Now Leaving Sugartown Read online

  Exercising a control I didn’t think myself capable of, I break the kiss. I push back thoughts of Sammy, open my eyes, and I come face to face with him. He’s standing on the footpath behind Luke, glaring at me. Disappointment fills his deep blue eyes.

  Ashamed, I drop my gaze. My face floods with embarrassment. Luke stares down at me. He has sort of this dazed look about him, as if I just took him completely by surprise, and I guess I did. I took us both by surprise. His arms are still wrapped around me, only now they’re not a welcome heat. They feel like snakes, squeezing me too tightly, sinking me lower in Sammy’s eyes the longer they stay on me.

  “Get. In. The. Car.” Sam spits out each word as if they’re venom in his mouth. Luke spins around, clearly as caught off-guard as I was. He looks at Sammy as if he’s afraid for his life, and I guess he probably should be. Sammy doesn’t want me in the way that Luke does—that much is obvious, I’ve only ever been his kid sister—but that doesn’t mean he’s happy with some random dude mauling me in public. Sammy is pissed and he’s one bear I don’t like to poke sticks at when he’s angry. It doesn’t happen often, he’s usually a pretty tolerant guy, but when Sammy Belle gets pissed, you don’t stand around provoking him. You run. I feel bad that I wasn’t able to give Luke a heads up.

  I scoop up my backpack and head for the car. Like every sullen, stubborn teenager that’s ever gone before me, I don’t appreciate being told what to do; so instead of climbing in, I lean against his piece-of-shit Camaro and shoot daggers through the back of his head with my gaze.

  “I didn’t mean any offense.” Luke says, and I’m sort of impressed that he sounds only mildly terrified.

  “Mouth raping her in the middle of the street isn’t offensive to you?”

  Luke holds up a pair of trembling, placating hands. “We were just messing around—”

  “Oh, you were messing around? Well let me just bring her back here and you can mess around some more in front of the whole fucking town.” Sammy grabs the collar of Luke’s shirt and slams him up against the school fence I’d been backed into a few seconds ago. “Is that your plan, Roberts? To mess around with Pepper?”

  “I didn’t start it.” His eyes widen, and I can’t see Sammy’s face from here, but I’m guessing his expression isn’t shooting cartoon hearts and rainbows in Luke’s direction. “Okay; I did start it, but I didn’t expect her to—”

  “Shut up.” Sam releases Luke with a shove, and bends to pick up his backpack before thrusting it at his chest. Hard.

  “Sam,” I warn, but he turns and glares at me, and then pointedly looks at the car. He doesn’t need to tell me twice. Well actually, he already did tell me twice, but the point is I’m moving now. I yank open the door, tossing my backpack on a floor littered with dirty work clothes, empty cans of deodorant, and even emptier chip packets.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Sam says to Luke as I slam my door and roll the window down.

  Luke doesn’t wait to be told a second time. He shoulders his bag and hurries along the footpath. Sam yanks open the driver’s side door and slides in. I can feel how pissed off he is, as if it’s a tangible thing.

  “Luke,” I shout and he stops and turns to face the car, warily. “Black.”

  What? he mouths.

  “That question you asked before. Black.” He stares blankly at me for a moment and then laughs, finally catching on.

  His gaze slides to Sam in the seat beside me, and then he smiles and says, “Crotch-less?”

  I laugh. “Is there any other kind?”

  He opens his mouth to say something more, but Sam uses that exact moment to turn the key in the ignition and rev the engine. I pull my head back in the window, and I’ve barely fitted my seatbelt into place when Sam yanks hard on the steering wheel and jerks us away from the curb in a burst of speed and burning rubber. I glance in the rear-view mirror and see Luke choking in a cloud of exhaust. Sam pulls out in front of an SUV and sticks his finger up when the driver lays on the horn.

  “Are you feeling alright, or are you extra specially premenstrual today?”

  “I’m fine. I just don’t like to be kept waiting.”

