How To Save A Life (13 page)

Slowly, I spin around, but she's turned her attention back to her nails again. I frown. She's been drunk, and she's been depressed, but this? This is ... Has she ... lost it?

"Mum." I slide into the seat opposite her. "You colour coded the kitchen."

"Nice, isn't it?" Her eyes briefly meet mine, and it's still my mother there, not some strange person I don't recognise. "I just thought it would keep me busy."

I don't know how to argue with that, so I busy myself preparing us both a bowl of cereal—taken from the red shelf, of course—and we sit around the table in silence, our crunches too loud for the quiet.

When we finish, I clear our bowls and then sling my backpack from its place near the door over my shoulder. "I'll be off then."

"Have a good day at school." Mum smiles, and for a second, guilt hits me. I'm not going to school. I'm going to a place where I shouldn't be. "I'm going to spend the day going through the paper for more jobs ... as soon as it arrives."

Warmth rushes through my body, and I drop my bag and give her a big hug. Maybe she is turning a corner. Maybe this is the one thing in my life that’s finally going right.

This could be the start of something big.

I
drive to the bar, figuring Mum will probably be suspicious if I don't take my car to school as usual. The trip is short, the road alongside the river overhung with majestic branches of ancient trees on one side, and the grey of the river on the other, the dark clouds in the sky reflected on its surface.

Thunder cracks, and I widen my eyes and focus as sheets of rain come bucketing down toward me. I flick my wipers on and lean forward, hunched over the wheel to try and see against the onslaught of this unexpected downpour.

Finally, I pull up outside the scout hall and drive my car right to the lake's edge. There’s a fence here now, newly erected, but it’s one of those chain link ones that don’t spoil the view.

Training doesn't start until ten, so I have two whole hours to kill here. After taking off my school jumper and stuffing it in my bag, revealing my black non-uniform shirt, I remove my shoes and shuffle my way into a pair of jeans, taking off my skirt as I go. I'm used to the getting-dressed-in-a-car dance. Sometimes after school, Duke and I used to—

Ow.

Hurt crashes into me, and I think of his warm, safe arms and how comfortable I was in his embrace. How if things go wrong at home again, I don't have an escape route. How I have to see him and Kat together every day for the next two months, till school ends.

Step two: Just ignore your ex.

If only it were that easy.

I need a distraction.
I re-lace my Cons then stuff my clothes into my bag and rifle through it, sliding out my Ancient History textbook and start to read, making notes on my phone as I go. It's the subject I struggle with the most, but it's not because I don't find the content interesting. For some reason, my brain just doesn't seem to retain it all. Or perhaps I get lost in the fantasy and myth too often, and the boring archaeological facts fail to rein me in.

My phone dings with an incoming text, and I swipe across the screen.
Kat
.

You're not at school. Hope you’re okay.

Every time I feel as if I’m getting a grip on conquering the pain, something happens to remind me of it again.

I’m fine.

I stare at my phone, waiting for the next message to flash through, but nothing comes, and I hate myself for being disappointed in that.

"Lia the loner," I say softly to myself.

My only friend right now is my mum. I throw my head back against the headrest and chuck my phone toward the back seat in frustration, just as the door opens.

I spin around in shock, and a very wet, very flustered Jase slides into the seat, sitting on my phone and slamming the door behind him.

"Hi," he says, rubbing his hands together.

"You're sitting on my phone!"

"Damn it!" He shuffles from side to side, and finally pulls the device out from under him. "It's a little ... damp." He grimaces, then starts to wipe it on the back of my car seat.

I turn back to look at him. His hair is so wet it's actually dripping onto my car seat, and his shirt clings to his body, revealing everything. It sticks to his chest, highlighting his pecs, those arms, his torso, and his pants are glued tight to his legs, his thighs.

"Why are you so wet?" I force my gaze back up to his eyes. “Did you walk here?”

"I live just a few houses down the street, and I don't have a car right now," he says, continuing his attempts at drying my phone. Every time his hand moves it across the back of my seat, I feel it running against my body, and for a second, I wonder if it's because of this crazy weird connection I feel to this guy, and then I realise that it's actually probably just that my car is an old piece of crap and the seat is barely padded at all.

