Pictures of You

Chapter 34

age SEVENTEEN

34

Evie

I’m such a mess seeing Oliver and his parents off at Sydney Airport that I land on Drew’s doorstep at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning in a flood of tears. It’s been a whirlwind two months, and somehow I scrambled through both my driving test and the end-of-year exams with my mind partially in gear and mainly in a love-induced freefall. I’ve emerged with my license, thanks to Bree’s parents and mine helping me get my hours up in Sydney and with long drives back and forth to Newcastle. And miraculously I haven’t totally wrecked my grades this semester.

But Year Twelve will have to be different. I’m barely holding on to my rational mind! I might be in love, but I’m also determined to get into Sydney University and study forensic linguistics. I have to get my head together, or the intensity of the relationship will do the one thing I always predicted. It will tear my life down.

For now, though, summer holidays stretch before us. Starting with me being totally bereft about Oliver’s family trip. It’s not just that he’s going away. It’s the way his parents acted with him in the departure lounge. Criticizing everything from the way he packed his bag to what he was wearing, the music on his iPod, and how he slumped in the chair.

“We’re giving you a first-class trip to Europe,” his mother said. “Why don’t you ever appreciate what we do for you?” She was as put together as always. Brunette bob. Pearl earrings. Judgmental expression etched on her face. I’ve tried to get along with her, but my breezy Newcastle vibe just doesn’t seem to cut it in Lane Cove. “Do you see other families giving their teenagers this experience?” She glared at me then, as if I were Exhibit A of the less fortunate.

“Sit up straight and look like you actually want to go,” his father demanded.

“He’s gone for six whole weeks,” I explain to Drew without preamble, crying, when he opens his front door. “How am I supposed to survive?”

He stares at me like I’ve lost it. He’s in flannel pajama pants and a white tank. Bed hair. Dark, school-holiday stubble on his chin, like he’s an actual man. There’s a huge bowl of cornflakes in his hand, as if he’d starve in the time it took to answer the front door. Entirely unbothered by my predicament, he shovels an obscenely large spoonful into his gob and mumbles through it, “Do you need a GoFundMe?”

I want to tip the cereal over his head. Someone as unromantic as Drew could never appreciate that Oliver is the first thought I have waking up or that I drift off to sleep inventing romantic scenarios starring us both. In the mini-screenplay in my head, I take some classes at the boys’ school, so it’s all secret longing looks over the flame of a Bunsen burner, or heads bowed, wrangling quadratic equations in the library’s study nook at recess …

We’ve spent so much time together since the pool party, Oliver’s existence on this earth seems to have woven itself inextricably through my own. First love will do that. Particularly for someone who spent years with her nose stuck in literary romance novels, thinking this happened only in books.

“It’s six weeks, Eves,” Drew says, crunching cereal in a way that makes me want to murder him. “Pull yourself together.”

I stop crying simply because I’m now outraged at his lack of empathy. He and I might have become close friends, but he was my second choice of comforter. Bree has a work shift at the markets this morning, so I’m desperate—and the way he’s receiving me here, I’d have to be.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s fine. I’ll distract you.” We walk inside to the kitchen, which looks like it always does—a little worse for wear.

“Can you stop chewing like that,” I beg him.

He smiles.

He knows I get enraged by the sound of unnecessarily loud chewing. It’s made worse by the way he’s tapping the metal spoon on the ceramic bowl between mouthfuls. And the fact that he’s leaning back against the kitchen bench instead of leaning into the problem .

“I don’t know why I expected you to get it,” I say. “It’s not like you’ve ever had a girlfriend.”

He feigns offense. “How dare you! I’ve had girlfriends!”

He has mercifully finished the cornflakes but positions the bowl as if to slurp the remainder of the milk and looks at me like this is a challenge.

It’s a step too feral for me. I leap up and snatch it out of his hands.

He towers over me and smiles.

“Being with a string of different girls isn’t the same as having one special person, Drew.”

“God, you make it sound like I’m a player.”

Yes. Well. Given I’ve technically been with precisely no one so far, sexually speaking—not even my own boyfriend—anyone with any experience is a lothario from where I stand.

He shifts me out of his way, then feeds four slices of bread into the toaster.

“I can’t possibly eat,” I tell him.

He frowns. “It’s not for you.”

He’s eating four slices of bread and the cereal? Where does he put it? My eyes flit over his taut physique. Seeing him practically undressed only calls to mind my other problem. Sex. And the fact that Oliver is expecting us to have it for the first time when he gets back from Europe. First time for me, that is.

We would have done it ages ago if he’d had his way, but whenever I imagine stripping off my clothes, I get worried I won’t know what to do and where to put things, and when, and in what order, while he compares the shambles of being in bed with me to all the other girls he knows.

“Bloody hell, Hudson, your boyfriend has been out of the country five seconds. You look like you want to devour me,” Drew teases, breaking me from my ponderings.

I am mortified . “Sorry!” I blurt. “I was thinking about sex.”

The toast pops up as if it can’t miss a second of this exchange.

“Not with you, obviously,” I clarify.

He picks up the toast and burns his fingers. “Shit!”

“Oliver wants us to … when he gets back …”

He busies himself attacking the toast with butter. Metic-ulously slicing tomatoes and cheese. Cutting the bread into precise rectangles. Then he carries the plate to the kitchen table, drags a chair along the tiles (cue more internal rage from me), sits down, and says, “Are you sure you don’t want some?”

“Er …” Now I’m truly flustered. “I mean, part of me does, obviously …” For the love of God, do not elaborate, Evie.

He pushes the plate across the table toward me. Oh! He was talking about toast. He covers a smile by biting into a piece. I can tell he’s trying to eat less annoyingly this time, and I feel myself soften toward him, despite his teasing.

“What do you want?” he says, after a while. We’re off toast and back on sex, I think.

I want to tell him I’m terrified. That I’m scared of showing someone my body. Scared I won’t know what to do with it, and that my lack of experience will ruin everything. But while Drew and I have become mates, that’s a conversation for me and Bree. He continues anyway, before I can think, and says, “Because if you’re not ready, he needs to respect that.”

I’m definitely not ready. The thought rushes at me, loudly.

“But I told him I loved him,” I explain.

Drew puts down the toast and pushes away the plate, defeated. He looks squarely at me. “You did?”

It’s like I’m under a spotlight in a police interview and he’s asking me if I meant it. Do I love Oliver? I must. Everything about him and me is like all my fictional dreams come true. He has everything in the world going for him and he’s literally obsessed with me. Whenever I’m with him, I feel like I’ve lost my grip on this earth. It’s this exciting, scary sense that I can’t predict our next steps.

“Whether or not you do is irrelevant,” Drew says, barging on. “You can still say no if you’re not ready. End of story.”

“I think I’m just scared,” I admit. I’m such an overthinker when it comes to this stuff, and I hate this about myself. I wish I had the confidence of other girls. “I’m sure it will be fine.”

Now he’s standing up and dumping leftover toast in the bin. “It needs to be more than fine,” he says, clattering the dish into the sink as he shoves the tap on too fast. “Fuck!” he says, accidentally spraying water all over himself. “Sorry.”

Drew always apologizes for swearing. It’s cute and unnecessary, because I also swear—with him, at least. Not with Oliver. It’s like I try to portray a version of myself with my boyfriend that is his ideal girl. I look back at Drew and his messy hair, wiping his torso with a tea towel as the hot morning sun beams through the kitchen window. And I can’t help feeling slightly envious of the girls he’s no doubt very patient with during “more than fine” sex.