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When they finish, Francesca groans about the ache in her arm and her brother gives her a massage.
“It’s like hanging out with the bloody Partridge Family,” Ned mutters, eating from a packet of chips. But he doesn’t leave and they rehearse the songs they’ve written, this time with Luca on drums, and before they know it, it’s past two.
Tom notices there’re a few missed calls from Bill. And a text from Georgie asking where he is.
He doesn’t want to tell her. Not to punish her, but because he wants his father to think he’s dead on the street somewhere.
He goes back to the Spinellis’ with Ned, and even when Francesca shows them the wedding dress she’s working on and her brother goes to bed vowing he’s not going to school in the morning Tom stays. Ned makes it as far as the explanation of calico.
“I’m yawning,” Ned says, leaving.
When Francesca talks beading, Tom puts up a hand.
“Frankie, not the beading. I don’t mind the bridezilla stories, or even the ones where your grandmother’s a bitch to clients with bad taste, but not the rest.”
“Will loves the beading stories.”
Will is such a big fat liar.
She’s gri
“Is it true about the piercing and the I love Frankie tat?” he asks.
She rolls her eyes. “I blame the engineers for the piercing. They are such a bad influence. And I wouldn’t exactly call it an I love Frankie tat,” she adds with a laugh.
He makes himself comfortable, trying to shove the dog away, who’s hogging most of the couch.
“So aren’t you worried that he’s being unfaithful over there? Isn’t it an issue for you?”
She looks up at him. “That’s a pretty personal question.”
“What? I’ve never asked you a personal question before?”
She doesn’t reply.
“What would you do if he did the dirty on you?”
He thinks of Georgie and Sam and the way they haven’t really recovered from Sam being with someone else, regardless of the circumstances.
“I’d never take him back,” she says without hesitation. “If he was unfaithful, I wouldn’t. And I love him as much as I love my parents and brother, and you know how I feel about them. Will knows that. I’ve told him. That if he’s about to do something that will betray us, then to picture my face because it will be the very last time he ever sees it.”
There’s a look in her eye that tells Tom she’s not joking.
“Then how do you know he’s not lying to you when he says he hasn’t gotten up to anything?” he asks.
She gives a snort. “Have you seen his face?” she asks incredulously. “Everything’s stamped all over it. Every emotion he can’t articulate, because he’s so introverted is all there. Every time he’s lied to me, I’ve worked it out in a nanosecond.”
“So he lies to you? And you’re okay with that?” he asks with disbelief. It’s like he wants Francesca to conjure up every shit thing about Trombal. He doesn’t know what he’d do with Trombal-less Francesca, but he always liked it better when the other guy wasn’t around.
“What? You’ve never told a girl you have a family function on when it’s really the football?” she asks. “Will doesn’t do romance well. He doesn’t believe in Valentine’s Day, and if my birthday falls on a night when the Dragons are playing, we celebrate the next day.”
“Then what does he do well?”
She thinks for a moment, and it’s as if she’s never had to articulate it. “I told him at the begi
She looks at Tom. “And if I get a little chemically imbalanced in the head, like we all know I tend to get sometimes, and I don’t want my parents or brother knowing, Will’s like, ‘We’ll deal with it.’ He’s never said, ‘Snap out of it,’ and he’s never said, ‘I don’t get it,’ and he’s never said, ‘I’ll fix it up.’ He just says, ‘You’re not up to going back to uni to finish your Honors this year? Big deal. There’s next year. We’ll deal with it.’” She nods. “That’s what he does well.”
Tom doesn’t respond. He’s never asked about her depression in the past, just knew it was there like a big black blob over her head. In Year Eleven they thought it was a one-off because her mother had been sick, but he had seen it once or twice again. Francesca knew the signs and he could tell she fought it with everything she had inside of her. He didn’t want to think of Trombal fighting it with her. He didn’t want to like the other guy in that way.
“I’m going to marry him,” Francesca says with such certainty that it makes his head spin.
“Bet your mother’s jumping for joy,” he says dryly.
“She reckons she didn’t go to uni and get herself a master’s so her daughter could marry her first boyfriend and sit making wedding dresses with her grandmother in Leichhardt like Italian women did fifty years ago,” Francesca says. “But my mother keeps on forgetting that she did everything she wanted to do. Married my father. Went to university. Had a family. No one got in her way. All at our age now. And that’s what she taught me. To do what I want to do and stop having people telling me that I can’t marry Will because I’m too young and I haven’t seen the world or taken advantage of the choices out there. Who says we’re not going to see the world? Or that I won’t want to sew for the rest of my life, or that I won’t want to finish my Honors? Who says choice is better in ten years’ time when it comes to guys? Just say there are bigger dickheads out there?”
“But you’ve only had sex with one guy, I’m presuming. Don’t you want to try . . . something different?”
Francesca gives him that look again. “Tom, without going into great detail, Will and I are very, very compatible in that department. Very.”
He looks at her, trying to get his head around Will Trombal having sex.
“Very,” she repeats.
“Enough,” he mutters. “I’m sick just thinking of it.”
She’s gri
“He feels the same way about you. When he left that next morning, he sent me a text saying, If that ‘insert-C-word-here’ moves in while I’m away, I’ll kill myself.”
“He wrote insert-C-word-here?”
“No. He used it. Capitals all the way.”
She’s looking at him as if he’s some insect under a microscope, as if she can truly see inside of him.
“Do you remember the first time we really . . . I don’t know . . . co
He nods.
“I asked you later why you got me to dance, and you said it was because . . .”
He nods again. “You always looked sad.”
“So did you, Tom. That’s why I took you up on it. Because back then, even before your uncle died, you looked as sad as I did. Except you were better at hiding it.”
He stands up, needing to get away. Sometimes he feels a pull toward Francesca. She was the reason he came into their group. It was her misery that united them, and somehow it ended up being her personality that kept them together when everyone split. She’s the one who writes the letters to keep the world informed. She listens to the news every hour to make sure everyone’s safe. So tonight he walks away even though she’s moved forward to give him a hug. Because he wants to kiss her, and knows she’ll hate him for it and that he’ll hate himself. He knows it’s for all the wrong reasons and that he’ll end up thinking of Tara Finke and her Brazilian peacekeeper and Will Trombal and the way he doesn’t do romance but eats the space between him and Francesca anytime he’s in the room with her.