Three Words: A Novella Collection Read online

  “Sounds like a plan.” Nate picked up his beer and tipped the remains down his throat. He placed the empty bottle on the table in front of him, a thoughtful look crossing his face. “Was it my fault? Did us being together for so long mean you ended up naïve?”

  Georgie bit her lip. She’d never thought of it that way. “Maybe. I never had another serious relationship after us. Then Matt appeared, and I was so blinded by his charm I fell for him hard. I thought he was the perfect man, everyone did. I wouldn’t be as stupid again.”

  “And now?”

  “You mean, is there someone else?”

  “Mmm.”

  She so longed to tell him there would never be anyone else, that he was the only one. Even if she hadn’t found out about Matt’s philandering, she would have ended it. Being with someone other than Nate didn’t feel right.

  “I’m single. You?”

  As Nate opened his mouth to answer, the sound of a female voice from the other side of the alfresco distracted him. Both he and Georgie turned to see who it was.

  “Nate! God, what the hell are you doing? We were supposed to meet at the Bell Tower forty minutes ago.” The girl’s auburn hair bobbed around her heart-shaped face, as she leant over the alfresco wall to scold him. Her skintight running gear stretched a little more, to reveal the cleavage of two pert and rounded breasts, the kind Nate and Georgie used to laugh about when they were seventeen.

  “I’ve been texting you for a good half hour.” The girl stopped and straightened with her hands on her hips, a disapproving frown taking up residence on her otherwise perfect features. “Who is this?”

  Nate picked up his phone to check the clock. “Sorry, Lydia. I lost track of time. This is an old friend, Georgie. Georgie and I grew up together. We bumped into each other on the path and decided to have a drink for old times’ sake. She’s only recently moved back to Perth.”

  Lydia scrutinized the empty glasses and plates on the table. She looked Georgie up and down, her steel blue eyes stopping at the giant rip in the thigh of Georgie’s pants. It was obvious she didn’t believe a word.

  “And you didn’t think to message me? I would have walked over to join you, if you’d told me. As it was, I only noticed you because I happened to be walking back to my car and heard this dreadful laughing. I thought someone was being strangled.”

  Georgie suppressed a smile. That had been her. She and Nate had been recalling other memories from their childhood, funny ones. Nate always said she sounded like a foghorn when she got going. But this was not the time to remind him of that. Clearly, he was meant to be on a date with this girl, and Georgie was interrupting.

  Gathering her things, Georgie pulled a couple of notes from the pocket of her pants and handed them to Nate. “Look, I should be going, anyway. I’m going out tonight and I have to get this river stench off and wash my hair. Tara will go ballistic if I’m late. She has this whole OCD thing going on and she can’t abide tardiness.”

  “Tara Ford? From school? Are you still friends with her?”

  “Yeah. I’m going to her boyfriend’s ‘welcome home’ cocktail cruise. It’s on one of those tall ships; you know the ones down Fremantle? If I’m late she’ll feed me to the sharks.”

  “Or make you walk the plank,” Nate chuckled. “She always had a bit of an attitude.”

  Georgie pushed out her chair and stood. She wanted to swap numbers or at least give Nate a kiss goodbye, neither of which would be happening with Lydia standing over them baring her incisors.

  “It was nice to see you again, Nate.”

  Very nice.

  “And lovely to meet you, Lydia,” she added, not meaning a word.

  “You too,” Lydia replied, equally uncaring. “Can we go now, please? In case you’ve forgotten, we have things of our own to do.”

  Nate stood as well, and leaving a pile of notes on the table with Georgie’s, he hitched a leg over the wall to join Lydia.

  “I’ll see you later, Georgie.” He leant back across the bricks and Georgie thought for a second he was going to kiss her cheek until Lydia stepped between them and took a possessive grip on his arm.

  “Come on.”

  As Lydia bustled Nate away, Georgie felt a stab of jealousy. It was as if the other girl had dug her pointy nails into Georgie’s chest and jabbed repeatedly at her heart like a witch at a voodoo doll. She’d had a similar feeling only once before in her life, and that had involved Nate too.