  “Why are you picking me up? Mum never said anything about you driving me to my stupid guitar lessons.” I don’t know why, but Cooper had been hounding Holly for years to get me into guitar lessons—something about following in my rock-star daddy’s footsteps. Holly had thought it would be good for me socially, so she agreed to run me two towns over every Tuesday to the best guitar tutor Coop could find in our area. I don’t even like the guitar. I only go because it makes them both feel better about my conception being an accident.

  “Why don’t you just quit, if you hate it so much? It would save everyone a lot of time, running to and from those lessons.”

  “I never asked you to come pick me up.”

  “No, your mother did. Why? Because Sam’s free time doesn’t matter; he’ll look after Pepper so the adults can get drunk. He doesn’t need a social life.”

  “I never realised I was such a burden to you, Sam. Pull over. I’ll walk home and quit my stupid guitar lessons over the phone.” I open my car door. Wind rushes in, tossing around an empty chip packet that flies out onto the road. We haven’t even stopped moving yet, but already I’m unbuckling my seatbelt and preparing to leap from moving vehicles in order to get away from him.

  “What the hell are you doing? Close the door. Get back in the car.”

  “Pull over.”

  Sam swerves off the road, pulling up to a wide shoulder out of the way of traffic. He leans over the centre console, gripping the door handle, he pulls it firmly closed. “I’m sorry. That was a shitty thing to say.”

  “Ya think?”

  “I just …” He sighs. “I’ve had a bad day. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” I say, and allow the silence to engulf us. Sam never speaks to me that harshly.

  “You wanna skip the lesson and go grab a milkshake?”

  I turn and glare at him, as if he’s riding the Bipolar Express. “What, no booze? Jeez, Sammy, you really know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “Pepper, you have no idea.”

  Something inside me soars, and maybe I look too hopeful because Sam frowns, he shifts uncomfortably in his seat and then peels back out onto the road. “Besides, you’re more than a handful when you’re stone cold-sober. I’m not plying you with alcohol for at least another six years.”

  I pout. “Fine, but I hope you know I plan on eating my weight in ice cream, Mister.”

  Sam drives us to an old-fashioned ice creamery two towns over where we collect enough trans fats to feed Africa for a millennium, and then we head to a quiet lookout, roll down the windows and breathe in the sweet salt air as we watch the ocean.

  “So, Luke Roberts, huh?” Sam asks, his eyes are dark and focused as he watches me lick chocolate fudge from my spoon.

  I frown, thinking over my surreal afternoon. “Yeah, looks like.”

  “Do you like him? I thought you’d called him a douche.”

  “I don’t know. Turns out he’s kinda cool after all.”

  “You never kissed me like that,” Sam states, almost absentmindedly, and then his wide eyes and awkward expression tell me he hadn’t meant for those words to come from his mouth.

  “Well, that’s because I threw myself at you, and you ran away screaming like a little bitch.”

  He shifts his body so he’s facing me. “Firstly, I don’t run. And second, I did what any sane man does when a minor loses their bikini top and attacks them.”

  “I did not attack you.”

  “Yeah, you kinda did.”

  “Okay, maybe I did.” I sigh, leaning my head back into the headrest, I cover my face as best I can with one frost-bitten hand and a chocolate sundae in the other. “Don’t suppose you could just wipe that idiotic mistake from your memory?”

  He leans over and brushes his thumb over my lip. “Why wou
ld I do that?”

  I startle. I don’t mean to pull back, but I do. I glare at him, which seems odd, considering I’ve fantasised about this moment since the time I was a whiny, prepubescent kid. Sam holds his thumb out for my inspection; there’s chocolate fudge on it. Chocolate fudge that was on my face. Of course it was, because Sammy Jay Belle doesn’t casually reach out and brush his thumb over my lip. He’s not hitting on me, and he’s certainly not thinking of me that way.

  I am such an idiot.

  Sam retracts his hand, but before he can wipe the syrup off, I yank on his wrist and bring the offending thumb to my lips, sucking it clean. Sam’s eyes lock onto mine. His large, calloused thumb is in my mouth and the heat in his gaze razes me where I sit. And then he closes his eyes, and gently pulls away. Sighing deeply, he shakes his head, gazing out the window as he says, “Alcohol may have been safer.”

