Ant rested his board against Dan’s Kombi. The surf was crap this morning so they’d come back to shore early which meant there was time to talk before he belted home to get ready for work.
“What are you supposed to do when a chick has bruises?”
Dan’s head came around sharp. “What kind of bruises?”
“Multicoloured ones, lots of them.”
“Assume she’s accident prone,” said Mitch. He hopped about brushing sand from his foot. “Or she’s got a second rate ballroom partner who’s got two left everything.”
“That’s never going to get old is it?” said Dan. He pulled himself up on the promenade railing between the Kombi and Ant’s Alfa and sat, his bare feet on the lower rail.
“By the time we’re sick of it you’ll have more than two left everything and the stand-off with Ferdy over that viral make-out video with you and Alex will be a full on knife fight” said Fluke.
“It’s because you have a girlfriend you feel you can say any friggin’ stupid thing that comes to mind, right?” said Dan.
Fluke grinned. “Yeah, pretty much.” He dodged a back hander from Dan only to have the one Mitch aimed at him connect with the side of his head. Classic. He was still grinning though. Nothing could wipe the grin off Fluke’s face since he and Carlie had gotten together.
“The bruises,” said Dan. “Do you think some bastard is knocking her around?”
“I don’t know what to think. I’ve seen bruises, ugly, purple and green, on her arms twice now. Once weeks ago, early in the office before the air con kicked in. She had her jacket off and there were bruises all over her arms. And then this week I ran into her on the street. Her shoulder was like a rainbow. Both times she covered up as soon as she saw me.”
“Is this same chick that makes you rave on about how equal opportunity is a bad thing because it stops the best and brightest?” said Mitch.
“Yep.”
“The same chick who got promoted ahead of you,” he said.
“Thanks for the reminder.”
“Anytime.”
“What are we talking about here? You think some fuckwit is hurting her?” said Dan. Fluke got up on the railing beside him and Dan casually pushed him off.
Ant shrugged. “I dunno, but what if there is?”
Dan sighed. “You find out.”
“It’s none of my business.”
“She’s a colleague. If someone is knocking her around, it’s your business. If some bastard is knocking any woman around, it’s your business. Why are you even hesitating?”
“You don’t know this chick. She’s private, reserved. She’s a snob.”
“You think she’s beating herself up?” said Fluke. He got up on the railing without interference from Dan. It’d be so easy to tip him backwards onto the sand below. Almost deserved it for the stupid comment. Ant took a step towards him and Fluke let go his towel and grabbed the railing. “I mean she says she walked into a door, or fell down some stairs.”
Ant stopped with both hand on Fluke’s shoulders and gave him light shove, just enough to be threatening. “No, I don’t think she’s beating herself up.” He let go of Fluke and stepped back. “And I don’t think she’s accident prone, has a rare medical condition, or plays a contact sport. This girl is no Toni, no Miss Behavin on skates.”
“Well what?” said Dan.
“Fluke might have a point. She might be covering for being slapped around. She does have,” he paused, looking for the right word, “attitude.”
Dan came off the railing and was in his face. “Fuck, Ant. I’ll do more than bruise you if you’re suggesting she brings it on herself.”
He turned away and grabbed his towel. “Keep your hair on, Dan. That’s not what I’m saying. She won’t take kindly to me interfering.”
“You’re not asking for her full medical history.”
“I’ve hardly had a dozen conversations with her outside work stuff.”
Dan went to object again, but Mitch got in. “Why’s it Ant’s problem?”
“Thank you, Mitch.”
Dan scowled at Mitch then grabbed his board and stowed it in the Kombi. “Explain to me how you’re going to make this someone else’s problem and it’ll be the right thing to do.”
Ant handed his board over. All their boards lived in the Kombi during summer. “I can’t be the only person to have noticed.”
Dan took Fluke’s board, but instead of busying himself stacking it inside the Kombi, he focused his baby blues on Ant. The kind of sharp eyed focus that helped Dan change his life. “What? You think there’s a first-in, first-response thing. You think there’s a pecking order for something like this, or a limit on the amount of concern that can be shown?”
