Chapter Fifteen
Payton
At least once a month,most of us would try to get over to Mum and Dad’s to spend some time there, see our parents and catch up with each other. We were close as far as siblings went; I guess we got lucky that way, but we could go a while without seeing each other properly with work getting in the way and the other commitments we all had. We were like worker bees: busy things but ultimately we all centred back to the hive, which for us, was each other and our parents.
Most of us had something already scheduled for this weekend. Ava’s friend from university was coming to stay with her; Max and Vic had a meal booked somewhere uber posh and I expected he was going to propose; Jackson and Vanessa had her gran over for the weekend—although her gran was still coming, being a rather formidable lady who ate balls for breakfast; and Callum had a date. Claire and Killian were already there so Marie could help with Eliza.
Dad’s TIA had given us a scare. He was still young at fifty-eight— at which point nowadays was someone described as old?—and we’d thought he was healthy, so last Sunday had taken us all back.
I unpacked my suitcase which was neater than usual. Since tidying my apartment I’d kept it that way: clothes folded, accessories organised, so my case took minutes to put together and less time to put away when I got to my room at my parents’.
They’d had the house modernised a year ago, pretty much gutting everything and redesigning it. Ava had a lot to do with it structurally—her favourite thing was to see what a house could be like with walls in different places and I’d seen her in action knocking a wall down shortly after she’d caught a boyfriend cheating. Marie had overseen the interior design, finally having rooms that were meant for adults rather than teenagers or children.
I loved it here. It was my childhood home and held all those memories like a jar filled with fireflies. The room I was in had been Seph’s when we were younger and one day he tried to be Spiderman and climbed out of the window. Sticking to walls hadn’t been something he was made for, and he’d tumbled down to the garden, picking up various cuts and scrapes and a broken arm. It shouldn’t be a favourite memory, but he’d truly believed he was Spiderman and had been bit by some insect, despite me and Ava yelling at him that it was just fiction. I remembered him sitting on the grass with me and Ava looking down at him through the open window and him shouting at us that ithadn’t worked and he didn’t know why.I truly loved my brother and all the crazy things he does on a semi-regular basis.
“Payton.” There was a knock at my door and my mother’s voice rang through the wood. “Payton, can I come in?”
“Shit, yeah, you usually don’t ask,” I said, quickly putting my underwear in a drawer. I’d packed some pretties, although I didn’t know why. The only person who’d be seeing them was me, which was more than enough, I knew.
I hadn’t seen Owen since Monday morning although we’d spoken and texted and chatted plenty. We’d had a long conversation about his breakfast with Dave this morning and he told me who he’d set his mother up with for a date tonight. I was officially no longer his lawyer, which was one less barrier in our way to something more than friends, if that was what we wanted.
“I have been asking since you were eighteen, Payton Marie, but you’re usually wearing headphones or engrossed in social media so you don’t hear,” Mum said, pushing the door open. “It’s tidy in here.”
I frowned. “What else did you expect?”
“Something akin to a clothes shop at the end of the first day of the sale.” She sat down on the bed. “How’s work been?”
“Good,” I said. “I’ve been making more of an effort to stop work at a certain time and do something during the week other than work, sleep and eat.”
Marie smiled. “What’s made you make that change?”
I knew what she was fishing for. “Knowing that everyone was worried about me burning out.”
“And Owen? Or is it just coincidence that he’s been around since you started to get your shit together?” Marie said, unfolding and refolding a pair of jeans that I was planning to change into.
Owen. I’d check my phone to see if he’d sent a text or if I had a missed call from him, and when I hadn’t, I’d debate messaging him with something fun or interesting or about the book I was reading. “I don’t think it’s all coincidence. He runs this successful business and is involved in others, yet he manages his time to do other things and he’s so calm with everything. Apart from the first time we met. Then he was a bit stressed.”
“You smile when you talk about him. Are you sure you’re just friends?” My mother had three gifts. The first was being a shit hot family lawyer. The second was being able to tell my father what to do and get him to do it. The third was that she could read any of her children like a basic story book. There was no point trying to act confused.
“It’s not just friends. But I don’t know what I want,” I said. “We get along so well and he’s really, really hot. He likes this lot of weirdos enough to see them three times a week and even Seph being annoying drunk hasn’t scared him away. He’s successful and gorgeous and clever and all that and he likes me. And I think he likes me a lot.”
“So why aren’t you more than friends, Payton? It seems like you know you should be. Is there no chemistry there?” my mother said as loud music blasted out from the room next door.
“Thanks for putting me next to Seph,” I muttered. That meant he’d be waking me up at stupid o’clock for a midnight feast because we had the tendency to turn into seven-year-olds when we came back home. “There is chemistry. It’s me. I’m scared because everyone I’ve ever dated has turned out to be a jerk and then I’ve got hurt. He’s too perfect so there has to be a fault there and I’m worried that when I find that fault I’ll end up getting my heartbroken again. Which then upsets everyone else because they worry about me.”
My mother had the audacity to laugh. The Blossoms latest album pulsed through the walls and my memories of being a teenager weren’t so sweet, with Seph’s inability to do anything quietly. “Payton, our job is to worry about you. Like you worry about your brothers and Claire and Ava. If you tried it with Owen and it doesn’t work out, we’d be here to pick you up and dust you down. Same with if it does work out: we’d celebrate with you and make sure he knows he’s got a foot in the grave already if he messes with you.”
I nodded, not knowing what else to say. There was no point in arguing because she was right, I just had trouble accepting it and that people being concerned and caring about me was not a sign of my failure. “Did you want me for something specific?”
“Just to tell you to hurry up as we’re opening Champagne. I think everyone’s here. There was just Ava left to arrive—she was running late but she might be here now,” Mum said. “I’d best go startle Seph.”
* * *
When my parents had the house renovated, they’d had three rooms knocked together to create a large kitchen come dining room come lounge and it was this room that we took over when we were all here. We’d eaten, somehow all squashed around the long table my parents had acquired from a monastery of all places, and gone through several bottles of wine, apart from Claire who was breastfeeding and whose only pleasure was to glare at Killian as he took sips of wine with a look of bliss on his face.
“I hate you,” she said. “I give you your daughter, decide to breastfeed her and in repayment you drink in front of me. Where’s your sense of decency?”
“Lost in the large pile of crap I scraped from up her back earlier. You’re doing brilliantly, dear. Keep a tab and those are all nights out where I have to stay in and babysit,” Killian said calmly. He’d thrown in the ‘dear’ specially to rile her, and judging by her blazing eyes he was about to have his daughter launched at him.
