Seven Days: The Complete Story (15 page)

“All the more
reason to dress to impress. You want to be noticed, right? You’ll
never get a recommendation if you never meet him.”

“Yes, but I
don’t want to get one in a slutty, throw-me-over-the-desk way.”

“Are you
saying my clothes are slutty?” She gives me a look and sticks the
remains of her Freddo in her mouth. A crumb of chocolate sticks to
her lip and she flicks it off with her tongue. I watch as it
disappears.

“Not at all.
On you they look glamorous and sophisticated. I’m just not sure how
they’ll look on me. Like a ten-year-old dressing in her big
sister’s clothes, I suspect.”

“You won’t
know if you don’t try anything on. Now shoo! Bedroom.”

I do as I’m
bid and after a few outfits and different shoe combinations, we
arrive at a black pencil skirt, a white business shirt, a pair of
pointed pumps and a black angora cardi to soften the outfit. I have
Mum’s favourite necklace with the small horseshoe on it for luck
and a bangle she always wore with turquoise stones. I look nice and
totally ready to rock this job thing. But geez, I’m nervous.

*****

The next day I
meet Mason for lunch after my tutorial. I never have to look to
find him, his shock of red hair means he always stands out in the
crowd, sort of like I do.

Our matching
hair is one of the reasons Mason and I started talking in the first
place. We were at a birthday party for a mutual friend when he
crashed straight into me, spilling his water all over my top. To
this day I’m positive he did it on purpose because he didn’t know
how to approach me. Anyway, I made a joke about him having to leave
the party because the quota of redheads had already been filled by
me and he countered by saying that clearly the research about
redheads being a dying breed was untrue. He then offered to get my
top dry-cleaned, which I thought was super nice. He didn’t even
look at my boobs when he said it. I have no idea how he managed it
seeing that they were wetter than if I’d recently competed in a wet
t-shirt competition. The conversation led to a date and, well,
three months later we’re still seeing each other, much to Emily’s
disgust. She’d been annoyed enough with me when I hadn’t pursued
the Nicholas thing — not that she’d known the truth of it — so
when I started seeing Mason she almost had an aneurism.

“Hey.” I sit
down on the grass beside Mason and give him a peck on the lips.

“Hey yourself.
You’re looking happier than yesterday.”

Mason knows
about my prac placement woes. He was the first one I rang when the
whole saga began. He doesn’t seem to care when I have one of my
‘meltdowns’ as he calls them.

“I have a new
placement.”

“That’s great.
Where?”

“Hardwick
& Lawson.”

Mason does
that licking thing he does with his lips when he’s impressed. Then
gives a very slow, approving series of nods. Being an architecture
student he’s well aware of who Hardwick & Lawson are. You’d
have to be living under a rock to have not seen their work or at
least heard of them. “How’d you score that?”

“The placement
officer said they jumped at the chance when they heard it was me.
Must have been the award last year. I’d have thought they’d already
have a student but the lady said they rarely take students so she
hadn’t bothered to contact them before this. It was on the off
chance because she was desperate to find me something.”

“Worked out
well for you.”

“Yeah.”

“When do you
start?”

“Monday.”

“Great. Want
to do anything later on?”

I roll over on
the grass, picking a few daisies from between the blades and
weaving them into a chain. Somehow I thought he’d be more excited
for me. That response sounded almost like a case of sour
grapes.

“I have a
paper to finish,” I say. “It’s a couple of hours work, tops. I want
to get it done so I can concentrate on the prac.”

“I’ll come by
yours, then. Cook you noodles for dinner.”

My lip twists
at the memory of what Emily said last night about Mason being at
our house too much. I promptly dismiss the idea. “Sure. I should be
done by seven. Come by then.”

I’m a crap
cook and Mason makes great noodles. Plus, Emily will be out. She’s
having dinner with Alex again tonight. It’s been six months for
them now, a surprise for everyone. Though nobody’s been more
surprised than Emily, I think. She keeps waiting for Alex to grow
an arsehole gene.

“Awesome,”
Mason says.

