Give Me Love (2 page)

The trouble
now
was the whole distance thing no longer existed since we moved to Sydney a week ago which placed me directly in Jared’s determined path.

I risked another glance at Mac through the mirror. She appeared distracted from her current topic choice and was now eyeballing my underwear with a narrowed gaze. It was a vintage blue and black lacy affair with a demi cup bra and little black bows and satin gathering that was both pretty and sexy and so expensive my purse gave out a feeble bleat of protest when exposed to the price tag. I’d only ventured to the shops to pick up milk and bread, but unfortunately that was when all sense went out the window.

“New underwear?”

I nodded because “This old thing?” never worked. She knew more about the contents of my wardrobe then I did. “I bought it yesterday.”

“Um, sorry? I thought I just heard you say you bought it yesterday.”

I cringed at the unhappy tone of her voice. What meditation was for some, shopping was for Mac. She didn’t mind doing it alone, but for some reason, if I shopped without her, I might as well just take myself directly to hell and save the time of waiting around for her to do it.

“We only moved to Sydney a week ago and you’ve gone shopping without me,” she hissed.

When I started putting the eyeliner on in a panic so I could make a quick escape, Henry, my other best friend and roommate, banged hard on the bathroom door to hurry me along.

I jumped again at the noise, eyeliner running wildly up my eyelid, and I wanted to scream in frustration. I’d never achieve Rockstar Goddess at this rate.

“Effing hell, Henrietta,” I screeched and tore open the door. “Can a girl not work her freaking Rockstar Goddess magic in peace?”

“Holy shit, Sandwich,” he muttered.

Sandwich was their nickname for me because of my surname Jamieson. Jam. Jam Sandwich. Now it was just Sandwich. It wasn't really the best nickname, but you just had to roll with what you got because if you kicked up a fuss, you’d likely end up with something worse.

I pursed my lips as his eyes did a full body scan before finally resting on the eyeballs that were glaring back at him.

“Finished?” I asked tersely.

Henry had long since declared Mac and I as asexual beings, so I took his body scan as the insult it intended to be.

“Tonight’s theme is Tartmonkey?” he asked.

Did he think I was planning to hit the stage in underwear alone? Before I could open my mouth, Mac beat me to it, snorting from her seated position on the toilet.

“That’s rich coming from your manwhore status, isn’t it, Hussy?”

He burst out laughing. “What the hell happened to your face, Evie?”

I raced back to the mirror to see a mad streak of liner, not unlike another furry black caterpillar, trailing up my eyelid and over my brow.

Was the universe trying to tell me something about my eyebrows? I raised them experimentally and turned my head left to right.

“Fucksicles, the pair of you. I have to start over now.” I grabbed for a makeup wipe.

“What’s with you, Mactard?” Henry asked.

I gave Henry a warning look as I threw the wipe in the bin. It conveyed the message that Mac was on the warpath, and that it was too late for me, but save yourself.

Mac stood up to inspect her perfect make-up job for any flaws as she replied, “I’m stressed and need an outlet. I need shopping, I need chocolate, and I need alcohol. Any order will do.”

Mac is like Ellen Ripley of Alien, capable, fierce, and downright scary, but being our band manager, not even those attributes could shield her from the stress levels the job entailed. She had me to deal with, didn’t she? And if I wasn’t bad enough, there was Henry and Snap, Crackle, and Pop, our other band members, otherwise known as Frog, Cooper, and Jake: the Rice Bubble trio.

Mac became our band manager when we finished uni, having long since given up her lifelong dream to kick ass on the police force like her dad, Steve, and eldest brother Mitch. I think it was all fun in theory—hot bad guys, guns, shoot outs, hot bad guys—but she eventually realised that the whole premise of having to be an upstanding citizen put a crapshoot on that idea.

“Start with alcohol,” Henry ordered.

“There’s bubbles in the fridge. Get me some too, please,” I added.

“Me too,” said Henry.

