Page 80 of The Side Road
Miles uncrossed his arms and clenched his fists. Mia thought he might be about to combust. She expected steam to shoot from his ears.
Like Snood, Oliver didn’t take his eyes off the angry man. When Miles tried to sidestep around him, Oliver blocked. As Miles moved to his left, Oliver blocked again. ‘It might be time to go,’ he said.
‘Fuck!’ Miles turned and headed down the steps. At the front gate, he stumbled and grabbed the railing to steady himself. Gasping for breath, he fell over the fence. Sweat beaded on his brow. He started shaking like a leaf.
In a few steps, Oliver was by his side, helping him to his feet.
‘My chest…no air,’ Miles mumbled.
‘Breathe slowly. Follow me. ‘In’ – Oliver took a breath – ‘and out.’ Oliver exhaled. Miles copied Oliver’s rhythm. After several breaths, his breathing was under control.
‘You, okay?’ Oliver asked.
Miles nodded. ‘I thought it was a heart attack and I was dying.’
‘You had a panic attack.’
Miles looked up at the sky. ‘I’m such a fucking cliché. I can’t believe Holly married me.’ He shook himself free from Oliver’s grasp and stepped through the gate toward his car.
As they watched him drive away, Mia asked, ‘What was that all about?’
‘He might need to talk to someone.’
They turned and walked back to the house. ‘You don’t like him, I can tell,’ Mia said.
‘I haven’t seen Miles in fifteen years. People change.’
‘It doesn’t look like he’s changed. Why don’t you like him?’
‘When we were kids – teenagers – we used to play a game called Billy Goat. We would wear our motorbike helmets and run into each other. Helmet-to-helmet collisions.’
‘Good god. Had you been drinking?’
Oliver laughed. ‘Yes. It was great fun.’
‘How old were you?’
‘It was before I left school, so fifteen or sixteen.’
‘Which means Miles was eighteen.’
Oliver rubbed his eye. ‘We used to hang out in the training room after everyone had left. Miles came by one day with a few friends. We were playing the Billy Goat game, and he started a fight. It’s difficult to fight back when you’re wearing a helmet. One kid was sent to hospital with a broken arm.’
‘He was a bully?’ Mia’s heart palpitated. ‘My best friend is married to this man.’
‘Hey’—he put his arm around her—‘people change.’
If someone were to ask Mia what she liked most about Oliver, she would say it was his confidence. He was quietly confident. His happiness came from a powerful acceptance of himself. It can’t have always been that way.
She wondered what ten-year-old Oliver was like – with a belligerent father who drank and a mother who had recently died. Thinking about ten-year-old Oliver living alone with just his father broke her heart. Quickly, she wiped the boyish image from her mind. Shifting ahead, she thought about sixteen-year-old Oliver. He had left school and was working in the garage with his father. How did he become the man he was? How did he keep his sense of humour?
Oliver straddled the line between adolescence and adulthood.Keeping one foot in each camp, he refused to leave his teenage self – or perhaps it was his boyhood self – behind. He held onto the little boy inside him, the one both parents loved. Mia concluded that his mother must have been an amazing woman.
That evening,Mia switched on the TV. She sat down with Holly and they watched an episode ofSeinfeldtogether. It was Holly’s idea; she wanted to see if the company she kept influenced her sense of humour. Mia didn’t like where this was heading.
Holly picked up her knitting and settled into her chair. She was making a cable-knit beanie. Intermediate level, it was beyond her ability, but Mia helped with the difficult details. After fifteen minutes of watching the show, Holly turned to Mia and said, ‘I’ve just realised something –Seinfeldis funny. I was watching it with the wrong person. What’s for dinner?’
‘Pumpkin soup. Why did you fall in love with Miles?’ Mia asked.
