Page 73 of More Than I Can Bear

I ended the call and then found the two of them watching me closely without giving away anything in return.

“Jack says to talk to Adam,” I said lamely.

“And what do you think?” River asked carefully.

I thought about the morning when I’d sneaked away. I’d wanted to talk to him, just to have a few more minutes together, but then I’d pussied out at the last minute. I’d thought I was avoiding the drama that might ensue, but look how that turned out?

“I’m ready,” I said, looking each one square in the eye. “If he wants to talk to me, I will.”

“I’ll get him on the phone,” Kaine said, with a smile and a nod. “I think you’ll find you made my brother’s day.”

Chapter37

Adam

I woke up feeling like fucking shit. At first there was just the physical pain, the ache in my stomach, still sour and rumbling ominously, the muscles having been strained yacking up in Mum’s garden. Then there was my head. It felt like I’d taken a fist to the face, the pain throbbing in time with my heart. But once the physical pain was noted, other shit came flooding in.

The girls touching me… Darren and his fucking camera… Alcohol, so much alcohol… Running out of the pub and ringing my brother. Fuck. That longing that seemed to plague my every step rising, rising, until I was crying down the line. Kaine having to walk away from Freya to pick me up— I aborted that thought process, jerking the covers of my childhood bed to one side and then slapping my feet down on the floor. Nothing good came from dwelling on shit, that’s what my coaches always said, so I forced myself upright and staggered out of the bedroom.

“There he is!” One of my dads looked up from the kitchen, waving a spatula at me. The smell of bacon and eggs was usually manna from heaven, but my gut lurched, letting me know what would happen if I tried eating that. Dad snickered when he saw how green I looked. “No wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey for you?” he said.

“Fuck no…” I lurched away.

“What about hair of the dog?” One of my other dads, Kev, went to the fridge and pulled out a beer. The bile started to pool in my mouth, reminding me that I had chucked up everywhere yesterday and I hadn’t brushed my teeth yet.

“How about a toothbrush?” I croaked.

“In the bathroom drawer.” Mum appeared behind me, then reached up and placed the back of her hand against my forehead. “You’re looking a bit better. Nothing a good night’s sleep and a few square meals couldn’t fix.”

“Less of the talk about meals right now, thanks, Mum,” I groaned, feeling my guts rebel. “I’m gonna head into work a day early.”

“Yeah?” All three of my dads came to attention right then. “There’s work to be done,” Barry said, but then his eyes narrowed. “But only if you’re sober enough to do it safely.”

I raised a hand. “As a judge. Pretty sure I vomited up most of the alcohol I drank.”

“Well, if you’re feeling better, that’s the first job off the rank,” Mum said. “You can hose out around my roses. Stinks like a bloody brewery out there.”

I had a shower, brushed my teeth, cleaned up all of my messes and then pulled on some work gear one of my dads lent me, already feeling better when I did so. There was nothing that couldn’t be improved with hard work, that was the family motto. I caught a ride over to the building site with Kenny, jumping out and grabbing the toolbox in the back of the ute, carrying it over to the job at hand. I was gonna be fitting some doorknobs onto a finished house, a nice simple job that ‘even I couldn’t fuck up’, according to my dad. I checked in with the leading hand, found the door furniture they were using and which house to start on first and then got started.

I always hated school. PE was my favourite subject, tech studies coming a close second. There was something that came from working with your hands that just made sense to me, where scribbling all day in the classroom didn’t. I didn’t exactly feel at peace though. Flashes of the mess I’d made, of the girls… of Darren… of Kaine being dragged away from Freya, all kept popping up too often for me to feel any kind of serenity, but… I felt useful. So when morning smoko came around and the leading hand said I’d done a good job getting through the simple task, I flushed, feeling better by being able to do something productive, at least. But right as I sank my arse down on my toolbox, ready to drink coffee from a thermos and munch on the ANZAC biscuits my mum had made, I got a message.

“Boss man wants to see you in the site office,” one of my workmates said with a jerk of his head.

“In the shit with your brother already?” one of the guys asked with a knowing smile. “That didn’t take long.”

“Fuck off,” I said, but with no real anger.

Putting shit on everyone you worked with was as Australian as kangaroos fucking, I reckoned. I shoved the biscuits back in the Ziplock bag, despite the other blokes offering to eat them for me. Mum’s cooking was well known around the work site. But as I wandered off to the site office, I was pretty sure how this’d go.

You fucked up, Adam, Kaine would say.You were supposed to get pissed, but not that pissed. You rang me up, whinging like a little bitch and then you…My imagined conversation with my brother evaporated after I knocked on the door and then walked in, because there, leaning against my brother’s desk, was Freya.

My mind stuttered, my lungs seized and my heart came to a standstill. Body and mind, I was derailed by the sight of her. I was exhausted, rawer than the last time I’d seen her, so my control was shot and I couldn’t hold any of it back, taking a step closer then forcing myself to stop. I wanted her so fucking much that my fingers were flexing, then forming fists, over and over, trying to keep myself from reaching out and throwing her over my shoulder. I’d carried her away from the medal ceremony and I’d do the same again, if that’s what it took… But I forced myself to take a breath, then another, hastily wiping away the sweat that prickled across my brow, before rubbing my hands on my shirt.

“Freya—”

“Adam.” She took a step forward.Shedid. Freya came closer to me and no one was pushing her there.Take another one, baby, I pleaded inside my head.Just one more. But she stopped, her fingers raking up and down her jeans-clad thighs. “I thought…” That fucking smile, it lit something inside me, a fire I didn’t know had burned out and left me cold and bereft, but now it was back. “I thought we should talk, finally.”

“Yeah, of course.”

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