Gabrielle Jaeger looked up from the kitchen counter where she was getting dinner ready to see her colleague, house mate and best friend Jack Quade come in. Jack had moved in three months earlier after his former housemate Dan Goldman had become engaged, and Dan had felt it was time to move out and leave the house to the lovebirds. At the time, Gabrielle's ex Steve Taylor – another colleague of theirs – had been making noises about a second reconciliation, and knowing that Jack and Steve had a somewhat acrimonious relationship, it had seemed like a good idea to ask Jack to move in with her and be a buffer between her and Steve's attentions.
She felt guilty about her motives now, because Jack had turned out to be a wonderful housemate – friendly, clean, a great cook whenever he got home enough to relieve her of kitchen duties. Not to mention he was a whiz at balancing a roster and for that, she would happily cook him dinner each night, He was easy to talk to and night after night she had found himself telling him about her life and her problems. And he gave a great cuddle. Much better than Steve, who saw cuddle as foreplay to groping.
And, a small part of her had to admit, very damn attractive. So attractive that she had kissed him at the wedding. Yes, she had been drunk and yes, she had been annoyed at the attention Steve had been paying to her new nurse Amy – a girl practically young enough to be his daughter – but it hadn't been purely a revenge move that had made her kiss Jack. There had been a little real attraction mixed in there, too.
Who was she kidding? More than a little. But Jack hadn't believed her and rather than try and convince him otherwise, she had been relieved that he seemed willing to let the matter drop and return to their previous close (platonic) relationship so long as she never mentioned it again. Or came onto him.
She realised he was talking to her. "Gabs, you got any plans for tomorrow?"
"None, why? You planning on having a girl over?" she teased. Jack hadn't been involved with anyone – if 'involved' was the right word – since his disastrous one-night stand with a woman who turned out to be married... and had had the crap beaten out of her for her infidelity. Jack had been gun-shy about getting involved with someone ever since.
That, and Gabrielle understood better than most why Jack was apprehensive about getting involved with someone. She knew he had been sexually abused as a teenager; you couldn't really live with someone and not work that out, and he had gone off the rails last year when the guy who had done it had, by sheer bad luck, reappeared in his life. He hadn't been interested in getting involved with anyone and opening himself up like that.
She couldn't say she blamed him. Last year, her first – and only – boyfriend Steve had blown back into her life after breaking her heart several years before by cheating on her with her best friend. She had allowed him back into her life, her house, her heart and her bed, only to have her heart broken all over again by his compulsive drinking. She had never thought she could confide in anyone about it until Jack had come along. Jack, who she had at first distrusted deeply until he had first grown on her, then coaxed her into trusting him. And since he had told her about the abuse she'd suffered, she had thought it was only fair that she confide in him.
Come to think of it, it was unlikely that he would be having a girl over. If he dated – and she doubted it, she was sure he would have told her – then he did it very discreetly. He wasn't about to go from discreetly dating without telling her to bringing women she'd never met home.
He poked his tongue out at her. She knew he didn't date. Actually, he liked the way she never asked him when he was going to 'get back on the horse'. He was over the bar scene. If he ever dated again, it would be with someone he was friends with, someone that he cared about before he took them to bed. And Gabrielle seemed to get that. Actually, he'd had more fun in these last few months just chilling with her at home then he had with his mindless screwing around. He didn't know if it as a good thing that he preferred a good movie and a good bottle of wine and her company to random sex, or just pathetic.
"No," he said. "My dad's coming over. I think he wants money." Funny how Ned Quade had never said so much as a congratulations when he'd been accepted to study medicine at one of the best universities in the country – on a full scholarship, no less – but he was more than happy to happy the benefits of having such a financially successful son.
"And?" she asked. "Dads like me." Parents, grandparents and siblings all tended to like her. She had a wholesomeness that people sought for their sons and brothers – although she didn't exactly have men lining up to date her. Too tall and too plain in her opinion, although the reality was that she was simply too gun-shy.
"I'm sure he'll like you plenty," Jack said drily. "You're what, a D-cup?" he asked, a touch crassly.
Gabrielle felt her cheeks flush at the vulgarity of the question. "None of your goddamn business."
"Sorry," he apologised sincerely, all crassness gone. "I'm just trying to make you understand the kind of guy my dad is. When he was in his twenties, he decided that was the age bracket he wanted in a woman, and he's never deviated from that."
