Out of Time (Face the Music Book 3) (2 page)

‘Let’s go.’ Dan picked up some condoms from the bedside table and threw them at him. ‘You’ll need to take them with you since the room will be mine.’

Mike caught two out of the three and pocketed them. Fuck that. Dan could screw in the car while he had the room all to himself and alone. He didn’t really feel like sleeping on the floor.

He lost track of the number of overpriced beers he bought. He remembered checking his phone and replying to his mum.

He couldn’t remember the band that was playing when a chick in shorts that were barely decent plastered herself to him. He didn’t make it back to the room, only to her tent so she could show him her piercing and tattoo.

By the time he did make it back to the room alone, he had no idea where Dan had gone. And he didn’t care either. He passed out on the bed, knowing that all he’d done was guarantee a shitty day tomorrow.

Chapter 2

Mike parked his mother’s car out the back of the hospice. It looked nice enough and he’d checked out the pictures online after she’d told him about it. His mother opened up the glove box. She wasn’t trying to hide the shaking of her hands now.

‘I’ve filled out the forms to transfer it to your name. No point in waiting.’

‘I have a car.’

‘I’m surprised it still runs.’ She pressed the papers into his hands. ‘Put my mind at ease.’ She smiled at him.

Another thing off her to do list. How many more things did she have to go?

‘You didn’t have to.’

‘I want everything in order. I’m not leaving you a mess.’

‘Mum …’ What could he say? ‘Thank you.’

He was not going to break down in front of her. He was not going to do that. He leaned over and hugged her, blinking fast to clear his blurry vision.
Get it together, Peterson.

‘I can do this stuff. I’m not a kid.’ He was almost twenty-six. He didn’t feel old enough to be able to deal with any of this.

‘You’re my kid and I’m trying to do the best for us both.’ She gave him a squeeze. She’d always made it work. They were a team. They had been a team. It didn’t feel like that anymore. ‘You’ve got other things to worry about.’

The second album was getting there. They’d received good press from the gig down south. He’d woken up with a hangover and one less condom in his pocket. He was ninety-nine precent sure he’d used it and not lost it. He hated that feeling. He hated waking up alone and then spending the next hour throwing up and downing paracetamol and sports drink to try and feel human.

He had to stop, but for a little while he didn’t have to think. When some chick had her hands down his pants it was easy to say yes, and then feel like a dick the next day. Which he always did.

He was becoming the kind of guy he’d always hated. The kind he imagined his father had been. A user.

His mother drew back. ‘Let’s go see what my prison looks like.’ Her voice wavered.

‘We can go home. You don’t have to do this. We can get a nurse in.’

She shook her head. ‘No. The house is packed up.’ She glanced out the window. ‘I can’t be on my own, Mike. You going away for one night made me realise that. I have stalled long enough.’

‘I won’t go away.’

She huffed out a breath. ‘Michael, you are going on tour and recording that next album.’

He’d be away for over a month with more summer festivals, and then recording in Melbourne. The guys were counting on him. He needed to be there. He wanted to be there … and he wanted to be here.

He was pulling himself apart and his mother was trying to stop that. It wasn’t working. Whatever he did the guilt would eat him up.

He didn’t say anything. Instead he got out of the car and hauled her two suitcases out of the boot. The dark blue sedan was now his—he’d put the paperwork in because that was what she wanted. He’d been wanting a new car, but not like this.

She got out and they walked up to the front doors.

It looked and smelled like a hospital. People came here to die. It was enough to make him want to turn and run. His mother signed her name, her writing no longer as neat as it had been. She sighed, as if disappointed with the result.

Then they were shown down the hallway to his mother’s new room.

It was just as sterile as the rest of the place. He stood in the doorway. ‘Are you sure about this?’

He sure as hell wasn’t, and he wasn’t the one who was going to be living here.

She nodded. ‘Let’s unpack? Unless you have other plans.’

He had no plans at all. Ed was at a wedding his new girlfriend had tricked him into attending. It was amusing to see him act so besotted. Mike was also a tiny … a lot … jealous. He’d always had a girlfriend through high school and his apprenticeship. And while at first the novelty of being single and carefree had been fun, it had worn thin and was now fraying at the edges.

