‘I’m in here because I live here,’ she replied, my favourite cream silk shirt thrown over her cocoa-coloured bike shorts and sports bra. ‘And I’m not going throughyourstuff, I’m looking for the dust bag formyChanel. It was in your suitcase earlier.’
‘You mean the last time you were in my room when you shouldn’t have been?’
I walked over to the bed, pulled out my suitcase and unzipped the front pocket to extract the little black and white bag. There wasn’t an awful lot of point in holding onto it now.
‘Is there anything else I can get you while I’m here?’ I offered. ‘My dress? Pair of shoes? Couple of kidneys?’
‘You can only donate one kidney or you’d die,’ Charlotte said, disgusted with my stupidity in a way only an eighteen-year-old can be.
‘I still wouldn’t put it past you,’ I replied. ‘Now piss off so I can get ready for this barbecue, and please stop going through my things.’
‘Don’t worry, there’s nothing else worth having.’ She blew a kiss as she flounced past me, waving the dust bag over her head like a victory flag, then shrugging off my shirt and letting it fall to the floor.
‘Don’t worry about closing the door or anything,’ I shouted as I surveyed her wreckage. The beautiful tiny cottage was a mess. How could one person cause so much carnage in such a short time? Charlotte was part-human and part-Tasmanian devil and, if I was being honest, I’d have taken a full-blooded Tasmanian devil over my sister in that moment.
‘What happened, have we been robbed?’
Joe stood in the open door, scanning the disaster area in front of him.
‘We’ve been Charlotte-d,’ I replied, allowing my tote bag to slip off my shoulder onto the bed, the soft mattress accepting the weight with a sigh. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t think she touched your stuff.’
‘Looks like someone did.’ He stooped to pick up my abandoned shirt, laying it over the back of the sofa as he eyed his weekend bag. ‘Oh right, that was you.’
‘I told you, I wasn’t going through it,’ I said, covering my red face with a pile of my clothes. ‘I was moving it.’
‘To save it from the mysterious leather-eating mice, I remember.’
The atmosphere between us was just as strained as it had been on the way to the butcher’s and I was starting to think I preferred smarmy sleazebag Joe to stiff and snippy Joe. At least that version gave me something to work with, a chance to practise my banter. This one gave me nothing at all and I wasn’t about to apologise when I hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, apart from conk him in the face with my laptop and that wasn’t on purpose.
Concentrating very hard on looking at anything other than me, Joe unclipped and unzipped his bag and pulled out a matching leather washbag. ‘If it’s all right with you, I’d like to shower before the party kicks off. Unless you want to go first?’
‘You want a shower?’ I replied. ‘In here?’
‘I was thinking I’d use the bathroom specifically but yes, I want to shower here at this cottage.’
Apparently his need was so great that he started stripping down right in front of me, his shirt already balled up in his hand as he unfastened the top button of his trousers. Joe had the kind of body that looked like he worked on sailing ships in days of yore and tossed around barrels full of ale as a workout. Strong arms ran up to meet broad shoulders and a barrel chest, and yes, there was hair on that chest and no, I didn’t hate it. There were no carefully sculpted abs but his stomach was flat, with exactly the right amount of softness to let you know he wasn’t afraid of carbs. Combined with his charm, charisma and stupidly handsome face, it was truly irresponsible of him to walk around likethat. Only he wasn’t trying to be charming right now, just irritating.
‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ I breathed before I could stop myself. ‘I mean, no, you’re not using my bathroom. And put your bloody shirt back on.’
‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked, shirt still decidedly off. ‘Hose myself down in the middle of the garden?’
There was another mental image I wouldn’t be able to escape for the rest of eternity.
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ he said, dismissing my protestations and tucking the washbag under his arm. ‘You can’t call the bathroom off limits when we’re sharing the cottage. What happened to “you owe me”?’
‘What happened to me keeping my distance?’ I asked. ‘That was your request, wasn’t it?’
There was no air conditioning in the cottage but despite the humid day outside, the atmosphere was positively frosty. We glared at each other from opposite sides of the room, neither one about to back down.
‘Sorry, I assumed you’d be capable of basic human decency,’ he said, blinking first, much to my delight. ‘I wasn’t asking for your permission to use the shower, I was being polite and asking if you wanted to use it first. Why does everything have to be a fight with you? You’re so fucking defensive.’
‘I wouldn’t have to be defensive if you weren’t so unpredictable,’ I volleyed back.
‘I’m not unpredictable.’ Joe frowned, looking surprised by the accusation.
‘Inconsistent then,’ I amended, picking up a pair of leggings and attempting to fold them, black Lycra slappingme in the face and wrapping around my neck. Leggings were really hard to fold when you were annoyed. ‘You’re inconsistent. And antagonistic. And flighty.’
‘Flighty?’ he scoffed, popping the rest of the buttons on his fly to reveal a flash of the same kind of black boxers I’d seen in his bag. ‘All right, Nana. I’m going for a shower. Something I do every day.Consistently.’
