Save Me (20 page)

After we ate, I made a call to my mum and she, of course, told me to bring her over ASAP. I imagined half of her was wanting to help Tegan and the other half was wanting to check out the girl that had me all caught up and acting like a huge pussy.

When I walked through the front door
, my parents and sisters were waiting in the entrance hall. Carly and Elle had converted the double garage into their cupcake business base so they were often around, Mum worked from home and Dad was hanging back because we had stocktake at work and, like me, he didn’t want to be anywhere near it. Everyone was always home, even though us kids had moved out, and my mum loved it.

They stood there and stared at her with idiotic smiles.
Subtle they were not. Glaring at each one of them, I introduced everyone and Mum took Tegan into her office just off the side of the house.

“So,”
Carly said as we sat in the lounge and waited, “that’s Tegan, hey?”
Here we fucking go.
“She’s very pretty.”

Pretty didn’t even begin to cover it.

“She is,” Elle agreed. “Though you usually go for tall blondes.”

I didn’t want to tell her that for five years my type was ‘breathing’ so I shrugged. “Don’t really have a type, Elle.”

Dad laughed completely out of the blue. The
what the fuck
expression was plastered across each of his kid’s faces.

“What?” Carly asked.

Dad looked at me with the smuggest smile I’d ever seen. “You’ve gone and fallen in love with her.”

Fuck sake. I had.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Tegan

After spending a lot of time locked away completing schoolwork I went to my first counselling session.

Kai’s mum, Melanie, was so nice. She didn’t push me to talk about something if I found one of her questions too hard
, which I mostly did. The session was more of us chatting than her questioning me but I had a feeling she got a lot more information out of me than I realised.

She le
d me out of her office and I almost bumped into Carly and Elle. They were grinning a little too much. “So, you wanna see some embarrassing things from Kai’s childhood?” Elle asked.

Like she needed to ask.
“Definitely,” I replied. I followed them down the hallway to what I guessed was Kai’s old room. Melanie came along, too, shaking her head at her daughters.

His room was
dark blue and black and pretty plain, probably because he didn’t live here anymore and took most of his stuff with him. It didn’t look like his house now, though. His house was light and inviting. This was so an angry teen’s room.

I sat down on the bed with Carly and Elle while Mel
anie went to get some photo albums. I wondered what he was like when he was a teen. It would’ve been interesting to have known him then.

“His room sucks, right?” Carly said. “Mum won’t redecorate it.”

“Why not?”

“Keeps him grounded.”

I frowned but had no time to ask why as Melanie came back. How could a dark room keep you grounded? It made no sense.

“Ooh, show her the space phase ones first,” Elle said. Yeah, I definitely wanted to see those.

Apparently, when he was five and six he was obsessed with space, to the point where he covered objects in his room in foil and made himself a helmet. I could imagine a smaller version of him pretending he was flying a shuttle. It was so cute.

After many more stories, a lot of them involving space and astronauts, we went downstairs.
Kai and his dad, Rob, were in the lounge. “Hey, spaceman,” I said and sat down next to him. He shot a dark look to his mum and sisters, who didn’t even try to hold back on laughing.

“I can’
t believe you told her!” he said, sounding annoyed but not at all surprised.

“Oh
, they didn’t just tell me. I saw pictures.” His mouth hung open. “You look so cute in that foil hat.”

“Right, we’re leaving,” he said, standing up and pulling me
along by my wrist. Laughing as I was hauled towards the front door, I caught a glance at a picture of him on the wall. He was really young, maybe five or six and had a big toothless grin.

“Hey,” he snapped, pulling m
e forwards again. Okay, I really loved it when he was embarrassed.

I was almost thrown into his car and for the whole way home he ignored me. Partly because I made space and astronaut jokes the entire time but
he was still being a little bitch!

I spent the next day hanging out at home and the evening with Sophie. Friday finally rolled around and it was time for my date with Lucas. I’d spent ages getting ready, or it just took ages because I was getting ready around Netflixing another episode of
Orange Is the New Black.

“Tegan,” Ava shouted up the stairs. “Lucas is here.”

‘Bout time.
He wasn’t even late but I was impatient.

“Be right down,” I called, grabbing my phone and ruffling my hands through the roots of my hair. He hadn’t even got out of his car by the time I was downstairs. “Don’t wait up,” I said to Mum and walked out of the house.

“Hey, shorty,” he said, walking up the path and holding his arms out for me.

I walked straight into him and curled my arms around his waist.

“Hey, yourself. So,” I said, pulling back, “where are we going?”

“I’m not telling you.”

Not cool.

“Why?”

“Because it’s a surprise.”

I smiled. “And what if it wasn’t a surprise?”

“Then I could tell you, but this is so…”

Dropping my arms, I pouted. He really did need to understand that I did not enjoy surprises.

“Fine. Let’s go somewhere then.”

He was pretty amused as he watched me stomp to his car like a child.

“What’re you doing?” he asked, shutting his door and grinning at me.

“You know, when you think about it, you’re basically kidnapping me right now.”

His mouth kicked up at the side and he started the car. He just looked sarcastic. “Right. Damn that consensual kidnapping.”

“Have I told you I hate you recently?”

“Yes, I think that was with the last surprise.”

“So, when’re you going to catch on?”

Seriously, you know someone doesn’t like surprises, don’t surprise them!

When he stopped at the bottom
of a hill I glared. “Lucas…?”

“It’s not steep, there’s a gradual climbing footpath to the top.”

