Tiptoe Through the True Bits

Oh Elise, it doesn’t matter what you say...

I fumbled in my pocket for my cellphone as it vibrated and played that oh-so-familiar song. The number that flashed up was not one I was familiar with. It took me quite a while to come to the decision of answering it.

“Hello?” I said softly. I almost expected it to be Gerard, telling me he was going to be late to meet me in the park as we had planned. I twirled a daisy around in my fingers.

“Hello, is that Elise LeBeau?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded official and important.

I straightened up and uncrossed my ankles, leaning my back against the tree behind me. “Yes, it is.”

“Miss LeBeau, this is Corey Farndale, from Farndale and Roth,” he said, as if he had said it a thousand times before. Lawyers.

“Oh,” I said, shuffling as Gerard came into view. “Hi.”

“Elise, I’m just ringing to invite you down to our office tomorrow afternoon if you’re available, to discuss the payments of your parents’ assets.”

My parents never had too many assets. There was the house, of course, but that was burnt to the ground. And everything in it, which of course also perished. And the car, which I already have. Aside from that, they had nothing.

But the insurance was a different story. My parents obviously planned ahead and, knowing that I would have nothing should they die, took out large life insurance policies. And there was the house and contents, too. I wasn’t too sure of the exact sum I was due to inherit but I imagined it being a fair amount.

Not that it bothered me all too much, of course. I’d have given it all back to have my parents here.

“Oh, right,” I said. “Sure. I finish school at three, so I can be there for half past?”

“That would be perfect,” said Corey. “We’ll see you tomorrow, Miss LeBeau.”

“Okay, great. Thanks.” I felt really strange when I hung up the phone, just holding it in my hand and staring into space for a moment. The past 24 hours had had a profound effect on me. It seemed as though I’d started to talk again, opened up to another human being and straight away all of these things had happened to me at once. As if I was actually an adult now. It was all becoming a bit too much.

Thankfully, as I glared at some strands of grass beneath me, and bit my lip, and ripped apart this poor daisy, I caught a glimpse of Gerard as he approached me beneath ‘our’ tree. And just seeing him made everything seem a little better.

“Hey, beautiful,” he grinned, sitting on the grass beside me and pecking me affectionately on the cheek. “How are you?”

“Things are weird today,” I said with a sigh, leaning my head against his shoulder. My hand felt for his and our fingers entwined. I closed my eyes for a second. “I didn’t get the morning after pill. I couldn’t do it. They put them right next to the baby food and stuff. Can you believe that?” I made a small grunt of discontent and he kissed the top of my head.

“That’s okay, El,” he said, but he didn’t sound too sure. “Whatever happens, happens.”

I nodded a little and sighed again. A small silence passed, in which I picked a fresh daisy from the grass and began to twist it around in my spare hand. “I took a test though, and it was negative,” I told him.

“Oh, okay,” he replied evenly. “You should probably take another one in a couple of weeks just in case. You get false negatives all the time in the early stages, apparently.”

I stifled a small laugh at his impossible knowledge of these things. He seems to know just about everything about everything. Smart ass.

“Hey, don’t laugh at me!” he said, headbutting me softly. “My cousin got a negative reading on a test and then three months later the doctor told her she was pregnant. Happens all the time.”

“Sure,” I smiled, kissing his shoulder lightly.

He laughed again and squeezed my hand. “Whatever happens, El, we’re going to be okay,” he said gently.

I nodded. “I know we will.” Another small silence passed. This time I closed my eyes contentedly and thought about my phone call. “I have to meet with my dad’s lawyers tomorrow,” I said eventually. “About the insurance money.”

“Oh, right. Want me to come with you?”

I nodded. “Yes please.”

“Of course,” he replied, kissing the top of my head. “Just come pick me up after school.”

I liked that Gerard didn’t drive. In a strange way I kind of liked him depending on me. I know it’s all backwards, but I guess maybe that’s why I enjoyed it. We weren’t ones for convention or tradition. We made our own rules, and even then we only loosely followed them.