Gabrielle could do the maths. Jack was twenty-eight, his dad couldn't be any younger than fifty. Which was a bit creepy but hey, he wouldn't be the first middle-aged man he had met who thought it was perfectly acceptable to have an age cut-off of thirty. Hell, look at Richard Craig. "I'm sure I can handle a middle-aged guy," she said drily, a little insulted that Jack thought so little of her ability to handle herself. She'd handled a drunk, amorous boyfriend plenty enough times, hadn't she?
Jack looked at her disbelievingly, but didn't say anything else.
Gabrielle opened the door the next day to be greeted by who she guessed to be Ned Quade. Jack hadn't said exactly how old he was, but he looked at least sixty. She remembered Jack had two older brothers and idly wondered if he had anything to do with either of them. "Come in," she said. "Jack won't be home for at least an hour, though."
"I'm sure I can manage," he said. "Where's the bar?" Slightly flustered, Gabrielle pointed him in the direction of the bar. "Better stocked than the last place," Ned said approvingly, immediately pouring himself a hefty glass of premium scotch.
"His last housemate had Hep-C," Gabrielle said. "Affected his liver."
"I know what Hep-C is," Ned said, a trifle sullenly. He had never felt comfortable around Jack and his university-educated friends, always making him feel inferior for being a labourer. You would think nurses wouldn't have such superiority complexes; they certainly hadn't been this uppity in his day. Or, he was convinced, so plain-looking. He would have thought Jack had better taste – he would have thought Jack would have plenty of beautiful women he could choose from.
Gabrielle didn't know what to say. Something told her Ned was something of a prickly individual. "Just – take a seat," she said, starting to feel a little uncomfortable. "I'm sorry I can't be much company, but I've got dinner to put on."
"Yeah? What are you making?"
Already, Gabrielle hoped that Jack wasn't planning on asking Ned to stay for dinner. "Roast beef," she said.
"Smells nice. My wife isn't a very good cook." He said this is a tone that suggested his wife wasn't good at a lot of things; from what Jack had said, Stella was an alcoholic and a generally lousy human being.
Gabrielle said nothing. He certainly wasn't getting an invitation out of her.
For the next hour and a half, Ned proceeded to get more and more drunk. I hope you take it out of whatever you plan on giving him, Gabrielle thought. Something told her Ned didn't have the money to imbibe such high-quality liquor in the quantities that Ned did. And she didn't like the way he kept looking at her and making idiotic comments about how good she was with her hands. She was beginning to regret telling Jack that she could look after herself.
"How long has Jack been living with you?" Ned asked. She didn't like the way he put a strange emphasis on the words living with you.
"Three months," she said.
"You treat him right?"
"We're friends, yeah," she said cautiously. "Look, Ned, I really don't know when Jack will be home. He works mental hours and he's so devoted to his patients – he's probably gotten caught up and forgotten all about anything else, I'm sorry to say. Perhaps you'll be better off coming over when he has a day off. I'll call you a taxi."
He stood up and eyed her blearily. "I think I'll wait," he declared. He took a step towards her. "You got a boyfriend?"
"No."
He eyed her suggestively in a way that reminded Gabrielle of Jack's comment about being a D-cup, and she was now very sorry that she hadn't taken Jack's advice and cleared out. "I always said the best ones are the plain ones – they have to try harder."
OK, that was it. "Mr. Quade, this is my house and I won't stand to be spoken to like that. I'll call you a taxi and you can catch up with Jack some other time."
"And you're shacked up with my son, which kind of makes it my house," Ned countered with a logic that only a vulgar, drunk pervert could come up with.
"No, it doesn't. My house. My mortgage. My – hey, just get the hell out, OK?" Gabrielle demanded, realising she was actually trying to justify her right to tell an unwanted guest to go. She reached for the phone and started to dial.
Ned grabbed the phone out of her hand and sent it flying across the room. Up this close, she could smell the alcohol that was oozing out of his pores and she wished now she had kept a better eye on just how much he had drunk. She immediately raised her hands to defend herself. Ned might be drunk, might be close to sixty, but he was still bigger than her and pushed his body against hers so she was wedged between him and the counter. The reek of alcohol assailed her and she felt like she was trying to throw up. Good at fending off a drunk, amorous boyfriend, was she? "Get the fuck off me!" she screamed.
