I woke up on Saturday morning to weather that had changed dramatically from the sticky summer heat we had been enduring over the summer months. It felt like autumn had finally arrived.
Since it was much cooler with the threat of rain hanging in the air, not too many people were down on the beach. It was mostly deserted except for a few die-hard bathers bobbing around in the flat-as-a-pancake ocean. The poor conditions had chased the surfers back to their warm Saturday morning beds.
I sat on the same bench Jessie and I had been on the night before, my feet on the stone wall, looking out at the ocean. I lit a cigarette and let last night’s crazy series of scenes replay in my head. I wondered how Micky’s head bandage was going to fit in with his rock star image. Maybe he could wear a flat cap like the guy from AC/DC or shave his entire head and start playing punk tunes instead of Level 42. That was an amusing thought.
I had been sitting there for a while and was about to light up another smoke when Jessie came up behind me and touched me lightly on the shoulder.
“Hi Danny.” she said, her voice without emotion.
“Hey Jessie. How are you feeling today?” I replied.
“Meh. Not sure, to be honest. Dad’s gone to work and I saw you sitting here from my balcony so I thought I would come down and say thank you again for rescuing me last night.” The scratch mark on her cheek had faded a little but was still quite noticeable.
“It’s no big deal. If you want I can go over to Micky’s place and slap him around a bit. I wouldn’t charge a cent for doing it.”
She chuckled and smiled, her dimples reminding me of the girl I knew her to be. She was so beautiful.
“Fancy taking a walk?” she asked.
“Sure. Which way do you want to go?”
“Let’s go south. We can walk on the sand. It looks nice and firm today with the tide out.”
She was wearing a creamy linen house dress with small floral details under a cardigan that looked like it might have been made a few decades ago. Today she didn’t look like a typical 80’s streetwise young adult, more like a housewife from the 1960’s.
We walked slowly along the sand towards the harbour mouth, me with my hands in my pockets, she with one hand free and the other swinging her sandals by their heel straps. She was leaving perfectly formed, feminine footprints in the sand, bright red toenails contrasting against the dark beach sand. Like the rest of her body, she had beautiful, perfect feet.
“So, what to talk about?” she asked, almost playfully.
“Well, I suppose we could plan a bank robbery, maybe check in with Micky’s Dad and see if he’s got any tips for us on how to avoid getting caught.”
She feigned shock and with her jaw playfully ajar whacked me on the shoulder with her free hand.
“Don’t joke about that stuff! Seriously, I don’t know for sure that he was a bank robber, I just know that he’s in prison over there. I really don’t want that story to get out. The McGee’s will know exactly where it came from.”
“Don’t worry, your secret’s are all safe with me.” I said, then pausing for effect added, “For a fee, of course.”
She laughed heartily this time. I hadn’t heard that laugh since we were twelve years old in primary school. My heart was beginning to pulse a little faster.
“Oh dear, what’s the price?” she asked.
“Hmmm, I dunno. I’ll have to think about it, Jessie. How good are you in the kitchen?”
She took a moment, looked up at the sky and then at me. “I make a killer beans on toast.” she finally said, amusement dancing in her eyes.
“Damn. So you weren’t in any home economics classes in high school, eh? Hmph. Beans are fine, so good for your heart, the more you eat the more you fart.”
She laughed again and it was so good to see her smiling freely now, a stark contrast from the girl she was after the fracas of the night before.
“How’s your job going?” she asked.
“Ugh. Hate it.” I replied. “I spend half my working hours listening to my boss prattle on about ledgers and journal entries, then the other half I have to do manual filing. It really sucks. I think I’m going to give it a few more months and then maybe see if I can get a job in car sales or something. Id’ make more money and of course get a company car too. All this walking around in the city is making me skinny. How’s it going on your side?”
The last I heard she had been working as an apprentice hairdresser at a salon in town after packing in the full time waitressing jobs she’d been doing since leaving school.
“It’s OK. Pay is shitty but I just need to get a bit more experience and then I can start to work freelance jobs. That’s where the money is. My colleague Sasha is making a fortune doing highlights and perms at client’s homes in her free time. It’s easy money, she says. She even bought herself a brand new car last year.”
“Sounds good. So how long does it take to qualify as a hairdresser?”
