So Much to Learn Page 18

  ~*~

  We drove for over half an hour to a club I'd never heard of. I guessed Jack had picked it because it was unlikely we'd meet anyone from uni there, or at least, not any of our crowd. There wasn't much of a line so it wasn't long before we were inside.

  It was dark, as most nightclubs are, and the music was pumping so loudly the walls were vibrating. I could tell that it was the sort of place that, on a different night, I would hate. I was of the opinion that if you couldn't talk because the music was so loud and you couldn't see anyone because the lights were so dim it kind of made the only two reasons to go out kind of pointless. The two reasons being, of course, to hang out with friends or to check guys out.

  Still tonight, as I stood to the side of the dance floor with Jack at my side, I began to see a third reason: to go out with your date and not have to talk or see anyone else!

  The music playing was the sort that thumps in your chest and reverberates all through your body making you feel a part of it rather than just an audience. Even the most dance-challenged can move to that kind of music as your body moves of its own accord, with swaying of the hips and bobbing of the head. And, with a communication method like dancing, who needs conversation?

  People were having to push past us to get to the dance floor and, seeming to realise at the same moment that I did that our choice of location wasn't spectacular, Jack shouted in my ear, "Shall we?" And gestured towards the mass of gyrating bodies in front of us.

  I took a deep breath then nodded. He took my hand gently and led me over to a spot near the wall where we wouldn't be quite so crushed.

  Stupid as it sounds, as soon as we got on to the floor, I got a feeling in the pit of my stomach somehow akin to fear. It was much more intense down there with the other dancers than up watching it. I tried to focus on Jack, but there were too many other people pushing and crowding around me. The crush of bodies and the sights and smells of other people seemed so primal as to be almost frightening to me. It was as if my body was being assaulted by senses and it had overloaded. It was something akin to claustrophobia and my dancing faltered as it gripped me.

  I was just about to ask Jack if we could take a breather when strong hands gripped me from behind and dragged me against an unfamiliar body. Before either Jack or I had time to react the hands slid lower until they were pressing against my pelvis and the person behind me started to grind against me. And I truly mean grind as in, but for the grace of clothes, I could well have become pregnant. Icy drips of horror cascaded down my spine and all my insecurities at being touched flew into my chest with a force hard enough for me to be unable to take a breath.

  My ordeal lasted less than a few seconds, though, as Jack started forward and pushed the grinder away as I struggled to get out of the guy’s arms.

  "Hey chill out," the random dancer laughed. "I was just showing her some moves."

  I still wasn't totally free from the stranger and I felt Jack give him another push which caused the guy's arms to fully release me and I fell forward. Jack caught me deftly whilst growling, "Yeah, well, show her again and I'll show you my moves."

  If I'd been feeling more myself I would have laughed at his corny one liner, but as it was I simply allowed Jack to led me over to a stool by the bar and, as I sank onto it in relief, get me a bottle of water.

  "Here, drink this," he murmured, removing the cap for me, almost as if I was a child. I was grateful, though, my hands were shaking so badly I don't think I could have unscrewed the cap myself.

  As I sat sipping the water, I felt my panic subside and instead began to feel extremely embarrassed. Why did I have to flip out like that all the time? One step out of my comfort zone and, bam, instant freeze up. It was so annoying!

  When the water bottle was almost half empty I finally looked up. Jack was standing silently beside me, almost as if he was on guard and I felt a sudden rush of affection for him as well as anger at myself for ruining a good night.

  "Jack, I'm so sorry," I said miserably. "I don't know what happened."

  "You don't have to apologise," he responded fiercely. "I shouldn't have brought you here, touching is kind of the order of the day at clubs and I should have thought that through. I'm sorry."

  I knew then that if I didn't do something we would end up in one of those endless rigmaroles where we each tried to convince the other that we had been in the wrong. Unable to express what I meant in words, my gratitude, shame and guilt, I stood up and threw my arms around his neck.

