Chapter 16 Mischa #2
“How will I get home? Give me my phone.”
“Phones and wallets are such a pain to replace.” Max looks up at the sky.
“You were always a smart kid, but you need to learn wisdom. At least the next town is not far away. It’s a beautiful moonlit night tonight, and this is a road.
Follow the path home, wherever that is for you now.
Maybe if you walk long enough, you might realize a thing or two. ”
Driving back Max is sullen.
“You can sell the product to our contacts in Sydney,” I tell him, “or throw it in the drain; we got the money, it’s all gravy.”
“I was never afraid to die before tonight,” he says, watching the road, “because I would rather die than let my family down. I forgot that my family is two different things. Sorry I made you doubt me.”
“Maxim, I hope you know you are worth your weight in gold,” I tell him. “If it was Sofie, I don’t know if I could have done what you just did.”
“That’s different,” Max smiles. “If it’s down to her and you, I’m picking her every time.”
I dial a number as we’re driving away.
He answers.
“Who the fuck calls at two the morning?”
“William,” I say. “I need that favor.”
“My God,” he groans. “That was quick.”
???
He arrives around three-thirty in the morning. Maxim and I stopped in some forest park on the way to Sydney and we are asleep in our seats. William bangs on the window and jolts us both awake.
“Wakey-wakey,” he says.
We get out and grab our backpacks. William inspects the bullet damage as we do. We cleaned the blood pretty good so it doesn’t look too bad. He’s trying not to laugh and I’m trying to ignore it. On the drive home Maxim reports the car stolen.
“Thanks,” I say to Will, as we arrive back at the hotel.
“Hope we’re even,” he says.
“I do too.”
At the hotel we get to our hallway and I wait for him to go into his room. He’s waiting for me and Max to go into mine.
“I forgot the card,” he says.
“What’s the matter?” I ask. “Don’t want to wake your girlfriend?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
“You can sleep on the couch,” I offer. “You’ll owe me a modern favor.”
“The worst kind.”
There are two small sofas in my room. Max takes one and Will takes the other. For some reason, maybe because his sofa doesn’t convert to a bed like Max’s does, William gets into bed beside me while I’m sleeping.
When I wake, Will’s phone is ringing, and then the door knocks. I open it a crack.
“I know he’s in here,” Austen says. “I can hear his phone.”
He pushes past me, and finds Will in the bed I’ve just come from. Will’s not wearing much. Then he looks at me. I’m naked, wrapped in a sheet.
He looks hurt. “Nothing alike, huh?”
“This is not what it looks like.”
“What does it look like?”
“Not what you think.”
“Did you do this to get back at me for Sabrina?”
There are little bottles of alcohol strewn all over the floor and I kick them and they clink against each other.
“Since I last saw you,” I tell Austen, “I have become hungover, seriously sleep deprived, and deaf in one ear,” I point to the small drop of blood that has leaked from my lobe and smudged the side of my jaw, “and a little traumatized, but I did not fuck your asshole brother. I jerked off at the pool last night to an audience of one, and that was just enough.”
He looks over to see Maxim asleep on the sofa.
Austen points to Max. “I remember that wet-cigarette-looking man and his giant horse penis from the sauna.”
“Hard to forget, really. That’s Max.”
“Max? one you had dinner with in Melbourne?”
“...Yeah?”
“You know what? I don’t actually care.”
He bends down and inspects his brother.
“He smells sober,” he says, and shoots a look at me. “Come on buddy,” he says to William.
“Baby?” William says as Austen rouses him from the bed.
He’s barely conscious as Austen leads him back to his room.
???
Things are frosty the next day. Austen won’t even look at me.
It’s sort of poetic justice that he feels scorned now too, but the fact that it’s blown up over Will is just as intolerable for me as it is for him.
I would never ever go with someone like Will.
He gives me the fucking creeps. Isobelle too.
Psychopath vibes. She also makes my superpower go a little haywire.
The moment the puppetmaster’s around it’s hard to read everyone else. It makes me feel human. I hate it.
I find a note stuck to the bottom of my shoe. I don’t know where it came from.
“You are my cup of coffee,” it reads. “Come wake me up.”
It plays on my mind all day. It’s for me, from Austen. It has to be. So I ask him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says.
“It must have been slipped under my door.”
“Maybe you didn’t see it, when you went in your room late at night, to sleep with my brother.”
I try to protest but he won’t hear it, and storms off.
He left the note for me. I would have left him one too.
He would have let me in his room the moment he heard me scratching at his door, pulled me into his bed, ripped my clothes off and kissed me all over my body.
