Page 2 of The Reality of Us
It was all over, and it was all her fault.
“Mum,” Owen sighed.
“What?” Lulu’s voice crackled through the car speakers. “Darling, it’s one little dinner. Denise is lovely. She’s moved home from Sydney. You remember her, don’t you?”
Owen’s palms tightened around the steering wheel. Hard to forget someone who had been called ‘Horse Face’ for most of high school. Not by him, of course. He’d been so wrapped up in his girlfriend and getting the marks he needed to get them out of Wattle Junction that other girls hadn’t registered on his radar. Owen tried to think of another excuse as he flicked his headlights on to high beam. The road to Wattle Junction was deserted.
“She’d love to hear from you.”
The nonchalance in his mum’s tone set off a series of warning bells. “Is she expecting to hear from me?”
The silence on the other end of the phone spoke volumes.
“I might’ve mentioned you’d been asking after her …”
He took a steadying breath. “Mum.”
Lulu cleared her throat, and someone chuckled in the background. Probably his dad, Wilbur. Probably with a beer in one hand, his gaze glued to the cricket. “Technically, you did.”
Owen shook his head even though his mother couldn’t see him. So much for letting him settle back in at his own pace. “You said you’d run into a Denise, and I asked if it was Denise Matherson. Hardly the same thing.”
“Technically—”
“Mum.”
“Leave him be, Lu,” Wilbur said. “He argues all day for a living. You won’t beat him on a technicality.”
Lulu grumbled before she lobbed a final shot at him. “Fine. Don’t call her. Be alone forever. I thought the point of turning your life upside down was actually to have a life, but perhaps I misunderstood.”
Despite the theatrics, Lulu wasn’t telling Owen anything he didn’t already know. He exhaled slowly. This reminder of how empty his life had been for so long was unnecessary. The endless hours of corporate ladder climbing and lonely nights in a beige apartment. He’d just never expected the emptiness to follow him back here. All his friends had moved away or were married or in long-term relationships, busy in different life stages that were years away for him. And, truthfully, he’d done a piss-poor job of staying in touch with them. At least his three brothers were still single, so they were around a bit.
“Darling …” Lulu said.
“Why don’t you come see the office on Wednesday once I’ve finished repainting it,” he suggested, steering the conversation away from bad memories towards safer ground.
“Fine, and we’ll see you at trivia tomorrow night?”
“Maybe.”
If Owen hadn’t drained his savings and then some moving home three weeks ago, he’d have been tempted to bet Denise would be sitting next to his parents at their weekly pub trivia table the following night. He rubbed his face with his left hand.
His headlights bounced off something—not a roo, but a car—in the distance. In the shadowy darkness, a woman stood with her arms folded across her body, leaning against the side of a pale-coloured AWD.
“I’ve got to go, Mum. Someone’s broken down.”
He slowed, flicking his high beams off and left a few car lengths between his white Jeep and the Volvo. In the headlights, the stranger’s blonde hair looked like a halo, twisted around her head in some sort of complicated plait.
Owen left his car running and hopped out, his mobile held up in one hand. “Are you alright?”
“Who are you?” the woman yelled back, her hands shielding her eyes from the bright lights of his car.
“I’m Owen.” He stepped clear of the door so she could see him better.
“Don’t come any closer!”
He stopped, his hands raised in surrender.
“Are you filming me?” She threw her arms in the air. “God. You people will stop at nothing!”
