Page 51 of Straight to Me

Her dying words to me were, ‘until we meet again'.

When Mads text me those very same words before she moved, it was as if my mum was screaming at me from beyond the grave. My ears started ringing as I read the message, my insides were howling; keep her. Love her. Protect her. Be happy with her.

But happiness? A life that wasn’t solitary? That was all I knew as a kid. “But then you fell at my feet and suddenly everything I’d been looking for was right in front of me. I've never believed in fate or any of that shit, but you're making it hard to ignore.”

Mads pushes herself up further into me and I can’t help but hold her tight against me as I lean forward and gently kiss her lips.

“Thank God your giant friend knocked me down,” she breathes before kissing me again. As she rolls back to lay her head against me, I see her examining the photo hung on my bedroom wall. “Is that Jack?” she asks. So inquisitive.

“The one and only,” I reply.

“You look similar.” I can’t help but let out a small laugh.

“Everyone used to say that. Until I became significantly better looking.” Mads laughs, her sweet noise like music to my ears. I decide I want to hear that sound everyday from here on out.

“Did you do everything together?”

“Most things. I attended the same secondary school as him in Perth and I joined the same football team as him, but he got a job whilst I apprenticed as a painter/decorator through TAFE.” She looks up at me, eyebrows scrunched together. “It’s a type of college you attend if you know you don’t want to finish high school.”

“Why wouldn’t you finish high school?”

“Honestly?” I ask.

The way she looks back at me makes a smile stretch across my face. So innocent. “Jack and I wanted to be like the men around us so bad, idolising them with every waking minute.”

The way they commanded respect and gained attention was of epic proportions to our impressionable minds.

Similarly, we started gaining attention from girls. Being growing, athletic lads, by the age of sixteen, we were having more sex with the girls at the clubhouse, than we could ever have imagined. It was every teenage boy’s dream. So very far away from what I would have been doing back in Preston.

“You always knew you’d join the club?”

“From the moment I saw them.”

“Is Jack in the club, in Australia I mean?”

“No, he’s too smart for that. Not long after turning eighteen, I started my probationary year for the club. Jack had done so well in his exams, my aunt wanted more for him. We wanted to stay together, but it was better for him to go. He followed his dream and went to the police academy for 6-months training.”

I had achieved more than I had ever expected with my grades, but education wasn’t for me. I wanted the club life.

“Did he come back?” Mads asks.

“He did eventually, three years later having already served in the rural areas where he was needed. A police officer recruit for the Western Australia Police Force.”

I was so fucking proud of him. He had worked so hard for it both physically and with his grades.

“Was it difficult when he came back, what with you being on one side of the law and him on the other?”

“Never. We’re family. No job or way of life would come between that. Without him, I wouldn’t have got through some of the shit that happened.”

“Like what?”

I mentally kick myself. I knew as soon as I said it Mads would ask. Now is neither the time nor place to dive so deep intothatday. But the way she’s looking at me, like she wants to know... Perhaps finally sharing some of it might help tame the tsunami of fears that torment me.

“Jack and I found a body, not long after he’d returned home,” I choke. Mads instantly turns her head back to look at me.

“Jesus, VP,” she says, her eyes forming wide circles, lips slightly parted in shock. “What happened?” I stare at the ceiling contemplating the events that followed the months after Jack’s return.

Rocco had arrived in Australia too. The two clashed on club nights because Rocco always hated law enforcement.

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