Page 37 of Waiting Game

“You’re not with Mr. Doc anymore, right?” she asked, “so who cares if you slept with him?”

“I do. Because I’m supposed to be smarter than that.”

Rome only nodded and we drove in silence back to their house.

Maybe I overestimated my self control when I decided to come back. In my head, it all went so differently. I thought that I would be able to see Ren, and not feel a thing. I thought that we could go back to being friends, to laughing and joking without there being the heavy tension behind our words.

After all, it had been ten years since I had seen him.

Shouldn’t the feelings have disappeared by now?

But the moment that I laid eyes on him, everything came back in a flood - and I was drowning in it.

Rome pulled into the driveway and we got out of the car. I hovered by the front door, and was trying to decide whether to go inside or simply walk to the nearest tram stop and go back to my hotel so I could stress out in peace.

“Come on. Your Mum’s not here. You’re safe,” Rome said.

I nodded, but didn’t follow her straight away.

“I’ll book those tickets for you. That’s if you still want to?”

I shrugged, but followed her inside anyway. I didn’t know what I wanted anymore.

We entered the house that was still littered with people.

A few gave a respectful nod to Rome and I, but most ignored us all together.

“Val!” Zarina called from the kitchen table as she noticed us walk in.

She was sitting at the table in her sweatpants and her hair thrown together into a messy bun atop her head, but she still wore her full face of makeup.

“Mum said that you already left,” she frowned.

“Well, I haven’t,” I smiled.

I was glad that I got to see Zarina again before I left, but looked down to the ground when I realised I probably wouldn’t get to see Sammy again. He had never been social anyway, and kept to himself. I was just glad that I got to chat and dance with him at the wedding.

It was strange, watching my baby siblings become adults.

Because I never saw them, the transition seemed as if it happened over night. I felt a pang of guilt in my stomach for missing so much, but at the same time, I knew that leaving was the right decision for me.

Even if that meant no one in my family would ever really trust me again.

It didn’t bother me that my mother hated me, because that had always been the only constant in my life. She liked to act as if she only hated me because I left, but wouldn’t accept that our relationship was shitty far before I ever moved out of Melbourne. Her hatred and contempt was nothing new, it was nothing that I needed to adjust to.

“So me and Larissa take turns working the weekends, that way I at least get a few days off a month,” Zarina talked fast, she always had. There was always too much that she wanted to say, and it fell out of her mouth quickly.

“Wait,” I laughed, “what’s the shop called again?”

“BoredHeuxs,” she pronounced slowly, “you know, it’s like word play between the wine and bored-hoes?”

“I get it, Zar,” I chuckled again.

It was something only she would come up with, and I wondered if Mum understood the wordplay, because I doubted that she would allow it if she did. Zarina had been running her lingerie store with Ren’s sister, Larissa, for the past few years. I could tell just how passionate she was about it by the way she spoke.

Zarina had always been the fashionista in the family. From when we were little she loved to play dress up and do her makeup. I was always the victim in her vanity chair receiving makeovers.

“So,” I wiggled my eyebrows, “does Larissa still follow Antoni around like a little puppy dog?”

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