Flesh & Blood Page 10

  I winced, sucking air through my teeth. “Yes, very much, but I’m supposed to pick Sarah up in,” I glanced at the clock on my dash, “about twenty, and normally I’d say she could wait a few minutes, but—”

  “—she’s still hungover,” Bree finished. She sounded really disappointed. “Okay. Maybe next time.” She withdrew her hand and began to get her bag together.

  “Erm, Bree…” I wasn’t really sure how to put it, especially after what she’d just disclosed. Absent-mindedly, I touched the healed scar on my cheek. “Do you really think me coming in is a good idea anyway? I’m pressing charges against Andrej for assault, and that’s aside from, well…” I gestured down at my men’s suit.

  Bree shrugged. “No, it’s probably not a good idea.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting back. “I can imagine they’re probably furious with me. I don’t think I should visit.”

  She shook her head. “I think there’s a maximum amount people can be angry before there’s no anger left,” she told me. “And the police said Andrej probably won’t get a criminal record if he agrees to get help for his gambling, so, you know, as long as no one finds out about their baby boy, it doesn’t matter what happened.” She exhaled and made a face. “Also Mum and Dad kind of don’t know exactly what’s going on between you and me.”

  That, I couldn’t believe. “Come on, they know you sleep over at my place most nights. I think there’s only one conclusion you can come to about that.”

  “Yeah, but they still think you’re a regular cisgender guy.”

  “Oh,” I said, and accepted that for a fraction of a second before I remembered Andrej’s jab about me ‘pretending’. “But Andrej knows I’m not, and he doesn’t seem like the sort of person who’d offer to keep my secret, especially since I’m, you know, pressing charges against him. He must have said something.”

  “Not yet,” Bree told me. “I mean, he said something about you, because the next time I was home after that, Dad was waiting for me and he was like, ‘Bree, you’re dating a Chinese boy?’ and I was like, ‘Korean’, and after everything that happened with the assault and finding out about Andrej’s gambling and stuff, I kind of didn’t have the guts to say, ‘Also he’s transgender’.”

  My eyebrows went up. Wow. “Out of everything, the fact I’m Korean is the problem?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know, he wasn’t happy but he didn’t tell me to stop or anything. There was so much going on I don’t know what he thought about anything. But yeah, I didn’t tell them about the other stuff.”

  I didn’t even want to ask it. “Andrej will tell them, won’t he?”

  She didn’t even pause. “Yes,” she said easily. “He will. I don’t trust him at all. I don’t know why he hasn’t, but I know it’s better if they hear it from me.” She sighed down at her bag, but she was gazing through it. “I think I’ve figured out how I should do it: I want them to meet you and see that you’re completely normal first. Because, yeah, I can totally see them not caring about anything to do with me for years, but suddenly it becomes super important to them that I don't date a trans person, you know? Because, oh my god, what if people find out? What if their friends back in Serbia find out? What if the family finds out…?”

  I laughed darkly at that. She’d just described my childhood. “—Yeah, that sounds familiar,” I said. “That’s basically the entire Korean community Mum used to be part of down in Melbourne.”

  She sighed. “Yeah, I don’t know if they really even know what trans people are, they’ve never talked about it. I want them to see with their own eyes that it’s totally fine, because Mum was really homophobic when I was younger, but there was a gay guy at her work for a while and she liked him so she doesn’t say that stuff anymore. So I think that’s the way to do it.”

  Something occurred to me. “Do you think it would be easier if you introduced me as a woman, then?”

  She looked sceptical. “What, like, ‘Hey, Mum and Dad, I’m gay and this is my mega butch girlfriend who has a flat chest and a silicone dick in her pants’?”

  I gave her a look. “I can leave this at home,” I told her, nodding down at the packer. “I don’t wear it all the time, and I’m thin enough that people would believe I’m naturally flat-chested.”

