Page 56 of Set Me On Fire

“I was going to have some of them.” Hunt reached for a satay, but I hunched over the box, baring my teeth. “Holy shit, Mills, this baby thing is making you feral.”

No, just scared. I couldn’t seem to regret anything about his or her conception, but it put me in a space I never wanted to be: facing down inevitable rejection. I chewed on my satay, the flavours of the peanut sauce exploding in my mouth. I ate another and another, then pushed some Hunter’s way.

“Thanks for that.” He snatched them away before I could change my mind, then looked at Jamie. “What?”

“We’re here for Millie, remember?”

A long look had my brother shifting uncomfortably in his seat, and he tried to focus on the food, but Jamie pulled it from his grip. He sighed and then licked his fingers clean.

“I’m sorry.”

“What?” I perked up immediately, because those two words and my brother did not go together at all.

“I’m sorry, OK?” He forced himself to look at me and it felt like all of our history was there on the table between us. “You know I love you, you little shit.”

“Um… thanks?” I croaked.

“And as some people at this table can attest.” His arm snaked around Jamie’s waist. “Sometimes I’m kinda crappy at showing it. Haybale and me, we shouldn’t have gotten into Noah’s face. He came to see you, not us. We were just… a bit worked up at the time. We warned him to keep away from you at school?—”

“What?”

Both Jamie and I interrupted him then and his cheeks flushed red under his tan, making clear the mistake he’d made. He shot me, then his girlfriend, a look before being forced to forge on.

“Um… so in summary?—”

“Back the fuck up, Cuntface,” I said, waving a finger in the air. “What was that last part?”

“So—”

“I think withholding sex as a weapon is a really shitty thing to do in a relationship,” Jamie said, “but I can and will do it in this situation. Spill, Hunter.”

“Right, right.” He sucked in a breath, then let it out in a huff. “We may have told Noah to keep the fuck away from you when you were at that party.”

No, no, he didn’t. He couldn’t have. My own bloody brother couldn’t have been the reason for this pathological fear of being rejected. At the very least, he would’ve stepped forward when I embarrassed myself in front of the whole school, hassling Noah for closure.

Wouldn’t he?

My baby was barely the size of an olive, but whatever hormonal conditions made it possible for them to grow were messing with my head. I sniffled, tried to hold that back, then bark-sobbed, making a horrendous sound.

“What the fuck, Hunt?” Jamie pulled away from him and went straight to me. “Millie, I didn’t know. I’d have kicked theirarses if I knew, seriously. Like when they tried dating me, I would’ve said absolutely not, you arseholes.”

“You would’ve missed out on hot monkey sex with three guys for me?” I asked, blinking through tears, and she nodded. That was it. I threw myself at her, sobbing into her shoulder.

This wasn’t hormones or the changes in my body. This was a pain held onto for years. The wound scabbed over but never really healed, due to the infection that lay beneath. I cried and cried and cried until there was nothing left to pull away and try and get my shit together.

“Fuck…” If I wanted contrition, I got it then. My brother looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “Hell, Mills, if I knew you were that into him, we would’ve never stepped in. We thought he was just like all the other little fuckheads trying to take advantage of a girl.”

“Like you did when you were at school.”

I ground that out, my voice feeling like it came from the depths of hell, not my throat.

“Yeah.” He looked around sheepishly. “Like we did. I… didn’t want that for you.”

I got to my feet, grabbing my phone, but it was still on charge, forcing me to instead just stare at it. All the internal dialogues I’d had with that screen over the days meant nothing because I didn’t have all the facts. Noah didn’t reject me so much as was cowed by my brothers’ bullshit, like the rest of the school.

So what did that mean?

I askedmyself that over and over, long after the two of them left, but of course it was then I realised I had work tomorrow. I ironed my clothes, showered and shaved everything, and wentto bed early, snuggling down under the doona to sleep. For a long time, I just played it over in my mind, that night.

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