  Chapter 6

  After the dreaded kissing incident at the movies, things had been awkward for quite a while between Georgie and Nate. She didn’t know why his feelings towards her had suddenly changed. She assumed it was because all his mates were getting with girls and being the unofficial leader of the pack, he felt some type of obligation to lead by example, with her as the obvious choice. After all, none of the other boys would dare go near her. Not if they wanted their faces to remain attached to their heads. To make matters worse, Nate had started to talk about the way girls looked, about kissing girls or even doing other stuff. He was always going on to his mates about it, like it made him a big man or something. Georgie thought she’d made it clear he wouldn’t want to be trying that stuff on her. She’d whack him with a cricket bat before that would be happening.

  By the time they reached fifteen, Georgie and Nate had begun to have a Saturday night social life. Usually, one of their friends would invite everyone over for a ‘gathering’ which basically meant sitting around in someone’s family room watching DVD’s or the boys playing Play Station while the girls talked about hair and make-up and listened to music. Sometimes, they swam in each other’s pools but they were rapidly getting to an age where having your hair wet after spending an hour doing it before you left home was no longer an option. So, the boys might swim or play fight in the water and the girls would dangle their legs over the edge and laugh at them. All except Georgie. Being the tomboy of the group and the only girl who surfed, she didn’t give two hoots about her hair getting messed up. Life was for having fun, not sitting on the side of a pool trying to look pretty.

  On the Saturday night in question, the gang had assembled at Tara’s house. Her parents’ had a massive mansion in City Beach with a rumpus room that led out onto the tennis court, pool house and Olympic-sized pool. They were also less strict with their supervision, which meant everyone liked going to Tara’s best of all. Tara’s parents didn’t mind that the kids sat around in the dark with the door shut, lighting bits of incense they’d bought at the markets or sipping from illicit bottles of wine stolen from their parents’ wine stash. They’d said on numerous occasions that it was preferable to the kids hanging out in the street, or being down at the park getting into trouble. At least, in Tara’s rumpus room, they could keep a bit of an eye out.

  The gang just finished swimming and everyone had dried off when Tara announced she was bored. Tara was often bored. Coming from a wealthy family didn’t mean she had more things to do.

  “What can we do?” she asked.

  Michael, who’d finished sharing a stubby of beer with Kyle, piped up, waggling his empty bottle in the air. “Let’s play Spin The Bottle.”

  Maggie Maloney rolled her eyes. Kyle did his best to look disinterested and Tara looked at Michael like he’d lost his mind.

  “Seriously, you are so High School,” Tara said, but everyone knew she was already planning to make the bottle stop in front of him. Tara had been dying to pash on Michael for ages. He just wouldn’t seem to get the hint.

  “But we are in High School,” Michael pointed out. “People expect us to act stupid.”

  “I’ll play,” said Jessica. She hadn’t given up on Nate.

  “What about you guys?” Michael asked, aiming his question at Georgie and Nate.

  Nate shrugged like he didn’t care and Georgie looked at the floor. She knew she’d been more clammed up more than a limpet on a rock since the movies but, seriously, she had so many things going on in her head and Nate was no help at all
. Most of the time she wanted to murder him. Last week, when he told her how nice her hair looked, she’d poked him in the arm so hard with a pencil, she’d left a bit of lead behind and it’d gotten infected. He’d had to get a tetanus shot, which he’d not been impressed about at all.

  Everyone sat in a circle and Michael placed the bottle in the middle. “Seeing as it was my idea, I get to go first,” he said, looking pointedly at Tara.

  Taking the bottle between his fingers he spun it on the carpet. The emerald colored glass came to a slow halt in front of Tara who muttered, “If you think I’m letting those manky lips of yours near me, you’ve got another thing coming, Michael Hemming.” Which was code for, ‘get over here right now and give me my prize’.

  The group watched with interest as Michael crawled across the carpet, stopping in front of Tara. His face was very close to hers. His eyes were glittering with teenage desire. “You sure about that, Tara? I mean, rules are rules. And the rules of this game say I have to kiss you.”

