Sean’s eyes darted back to mine, a deep burning behind them as his brow creased. My smile slowly faded.
I had meant for it to be a lighthearted quip, but it had gone down like a lead balloon.
Tammy came to stand beside me. “Hey, Amy, sorry to be a party pooper but I have a ten-kilometre run in the morning so I’m going to head.”
A ten-kilometre run? Of course she does.
“No worries, thanks for stopping by.” I struggled to focus on Tammy. Sean had turned into Mr Broody before me.
“Thanks for the game, Sean. Sorry I was such a disappointing partner,” she smiled sheepishly.
Sean’s mood lifted. “You a disappointment? Not possible,” he said, shaking his head, his beautiful eyes making contact with Tammy’s, causing her to look down and blush.
“Yeah, well, drive safe!” I threw in, breaking their moment.
Sean finished the last of his beer. “Hey, Tam, you think you could give me a lift home?”
“Oh, yeah, of course, sure.”
My head pivoted around between the two of them. “Uh, Sean lives at the old Ellermans’ lake house,” I said. “It’s on the other side of the ranges,” I added helpfully, hinting that it wasn’t exactly on her way.
“Oh, I don’t mind.” Tammy waved me off. “I never get tired of seeing that place.”
Sean smiled. “You sure it’s all right?”
“Absolutely!”
My heart sank as Tammy jangled her keys from her bag and gave me a hug goodbye. I couldn’t look at Sean. Instead, I turned to make my way towards the bar, but it couldn’t prevent me from hearing the cat-calls and laughter as a few blokes egged Sean out of the door as he followed Tammy.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kids,” teased one local.
I guess I knew what type was Sean’s: Tammy Maskala.
***
The next day, the hotel shone like a newly polished diamond, inside and out thanks to the raving success of the working bee. Toby and Ringer were in the bar replacing the down lights with new bulbs while Chris reaffixed the blackboards that housed the new lunch and dinner menus. It wasn’t a broad selection, but it would be enough to satisfy. Fisherman’s basket, steak and chips, Guinness pie and mash, vegetarian lasagne and the crowning glory … chicken parmigiana.
“Well, I don’t know about anyone else but I reckon you’ll have the usual suspects trial the menu,” Toby said as he climbed down from his stepladder.
“It’s nine a.m. and you’re already thinking about lunch?” Chris threw over his shoulder. “Is this straight?”
“No!” the three of us said.
“What do you mean the usual suspects?” I asked Toby.
“Don’t you know? We’re all lobbing here for lunch. Sort of a working bee celebration.”
I was going to argue that I didn’t know; my head was all over the place at the moment so there was every possibility that I had been told but it just hadn’t registered.
“Don’t stress, Amy, they’ll be paying customers,” Chris said. He thought he was so clever, reading my mind.
To be honest, it was the last thing I was thinking about. “I wasn’t even thinking about that,” I defended.
Chris just ignored me as he stood back from the blackboard and took a good look. “Bloody hell, crooked as a dog’s hind leg,” he mumbled to himself.
Toby and Ringer worked on in awkward silence. Great! They probably thought I was being a tight arse, worried about people not paying their way at lunch. I cursed Chris and his big mouth. But how could I defend my real thoughts, and explain that the reason I was walking around like a space cadet was because all I could think about was Tammy and Sean?
I fought against it, tried not to think about them, but as I had tossed and turned last night, punching my pillow and kicking the sheets off my bed, all I could think about was the two of them. Alone in the night, the car stopping, Sean inviting her into his sprawling, beautiful house on the lake that I was secretly dying to see inside of. He would give her the grand tour and there would be lots of blushing moments and stolen looks. They would bond with getting-to-know-each-other conversations. Aside from her gorgeous exterior, he would soon realise that she was a fitter-than-fit biomedical genius.
Unlike me, Tammy was the complete package. She would cutely confess she’d had a crush on him when she was younger and blah, blah, blah. I’d felt sick just thinking about it, and, more to the point, utterly miserable.
I couldn’t even focus on the progress we’d made at the hotel, on the truly amazing effort all our friends had made in dedicating their time and money. I felt awful not feeling more emotionally invested in what was really happening.