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Reunion
by Nicola
Rating: PG-13
Billy sat on the curb outside the house he had grown up in. Ramsay Street remained maddeningly unchanged. He'd bet that even in twenty years time he could come back and still feel precisely the same as he had done when he'd lived here. He'd always be sixteen in Ramsay Street; horny and hormonal and restless. He wished he had a cigarette—something to do with his hands—he wished smoking didn't cause him to cough up a lung. I seem to be racking up the bad habits recently, he thought darkly.
Someone was blocking his sun. He squinted up, finding tanned legs and a short skirt a few feet away. He couldn't see her face.
"What are you doing here?" she said impatiently. "This is private property."
"I'm sitting in the gutter. You wanna bust me for that?" He watched her hands move to her hips. He could imagine the pursed lips, the flick of hair.
"Who are you?" she said, impatience riling into annoyance. Nosy, too, Billy noted.
"More importantly, who are you?" he mumbled. He had a pretty good idea. If there was one thing he had learned, it was that fate had a sense of humour.
"Isabelle Hoyland," she said resolutely, as if she were introducing herself on Australian Idol.
"Bingo," he muttered. He stood up, finally coming face to face with the infamous Izzy.
"I'm Bill Kennedy." He extended a hand. "You're the other woman. I'm the son. It's about time we met, don't you think?"
Billy was gratified to see colour rush to her cheeks. She smiled tightly, recovering herself. "Billy. I've heard so much about you." She slipped her hand into his, shaking it woodenly.
"I've heard quite a lot about you, too."
Her laughter was brittle. "All of it lies," she said. She tossed her hair again, and he saw that she was fighting the urge to fidget.
Billy looked away, exhaling heavily. He felt profoundly caught between wanting to laugh and wanting to scream. Instead, he asked, "you know where I can get a drink around here these days?"
She raised an eyebrow at him. "It's not even midday," she said archly.
"So I'm guessing Lou's pub is out." He refocused his gaze on her face. She looked conflicted. He wondered briefly what would win out: suspicion or curiosity. "I guess I'll be drinking alone in my hotel room again," he continued, "like the sad old bastard that I am. Add a guitar and I'm just like my old man."
It came to her suddenly, the way niggling little things tend to (the brain continuing to work away while you're . . . otherwise engaged). "Anne!" she exclaimed. "I knew I knew it," she muttered triumphantly. Isabelle had listened to so many boring stories, memorized so many mundane facts in preparation for her role as The New Mrs. Karl Kennedy. It was gratifying to know she had retained at least some of that learning—even if she'd failed the final exam, the part where she actually became Karl's wife.
Izzy rolled over, burrowing further underneath the bedcovers. She felt mellow . . . sated. A little drunk, too. "What happened to her?" she asked. Her hand crept over Bill's chest, using her fingertips to lightly trace patterns. He had tensed at the sound of Anne's name, and Izzy had the thrilling sense that this was a sore point.
"What d'you mean?" he said flatly. "She's in Queensland."
"And you're here," Izzy prompted.
". . . We're not joined at the fucking hip," he muttered. "We're not married."
A smile sprang to Izzy's lips. "And that made it okay." Her hands were teasing lower. "For you to cheat on her."
Bill sat up in bed abruptly. He pushed Izzy off him, so that she fell back into the soft mattress. Her eyes gleamed cat-like as she curled her body around the duvet. "Because this isn't the first time," she finished, "is it?"
"You don't know the first thing about me and Anne," he said coldly.
"And you don't know the first thing about me and Karl," she shot back quickly. Stepped right into that one, didn't you? she thought cruelly, triumphantly.
There was a tense silence, and then Bill sighed. "I thought she was cheating on me," he said quietly. "There was this guy at work. She used to talk about him all the time. Roger said this"—he mimicked, pulling a face—"Roger said that, Roger's so smart, Roger's so funny. Except, it turned out . . ." He slid back down into bed beside Izzy, although he didn't reach out to touch her. "It turned out I'm a paranoid tool and she's a fucking saint."
"Things fall apart sometimes," she said.
He shot her a look. "You're not. You're not gonna make this about you and him. You're not gonna make me understand." He let out a deep, angry breath. "You trashed my parents' marriage."
"And did it make you feel better?" She was surprised at how much anger she, too, felt. "To come here and tell me that? To fuck me and then tell me that?"
He couldn't help but smile. "No," he said sourly, "not so much."
Izzy relaxed into a smile. "You should go back to Anne," she said, lulling herself back into her earlier state of surface contentment. "Lie to her, buy her flowers, make it better."
Bill leaned closer. "That's your advice?"
"That's my advice," she murmured. The breath fluttered in her throat as his lips covered hers once more.
September 2005
Note: for Jess
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