:: chapter
two ::
“Hey.”
The sound of Taleah’s voice, coupled with the sound of a folding chair creaking as someone settled themselves into it, was all it took to make me tear my gaze away from the moving truck that was sitting at the end of the driveway. Today was moving day, and I had taken the responsibility of getting Taylor and I moved into our new house. Said responsibility mostly involved sitting in a camp chair next to the ramp that led up to the front porch and directing my brothers as they moved the boxes that Taylor and his brothers had packed and loaded into a moving truck into the house. “Hey Leah,” I said when I saw who had sat down next to me. “Thanks for getting Matt to help out.”
“If I’d known it was going to be this easy to drag him away from the TV, I would have got him to help you move into Taylor’s place last year,” my sister replied. “The footy isn’t even on until tomorrow.” Almost on cue, my brother-in-law stepped out of the back of the moving truck and started heading down the ramp, a cardboard box in his arms. “Don’t you dare drop that box, Matthew!” she yelled.
“Taylor promising to shout him a six-pack of Great Northern probably helped,” I said.
“Speaking of, where is your other half?”
“Back at our old place – we flipped a coin to see who was going to do what. Winner gets to spend the day here making sure everything goes smoothly with the move, and the loser gets to finish packing the old house up. I called heads, Tay called tails, and it came up heads.”
“So you get to sit on your arse directing the move, while loverboy gets to work his arse off?”
I shrugged. “I did offer to switch places with him, but he said he didn’t mind. Reckons it keeps his mind off shit.” Just as I said this, Matthew stopped in front of Taleah and I, giving me the opportunity to see how the box he was carrying was labelled. Taylor had written OFFICE on the side of the box in heavy black texta, and had drawn a little guitar underneath. “Can you pop that in the sunroom?”
“No worries,” Matthew said, and gave me a smile as he walked past. I smothered a giggle as Taleah smacked him on the backside.
“How’s Taylor going, anyway?” Taleah asked once Matthew had headed inside the house. “I know it’s nine years on Wednesday, but apart from that…” Here she shrugged, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what to say next.
“Honestly?”
“As much as you can tell me.”
“Right.” I rubbed my forehead a little as I tried to decide just how much to tell Taleah about what had happened nearly two weeks earlier. I had to balance Taleah being my sister and Taylor’s future sister-in-law with the fact that like me, and like Gabrielle, she was a Hanson fan. It took me maybe half a minute to decide that her being family won out. “Not too well,” I replied at last. “He hasn’t had a relapse or anything, at least not that either of us are aware of, but his health’s not great right now.”
“Shit.” She sighed. “Exactly how bad are we talking?”
“We won’t know for sure until he’s seen his oncologist on Wednesday. But at this stage…” I swallowed hard, wishing Taylor was with me to help explain. “He might have something wrong with his heart.”
Taleah covered her mouth with a hand. “Oh no.”
“Yeah. He’s got an appointment at Wollongong Hospital with a cardiologist a week from Monday – it was the earliest he could get in to see them. Hopefully it’s just something he can take medication for.” I suddenly felt cold all over, and I pulled my hoodie tighter around myself. “If he ends up needing surgery, and something happens to him…” I trailed off, not wanting to finish that sentence. It was something I couldn’t even bear to think about.
There was a sound of steel scraping against concrete, and I looked over just in time to see Taleah scooting her chair closer to mine. She slipped an arm around my shoulders. “I know, Rue,” she said. Through the sleeve of my hoodie I could feel her rubbing my right arm. “I worry about Matt all the time.”
“So I’m not worrying for nothing?”
“Of course not. You love him, of course you’re going to worry about him.” She moved her hand off my arm, and soon I could feel her smoothing down my hair over my head. “We all worry about him, really.”
“Please don’t tell anyone what I told you.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Taleah miming zipping her lips shut. “It’s in the vault.”
“Thanks, sis.”
“Anytime, Rue.”
The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful, with Matthew and my brothers driving the moving truck back and forth between Corrimal and Woonona, unloading boxes and furniture in between trips, and me directing them in moving mine and Taylor’s belongings into the house. At one point Taleah had loaded up Spotify on her phone and put Hanson’s albums on shuffle, and the two of us had spent a couple of hours singing along at the very tops of our voices.