“Well,” Gerard said eventually with a great sigh. “I guess we should get going. Don’t want to miss our appointment.”

“Heaven forbid,” I muttered, as we both rose to our feet and headed for my car, hand in hand every step of the way.

--

Smug. That’s the only word to accurately describe the look on Dr. Gould’s face as he glanced from me to Gerard and back again. We were still holding hands as we took our chairs opposite him.

“Good afternoon, Gerard,” he beamed. Gerard gave him a small nod. “And good afternoon, Elise.”

“Afternoon, Doc,” I replied.

I’ll admit I was looking for a little more of a reaction from him than a raised eyebrow and a small laugh. I wanted him to fall off of his chair in surprise, if I’m completely honest. But no. He just raised his eyebrow and laughed and made a note in his book before turning back to us.

“And I suppose you two are together now,” he stated, without even a hint of inflection. He’d planned this from the very beginning. From the moment I first laid eyes on Gerard in the waiting room and he’d caught sight of my interest in him, this had been his plan. What a dirty trick. Brilliant, of course. But dirty.

“Yup,” Gerard replied, holding up our entwined hands.

“Well, I have to say, I am extremely pleased,” Dr. Gould announced, rubbing his hands together. “With myself, of course, for this brilliant plan I have devised.”

We both laughed lightly. “We knew about your plan from the start, Doc,” I told him.

“Well who cares, if it worked?” he grinned in response, tapping his pen against his paper. “I mean, Elise, you’re speaking again, and how wonderful it is to hear you. And Gerard, I never thought I’d see the day you walked into my office with a smile and a beautiful girl on your arm. You’re both doing so well. You’re so good for each other. Frankly I’m thrilled.”

We both blushed a little and Gerard began to play with my fingers.

“I should hope,” the doctor continued, as he picked up his pen again, “that I won’t be seeing either of you ever again.” He looked up, still smiling. “No offence.”

Upon leaving his office we decided that a celebration was in order. It had been a crazy 24 hours and we were both exhausted from it so we decided to rent a movie and order Chinese food. But first I had to collect some clothes and my toothbrush from my aunt’s house. I made Gerard stay in the car, to make life easier for everybody involved, as I grabbed my stuff.

As usual, I was greeted by a new au pair (not even a saint could last more than a couple of weeks with my hideous cousin so the turnover is fairly high) cooking up some chicken nuggets for Tom while watching some Mexican gameshow. She looked quite alarmed as I stormed into the house, as it had been several days since I’d last been back and she had no idea whether I lived here or whether I was a burglar. Either way she just watched with mild surprise as I crossed the kitchen and headed upstairs.

Of course Tom, sensing my presence, was out of his room like a shot and hung around my bedroom doorway for a moment as I shoved things into a backpack. I could feel his little eyes watching me. The bastard.

“Oh good, are you finally leaving?” he asked me. “About time. I hate having you around here. Nobody wants you here, you freak.”

I looked up at him and smiled. This seemed to knock him off-kilter and his grin faltered on his chubby disgusting face. “Go fuck yourself, Tom,” I said clearly, and then pushed right past him, ran down the stairs before he could react, and straight out of the door. I’m sure by this point the au pair probably assumed I had cased the joint, but I left her to it.

“That was quick,” Gerard commented as I hopped back into the car.

I threw my bag on the backseat, next to my school satchel. “Yeah well I don’t want to spend any more time that in absolutely necessary in that hell hole,” I grumbled, clicking in my safety belt and pulling off the drive.

“It doesn’t seem so bad,” he shrugged, but I gave him a dark look to shut him up.

“It is a living nightmare,” I said firmly. “They are monsters. That kid just... argh.” I shook my head to display my loss for words. There are no words to sum up pure evil. “He is the devil,” I finally said. “The fucking devil.”

Gerard nodded and placed a hand on my thigh. “Okay, babe, okay.” He was laughing a little but I could tell he knew what I meant. He always knew what I meant. And I loved him for it.

