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Joq clicked to a video of Finn trying to leave his house in Byron, his mother and his sister with him, the sister telling the reporters to “Fuck off!” while Finn looked stoic yet terrified in the middle of their huddle.
He heard George make a guttural sound behind him. Joq slammed his laptop shut. He looked up. George was breathing loudly, and he seemed angry, yes, but upset too.
“He’ll—
“Don’t,” George said and went for the door, grabbed his coat, keys, pulled on his boots and left.
When George still wasn’t back the next morning, it finally dawned on Joq he’d gone to see Finn. To console him.
Joq didn’t know how to feel about that. Pissed off, certainly, that old self-righteous anger raising its head again. It was almost becoming a comfort.
It was a feeling that deflated suddenly and thoroughly when he finally got a text from George twenty-four hours after he’d walked out the door.
I know what you did.
Joq felt all the life drain out of him. He wished he’d never done it. He wanted to take it back. He had no idea how he’d fix this. He typed and erased several messages. By the time he finally sent one line, I can explain, the message bounced. Blocked.
And it was not George he spoke to about where they went next, it was George’s lawyer.
34
His new apartment was clean, bright, open-plan and airy. It was also smaller with a shared pool and gym. Joq didn’t mind, he’d never been into the pool as much as George and, as he’d thought bitterly since the whole thing went down, as much as George and Finn together. He heard through the grapevine George had sold the place, where he lived now a mystery. Where he was now also a mystery. He hadn’t been in the stadium: “on leave” the only explanation that’d been given.
Joq had a pretty good idea that leave was happening in Byron Bay. He tried not to think about it. He felt like shit about what he’d done, and that feeling had been cemented when George’s lawyer presented him with a settlement document—effectively ending their de-facto relationship with a pay out and a request to be out of the place by the end of the week. Joq still had the cheque; he didn’t think he’d cash it, the whole thing felt too shitty.
So, he was surprised when he got a message from a private number to meet up at a dive bar in St Kilda signed off, Creed.
Joq had to snort. Really? The unceremonious lawyer, paperwork, removal truck at ass o’clock exactly seven days after George left didn’t tip him off there was nothing but frosty animosity between them from now on? Oh, yes, signing off Creed would do it.
He wasn’t going to go. What was there to say?
Well, actually, he thought the day after receiving the message, and the day before they were set to meet, there was a lot to fucking say. He woke up pissed off and replied: See you then. He stopped himself from writing Nord in a fit of pettiness.
The bar was dark when he walked in, the early afternoon sunshine muted through the cracked blinds. There were a few people on one side, in shadows, a lady playing a poky near them, the bar on the far side empty. Joq sat on a bar stool on the empty side.
“What can I get ya?”
“Schooner of whatever pale you’ve got on tap,” Joq said and put his wallet on the bar.
The guy brought his drink. Joq tapped his card. He took a sip and ignored the sound of the door opening, the jangle of the blinds clapping against the glass.
George cleared his throat. Joq looked up. He was tanner, his hair even longer, and underneath the carefully concealed fury radiating off him, he looked better and more relaxed than he had in a long time. Joq guessed marathon fucking a twenty-one-year-old would do that.
“Have a seat,” Joq said.
“This won’t take long,” George replied.
Joq turned to face him.
“What can I get ya?” the bartender asked.
“Nothin’,” George shot him a smile. “Thanks.”
The bartender wandered off, his wide eyes saying he knew exactly who he’d just spoken to. George waited until he was on the other side of the bar before he spoke again.
“I wanted to say this in person so you didn’t have any evidence.”
Joq scoffed. “Odd to come to a bar to do it if you’re not gonna have a drink.”