By the time moving was done for the day, the sun was getting low in the sky and it was starting to get cold. I’d zipped my hoodie up and pulled its hood up over my head so that my ears stayed warm, and had shoved my hands into its pockets. When the front door of the house opened behind us just before five o’clock, I looked back over my shoulder to see Matthew, Troy and Benjamin coming outside. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Taleah doing the same thing. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“That was the last of the boxes,” Troy replied. “Still a bunch of things that have to be brought over, but I think Taylor wanted to sort those out himself.”
“Probably the practice space,” I said. “His piano as well, but mostly the practice space.”
“He said something like that, yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll give him a bell and see how he wants to play things.”
Before I could unlock my phone and open my phone directory, though, it started ringing, the caller ID reading Taylor. I quickly swiped my thumb across the green Answer button that had popped up on its screen. “Hey Tay,” I said in answer.
“Hey Rue,” he replied, and I bit down hard on my bottom lip. He sounded beyond exhausted. I wasn’t going to say anything though, at least not unless he did. “We’re nearly done over here, just got our bedroom, the practice space and my piano left to pack up. I don’t think we’re going to get any of that done today though. I’m just way too tired.” As if to emphasise his point, the end of that last sentence was interrupted by a yawn.
“I thought you sounded tired. What are you going to do now?”
“It’s what, five o’clock?” I could almost see him checking his watch after he said this. “Yeah, five o’clock. I was thinking we could order pizza or something for dinner.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“Okay. It’ll probably just be us two and my brothers, unless your brothers want to stick around.”
“I’ll ask them. Hang on.” I lowered my phone for a few moments. “Tay’s going to order in pizza for dinner, do either of you feel like sticking around?”
“I will,” Benjamin said immediately, while Troy and Matthew shook their heads. I nodded and went back to my phone call.
“Ben’s going to come back to the house with me,” I said. “He likes pepperoni.”
“Gotcha.” He was quiet for a moment. “I told them.”
I didn’t need to ask what he had said to who – to me, it was obvious. “What did they say?”
“Well…” He let out a soft, nearly inaudible sigh. “They’re worried. Neither of them want to get started on recording the new album until they’re absolutely sure I’m okay.” He scoffed a little at this. “Of course I’m not okay. I’m never fucking okay.”
“Taylor,” I chided him gently. “They’re your brothers, of course they want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I know, I know. Sorry.” I was pretty sure I could see him rubbing his eyes a little as he said this. “I…I’ll ask Dr. Wenham when I see her if I’ll be okay to go down to Melbourne.”
“Good. Thank you.”
This time, Taylor let out a quiet laugh. “You sound like my mum.”
“Your mum lives three hours and nearly three hundred kilometres away. Someone has to.”
I knew Taylor had to be rolling his eyes a little at this, though it would be in fondness rather than exasperation. “Do you want me to order dinner now, or wait until you get back here?”
“You may as well do it now. I reckon we should have an early night, so the earlier we have dinner the better.”
“Yeah, okay. See you soon.”
“See ya.”
We both hung up, and for half a minute or so I stared at the photo that I’d used as my phone’s wallpaper for the last few months. It was a photo of Taylor and I from New Year’s Eve, the two of us standing against the seawall at Mrs. Macquarie’s Point in Sydney, kissing as fireworks exploded in the night sky behind us. Almost at the same time that my phone locked, turning its screen dark again, I let out a shaky sigh and closed my eyes.
“Hey, you okay?” Taleah asked from just behind me, and I shook my head. “Oh, hey, c’mere…”
Almost before I could blink, Taleah had pulled me up onto my feet and drawn me into a hug. I buried my face in her shoulder and tried my hardest not to start crying. I could feel myself shaking from the effort of holding the tears back. “He’s going to be okay,” she said as she held me, one of her hands stroking my hair. “I promise Rue, he’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, I do. You know how I know?” she said, and I shook my head. “Because he’s got you. That’s how I know. And I know that you love him and care about him too much for him to not be okay.” I drew back just far enough that Taleah could slip a couple of fingers under my chin and tilt my head up, and she gave me a smile I took to be reassuring. “Whatever happens, the two of you will be okay.”
Back at the house in Corrimal – soon to be mine and Taylor’s old house – Troy and Matthew parked the moving truck alongside the kerb out front, behind Troy’s ute, and Taleah let Ben and I out of her car in the driveway. “Thanks for the lift, Leah,” I said once Matthew had taken my place in the front seat.