Ant held Dan’s stare. Dan wasn’t the only one who’d had a tough childhood. Ant’s wasn’t near as bad—not one tenth as bad, but he’d had to grow up fast, had to leave school early, get a crap job and study at night. He was still catching up. He was the only one in the Petersen’s team without a blue chip, right university, right degree pedigree. The only one who’d got there sideways from sheer persistence. Oh sure, he looked the part, acted it so well it was who he was now, but scratch the Italian wool surface of his life and you got a scrapper like Dan, which meant he knew exactly what he had to do.
“Ah shit. I have to ask her about it.”
·
Bree was at her desk, head down and busy when Ant arrived in the office at his usual post surf time for the first time in a good while. She didn’t acknowledge him. She’d not done more than nod at him when she was leaving last night either. And yet they’d shared a laugh yesterday and an actual mutual understanding moment. At least that’s what he’d thought. Must’ve gotten that wrong.
Lately he’d been skipping the morning surf more often than he was making it to the beach to get a jump on the work day, and even though the air con wasn’t firing, the reception from Bree was usually frosty enough to keep him cool.
Without doing more than giving him a weak smile and a bland good morning, with a side of ‘you’re early’, that was more, ‘officer he did it’, Bree made it known he was spoiling her peace. So he hoped she was happy this morning because sometime today he’d be invading more than her sense of early morning office ownership. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t seen those bruises on her arms and he had to ask, even if he wasn’t the first. Even if it upped her frost quotient towards him.
That’s what made this so much harder. Bree already gave off intense dislike. Not that she was overly friendly with anyone on the team, except Christine and that was a girl’s club thing, and the competitive nature of the office ensured they were all rivals before they were friends, but still, if there was anyone she avoided more, it was him. And if her reaction to him coming in early wasn’t enough of a tip-off then there was the never sitting beside him at team meetings, going so far as standing instead of taking the last seat near him, never accepting his group invitations to lunch or Friday night drinks, and rarely if ever making eye contact. No wonder he’d figured her for a snob and a bitch and stopped trying to engage her. As far as he was aware, the only thing he’d done to make her eyes shoot icicles of hatred at him was exist.
Ordinarily he couldn’t care less about something like that, but since his epiphany in the shape of a girl who likes girls, he did care. Because post the fiasco with Toni, he wasn’t sure he hadn’t missed something important about Bree and how she reacted to him, and that made him even less sure how to approach this.
For all of five seconds, he thought about going around the problem and talking to Christine. It was likely she’d know, and if she did, and it turned out Bree was the world’s most clumsy person, then this whole thing was done with. He could stop worrying about it. But if Chris didn’t know, and he raised it with her, and it turned out Bree dressed the way she did; trousers and long sleeves on days when all the other women wore lighter summer clothes, because she was hiding something terrible, then he was making things worse for her by dragging more people into it.
He had to think like Bree was a monster wave, face her, take it to her, paddle like mad and then get the friggin’ hell out of there if things got too hairy before he got pummelled to pieces.
It took him all day to get his approach right. And even then the water was choppy. Bree was in one of the client meeting rooms using the table to compile a report that must’ve got screwed up by the photocopier. He watched her go in. He knew that room only had one glass wall facing a little used corridor and a door that closed. It was perfect for a private conversation. He went in and shut the door behind him and it was only then he realised it was also perfect for making someone feel cornered.
Bree’s, “What do you want?” was so sharp it could snap a leg rope.
“I, ah. Wanted a moment with you.”
“A moment?” Ant could almost believe it was possible to catch frostbite from words alone.
“Yeah, I wanted to ask you something.”
“I’m sure the door could be open while we have the moment.”
“Yeah, but it’d be better if it wasn’t.”
“Open the door, Anthony, you’re making me uncomfortable.”
“Why do you call me Anthony? Not even my Nonna calls me that.”
“Is that what you came in here for? I’m happy to call you Santa Claus if you’ll go.”
He sat and she said, “Don’t,” so he stood, but he towered over her, she was only a little thing, so he sat again and she said, “What’s going on?”
“Why do you hate me so much?” That wasn’t the question he’d planned on asking but since he was already in choppy water, he might as well get wet.
“Are you for real? You come in here for no good reason, shut the door, complain about me using your given name and want to know why I hate you. I don’t hate you. But I might start if you don’t leave me alone.”
“You really don’t hate me?”
“Ant.” She said it very deliberately. “This job is exhausting. I don’t have any energy left over to summon hate for anything other than olives and anchovies.”
He grinned. “You hate olives? They’re like chocolate in my family.”