We lay on the
grass for a bit longer before getting up to get some lunch in the
student café down the road. It’s cheap and I don’t mind eating
there though Mason complains about the cost, as usual. If there’s
one thing that does annoy me about him it’d be his whining about
money. We’re both students. And even though I do have the benefit
of a small inheritance from Mum that I try not to touch, I’m not
exactly rolling in cash either. But I can still afford to buy lunch
every now and then.

As we sit
eating our cheese toasties, Mason says to me, “So… special day for
us.”

I frown,
trying to remember what day that could be.

“It’s our
three month anniversary,” he reminds me. He reaches into his pocket
and pulls out a tiny blue packet secured with string. It’s very
cute. “Happy anniversary, Sadie.”

I feel a
little bit like a fraud as I take the packet and open it. I thought
only fifteen year olds did ‘three month anniversaries’. I certainly
wasn’t counting the days that closely.

Inside the
package is a Stirling silver bracelet with one lone charm. It’s
made to look like a book cover from my favourite book of all time,
Far From the Madding Crowd
. You see? This is one of the
things I love about Mason… he’s thoughtful. He remembers the most
random things that no other guy would ever remember.

“I love it.
Thanks so much.” I kiss him softly on the lips. “Happy
anniversary,” I say, leaning over to hug him tight. “Sorry I didn’t
get you anything.”

“You like it
then?”

“It’s
gorgeous,” I put the bracelet on and hold my wrist up to admire the
teeny book dangling from it.

“This would be
the appropriate time to say I’d like to take our relationship to
the next level. I like you so much, Sadie. I want to be more
committed to each other.”

Oh gosh. He
sounds like
he
needs committing.

“What exactly
did you have in mind?”

“I think we
should be exclusive. I know you weren’t keen to before but we
practically are, anyway. Well, I am. We should make this official.
I’d like you to move in with me.”

This is not
how I planned my Tuesday morning to go. I’m floored. Don’t get me
wrong; I like Mason. I might even love him a little. He’s nice. But
I never imagined myself living in the same house as him. He has
housemates. Gross, smelly housemates who play X-Box all day and
never do the washing up. They act more like twelve year olds than
twenty-four year old men; they’re
sooo
immature. I’d end up
being live-in housekeeper for a bunch of boys who can’t fend for
themselves. And I certainly couldn’t have sex while they’re in the
next room elbowing each other and tittering because they can hear
me coming.

“Um… er.”

Mason seems to
sense this hesitance. “I thought we might get a place of our own.
I’m tired of living with the guys. It’s like being in a playgroup
with beer most days.”

He’s got that
right. I’m still not sure this is what I want, though. Living
together is a huge commitment; it’s practically being married. But
it’s not that I’m stressing about. In the back of my mind, I keep
thinking Mason isn’t Nicholas and he’ll never be Joel. The
flipside, of course, is that nobody ever would be. I’ll never meet
men like them again. Is that how my relationships will be measured
from now on? Will I always be comparing every man I meet and
finding fault? Have I ruined any potential relationship before it
can even begin because I’m reminded of them in the smallest of
things? I give myself an internal slap. The fling with Nicholas and
Joel was a one off. It will never happen again. I need to move
on.

“Can I think
about it?”

Mason chews on
the side of his lip. “I sort of found us a flat.”

“Already?”

“It’s in the
centre of town,” he continues. “Right where you told me you always
dreamed of living. It has a little balcony big enough for a bistro
table and chairs so you can sit and have your morning coffee. There
are high ceilings, timber floors and it’s totally renovated. We can
sell our cars if we live there. Ride bikes everywhere. Eat on the
strip once a week. Go to that wine bar you love so much without
having to catch a taxi home.”

He’s making it
hard for me to refuse, giving me the things I always wanted. Yet,
something still doesn’t seem right. “How can we afford a place like
that?”