“A few years. There’s no set time frame that I know of. I’ve been at it for almost a year now. Never thought I would get through that first 6 months of washing heads and sweeping up hair off the floor. Ew, makes my skin crawl just thinking about it now.”
“What did you do before hairdressing?”
“Just waitressing. I thought about doing nursing, but that’s quite a big commitment. Lots of book work. I wasn’t a boffin in school like Jeannie was.”
She was talking about a girl we knew from junior school, Jeannie Morris who would get over 90% for all her exams.
“Ah yes, good old Jean Genie. How’s she doing? You still keep in touch with her?”
“Not really, she turned out to be a bit of a snob. Last I heard she was finishing off a degree in accounting. Articles or something along those lines. A proper brain box that one, now with a superiority complex to match.”
“Ooh, so she’ll soon be Miss Big Bucks. Can’t say I care for accountants all that much. To be honest I don’t know how I ended up working in the bank, I hate that bloody place.”
“But surely you’ll go far working there, Danny? Don’t they give you study opportunities?” she asked, looking intently at my face as we walked.
I had thought about this and hadn’t really come to a conclusion on whether I wanted to take that plunge. It seemed like just the other day that I was sweating over high school final exams and after the two years I had served in the army I simply lost the desire to hit the books again.
“They do,” I replied, “but it’s a bit of a golden handcuff. They’ll pay for your studies but then you have to work it back with time served. So if you leave the bank before you’ve done that they will take what you owe them out of your pension, or if that’s not enough then you have to pay it back some other way.”
“That sucks.” she said.
“It does.” I agreed.
There was a moment or two of silence as we walked on. The beach was deserted as we got further south. I had all sorts of questions I wanted to ask her, but shyness held me back. I wanted to know more about what she did in high school, where her Mom had gone and why she had ever hooked up with that prick Micky in the first place. Instead of asking her the things that were on my mind I spoke about how much high school sucked. I wanted to tell her how much I had missed her on our walks home from primary school. I wanted to ask her out on a date, but given the current circumstances that seemed a bad idea. I really didn’t know what I wanted from Jessie Lombard. Being in her company right then was good enough though.
We’d walked quite a distance from our starting point and were almost at the harbour mouth. Some heavy dark clouds were rolling in from the West.
“Uh, oh. I feel rain.” she said.
“Shit. Left me brolly back at the Rolls.” I joked, mocking Andrew’s cockney accent. She smiled back at me, her face suddenly seemed more appealing than ever before. “If it comes down hard we’re kind of screwed, there’s no shelter here and it’s a helluva trek back to the flats. Maybe we can go to those clubhouses, see if there’s shelter there?” I suggested.
To our right, up a slight sand bank was a group of buildings that belonged to the yacht club and other water sports organisations.
“Ya, let’s go over there.” she agreed.
As we were heading towards the clubhouse building she got right next to me and tucked her hand into the gap between my right arm and torso. This unexpected physical affection surprised me. I squeezed her arm closer by closing the gap. We moved in step towards the clubhouse together, loping through the sand as the raindrops intensified around us.
“Looks like it’s all closed up here.” she said as we reached the stoop in front of the clubhouse. Perfect.
There were a few tables with bench seats under a covered patio area, so we sat down on one, side by side like patrons at a restaurant. I put up my hand, pretending to call a waiter for service. Jessie giggled. This girl who I had known since childhood was still tearing down all my heart’s defences. I was trying to find reasons to not be attracted to her.
Micky has been with her.
She might be pregnant with his child.
She has a drunkard father.
Her mother ran away.
She… is not my girlfriend.
But she could be, said a small internal voice at the back of my mind.
Beneath her short bob she had a delicate but sensuously feminine neck. Her jawline was soft and her hazel eyes were accentuated with only the faintest application of mascara and eye shadow. She could go without any makeup and still remain beautiful, I thought as I surveyed her profile, trying not to be obvious about it as we watched the rain intensify.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I asked, gingerly. She sighed heavily.
“I can’t stop thinking about this situation with Micky.” She turned her eyes turned to me. “What do you think I should do? Tell him I’m late? We are definitely over, that’s for sure. I don’t know why I stuck it out with that cheating bastard for so long. What a waste of a year.”