  Tara gave an exaggerated groan. “Oh, alright.”

  And with that, Michael proceeded to see how far down her throat he could stick his tongue. Georgie watched on flabbergasted. How could they kiss for so long without drawing breath? It had to be bad for your brain to be oxygen deprived for so long. Not that that would affect either of them.

  “Get a room, you two,” Kyle joked. He’d been timing the couple on his watch before calling ‘time out’ after five minutes.

  Behind Tara’s back, Michael gave him the finger.

  Then it was Kyle’s turn. After declaring openly the previous week that all girls stank, he couldn’t go back on his word by enjoying the kiss, so when the bottle stopped in front of Maggie Maloney, he crawled across the floor and pecked her on the cheek. Then, looking very sheepish, he scuttled back to his spot, his face redder than a tourist who’d spent a week at the beach without sun block.

  “Lightweight,” said Michael, who’d just come up for air. “Let’s see if Adams can do any better.”

  Nate swallowed and took a swig of beer from his bottle. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and lazily sauntered to the center of the circle. “Hope you girls are ready,” he joked. Then, he picked up the bottle and gave it a hefty twist.

  From the other side of the circle, Georgie watched the bottle’s progress without breathing. The air was trapped so far down her throat it felt like a balloon was lodged there, one pop and she’d be dead. God, she had to stop this. She couldn’t let Nate get with another girl. It wouldn’t be right.

  The slower the bottle rotated the more upset Georgie became. She didn’t want Nate to kiss anyone else; she wanted him to kiss her. She’d always wanted that, it was just that, when they were at the movies that day, she’d felt pressured and not quite ready. She gazed across the circle, hoping to catch his eye, hoping he’d say he’d changed his mind and wanted to pull out but he didn’t. His face was intent on that bottle and where it would stop. The only sign he gave that he might not be as cool as he portrayed was the tapping of his toe against the carpet. Nate always tapped when he was nervous.

  When the bottle stopped, its neck was pointing to Jessica. Moving as if to his death, Nate began the slow crawl to Jessica’s side.

  Georgie was distraught. She’d been willing the bottle to stop anywhere but there. Everyone knew how much Jessica crushed on Nate. Once he got close to her, she’d wrap him in those boobs of hers and he’d be lost forever.

  But what could she do? If she jumped up to save him, she’d look stupid in front of her friends and they’d all know her true feelings. Her and Nate been friends for so long, nobody would believe it if she suddenly stood up and declared she loved him. Not after the pencil thing. They’d think she was an idiot.

  Nate had reached Jessica. She was preening and giggling and showing off like she’d won first prize in a beauty contest. “Oh Nate. I always knew we were meant to be together,” she simpered, as she licked her lips and adjusted her clothing to give him a better view. “It’s fate…. Nate — Fate. Get it?”

  I’ll give her fate, Georgie thought. It’ll hit her right between the eyes when I throw that bottle at her head.

  Nate was puckering up. Jessica had her hands on his chest, pulling him towards her by the scruff of his t-shirt. Georgie’s hands were clenched in fists. It was either that or rip every hair from Jessica’s perfect little head.

  “Stop!”

  Oh no, had that come out of her mouth? Georgie looked around hoping that it hadn’t, or if it had that nobody had heard, but judging by the way everyone was gawping at her, she’d obviously said it. And rather loudly at that.

  “What’s wrong?” Jessica asked, which was a load of old twaddle because she knew very well what was wrong. She was about to play tonsil hockey with Nate. Georgie’s Nate. It was unthinkable.

  Stumbling to her feet and tripping over the cords from the Play Station as she went, Georgie ran through the open doors and around the side of the pool. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she gasped for air between sobs. She leant her head against the wall of the pool house as she tried to squeeze the tears away. What had she done? She’d never be able to face them now, not when everyone had seen her making a spectacle of herself.

  “Georgie?”

  Nate’s soft hand was on her cheek. His face leaned close, studying the pitiful look in her eyes. “Are you okay?”