He kissed her hard, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, and it was revolting. Briefly, she remembered when she had kissed Jack drunk at Dan and Erica's wedding. He had kissed her back for a split second, and a part of her hadn't been able to stop thinking about how nice it had been. He certainly knew how to kiss better than Steve. An ability he clearly hadn't gotten from his father. The smell of alcohol was overwhelming and the feel of his body pushed against hers revolting. Never, not even when he had been really drunk and really amorous, had Steve revolted her like this.
She arched her neck back as far as it would go so quickly that it felt like it would snap. "Get your filthy hands off me!" she screamed at him. "How could you think I'd let you touch me in a million years?"
"If you're good enough for my son, then you're good enough for me," Ned said with a leer, and kissed her again. She responded by clamping down her teeth on his tongue. Ned roared with pain and reared back, although he didn't let go of her. "You bitch, you'll pay for that," he spat. He brought his hand up to her breast and squeezed hard. She cried out from pain and humiliation.
"I believe she just told you to take her hands off her," came Jack's voice. He had crossed the living room and was in the kitchen in a few seconds, wrenching Ned off Gabrielle with a force Gabrielle didn't realise he possessed. The look of fury on his face actually frightened her, even though she knew it wasn't directed at him. He looked directly at Gabrielle and tried to soften his face into something that resembled compassion when he felt like ripping off his own father's head right now – or maybe another body part that he clearly prized more dearly. "Stay there for a second," he said as kindly as he could manage. "Just let me take care of this."
He hauled Ned outside and shoved him against the wall roughly. He retrieved his keys off him. "I am going to call a taxi and you are going to stay right here and don't make a sound until it gets me or so help me God, I will personally see to it that Gabrielle presses charges."
Ned glowered at Jack, too drunk to feel fear. "You're not seriously going to take that tramp's side?" he asked.
Jack replied to slamming his fist into his father's nose. It landed with a satisfying crack and seemed to tell Ned that he meant business when he said to stay right there and not make a sound, because he slid down the wall with a whimper and stayed put.
Jack let himself back into the house where Gabrielle was huddled in the corner of the kitchen. He held out his arms slightly to her in a non-threatening motion for a hug if she wanted it, and she ran into his arms. "Jack, I swear I didn't do anything," she said.
"Sweetheart, I know you and I know my dad. Of course I know you didn't do anything. It's my fault. I should have insisted you not be here. I should have met him somewhere else." He felt the strong urge to hold her tightly and kiss the top of her head but didn't want to invade her personal space any more. "Why don't you go have a shower and I'll take care of dinner. You'll feel better." Gabrielle nodded and left Jack's arms to go to the bathroom.
Jack watched her go, shaking with fury. He had always known what kind of man his father was, hadn't wanted Gabrielle to be around for precisely that reason. But he had been expecting Ned to make vulgar remarks, to hit on her verbally, certainly not to assault her the way he had. And in her own home! Jesus Christ, if this was the way he would treat a woman in her own home, a home that he was a guest in, what did that say of the way he treated women in general?
Well, he didn't care about that right now. He only cared about Gabrielle. He picked up the phone and dialled his father and step-mother's home with the intention of getting his step-mother. Stella answered, and to Jack she sounded a little bit drunk herself. He didn't know how much of what he would tell her was going to sink in – both because of the alcohol and because Stella was absolutely determined to believe that her husband's infidelities were the result of trampy women throwing themselves at him, and not a sad man who thought himself to be much younger and more good-looking than he actually was.
He briefly told Stella what had happened and ended it with, "If he comes anywhere near Gabrielle or this house ever again, I will call the police again," and he hung up before she could launch into a tired about a woman she didn't know. In Stella Quade's opinion, any woman who caught the interest of her husband was a tramp.
He wrapped up Gabrielle's partially-prepared roast and put it in the fridge. He sucked at the things, and instead he ordered in. He didn't feel much like cooking, anyway. He was more shaken then he cared to admit. Gabrielle meant a lot to him – nearly as much as his sister, the only family member that he cared about, did – and to see her being mauled like that... he shuddered to think about what could have happened if he hadn't come home when he had.
