The hemsworth effect, p.30
The Hemsworth Effect, page 30
Aimee paused. The passing streetlights flashed through the windows and lit up her face in jolts. She thought back to what Brooke had told her in the kitchen that morning. ‘She said… you do whatever you need to do for your kid.’
A beat passed as they both let Brooke’s words settle.
‘Well…’ Rob looked over at her friend. ‘Freya is lucky that she has you to help her. I know she’s grateful beyond words.’
‘She should be more than grateful. What choice did I have? She had no other option, which meant I had no other option.’ She nodded at her phone. ‘Can you text Heath for me? Just ask him if Freya’s at the party. I want to make sure.’ Then she had a sharp realisation, just as her friend picked up the phone: What if Rob saw the recent messages between Aimee and Heath and sensed they’d slept together? She wasn’t ready to have that conversation.
‘OH. MY. GOD.’
Fuck.
‘Whose almost-peen is this?’ Rob flipped the phone screen around.
Aimee almost drove into one of the fancy letterboxes. On the screen was a photo of a man’s toned torso – rippling abs and angular hip bones with a trail of scruff that led from the bellybutton down to… the area that was strategically cropped out of the picture. She knew whose almost-peen it was. And it wasn’t Heath’s.
‘You had a new message when I unlocked the phone, so I read it!’ Rob leant away to evade Aimee’s grabbing hand. ‘Who’s… Jules?’
‘He’s…’ Aimee fluttered her eyelids and reluctantly tried to answer the question.
‘The guy you told Charlie you’re hooking up with?’ Rob said with glee.
Aimee almost nosedived the car into another letterbox. ‘I knew he’d tell you!’
‘Of course he told me!’
‘I’m gonna beat him with his own guitar!’ Aimee exaggerated.
‘Well, even with the threat of a throttling, he’d still rather be here than at that Ballina New Year’s gig. You know, I think he almost cried when he realised he was gonna miss out on our secret mission. I would too. This is the coolest thing we’ve ever done.’
‘What did he tell you about my romantic situation?’
‘Ugh, Aimee. Romantic situation? You make it sound so unsexy.’ Rob cringed. ‘He wanted to see if I knew any more details, which I didn’t. And please note,’ she sat up straight, ‘I was very well-behaved after finding out that information and I didn’t probe you at all. I was being respectful.’ She held up the screen again with a wide smile and pointed at the picture.
Aimee grabbed it. ‘Yeah, real respectful,’ she deadpanned. ‘It’s Jules. Just… Jules.’ She batted away the conversation with a hand.
‘Well, I do have to say, I was a little hurt you didn’t tell me.’ She hammed up her upset but Aimee knew there was a kernel of truth to it.
‘I didn’t not tell you intentionally.’ She reached over and affectionately squeezed the back of her friend’s neck. ‘It’s just… I was… I dunno. I was a lot of things. Embarrassed. Nervous. Scared if I talked about it that it would become something it shouldn’t be… or that I’d jinx it and it’d go away. I’ve been with the same guy for twenty years! Talking about hook-ups isn’t something I’m used to!’
‘Are you saying you’re not the kind of girl who shits the bed and broadcasts it on a podcast?’
They shared a knowing smile at the in-joke.
‘Well, to make it up to me,’ Rob said, ‘can I see a face?’
‘I don’t wanna say anything more,’ Aimee tried to end the chat. ‘Because there’s really nothing more to say.’
‘I’ve almost seen his penis. Show me his face.’
‘It’s just a hook-up. It came out of nowhere and… at the end of the time-out, it’ll disappear again.’ It was all true-ish. What Aimee had with Jules was just hook-ups in a caravan. Nothing more. He was just an escape – someone who didn’t know about her problems. Someone who, without knowing much about her, made her feel more excited than she’d felt in twenty years.
Something buzzed on the plastic of the centre console and Aimee was grateful for the interjection.
‘Ooh, we got another one!’ Rob held up the Nokia that Freya had given them.