‘I can spend the day with you.’

‘I don’t need supervision. That’s what the nurses are for. But I expect you to visit.’

‘I will.’ What else was he going to do? He had a little more sparky work coming up to make ends meet, and he had a couple more song ideas that he wanted to put down. He was playing the piano again after not touching it for over a year. His fingers hadn’t forgotten what to do.

They started unpacking. His mother hadn’t brought much. Clothes, a few pictures. No books because she couldn’t read them anymore. While they wouldn’t let her garden, she could still go outside. After the busy life she’d had, this all seemed very … he didn’t know … it was like being dead before it happened.

He plugged in her phone charger and set up her tablet on its stand. At least she could listen to audio books. They’d bought some last night. Him reading out the titles because she couldn’t, not easily anyway. She described it as having a black cloud right where she wanted to see.

There was a knock on the door and a nurse came in. ‘Hi Mrs Peterson, I’m Ava. I’m one of the nurses. I just wanted to stop by and see if there was anything you needed.’

Mike turned around at the overly happy voice. How could she work in a place like this and be happy? She smiled at him—it was a professional smile with just a hint of frost.

He returned it. Not thrilled with the interruption.

‘Call me Irene. This is my son Michael.’

Mike nodded at the nurse. She was a dainty thing, dark hair in a bun, brown eyes and honey brown skin. That his second thought was how easy it would be to pick her up and fuck her against the wall was all bad. He wasn’t
becoming
the kind of guy he hated, he was already there.

But she was pretty and entirely too nice for him. Too smart as well. There was a reason the nice girls, the girls he’d like as a girlfriend, were avoiding him. Women had a sixth sense about dicks, and guys who thought with their dicks, and thought of little else but where they could stick their dick. Somehow, he didn’t remember when or where he’d become that person.

Had it been a slow slide into sleaze? It must have been, because he didn’t remember making that decision. Maybe he’d been drunk at the time.

‘Mike.’ He managed to say it without looking at her in case he revealed too much about the lower levels of his mind.

‘Aren’t you good for helping your mother?’

He glanced at Ava; sure he hadn’t missed the condescending tone in her voice.

‘Mike’s always there for me.’ His mother smiled at him.

It was just him being overly sensitive about the whole thing. Apparently he was the only one not okay with his mother moving into a hospice for the last few months of her life.

She’d been very blunt when telling him that. Given him the facts so he had nowhere left to turn. Part of him was glad it was all on the table, the rest of him wanted to hide under his blankets … which is kind of what he’d been doing but he wasn’t squeezing a teddy in bed.

Ava regarded him coolly, as if she knew exactly the kind of person he was. He tried not to fidget as he held her gaze. She looked away first.

It didn’t feel like a win.

‘I’ll come back a little later and take you on a tour, if you’re up for it.’

‘I’m not bedridden yet, and I don’t plan on hiding in here either.’

Ava’s smile turned warm, but it wasn’t directed at him. ‘Good. I’ll see you later, Irene.’

Mike watched her walk away. He looked at his mother but she’d returned to hanging up her clothes. He finished unpacking the other suitcase, knowing that his mother was going to send him on his way as soon as he was done.

An hour later he walked back into the dry heat of the January heatwave. Day five of temperatures over forty degrees, the heat had to break soon. He scratched his beard, almost tempted to shave it off. He walked over to the car and unlocked it. A wave of hot air shimmered out.

He picked the papers up off the seat and sat behind the steering wheel. Her handwriting was perfect. She’d filled them out and left the pen clipped to them, 0--- ready for this moment. She’d had it all planned out.

He folded his arms over the steering wheel. Alone he let the dam break.

***

When Ava went back to see Irene she was sitting on the bed. She didn’t look so confident now her son had gone. Lazy man, ditching his mother when she needed him most.

She sounded just like her grandmother. That was more than a little disturbing. The last person she wanted to sound like was the judgemental matriarch of the family.

Ava knocked on the open door. ‘Hi.’

‘Come in.’

‘First time in care?’ People didn’t always cope with the change. For many it was a temporary stay on their road to recovery. For others their last stop.

