Chapter 26 : Later Sunday Afternoon

I was embarrassed, humiliated, mortified, shamed, distraught.

I was an idiot, a moron, a bonehead, a doofus, a git, a fool, a nitwit, a cretin.

I wanted to die.

I wanted to dig the deepest, darkest hole and curl up in a ball at the bottom.

I wondered if perhaps I was already there.

Reality had other ideas.

It insisted on dragging me out of the darkness.

My senses reconnected and I started feeling again.

I was curled up in a ball, but I wasn’t at the bottom of a hole.

I was curled up in a ball, but I wasn’t on the floor.

I was lying on Dan’s solid body with his strong arms firmly around me.

For an instant I thought I was flashing back to the moment where I’d made the biggest, stupidest, terriblest mistake of my life.

“Ruined,” I moaned.

But this wasn’t a flashback. This was different.

For a start, my sweatshirt was being tugged up my body. Small hands – smaller than Dan’s – were working first one of my arms and then the other out from the sleeves – female hands. The same hands tugged my t-shirt back down where it had lifted up during the removal of the sweatshirt.

The sweatshirt was slipped over my head and I blinked my eyes open. Tara stood above me. She was spreading the sweatshirt out in her hands and examining splashes of paint on it. Dan’s strong arms were wrapped around me – they’d shifted around, cooperating with my de-shirting, but they’d never let me go.

“Don’t touch me,” I murmured, pushing feebly at the arms. “It’s all ruined. Don’t touch me.”

Tara looked down at me. “I should be able to get this out. It’s only a few spots. Hopefully it won’t stain too much. It won’t be totally ruined.”

“Ruined,” I moaned in echo.

She turned and left, taking my sweatshirt with her.

With Tara gone, I could now see Mum standing on a chair with a tray in one hand and a scraper in the other. She was wearing her painting clothes and had a little collection of paintbrushes sprouting from a pocket. She was carefully removing excess paint and stopping drips from running down the wall. She’d only just started. A huge sky-blue splosh covered the middle of sexy-Bec.

I groaned and closed my eyes. “Ruined,” I whispered.

“No, honey!” chirped Mum. “I think I can save it. I was thinking of turning this into a blanket.” She used her hands to gesture over the painting. “It would be lying across your lap like this and then falling down the front of the couch here. What do you think?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again. Mum was looking at me, expecting an answer.

I stared at Mum.

When she realized that she wasn’t going to get a reply, she pulled a paintbrush out of her pocket, turned back to the wall and went back to work, humming quietly to herself.

I looked down at the strong arms wrapped around me.

I opened my mouth to speak, having finally found something to say. I had no idea if my voice would work.

“Dan?” I whispered. “What are you doing?”

I felt a kiss on the top of my head. “I’m holding you, Bec,” he whispered into my hair. “That’s what I’m doing.”

It took me a moment to figure out how to respond to that.

“Why?”

“Because I think you need holding,” he said – still talking into my hair. I could feel his breath pushing at the back of my head. I could feel his lips brushing against me. I could feel my hair being moved as he pushed his face into the back of my head.

“But...” I said.

I had no idea how to finish the sentence.

How could I have been so stupid?

“You don’t hate me?” I whispered, my voice trembling.

“I love you,” said Dan. “I love you totally and unconditionally.”

“But I...”

Pesky sentence – it still refused to have an ending.

“Shh!” he whispered and kissed my head. “It was a mistake, nothing more.”

Is that what it was? A mistake?

I watched Mum cheerfully pushing paint around on the wall. Behind Mum, sprawled out on her red velvet sofa, that other Bec looked back at me. Her eyes full of lust. Her lips red with desire.

I let her out. I let her loose and she tried to seduce Dan.

It was a mistake.

“I understand why it happened,” whispered Dan. He shifted me slightly so his face was next to my ear. “You put your trust in someone and you were betrayed. I know how much that hurts. When you put yourself out there, it makes you vulnerable. You have to take down some of your defenses. That means the betrayal can strike deeper. It cuts further into you. It hurts more.”

Betrayed? Yes! So totally and completely betrayed.

Hurt? Yes! So totally and completely hurt.

My eyes wandered between Mum and her. Mum was covering her up, draping a blanket over her, giving her some decency, keeping her warm. But she didn’t look at Mum, she looked at me. Her eyes trapped mine with an intensity that was frightening.

“In a reaction to that hurt, you turned to me,” said Dan. “You know that I love you. You know that I won’t betray you. I understand. I’m not shocked. I’m not even surprised. I guess you could say I’m flattered, delighted even, but not surprised.”

“But...” I said. I was waiting for the “But.”

“But it can’t happen. We both know it can’t happen. We both know why it can’t happen.”

“Dad!” I whispered.

“Dad is one of the reasons. Neither of us wants to hurt him.”

“But Dad and Aunty Penny...”

“You know more about their childhood than I do,” said Dan. “But from what I do know, we can’t use them as examples of what is the right thing to do. What happened between them might have been right for them but that doesn’t mean it would be right for us.”

He stopped. He’d made his point. I couldn’t argue with it.

“Another reason is me,” he said soberly. “I’m an adult. You aren’t. There are laws.”

I closed my eyes. If ever I felt like complaining about those laws, one look at Dad would remind me why such laws were important.

“But when we’re both adults?” I asked, wondering if I had found a chink in his armor.

I felt Dan let out a long, slow breath.

