The Goodbye Ride (11 page)

“Me?” Liv glanced over her shoulder to
check the service counter. “I don’t think so.”

“You
so
don’t know how men think,
Olivia Murphy.”

Italian guy caught her looking and turned
on the hundred-watt smile, picking up a plate of dessert and dipping it at Liv
as if he played a real-life chef on a crap reality cooking show. He banged the
bell on the counter with an over-blown flourish and one of the serving staff
came running.

“A-ha,” Owen said, and Liv ducked her head
back to him, cheeks pink. Owen couldn’t remember ever seeing a girl look so
beautiful when she blushed. “He’s not the man for you, Lovely. He’s a pussy
really. A real man—a man like me—would have brought your dessert over myself.”

He saw her shoulders jiggle as she tried to
suppress her giggles. Then the waitress arrived. She placed their servings on
the table, picked up their table number, and asked if they’d ordered coffee.

“A long black and a latte. We did, thanks,”
Liv said.

The waitress put the silver pole back on
the table, shuffling it between a small white bowl filled with sugar sachets
and a red candle in a glass holder and said she’d find out what was happening
with the coffees.

Liv cut her spoon through a slice of
blueberry cheesecake and dragged it through the cream to the side. She had slim
fingers, neat, short nails. A ring he’d thought was a ruby but Liv said was a
garnet, sat lightly on the middle finger of her right hand. He hadn’t noticed a
ring before—and if she’d worn one, he would have. She’d told him at the
restaurant it had been her grandmother’s.

Now the ring sparkled as she attacked her
cheesecake.

Owen cut a wedge out of his chocolate
brownie and wolfed it down. “Your waiter friend is right, by the way. This is
awesome.”

“We deserve a treat. We’re awesome.”

He met her gaze, held it a few seconds too
long.  The levity of the last few minutes vanished.

“I’m glad you think so.” As he said it,
Owen reached under the table and laid his hand on Liv’s knee, rubbing denim
that was warm beneath his touch, well-lived in. His fingers found a threadbare
patch and scratched through, touching bare skin.

She jumped hard enough to make the table
number wobble on its pole. Owen gave her knee one final squeeze and let go.

“If I ask you another heavy question, will
it make you turn all mushy again?”

“If I said yes, would it stop you, Owen?”
The pink tip of her tongue stole out to taste her upper lip.

“Probably not. You’re cute when you cry.”

“Flatterer.” She waved her spoon at him
then scooped at the icecream. “Go on then.”

“The day we met you said you lived with
your parents. But if you moved out after Luke died, I don’t get why you moved
home again if being there makes you miserable. Is business so tight you can’t
afford your own place?”

She sat straighter, dessert spoon poised on
the way to her mouth. Then she put the spoon back to the plate with a faint
clink. “My mother tried to commit suicide in November. It was the third-year
anniversary of Luke’s death. Dad came home from work that night and found her
passed out in bed. She’d taken most of a bottle of sleeping pills and they had
to pump her stomach.”

Her sentences reminded him of the way a
reporter delivered the news. Factual. Precise. But her eyes weren’t so
objective.

“When dad asked me to come home and help
him watch mum I couldn’t say no. My dad’s never asked for help with anything in
his life.”

Owen sat back in the dinky chrome chair. Of
all the scenarios he’d envisaged, this wasn’t one of them. “Is your mum seeing
anyone? A shrink?”

“The hospital referred her to a
psychiatrist at Stirling and he’s been good for her. She’s finally at the point
where she can leave the house but it’s taken all this time.” She shuffled
sideways as the waitress returned with their coffees.

Owen dumped the contents of a sugar sachet
into his long black, and stirred.

“You’ve seen my house,” Liv said, taking a
sip of her latte. “My mum has always been a neat freak, but sometime after Luke
died, it got worse. She stopped going out to do the shopping and had groceries
delivered instead. All she did was stay home and scrub everything to within an
inch of its life. Dad should have seen the signs, but he had his own demons to
deal with.”

“Meaning?”

“Dad’s a fireman in the metropolitan fire
service in Adelaide. He works nights, split shifts. The day Luke died, Luke had
borrowed my mother’s car the night before—which was something dad had told mum
not
to let him do. He’d driven in to Mount Barker to see Ben. Dad was on night
shift and Luke thought he’d have no trouble getting home before dad did, but
Ben said they overslept.”

“You think Luke crashed because he was
speeding to get that car back before your dad got home?” Owen asked.

“That’s what Ben thought,” Liv said,
sipping at her latte and getting milk on her upper lip. “He said if my father
had never interfered, Luke would still be alive. They had a huge row at the
hospital because dad wouldn’t let Ben into Luke’s room. Ben never got to say
goodbye.”

She wrapped both hands around her latte
glass as if it was an anchor that might keep her from floating away. “Dad said
if Ben had stayed the
fuck
out of Luke’s life instead of making his son
creep around in secret, he wouldn’t be in a hospital room breathing through
tubes.” Her lip twisted bleakly.

Owen reached across the table and wiped her
milk moustache away with his thumb. She quivered at his touch. “And what did
you think?”

“I couldn’t talk to my father for months
after the funeral. I didn’t understand how he could be so intolerant when it
came to his own son. I only held it together until the funeral for mum’s sake.
After we buried Luke, I moved out. I concentrated on the last year of my
viticulture degree and then I started LiVine.”

“And then your dad asked you to move home
to help with your mother?”

She nodded.

Owen spooned dark chocolate brownie into his
mouth and thought about what Liv had said. “I’m trying to think how my old man
would have reacted if I’d turned out gay.”

Liv almost choked on her coffee. “I don’t
think that was ever on the cards.”

“True,” he smiled. “But even so, I can’t
imagine Mack Carson giving me his blessing, exactly.”