  For a moment he rocked back in shock, then his arms came around me, strong and firm. I buried my face into his neck and breathed in his familiar scent which reminded me of home and comfort, but also of spice and tingles in the belly. We stayed that way a long time, not moving, but simply tightly clutching each other until, eventually, Jack pulled back a little to look at my face.

  "Alright?" He asked and I nodded because, then, it was.

  He released me, I took a step back and, for a second, it felt as if every inch of my body cried out to regain contact with him. It passed, but the intensity of my reaction left me feeling like I'd been slapped in the face with a cold fish. My expression obviously showed a bit of this as well as Jack laughed and held out his hand.

  "Come here," he said and, when I took his hand he spun me into him. We froze for a moment with him still holding one of my hands and my chin tilted up to see his face and then he smiled, his teeth bright in the flashing lights.

  "Dance with me?" He asked and I smiled too and nodded.

  We made our way back over to the edge of the dancers and then he released my hand and rested his hands on my hips. I hesitantly rested my palms against his chest and looked up into his eyes as we swayed together. We weren't dancing nearly as close as other people around us, but there are different kinds of close and we didn't need to grind to achieve ours.

  After a while I grew daring, and turned around so that my back was resting against his chest. A moment later his arms snaked around me and wrapped me into his embrace.

  I could see that the club and the dancing weren't actually frightening at all now. It was private, deep and personal.

  I could feel Jack's heart thumping against me and I focused on that until it became like the music we were swaying to. I closed my eyes and melted against him wrapping my arms around his. The song was a fairly mellow one, but slowly it sped up and I found myself moving against Jack in response. Lost in the beat, I lifted my arms up and twined them around his head whilst twisting slightly so that one of his legs was between mine. I refuse to admit that I was grinding, but it couldn't have been that far off.

  Once I realised what I was doing, I gasped and felt my face heat up. "Sorry," I said, dropping my arms and lifting myself as far away from his body as his encircling arms would allow. "I didn't realise what I was doing, I'll stop."

  I attempted to move even further away, but his arms tightened. "Don't you dare," he said in a voice that I almost didn't recognise it was so deep and gruff. It sent shivers down my spine and into my legs so it was lucky he was basically supporting me as I could quite easily have slithered to the floor in that moment.

  "Lesson five," he said, brushing some of my hair to the side so he could speak directly into my ear. "If you trust me….him…the guy you're with, it can be OK to relax and let yourself go. Physical contact doesn't always have to be scary and it doesn't always have to lead somewhere."

  I smiled as he accidentally included himself in the lesson, but the humour lessened as I took in what he'd really been saying. In a roundabout way he'd been asking if I trusted him enough to fully let myself go. And I knew in the next instant that I did.

  I let the music take over me again and, this time, felt him moving back against me. It wasn't like with the guy from earlier, it wasn't rough or pervy, but rather as if we were in perfect sync with each other, almost as if we could predict what the other was about to do. After a while it no longer seemed as if there were two of us, but that we had become one entity, corny a
nd cheesy as that sounds.

  I fully understood, for perhaps the first time, how music is a very primitive instinct. When we were dressed in nothing but loincloths we would take the time to stamp out a beat around the campfire. Music is necessary and, if you let yourself, can allow you to enter a different sphere where nothing matters, but the rhythm.

  Time slipped away and I reckon we could have danced all night, as the song goes, but we were rudely brought out of our own little world by a voice calling out, "Jack!"

  Jack released me and I staggered to one side in my painful heels feeling that fuzzy, tired feeling you get when you stumble, blinking, out of the cinemas after a long film.

  A girl was elbowing her way through the crowd over to us and my heart sank as I realised who it was. Kristin Bayers. Wonderful. Jack's ex-girlfriend, just who I needed to see at that moment. Kristin was extremely curvaceous and loved to show it to everyone by wearing the skimpiest things she could find. Her hair was long and bouncy and clearly not the colour she was born with and she had a smile which was so big and toothy you felt she could snap you up with one gulp if she felt so inclined.