“No worries,” Taleah said cheerfully. “See you tomorrow, yeah?”
“See you,” I echoed, and I stepped back from the passenger side of the car so that Taleah could merge into the traffic that filled Pioneer Road. She and Matthew each gave me a wave that I returned, and were soon lost amongst the line of cars heading north toward Bellambi. “Go on inside Ben,” I said, having seen that my youngest brother was sitting on the wall that barred the front garden off from the nature strip. “Hopefully there’s still enough pizza left.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Benjamin replied, and he had soon climbed over the wall into the garden.
“Be nice!” I called after him. “I mean it, Ben!” He waved back at me, and I let out a sigh as he let himself into the house.
“I don’t think you need to worry about him,” Troy said as he came up beside me. “He’s not as much of a shithead as he used to be. You know that.”
“He’s still a shithead.”
Troy chuckled and slung an arm around my shoulders. “He’s the youngest. I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to be a shithead.”
“So long as he isn’t a total deadshit toward Taylor or his brothers, he can be as much of a shithead as he likes.” I gave Troy a tired smile. “Thanks for today, Troy.”
Troy pressed a kiss to the crown of my head, and gave my ponytail a quick yank before stepping away. “No worries, Rubes. See ya tomorrow, yeah?”
I nodded. “Yeah. See ya.”
It wasn’t long before I was outside by myself. It was still fairly early, even though it was dark outside – the takeaway place across the street was still open, light spilling out of its door onto the tables and chairs that had been set up in front and the colourful flags that were fluttering in the breeze, and even though the Towradgi Beach Hotel was a good kilometre back toward Wollongong I was pretty sure I could hear music drifting up the road from whatever band was playing a show at Waves that evening. I sat down on the wall roughly where Benjamin had been sitting, braced my hands against it so that I stayed upright, and let my eyes drift closed.
Between the move, Taylor’s health beginning to get worse and worry over his upcoming appointments, it had already been a hard couple of weeks. I didn’t want to imagine how much worse it could get. I just had to hope that Taleah was right – that Taylor would be okay.
He had to be okay. Because I wasn’t sure I would be okay without him.
The sound of Taleah’s voice, coupled with the sound of a folding chair creaking as someone settled themselves into it, was all it took to make me tear my gaze away from the moving truck that was sitting at the end of the driveway. Today was moving day, and I had taken the responsibility of getting Taylor and I moved into our new house. Said responsibility mostly involved sitting in a camp chair next to the ramp that led up to the front porch and directing my brothers as they moved the boxes that Taylor and his brothers had packed and loaded into a moving truck into the house. “Hey Leah,” I said when I saw who had sat down next to me. “Thanks for getting Matt to help out.”
“If I’d known it was going to be this easy to drag him away from the TV, I would have got him to help you move into Taylor’s place last year,” my sister replied. “The footy isn’t even on until tomorrow.” Almost on cue, my brother-in-law stepped out of the back of the moving truck and started heading down the ramp, a cardboard box in his arms. “Don’t you dare drop that box, Matthew!” she yelled.
“Taylor promising to shout him a six-pack of Great Northern probably helped,” I said.
“Speaking of, where is your other half?”
“Back at our old place – we flipped a coin to see who was going to do what. Winner gets to spend the day here making sure everything goes smoothly with the move, and the loser gets to finish packing the old house up. I called heads, Tay called tails, and it came up heads.”
“So you get to sit on your arse directing the move, while loverboy gets to work his arse off?”
I shrugged. “I did offer to switch places with him, but he said he didn’t mind. Reckons it keeps his mind off shit.” Just as I said this, Matthew stopped in front of Taleah and I, giving me the opportunity to see how the box he was carrying was labelled. Taylor had written OFFICE on the side of the box in heavy black texta, and had drawn a little guitar underneath. “Can you pop that in the sunroom?”
“No worries,” Matthew said, and gave me a smile as he walked past. I smothered a giggle as Taleah smacked him on the backside.
“How’s Taylor going, anyway?” Taleah asked once Matthew had headed inside the house. “I know it’s nine years on Wednesday, but apart from that…” Here she shrugged, as if she couldn’t quite figure out what to say next.
“Honestly?”