It was one of those basic mobile phones you can buy from the cigarette counter at Coles – clunky, and with an old-timey keypad. It received all the text orders and addresses. Freya told them to just drop off the orders to the addresses as people texted them in. The simple instruction made it sound so innocent – which is partly how Aimee convinced herself to do it. She was just dropping stuff off to strangers… and getting paid with wads of cash. It was easy enough.
‘I’ve always wanted a burner phone,’ Rob said. ‘Mainly just so I could talk about having a burner phone.’
‘Am I still going the right way?’
Rob flicked the cigarette butt out the window and inspected Google Maps on her iPhone. They’d headed south out of Byron and were cruising around the streets of Broken Head. ‘Keep going straight about a hundred metres. I searched the address on Street View and the house has a big white concrete fence with black bars.’
Aimee had been assessing the addresses as they were texted in – making sure there weren’t any properties she recognised. Freya had said the orders they received were all from out-of-towners – people there on holiday – but Aimee wanted to make sure. At least with the fancier homes, she was sure they definitely wouldn’t know anyone inside them.
‘A lot of these houses are almost as ridiculous as Byron Bay Westfield,’ Rob said, referring to Chris Hemsworth’s sprawling white concrete compound.
Aimee kept squinting at the numbers on the letterboxes that slowly rolled by. Rob held her hand up when she saw the big white concrete fence and started texting the owner to come outside and collect. Aimee pressed her foot on the brake and the Monaro came to a stop.
‘Hey…’ Rob reached over with one hand and squeezed the back of Aimee’s neck. ‘… Don’t let it change the way you think of her.’
Aimee paused for a second and stared up at the big white house. It was one of those mansions that was so expensive it actually looked ugly from the outside because the owners had to design it with huge fences and no front windows to ensure their privacy. It was basically a million-dollar shipping container.
The phone buzzed. ‘Come inside,’ Rob read.
Aimee scrunched up her face. ‘Like… in there? Absolutely not. Tell him to come out here.’
‘Sent.’ Rob clicked her seatbelt off.
‘Is he coming out here?’
‘No, I told him to open the gate – I wanna go inside.’ She shot Aimee a mischievous look, jumped out of the car and whacked closed the door.
Aimee killed the engine, grabbed her stuff and paced up the Pebble Tec driveway after her. She’d rather skid down the Pebble Tec driveway on her bare knees than be doing what she was about to. They could hear the vague thump of music seeping out. Through the glass double-door entrance, Aimee could see people crowded around inside, holding drinks and talking.
‘What’s with the all-white outfits?’ she observed.
‘I know! Like, they’re a problem every summer. But I feel like this summer it’s worse.’
‘White pants?’ Aimee squinted at the garments that, on her, would be a stain magnet. ‘The sheer arrogance.’
Rob pulled open the handle on one of the glass doors, breaking the seal of the house and letting the music escape like a thousand dogs sprinting out to the street.
‘I’m gonna go find our guy,’ Rob called back as she slipped inside. Her boots clopped over the giant grey tiles and her long leopard print coat disappeared into the crowd.
Aimee hung back in the hallway. It definitely wasn’t the kind of house that the people in her life hung out at but she was still paranoid about running into someone she knew. Like who? Town weirdos who gossiped. Narissa from the bank. She could tell the place was a rental. Modern furniture, generic artworks. No photographs or personal items. Kind of how her apartment would look when it was eventually listed on Airbnb. A toilet flushed and a timber sliding door rolled open behind her. Before she could move, the person had barged into her.
‘Ugh!’ Aimee shrieked as the guy placed a wet hand on her shoulder to walk past. She was on edge. It was like a haunted house – only, the ghosts and mauled bodies springing out of the dark corridors could be people she knew.
The guy laughed at Aimee’s horror. ‘It’s not piss!’ He held up his wet hand and yelled over the music. ‘It’s water! I just washed my hands!’ He nodded to the basin in the bathroom.
She moved further down the hall to find some space away from the mayhem. Over the crowd, she could see a sprawling living room with soaring floor-to-ceiling glass doors and a fully-grown indoor palm tree that would had to have been craned in when the house was being built. Brooke would’ve been extremely jealous of the feat. Aimee squeezed and shuffled past people with breathy apologies until she reached the kitchen and took a seat on a tall timber stool at the marble-topped kitchen island. Her eyes had locked onto a giant canvas print of a highland cow – an accessory that everyone who wanted the Byron aesthetic seemed to have. Staring at the animal’s trademark long tousled fringe, she realised it kinda looked like Bodhi the van guy.