  While considering that option, Bree remembered something and laughed to herself. “You know ‘lesbian’ is kind of true, though? At least for me. Because after that first night you messaged me back, like, my heart—” She made a fluttering movement by her chest. “—so yeah, I thought you were a girl back then and I was, like, imagining stuff about you. Maybe I’m a bit gay anyway? I probably am. But not completely, because I’m totally into you now, and if you end up on testosterone and all that, I’ll be into you then.”

  I reached out and brushed my thumb along her cheek with a faint smile. “That’s extremely sweet, but it doesn’t answer the question of how you’re going to explain me to your parents.”

  Bree leant her face into my hand. “Well, what do you want?”

  Hah. What a question. “I just don’t want you to get in trouble. What do you think will get them off your back?”

  She made a face, thinking. “Honestly? I don’t think it matters what I say about you. If I’m anything other than totally hetero they’re not going to be happy. I mean, they’re not like your mum with the whole ‘your main purpose is to get married and have babies right now’ thing, but yeah, it’s more like, ‘Oh my god, did you hear who the Dejanovic girl is dating? Tell everyone.’ That’s what they’ll be thinking.” She must have seen my expression, because she added, “By the way, none of this is your fault. I was the one who came after you, remember?”

  I had to chuckle at that; I had been thinking it would have been so much easier for her if she’d just fallen for an ordinary cis guy. “Mind reader,” I accused her, and then exhaled at length and shook my head. “Shit. It really sucks that Andrej knows. If he didn’t, we could just pretend that I’m a cis guy and we wouldn’t have to worry about any of this.”

  Bree nodded. “Everything’s fucked,” she said with false cheer, and then she reached over and put her hand on mine again. “On the bright side, your mum’s going to come over to Australia in like two months and probably stop me from seeing you anyway, so…”

  “I’d never let that happen,” I said firmly.

  We sat there, holding hands and staring forward. “Well,” Bree said eventually, forcing a smile. “I had a really good day today anyway.”

  I stroked the back of her hand with my thumb. “Mine got a lot better about half an hour ago.”

  I think that smile might even have been genuine for a moment. “Everything will be okay,” she told me like she was reciting a mantra, and then began to rearrange things in her bag so she could close it. “I should probably let you go pick up Sarah.”

  I made a face and nodded. “Yeah, I’m going to be—” I glanced at the clock on the dash and realised what time it was. “—Shit, really late. I have to go.”

  Bree giggled at my reaction. “Oh my god, you’re such a terrible person, you’re going to be five minutes late,” she said with comical gravity.

  “Quiet, you,” I told her. “It’s respectful to be on time to places, and Sarah’s done heaps for me, the least I can do is be on time for her.”

  “Yeah, she’s totally going to hate you,” Bree said with a smirk, finally managing to zip her bag up. “She’ll know it’s my fault, anyway.”

  Even though I’d seen Bree take the tablet out, I double-checked it was still on the back seat just to be safe. “Are you going to be okay to do your homework without the tablet?”

  She nodded as she opened the door. “Yeah, there’s just some Psych reading on my timeline and I printed it all out, I can probably even read it all before everyone gets home. And if anything really gets me I can just google it on my phone without wasting too much data.”

  “Well, make sure you don’t get distracted,” I told her as she got out. “
I know what you’re like with Google.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, ‘Dear Google, how do I stop my boyfriend nagging me?’” She knelt back on the passenger seat to give me one last kiss before she ducked out and hoisted her bag on her shoulder. “I’ll be good,” she told me. “I promise. Oh! By the way, my timeline says I’m supposed to do Chem homework tomorrow, but I’ll need help with that. Sarah said she would go through it with me, so can I come over tomorrow night?”

  You can get back in my car and come home with me right now, I thought, already regretting not just locking the doors and driving home with her. “Sure, see you then.”

  She waved goodbye to me as I hurriedly chucked a U-ey and headed back out onto the main road.

  I actually was really late. It was a good ten minutes past the latest I said I’d be to pick Sarah up, and I was probably another twenty minutes out of the city in this traffic. While I was parked at the lights, I tried to frantically text her—getting myself honked at when the lights turned green and I didn’t notice—and nearly swerved and hit a parked car when I went to send it.