Mac smoothed her already perfectly smooth golden blonde waves and vacated the bathroom, making sure to inform Henry that Jared was coming tonight before she left because Henry and Mac rode the same wavelength on that particular topic.

Who did the two think they were? The love fairies? I gave a snort as I re-pencilled my brow. The Laurel and Hardy duo was more their speed.

Henry smirked and got out his phone to start texting whoever. “Looks like your avoidance plan hit a snafu.”

“Snafu?” I snorted. “That’s something my Great Aunt Dottie would say.”

“You don’t have a Great Aunt Dottie.”

“If I did, she would say that.”

I finished adding the second set of eyelashes to my eye and blinked rapidly as Henry read a reply to his text with a faint smile.

Henry was the lead guitarist in our band and the ultimate pretty boy. A real live Paul Walker with his white blond hair and blue eyes, and left girls a bit tongue tied. Not me though. I’d known him since the age of five when he was a dirty little snot nosed grub. I got into a fight with Johnny in the schoolyard. I called Johnny a bumface (he’d looked up my skirt), and a shouting (him), name calling (me), hair pulling (him and me) match began. Our interaction had drawn quite the crowd by the time I got in his face and smashed my knee into his boy bits. Everyone laughed, as little kids do, in the face of seeing a bully go down, especially at the hands of a girl.

More yelling (me again) ensued and at that, Johnny’s friend came over and pushed me into the dirt. I heard a boy yell out and looked up from the pile of rubble to see a little blond boy leap onto the back of Johnny’s friend and pull him into a headlock. I got up and dusted off my hands, ready to jump into the fray, when our teacher Mr. Paul came racing over to pull everyone apart.

We bonded after the mayhem, and afternoons found us trading the guitar we’d bought together with saved pocket money back and forth, or driving our matchbox cars through little dirt tracks we had painstakingly dug out in the backyard. Mum hadn’t been impressed about that because we'd turfed up a fair whack of lawn, and after the Big Wet (it had bucketed down rain for two weeks straight) it left quite the mud pit in the backyard. A few of our precious little cars, including my prized black Trans Am, got buried.

“Earth to JimmyJam,” Mac sing-songed, waving a glass of bubbles under my nose.

I snatched the glass out of her hand with a thanks and took a sip, followed it with a loud delighted sigh, and finished with a lip smack.

“Big crowd expected tonight, Macface?” I asked.

Henry looked up expectantly from his text fest.

We’d played quite a few large crowds at venues and festivals throughout Melbourne, but The White Demon Warehouse was our biggest break yet and was well known as the launchpad for two bands now headed into the stratosphere of Planet Success. We had high hopes.

“Packed house, bitches.”

I grinned at Henry. Henry grinned at me. Mac grinned at both of us.

“Just add a scout to that mix and I’ll give you a big pash,” I said to Mac, pouting my lips in a come hither if you dare expression.

“Christ, don’t say that. You’ll ruin my lippie. I spent like ten minutes on it.”

I looked at Mac lips. They looked like she’d spent ten minutes on them.

“Do mine,” I ordered.

I guzzled the rest of my bubbles while she scrabbled around in the vanity drawer, producing a lip liner, a tube of lip plumper, base lipstick, top lipstick, and a sparkly pink gloss.

Henry, absorbing the seriousness of what we were about to embark on, rolled his eyes. “Aren’t we like in a hurry?”

The front door slammed and the Rice Bubbles could be heard banging around in the kitchen, pillaging our fridge and pantry.

“Christ, Henry!” Mac waved the lip liner around in a panic. I moved my head back, fearing another furry eyebrow fiasco, this time in Perverted Pink. “Go hide my chocolate stash will you? If those troublemakers so much as breath on it, I’ll have them eating through straws.”

Henry left with an eye roll, drinking his bubbles and texting madly as he went.

Mac turned to me with an evil grin that evoked feelings of great fear.

“Now, back to Jared,” she began.

“Mac,” I warned sternly with a finger point. “Don’t even go there.”