‘Aimee?’
She whipped around. Jules was standing on the opposite side of the bench. Her heart instantly started beating faster. With wide eyes, she worked hard to get her brain to catch up with what she was seeing. ‘You!’ she stated, hoping her horror would be misconstrued as surprise.
‘Me,’ he laughed. ‘And… You.’
Aimee closed her eyes as she recited the excuse she’d formulated earlier while getting ready, should she accidentally run into someone she knew. ‘One of the girls from the TV show was here and she texted and asked if I could pick her up.’ Her voice sounded strained and anxious.
‘Well, that’s very thoughtful of you on New Year’s Eve.’
‘What are you doing here? This is… far away from your caravan.’ She tried not to cringe at herself for sounding awkward.
Jules laughed and poured whisky into a short, heavy-looking crystal glass. ‘Production party, remember?’ He leant over the bench to give her a quick kiss before putting the lid back on the bottle.
‘Oh, right.’ She shook her head. ‘Yeah… I just… thought it was on the Gold Coast.’
‘Nah. Down here. Someone rented the house.’ He smirked. ‘I sent you a photo earlier.’
Aimee covered her face. ‘You did send me a photo. I was driving when it came through… that’s why I haven’t responded yet.’
Things felt weird between them. Maybe it was just the circumstances of the night. Aimee felt like there were so many things she was trying to hide from so many people. Hide drugs from Jules, hide Jules from Rob. She’d rarely been out in public with Jules. Apart from the day they met in the bookstore and their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it date at the annoying health cafe, they only ever really hung at his caravan. When they were together, it was always just them. In their own world.
Standing in the kitchen of a random million-dollar mansion, Aimee was aware the chemistry she usually felt with Jules had somehow evaporated – as if the walls of their private universe had fallen down and the winds of reality had blown out the spark. Now, all they had was random small talk. Aimee felt like she was forcing chit-chat with a colleague she had drunkenly slept with at the office Christmas party. She put the feeling down to the secret double life she was trying to keep under wraps that night.
Her phone buzzed and she glanced at the home screen. It was Rob, saying she was on her way back to the entrance. Aimee needed to get out quick. There was no way she was letting Rob near Jules after the almost-peen pic. And there was no way she was letting Jules near Rob for as long as there was a bumbag strapped to her waist filled with Ziplock bags of an illegal substance.
Aimee shook her head quickly and raced to talk, holding up her phone. ‘That’s my friend – the girl from the show, who I’m picking up. She’s out the front, at the car. We gotta get her back to the New Year’s party.’
She jumped off the stool and was about to run off when Jules grabbed her by the hand and spun her around with a laugh. ‘Am I seein’ you tomorrow?’
Aimee felt like there was an invisible clock ticking down and she only had seconds to escape. ‘I’ll message you later!’ she called as she scurried back down the hallway and her body blended in with the crowd. Just as she was about to make her escape, the front door swung open.
‘Freya’s mum!’
Aimee almost shrieked at the sight. Luna was standing in the entrance with a cameraman. ‘Hi?’ was all she could manage as she tried to mentally consolidate all her worlds that were colliding.
‘How did you get invited to this?!’ Luna laughed. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that, babe.’
‘Um, well…’ Aimee shuffled back as the cameraman repositioned to get both girls in shot. ‘Oh, no – I can’t stay and film,’ she hastily told the crew, feeling the clock count down faster. ‘I was just dropping someone off.’
‘Oh, who?’
‘Ah.’ Aimee squinted, but Luna didn’t wait for a response.
‘I don’t know anyone here – just a guy I’m fucking,’ she said nonchalantly.
‘Oh, so you and Bodhi… not together anymore?’ Aimee cursed herself for asking a question and delaying her exit more.
‘No, we are.’ Luna laughed. ‘By the way, thanks again for saving me during my meltdown at Freya’s party. It was just a phoenix moment. Go down in flames, then rise again.’