“Well, there we go. I must hate you because you like olives and I think they should be wiped from the face of the earth.”
Ha, he hadn’t realised how funny Bree was. “You really hate olives?”
“I’d really like you to go.”
“Can’t do that. Haven’t had my moment. You truly find this job exhausting?”
“No, I find I can do it half asleep and skating backwards while knitting a jumper and whistling Sadie the Cleaning Lady. Yes, I find it exhausting. Now moment over,” she pointed to the corridor. “Get out.”
Jesus, she was funny. Funny beat icy and got to drink a beer with the boys afterwards. The moment was definitely not over. “I find it exhausting too. I’m going to have to give up my morning surf altogether. I need more time to get across it all.”
“You find it exhausting?” Bree’s eyes did a bug out thing.
“Shit yeah.” It was hard to tell which one of them was more surprised by what he’d admitted.
She got it together, freak wave quick. “Okay—I’m calling that the moment.” She did the pointing thing again. “Get out.”
No chance. “I have to ask you a question, Bree, and you’re not going to like it, but since you don’t hate me, and I’m not about to force feed you olives, I hope you’ll answer.”
“You do know you’ve pretty much guaranteed I’m not going to answer any question you ask me?”
“Why?” He thought he’d done good at smoothing the rough seas. “I thought we were getting on.”
“Just because this is the longest non-work conversation we’ve had in a year does not mean we’re getting on.”
“Ah Bree, you’re a fucking snob.” And a bitch, but he was smart enough not to add that. Though not smart enough not to have caused the expression on her face; pinched like she was constipated. Now she hated him.
“And you’re an arrogant, self important, entitled, hyper-competitive, walking bag of pissed off, who can’t accept a woman beat him to the job he wanted.”
He stood so quickly, his thigh knocked against the table and sent a pile of her paper sailing off the edge. This angry she didn’t seem so small, as though her fury gave her height and width. But not enough to hold him down.
“I need to know about the bruise I saw on your shoulder. Is someone hurting you?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Answer the question, Bree.”
She leaned across the table. She pushed up against it and shoved it into his legs. She got as near to him as the geography of the room, its glass wall and its furniture would allow. “Fuck off, you pompous prick.”
It was hard to imagine anyone getting close enough to bruise this bitch of a woman. He no longer cared if anyone had. He opened the door. “Right then, we know where we stand.”
He left the room like she wanted. The moment was so over.
·
Ant could hear Jeff whining behind the door. What was taking Dan so long? The Valiant was parked behind the Kombi, and the garage door was closed which meant the Mustang was inside. Dan wouldn’t go for a walk without Jeff and he knew Ant was coming. He pounded again and called out.
That moment with Bree had worked on him like sunburn. He hadn’t even noticed it at first. But then it started to itch a little, especially the part about being arrogant, entitled and self-righteous. Then the sting started in when he thought about how she’d called him a walking bag of pissed off. By the time he left the office he was stiff with the knowledge he’d actually considered it might be her fault if someone hurt her and he’d thought that was okay. Now he was pretty sure her explosion of anger was a defensive response. He’d made her feel trapped, then he’d surprised her. He was a prize fuckwit. He felt like he had blisters of disgust all over him. He needed Dan to help pop them and peel all the dead skin of his foul lack of grace, consideration and arrogance away.
By the time he heard Dan in the hall, he felt like stripping off his suit and presenting himself already naked for the flogging he knew he deserved. He made do with taking his suit coat and tie off.
“Sorry,” Dan called. Ant heard keys jangling, then, “Move, Jeff,” then the door was open, and Ant knew what’d taken Dan so long. He had a freshly fucked look about him, screwy hair, heavy lids and half-dressed, a smile so smug it could rot your jaw.
“I’m interrupting.”
Dan laughed. “You sure are. I‘d have left you out here but Alex wouldn’t let me.” He swung the door open and stepped back, taking Jeff by the collar to give Ant space to move through the doorway. Alex was in the kitchen, fully dressed and brushed but her eyes were big and bright with left-over desire.
She said, “You’re not interrupting,” but she blushed the same shade of pink camellia his mum loved. She handed him a coffee. “Have you eaten?”
He threw his suit coat over the back of a chair and unbuttoned his cuffs to roll his sleeves up. “No, but I’m cool.”
“I can make you an omelette, ham cheese and mushroom?”