  "I thought it was you," she shrieked, finally having made it to us. She threw her arms around Jack and, to my extreme annoyance, he returned the hug.

  "How are you, Kris?" He asked, his deep, calm voice at total odds with her high pitched exclamations.

  "All the better for seeing you, we haven't hung out for ages. Why haven't we met up? Where have you been? What have you been doing?"

  "Steady,” Jack laughed good-humouredly, and I shifted slightly beside him, making Kristin's gaze suddenly fall on me.

  "Natalie, I didn't see you there,” she said with what I took for entirely insincere sweetness. “Are you here with your brother?"

  Bitch!

  I felt like saying, 'no actually I'm here with your ex and we were having a damn fine time before you showed your ugly mug. And, contrary to what many people believe, I do hang out with more people than just my brother!'

  Still, I limited myself to saying. "No, Kristy, I'm not here with Matt."

  "Kristin," she corrected me and I gave her a chilling smile.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," I said, my voice dripping with artificiality. "I know how annoying it can be when people get your name wrong."

  There was a pause and then, as Kristin turned to wave at somebody else she knew, Jack murmured, "Down girl." And I bared my teeth at him in imitation of a vicious dog.

  As Kristin faced us once more, I pasted a brilliant and oh so fake smile on my face and gestured towards the toilets.

  "I'm just going to the loo, you guys catch up and I'll meet you by the bar in a few minutes."

  Kristin, judging by her reaction, thought this was the best idea she'd ever heard and latched onto Jack's arm immediately. Just before they disappeared into the crowd Jack turned his head and rolled his eyes in Kristin's direction before winking at me.

  All the butterflies that had been so cruelly driven off by Kristin's arrival on the scene came back in force and flapped their little wings for all they were worth. A real smile spreading across my lips, I made my way, unsteadily due to my heels, over to the toilet line.

  It took a long time for me to enter an empty stall, but, on the plus side, I became very good friends with my queue partners. They were extremely sociable although that may have been supplemented by some artificial means, if you know what I mean.

  As I entered back into the main club area I was feeling pretty good. My freak out was completely forgotten and I moved to the music and weaved through the crowd without any hesitation. I had just caught sight of Jack and raised my hand to wave at him when I heard some guy shout, "Get your hands off my girlfriend!"

  Like everybody else in the near vicinity I looked round to see what all the commotion was about and saw an all too familiar mug reply, "Chill out, I was just showing her some moves."

  Uh-oh, testosterone explosion in 3, 2, 1…

  Bam! A fist in the face. Not particularly original, but obviously effective and, considering my history with the man getting hit, a very good move all round.

  And off they went.

  Have you ever noticed that fights aren't at all like they are in the movies? Hardly anyone ever gets a punch in except for at the very beginning, after that it just becomes a mess of pushing and shoving, their hands tightly holding on to the front of their opponents shirts. I've seen more intense fights between women in a shoe store after the same size.

  Still, it was perhaps not the best idea to loiter in the locality of so much raw aggression and I began sidling round some spectators to join Jack and Kristin. I was just thinking I was out of the danger zone when suddenly the crowd parted beside me and, before I had time to stagger out of the way, six feet of wheeling drunk man smacked into me. My balance not being that good at the best of times in those stupid shoes, I felt my ankle roll and the next moment I went down, the guy crashing on top of me.

  All the breath was knocked out of me in one big whoosh, but being winded was the least of my troubles; my ankle was trapped beneath the both of us at an awkward angle and was sending messages of extreme pain to my brain.

  "Get off me, you big brute," I wheezed, but, considering all the noise around me, I doubt anyone heard me.

  I don't think there was anybody in a ten kilometre radius, however, who didn't hear the roar that followed a moment later.

  "Get off her!"

  The heavy weight on top of me abruptly lifted and I was able to see Jack, the muscles in his arms straining, hauling the guy off me. The movement jarred my ankle and I gave a little yelp of pain, my eyes watering. Despite the noise of the club Jack seemed to have heard me and he threw the guy to one side before crouching down anxiously beside me.

