22. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

“So what’s it like being back home?” Audrey asked her as the two of them strolled side-by-side up Silverbloom’s main street.

Ollie found herself smiling as she realised the place felt bustling to her after Ribbonwood’s sedate pace. The population of Silverbloom was something like four thousand people. Melbourne’s was over five million. She’d barely been home more than a month and already she was turning back into a country girl.

“I mean,” she corrected them both, “ Melbourne is home. But it’s actually really nice being back?”

Silverbloom was an extraordinarily pretty, if increasingly touristy town just up the range from Ribbonwood. There was a long wide main road, showered in purple petals from the rows of blooming Jacaranda trees shading either side of the street. Ollie looked at the shops they were passing by: independent luxury clothing brands next to a Mitre 10 hardware store that had been there her whole life, a place that seemed to only sell fancy candles, followed by a fish and chip shop and a boutique selling everything you could think of made from alpaca wool. There were all the hallmarks of a rapidly gentrifying country town.

A local busked for spare change with a beat-up guitar and a surprisingly moving cracked voice, clearly hoping for some kind of trickle down from the well-heeled tourists who crowded the streets, even on a Monday. Ollie wondered grimly if his home had been turned into an AirBnB yet as she tucked twenty bucks into his guitar case.

She’d met Audrey for brunch at a cafe that wouldn’t have seemed too out of place in central Melbourne. Exposed brick walls, hipster service staff, bloody good coffee. There were a hell of a lot more tans up here though.

Audrey was one of the only school friends she’d stayed in any kind of touch with over the years. Back at Ribbonwood High the two of them had been an unstoppable duo on the soccer field, Audrey the relentless midfielder who could always boot the ball to Ollie no matter how far up the field she was. She’d set Ollie up for probably eighty percent of the goals she’d scored, the two of them colliding in sweaty boisterous celebrations as Ribbonwood won again and again and again.

It was kind of hilarious now, looking at the refined woman across from her. Auds was Chinese Australian, hair sleek, make-up meticulous, her clothes neat and feminine. She’d been a high achiever too, just pipped at the post by Ollie’s competitive streak, something she’d tolerated with slight shock as Ollie suddenly cruised past her test scores at the age of fifteen. Since Ribbonwood wasn’t exactly bustling with diversity, Ollie - a wog - had actually understood a fraction of what Audrey had experienced when her doctor parents decided on a tree-change when their only daughter was in Year Eight. The two of them were the ethnic kids , bonding over the experience of having their lunch box contents ridiculed daily by girls named Jessica and Sarah.

In recent years they’d almost lost track of each other altogether. It was a couple of christmases ago that Ollie had met up with her finally for a drink, Audrey hiring a babysitter for the occasion and getting flushed and teary after a single glass of wine as she deplored the sacrifice of her career for a guy whose idea of a work ethic was to have an impressive title gifted to him at his dad’s company then spend all his time schmoozing younger women in the industry.

Now though, Audrey commuted three days a week into Brisbane, using the settlement from her divorce to cover a nanny. She looked incredibly content.

“Honestly, fuck men,” she’d said over her eggs florentine that morning, before she met Ollie’s eyes and started to laugh. “Well. I guess I’m preaching to the choir in this instance,” she acknowledged.

“Only if you’d said don’t fuck men.” Ollie grinned back. A quick indecent flash of Lara Bennett naked and arching beneath her made her grin impossibly wider.

When she and Audrey hugged their goodbyes, Ollie accepted an invitation to come have dinner with her family the following week. God, it actually was nice to be here for long enough to rebuild a friendship, she reflected.

It wasn’t that she didn’t have friends in Melbourne. She had extremely close workmates, two old flatmates she saw regularly, an ex-girlfriend from yonks ago that had somehow become a solidly good mate. It’s just that since she’d been home - no, not home, Ribbonwood - she’d found herself leaving their text messages on read. She’d missed a call from Sasha and two from Chelsea. She’d call them back soon, she promised herself. Life in Ribbonwood was just busy.