  “Sam,” I begin, and then allow the rest of the words to spew from my mouth before I have a chance to chicken out, “if I’d been born just a few years earlier, or you’d been born a little later—”

  “Don’t,” Sam says, and the glimmer of anger I’d seen in his gaze when he held Luke up against the fence is back. He starts the engine and throws the car into reverse, driving as erratically as he had when he first picked me up this afternoon. I sink down in my seat and wish I could disappear into the upholstery altogether.

  THREE DAYS after Pepper’s welcome-home party and I’m woken early by a thumping on my door. I groan, check the time on my alarm clock and roll out of bed, yanking on a pair of faded denim jeans and running a hand through my sleep-mussed hair. The pounding becomes more insistent the longer it takes me to reach the entrance to my loft. I’ve got wood, and I need to pee so bad I’m practically dancing my way to the door. I flip the locks and yank it back on its hinges. Pepper stands on the other side. Her pale pink hair sticks out in all directions, she’s wearing a tattered faded old Ramones T-shirt and a pair of trackies, and she looks like she just rolled out of bed.

  I grunt. She grunts back, and then she pushes past me into my apartment.

  “Please, Pepper, by all means, come into my house and make yourself at home.”

  “I can’t stay there any longer,” she screeches, and makes a beeline for the kitchen. “Holly’s fucking driving me crazy. She hovers. All the time. And last night, I heard them. I heard them, Sammy. Fuck, no one should ever have to hear their parents going at it like gorillas, but I heard them. I can hear everything in that closet, and just because Jack knocks out a couple of shelves and squeezes a bed in there, doesn’t mean you can call it a goddamned bedroom. Where the hell is your coffee?”

  I watch her pace my kitchen, opening drawers and banging cupboards in search of caffeine. My cat, Mr Whiskers—who I rescued from the shelter believing it was a male and later found out was a female that seems to be in a perma-state of menopausal bitch—jumps up on the island bench. Pepper hisses at her, and the cat hisses back and then skitters away, inherently knowing when she’s out-fucking-crazied.

  I shake my head in order to clear the haze of sleep and Pepper. I shut the door, or I try to, but there’s a big, black, studded overnight bag crowding my landing. I stare down at it, not comprehending why the fuck someone would leave that on my doorstep when Pepper screeches again, “Coffee, Sammy. Where is the fucking coffee?”

  “In the canister, cupboard on your right,” I answer as if on autopilot. I stoop over and pick up the bag. “What the fuck is this? What are you doing here, Little Harajuku?”

  “I can’t stay in that house with Jack and Holly anymore, Sam.”

  “What?”

  “They’re fucking, everywhere, at all hours of the day, and it’s killing me. No one should have to hear their mother scream ‘Shove it in my arse, my big, hard Jack Rabbit’.”

  My eyes widen and I scrub a hand over my face. “No, you’re right. You probably shouldn’t have to hear that, but you can’t stay here.”

  “Why the hell not? I can’t live in a house with Holly, Sammy. I’ll kill her. I’ll kill myself,” she adds without preamble. Water runs as she fills the machine. She pulls out the sugar and a teaspoon from the drying rack on the sink, knocking several other pieces of cutlery to the bench before dumping three heaped spoonfuls into her cup.

  My jaw clenches with anger. “Not funny, Little.”

  “It wasn’t meant to be.” She slams the coffee canister against the bench and yanks two cups down from the shelf. Then she flips the machine on and it bangs to life with a noisy wheezing protest. I really need to get another machine. “It’d just be until I leave town, and granted I don’t know when exactly that would be, because well, there may kinda be warrants out for my arrest back in Melbourne. Anywhoo, I’m a lot cleaner now, I don’t leave shit all over the floor, and I’m quiet. Sort of. You won’t even know I’m here.”

  I’ll admit I took about three per cent of that speech in. She lost me somewhere around “leave town”. “You’re leaving again?”

  “Duh. Did you really think I’d come back for good?”

  “I don’t …” I decide finishing that sentence is a lost cause. Instead, I cut straight to the chase. “Pepper you can’t stay here.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one, it’s a loft. There’s no bedroom, and there’s one bathroom that doesn’t even have a fucking lock. There’s no privacy, and there’s one bed. My bed.”