Dan sat at the table. “No, don’t feed him. This is meant to be a quick stopover. Quick, Ant. Like you said, you’re interrupting.”
“Dan.” Alex smacked the back of Dan’s head, then pushed her fingers through his hair and bent forward to kiss the top of his head. It was hard to tell whether Dan liked the smack, the hair pull or the kiss more.
He grinned, like a satisfied bastard, whose girlfriend had just moved in. “Plan on getting indigestion, mate.”
Ant sat. Alex started on the omelette Ant wasn’t sure he’d be able to eat. His stomach was full of self-loathing. Old Dan, pre Alex, would’ve gotten him drunk right about now and all of this would’ve gone away. New Dan was less forgiving, but forgiveness was the last thing he needed.
“I fucked up,” he said.
“How?”
“Look she’s a prickly little bitch and—”
Dan cut him off. “You fucked up, but now you’re going to blame her for it.”
“Right. Shit.” Ant sighed.
“Start at the beginning,” said Alex. She waved a tomato at him and he nodded. He’d probably have nodded at having his balls removed if she suggested it. Except now he thought about it, Bree had already done that. She took his promotion first, then she took his self-respect.
He stood up. This might be easier if he was moving. “I never even got close to finding out for sure if someone’s roughing Bree up.”
Dan refilled his coffee cup from the plunger pot. “Why not?”
“She got to me.”
“You said she was five foot nothing and reserved.”
“Not that a well prepared five foot nothing couldn’t do you some harm, Ant,” said Alex.
“He’s a tree, Alex,” said Dan.
“So she’d be packing a chain saw.”
They laughed, but Ant wasn’t seeing the humour. It was Bree’s humour and then her anger that’d derailed him. None of it reserved. “She was different to what I expected.”
“What do you mean?”
“For a start she was threatened by me and then she was funny and kind of vulnerable and then she totally lost it with me. I never expected any of that. She was supposed to be all business, straight up and down and Frosty the Snowman.”
If Dan and Alex ever had kids, the expression on Dan’s face would be the one his teenager would come to know as the one right before things got ugly. “When you say you threatened her what do you mean?” His voice was so even, his posture so relaxed, but it was a party trick, masking his ability to have you skewered and writhing on the spike of your own dumbness before you even knew he was gunning for you. This is what he’d come to Dan for, the brutal stripping of his own defenses. Didn’t mean he had to give them up easily.
“I surprised her in a really small meeting room and I closed us in because I wanted to keep it private. She kept asking me to open the door but I didn’t. And since I’ve never sought her out for a private discussion before I guess it was threatening.”
Dan looked at Alex. “That’d do it,” she said.
He turned back. “You said she was funny and vulnerable and she lost it.”
“She was funny right up until she called me arrogant, entitled and a walking bag of pissed off.”
Ant thought Dan might laugh. There wasn’t an ember of humour in him. “Not vulnerable because she felt threatened by you?”
He had to think for a minute. He leant on Dan’s fridge. “No. She was vulnerable because she admitted she found the job exhausting.” He came back to the table and sat. “She told me outright I was making her uncomfortable and I ignored it, but she didn’t back down about it. Kept on telling me to get out and leave her alone. At no time did I pick her for scared.” Not even when she’d come at him, almost climbing on the table to get in his face.
“But for all that you still thought she felt threatened?”
He had a couple of seconds of think music while Alex put the omelette down in front of him. “I asked her if she hated me. She’s always avoided me like I’m diseased. One time she chose to stand up rather than take the last seat at a meeting table beside me. She said she was too exhausted to hate me, but the way she reacts to me it’s gotta be near enough.”
“What’s your role in it?”
He picked up the knife and fork. “I breathe.”
“Ant.”
“Look, I really don’t know, that’s why I asked.” He took a bite of egg and ham. “I thought I had a pretty good fix on how I played with other people, but lately I’m not so sure.”
“Wouldn’t be having an epiphany would you?”
He looked up at Dan and caught his smirk, but said, “Great omelette, Alex. Bree might’ve felt threatened because she knew what I was going to ask.”
“How would she know?”
“She knew it wasn’t a work question. She knew I wanted it to be between the two of us. She might’ve guessed I’d seen the bruises. And she sure as hell knew I wasn’t going to ask her out.”
“So what happened when you did ask?”