“As much as you can tell me.”
“Right.” I rubbed my forehead a little as I tried to decide just how much to tell Taleah about what had happened nearly two weeks earlier. I had to balance Taleah being my sister and Taylor’s future sister-in-law with the fact that like me, and like Gabrielle, she was a Hanson fan. It took me maybe half a minute to decide that her being family won out. “Not too well,” I replied at last. “He hasn’t had a relapse or anything, at least not that either of us are aware of, but his health’s not great right now.”
“Shit.” She sighed. “Exactly how bad are we talking?”
“We won’t know for sure until he’s seen his oncologist on Wednesday. But at this stage…” I swallowed hard, wishing Taylor was with me to help explain. “He might have something wrong with his heart.”
Taleah covered her mouth with a hand. “Oh no.”
“Yeah. He’s got an appointment at Wollongong Hospital with a cardiologist a week from Monday – it was the earliest he could get in to see them. Hopefully it’s just something he can take medication for.” I suddenly felt cold all over, and I pulled my hoodie tighter around myself. “If he ends up needing surgery, and something happens to him…” I trailed off, not wanting to finish that sentence. It was something I couldn’t even bear to think about.
There was a sound of steel scraping against concrete, and I looked over just in time to see Taleah scooting her chair closer to mine. She slipped an arm around my shoulders. “I know, Rue,” she said. Through the sleeve of my hoodie I could feel her rubbing my right arm. “I worry about Matt all the time.”
“So I’m not worrying for nothing?”
“Of course not. You love him, of course you’re going to worry about him.” She moved her hand off my arm, and soon I could feel her smoothing down my hair over my head. “We all worry about him, really.”
“Please don’t tell anyone what I told you.”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see Taleah miming zipping her lips shut. “It’s in the vault.”
“Thanks, sis.”
“Anytime, Rue.”
The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful, with Matthew and my brothers driving the moving truck back and forth between Corrimal and Woonona, unloading boxes and furniture in between trips, and me directing them in moving mine and Taylor’s belongings into the house. At one point Taleah had loaded up Spotify on her phone and put Hanson’s albums on shuffle, and the two of us had spent a couple of hours singing along at the very tops of our voices.
By the time moving was done for the day, the sun was getting low in the sky and it was starting to get cold. I’d zipped my hoodie up and pulled its hood up over my head so that my ears stayed warm, and had shoved my hands into its pockets. When the front door of the house opened behind us just before five o’clock, I looked back over my shoulder to see Matthew, Troy and Benjamin coming outside. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Taleah doing the same thing. “Everything okay?” she asked.
“That was the last of the boxes,” Troy replied. “Still a bunch of things that have to be brought over, but I think Taylor wanted to sort those out himself.”
“Probably the practice space,” I said. “His piano as well, but mostly the practice space.”
“He said something like that, yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll give him a bell and see how he wants to play things.”
Before I could unlock my phone and open my phone directory, though, it started ringing, the caller ID reading Taylor. I quickly swiped my thumb across the green Answer button that had popped up on its screen. “Hey Tay,” I said in answer.
“Hey Rue,” he replied, and I bit down hard on my bottom lip. He sounded beyond exhausted. I wasn’t going to say anything though, at least not unless he did. “We’re nearly done over here, just got our bedroom, the practice space and my piano left to pack up. I don’t think we’re going to get any of that done today though. I’m just way too tired.” As if to emphasise his point, the end of that last sentence was interrupted by a yawn.
“I thought you sounded tired. What are you going to do now?”
“It’s what, five o’clock?” I could almost see him checking his watch after he said this. “Yeah, five o’clock. I was thinking we could order pizza or something for dinner.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“Okay. It’ll probably just be us two and my brothers, unless your brothers want to stick around.”
“I’ll ask them. Hang on.” I lowered my phone for a few moments. “Tay’s going to order in pizza for dinner, do either of you feel like sticking around?”
“I will,” Benjamin said immediately, while Troy and Matthew shook their heads. I nodded and went back to my phone call.
“Ben’s going to come back to the house with me,” I said. “He likes pepperoni.”
“Gotcha.” He was quiet for a moment. “I told them.”
I didn’t need to ask what he had said to who – to me, it was obvious. “What did they say?”