I could see the sandy path curling around the green hill. At least I wouldn’t discover new muscles with this one. We walked slowly, hand in hand, looking out at everything getting that little bit smaller the higher we got. The hill was probably only four or five stories tall but it gave a great view of the cliffs and sea in the distance. Everything was pretty flat where I lived so I loved visiting Lucas.

We reached the top and I gasped. He had a small picnic basket sitting on a blue blanket and little silver lanterns lined the edge of the material.
“Luke, this is amazing,” I whispered. “When did you do this? How has it not been stolen?”

He laughed. “I text
ed Grace when we were on our way. My idea but my sister’s hard work.”

Wow, I didn’t think Grace liked me enough to help Luke do something like that.

“If we don’t see her before I go home thank her for me,” I said, giving him a kiss.

“I’m glad you like it
and I will. Come on, I’m starving.”

Of course.

He kissed the top of my head and
tugged me to the picnic. “You hungry, too?”

I wasn’t really but there was no way I wasn’t stuffing my face since he went through all the effort
of organising this for us.

“Yes, feed me,” I said, sitting down between his legs and opening the hamper.

He had chicken salad sandwiches, cocktail sausages, salt and vinegar crisps, a huge bar of Cadburys chocolate, marshmallows, jellybeans, and Oreos. Not exactly healthy but it was all some of my favourites.

“You’re the best, Luke.”

“Remember that for later.”

I rolled my eyes and tucked into a sandwich. Like I wouldn’t want sex with him.

“So, how badly are Grace and Jake teasing you for being romantic?” 

“Grace not at all. My brother and dad however…”

“Didn’t you say your dad proposed to your mum in rose petals?” He’d briefly told me that when we were first talking and trying the friends only thing.

“
Yeah, but he’s a fucking hypocrite.”

I laughed and leant back against his chest. “How is your dad?” I knew that although he was doing okay he was finding it hard to relax and that was understandable, his body could reject my dad’s heart at any moment.

“He’s alright. His blood pressure is slightly high because of the medication he’s on but the doctor is monitoring it.”

I wasn’t sure what upset me the most, that my dad didn’t have his heart anymore or that it could fail, be cut out and thrown away like trash.

I wasn’t sure what to say so I just said, “I hope it settles down soon.” I honestly did hope that his blood pressure improved because I wanted him to live a long life just like Dad should have.

We ate
until we were feeling ill and talked for well over two hours. I felt lighter than I had in a long time but I also couldn’t kid myself that it wasn’t because I still had so many things safely locked away. I wasn’t sure if I was getting better at dealing with everything or getting better at ignoring it.

“
Tegan…”

“Go on,” I said, looking up over my shoulder.

“Y
ou’ll call me if you ever need anything, won’t you? I don’t care where I am or what I’m doing, you’re more important to me than work.”

Okay, that was sweet and totally unexpected.
“Yeah, of course.” He pressed his lips to the top of my head.

“
Good. Now, can I talk to you about something without you getting mad at me?”

I guess we’ll find out in a minute.
“Yeah.”

I felt his chest expand as he took a deep breath
. “When you were drunk, why did you ask for Kai?”

I turned on my side to face him.
His eyes were tense. “I didn’t really think about it, but Kai knows what to do when I’m like that. He always has, so I always ask for him. I don’t want to. I hate that I do it and that I ruin his night all the time. I want to not be like this, Luke, but I don’t know how to.”

“Kai’s mum helped?”

I nodded and he smiled.

“
Well, I’m proud of you for getting help.” I didn’t, not really. It was kind of thrust upon me, not that I wasn’t grateful or didn’t understand that I needed something. “Next time you feel like drinking maybe you should call me instead, though?”

“Yeah.” I agreed even though I wasn’t sure if I could.
When I was out of it I didn’t consciously decide who I wanted. I just called the person I knew could help the most. He opened his mouth to say something else but quickly closed it again. “What?”

“
Nothing.” He bent his head and kissed me.

“
Tell me. Please.”

He sighed and took my hand, playing with my fingers. “About Kai.” He paused for a second to study my face. I nodded for him to continue
, even though I was getting bored of Kai-talk from everyone that had an opinion on my friendship with him. “I know you’re friends but it bothers me how close you are.” He winced. “Look, I know I have no right and I would never ask you to change your relationship with him but I just wanted to be honest and say that I don’t like it.”

His not liking it wasn’t a surprise but I’d made myself clear that
I was friends – nothing more – with Kai and no one was going to tell me what I could or couldn’t do.

“Luke.” I stopp
ed talking when I realised I actually had no idea how to handle it. “Okay. Me and Kai are friends, he means a lot to me and he’s been there for me so many times. He understands because he lost his brother and handled Isaac’s death as well as I’m handling my dad’s. I want to be with
you,
but I won’t change my relationship with him. Maybe that’s really selfish, I don’t know, but other people have a boyfriend as well as friends of the same sex, so I don’t see why it should be different for me. What happened with him is in the past and I would never cheat on you.”

He nodded slowly, frowning as he thought about what I’d said. “Okay. I can accept that. I do trust you, Tegan, I guess I just needed a little reassurance.”

“I don’t mind reassuring you if it’s what you need to hear and help you to keep on trusting me. Kai’s really been there for me.”

“I know and I’m glad he has.”

“Are you cool now? Can we get back to our date?” He didn’t reply, instead he laid me down and kissed me until I felt dizzy.

Just after midnight
Luke took me back to mine because the temperature had dropped and we were both getting tired. He gave me a long, deep kiss before leaving me to go back home.