Chapter 6
My hangover pounds against every inch of my skull, but it’s Sunday.
Which means no matter what state I’m in, if I have a pulse I have to pull my sorry ass out of bed, gulp down a river of water and go to my parent’s house for lunch.
It’s tradition, and there’s no excuses. My five-year-old nephew was born on a Sunday morning so my mum relocated lunch to my sister-in-law’s hospital room that day.
If Lia can handle a room full of in-laws chowing down on pasta after she’s just pushed a baby out her hoo-ha, then my fragility can handle a hangover.
I pull on an old, oversized hoodie, scrape my hair into a messy pile on top of my head, and wince when I look into the bathroom mirror. Why, oh why, did my drunk ass not think to remove my makeup last night?
R.I.P to my white silk pillow-case.
After a minute of attacking my face with a wet-wipe and achieving nothing except moving the makeup around on my cheeks, I give up and trudge out of my ensuite, straight past my unmade bed and to the front door, proud of myself for remembering to snag my keys on the way out.
Thirty minutes, a packet of breath mints and a tram ride I’d rather forget later, I let myself into my parents’ house, dump my keys on the console and head down the hall into the dining room.
My dad, olive-skinned from years of concreting out in the sun, is wearing his usual white singlet under suspenders and sitting in the same place I find him every Sunday.
His spot at the head of the already-set table, with an open newspaper spread between his calloused hands.
“Hey, Dad.” I lean down to kiss his shaved head and a wave of nausea roils through me, prompting me to dump myself into the chair next to him.
He barely looks up from the paper. “Hello, my darling.” His voice is deep and gravelly, wrapping around me like a warm hug.
“Anything to report?” I ask Dad the same question I ask him every week as I lean back and rest my head against the chair. The room spins, so I close my eyes for good measure.
“Nothing good.” He sighs. Same as always. This is why I don’t read the news. The world is a depressing place.
My big brother Tony, who looks like a younger version of my dad with slightly longer hair, strides in from the kitchen and I hear him place something down on the table before taking the seat diagonally to me.
“Jeez, Gia,” he comments, amusement lining his voice, “you smell flammable.”
I give him a kick under the table that connects with his shin.
“Ouch!”
Cracking open an eye, I see a feast laid out on the table more suited to a banquet for twenty than lunch for six, which is standard for a Sunday here.
At least I’ll be able to take home left-overs and save some pennies.
Which reminds me: I really need to sell another bag. Or better yet, get a real job.
“You look like shit,” Tony chuckles.
“Must be like looking in a mirror,” I throw back, albeit weakly, forcing another laugh out of him. My brother and I never pass up an opportunity to insult each other. It’s our love language.
My nephew comes bounding in from the kitchen, followed by his heavily pregnant mother, Lia.
“Aunty Gia! I’ve been waiting for you to play monster trucks with me!”
“Leo, baby, Aunty Gia doesn’t look well.
Let’s save monster trucks for next week hey?
” Lia croons to him, pulling out a chair and placing him on top of it.
I throw her a grateful smile and she winks at me in return, mischief plastered all over her gorgeous face, and I just know she’s dying to ask me about my night.
Since my separation, Lia has been living vicariously through me while her belly and her feet slowly swell by the minute.
“Yeah, bud,” Tony pipes up, ruffling his son’s hair. “You don’t want Aunty Gia spewing on your trucks.”
“Gross!” Leo scrunches his cute button nose and covers his mouth with his little dimpled hands. “Have you got the gastro, Aunty Gia?”
“Nah, bud, she has the Sunday scaries.” Tony laughs, and I offer him another kick. Tony is like my dad in so many ways, even following in his footsteps with the family concreting business.
My family is very traditional. Growing up, Tony had so much more freedom than me, being a boy and all.
I was the one that had a curfew, the one that was expected to help cook and clean around the house, and I wasn’t allowed a boyfriend until I turned eighteen.
And even then, it was pretty much expected that I married the first boy I dated.
Tony came and went as he pleased and didn’t have to lift a bloody finger around the house.
When we were kids, I didn’t think too much of it because that’s just the way it was; I was a girl so certain things were expected of me.
