“Um, yeah. That’d be good.”
He pulls a small orange Bic from his navy workman pants. He’s enormous. Taller than Jake. Taller than the surrounding trees, it feels like. And I’m small and impossibly female. An idiot on a self-imposed muck-raking quest with plastic knuckledusters in her pocket. I want to run, but I know this man would chase me, and then I’d be fucked. I take a step toward him and accept the lighter. “Thanks.”
“No worries.” He gestures at my Pall Malls. “Bum one off ya?”
I don’t have much of a choice. I offer him a cigarette, stick one between my lips and light up. It tastes disgusting. I swallow the cough clawing its way up my throat. Choking in front of this guy would be like displaying my neck to a slavering wolf.
My head spins, and the rush of nicotine combined with the whiskey blooming in my stomach loans me a little strength. I hold out the lighter. “Thanks.”
“Keep it.” He pulls out a second one and sparks his own cigarette, studying me over the smoke. “You were just up at the farm.”
It’s not a question, but I smile as if it might be. “I dunno. Was I?”
He doesn’t smile back. “You wanna watch yourself.”
“I do. I’m extremely watchable.”
“You got a smart mouth on you, ay?”
I tilt my cigarette upward and pray it burns fast. “So I’ve been told.”
He takes a step closer, and I fight the urge to retreat. “Do we know each other?”
His eyes narrow. “Shannon. Strom.”
My heart rate spikes. Shannon Strom. The first guy to ever ask me if I’d gone to band camp as a lay-up for a wank joke. I was in his homeroom two years in a row, but I wouldn’t have clocked him in a million years. He’s put on weight, and that, and his blotchy face and beard, make him look at least ten years older than Cece and Jake.
“Oh yeah,” I say. “We went to school together.”
“Yup. You were JGH’s missus, yeah?”
My stomach knots.Were. I feel the shield I didn’t know I was holding be yanked from my hands—the bulwark of Jake’s reputation. What am I supposed to say now? ‘Nah, Shan, me and Jake are still heaps in love. Please don’t beat me to death and toss my corpse in a shallow grave, or he’ll be, like, so sad?’
I settle for drawing on my Pall Mall. “I was. How ’bout those All Blacks, huh?”
A cold smile settles on Shannon’s face. “Not surprised he ditched you. He can do better.”
I flick my ash. He clearly wants a reaction, and he’s not getting one.
Shannon leans in a little closer. “I think I remember you from back at school. Wog retard from Aussie, yeah? Played the flute?”
I keep my expression blank. My insides boil with rage, but I’ve been called a lot worse by a lot better, and he’s still not getting a reaction from me.
“Oh come on,” Shannon says in that sing-songy lilt men use when they’re baiting you. “Don’t get all pissy.”
I blow a lungful of smoke directly in his face. “Thing is, Ram-Rooter, I’ve searched the inner recesses of my heart, and I don’t have anything to say to you.”
His upper lip curls. “Then I think you should leave.”
“Great show.”
“Huh?”
“I’m already going.” I drop my cigarette and grind it out under my boot. I’d usually pick up the stub, but the environment’s gonna have to take a hit on this one. “Have a great day.”
I feel him watching me as I climb into Cece’s car. I refuse to look back. I don’t glance at him in the rearview mirror. I don’t flip him off as I drive past. My hands are shaking so hard I’m scared I’m going to clip one of the many utes and vans lining the car park.
Whatever just happened, Shannon Strom knows I was at the farm. I didn’t imagine the tension in that pub, and I didn’t imagine that fucked up conversation. Things are getting weird. Although ‘scary’ might be the accurate descriptor.
