Chapter 46
46
‘I don’t ever want to move again,’ I say with a sigh.
‘And you wouldn’t have to except – a few small things – one being that we don’t live in Australia, and we have to go home, the other being that there’s going to be a wedding ceremony here in a few hours, and the two of us lying naked on the floor might kill the mood,’ Ethan replies.
‘Perhaps,’ I say. ‘I suppose we could take this party inside.’
‘Okay but I hate to break it to you, we do need to move all the chairs back into place first,’ he says.
‘I guess I can handle that,’ I say with a smile.
It’s dark but I don’t have to search for long to locate my bra. I quickly put it on, throwing my dress over the top, and I’ve located one of my shoes when I realise Ethan isn’t moving.
‘Shit,’ he says softly.
‘What?’ I reply.
Oh, God, don’t tell me he’s regretting it already. I thought we’d turned a corner, that this was going to be the start of something.
‘The bench,’ he says. ‘Your family bench… we’ve broken it.’
Shiiiit. Suddenly I wish it really was just Ethan having cold feet, that I could deal with.
‘What? How?’ I ask.
‘I don’t know if we landed on it, or we knocked it with a chair but… look,’ he says.
Sure enough, the bench is in three pieces.
‘Can you fix it?’ I ask him, panic consuming me.
Ethan gets down on his knees and tries to click the bench back together. I grab my phone from my bag and shine my torch on it. Oh, thank God, I think he’s done it.
Ethan turns around and cautiously tries to put his weight on the bench, but the second he gets near it, it falls apart again.
‘Shit,’ I blurt.
‘Look, it’s okay, we?—’
‘It’s not okay though, is it?’ I snap back. ‘I knew this would happen, I knew we should stay away from each other, that we shouldn’t do this, that?—’
‘Do not say we’re cursed, or that it’s the universe, or whatever,’ he tells me. ‘It’s not that.’
‘What’s the alternative?’ I reply. ‘That we’re both fuck-ups? That we’re both losers, with no direction in life, nothing to show for our time on earth, just making a mess everywhere we go? Because, newsflash, that’s what we are. I should never have brought you here, look what we’ve done. I think you need to go, you need to leave, before we fuck anything else up.’
‘Lana—’
‘Ethan, I’m serious, we’re nothing but trouble,’ I tell him.
‘Okay, fine, I’ll go,’ he replies. ‘But, just so you know, everything you just said about me, it’s not true.’
‘You think you’re better than me?’ I reply.
‘No, I don’t,’ he says seriously. ‘And I would never say anything like that about you, but perhaps if you did care a little more about your job you would know that I don’t work there. Redflags is my app, your company built it. They work for me. I’ve just put in an offer on a new flat – I don’t feel like I’m doing all that bad in life. I’m sad to hear you don’t feel the same.’
I know that I should apologise for what I just said but I’m not wrong about one thing: we are trouble together.
‘I’m going to bed,’ I tell him. ‘Just… balance that thing together, lock the door and put the key back where you found it.’
‘We won’t get away with that, will we?’ he says.
‘No,’ I reply. ‘They’ll realise it’s broken, and maybe I’ll come clean, or maybe I’ll be too scared and they’ll end up checking the CCTV, and they’ll see that it was us and… and I’ll deal with it alone.’
‘Lana—’
‘Just… leave it,’ I tell him. ‘We were never supposed to do this.’
I grab my bag and hurry out of the pool house, slinking back around the house to go in through the front door now that Bea isn’t lingering there any more. It seems like most people have gone to bed now, but this is definitely the best way to get in, without bumping into anyone.
Oh, I have really fucked up this time.