax whispers next to me.

“I miss her,”
Teagan mumbles as she carefully places her spoon in her now finished soup bowl.

“So do
I.” Jax whispers again looking at me carefully out the corner of his eye while keeping his face pointed towards Teagan.

The room falls quiet again.  The tension making the air thick and it’s getting hard for me to breath.  Whatever I have said, or done, it has flipped the mood in the room to a
subzero point.

“You had a Camaro?”

I try to change the conversation.  This time I am on the receiving end of a ‘thank you for the changing the subject’ look from Teagan as Ro returns her attention to me.

“I had two Camaro’s.  Now I only have one.  This is thanks to a dickhead truck driver squeezing one of them up against a guardrail in Melbourne last week.”

I look into Ro’s eyes trying to work out if I should continue to pursue the conversation or not.  I see a slight hint of hesitation fly across her face as she follows my lead on the topic change.

“TWO Camaro’s!”
I announce, surprised that anyone would have not one, but two. 

“Yes, I was very annoyed about the one that got written off. 
It wass a 1969 ZL-1 Camaro.  There were only sixty-nine of them ever made and they are as rare as hen’s teeth.  It is my own stupid fault for taking it out of the shed I suppose.  I did love driving it though.  I especially loved to see the looks that people flung my way when they realized an ‘old bag’ was driving it around.  Priceless!”

She chuckles and the cheeky grin returns to her face.

“That’s terrible.  It was insured I assume?” I ask trying to keep the conversation pleasant and
safe
.

“Of course.
  It is unlikely I will ever find another one however.  People just don’t want to sell them.  They never come up for sale.”

“If anyone can find one, Ma will though.” Jax
rejoins the conversation, his shoulders relaxing and his eyes softening.

“She spends hours every day scour
ing the Internet for classic cars.  I’ll bet money that it wasn’t our father who found that Gran Torino for sale was it Ma?”

A huge smile spreads across Ro’s face as she beams at her son proudly. 

“Of course not son, you know me so well.” 

Rebecca and
Teagan physically relax further and I see Rebecca start sliding her chair back.

“Time for mains,” she announces cheerfully.  “Lasagne all-round I presume?”

She moves her gaze to me pinning me with a look that suggests there is no way I am going to be allowed to refuse.

I feel my stomach do a high five at the thought of all those carbs and protein mixed into a cheesy, gooey mess.  Then my head quickly calculates the
kilometers I will need to run tonight to assuage the calorie onslaught I am about to receive.

“Yes, please.” I announce plastering an eager look on my face as I concede defeat on the chances of getting out of eating ‘mains’. 

I wonder what third course is?

As if reading my thoughts, Rebecca grins at me knowingly and says, “I’ll bet you can’t wait for the Lemon Tart chaser we have to go with that hey?  Extra whipped cream for you by the looks of it.  You look like you need fattening up.”

“I’m dairy intolerant, no cream thanks.” I mumble as I add another three kilometers to my running calculations. 

“I’ll help serve up.” Ro announces sliding her chair back.  “I need to check my chicken pies in the oven anyway.”

I look to Jax who seems to sense my food distress as he rolls his eyes and gives me an ‘I told you so’ look.

Food coma – here we come.

I watch as the two women bustle into the kitchen and open the oven doors inspecting their handiwork.

*****

Apart from my horror at the sheer quantity of food piled onto my plate over the next three quarters of an hour, the rest of the meal flow
s well.

I learn that Ro is indeed a collector of fine cars and she ha
s twelve classic cars tucked away in a shed at her house.

Teagan
is a kindergarten teacher at the local child-care center.  She also has two small children of her own aged two and five to Jax’s brother Luke.  The children are spending the day with their father at Ryan’s house.  Ryan is Jax’s other brother and he is Rebecca’s husband.

Ryan and Rebecca have been happily married for twenty years and they themselves had a rather large brood of five children.  Their ages span from nineteen years of age down to their youngest who is ten.  The ten-year-old son is some sort of child prodigy.  Apparently he is already attending high school and expects to graduate at the age of fifteen. 

Rebecca has been another stay-at-home mum all her life, similar to Ro.  Her hobbies are not in any way similar to Ro’s.  She spends many hours a week as a volunteer for the local Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.  As well as this, she spends many more days actively helping the local Country Fire Authority.  These days may turn into weeks whenever she is required to help with disaster recovery events in the local area. 

During the easy flow of conversation I also recount my long-term employment as a finance officer with a large wholesaling company based near my home.  I also tell them about my beloved Golden girls.

Our banquet is finally done just over an hour after it starts.  At this point, all three women swing into action to quickly clear away the plates and continue their quest to stock Jax’s fridge and cupboards with food to keep him alive and well for another fortnight. 

Ignoring my offers for aid, all three women slip seamlessly into a process that sees the kitchen tidied and everything put away in what seems like a matter of minutes.  They then move their focus to assigning cleaning tasks and vanish off to various corners of the house to finish the jobs they are obviously here to do.

Sipping on a glass of iced water to assist in washing down my massive lunch time meal, I turn my attention back to Jax.  Jax has been sitting quietly next to me while we watch his family whirlwind through his house.

“You say this happens
every
fortnight?” I ask incredulously.

“Yeah, without fail.
  Rain or shine, they arrive like an army of worker ants and polish the place from top to bottom.  Contrary to your conversation with my Ma earlier, I do actually make attempts to keep the place clean myself.  These are apparently frowned upon as she has some sixth sense on the excessive dust mite populations inhabiting my bedrooms.  There are also large colonies of bacteria in my bathrooms that will kill us all if not destroyed.”

“I see.” I nod as I grin at him.  “And how long has this been going on?”

“Nearly three years,” he states without hesitation, fixing his eyes intently on mine.  

Why only three years?

What about the other years between his fledging the nest and three years ago? I resist the urge to ask as I see a shadow of sadness flash across his eyes just beneath the surface.

“And the cooking?”

“Same.”

His eyes blank out and he deadpans.  This time there is a definite flatness in his tone that leaves me feeling a surge of pain for him.  Something happened three years ago.  Something that saw these three women decide to step into Jax’s life to repair it once a fortnight, without fail apparently.