Australian Love Stories by Cate Kennedy Page B

who didn’t want to grow up. I dated adrenalin junkies who drank too much. But I never picked them mean. I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as a temper.
    We kept a wine cask under the sink, so no-one would know how undiscerning our habits were. On a quiet night we’d fill our glasses and empty them, sitting on opposite ends of the couch, our legs comfortably entwined.
    â€˜You should paint your toenails,’ she’d say. Hers were bright red—little sirens on her feet. I thought I could see the faint scarring where her blister had been.
    â€˜Can’t be bothered,’ I’d say.
    She’d tickle my feet, which I hated and loved.
    â€˜Stop it! Stop, stop!’
    â€˜Not until you tell me all about Brad,’ she’d say. I was never game to tickle her back.
    So I’d tell her about Brad and how he’d love me all night and then rise before dawn to go surfing while I slept. He’d beat work a few hours later, laughing, eyes dark with the pleasure of himself.
    â€˜One morning he left me a map,’ I said.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜A map. Of the coast, with an X where he was going to surf.’
    â€˜What did you do?’
    I was embarrassed. ‘I got up and drove down there.’
    â€˜Then what?’
    â€˜He wasn’t there.’
    â€˜What happened?’
    â€˜I drove home again and when I saw him at work I said what was all that about? Where were you? And he just laughed and said I should learn to read maps.’
    â€˜Arsehole,’ she said. Actually, I had to agree, but it didn’t change anything.
    â€˜Anyway, you should talk,’ I said.
    Matt had had her hooked for six months. A thirty-eight-year-old Peter Pan, he went clubbing with people twenty years younger, refused to learn to cook or figure out how a bank account worked or ever, ever talk about where a relationship might be going.
    â€˜He pleases me,’ she said, ‘and that’s all I want for now.’ She was so self-contained, so apparently relaxed about it that I wasn’t prepared to push it any further.

    We were served a notice to vacate. We had no idea why anyone would want to reclaim the purple shag pile, but we found another flat. It was bigger and more tastefully decorated. Brad and Matt changed names and faces but came essentially from the same store. Somehow, they never stayed over.
    â€˜I don’t think I could stand someone else’s man at breakfast,’ she said. I suspected her feelings weren’t only about a man labelled ‘someone else’s’.
    We still talked, end to end, on the couch. We graduated to bottled wine.
    Once, near the end of a bottle, she said, ‘I don’t know about this whole man business.’
    â€˜Oh?’
    â€˜Well, sex is fun and all…’
    This was a subject we never handled with our gloves off.
    â€˜But what then? Can you imagine the same guy’s dirty socks under your bed for years?’
    â€˜No, since you put it like that. I supposed I just thought one day someone might make me change my mind.’
    â€˜But why? And how? Maybe what we’ve got now is as good as it gets. We share the housework without all that his work/her work crap. And we never argue.’
    That brought me up short. We hadn’t. Argued. One or other, and sometimes both of us, had been irritable sometimes, but that was it.
    â€˜Maybe we just haven’t grown up yet.’
    She snorted and grabbed my foot.
    â€˜You’re not wrong there! When are you going to make your feet look nice, eh?’
    She looked tired but I didn’t know whether or how to say something. Instead, I got up to put the kettle on.
    About a month later we were installed in our usual way on the couch.
    â€˜Let’s have another bottle,’ she said. This was new.
    I’d never been this drunk.
    â€˜I’ve never been this drunk,’ she said.
    I looked at the second empty bottle. Was it a mindreading