Mac, having heard my warnings before, rolled her eyes.

What was this? The Eye Rolling Convention?

She grabbed my finger and shoved it away. “Bet your sweet ass I am going there. I’m tired of your silly geek parade, Sandwich. You might have no trouble lying to yourself, but I’m not lying to you when I tell you that you’re being a giant, fat, retarded idiot.”

Mac had obviously decided the indirect route was for the weak.

“Just give it to me straight, Mac, okay? Because I’d hate for you to waste time taking tact pills in the morning.”

“Better than the stupid pills you seem to have been overdosing on the last God knows how many years. Come on, Evie, I know you think the dorks you’ve been dating are safe, and I won’t deny that they are because I’ve seen you more involved in watching paint peel from the walls, but it’s no way to live. I don’t care about Hairy Parry’s time space continuum theory or Beetle Bob’s thesis on the evolution of insects and its problems for Darwinism.”

Frankly, I didn’t care either, but it was hardly the heady stuff that would lead your heart down the garden path either, was it?

“Hairy Parry was cute.”

“Was he? How were you able to tell under all that hair?”

I chuckled, disrupting Mac’s efforts at layering liner along the edges of my lips.

Hairy Parry had a calm, quiet demeanour and also a beard and a long wavy mane that rivalled my own. I think dating a man with so much hair was more a novelty than anything else, but we did enjoy each others company. I was loud and he was quiet, and we somehow managed to find a middle ground that worked for the both of us.

Mac smoothed on the base lipstick.

“Rub your lips together, Sandwich,” she ordered.

I rubbed my lips and offered a pout as she inspected and then continued with the top coat.

“Beetle Bob was really sweet.”

“Beetle Bob lavished more attention on Draco than on you!”

This was true. Draco was one of Beetle Bob’s pet bearded dragons, a very social little Australian lizard that would bob his head and swish his tail whenever I visited. Surprisingly, Beetle Bob’s little creatures were entertaining and somehow soothing, but they did require constant care, so many nights would find us cozied up on the couch watching television while they overran the house.

“I miss Draco,” I muttered. “Maybe I should get my own little lizard friend.”

Mac snorted. “You don’t have the time involved in caring for one of those freaky little critters and don’t change the subject.”

With a “Voila,” Mac finished slicking gloss on my lips and shoved me out the door and towards my walk-in wardrobe before I could even pout in the mirror to inspect the results.

Hands on her hips, she stared at the contents. “What are you wearing?”

“Well I thought I would—”

“No, you thought wrong.”

Of course I did, considering her control issues filtered down into telling me what I should and shouldn’t wear.

I pursed my glossy Perverted Pink lips, and let her have her way, flopping down on the bed as she made her way into the wardrobe.

Henry wandered in, phone at the ready. “Top up?” he asked, indicating towards the empty champagne glass I still clutched in my hands.

“No,” Mac shouted from somewhere within the dark confines. “She’ll ruin her lips.”

True. Perverted Pink Perfection was not created in mere moments.

Henry shrugged and walked back out.

“I think that you should ask Jared out,” Mac shouted.

“Are you high? Because I’m pretty sure I heard you telling me I should ask Jared out.”

“Here!” A pair of Sass and Bide croc-print skinny jeans slapped me in the face.

I winced. Those were going to be hot, as in sweaty. I stood up and began the struggle of wedging my legs into the tight material.

“No, I am not
high.
Okay, don’t. He’ll ask you. I’m sure of it. Now that we’re living in Sydney, there’ll be no more avoiding him.”

That was what I was worried about, especially after the incident at the Zen bar two weeks ago in Melbourne that simply confirmed my lack of control around the man.

I lay on the bed, sucked in my stomach with everything I had, and zipped up the jeans. As I rolled off the bed and onto my knees, a manoeuvre performed because simply sitting up in said jeans was unachievable, a silver and Lucite studded baby doll top slapped me up the side of my head.