"You're opening a bar, but you don't own a car?" I tilt my head. It seems strange, to have money for one but not the other.

"No." His eyes darken dangerously. "I ride a motorbike."

I swallow. "Oh."

The air crackles between us, and everything about this guy, from the fact he rides what Ana used to call a ‘death machine’ to the bulk of his arm muscles, screams
not safe.
And for some reason, even though I’ve been spending the last eighteen months avoiding everything unstable, I’m drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

"Why are you staring at my arms?"

I jerk my hand back that had somehow moved very close to his bicep without my realising.

"I ... was wondering ..."
Think, Lia, think,
"... if you work out."

My normal brain slaps this idiotic flirty bitch upside the head.

"Oh." He gives a cheeky smile. "So you think my arms look good."

"No." I shake my head, and his expression switches to one of hurt. "I mean, yes! Of course! They're very, very nice arms. I bet they ... come in handy. For a lot of things."

This time, my normal brain walks out, shouting back,
You're on your own, sucker.

"They do." Something sparkles in his eyes. "I use them at work, and at play."

Holy caviar on a crab cake. My heart picks up its pace, bouncing around in my chest like a cheerleader at a football hottie convention, and it's all I can do to pick my jaw up off the floor and make some semblance of normal conversation.

"You study?" My phone still in hand, he indicates the textbooks on the front seat, clearly oblivious to the internal hormone combustion I have going on. "I always wanted to go to university."

"Yeah. I'm just doing ... Arts." I snap my history textbook closed. It's just another white lie to add to the already existing bunch.

"Yeah?" He frowns and leans closer, resting his arms on the back of my seat. There is just a really thin, really old, completely useless piece of material between his wet, hot body and mine right now. "I woulda thought you'd be doing something with music."

"I want to. I've actually got an audition for a scholarship, to transfer to VCA in Melbourne and study Contemporary Piano."

"Good. A talent like yours shouldn't be wasted," he says, sincerity lining his features. "Although, not good for me. I'll be losing my favourite soon-to-be employee."

Even though the words are innocent, they send a dangerous chill down my spine. I square my shoulders, and force myself to get a grip.
He’s just a guy, Lia.

A guy I've done nothing but lie to since he came into my life.

The most honest thing I've done is let him hear me play.

"Well, let's not go making presumptions yet." I place my textbook back in my bag, careful not to let him see my uniform stuffed in there as well, and hold my hand out. "Phone, please."

Slap.

The metal makes contact with my hand, and I check the screen and see that it's not broken, and also that he's changed the background picture to a snapshot of one of—oh God, it's a picture of one muscly-looking arm.

"Very funny."

"Thank you."

I mock-glare at him in my rear-view. This car is definitely not big enough for the two of us. I smile and tease, "Get outta my car and train me already."

"Say please," he provokes, and I'm somewhere between ready to slap him and jump him when he realises he might be pushing me too far and places his hand on the door, ready to step back out into the pouring rain.

"Please," I mumble, and he bolts out of my car, up the ramp and through the flaps into the bay at the top.

I grit my teeth and tuck my phone in my jeans pocket, removing the keys from the engine.

This is gonna be a long day.

***

I leap up the ramp, trying to maintain purchase on the slippery surface with my Cons. The rain is relentless, attacking every inch of my body in the short ten-second walk from the Corolla to the bar, and by the time I hit the back room, I'm soaked.

The door to the bar is open, and after wringing my ponytail to try and squeeze some of the excess moisture out, I walk through to the main room.

"Here." A white towel is handed to me, and I pad it to my face then wrap it around my shoulders. It smells like fabric softener and clean and
him.

And I hate that I like that.

I force myself to drape the delicious-smelling towel over a bar stool, even though I'm still soaked to the bone. Jase raises his eyebrows at me.

"My clothes are soaked. There's nothing a towel can do."