Gabrielle was in the shower for over half an hour. Jack didn't blame her. When Patrick had first assaulted him... Which was why he was taking his father's assault on Gabrielle so hard, he knew. He knew what it was like to be violated. Well, he wouldn't make her feel the way Patrick had, like he had somehow done something to encourage it, or like Stella had, like he had simply made it up...
"Hey," he said softly when she came out of the bathroom. Her skin was red raw, like a sunburn, and Jack could feel the nail brush against his skin. For once, he didn't berate her for 'borrowing' his dressing gown again. She claimed to like it, that it was bigger and warmer and more comfortable than hers. Well, if it made her feel warm and comfortable now... "I ordered us Thai. I figured neither of us felt like cooking."
"Thanks," she said in a small voice. She felt as if she were ten years older and she wondered if Jack had ever felt like this. She shivered at the thought, realising that what Jack had gone through was a million times worse. She spotted the bottle of vodka on the table; Jack had already poured what she suspected was half-and-half vodka and lemonade. Suddenly, it was exactly what she needed and she reached for it. Jack was quicker and pulled it out of her grasp. "Please," she begged.
"Eat first."
Obediently, thinking only of the vodka, she opened the nearest carton and dug in with a fork. Her hand was shaking so badly that she only got it a few centimetres up before she was forced to drop it again. "Here," Jack said softly. He lifted the fork to her mouth and fed her with as much patience and gentleness as he demonstrated with little Zach Beaumont. "Gabs, you need to eat," he pleaded when she tried to reach for the vodka after one mouthful. "Three, and you can have some." He realised he sounded like he was negotiating with a child, and bit down on his bottom lip. He had no idea what he was supposed to do and he hated himself for it – for putting her in this position in the first place and for not knowing what to do about it now.
Gabrielle obediently ate and Jack let her have a drink for every three bites she had until he was satisfied that she'd eaten enough and he let her drink as much as she liked. "Feeling any better?" he asked her after an hour when it was clear she was quite drunk. Such a Cadbury, he thought, then he remembered that her low tolerance to alcohol came from the fact she didn't drink much, and that was because of Steve's drinking. So she had had her fair share of experience with drunk, amorous men – and he had thrown her right back into it.
"Violated," she said. "I don't understand it. It's no worse than what Steve used to do. I don't know what's different."
"Maybe you got used to knowing there were men out there who weren't, you know, absolute jerks who hit on anything in a skirt."
"Yeah," she agreed through tears. "I know there are some good guys out there." She allowed Jack to embrace her and gradually fell asleep in his arms with the help of nearly half a bottle of vodka. There was something tragically pathetic about watching her sleep in his arms, her face still wet with tears. No-one else is going to hurt you on my watch, he vowed.
When he started to feel sleepy himself, he lifted her up and carried her to her bedroom. He lay her down and watched her for a few seconds, contemplating if he should make her more comfortable by partially undressing her, then decided that that was absolutely the last thing she needed. "Sweet dreams," he said as he shut the door behind her – leaving her reading light on, because he knew what it was like to be afraid of the dark – hoping that she did actually have sweet dreams, although he doubted it.
She woke late the following morning. She had showered again and was dressed simply in jeans and a t-shirt, her hair freshly washed and her skin scrubbed. Poor baby, he thought. "How you feeling?" he asked.
"Better," she said in a small voice which meant not much better.
"You want breakfast?" he asked. He had prepared a feast of both healthy and greasy, hangover-friendly food. Gabrielle eyed it and was suddenly starving. She had eaten only as much as Jack had cajoled her to in order to drink, and her stomach was reminding of that now.
"I don't usually drink like that," she admitted when she caught Jack watching her scarfing down food – bacon, fried eggs, hash browns – like there was no tomorrow. "I've never been much of a drinker."
"I've noticed," Jack said. "I'm not surprised. It must have been hard, being with someone who was always drunk."
"He'd always promise to behave himself," Gabrielle said, opening with a scenario that Jack was all-too-familiar with. "But it would always be a case of 'just one more' – and of course it was always just one more after that, and just one more after that. There's a saying that's common in AA, that one is too many and a hundred is never enough. Once he got started, he couldn't stop. And he changed once he started. He got sleazy. Not just with me – with everyone. Or at least all the single girls. Whatever dumb things he might have done, he knew better than to hit on someone else's girl. It was a line he knew not to cry – another man's turf and all that."