  Georgie wrenched her head away. “What do you think?”

  She didn’t mean it to sound horrid but seriously, she was balling her eyes out in the middle of someone’s backyard, in front of her entire social group. Couldn’t he have come up with something better than that?

  “I didn’t kiss her.”

  Georgie turned to face Nate. He looked very serious, more serious than she’d ever seen him. Well, except for the time they got called in to see the Principal after they got caught putting cling wrap on the toilet seats on April Fools’ Day. He knew his dad would throw a mental.

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t want to. I want to kiss you. I’ve always wanted to kiss you. I think you’re the prettiest girl in the world.”

  Nate put a thumb to Georgie’s tears, smearing them away. He offered her a sleeve on which to blow her nose but she declined, because it took friendship to a level of grossness even she wasn’t comfortable with. Instead, she gave a loud sniff and a limp smile as he wound his arms around her waist and drew her to him.

  “You made a bit of a scene back there,” he said.

  “I’ll never be able to face them again. Everyone will laugh at me.”

  “I won’t laugh. And who cares what they think? Kyle still has his Mighty Max’s in a line on the shelf in his room and Michael’s mum makes him wear a singlet under his school shirt in winter. We’ve all got our thing.”

  “And my thing is behaving like a fool?”

  Nate gave a smile. “You’re not a fool. Nobody thinks that and if they did, I’d punch them out.”

  “That’s very chivalrous.”

  “I’m just that kinda guy.” Nate wound his arms tighter. Georgie could feel his heart hammering in his chest. Or was it hers? No, hers was in her throat.

  “Why won’t you let me kiss you? Don’t you like me?”

  “I love you, Nate. You’re my best friend but if we kiss everything will change. We’ll be, like, going out. We might end up hating each other. Lots of people end up hating each other.”

  “I could never hate you,” he said.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Yes, I do. We love each other, we always have. Besides, I know you want me. You looked like you were going to thump Jessica with the Play Station controls.”

  “I was actually going for the bottle. More damage,” Georgie confessed.

  “So you admit it? You were jealous!”

  Pulling back, Georgie gasped in mock horror. “I was not! I was saving you. If you got stuck in her boobs, you’d suffocate. You don’t even like her. How you could kiss someo
ne you don’t even like is beyond me.”

  “Maybe I do like her. Maybe all this time I’ve been putting on an act?”

  Anger swelled in Georgie’s chest. “You don’t like her. I know you don’t. You like me. Just the same as I like you.”

  And to prove it, she reached up on her tiptoes, took Nate’s face between her hands and pressed her mouth to his. The shock of her action took them both by surprise.

  “Are you sure about this?” Nate asked, trying to pull away and finding the nape of her neck instead.

  “Surer than anything,” Georgie replied, though thought was becoming increasingly difficult with his lips racing over her skin.

  Nate held Georgie tight and twisting her around, leant her against the wall of the pool house, his body covering hers with such pressure, she could barely get air into her lungs. His lips descended on her, his tongue searched deep inside her mouth until it met with hers. He kissed her and kissed her and Georgie wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back.

  “Nate. Stop for a second,” she gasped, as his hands slid up and down her sides in mad abandon.

  A loud groan vibrated on the skin of her earlobe. “What?”

  “Promise me this isn’t going to change anything.”

  Nate stopped. “Nothing will ever change. It’s always gonna be you and me, Georgie. Just now it’ll be in a different way.”

  Chapter 7

  Glancing down at her watch and hurriedly handing some cash to the taxi driver, Georgie stepped out of the car, realizing she’d arrived at the dock with only seconds to spare. Her afternoon with Nate had put her seriously behind but she didn’t mind. It had been worth every minute to see him again.

  The rest of the group was already onboard, the boys wearing eye-patches and pirate hats and the girls, bandanas and golden-hooped earrings. A number of clichéd pirate terms were being bandied about as plastic cutlasses were brandished in the air and schooners of ale clinked, which only meant one thing: it was going to be one of those parties.