“I can’t think about that now,” said Dan. “We both have a long way to go before that happens. Who knows where we will be and what we will want by then.”

I wriggled in Dan’s arms, settling myself. I guess that wasn’t a no.

“Another reason is you,” said Dan. “You’re still a child.”

I started to argue but he hushed me.

“I understand. No teenager likes to be told that they’re still a child, but it’s true. You’re growing up, maturing into a young woman. But you are still growing. I can see it, even if you can’t. You aren’t an adult – not yet – not physically and not mentally and not emotionally. And on top of that, you’re learning how to cope with your brain thing. Simply being a teenager is such a hard thing.”

“It’s like being lost in a maze,” I said quietly. “Every time I turn around there’s another branch in the path, another choice – so many choices and I have no idea where any of the choices will lead me.”

I felt Dan nodding his head next to my ear. “I can see that, yes. You could use a big brother to help you cope with all of that. And you will for quite a while. I’d like to volunteer for the job – for as long as you need me.”

He was quiet for a moment. I could feel a hand gently stroking down my arm.

He sighed. “Sex always complicates relationships – sometimes that complication is a good thing – it can make a relationship richer. But sometimes – not so much. Between us, that complication would get in the way of me giving you the help you need as you grow up. I had to say no. I had to stop you. I’m sorry.”

I sighed and wriggled again to cuddle myself further into Dan.

“I thought I ruined everything,” I whispered.

“If you’re talking about me,” said Dan, “I’m not that fragile. My love for you is not that shallow. My admiration for you is not based on the assumption that you will never make a mistake. If you’re talking about the painting, I think Mum is fixing it. If you’re talking about the sweatshirt, there are a hundred just like it on special at Walmart. We can always buy another one. I can’t think of anything else you could possibly be talking about. Nothing is ruined – not one single thing.”

In front of me, a smear of sky-blue had started transforming into a blanket. It was symbolic.

Not ruined.

Transformed!

I watched Mum working her magic. I could hear her humming softly to herself as she worked.

Not ruined.

“I should help her,” I whispered.

“That’s a good idea,” said Dan.

“I don’t want you to let go of me.”

“I’ll be here.”

I didn’t move.

“I really don’t want you to let go of me.”

He moved. I felt him shifting underneath me, stretching and contorting himself. One of his arms left my waist and did something behind me, out of my sight.

Finally, he finished whatever he was doing.

He used his other hand to grasp my wrist. The missing arm came wrapping back around me, a shoelace dangling from his fingers. He wrapped the shoelace several times around my wrist, right next to my medical bracelet.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

He pulled the lace tight.

“This is me – holding on tight, not letting go of you.”

He carefully tied the ends with a bow and settled the bow flat on my wrist.

“This is a magic shoelace. The other end connects all the way back to me, no matter how far apart we are.”

I ran my fingers over the shoelace.

“Now get up and help your mother fix the painting.”

He gave me a boost and I was suddenly stumbling to my feet. I glanced down at him and he made little shooing signs with his hands. I sighed and went over to Mum. Standing beside her, I glanced back at Dan. He was making himself comfortable, leaning against the bed. He showed no sign of leaving.

“I’m still here!” he mouthed at me. Then he repeated the shooing gestures with his hands.

I sighed and turned back to Mum. I reached up to pluck a paintbrush out of her pocket (she was still standing on the chair) and looked carefully at what she was doing.

Mum seemed to sense me standing there. She stopped and looked at me.

“If the blanket is lying there,” I said, “then it will drape down through here, with maybe folds running down like this, here and here.”

Mum watched my waving hands and nodded. “That seems about right.”

“You keep doing that part up there and I’ll start working on where it drapes down,” I said.

I started working as I spoke, collecting excess paint from a big splash and working it out sideways and down. We were going to need to make different shades to highlight the folds but that was okay. I had a whole collection of paint in the corner, ready for the painting of Angie I’d been going to do on the back of my door. I had intended to work on it this weekend but somehow I’d never had the time.

Mum and I worked together, almost wordlessly keeping track of each other so that our sections joined seamlessly. Every so often, I glanced back at Dan. He sat there, looking relaxed, watching us paint, with a gentle smile on his face. I would look back at him and touch his shoelace around my wrist. And then I would get back to work.

Then one time I glanced back and saw that Dan now had Angie in his lap. She was leaning back against his shoulder. Dan’s hand was gently rubbing up and down her stomach and chest. Her eyes were drooping as the quiet action in front of her, combined with Dan’s massage, lulled her to sleep. Tara sat on the floor next to Dan with her head resting on his shoulder, one of his big arms loosely looping around her. She was watching us paint with the same quiet contentment in her face that Dan had. I smiled at her and turned back to the wall.

Throughout it all, I had the constant awareness of the pressure of Dan’s shoelace holding onto my wrist. I had the warm hard weight of Nana’s necklace pressing against my breastbone. I had Mum’s body bumping gently against mine as we worked together. I was surrounded by family. I was safe.

I don’t have the experience Mum has with paints. Nor do I have her experience working with large canvases in any medium. Mum was working steadily on the chair, confident with what she was doing. I had to step back every so often to see whether I was getting the coloring and the shading right. Mum worked fast, paintbrush slipping across the wall. I had to go slower. This was originally Mum’s painting, I had to match her style, her length of strokes with the brush, or my section would look weird compared to the rest. It was hard – the sort of hard that is challenging – the sort of hard that is fun.