I need a drink!
I zigzagged through the crush of bodies and made my way towards the beer garden bar. Max was flat out attending to the drunken hordes. I wedged myself into a space at the end of the bar, thinking that he would get to me when he was ready.
I felt the press of someone behind me and before I had the chance to move, I heard the unmistakable voice yell out: “Another VB and a raspberry Cruiser, thanks, mate!”
I turned to stare up at Sean.
“It’s raspberry you drink, right?”
“Thanks.”
Sean squeezed next to me, handing over a twenty and passing me my Cruiser.
“Having fun?” he asked before sipping on his beer.
I shrugged. “I guess.”
Sean leaned his back against the bar and his gaze trailed over the sea of people in the beer garden. “Sounds like you need a distraction.”
“Well, I have been distracted by Adam and Ellie’s alternative dance moves.”
Sean’s eyes darted off into the distance. He slowly raised his beer to his mouth. “I wasn’t talking about that kind of distraction,” he smirked, before taking another long sip.
My eyes narrowed in confusion as I looked up to study his profile. Sean didn’t break away from whatever he was looking at, so I thought maybe I had misheard him.
He pursed and smacked his lips together, as if savouring the remnants of his beer before turning to face me, holding his beer up mid-sip, mostly to disguise what he was saying to me.
“Leave the back door unlocked tonight,” he said before skulling the rest of his beer and placing the empty glass on the bar. He winked down at me before stalking through the crowd and disappearing out of the side exit into the night.
***
Oh my God! Oh my God!
I grabbed a pile of clothes and shoved them in the bottom of my cupboard. Ripping my bra off the handle of my door I shoved it in my bedside drawer. I frantically straightened out my doona cover and studied my reflection in the mirror for the hundredth time.
Did he mean what I think he meant?
Sean had vanished for the rest of the night. My head was so firmly in the clouds I kept getting sympathetic looks from everyone.
“Poor Amy, she is really taking it hard.”
“She’s just not herself tonight.”
If only they knew the truth. My first port of call was to make sure that the back door to the beer garden staircase was in fact unlocked;. I twisted and left it ajar. Mercifully, Adam and Chris and everyone were headed up to the Point tonight. But not me. No one questioned my sincerity when I said I had a headache and didn’t really feel up to it.
I peered down the long, darkened hall to see that no slither of light shone from underneath my parents’ door. I tiptoed back into my room and shut the door.
I took a deep, calming breath. My clock radio read twelve-forty a.m. I started to wonder if maybe Sean had been joking; maybe it had been so long since we had last hung out that I had forgotten how to read his smart-arse innuendoes. I paced my room, a worried line etched in my brow.
I am such an idiot. He was probably sitting on the bonnet of a car at the Point with his arm slung around some floozy, having a good old laugh at me. With each passing minute, anger boiled within me.
He’s not coming. He is not coming.
I chewed anxiously on my thumbnail, scowling at the wall, shaking my head. I was such an idiot.
Nearing on two a.m., I resigned myself to the fact that he wasn’t coming and felt filled with self-loathing. When would I ever learn? Sean Murphy would never change.
I furiously brushed my hair, cursing the day I ever met Sean Murphy. With each stroke I spat a word of commentary.
“Arrogant!” Stroke.
“Egotistical!” Stroke.
“Infuriating!” Stroke, stroke, stroke.
I threw the brush on my dresser, knocking over the white gift box that sat there. I stared at the tipped box, slowly reaching over to stand it back up, the weight inside plonking against the cardboard. I reached inside and retrieved the Rubik’s Cube. I glared at it. Surely I should have taken this as a sign that there was rarely ever a serious moment with Sean; even his ‘I’m sorry’ gift had to have a smart-arse undertone to it. I thought back to the horrified looks on the girls’ faces in the kitchen. They had thought I’d lost the plot when I seemed happy about receiving not chocolates or jewellery, but a Rubik’s Cube from Sean.
I re-read the card:
‘I said I would let you know what I wanted.’
“A Rubik’s Cube? What are you trying to say? Pfft, idiot!”
I sat on my bed, punching and fluffing up my pillows, leaning against my bedhead. I studied the multi-coloured, twisted cube, the colours speckled all over its surface.