“She fucking lost it with me. But not in some hysterical female way.”
“I beg your pardon, Ant,” said Alex. He knew she was objecting to his assumption that all females got hysterical. He dropped his eyes to his plate. There was ballroom dance teacher Alex, not to be mucked with Alex. The woman who’d turned Dan inside out and helped him re-make himself.
“Sorry, Teach. But you know what I mean. She didn’t shout or cry or carry on. She was calm. She told me plain and strong to get the fuck out of her business.”
“So it didn’t go as well as you might’ve hoped,” said Dan. “But this is fixable. You can pick a better approach, you can talk to her again. What’s really upsetting you?”
Ant put both hands to his head. “She’s so goddamn irritating.” He dropped them back to the table. “I stood in that room and I could see how she might push someone to hurt her.” Dan shifted, his weight coming forward. He was about to rip in so he kept on, “That’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is I stopped caring if they were. I just walked out on her. What kind of a bastard act is that, Dan?”
Dan said the words, “And now,” and they were like an option in a contract. They came with conditions. If Dan didn’t like what Ant said next, things would get dead ugly.
He looked down at the half eaten omelette. “I’m ashamed I thought that for even a minute. And I fucked up bad because I made this all about me, about how she wounded my pride.” He pushed the plate away and stood up. He walked over to Dan’s fridge and opened the door. No beer. Probably just as well. “I’m only irritated by Bree because she doesn’t fall for my act and she took what I wanted. She deserves the senior analyst role, I know that. I always knew it. It just didn’t suit me to admit it. She’s got the credential for it and the skill.” He came back to the table and sat. “And she sure as fuck doesn’t deserve to be threatened by me or smacked around by anyone, ever.”
Dan reached over and pushed the plate back at him. “Eat. You need your strength; epiphanies take it out of you.”
Ant ate. He still felt scalded. All he could think about was how to fix this; how to get near Bree without making her so distrustful she was like a roller derby girl playing offence and defence at the same time.
When he left, hours later, Alex kissed his cheek and Dan walked him out. At the door he said, “I’m just a big loud fuckwit,” and it felt like a definition of the normal he no longer wanted to live with.
Dan sniffed a laugh. “Yeah, so was I. So was Mitch, till we met the reason not to be. Maybe you’ve met yours. And I don’t mean the girl. It’s bigger than that. It’s about what’s going on in your heart.”
Ant nodded. It was close to midnight and he was tired of this day. He wanted a shower and his bed. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
Dan slapped him on the back, in a place where the imaginary sunburn still stung. “I’m your fuckwit mate, I’m not an oracle. All I know is you have to be genuine and it’s something we’ll always be working on.”
Ant went home and stood under the shower till the hot water stuttered, but when he got into bed he couldn’t sleep. He got up again and fetched his laptop; he might as well check the markets, read a few reports as stare at the ceiling. He wondered if Bree did that too. Or did she leave the office and forget about it, did she enjoy her evenings with a bloke? That made him think about the bruises again. He opened an email. If he asked her again this way, it’d be done. And without the awkwardness of another confrontation he didn’t know how to manage.
He typed bre and her email address popped up. He thought about the subject line and typed A moment. Then he put his cursor in the message space. He wanted to keep the language as businesslike, as impersonal as possible. Maybe that way she’d overlook her personal feelings for him and react to the content not the context.
He typed: My apologies for disturbing and upsetting you yesterday, it was not my intention. Unfortunately I allowed my own feelings to get in the way. I do however feel the need to follow through on our discussion but rather than disturb you again in person, I thought I would ask my question again here so you can respond at your leisure. Or not, as you see fit.
It wasn’t Dan’s genuine and there wasn’t much heart in it, and it read like crap, but it was the best he could come up with.
I have noticed your bruises and I am concerned about them, about you. I’d like to know if there is anything I can help with in relation to that.
He wanted to ask if she was all right, if she was trapped in a bad situation and needed help to get out. He wanted to ask if she forgave him for being a big, loud fuckwit for the last twelve months and tell her that yeah, she was right, he was a pompous arse, but he was trying to get over himself. But mostly he wanted to ask if there was someone hurting her, and if he could lean on them for her to make it so she never got hurt again. But he couldn’t do any of that, because, well, just because. She hated him.
He hit send before he could think any further about it, powered down and tried to coax his scalded skin to sleep.