Page 15 of After the Siren

Chapter Eight

If someone had asked Theo a year ago where he thought he’d be the following New Year’s Eve, the answer would not have been a house party at Jake Cunningham’s place.

But here he was, knocking on the door of a dilapidated bungalow in Coburg.

Maybe Jake wasn’t as unbearable as Theo had first thought.

Or maybe Theo was building up a tolerance. Like microdosing arsenic.

At least the New Year’s Eve party had given him an excuse to escape his family.

It hadn’t been bad , exactly. It just always felt as though there was something they were all pointedly not talking about (his choices, his ex-girlfriend, him moving back to Sydney).

A fretful, unfair part of him was worried that Eva might spill the beans about the incident that had landed him in hospital.

She’d promised she wouldn’t, but he wasn’t certain.

He hadn’t spent proper time with Eva in years, and some days she felt like a stranger.

On top of the usual prickle of parental disapproval, he kept thinking about coming out.

Maybe it had been the conversation with Priya, but he turned it over in his mind, again and again.

He didn’t think his parents would react poorly .

But it would be one more item on the list of things about Theo to be accepted , or indulged.

It would be worse if he were really estranged from his parents, he knew that, but that didn’t stop the way things were from feeling fraught.

He knew they loved him, but they still looked at him like they didn’t understand him at all.

He’d stopped talking about the things that mattered to him until they didn’t really have anything to say to one another. They didn’t really know him anymore.

The night of the incident, even if they’d been in town, he still would have called Priya for help. Probably even if they’d been in the house with him.

He shook his head. These were not New Year’s party thoughts.

There was a doorbell, but someone had pasted a sticky note above it that read fucked , so Theo knocked.

‘It’s open,’ someone yelled from inside. ‘Come in, turn left.’

Theo stepped into a tiled hallway with a worn runner that had definitely come from Ikea and stopped. Blinked.

There was a shrine to the Virgin Mary in a nook next to the door, complete with one of those waxy statues wearing a baby-blue robe and an expression of blank benevolence.

It stood on a lace doily alongside a set of rosary beads and a couple of candles in pink plastic holders.

All standard (though unexpected in this house).

What was less standard was the array of other objects: Falcons footy cards, several seashells, a battered green rosette and a scattering of middling origami.

Theo wondered if he was dreaming. Maybe his mind had merged the homes of various elderly relatives with what he’d imagined Jake’s house to be like. Maybe his parents had asked one question too many and he’d had some sort of stress blackout.

‘Don’t worry,’ Jake said, materialising next to him. He was wearing fireworks-pattern board shorts and nothing else. ‘You brought beer, so she approves.’

‘I ... Do I want to know?’

‘It was here when we moved in, so we just left it.’

‘Hey, bro,’ Paddy said, joining them in front of the little oratory. Theo handed him the beers; he wasn’t going to drink any of them, but it would have felt rude to show up empty-handed. ‘Thanks. Nice of you to say hi.’ Paddy gestured at the statue.

‘That’s a lot.’

‘Felt weird to chuck it out.’

‘That ... I get it.’ Good to know the tenets of a Christian childhood crossed cultural barriers.

‘Mainly it’s to stop Paddy fucking anyone in the hall,’ Xen said, coming up to join them. ‘Hey, Stavs.’ He pulled Theo into a friendly hug.

Paddy snorted. ‘Maybe she’d be into it.’ He ducked past them to greet a couple of newcomers before Theo could reply.

Theo followed Xen and Jake deeper into the house.

It was exactly what he would have expected from Jake, Xen and Paddy: huge TV, giant sectional couch, wall-to-wall Ikea.

There were a handful of Falcons players in the living room – mainly the younger guys and several of the AFLW players.

He could have amused himself guessing whose friends were whose; there were definitely some people who were too cool to be there for anyone other than Paddy.

Jake and Xen got pulled aside by some people Theo didn’t know, so Theo joined a group that included Tommy and Raze.

He didn’t know any of the AFLW players well.

He’d spotted for the captain, Gabriella D’Ambrosio, a few times during early morning gym sessions.

He knew a few of the others from the sort of casual chats you had in between sets or when you were both making a cup of tea at the same time.

They were all friendly, but he had the sense that they were a little wary about the men’s team. Probably with good reason.