Her family could be so all consuming and she wanted to spend as much time as she could with Nonna, although the elderly lady was starting to sleep more and more during the day. Her nieces and nephews were ridiculously delightful. She wanted to soak up hours of conversation with her sister before her life got sideswiped by another small infant. And then, there was Lara.

She bit her lip as she walked. It had been barely two days since she’d dragged herself out of Lara’s bed and she already wanted to be back there more than she could handle. There was a mouth-shaped bruise on her shoulder that made her smile every time she got undressed, remembering Lara straight up biting her at one point as she came desperately all over Ollie’s fingers.

Ollie was a massive idiot who hadn’t even thought to leave her phone number as she’d stumbled out the next day, drunk on spectacular sex and Lara Bennett’s breathtaking body. She’d thought about it and overthought about it, trying not to crowd the woman or show quite how extremely her head was turned by her, before she’d decided she’d go and see her at the store tomorrow. Not too early on, she reminded herself, mentally counting the hours. Maybe early afternoon? She wondered if lunch breaks were a thing Lara took and if she could entice her back into that little store room, even for half a stolen hour for the taste of her kiss. God, she really was way too keen. Maybe she should wait until Wednesday instead?

She walked on, heading towards the farm ute she’d parked up at the top of the street when she felt the eyes on her. There under a broad sun umbrella at a table outside one of the cafes, sat Lara herself, alongside Tilly. Lara watched her approach, the faintest flush on her cheeks. Immediately, like an absolute dork, Ollie couldn’t fight her wide smile.

“Hey,” she said as she reached them. Lara wore a little white and navy striped t-shirt under a black pinafore smock with a touch of red lipstick that together made her look simultaneously like a slightly hip urban MILF and an impossibly young student. It was ridiculous to think she was thirty-five. Oh shit, her daughter was there; Ollie really had to stop staring at the woman. “Are you wagging school?” she asked Tilly instead.

Tilly giggled. Lara was watching Ollie back too, a look in her eyes Ollie wasn’t sure she could interpret correctly. She sat, experimentally, on the edge of the picnic bench on Tilly’s side and saw to her relief, Lara failing to bite back a smile. She swung her legs under the table fully and smiled back.

“It’s a teacher’s only day,” Tilly informed her. “Mum took me shopping for new art supplies,” she announced excitedly, pointing to the big brown paper bag already pulled open on the table next to her. Lara had a large half-drunk coffee and there was an empty plate of cake crumbs between them. Oh fuck she was pretty. Stop staring Ollie. Do not think about the sex.

“You’re an artist?” she asked Tilly instead. Tilly’s eyes got bright.

“Uh huh,” she said. “I won an art competition at school. We had to paint our favourite place on earth. I was going to paint the beach but that seemed too boring, so I painted our chicken coop instead.”

“Ah,” Ollie grinned. “Another crazy chicken lady.”

“I love them!” Tilly beamed. “They’re so cute and fluffy. I know every breed there is,” she boasted. “Mum pretends they’re hers but they’re actually mine.”

“You know you say that,” Lara spoke up for the first time, “and yet suddenly they’re mine when it comes to cleaning out the coop.”

“You’re the grown up,” Tilly explained with a shrug. “I just get the fun stuff. Like cuddling them.”

Ollie started laughing as Lara lifted her eyes skywards, her hands around her cup.

“You’ve got her there,” Ollie told Tilly. “Sounds about right.”

“You can have Stella,” Tilly said to her mother with a tone of great generosity. “She’s the head chicken,” she explained to Ollie. “She’s really small, but she’s super feisty and the boss of all the other chickens anyway.”

“She sounds like the perfect chicken for you,” Ollie told Lara. “Think of all you have in common.”

Lara eyeballed her and Tilly giggled.

“Can I please have a macaron?” she asked, suddenly shifting track. “They’ve got the blue ones in again.” Her eyes got huge as she stared over her mother’s shoulder into the shop.

“We literally just ate vanilla slice because you said it was the only thing you’d ever wanted in your whole life,” Lara told her. “Your teeth could fall out from the amount of sugar we just ate.”