“What about your mother?” Liv asked.

“My mum just rolls her own way. She doesn’t
let much of what goes on around her, phase her. She’s a bit like Aunt Margaret
like that.”

His mother was also completely self-absorbed,
and so busy
being
self-absorbed, she had no time for anyone else.

Owen thought about telling Liv his own
secret. He had a window if he wanted, but part of him didn’t want to spoil the
night by dirtying it with Jayden Parker’s name. He
would
tell her soon,
he concluded, but not yet. Not tonight. He wanted her to get to know him first,
maybe—if he was lucky—to fall in love with him.

He scooped a generous sliver of dessert on
his spoon and dipped it in double cream. “Are you ready to try this?”

Her gaze fixed on the chocolate fudge. “Am
I
ever
.”

****

Owen drove Liv’s Hyundai back up the
Freeway. The radio was on and Liv hummed and didn’t talk and watched orange
lights fly by, and all the while she thought about the previous night’s wild
ride on the down track and how good that leather felt as it constricted about
her like some gigantic Amazonian snake. And the
speed.
God! It had felt
like she was flying.

It was Owen who suggested a nightcap and
she leapt at the chance, not wanting the night to end—too shy to let it begin.

He parked her car in the carport of her
parents’ house and they walked back to the main street, hand in hand. Or did
she float? She couldn’t be sure.

Now, perched on a stool in the front bar of
the Hahndorf Inn, Liv nursed a nightcap of hazelnut-flavoured Frangelico while
Owen swirled a single-malt Scotch in a tumbler of ice.

For the Sunday night of a holiday weekend,
the bar wasn’t busy. A juke box churned out Top 50 hits, most a few years old,
and an older couple did what might have passed for dancing twenty years ago in
the space between pool tables.

Owen sat with his body open to hers, one
elbow on the bar, knees spread. He didn’t speak much, but he touched her often.

Liv, facing the bar, doodled in her drink
with a straw she didn’t want. Every time Owen’s knee bumped her thigh she’d
stop stirring because his touch froze her brain and she couldn’t concentrate.
Looking at him didn’t help her focus either. Something in his dark eyes turned
her insides to slush.

He sipped his scotch.

She crunched her ice.

And it was almost a relief when the pub
door opened and a blast of cold air arrowed in.

Like them, the couple who entered was
dressed for the city. The girl rubbed her hands and stamped her feet and they
moved to a booth by the window. The guy came up to the other side of the bar to
order drinks.

Liv knew him instantly.
Andrew Straw.

She averted her face.

“Do I have to shoot him?” Owen said, so
softly, Liv wasn’t sure she’d heard him right
.

“What? No!”

“You looked at that guy like he crawled out
of
Deliverance.
”

“He damn well could have,” Liv grumbled
under her breath.

Andrew Straw paid for his drinks and
swaggered back to the girl near the window. Liv threw daggers at his back.

Owen finished his scotch in one final slug
and stood up. “Ready to blow this joint?”

Liv untucked her legs from the bar stool,
pulled her coat more tightly around herself, and followed him out the door.
After the beery pub smell, the fresh air was invigorating. A thin veil of dew
painted the ground.

“We’re not all Cave Men you know, us
blokes,” Owen began, as they crossed the main road. “Take me, for instance. I
read
The Australian.
”

“Some would say that proves your Cave
Man-ness
.
” Her shoulder bumped his.

Owen hugged her into his side. They walked
like that, matching strides, and Liv hooked the fingertips of her right hand
into the back pocket of his jeans, enjoying the play of his muscles and the
loose way he moved.

“So what did that guy in the bar do to get
you off-side?”

“He didn’t do anything to me, exactly, but
he was an absolute prick to Luke and Ben. Strawy is one of four brothers who
live around here—all called Strawy by the way—and the whole lot of them made
Luke’s life hell. Andrew was always cracking jokes about not dropping soap when
Luke was around and telling the blokes in the pub to make sure they kept their
backs to the bar. He’s half the reason Luke and Ben started riding up to Mannum
in the first place. The other half is his brothers.”

She looked up at Owen, striding beside her,
a solid mass of male muscle, and added: “When I first saw you—when you stopped
outside Dean Lang’s in your cousin’s red ute? I thought: here’s another
homophobic he-man. I see them everywhere.”

Owen laughed. “That’s because you’re
looking for them.”

They climbed the hill on English Street and
turned into Church. Owen’s shoes barely registered a thud. Her boots clacked as
if a horse-drawn carriage rattled up the street.

They passed the bowling club driveway. Soon
they’d see her parents’ brick and tile house, hunkered on the block behind a
bare-branched pair of liquid ambers. The Pantah would be there too, parked
beside her father’s Hilux—the exact same spot where Luke used to leave it.

The Ducati was so close to being hers she
could taste it, but the taste was bittersweet. Tomorrow, she’d get the bike,
but there’d be nothing to keep Owen around.

Unless he stayed for her, and that was one
question she’d never ask.

“I have to make a decision on Antarctica
soon,” he said, and her stomach jumped because it seemed he’d read her mind.
“The HR guy rang yesterday.”

“Well the vineyard’s all done. You’re all
good to go.” She said it as brightly as she could, as if the thought of him
leaving didn’t make her feel sick inside.

“You say that like you don’t care either
way.”

He glanced at her, but it was too dark for
Liv to see his face. What she could see was the arch of her parents’ carport
and the double chimney, cylinders outlined against the night stars. The Church
Street house was like a dog-eared map of her life—she knew every brick, paver,
and blade of grass. She knew where its skeletons were buried.

They angled off the pavement, cutting
across the lawn, dodging tentacles of sprawling rose bushes that caught at
their clothes. Alison Murphy never pruned her roses before the second week of
July.