The Blinding Light (25 page)

Mum’s analogy got a bit wonky in the end, because I thought that suns exploded and became black holes that sucked everything up. Hmm.

“So Jake needs another sun. You just need to be big enough to attract his attention away from the old sun. Then, once you have his attention, you need to shine as bright as you can. Give him light and warmth and something to revolve around, and he’ll never leave.”

I waited with bated breath for Patrick’s answer. “I’m working on it, Corrine. I don’t ever want him to leave.”

I
DON
’
T
ever want him to leave.

That sentence kept me going for the next two days. I hugged it tightly to my chest and smiled to myself. Patrick had told Mum that he loved me. Did I love him? No doubt about it. I think I actually fell for him the first day we met.

But could I take the chance? Mum and the girls needed me so much.

Okay, if I was truthful, they were needing me less and less. Ellie had found her feet—she had a job and a new man in her life. Lizzy had finished her university course and was about to embark on a career. She’d hinted that she might have a job offer, but it would require a move to Sydney. I thought that was a great idea.

Of course, Maria was still a baby—but a very capable baby. She had a driver’s license and was soon to have a car. She had her head screwed on straight.

And Mum…. Well, Mum was still a train wreck but she wasn’t as bad as she once was. She hadn’t gambled in nearly a year and she was trying to get off the booze and cigarettes. To my surprise I’d found that since she was sober, she wasn’t as dumb as she thought. She knew she’d made mistakes. She was intelligent enough to understand how badly she’d gone wrong. I doubted that she would ever be able to hold down a job and get off welfare, but at least she wasn’t on the one-way track to drinking herself to death.

So without my family, where did that leave me? What did
I
want? I really had no idea. Before Mum’s debt I had been on my way to buying myself a house, but I wasn’t really sure why. Just because it seemed like the sensible thing to do. I didn’t even really have an idea of what sort of place I wanted—a townhouse in the city? An apartment on the river with a view? A house with lots of room in the suburbs?

The girls all had dreams and visions of the future. Ellie wanted to get off government handouts and buy a nice house for Skylah and herself. Lizzy had dreams of international law and fighting for justice. Maria just wanted to learn, learn, learn. But what about me?

I had no plans for a big career. I didn’t want to go back to school and study. I had no big aspirations to travel. I actually had no compass at all—no north that I was heading toward. Mum was right—I was a planet. I revolved around my sisters’ needs, and once they were gone, I would have no direction.

Could Patrick be my sun? What would life be like with Patrick? He needed someone to take care of him, that’s for sure. Not only his physical needs—and I don’t mean sex!—but he really did need someone to brighten his life. He needed someone to force him to go to pubs and someone who would take him to the beach. He needed someone to make him eat healthy instead of existing on salt!

He needed a househusband.

What he didn’t need was a keeper. He didn’t need to be caged and babied like my mother. He didn’t need someone to give him money for he had enough of his own and wouldn’t be needing handouts like my sisters. He needed someone to hold his hand and be by his side, and occasionally to be behind him, giving him a push to try new experiences.

But the big question was, did he want me to do that?

Weighing on my mind was also the blindness issue. It was true I loved Patrick despite his blindness, but the simple fact was, the man
was
blind. There were things we couldn’t do. There were allowances I had to make. Could I live with that permanently?

The previous week I had grabbed a couple of things from the supermarket and brought them home on my bike. When I made it back to the house, I was busting for the loo, so I dropped the bags on the kitchen floor and raced for the bathroom. I wasn’t even halfway through emptying my bladder, when there was a tremendous crash and a whole lot of cursing. Patrick had tripped over the bags, and by the time I arrived at the scene, he’d busted open a bag of rice and had Coke frothing from a break in the plastic bottle. I’d felt extremely guilty and had apologized sincerely. I was mortified when I found the bruises on his arms and legs that night, and it killed the amorous mood for me. I covered it well, and I don’t think he noticed, but I felt completely wretched at the fact that I’d caused him injury.

I also learned very quickly not to close doors in the house no matter how much I enjoyed kissing his bruises better.

Regardless of what I had said to him, I did feel sorrow in all the things we couldn’t do together. Before selling my car, I’d jogged to keep fit. That was something I couldn’t do with Patrick. Watching a movie with a blind man is also a completely different experience – not to mention the fact that he didn’t find Paul Walker attractive, which was just unnatural. I’d pointed out that in some ways I greatly resembled the man and he’d laughed himself silly. He went on to describe how my voice was infinitely sexier than the actor’s voice, speaking of modulation, nasal quality, and accent. I was chuffed at the fact someone would prefer Jacob Manning over Paul Walker.

Once I’d accidently left the room without telling him and came back to find him still chatting away to thin air because he’d missed my leaving. That was a little embarrassing.

There were, however, some great benefits to being with Patrick. The man genuinely enjoyed my cooking. I knew I wasn’t a bad chef, but the numerous compliments I received for everyday dishes were great. His nose could sniff out the merest hint of spice and he often identified all ingredients in the meal before the first bite.

He was also intelligent, well-read, honest to a fault, goddamn perfect in bed, and made my heart sing like a fucking canary.

So just because he needed a little more help than other guys I’d dated, it in no way made me balk at the thought of a relationship with him.

Now I had to find somewhere in our conversation to make that clear to him.

S
ATURDAY
I
crawled out of Patrick’s bed around 10:00 a.m. He’d been up for a while and was sitting on the veranda with a coffee and his laptop, listening to the news on the web. I brushed a kiss over the crown of his head and sank into the chair beside him.

“Gosh, I’m tired. You need to stop waking me up at dawn to ravish me. You should wait until a decent hour like 8:00 a.m.”