He came into the conversation in time to join a spirited argument about indie pop. He found an unexpected ally in one of the AFLW players, who was rocking a lot of facial glitter and the most impressive mullet Theo had ever seen.

‘I’m Dex,’ the player said in a lull in the conversation. ‘They/ them.’

Theo took the hand they offered. Dex held on just long enough to let Theo know that they weren’t not interested.

He didn’t find it hard to smile back. ‘Theo. He/him.’

‘Ooooh, you’re Theo. Interesting.’ Dex gave him a once-over.

‘What?’

Dex shrugged. ‘Nothing, just heard about you.’

‘That’s alarming.’

‘Dex is usually pretty alarming,’ one of the other players chimed in. Ya?mur Kaya, Theo remembered. She was wearing denim shorts and a crop top that read Fuck NYE.

‘Theo, this is Drips, she’s my least favourite teammate,’ Dex said.

Drips – Theo had questions about that nickname – rested her chin on Dex’s shoulder. ‘Mean. Why are you alarming this nice boy, Dexy?’

‘I just said I’d heard of him,’ Dex protested. ‘Good things only.’ They tipped their head towards Gabby. ‘Gabs likes you, and Paddy hasn’t said anything that bad about you.’

‘Wow, good to know.’

It actually was good to know. Theo knew he’d gotten a couple of black marks against his name with Paddy.

They slipped into easy conversation about the AFLW season.

The party, overall, was more chill than Theo had expected it to be.

There was a very aggressive Mario Kart tournament happening in the living room, but nobody was going too hard on the substance front (at least, not obviously).

The sliding doors at the back had been thrown open to connect the open-plan living room to a covered deck and the backyard.

The playlist had clearly been put together by people with diverse and divergent musical tastes, but it was kind of working.

Theo stuck with the group of players, drinking kombucha while everyone else drank beer and got louder and looser in increments. He got pulled into the Mario Kart tournament eventually.

‘Should have known you’d be fucking good at this,’ Paddy griped as Theo emerged victorious from the first race.

Theo lost the cup to Jake, who was the sort of player who moved his whole body as he played, his shoulder pressing into Theo’s every time he leaned to one side.

Theo maintained that Jake had deliberately jostled his elbow at a crucial juncture, but he had to take the L.

He surrendered his controller and went to grab another kombucha, lingering for a moment in the empty hallway, taking a deep breath.

He was hit by a sudden feeling of dislocation.

Everything had changed so much in a year.

When he blinked, he could almost catch snatches of last New Year’s.

Sarah’s hand in his, pulling him out onto the balcony to watch the fireworks.

The pulse of the bass. The flickering of the coloured lights in her friend’s Kirribilli penthouse.

Increasingly incoherent voice messages from Priya and Rachel, demanding that he go out with them after.

Thinking, This will be my year, this year will be better , as golden starbursts blossomed and fell into the dark water, light pouring in an endless waterfall off the Harbour Bridge .

His chest tightened. He headed for the backyard rather than the group he’d been talking to.

There were a few people smoking outside and a couple sitting on the grass, wrapped up in each other.

Theo ducked around the corner of the house and found it quiet, away from the glow of the outdoor lights.

The only seating option was one of those ridiculous swinging love seats, so he lowered himself onto that and focused on his breathing, counting in and out, then on the feeling of the cold bottle against his fingers, then the points where his thighs touched the seat.

There were coloured fairy lights wrapped around the frame of the seat. He counted those, too.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out there when he heard footsteps – a few minutes, maybe. He straightened as Jake rounded the corner and stopped.

‘Hey, this is my hiding spot,’ Jake said.

‘Sorry.’ Theo made to get up, but Jake waved him back down.

‘It’s all good, but you gotta share.’ Jake dropped down onto the seat beside Theo, sending it rocking, then stretched his legs out. ‘And you gotta tell me why you’re hiding.’

‘I’m not hiding.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Jake rocked the seat again.

‘Why are you hiding?’

Jake crossed one ankle over the other and took a sip of his beer. ‘My ex and I got together on New Year’s the year before last,’ he said eventually, picking at the edge of the label on the bottle with his thumbnail.

‘Oh.’ Theo felt like he was intruding, again, but Jake had told him to stay. He suddenly wanted to know what the deal had been with Jake’s ex: his name, what he’d been like, why they’d broken up. Not that he was going to ask any of that.