“I mean,” Ollie interjected, “macarons are really little when you think about it. ”

Lara shot her a look of disbelief and Ollie smiled at her guilelessly. Tilly bounced a little on the seat beside her, her eyes beseeching.

“Is this because you want a macaron?” Lara raised her eyebrows.

“I mean not a blue one,” Ollie denied. “I’m not a savage.”

Tilly laughed.

“You really do have a sweet tooth,” Lara shook her head at her.

Ollie bit her lip and looked at her for a beat.

“I really do.”

Lara flushed extremely pink.

“ One ,” she turned to her daughter to warn her, and quickly left the table to head inside the cafe.

Tilly and Ollie grinned at each other.

“I think my mum likes you,” Tilly said curiously.

Ollie’s eyebrows hit her hairline.

“What makes you say that?” she asked cautiously.

“She saw you coming up the street and said oh shit,” Tilly told her. “Then she put her lipstick on.”

Ollie fought extremely hard not to smile.

“Well,” she said, “I am very likeable.”

“Do you like chickens?” Tilly asked her, her small sharp features making her look like a little fairy tale elf.

“Is this a trick question?” Ollie asked her.

“It’s an important one.”

“I mean, maybe I just haven’t met the right chickens,” Ollie told her. “It’s possible I could start to like them. ”

“I’ll introduce you,” Tilly decided. “Maybe we should just start with Moonbright,” she mused. “She’s an Orpington and very gentle.”

Lara returned with a plate with three macarons on them. Tilly squeaked and grabbed the blue one.

“Thanks mum!” She bit into it, making an exaggerated happy face.

Ollie reached over to the plate and Lara quickly swiped the hot pink one from beneath her fingers.

“Uh uh,” she told her, leaving her what looked like salted caramel.

“See?” Ollie told her, watching her intently as her neat white teeth sank down into the pink sugar. “You’re grateful now, aren’t you?” Lara pretended to ignore her. Neither of them looked away. “Just imagine,” she said to Lara, “if your whole day had gone by without this.”

Lara lowered her lashes. Her smile turned Ollie into liquid.

“Nice ride,” Lara teased her a few minutes later as they stopped on the way up the street beside her vehicle.

“You keep thinking I’m not a country girl,” Ollie rolled her eyes, looking at the beat up farm ute. “But it doesn’t get more country than this.”

Tilly drifted away to stare into the window of a shop filled with gleaming glass trinkets. Lara watched her for just a second, then turned abruptly to look at Ollie.

“Was the other night just a-”

“No,” Ollie interjected. “Not for me. Can we do that again soon? Please?”

Lara smirked at her. She looked a little relieved.

“Wow. You’re so cool, Ollie,” she told her. “Honestly, anyone would think-”

“That I’m dying to fuck you again?” she whispered. Lara narrowed her eyes, but she also flushed just enough to ruin the effect. “You’re crazy if you think I don’t want more of that.”

“I mean it was hard to tell,” Lara pointed out. “After all, you just left. No follow-up plans, no conversation, I don’t even have your phone number. ”

“In my defence, you were wearing very little at the time and my brain may have not been at its optimal level of function,” Ollie told her. “Give me your phone.”

Lara handed it to her.

“Uh, you need to unlock it.”

Lara huffed and grabbed it back. When she handed it to Ollie again, Ollie added herself. She typed for a second and they both heard a small ping as Ollie’s phone chimed from her back pocket. Lara cocked her head.

“Did you just text yourself?”

“Oh look at that!” Ollie pulled out her phone. She looked down at the message. “Lara Bennett,” she frowned, tapping her chin. “Whoever she is she sounds extremely keen.”

Lara grabbed for her own phone but Tilly arrived back at her side.

“Can we get a sun catcher?” she asked.

“What?” Lara looked down. “ No. ”

“They’re really very little,” Ollie started.

“Oh my god you have no control,” Lara shot back.

Ollie just smirked at her.

“See you around, you two,” she said.

“I’ll tell Moonbright you’re coming!” Tilly said chirpily and her mother gave her a sideways look.

Ollie watched them both in her rearview mirror as she drove away. She could not, for the life of her, stop smiling.