  It didn’t take her long to text me back, and it was three green sets of lights before I hit a red one and could read it. “I’m standing on a train platform. I’ve been abandoned by everyone. I am going to die alone, wedged between two business dudes on their smartphones. They won’t notice. It’s been nice knowing you xx.”

  I felt awful, because it made me laugh. At the next set of red lights, I replied, “I am so so so so sorry. If you want to wait somewhere, I can pick you up anyway.”

  She replied before the lights went green. “Nah, it’s actually fine. It’ll take me less time to get home on the train than it’ll take you to get here. I need to drop past the chemist and grab something anyway, so it’s no big deal.”

  She didn’t seem upset at all, and in two text messages she hadn’t mentioned throwing up all over everything. Although there was a strong possibility she was headed to her chemist for the sole purpose of buying them out of anti-nausea pills, I felt better. Maybe I could just offer to ferry her to and from work for the rest of the week as penance.

  After I’d pulled into the driveway, somehow having miraculously avoided crashing horribly as a result of texting behind the wheel, I spent a few seconds holding my phone and thinking about the red brick townhouse with Bree in it. It was just so much to process, all of it. That beautiful house, her fucked family. No wonder she could hardly study there.

  I mulled over it for a few seconds and then texted her. “You know you can stay over with me as much as you like, don’t you?”

  It wasn’t long before my phone buzzed in my hands. “yeah i know thanks <3 <3 <3”

  “Then why are you there, Bree?” I said aloud and sighed, but didn’t ask her that. I just texted, “I hope you’re okay.”

  “i will be…………. :) :) :)”

  I gazed at those cheerful smileys for a couple of seconds, and then slipped my phone back into my pocket, grabbed Bree’s tablet from the back seat, and headed inside.

  I figured I must have beaten Sarah home after all, because nothing was on inside except the hall light, and Rob was always forgetting to turn that off. The house was quiet, and I think I might even have been humming to myself as I put the tablet on my desk and hung up my tie and blazer. If I was quick, I could probably have my shower first before Sarah got home.

  I had been undoing my cufflinks and trying to work one of them out of the little hole when I rounded the corner into the bathroom and nearly collided with the person who was already in there.

  Sarah was standing there in front of the mirror, still in her work clothes.

  “Sarah!” I half-laughed, putting a hand to my chest and taking a deep breath as I leant heavily against the doorframe. “Fuck, I had no idea you were even home! Sorry about charging in here without checking that it was…” The words died on my lips when I realised I was doing all of the talking.

  She was just leaning against the vanity with a stricken expression, white as a sheet. It was so quiet I could hear the clock ticking from the living room.

  My stomach knotted. She’d been fine when she’d sent me that message half an hour ago, but now she looked like she’d just seen a ghost. “Sarah…?” I took a couple of steps towards her. “Fuck, are you okay? Are you still feeling sick?”

  She swallowed, opening her mouth, but closed it again when nothing came out of it. In the end, she just shook her head once and showed me what she’d been holding. It looked like a white pen, and it was shaking because she was. When I looked harder at it, though, it was too flat to be a pen and it had a window on the end of it.

  In the window was a little blue cross. All the blood drained from my face as I realised what the device was and what that cross meant.

  Sarah had clearly only just seen it. She looked up at me, still numb with shock. “Min, I’m pregnant.”

  SEVEN

  “I just thought I’d check…” Sarah’s eyes dipped again to that little blue cross. “I didn’t even think… Shit.” She exhaled, and placed the white test stick beside her on the vanity. “Shit.”

  I stood stiffly against the doorframe. I had no idea what to say to her. What did you say to someone in this situation? Honestly, discovering I was pregnant was right up there with my worst nightmares.

  From Sarah’s expression, it looked like it might be pretty close to the top of her list, too. “What am I going to do?” she asked aloud. Rhetorically, I hoped, because I didn’t have anything resembling an answer for her.

  I swallowed. “U-um. Where’s Rob? Should I call him for you?”