“Well…” He let out a soft, nearly inaudible sigh. “They’re worried. Neither of them want to get started on recording the new album until they’re absolutely sure I’m okay.” He scoffed a little at this. “Of course I’m not okay. I’m never fucking okay.”
“Taylor,” I chided him gently. “They’re your brothers, of course they want to make sure you’re okay.”
“I know, I know. Sorry.” I was pretty sure I could see him rubbing his eyes a little as he said this. “I…I’ll ask Dr. Wenham when I see her if I’ll be okay to go down to Melbourne.”
“Good. Thank you.”
This time, Taylor let out a quiet laugh. “You sound like my mum.”
“Your mum lives three hours and nearly three hundred kilometres away. Someone has to.”
I knew Taylor had to be rolling his eyes a little at this, though it would be in fondness rather than exasperation. “Do you want me to order dinner now, or wait until you get back here?”
“You may as well do it now. I reckon we should have an early night, so the earlier we have dinner the better.”
“Yeah, okay. See you soon.”
“See ya.”
We both hung up, and for half a minute or so I stared at the photo that I’d used as my phone’s wallpaper for the last few months. It was a photo of Taylor and I from New Year’s Eve, the two of us standing against the seawall at Mrs. Macquarie’s Point in Sydney, kissing as fireworks exploded in the night sky behind us. Almost at the same time that my phone locked, turning its screen dark again, I let out a shaky sigh and closed my eyes.
“Hey, you okay?” Taleah asked from just behind me, and I shook my head. “Oh, hey, c’mere…”
Almost before I could blink, Taleah had pulled me up onto my feet and drawn me into a hug. I buried my face in her shoulder and tried my hardest not to start crying. I could feel myself shaking from the effort of holding the tears back. “He’s going to be okay,” she said as she held me, one of her hands stroking my hair. “I promise Rue, he’s going to be okay.”
“You don’t know that,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, I do. You know how I know?” she said, and I shook my head. “Because he’s got you. That’s how I know. And I know that you love him and care about him too much for him to not be okay.” I drew back just far enough that Taleah could slip a couple of fingers under my chin and tilt my head up, and she gave me a smile I took to be reassuring. “Whatever happens, the two of you will be okay.”
Back at the house in Corrimal – soon to be mine and Taylor’s old house – Troy and Matthew parked the moving truck alongside the kerb out front, behind Troy’s ute, and Taleah let Ben and I out of her car in the driveway. “Thanks for the lift, Leah,” I said once Matthew had taken my place in the front seat.
“No worries,” Taleah said cheerfully. “See you tomorrow, yeah?”
“See you,” I echoed, and I stepped back from the passenger side of the car so that Taleah could merge into the traffic that filled Pioneer Road. She and Matthew each gave me a wave that I returned, and were soon lost amongst the line of cars heading north toward Bellambi. “Go on inside Ben,” I said, having seen that my youngest brother was sitting on the wall that barred the front garden off from the nature strip. “Hopefully there’s still enough pizza left.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice,” Benjamin replied, and he had soon climbed over the wall into the garden.
“Be nice!” I called after him. “I mean it, Ben!” He waved back at me, and I let out a sigh as he let himself into the house.
“I don’t think you need to worry about him,” Troy said as he came up beside me. “He’s not as much of a shithead as he used to be. You know that.”
“He’s still a shithead.”
Troy chuckled and slung an arm around my shoulders. “He’s the youngest. I’m pretty sure he’s supposed to be a shithead.”
“So long as he isn’t a total deadshit toward Taylor or his brothers, he can be as much of a shithead as he likes.” I gave Troy a tired smile. “Thanks for today, Troy.”
Troy pressed a kiss to the crown of my head, and gave my ponytail a quick yank before stepping away. “No worries, Rubes. See ya tomorrow, yeah?”
I nodded. “Yeah. See ya.”
It wasn’t long before I was outside by myself. It was still fairly early, even though it was dark outside – the takeaway place across the street was still open, light spilling out of its door onto the tables and chairs that had been set up in front and the colourful flags that were fluttering in the breeze, and even though the Towradgi Beach Hotel was a good kilometre back toward Wollongong I was pretty sure I could hear music drifting up the road from whatever band was playing a show at Waves that evening. I sat down on the wall roughly where Benjamin had been sitting, braced my hands against it so that I stayed upright, and let my eyes drift closed.