  "Tally, you alright?"

  I pushed myself up into a sitting position, being careful not to move my sore ankle. "Well," I sighed, "much as I hate to sound like a pathetic girl in an action film, I've hurt my ankle."

  I allowed Jack to gently help me up and I leant heavily on him to avoid putting weight on my right leg.

  "You, get her some ice from the bar," Jack instructed the guy who had fallen on me and, with surprisingly little complaint, he scurried off to do his bidding.

  Kristin, showing surprising concern, shooed a girl off a nearby chair and Jack basically carried me over to it. The ordered bag of ice appeared a moment later and Jack knelt in front of me, as if he was about to propose, and lifted my right leg up so that my injured ankle was cradled in his strong hands. Slowly, and with great care, he removed my silly heels and wrapped the ice around my ankle, the cold making me start.

  "Your dancing shoes I said." Jack eyed the heel he had removed with scorn. "You can't tell me those are your dancing shoes."

  "Well sandshoes don't really go with this outfit," I pouted, putting on my best 'snob' voice, which sounded eerily like Haley's.

  "They're great shoes," Kristin added, clearly wanting in on the conversation. "Worth the pain, I'd say."

  Jack looked at her as if she had gone insane, then looked at me that way too as I shrugged as if to say, 'yeah pretty much.'

  "You girls are mental," he murmured before looking at me squarely in the eyes. "And before you suffer any more mishaps I'm taking you home." Looking back up at Kristin he nodded. "It was good to see you again."

  "Yeah, you too. Say hi to Matt for me." She smiled, showing all her huge glossy white teeth.

  Ooh predator look.

  Still, it was me Jack was going home with so suck on that Kristin! OK, true, we do live together, but I'd take any victory I could over a bombshell like her.

  We staggered out of the club and to the car which, thankfully, wasn't parked too far away. Jack helped me into the passenger seat and propped my leg up on the dash with the ice firmly packed around it before making his way round to the drivers’ side.

  "Well that was eventful," I said as we pulled out of the parking space and began the drive home. "And seeing Kristin was
a bit of a surprise. Should we be worried that she'll tell people that she saw us together?"

  Jack shook his head. "Nah, I made out like we were just hanging out and, besides, compared to some of the dancing other people were doing ours was relatively tame."

  Little spikes of hurt erupted in my chest at these words. I'd been soaring through the galaxy on a wave of feelings and desires and he'd thought our dancing was tame?

  I was so wrapped up in my wounded pride that I almost missed him mutter quietly, "Outwardly at least."

  I grinned shyly and looked out the window, satisfied that he too had been affected by our close contact earlier.

  We fell silent then and I gazed out the window at the lights flashing by feeling, despite my throbbing ankle, happy and content.

  "Why did you date Kristin?" I asked suddenly, after a few minutes had passed. I'd been thinking about this question in the toilet stall and hadn’t been able to come up with an answer. I didn’t think she was his type, she was much more the sort of girl Matt would be interested in, loud, brassy and not afraid to flaunt her, um, womanly attributes.

  He didn't answer for a long time and I looked round to see why not. He was looking intently out the windscreen, his jaw was clenched.

  "Jack?" I asked in confusion.

  He glanced at me briefly and shook his head. "You're not going to like my answer and I'm not much proud of it either." He took a deep breath and rubbed a hand through his short hair. "To put it simply, I was with Kristin because the sex was good." I made a noise of disgust and he shrugged slightly. "I told you that you wouldn't like it."

  "You could’ve lied!" I exclaimed. "Now I've got really bad mental images." I shook my head as if to clear them then looked at him with interest. "You know, I would never have picked you as someone who chose a girlfriend based on her sexual prowess. Matt, yes. You, no."