"Suit yourself." He's wrapped in a similar white towel, or perhaps a sheet, judging by how much of him it covers. He walks over to a little box on the wall to the side of the bar and flicks a few switches. Something whirs to life, and soon warm air starts to filter through the room from the unit above the front door and the one we just came through, which I quickly move to close.

Just as I do, though, the door swings open, and in walks a girl in what have to be four-inch heels, the skinniest skinny jeans known to man—seriously, are they spray-on? I almost want to do a touch check—and a cleavage-revealing V-necked top. She looks around twenty-one, twenty-two.
His
age. Not like seventeen-year-old illegal employee over here.

"Soraya! You're here." Jase gives her an easy smile.

"Hi sweetie." She struts over and kisses him on the cheek.

"Where should I put this?" Soraya slides what could be an overnight bag over her arm.

"Anywhere for now, but during shift you can pop it under a shelf in the kitchen." He gestures to the small room behind the bar.

Soraya trots off to do just that, and I shuffle my feet, suddenly feeling very underdressed, with my Cons and wet hair. Thankfully, I'm not left as the odd one out in their love-fest for long, because the door swings open again and this time, another guy and a girl walk in, both who look a lot less slut-tastic than Soraya and a lot more ... well, like me. Both are dressed in skate shoes and jeans, and have also suffered the effects of the weather outside, which Soraya somehow magically avoided.
Maybe she's wearing so much makeup the rain was repelled by it.

"Kyle, Hope, meet Lia. Soraya is just putting her things down in back."

"Hi." Hope smiles, and Kyle gives a short nod.

"We're starting small staff-wise, as you can see, and we’ll grow when we see what kinda demand there is," Jase says, rinsing his hands under the tap in the small sink at the back of the bar. I don't know why he bothers—they've just been soaked with rain.

"Cool," Kyle says, his voice as low as his shoes are from his head. Seriously, the man is tall. Probably so tall, he wouldn't be allowed to play basketball, because it isn't a slam dunk if you're just placing the ball in the net.

"Okay, so uniform wise, I'd like you all just to wear black. Keep your style to whatever you feel comfortable in—obviously nothing too revealing or too casual," he says, walking behind the bar. Soraya comes out from the kitchen and sidles past him, her chest brushing his back. I don't pick up the glass Jase places on the bar and hit her with it, because I'm not jealous and also because I'm a good, sane, rational person.

"Now, let's run through a few basic cocktails, and then I'll go through the cash register system, which you guys'll find a breeze."

With that, he pulls out various bottles from the wall behind him, as well as several more glasses, while Soraya, Kyle, Hope and I sit at the bar and take notes on our phones while watching him make a series of drinks. And man, Jase is good. Some of the drinks look simple, but others involve fire, flare, and the speed with which he shakes a drink? Wow. Seriously, it's impressive.

"Where did you do your training?" I ask while Kyle steps behind the bar to try and recreate a whiskey sour, as Jase just taught us.

"I ... I learnt a lot from a friend," he says, and his eyes shift away. He’s hiding something.
There’s so much dark about this man
.

"You truly have a gift," Soraya simpers, placing a hand on his arm, and he smiles, then shrugs it off to go and grab the correct tumbler for Kyle to pour his shaken drink into.

It turns out that the other three here all have bar experience and nail the drinks pretty quickly, leaving just me as the novice with no bar skills. When it's my turn to try and give some of Jase's drinks a spin, not only do I struggle to make the spoon twirl around the glass without my fingers tripping over each other, but also my shake is so pathetic that the egg whites don't stiffen and give the sour a foam, making it just some weird wishy-washy texture with lumps.

"We'll start you on the floor," Jase says, chucking me on the chin, and I smile.

Three hours later and Jase gets us all to fill out some basic paperwork where I lie about my age in print, just for something different, and then we leave, with promises that we'll we back at five to start the shift.

I linger by the door, hesitant to leave. Soraya also lingers, although she's well and truly inside the bar.

"Sorry, Jase?"

"Yes, Lia?" he asks, and him saying my name does more of those twisty things to my insides.

"You don't want me to play tonight ... do you?" I bite my lip.