  “So we’ll share. It’ll be like old times.”

  “Except it’s not old times. It’s now. And now, we don’t share a bed. We don’t bathe naked together, and you don’t move in with me after skipping town in the middle of the night five years ago without so much as a fucking explanation.”

  She sighs. She fucking sighs, as if I’m the one who came strutting in here banging shit around and demanding that she share half her bed with me after she walked away.

  “You can’t stay here, Pepper.”

  “Sammy, I have nowhere else to go.”

  “Not true. You have a perfectly good storage cupboard to call home in your mother’s house, with your family, who can handle your erratic mood swings.”

  Her head snaps up, and she blinks at me. I’ve hurt her. Fuck. I didn’t mean to say that shit about the mood swings, but she just drives me fucking crazy, to the point where I wonder whether I need those little white pills she carries around like a life preserver more than she does.

  “I didn’t mean that,” I say quietly. She slides the coffee she just made across the island bench and I graciously accept it, wrapping my hands around the warm ceramic mug.

  “It’s okay. A bird is a bird, remember?” she whispers, and I know she’s reliving every conversation we’ve ever had about her disease, because I’m reliving it too. All the hurt, the tears, and the sadness I would have given anything to be able to take away from her, but I couldn’t, because she didn’t stick around to let me try.

  “Pepper, I know Holly’s a handful, and the two of you can’t spend more than a day in the same house without wanting to throw down WWWF style, but I just don’t know if this is—”

  “Sammy. We’re not eighteen and twenty-four anymore. You’re not my type, and I’m pretty sure I’m not yours.”

  I nod and lower my gaze to my coffee. She couldn’t be more wrong about her not being my type. Truth is, I’ve only ever had one type: Pepper Ryan, whether she was a sweet-faced redhead with a bad attitude, or a blue-haired manic-depressive emo little shit. It doesn’t matter how old she is, or how many times she changes the colour of her hair, every fibre within me screams out to touch her when we’re in the same room. Living with her would be absolute fucking torture.

  When I glance up, Pepper’s rubbing at a spot on my countertop. Her wild pink hair shakes out all around her shoulders. Beneath her worn T-shirt, her breasts jiggle in time with her violent scrubbing. It takes several deep breaths—and an insane amount of luck—not to come in my pants.

  I need my head checked for agreeing to this. “You can stay
, but you sleep on the couch, you pick up your shit, and you don’t complain when I have people over.”

  “You know people other than Jake?” she teases but I send her an “I’m still not one hundred per cent on you invading my space so don’t fuck with me” look and the smile quickly disappears.

  “Oh, I have another bag in the van, would you mind getting it for me? It’s parked out front,” she says as she props herself up on my kitchen bench, folding one leg under the other and sipping her coffee.

  “Can I get rid of my morning wood first?” I say under my breath, not expecting her to hear me.

  “Yeah, you should probably take care of that shit. It’s distracting.”

  I set down my coffee cup and head for the bathroom.

  “Maybe we should work out some kind of roster?” she calls after me. “Like I get a masturbation break Tuesday, Thursdays, Saturdays and twice on Sunday, and you get—”

  “You really need to stop talking about this.” I slam the door shut behind me and whip out my cock. Pepper’s been here all of five minutes and already it’s begging for that little tease’s touch. I piss—though it takes a lot longer than it should have because I keep thinking about her tits in that top and my hard-on just won’t go down. I stare at myself for a long time in the mirror, as I wash my hands. What the fuck did I just get myself into?

  I come out of the bathroom to find Pepper bouncing up and down on my futon like a little kid. I sit down beside her.

  “Your futon sucks, Sammy.”

  “Get used to it, kiddo.”

  “What kind of arsehole owns a futon?”

  “What kind of nut job drives an ice-cream van?”

  Pepper glares at me in mock horror. “Hey, don’t hate the van. She and I have been through thick and thin. It was a really long ride back from Melbourne.”

  “How do you even get an ice-cream van?” I pick up the half-empty coffee cup she brought over from the breakfast bar and drink down the remainder.