I blew out a breath and pursed my lips in contrived contemplation. The conversation was heading in a positive direction given what she’d just said about her and Micky definitely being over. But what if she was pregnant?
“Honestly, I don’t know, Jessie. I think the first thing you need to do is find out whether you are actually preggers or not. Do you have a GP you can visit? I can help if you need money for an appointment and a test.”
“No, but thanks anyway. I’ll just go to the local clinic down the road and see if they can do a test there.”
“Were you using birth control pills?” I asked. “Because my friend Liz at work told me that they can throw your hormones and cycles out of whack if you accidentally miss one.”
“Nope. No pills, just plain old French letters. But knowing Micky he probably broke the thing putting it on. Stupid arsehole.” she muttered.
The idea of him screwing Jessie was suddenly in the front of my mind. It repulsed me. She deserved so much better than him and if I was being accurate in my assessment of the little Scottish shit he probably didn’t even bother with the condoms during his many conquests. Who knew what diseases he might be passing around. AIDS wasn’t just a gay thing anymore. What if he’d passed it onto her?
“And if you are pregnant, would you consider an abortion as an option? I mean, I know it’s illegal and all, but there are ways of getting it done quietly and privately. A friend of mine’s sister had one when she was 15.”
“I don’t even want to think about that option.” she said, dropping her head, looking at her sandy feet, the red toenails now covered in sand from our trot up to the clubhouse. “I probably won’t be able to afford one if even if I could get it done. And how safe are they? I don’t want to find out years down the line that I can’t have kids because of some stupid mistake I made now. That would be awful. Adoption would be much better.”
I liked what I was hearing about her wanting to have kids. Someday.
“Smoke?” I offered her one of my Camels and fished my Zippo lighter out of my pocket.
“Thanks. I think I will, even though I’m probably not supposed to smoke in this condition.”
“Well, your condition is uncertain, so I wouldn’t be too concerned about a cigarette or two.”
I lit the Camel for her so that she didn’t have to inhale the Zippo fumes and then passed it over before lighting one for myself.
These are the days, I thought as the rain pelted the awning we were underneath. We sat there quietly, blowing smoke into the air. She looked at me and asked a question I should have anticipated.
“How come you’re not involved with anybody, Dan?”
“Hmmm, good question.” I replied, feigning a pensive look. “I broke up with Vanessa a few months back. She was also a bit of a two timer. No wait, let’s just call a spade a spade; she was a quadruple timer. Apparently I had no idea that there were at least three other guys in her life at the same time our paths crossed.”
“Wow, that’s not cool. Sounds like the female version of Micky. How did you find out she was cheating?”
“One of her friends let slip about another guy she had seen while we were together, so I asked and she didn’t deny it. Later I found out from Simon that he had seen her hanging out with at least two other guys while we were still supposed to be exclusive.”
“Did you… you know, use protection when you were with her?”
I said I did, wondering how much more personal this conversation was going to get the longer the rain went on. She gently rested a hand on my arm. Her hands were still cool to the touch.
“You’re a nice guy, Dan. You deserve better.”
“So do you.” I said, returning the gesture and putting my hand on top of hers.
She leaned closer and kissed me on the cheek. My heart kicked into overdrive.
“I’ll tell you a secret,” I said. “If you hadn’t been involved with Micky I would have asked you out as soon as I moved back to the south end. Would you have said yes?” I was thinking I had nothing to lose at this point so I may as well throw caution to the wind.
Her eyes lit up as she sat bolt upright, looking me directly in the eyes.
“Are you kidding? You’re like one of the dreamiest guys on the beachfront, all the girls want to go out with you. Especially me!”
“Nah. Really?” I was taken aback at her response. I felt my face flushing a bit.
“Of course!” She was smiling like a lighthouse in full beam now and my heart was galloping faster than wild horses bolting down a prairie. This was a revelation that I had never imagined could be true. Me, the oblivious subject of south end female desire.
“The girls coming into the salon are always talking about you, Dan. Don’t you know?” she went on.
“I did not know.”
I took a deep final drag of my cigarette, smiled broadly and flicked the butt onto the sand where it died quickly under the falling rain. Jessie did the same with hers, but threw it like a dart instead, coal forward.