“I’ve done the
sums. It won’t cost much more than we pay in our current places.
About fifteen dollars more a week each. Best of all, it’s coming up
for lease in a month. So you don’t need to make a decision straight
away but we do have to move on it if we don’t want to miss out.” He
leans over, the weight of his body crushing mine as he pushes me
into the grass and kisses me. He’s sucking the life from me and for
some reason I feel embarrassed, doing this here, out in the open.
With Mason.

“I love you,
babe. I want this to work,” he whispers.

“I’ll think
about it,” I say, kissing him. I mean, it sounds wonderful and
Mason is wonderful in his own way. But I’m not ready for this. I’m
not sure this is how I planned my life to be.

*****

Sleep is hard
to come by that night. It’s becoming something of a habit; my head
is spinning in circles from the things that have happened earlier
in the day. On one hand, I know Mason is in love with me and wants
us to be together. There are so many things to love about him, so
many things I want to learn more about. On the other, I feel like
we’re going too fast. I feel like he’s thrown me in at the deep end
and I’ve had no time to plan for the swim. After a while, my mind
inevitably switches to thoughts of my prac. I formulate different
scenarios and plan the things I might say when I start the job at
Hardwick & Lawson. I want to sound like I know what I'm on
about, that I'm up with the latest developments, not that I'm some
clueless university student with stars in her eyes. I know it
sounds anal but this is how I like to organise. I visualise
things.

The dramatic
overthinking well and truly taken root, I decide it’s pointless
staring at the ceiling so I get up and head to our tiny kitchen to
make myself a mug of warm milk.

I stand at the
window with my mug in my hand, looking out at the city. It’s a
clear night, but cold, and I watch the stars twinkling around the
moon. A satellite streaks across the sky and for some reason I’m
reminded of Nicholas and the morning on the boat. He told me how he
loved to watch the stars and how when he was little he always tried
to count them but he couldn’t count to big enough numbers to count
them all. I wonder what he’s doing now? Probably found some other
girl that Joel doesn’t care for. A good-looking man like him would
never be single for long. I ponder, too, at what might have become
of us if I hadn’t left that morning. Would I have been able to
continue the relationship with him and Joel or would my conscience
have gotten the better of me? I know the aim was for me to never
know who I was having sex with but I loved the way Nicholas held
me. It always felt so right. He made me feel so safe. And despite
the fact that Joel was the most annoying man on the planet, I
couldn’t imagine my life never having met him. In his own
non-committal way he cared. I know he did. You can’t fake that kind
of thing.

After my drink
is finished, I put the mug into the sink and head back to bed. I’m
tired now, so I curl up under the covers. I sleep well despite the
fact that my night is filled with dreams… and all of them seem to
revolve around one solitary kiss. When I wake the next morning, I
remember the dream briefly as I’m straightening my hair and putting
on the eyeliner Emily suggested. Stupid, but it’s like that dream
is trying to tell me I shouldn’t live with Mason, that there is
more to life than settling for second best at the age of twenty-one
because a guy who loves you asked you to. And I’m not harbouring
some secret longing that Nicholas, Joel and I will meet again and
live happily ever after either. The city is a big place and two
surfer guys like them would never be in the same place at the same
time as me because I never intend to go skinny-dipping again for
the rest of my life.

At precisely
8.27am on Monday morning, I find myself standing at the entrance of
Hardwick & Lawson in Davey Street. The building is Georgian,
like
really old
Georgian, not that hideous fake knock off
stuff. It’s sandstone and three storeys high with a further storey
in the attic delineated by curved dormer windows. It’s immaculately
maintained and has rows of symmetrical Georgian small paned glass
with symmetrically placed topiary-balled trees growing on either
side of a glossy black front door. Nobody would expect anything
less from the biggest building and design firm in the city.

I take a deep
breath, smooth my skirt — well, Emily’s skirt. I turn the knob on
the front door and as I do, my mind turns to Mum. I know she’d be
proud of me today and I feel her with me, urging me to stay calm,
not to be nervous, to do the very best I can. My knees won’t be
shaking like this once I get in there but this is like any new
thing I try in this grown-up life of mine. Beginning is the hardest
part — the uncertainty of what lies behind that door will fall away
once I’ve made the first move.