Page 132 of Queenslander
The fact that Nev had cold feet shouldn’t surprise Ronnie as much as it did. Every new thing had growing pains.Progress wasn’t achieved inside the comfort zone.Hopefully in the morning Nev would feel better and get over whatever mental block this was.
“Dress code: vest and tie,” Nev said.
Ronnie turned, guitar case behind one shoulder. “Can I raid your closet?”
Nev’s bedroom was dark. Ronnie felt the owl watching her as she touched the light switch. The same ironed shirts, slacks, neckties, bow ties, and the new baby blue linen suit Nev had loaned to Mikey for the hearing. She ran a finger down it. Soft as an old T-shirt. She wondered if Nev hadn’t come to the hearing because she loaned her only formal outfit to Mikey. That was something Nev would do. She chose a black vest that had been Nev’s father’s, then pushed the light switch.
She had to pass through the family room on her way out. Gunni tapped Nev’s arm. Nev looked up, guarded.
“Don’t you want to ask which one she picked?” Gunni asked.
Ronnie held up the black vest, feeling childish.
Nev glanced at it. “Don’t wear a black shirt with a black vest. That defeats the entire purpose of wearing a vest.”
Gunni chuckled. “She looks good in black.”
“Everyone looks good in black,” Nev said.
Outside, honeyeaters and rainbow lorikeets warbled urgency in the grevilleas. The avian chorus sounded like a mixture of nails on a chalkboard and a crowd shaking sleighbells.
The next morning Ronnie biked to the boat launch on the east shore of Lake Tinaroo near where they had done the crane count with her dad earlier that spring.
Nev swam in goggles and nothing else.
Ronnie piled her clothes on a rock before wading through waist-high grass to the water’s edge, then ran in, splashing.
The water grew colder farther from shore. Ronnie ducked under, then popped up. She treaded water while pushing wet hair out of her eyes.
Nev looked silly in the goggles. “That night in the strangler fig was magical for me.”
“Same,” Ronnie said.
“It was more magical for me.”
“Pretty fucking magical for me too, babe.”
“I don’t want to do it again.”
Ronnie’s heart fell. “Why the hell not?”
Treading water made Nev pink. “The way you trust me and ask me for things makes me feel like I’m worth something.”
“You are,” Ronnie said.
“If we slept together again, it wouldn’t be casual for me.”
“Me neither.”
“I don’t want to date you, Dain’y. You’re a shitty girlfriend, no offense.”
“None taken.”
“I would be jealous and miserable,” Nev said. “We would drive each other crazy.”
Ronnie wanted to say that was paranoid, but Nev was right. Ronnie would anticipate sex and be disappointed if it didn’t happen. She would feel annoyed when Nev didn’t invite her to sleep over. She would start to read silence as rejection, and make it a personal challenge to get Nev to orgasm every time they hooked up. If Nev didn’t, Ronnie would feel like a failure.
She would try to cheer Nev up, to fuck her depression away, to be the drug that mellowed her out at night instead of the gin, which wouldn’t work. It would never be as magical as it had been the first time in the hollow tree. She couldn’t solve Nev’s problems with sex. It wouldn’t fix anything that was broken, but it might break something that was whole.