I would have tasted him and begged for more.
I would have asked him to tie me up and he would have, and rubbed me down with massage oils and pleasured me before pushing himself deep inside me like I had never let anyone do before, harder and harder, until I drained him of all the cum in his body, and we would have had sex all night the way we have both been dying to do.
And now that’s all off the table.
‘Thwarted’ is not an emotion, but it should be.
???
Second to last day. The group is headed to the cave painting heritage site, I can’t take it anymore. I move over to William on the bus.
“Hey Will,” I say.
William and Austen’s eyes shoot up. I sit down in front of them and they both seem surprised.
“Morning,” William says.
“So remember the other night when I called you when my rental car broke down and you picked me up? When you stayed in my room with Max because you said you didn’t want to wake Isobelle up?”
“...Yeah?”
“Well, I know it sounds weird but at some point it felt like someone was sleeping next to me.”
Sabrina and Isobelle look at each other. Kane looks over too.
“That was me,” he says.
“Okay,” I nod. “What the fuck?”
“Sleeping on a sofa was horrible,” William scratches his head.
“I’m too tall for that shit. I got up to piss, and when I came back, I thought: I can’t sleep on that, I’m getting in the fucking bed, I don’t care anymore.
” He looks at me. “I mean, I was barely conscious, it’s not like I’d ever do anything weird, if that’s what you are worried about? ”
“I’m just a little paranoid.”
“I guess it was a crazy night for you.” William smirks.
“I figured what happened was, you were drinking in the pool, talked Max into going out to party. You were also probably high, and you fucked up the car. That’s when you called me to come get you, because I owed you for the koalas. Am I in the ballpark?”
Austen’s eyes look at me, expecting a reply.
“I mean,” I sigh, “you make me sound like an idiot.”
“Oh you definitely are,” William smiles. Sabrina and Isobelle chortle. “You’re also not my type.”
My eyes bug. “You are one-hundred percent the opposite of my type.”
“Sorry I made you nervous,” William says. “Especially as, if the shoe was on the other foot, you’d be dead.”
“I’ll take your word for it. You’ve almost killed me once.”
“Indeed,” he offers me a fist-bump. “We good?”
We reach our destination. Austen and the others stomp off up the trail. William laughs to himself. He hangs back with me as everyone else gets out of the bus.
“Are you having deja-vu?” William asks me, as his face twists into an evil little grin like a cartoon villain.
“No,” I say. “Should I?”
“Huh,” he shrugs, trying to hide the enthusiasm that was making his eyes look crazy. “Must just be me.”
We’re in the parking lot at the start of the trail.
William looks at me and bounces on his toes and looks away.
He’s radiating an energy he can barely contain.
He stretches his arms, not because he’s tired from the drive, but because he’s masking something that’s starting to spook me. I can feel him coming in for the kill.
“Am I about to be ambushed?” I ask.
“Apparently there are these natural little pools inside the forest park,” he explains. “They’re shaped like jelly beans.”
Recognition of what he’s saying is forming, but I push the thought back. It can’t be.
“We should catch up,” I say.
“Hey that car over there looks familiar,” he says, smiling like a maniac.
He walks towards a black sedan and I follow in horror.
“Oh my god, is that a bullet hole?” His jaw drops in mock surprise. “Do you think someone should report it to the police? Don’t worry, I’ll put your name down too, so we can both claim the reward.”
My mind stops working. “This is...” I stammer. “I don’t... you... did you tell us to dump it here to mess with me?”
“It’s mostly fun and games,” he smiles.
“Mostly?”
“I did want a little leverage, but I hit gold. I knew that car was hot. I didn’t think it would be this hot.”
“I didn’t shoot anyone, idiot. I got stood over buying drugs, and the asshole blew a hole in the roof of my car.”
“Tell it to the cops.”
“Okay, evil genius,” I frown. “What do you want? Some old-time favor? Because I’m good at those.”
“I can tell you’d be good for some biblical shit,” he raises an eyebrow. “But a modern favor is all I want. I’ll still owe you as well.”
“Anything.”
“I know you’ve got some little spark with Amelia. She seems into you.”
I glower at him, waiting for him to get to the point.
“Okay?”
“However, Austen likes her, they’re seeing where it goes, and you should stay the fuck away so he can do his thing.”
What the fuck is he talking about? Austen is engaged. To be married. To Sabrina. But loves me. Not Amelia.
“Your... brother Austen... has something going with... Amelia?”
“They hooked up when we were in the Northern Territories.”