Page 64 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
For their third date, Brett asked Josie to a cafe in Blue Bay, near The Entrance. The Entrance is the more popular spot, attracting tourists who like the pelicans that tend to congregate in the area. Josie never recovered from her mother readingStorm Boyto her as a child, let alone seeing the movie, so she feels ambivalent about pelicans: drawn to them yet also sad when she sees them. She had told Brett this as they sat on the beach at Killcare, talking about books they’d loved as children – not the conversation she thought she’d be having, but she’s learning that she shouldn’t make up her mind about him in advance. Still, she couldn’t believe he’d remember it. Let alone take her so seriously that, when he suggested Blue Bay as their destination, he said, ‘I know we could go to The Entrance but I also know how you feel about pelicans.’
The thoughtfulness in that one sentence was enough to take her breath away. They were standing by her car at the end of another workday – because by now he turns up almost every day to walk her from the salon and see her safely into the driver’s seat – and he was so matter-of-fact about it. Not saying it as if she’s a weirdo for having a pelican problem.
‘It’s so pretty round there, though – how about Blue Bay?’ was the way he phrased it.
She hasn’t been to Blue Bay in … well, ever. There are so many beaches on the Central Coast and, as tends to happen when you live in a place that other people love to visit, you don’t see it the way they do. Her cousin in Sydney says the same thing:people love going to Bondi Beach but unless you live near there you rarely think of it. Josie isn’t sure if that means we tend to take things for granted or that we appreciate what we have. Maybe neither. Maybe it’s laziness.
Brett is there to bust her out of that laziness by taking her to Blue Bay for lunch on this wintry Saturday that is slightly overcast. He pulls back her chair for her and she sits down, beaming. Just happy to be with him. She’s never felt this happy simply to be with someone. Other people can be complicated; hard to read, hard to predict, so she tries to be the good girl and behave in a way they expect, and usually fails. Brett seems to like her just to be her. It’s harder to accept than she thought, because she’s spent most of her life trying to be what others want her to be. Who is she and what does she really want? These are questions she’s been asking herself as she drives to and from Terrigal each workday. The answers haven’t yet appeared, apart from this one: she wants Brett.
‘My mum says the sandwiches are great here,’ Brett says, his white teeth flashing against his tan as he smiles.
‘Did you tell your mum we were coming here today?’
He looks up from the menu. ‘Yeah.’ Another smile. ‘I asked her where’s a good place I could take you.’
‘She knows about me?’ Josie says in a rush.
He looks bemused. ‘Sure. I told her about you when I met you.’
‘Oh.’ While she’s thrilled about this, she wonders if he’ll presume she’s told her mother about him. Will he think her strange that she hasn’t? Or maybe he won’t judge at all. He’s not the judgemental type. Or he doesn’t seem to be.
‘Is that okay?’ He sounds worried and she finds it endearing.
‘Of course! It’s fine!’
He gives her a funny look then smiles. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, ‘you don’t have to meet her unless you want to.’
That’s not what I was thinking, she wants to tell him. But before she can get it out the words get stuck in her throat because she sees something she never wanted to see: one of her mother’s friends, walking into this little cafe in Blue Bay where she’s sitting with a boy her parents don’t know exists, let alone that she’s on a date with him.
‘Josephine, darling!’ calls the friend, whose name is Miriam, which Josie knows all too well because Miriam likes to drop by unannounced and after she leaves her mother will sigh, shake her head and mutter, ‘Oh, Miriam.’
It’s impossible for Josie to pretend she’s not her, because the most recent drop-in by Miriam was two nights ago and Josie has not changed at all in that time. Her hair is the same length and colour; her weight is the same. So there’s no point pretending to be someone else, as tempting as that is because she really does not want to introduce Brett to Miriam of all people.
Brett twists toward the door in time to see Miriam rustling in their direction. Miriam always rustles. Josie is not sure why, but it’s probably something to do with the fact that she likes to wear clothes with lots of details.
‘Mwah mwah.’ Miriam kisses Josie once on each cheek, almost as if she was expecting to see her and, indeed, that it’s they who are meeting for lunch. ‘Lovely to see you again so soon, darling,’ she goes on, then turns her heavily mascara’d gaze to Brett. ‘Who’s this handsome young man?’ she demands.
Josie wants to sink into her chair, but Brett just grins, then stands up, towering over the diminutive Miriam.
‘Hi,’ he says.
‘This is Brett,’ Josie says, not much above a whisper.
‘Brian?’ Miriam looks confused, although Josie is sure she heard it properly.
‘Brett.’ He’s still grinning.
Whyyyyy?It will only encourage her!
‘Brrrrrett.’ Miriam rolls herrs as she says it and seems to enjoy doing so, given the spark in her eyes. ‘And who are you, darling?’
‘I’m Josie’s boyfriend.’
He glances at Josie, so calm, so confident, and instead of feeling elated that he’s called himself her boyfriend –her boyfriend!– she wants to tell him to take it back, immediately. Instead of this being the best moment of her life thus far, it feels as if she’s being pulled into a black hole of imminent parental disapproval, because she knows for sure that the first thing Miriam will do when she leaves this place – something that might possibly even cause her to leave this place instead of staying for lunch or whatever she’s doing here – is call Josie’s mother and gossip about seeing Josie and meeting Brett. So when Josie arrives home this afternoon, after pretending she was ‘just going for a drive’, she’ll have to tell her parents she has been lying to them.
It’s going to be bad. Bad enough that she needs time to think about what to do and say and what she might need to do after she says what she’ll absolutely have to say, which is that she’s had three dates with Brett and she lied about all of them.