Have you ever felt like you have a soulmate? I never used to believe in them, before I met mine. And the brilliant thing, the thing that makes it all really real, is the fact that he didn’t even have to talk to me to fall in love with me. I could see in his eyes, as I drove back to his house and caught glimpses at him catching glimpses at me, that he adored me. There was a glimmer there. And that glimmer was love. Nothing more to it. We were just a couple of kids in love.

Gerard’s parents were having dinner with a friend and Mikey was in his room with Amberlyn when we got back to the house, so Gerard and I headed downstairs.

“Home sweet home,” I grinned, throwing my bags and then myself onto Gerard’s bed. It was possibly the most comfortable bed I’d ever experienced. Springy but soft in perfect measures. I could have lay in that bed all day and been perfectly content.

Gerard just smiled and lay down beside me, his head on the pillow next to mine. He stared at the side of my head for a moment. I turned to him and laughed lightly.

“What are you looking at?” I asked with a playful scowl, in my best cheesy American cop drama voice.

Gerard grinned and wrapped his arms around me. “I just can’t believe how much I love you,” he said softly, kissing my cheek.

My stomach flipped over and over and I felt my cheeks redden. I couldn’t get enough of him. Being around him made every moment incredible, and saying things like that just made me feel like I was on the best drug in the world. “I guess I love you a bit, too,” I replied, kissing him again, this time on the mouth. It was a closed-mouth kiss but it lasted a while. It was perfect. He was perfect.

He sighed as we parted and rested his head on my chest. We were silent for a while.

“Hey, El?” he said eventually.

“Yeah?”

He shuffled around and stood up and crossed the room. I leant onto my elbows to watch him. He walked back towards the bed with his guitar, and handed it to me. I sat up.

“Sing to me,” he grinned, sitting beside me. “I want to hear you sing.”

I laughed nervously and shook my head. “I’m not the best singer,” I blushed, pushing my hair behind my ear.

“I don’t care,” he replied. “Just sing to me.”

I sighed in exasperation and took the guitar off of him. Truth was, I wasn’t a bad singer. I was never anywhere near as mind-blowingly good as Gerard, of course, but I knew how to hold a tune. My mother had been a singer, as well as everything else, so I always used to love singing with her. I hadn’t sung a word since the fire.

I didn’t want to sing the same old song. I wanted a new song, to mark this new point in my life. So as I tuned the guitar I tried to think of the perfect song to sum up my feelings at that moment.

“Okay,” I smiled, giving the instrument a satisfactory strum. I glanced at Gerard beside me. “You ready?”

He nodded enthusiastically and I giggled. I felt nervous because I wanted him to like it. I wanted so badly for him to like it. But in my heart of hearts I knew he would like it no matter what because I was singing it for him.

“Hand in glove, the sun shines out of our behinds. Not it’s not like any other love, this one is different because it’s us...”

I could almost hear his face creak as he broke into a grin. My acoustic, gentle version of the song in my wispy, cautious voice sounded a little alien, almost nothing like the original, but he seemed to be enjoying it the whole way through. Just as I got to “the good life is out there somewhere...” when I heard the basement door open and promptly stopped silent, whipping my head back to see who had entered the room.

“Where have you been hiding that beautiful voice, you little minx?” Amber was grinning as she descended the stairs with Mikey in tow. The poor boy followed her everywhere like a lost kitten, but who can blame him? I’m sure he couldn’t believe his luck that she was his and his alone, and maybe he didn’t want to let her out of his sight for fear that he’d lose her forever. So he trailed behind her, blinking in the glow of her presence.

I flushed a deep red and Amber laughed that wonderful laugh as she placed herself onto the bed next to Gerard. I put the guitar next to me and twisted around to face them all.

“So, you’re...” She waved her arms around in articulation.

“Talking?” I offered. She nodded. We both smiled. “Yeah, I’m talking.”

“He finally cracked you, huh?” She nodded her head towards Gerard as if he weren’t listening.

I laughed and took his hand. “I guess he did.”