But I definitely feel the sting of it as an adult.
Even now, the stigma of being a twenty-eight-year-old almost-divorcee with no children is a thorn in my mother’s side. One she constantly reminds me of.
As if my thoughts conjured her, Mum breezes into the dining room with a stack of plates and starts placing them around the table. The second she eyes me, she does a double take, her hand holding a plate frozen mid-air.
“Gianna, what on Earth happened to you?” Her eyes are round with shock as she takes in the current state of me. She looks immaculate, of course, her black hair twisted perfectly into its usual chignon.
“Drank half a bottle of tequila by the smell of it,” Tony mutters jovially.
Mum looks appalled as she continues placing dishes on the table.
“You should go brush your hair.” She tuts. “Use my bathroom. I have make-up wipes in the cupboard.”
“Thanks, Mum, but I’ll politely decline.” It kills mum that since I left Daniel, I turn up more often than not to family lunch not ‘put together’. She wakes up and puts on a full face of makeup regardless of whether or not she’s even planning on leaving the house that day.
Mum throws me disapproving glances as she makes her way around the table. Just as she places the last plate down, the doorbell chimes and she throws me one last hopeless glance before she rushes to answer it.
“Ten bucks says it’s the solar panel guy and mum gives him half an hour,” Tony says as he swipes a small, crusty loaf of bread from the table.
“Make it twenty, and I vote Avon. She’ll come back in with a new lipstick,” I reply, snagging the bread from Tony’s grasp and taking a bite. I hope it isn’t the solar panel guy. I really don’t have ten bucks to spare right now.
“Stop it you two.” Dad huffs, but there’s nothing but amusement dancing in his eyes as they skim across the page of his paper.
“This isn’t the sixties, you know.” Lia laughs, the sound a pleasant tinkle. “People don’t go door-to-door selling stuff anymore.”
When I hear Mum greeting someone followed by the sound of heavy foot steps coming down the hallway, I look around at Tony and Lia. They both shrug their shoulders at my silent question. Dad still has his head buried in his newspaper.
That’s when my eyes snag on the extra place setting at the table. A sudden, foreboding hum takes root beneath my skin just as Mum steps back into the dining room with a huge beam on her face, followed closely by my estranged husband, Daniel.
Daniel, who’s tall, wide frame is taking up the entire threshold to the dining room, stands with his hands casually resting in the pockets of his jeans as if he has not a care in the world.
What the fuck?
My breath hitches in my throat as I turn my attention back to Mum, who looks as though she’s presenting me with a brand-new shiny car and not the asshole I’ve wasted the last ten years of my life on.
I open my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
“What are you doing here?” Tony demands into the awkward silence, plucking the thought straight from my mind. Dad has put the paper down and is now sitting forward in his chair. Neither of them have seen Daniel in six months, and their show of solidarity makes my heart briefly swell with affection.
“Come on, let’s go and get your hands washed,” Lia says to Leo, lifting my nephew off his chair and directing him back though the kitchen. This is a conversation she probably doesn’t want him around for.
Daniel, however, seems completely unfazed by the unwelcome reaction to his presence. He smiles wider at Tony, showing off his whiter-than-white teeth.
“I’ve come for lunch,” he says, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. As arrogant as ever, I bet he thinks he can get back into my family’s good graces with a bit of chit-chat over Mum’s melanzane.
Judging by the way Mum’s ogling him, he’s already got one in the bag.
All of a sudden I feel really silly sitting here, hungover and feeling like shit, while Daniel looks better than ever, like the last six months never happened.
The urge to cry appears out of nowhere, prickling the back of my eyes.
The brief feelings of power and control that my night with the sexy stranger evoked within me, however badly it ended, vanish into thin air like they were never even there to begin with.
Now I’m just the same old Gianna that I’ve always been, letting everyone around me decide what happens in my life while I sit back and take it.
“Why?” Tony spits through his teeth.
“I invited him,” Mum says like she hasn’t just gone and dropped a nuclear bomb on lunch. She places a hand on Daniel’s back and directs him to the seat next to Tony, so that he’s opposite me, while I sit like a stunned mullet and watch my tormentor join family lunch. How could she do this?