“Well, the things you learn when talking to girls suffering hormonal distress.” I joked, my gaze trapped on her now unfathomably beautiful face. “If you weren’t possibly carrying that Scottish prick’s baby I might drop onto one knee and propose right here and now, skip all this preamble. You’ve just made my year! It can’t get better than this.”
She laughed and leaned closer into me. I put my arms around her and kissed the top of her head. Her hair smelled wonderful, like a summer breeze in a field of flowers. It just felt so right being with her in this moment, rain all around us, nobody else in sight.
We sat there for what seemed like an eternity, not saying anything, just enjoying one other’s presence.
“So what else did you get up to in high school?” I finally asked.
She seemed a little disinterested in the question.
“Homework, dance lessons and avoiding arseholes. I didn’t really fit in with the crowd at Central Girls High. And you?”
“I was the same. I hated high school. I had to catch a bus out of town every day just to get there when we still lived down here on the south end. My school was full of all these rich kids flying high on their parents status, looking down their noses at me because I came from town. And you know in that world of theirs nothing good comes from town. Pricks. The lot of them.”
Jessie forced her lips into a downward, commiserative smile.
“That must have sucked. At least I was with the girls we were with in primary school, although some of them turned out to be real bitches. Do you remember Annie Preston?”
I thought for a second and then remembered who she was, an abnormally tall blonde girl who had already started getting zits aged ten.
“Oh lord, yes I do remember her. Long legs Preston.”
“Yes, she got even taller in high school and for some reason took a serious disliking to me. I got into it with her one day on the sports field doing high jump. She slapped the shit out of me. Luckily the teacher saw it happen and intervened. I swear that girl wanted to kill me for some reason. Wish I knew why.”
“That’s not cool. Did you have a boyfriend back then?” I asked, prying slowly into her past love life.
“Not at that time. I did go out with a guy from the other side of the bay for a while, but nobody from our school knew him. I don’t think Annie would have been jealous of me seeing that guy though.”
“Maybe she was jealous of you. Lesbo perhaps?”
Jessie’s eyes got larger.
“Oh God no, please don’t put that vision into my brain! Ugh!”
The rain continued to fall as we sat there enjoying one another’s company. Jessie seemed to be quite at ease. She was cuddled up in the crook of my arm, her over-sized cardigan wrapped around her body, her head resting on my shoulder. I felt happy having her so close to me, but also uncertain of where this was all going. I had wanted to be with her for so long, but given everything that I knew at that point about her situation it just felt too… fragile. Would she hurt me? Would she go back to Micky if she was actually pregnant? I just didn’t know.
“How did you and Micky get together?” I blurted out, not sure if this was the right moment to bring up the subject of the guy who had caused her so much recent distress, but given the way I was feeling and the signals she was sending me I had to know how she really felt about the guy.
She stirred, tilting her head up to look at me and then sat upright, a small sigh escaping her as she did.
“Danny, I really don’t want to talk about Micky, but if you have to know… we got close when I was waitressing at Domy’s, the restaurant across the road from Harlequins. He’d come in there for an early dinner every Friday before his gig. He’s charming, you know, and I fell for it. Foolishly.”
“Do you love him?” I asked. She shrugged and turned her face away from me, looking out at the horizon.
“I don’t know.” she said. “I loved the idea of being in love with him, but… I don’t think he’s a person who really knows how to love you back.”
“So, sort of a lost cause?” I suggested.
“Ya. He’s a lost cause, for sure. I don’t see a future with him, especially if I am pregnant because he wouldn’t be the kind of father I’d want for my child.”
“And if you are carrying his kid, are you saying that you’d go it alone? Without him being involved? Assuming you don’t follow the adoption route.”
She didn’t answer, instead she sat quite still, her mind probably chewing over the realities of what that situation might look like for her. A drunkard father, low income job, no spousal support. It wouldn’t be easy. She looked back at me and I could see that the tears were back in her eyes.
“I don’t know, Danny. I don’t know.” Then her tears came harder. I pulled her back to me and she didn’t resist.
“I’m sorry, Jess. I didn’t mean to hurt you with these questions. I will be here for you, if you want me to be.” She said nothing, but continued to rest her head against my chest.
We sat together like that for what seemed like hours until the rain stopped and we walked back to the flats.
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