“So Janelle King cornered me in the grocery line on Tuesday and railroaded me into signing up for the Bachelor Auction,” Ryan said to change the topic.
“Debbie Marin had me sign up this week too,” Dustin admitted.
“I don’t know why you all avoid it,” Brad laughed. “I’m the first to sign up every year.”
“You couldn’t pay me to do that,” I said gruffly. “Can’t I just donate to the Rural Fire Service directly.”
“Then you miss out on the fun,” Brad replied.
“That’s the point, I can’t think of anything less fun than parading around in front of drunk women, asking them to pay to go on a date with me.”
“It’s just all harmless fun,” Brad said. “Odds are high since it’s your first year that either old Sylvia Nable or Mavis Winston will win you and make you work in their garden for an afternoon.”
“That’s what happened to me,” Ryan laughed.
“Didn’t Bella win your brother at last year's auction?” Dustin said.
“Yes, she did,” I just lowered my head, silently begging someone to change the topic again because, yes my brother, Noah, was engaged to the woman who won him at the bachelor auction, and my mother had not stopped hassling me to register.
“So why not sign up?” Brad asked.
“Because I don’t date.” I yet again nodded my head in the direction of my daughter, hoping that everyone at the table would stop.
Chapter three
Zoe
It felt like I was on a holiday staying at Damien’s house. His neighbourhood was quiet, and his house was only a few blocks from the beach. His ‘nothing fancy’ granny flat was more than twice the size of the place I’d been renting above the salon, it was comfortable and most importantly, there was a pool.
I couldn’t help myself, I dove in not long after Damien and Mariah had left on the Friday night and had started swimming each morning before breakfast. I hated to admit that despite living in Hartwood Bay for almost a year, a place that was laid back and so much less judgemental than the part of Melbourne that I’d grown up in, but I was too self conscious to swim at the local beaches. Sure, I would splash around with my feet in ankle deep water but I’d still be wearing shorts and a t-shirt, doing everything I could to disguise my squishy mid-section.
A year after finding my then fiancé balls deep inside my much skinnier best friend at my engagement party, I was still very aware that I didn’t have the kind of body that most men found desirable. Not that I cared about a man desiring me again.Nope, I was done with men. Once you’d experienced that level of betrayal it was hard to ever trust again.
Apparently Christian didn’t waste any time getting engaged to Holly, according to my mother. I wouldn’t know because I’d closed all my social media accounts when I moved to Hartwood Bay. My mother was the only real source I had of information from my former life. I might work with my cousin, Audrey, but she knew that I left that life behind in Melbourne for a reason.
Mum called me twice a week to fill me in with all the information from the world I was ignoring. She didn’t fail to ask me, each time, when I was going to come home and find someone to settle down with. Her opinion was that if Christian had moved on, that I needed to do so as well, or it would look like he won. She didn’t realise that he had won, he got the girl he wanted all along, and I was living a solo life that I enjoyed much more than most of the time I’d dated him.
In hindsight, I was better off finding out about their affair before we’d tied the knot, but it still hurt. I felt like a laughing stock. Of course, I was the last to know and it took me walking in on them in the act to realise that I was really not the kind of woman Christian truly wanted.
I could still hear his voice in my head each time I attempted to wear something that highlighted my mid section. “Maybe wear a jacket over that…” was his usual response when I’d ask him how I looked. Anything to cover up the lumps and bumps around my waistline.
In the last few months, I’d graduated to wearing shorts that didn’t end below my knees. Bella had bought all of the stylists in Steele Cut a cute pair of leopard print shorts, and although I hated exposing my legs, I wasn’t the only woman in the team with thick thighs. In fact we were all on the curvy side and it was liberating. Like it was my fuck you to the asshole that broke my confidence as well as my heart.
Having a fairly private place to swim was like finding an oasis in the desert, getting those laps in before Damien and Mariah had risen made me feel like a new woman. In fact I’d hardly seen the father and daughter duo since moving in, they’d left the house early Saturday morning with a double kayak attached to his ute and came back hours later.
As Sunday morning rolled by, Damien knocked on my door to let me know that he was holding a family BBQ and that I was more than welcome to attend. When I said yes I didn’t realise just how many people that would mean but as I walked out to the alfresco area with a store bought dessert, that family BBQ for the D’Amico family meant Damien’s parents, his brother Noah and my boss Bella, Bella’s sister, Maddie, and her boyfriend Brock as well as Maddie and Bella’s mum, Donna and her partner Patrick. It suddenly made sense why a household with only two people had such a large outdoor dining setting.
Damien’s mum, Giovanna, took the dessert out of my hands and greeted me with a side hug and a kiss on both cheeks. “How are you going? You poor thing! Forced out of your home so suddenly!”
“Oh it’s OK, I’m sure that I could still make do there but Bella and Damien insisted.”
“And so they should.” Giovanna furrowed her eyebrows. “I hope Damien has been feeding you well?”
“Oh, he doesn’t need to feed me, there’s a little kitchen in the granny flat, and it’s honestly better than what I’d been living with since moving here…”
“Mum! Leave the girl alone.” Damien interrupted as he walked out, he was wearing a white t-shirt spread tightly across his broad shoulders, and my stomach flipped. He was a handsome man and even though I wasn’t interested in a relationship, I could still window shop.
“But she’s our guest, I’m just saying that maybe if you fed Libby a little better, she’d have stayed.”