Between the move, Taylor’s health beginning to get worse and worry over his upcoming appointments, it had already been a hard couple of weeks. I didn’t want to imagine how much worse it could get. I just had to hope that Taleah was right – that Taylor would be okay.
He had to be okay. Because I wasn’t sure I would be okay without him.
As much as I wanted otherwise, Wednesday wasn’t without its share of drama. And it began before the sun had even risen.
“Ruby?”
I wasn’t sure if it was the light from the hallway spilling into the room through the just-barely cracked door, the absence of Taylor’s comforting warmth against my back or my own internal alarm clock, but as soon as I heard my name being called out I was immediately awake. “Yeah?” I replied through a massive yawn without opening my eyes.
“Sorry I’m waking you up so early,” the voice continued, sounding apologetic, and I squinted in the direction of the door. Zoë had poked her head into the room, the warm yellow light from the hallway casting her in silhouette. “Tay’s in the bathroom,” she added.
“Is he okay?” I asked as I eased myself upright. As soon as I was sitting up I braced myself with a hand against the mattress of the bed.
Through the half-dark, I could see Zoë shrug. “Don’t know. But I was going to have a shower before school, and I found him sitting on the floor against the vanity. I think I woke him up.”
I scrubbed a hand across my eyes and let out another yawn. “Okay. Thanks for letting me know. I’ll go drag him out of the bathroom so you can have your shower.”
Zoë shook her head. “Nah, it’s okay. I’ll use the shower in the other bathroom.”
“You sure?”
“Yep. Totally sure.” She gave me a smile, one I thought was far too cheerful for so early in the morning, and drew back into the hallway. I listened to her footsteps fading away for about half a minute before pushing the covers back and getting out of bed. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the glowing, bright blue digits of Taylor’s alarm clock tick over from 6:14 to 6:15.
Sure enough, Taylor was exactly where Zoë had said he would be – sitting against the vanity in the bathroom that was next to the laundry with his eyes closed, legs stretched out on the cold tiles and his head tipped back against the doors of the cupboard beneath the sink. I left the bathroom light off on my way in, figuring he had a good reason for not having turned it on, and eased myself down onto the floor next to him. “You feeling okay?” I asked him quietly.
He didn’t answer me for a little while. Right when I thought he must have fallen asleep, he cracked one eye open and just looked at me. “I’ve been in here feeling like I’m going to throw up for the last I don’t know how many hours,” he replied at last. I couldn’t help but notice how tired he sounded. “How do you think I feel?”
“Okay, yeah, that was a stupid question.” His only response to this was a rough-sounding chuckle. “Is it just because of your appointment?”
“I think so.” He let out a sigh. “I hate that it makes me feel this way.”
“Yeah, I know you do.” I put a hand on his head, intending to run my fingers through his messy hair, and froze when he flinched. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, my head just really hurts,” he replied as I lowered my hand. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Feels like someone’s got it in a vice.”
I winced. I knew exactly how that felt. “Ouch. No wonder you’ve got the lights off.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, fortunately for you, I know exactly how to fix that.” I let out a quiet groan as I eased myself back to my feet, using the vanity to brace myself, and reached down to help Taylor up. “Come on. We’ll get some Panadol into you for the migraine, and I’ll make you some mint tea. Sound good?”
“That sounds fucking fantastic.”
“I thought it might.”
It wasn’t long before Taylor and I had shifted ourselves out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. I got the kettle going while Taylor took a couple of Panadol. “I’d give you a couple of my Panadol Extra, but you already drink so much coffee that the caffeine might not do you much good,” I said as I found the box of peppermint teabags that I’d spotted in the pantry the afternoon before, along with a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. “Same with a couple of Nurofen, seeing as I know you can’t take it.”
“Yeah.” He held up the packet of Panadol and gave it a little shake, the movement making the blister packs inside rattle. “Not the first time I wish I wasn’t allergic.”
Neither of us said much for a little while after this. It was still so early that I knew neither of Taylor’s parents would be up yet, so I didn’t want to make any noise that would wake them. Not to mention that if the migraine Taylor was currently suffering through was anything like mine were, the slightest of loud noises would just make it worse. Never mind that I knew he probably didn’t want to talk much anyway. So rather than force conversation, I busied myself with making Taylor a cup of tea along with breakfast for us both.