"I never got that mentality," Jack said. If Gabrielle wanted to talk about something other that his father's assault, then he was going to help the conversation along. "By his logic, wasn't he some other woman's turf?"
"Yeah, you really don't get it," Gabrielle teased, and she smiled – briefly and with none of the vibrancy that she usually smiled at him during one of their private conversations, but it was a smile nonetheless. "Its different for guys. It's OK for them to cheat."
"It's not OK by me."
She smile again, this one an improvement on the last one. "You're not 'most guys', Jack. Sometimes I don't think you ever were." He looked a little flustered at that, and she actually laughed. "You don't need to be embarrassed. It's what I like about you. You're, like, the first decent guy that I really got to know – apart from my dad and my brother."
"Just what a guy wants to hear," Jack said. "'You remind me of my brother'." Though it beats the hell out of 'you remind me of your father', Jack thought.
Gabrielle seemed to know exactly what he was thinking about, and her face seemed to physically drop as a cloud settled over it "I can still taste him," she said.
"Sorry?" Jack asked, although he knew exactly what she was talking about. It had taken him a long time before he'd felt comfortable being kissed by anyone – let alone enjoyed it.
"I can still taste him – when he kissed me. I can taste the scotch on his breath and feel the pressure of his mouth – " she shuddered in illustration. "I can stop thinking about him grabbing me – " she used this as a euphemism for when Ned had groped her, " – but I can't stop tasting him. It's like the fantasy girls have about their first kiss with Brad Pitt only in the nightmare format, and – "
Jack wasn't sure what possessed him to kiss Gabrielle, but she was standing there, looking so forlorn and unsettled. If he'd stopped to think, he would have told himself that it was a bad idea, kissing someone who had recently been sexually assaulted. But he kissed her nonetheless.
He had thought about kissing her before, of course. You didn't live with someone who was cute and single – dysfunctional relationship with her ex notwithstanding – and not think about kissing them. But he'd never thought about acting on it, and certainly not under circumstances like these. But when he did kiss her, it felt perfect. Like every other kiss in his life had been a rehearsal leading up to this, every woman he'd kissed an understudy for Gabrielle.
Needless to say, she was surprised by his kiss. She couldn't say she hadn't thought about kissing him before – you didn't live with a good-looking, single guy and not think about what it would be like to kiss him – but this – this was something else entirely.
And not entirely unpleasant, either. Actually – very damn pleasant. She had known his lips would be soft but there was knowing and actually feeling. He tasted like expensive coffee when Steve had almost always tasted of alcohol. And she vaguely realised that this was why Jack had kissed her – to remind her of what a gentle, non-alcohol-reeking kiss could taste like. Except – she had so little experience with what a gentle, none-alcohol-reeking kiss tasted like – certainly, she had never experienced something as gentle and tender as this kiss. Gentle and tender but sexy and hot at the same time. She had never thought a kiss could be like this – like the Brad Pitt fantasy, only better, because in the fantasy, Brad was never her best friend. All her feelings of disgust and violation disappeared. "Jack," she whispered as she opened her mouth to his tongue...
When she said his name, Jack pulled back abruptly. "Oh, God, I'm so sorry," he said, realising what he had done – he had kissed a girl who had recently been sexually assaulted. He had come onto a woman who his father had attached the night before. Jesus, what kind of sleaze was he? Maybe those comparisons aren't undeserved, he thought.
He could barely look at her, but forced himself to meet her eyes. If she wanted to hate him, she had a right to do so. Instead, he was met with her shy smile. "You don't have to be sorry," she said. "I liked it."
"I shouldn't have – " he started, but boldly, she stopped him by putting her fingers over his mouth.
"Yes, you should have," she said. "And you should do it again."
"Yeah?" he asked, searching her eyes for some sign that she was just saying it. There was none – just shy hope and anticipation. So he kissed her again, and this time, with both of them expecting it, it was better than the first kiss – and the first kiss had been pretty special, so the second kiss... "Feeling better?" he asked when he pulled away from her again, this time much more casually.
"Much," she said. "But maybe you should kiss me again, just to be on the safe side."
"Sounds good to me," he said, and he leaned in for another kiss.