  She exhaled and shook her head. “He and Daz were helping some friend with a reno job and they’re probably out having drinks now, thank god.”

  “Thank god?”

  She sighed at that question, glancing up at me. “He’s going to want me to keep it, Min. I just need to think.” She ran a hand over her face for a second. “I just need to think.” I watched her eyes track across the floor as she did that. After a moment, she came to some sort of decision. Standing up straight and pushing off the vanity, she picked up the pregnancy test and tossed it into the rubbish bin in one smooth motion. “Okay,” she said. She sounded calmer. “Okay. The first thing I need to do is go and get it confirmed.” She went to walk past me.

  I stepped back into the hallway as she powered through to the living room. When she returned, she had her handbag over her shoulder and her car keys in her hand and she was striding towards the door, her heels clicking purposefully on the floorboards. She still looked very pale and unwell.

  It was ridiculous, letting her go by herself to something like this. I stopped her. “I’ll drive you.”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, but it’s fine. I don’t have an appointment, it might be a while.” She went to pull away from me.

  I didn’t let her. “I don’t care if it takes all night.” When she went to say something else, I talked over her. “I’ll sit in the car and wait there if you want. But I’ll drive you.”

  After a moment, her shoulders relaxed. “Okay,” she said. “But I hope you realise I’m going to throw up all over your nice car.”

  I smiled faintly. “Then I’ll clean it up while I’m waiting for you.” I ducked into my room to grab my suit jacket and then let us out of the house.

  Sarah didn’t actually throw up all over my car. She just sat tensely in my passenger seat with her eyes glazed as we drove all the way to her doctors’. Because her work hours were as ridiculous as mine used to be, the clinic was this 24-hour one that was miles away. I was glad I’d offered to drive her, because I couldn’t imagine driving this far if I was unwell and preoccupied.

  We were sitting at a particularly long set of lights and half-listening to pop radio when I realised she was watching me. I looked quizzically across at her, and she said, “You probably think I’m really irresponsible, don’t you?”

  I scoffed at her. “Yeah, nothing more irresponsible than rel
igiously taking contraceptive pills every morning.”

  She smiled in appreciation, but she didn’t look convinced. She shook her head. “I should have used condoms. I know I should have.” She sighed again.

  We’d turned off the main highway and gotten through two or three more obnoxious pop songs before she said anything else. “You’re being unnervingly quiet, Min.”

  I chuckled. “As opposed to unobtrusively quiet?” I glanced across at her again. She looked drawn and restless, and she kept checking her phone and fiddling with the aircon. I looked back at the road again, thinking. Bree would have been able to easily fill up the car with her light-hearted small talk; I felt wholly unqualified for the job. I tried to think of something relevant to say instead. It came to me immediately, but it took me a minute or two to convince myself to actually say it. The words felt really strange to me. I’d never said them before. “I thought I was pregnant once.”

  Her whole demeanour changed. I don’t think she expected that from me. “Wow. Seriously?”

  I slowly nodded. “It was after I’d just started sleeping with Henry. You know how pregnancy tests say you have to wait a week after your missed period for them to work? Well, I didn’t really know when that was, so I panicked and did them every morning—and some lunchtimes—for two full weeks until I was 100%, definitely sure I wasn’t. Then I did one a week later just to be safe.”

  Sarah laughed, and it was like I’d hit the pressure valve. “You crack me up,” she said, relaxing back into her seat. “I’m always irregular, too,” she said. “At least, for the last few years I have been. It only occurred to me this afternoon that I probably should have had a period in May, but I didn’t. I can’t even remember if I had one in April. Maybe near the beginning? I don’t think I’ve had one since before we went up to Broome.”

  I bit my lip so I didn’t laugh. She and Rob had been at it like rabbits while we were there.

  She gave me a sharp look. “I know what you’re thinking, Mister,” she said, and then looked twice at me with a bit of a perplexed expression. “By the way, can I just comment how extremely weird it is to be discussing periods and pregnancy scares with someone who looks like a dude?”