“Is this the first migraine you’ve ever had?” I asked as I hopped up onto the bar stool next to Taylor’s. I had set a mug of peppermint tea and a plate of peanut butter toast down in front of him, and he took a small sip of his tea while I bit into one of my own pieces of toast. “It’s not the same tea as the one we’ve got at home,” I added apologetically. “But it’s the one I used to buy ages ago, and it’s pretty good.”
He shook his head a little. “Had them before,” he replied with a wince, and I gave his free hand a quick squeeze. “Usually only happens when I’m really stressed out.”
“Like right now.”
“Mhm. Like right now.” He winced again, and I nudged the plate of toast closer to him. “Rue, I’m not really hungry right now…”
“I know. But it’ll help the Panadol kick in faster if you eat something. And you probably won’t feel as sick.”
He gave me another look, one that was only marginally less than disbelieving, but he picked up one of the pieces of toast that was in front of him. “I hope you’re right.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
Neither of us said much more until after we had both finished eating. By this time Zoë had left for school, the other occupants of the house were up and about, and Taylor and I had retreated to the porch swing on the back deck. Autumn had well and truly set in now – it was chilly outside, and I found myself very thankful I’d thought to grab my hoodie on my way outside. I cupped my hands together and breathed out against them to warm them up. “What time’s your appointment?” I asked as I rubbed my hands together.
“Ten-thirty,” he replied quietly. He already sounded incredibly anxious – his voice had been shaky, and I could feel him trembling ever so slightly, like he was a leaf being buffeted by a strong breeze. He pushed the right sleeve of his hoodie back and checked his watch, letting out a soft groan. “Still three hours to go.”
“Do you want a distraction?”
“Oh shit yeah.”
I stifled a laugh at this. He had answered me so quickly that I almost felt like he had been waiting for me to ask him that specific question. “The new album,” I said after a bit of thought. “When do you think you’ll be starting recording?”
“Not sure yet,” he replied. I could feel him giving a half-shrug as he said this. “We have to talk it over with Liberation first. We usually go down to Melbourne for that.”
“You couldn’t do it over Skype?”
“If we absolutely had to we could, yeah, but I think we all just prefer being able to hash things out face to face.” He scrubbed a hand down his face. “But I think that particular decision is going to be out of our hands this time. It’s going to be Skype or nothing.”
“What makes you say that?” I asked, about half a second before I figured it out. “Dr. Wenham,” I realised, and Taylor nodded.
“Yeah. If it turns out that this…thing that Dr. Emerson wants me to see her about is something that I need to have surgery for, she probably won’t want me going too far from home for a while. Which means I can’t go to Melbourne.”
“And they’re not going to want to leave you out of any discussion about the new album.”
“Nope. Put it this way – the only reason that Strong Enough To Break got made the way it did in the first place was because I gave Isaac and Zac permission to film me going through treatment both times. Otherwise it would have been wholly about the recording of Underneath.”
“And you’d be able to watch it without it triggering a panic attack.”
“Mhm. Part of me still wishes we’d done it that way anyway.”
“Do you know what you’re going to call the new album yet?” I asked, in an attempt to steer our conversation back to its original topic.
“Not yet. We’ll come up with something eventually – we always do.”
We both went quiet again after this, falling into a silence that was broken only by the rustling of leaves in the trees that surrounded the house, birdcalls, and in the distance cars driving along Black Hill Road. Taylor was still shaking, and I carefully slipped an arm around his shoulders. He immediately leaned closer, putting his head down on my shoulder, and as I glanced down at him he closed his eyes.
“You’ll be okay,” I said, badly wanting to believe what I was saying. “You have to be okay.” I started tracing the shoulder seam of his hoodie with my thumb. “I don’t know what I’ll do if you’re not.”
“March straight after me, I reckon,” he said, and I let out a quiet laugh.
“Probably,” I agreed. “Hey, I have an idea.”
“Hmm?”
“After your appointment, we should go out to that Cold Rock we went to on our first date.”
“The one in Hamilton?”
“Yeah. If you get good news, then we get to celebrate with obscenely expensive ice cream. And if you don’t get good news…well, we still get obscenely expensive ice cream. Either way we both win.”
Taylor let out a laugh of his own. “Yeah, okay. That sounds good to me.”
| << |
| chapters
|
|