Patrick pulled the earpiece out and grinned at me. He knew I was joking, since it was me who woke him more than he woke me. “Poor baby. Are you getting old?”

I flipped him a finger and then groaned, “Oh, fuck. I just made a rude hand gesture at you and you’re fucking blind. That’s how dumb and tired I am!”

He roared with laughter and left me to wake up in the sun while he made me a morning coffee. He knew me well because he came back with two coffees—I’d usually skol the first one and then sit leisurely over a second cup. I contemplated the cloudless blue sky and asked, “How about a dip in the river today? Are you a budgie-smuggler type of guy, or boardies? I don’t really care, but just give me a bit of warning so I can tell my dick to behave when you strip off in public.”

“Do I look like the type of man who would wear budgie-smugglers to go swimming in public?”

I grinned. “A gay man can always hope, can’t he? But I understand if you don’t, because I wear boardshorts to go swimming too. So tell me, Patrick? If I can find us a not-so-public swimming spot, will you wear Speedos for me, or do you think I could persuade you to skinny-dip?”

He contemplated it for a moment with a smile playing around his mouth, and then he said, “Will you be skinny-dipping with me?”

“Of course,” I answered promptly. “And do you know what? I have this sudden urge to buy a pool for us this afternoon. Just a toddler’s pool will do. It’s not like we’ll use it for very long before needing to head back inside.”

When he didn’t laugh at my joke, I looked over with concern. He was fingering his nearly empty coffee mug in a nervous fashion, and my heart sank. I had a feeling that whatever had been on his mind all week was about to come out. No matter what he’d said to my mother, I wasn’t sure that it would be good news.

“Jake? Are we… exclusive?”

That was not the question I was hoping for. Did it mean he wanted other guys? There was no other way to answer apart from honestly. “I don’t know. I know I’m exclusive to you and I was planning on remaining that way. How about you?”

“Definitely exclusive to you, Jake. If you’re around I don’t even see other guys—and that’s not a blind joke.”

Hope soared in my heart. “So can I call you my boyfriend?” I asked cheekily. “Are you my boo?”

He rolled his eyes and smiled. “I don’t think I could ever be anyone’s boo, but I’d love to be your boyfriend.”

That deserved a kiss, and I jumped up and snatched one from his lips. “Good morning, boyfriend,” I said.

He caressed my face for a moment before I sat down again. “Jake? I need to ask you something—something serious. It’s important to me, so I need you to consider it and don’t be offended or get angry or anything without thinking it through. Can you hear me out?”

Oh, shit. Something serious?
“Okay.”

“I want you to move in with me.”

I blinked a couple of times to focus and make sure I wasn’t dreaming. He thought I’d get angry at him over this?

“Patti-cake….”

He held up his hand to stop me. “Wait! Just… wait a minute. There’s more. Moving in with me has strings and conditions and lots of responsibilities. So can you just wait until I tell you all of it before you jump in?”

I settled back in my chair and remembered my yes-boss-no-boss voice. “Okay.”

“I want you to move in, but I think it needs to come with a change of status between us. At the moment you’re my housekeeper, but you’re doing half of your work outside of hours. I’ve noticed how often you put on the washing machine on the weekend, and you always do the dishes after dinner. These are the jobs I’m paying my housekeeper to do. So I want to terminate my contract with Housekeepers Inc. and pay you direct.”

“Pat—”

“No!” he stopped me again. “Wait. I haven’t finished.” He swallowed and continued on. “I’ve spoken to my accountant, as he’s the one who pays all my bills and takes care of my finances. I can pay you a salary direct, and then you could continue to do the housework but not be restricted to hours. I’ve had a housekeeper for this house for five years now and I know how long it takes them to look after it, so as long as you still do the dishes and vacuum and stuff, I don’t really care if you do them at night or on the weekend. The nine-to-three hours were just to make sure the housekeeper wasn’t bothering me when I wasn’t at work. And….” He held up his hand as I went to interrupt. “And since I don’t have to pay the agency, then I can pay you extra. I thought it would be fair to you that you get paid the same amount plus what I was paying for agency fees. It would be a good swap for you—a pay rise, plus you’d have more flexibility in your day because you’re not restricted to hours while I’m at work.”

He anticipated my next attempt at an interruption because this time he held up both hands. “Wait! There’s more.” He couldn’t see me but I was grinning madly. “I know that you’re going to tell me that you want to pay your way and you should pay me rent or board or something for coming to live with me. I’ve thought about that. You need to realize, Jake, that I’m a rich man. I know you don’t want to live off me, so I’m not suggesting it.”

He did know me well, because it was exactly what I was about to say.
I grinned some more and waited for him to continue.

“You don’t need to pay me rent because I own this house outright. I don’t have a mortgage, so you don’t need to contribute to it. And in lieu of you paying half of the electricity bill or whatever you were about to ask, I’d like to make you a deal. I’ll pay for all your board if you cook all the meals. I hate cooking so if you cook me—us!—meals and make dessert at least… hmm, let’s say twice a week, I reckon we should call it square.”

I was pressing my lips together to keep from bursting out. But Patrick wasn’t finished.

“And there’s more.”

More?

“I want to hire you for more things too. So I’ve talked to my accountant, and he showed me the figures, and you would actually be saving me money. So don’t think I’m asking you to do this out of the goodness of my own heart. This is a good deal for me too. I want to pay you for more than just six hours a day. I want to increase this by two hours a day, including weekends, and pay you to drive me to work. At the moment I’m paying a huge sum to the taxi company, mostly for taxis to wait around for me. So instead I want to buy a car and pay you to drive me to wherever I need to go—work, university, the shops, the park, the barber. It would work out cheaper for me, plus you’d have the car during the day at your disposal to go to the shops and visit your family and everything. Plus if we had a car we could go places on the weekend.”