Irene nodded. ‘And last.’

Oh.
That made Ava a little sadder. ‘I’m sure Mike will be back.’

Irene laughed. ‘I know he will.’

Ava hoped that was true. She’d seen it go the other way too many times. Out of sight and out of mind. It would never happen in her family—even though it was nice to imagine not having to deal with her argumentative grandmother on a daily basis.

‘Would you like to go for a walk around?’

‘Yes. I need to learn where everything is before my eyesight goes.’ Irene stood up. Her short blonde hair was neatly styled. She didn’t look like she was dying. That was the hardest part.

Ava took Irene through the centre. They talked about the kind of care she currently needed and what would happen. Irene was too calm about the whole thing, but her brave façade had fallen away.

‘It’s okay to be scared.’ They were standing in the shade of the veranda.

‘I’m not worried about dying. I faced that eight years ago. It was only a matter of time until it grew back. I’m scared for Mike. He gave up his dreams last time and I don’t want him to do that again. I don’t want to leave him alone.’

Ava wanted to ask about her husband, but Irene wore no ring and she’d mentioned no other siblings.

‘This wasn’t Mike’s idea?’

‘No. Far from it.’ Irene looked at her. ‘He held my hand last time. I have to let him go this time.’

This was a woman who had looked at death and decided that she was going to do it on her terms and no one else’s. Ava respected that. She’d have been kicking and screaming and showing zero regard for what others thought. Her grandmother would be horrified by the performance. She was generally horrified with everything Ava did. That she was unmarried and working as a nurse, of all things, was a terrible waste. Her father and grandmother had both suggested that she’d be better off going back to university and becoming a doctor since she wasn’t even trying to get a husband. They were hoping that if she was a doctor it would improve her prospects and more men would be interested in her.

At twenty-four she was too old and now too unqualified to be a desirable bride for the men her grandmother deemed suitable. If that meant the old busybody stopped thrusting well-connected Indian men in their thirties at her, it would be wonderful.

She wanted to be married about as much as she wanted to be bitten by a redback spider again. Which was not at all.

If Mike was the good son Irene said he was, she’d be nicer to him. He had looked rather shell-shocked, which wasn’t the expression of a man off-loading a burden. Perhaps she had misjudged him.

‘Did you want to tell me about Mike?’

Irene gave a little laugh. ‘You don’t have to try and be my friend.’

‘Maybe I’m just nosy.’ If she’d met Mike elsewhere, she’d have given herself a little time to check him out before moving on.

She liked to hear the stories of other people’s lives. The things they regretted and the things that they’d wished they’d done.

There were things she wanted to do but hadn’t dared. She’d been born in Australia, her father had been born in Australia … but her grandmother still acted as though they were living in India, and wanted her granddaughters to marry a good Indian man and not repeat her mistake of marrying an Aussie.

What Ava wanted didn’t seem to matter.

Chapter 3

When Ava got home her mother was in the kitchen. She’d obviously only just gotten home as she was still chopping up vegetables.

‘Do you need a hand?’

‘Almost done.’ Her mother diced an onion at a speed Ava had yet to master, or even come close to.

‘She could’ve done this for you.’ Ava washed her hands, ready to help.

‘Don’t complain about what can’t be changed.’

‘Hmm. It could change though, if we complained.’

Grandmother was at home all day, meddling and thinking up new ways to cause trouble instead of helping. That was a very uncharitable thought so Ava kept her mouth closed. She didn’t need the extra trouble that would come with voicing her dissent, as it would whip around and bite her firmly on the butt.

Her mother shook her head.

‘You have the patience of a saint.’ She kissed her mother’s cheek. Whereas she was a bitch; even if she didn’t say most of what she thought, she still had those thoughts. Nice people didn’t think like that.

‘I have learned to choose my battles. Did you get your new roster?’

Ava nodded. No one was going to like it but her. ‘I have to work Sundays.’

‘So no church.’ Her mother didn’t look at her.

She was disappointed. It rolled off her in waves that threatened to drown Ava. Of all the people she did disappoint, she hated hurting her mother the most.