  "Matt isn't as shallow as all that," he defended my brother. "And Kristin has a bit more to her than the average sex kitten, she understood the arrangement just fine. The last couple of years she was there for me when I needed to take my mind off things. She was never really my girlfriend, we didn't ever date in the sense of going out…"

  "Yes, thank you," I interrupted quickly. "I think I get the general idea of what your meetings entailed." I rearranged the ice on my ankle then, somewhat more hesitantly, I continued, "And, by needing to take your mind off things, I'm guessing you mean your hook ups take place on the 19th of September?"

  Jack's hands tightened on the steering wheel and then he went very still apart from a nerve which I could see ticking near his jaw. I wished I could take back my thoughtless words. The 20th of September was the day that his mother had crashed the car containing her and the twins, Paul and Lizzie, and every year on the day before Jack and Matt disappear for the whole day and night. I don't know exactly what happens, but, safe to say, I think a lot of drinking and debauchery takes place as Jack attempts to plunge himself into oblivion where he can't be plagued by bad memories.

  Seeing that he wasn't relaxing, I gently put my hand on his arm and looked up at him sadly. "I'm sorry, Jack," I said miserably. "I shouldn't have-"

  "No," he said flatly, seeming to come back to himself although his grip on the wheel didn't lessen any, “don't apologise. It's not a big deal."

  It clearly was a big deal and, although I usually tiptoed around his issues, I suddenly didn't want to let it go.

  "Won't you talk to me about it?" I asked. "Getting stinking drunk and sleeping with people like Kristin can't help really, can it?"

  "Look, just drop it." He spoke quietly; Jack had never really raised his voice at me, but I would have taken shouting over the weird intensity which laced his words and belied the volume they were spoken at.

  I really considered continuing to push the issue, but I flinched away from saying something which would, at least, cause him to speak in that intense, flat voice again or, at most, upset the weird sort of relationship we had going.

  Cross at my cowardice, I removed my hand from him and faced out the window again.

  Neither of us spoke for the rest of the journey home and when we pulled into the car park I opened my door and attempted to make a dignified exit without his help. Unfortunately this proved to be impossible and, before I could disentangle myself from the seatbelt and get my leg off the dashboard, Jack had exited his side and come round to mine.

  One look at him made me stop my fussing, but, as if scared I'd try to make a run, or rather a hobble, for it, he put his hands on my shoulders, pushing me back into the seat.

  "Listen to me," he said and I could hear deep frustration in his voice. "I'm screwed up, I know I am, but getting drunk on the 19th and having sex with women like Kristin is the way I've found to deal with it. I know that you don't get it, but, if I don't want to talk, it’s not about you, OK? If I did want to talk then you or Matt or your parents would be the ones I would go to. But at the moment I just…" He faltered and I put my hands on top of his and held them tight.

  "It's OK," I said, wanting him to stop as it was obviously hurting him to speak like that.

  Tension seemed to flow out of his shoulder and he released me and stood back. "No, it's not, but now's not the time to get into it." He reached past me and unhooked my seatbelt before helping me out of the Ute.

  With my arm around him, I was able to hop across the asphalt, although anyone who has tried to hop in high heels would understand that it was no mean feat! The stairs were the most difficult thing and seemed to take forever, like my very own Everest. When we reached our door I collapsed against it, puffing heavily, before shooting Jack a wry smile.

  "Well, that was certainly the most interesting date I've ever been on," I said, looking up at him through my eyelashes. "All the highs and lows of a rollercoaster."

  Jack shot me a small smile and stood back from me as if he was scared to get too close. "It wasn't exactly as I'd planned it, no," he agreed.

  I blew some hair out of my face and shrugged. "When is anything?" I pointed out. "I can honestly say, despite everything, that I had a great time." I stepped forward hesitantly and, putting my hands on his shoulders, I reached up and kissed him lightly on his jaw-line. Leaning my cheek against his briefly I added, "In fact Lesson five might just be my favourite so far."

  I moved back and we looked at each other for a long moment. Then, coughing awkwardly, Jack gestured towards our flat. "Right, back to business," he said gruffly. "That leg should be elevated." And, without further ado, he opened the door and ushered me inside.