‘Well, that’s very Byron of you,’ Aimee rushed, desperate to get away from the cameras and out of the house. Then a thought snuck into her mind. ‘Wait, have you seen Freya tonight?’ she asked, a little too directly. ‘Because you came from Brooke’s, right?’
Luna laughed, as if recalling an inside joke. ‘Oh my god, when Nina and Brooke found out I was invited to a party where famous people would be, they basically kicked me out and told me to get here with a camera. Ever since most of the bars and restaurants banned the show from filming, Nina’s desperate for parties to film that aren’t just at Brooke’s house.’
‘But you saw Freya before you left?’
A voice called out from down the hall and Luna’s head snapped to look. ‘OK, babe, I gotta get in there!’ She kissed Aimee on the cheek. ‘You should come on the pod again!’ The camera followed her into the crowd.
Aimee paused for a second before she remembered what she needed to do: get the hell out.
When she reached the bottom of the driveway and threw her body into the driver’s seat of the Monaro, she felt like she hadn’t taken a breath the entire time she’d been inside. The sound of Rob’s boots clopping on the concrete echoed down through the dark.
‘Sorry that took a while.’ She flopped into the passenger seat and slammed the door. ‘I got the feeling it was a famous person’s house, so I had to take a photo of myself in their bed.’ A white light lit up the dark as Rob swiped open her phone to reveal a photo of herself swathed in the owner’s expensive-looking cream sheets. ‘Just a second.’ She clicked her seatbelt in and picked up the burner phone. ‘I’ll put the next address in Google Maps.’
Aimee held her hands up and closed her eyes. ‘Look, we’re not doing any more deliveries tonight. It’s too risky. I just ran into someone I know.’
Rob’s jaw dropped and she leant over to look up at the mansion through Aimee’s window. ‘Who do you know in houses like that?’
‘Just… One of the girls from the show was there. With a cameraman. That was way too dangerous.’
Rob held up the burner phone. ‘But all these people are expecting deliveries tonight.’
‘It’s cocaine, not milk. It won’t expire.’ Aimee started the engine and it let out a roar. ‘I have an idea.’
Rob cackled at the unintentionally cool moment. ‘Ooh ahh. You little villainess. C’mon. Do that again but this time while lighting a cigarette.’
Aimee swatted away the pack Rob was holding up.
‘C’mon, smoke. All the cool villains do it.’
FORTY-ONE
‘The Stevie?’ a guy asked, a little hesitantly. He had one of those annoyingly neat haircuts that big city finance bros have. Probably went to a private school in Sydney when he was younger and now worked at one of the Big Four. The kind of guy who was always a dick to waiters.
Aimee and Rob sat before him in deck chairs behind a card table while the regular Sunday market nonsense carried on around them. They sipped on frozen cokes out of giant yellow cups that they’d purchased from the Night Owl down the street and smiled at the nervous finance bro, letting him dangle for a few moments and making him question if he was at the right place. A paper sign was sticky taped to the front of the table with the stall name scrawled on it: Cassette Collective Co-op. Laid out on top were the products. The afternoon sun brought out the scuffs and scratches on the well-worn plastic cases. You wanted eighties hits? You got ’em. Tom Jones. Diana Ross. Lots of those random compilation tapes with lame titles like, Thru The Roof! Best of the Eighties!
But customers only seemed to be making one request.
‘Ah… someone told me to come here and ask for The Stevie?’ the finance bro said again, scrunching his face a little.
Aimee reached under the table, pulled out a copy of Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation and opened the case to make sure the right item was inside: a little zip-locked bag of white powder. ‘It’s a classic.’ She held it out with a smirk.
‘Eight dollars.’ Rob held out her hand and the guy passed over a tidy wad of fifties. She flicked through the notes and counted three-hundred dollars, then shoved it in her bum bag. ‘Enjoy the tunes.’
The guy tucked the tape into the side pocket of his chinos shorts and walked away while Rob giggled to herself.
‘You’re drunk with power.’ Aimee sipped her frozen coke. ‘And you’re also way too proud of yourself for coming up with that code word.’
