Ma first update of 2014!

Sorry. Was wanting this one to be up earlier, but due to unforeseen circumstances (A.K.A. a 10 page long job application!), updating this got put on the back burner. Not to mention, I think 99% of my brain cells have been fried this extraordinarily hot summer. Thursday was expected to get to 46 degrees (Cels.), which I looked up and is 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit for all my Fahrenheit-followers. SO close to breaking the record for the hottest day ever where I live (which is 46.1), but it was still the hottest city in the WORLD on Thursday.

My brain doesn't cope too well in the heat, so, my apologies if this chapter makes little/no sense. I did proofread it, I promise!

P.S. Thank you to all my ultra-awesome readers and especially the reviewers of the last chapter. I have been waiting ALL year to tell you that! Haha ;) (I think I love New Years jokes way too much!).

Chapter 33 – Away From It All

Rikki's POV

Tam is not my favourite person.

That is no secret.

However, within minutes of beginning Zane's forced weekend away with her (which he had eventually blackmailed me into accepting), I had discovered that she really is not my favourite person to travel with either. By any stretch of the imagination.

We had barely left home, not even making the short distance to Broadbeach from Surfer's Paradise before she had started grumbling about being hungry.

From her first whinges after we passed the initial golden arches of the first of many McDonald's (on the trip that would take nearly two hours of driving), I had to remind myself that I was in the company of a sixteen year old… Not a whiny and hungry six year old. The two ages were surprisingly easy to mistake for one another right now.

"It's very nice here…" Tam judged as she scanned our accommodation upon arrival, after we left the confines of the car that we had been pushed in to travelling in and spending the last couple of hours in it together, to reach our gift destination. I had no choice in the transportation matter.

All-in-all, the trip hadn't been very interactive, with me focusing on driving, using that excuse to hush any of Tam's attempts to speak until she eventually gave up and succumbed to focusing on the scenery and views for the majority of the drive.

"It's the nicest place I've ever stayed at… Not that I've been on a trip in a while" Tam added, before moving her body and her focus back over to my car.

"Well, you obviously don't know Zane Bennett very well then… Anything that is less than the best is absurdly unacceptable."

As we pulled our bags out of the car to transfer them into the accommodation, I started to realize the catch of this trip and the wavelength that Zane was on when he booked this particular place… And why he had done so. Although it looked lavish and fancy, the dimensions of the makeshift house were pokey, small and confined… Very much isolated and out of the way from other civilization and other people.

Honestly, I really would not be surprised if it were a honeymooner's cabin, where having nothing else to do and nowhere else to go besides one another's sides would be anything but a problem.

The same concept of confinement to a small space was not meant for two feuding sister's.

As I pulled out the key card that Zane had presented me with earlier to unlock the accommodation, I quietly hoped that (as they occasionally had the habit of being) my suspicions about Zane were wrong, and that what did not look very spacey from the outside was really just a misunderstood palace.

Wrong.

While I groaned upon opening the door, beside me, Tam looked completely engrossed with our new surroundings.

"I'm going to kill him…" I muttered harshly under my breath as I furthered my position in the cabin, walking through and searching for some reason to stop me getting back in the car, doing another two hour trip back to the Gold Coast to slaughter Zane slowly and painfully while I left Tam here.

Maybe this was really going to be a blessing in disguise! Even prosecutors and judges would be unable to deny the unlawful act of torture that I was pushed into enduring.

"You can sleep on the toilet, in the shower, on the table, wherever you want as long as it's not in the double bed with me," I explained to Tam as I explored the small cabin with limited furniture, limited entertainment and limited space. The less that I discovered there was here, the more my fury grew. Zane really had no idea what he signed up for and what was coming for him after his intentionally conniving plans.

I dumped my bags that I had pulled out from the car in one of the few corners in the cabin that were free from furniture, doors or so forth.

"I need a walk. I'll be back in a bit" I quickly informed Tam before hurrying out of the door, getting out of the place as fast I could and not spending any time to linger longer than I had to.

I retrieved my phone from its tightly nestled position within my pocket, extracting it and taking my anger out on the touch screen as I scrolled down to second last name on my contacts list, the name above only Zeke, my colleague from work. I tapped the name and number that followed it furiously and held it up to my ear.

"Emergency calls only. Goodbye" a computerized voice informed me unexpectedly as I had been waiting for the equally as computerized dial tones.

I spent a moment considering the four word message that was as equally as impersonal to me as it was to every other person that would have heard the last message that I wanted to hear right now... However, if the voice recording knew the situation I was in, I believe that they would be moved by such pity that they would do anything in their power to help me out. Just short of building a whole other station or telephone pole for phone reception to enable me to yell down the phone at Zane, the evil mastermind who threw us into the world's smallest, isolated and boring cabin without phone and internet service.

In my increasingly furious state, I attempted to justify the conniving with the reasoning that if I was moved to take physical action against Tam and boil her like a saucepan of water over the course of this weekend, and if she didn't get treatment she needed in time, her death would be on Zane's hands…

I took my time to defuse, walking around the cooler scenic and bushy location before I eventually built up the courage to make my way back to the cabin, to attempt to deal with the person I would give up one of my own kidney's to avoid.

As I approached the glass sliding door that opened into our ridiculously small cabin, I stopped in my tracks for just a moment.

Tam was sitting on a lounge chair, doing nothing, holding nothing, engaged in nothing. She appeared to just be staring at the wall, possibly daydreaming or perhaps if she was that sort of light sleeper, sleeping with her eyes open. Whatever she was doing didn't matter; it was her appearance that wordlessly told me the whole story.

… She didn't look like the feisty, mirror-image replication of myself, how she would look when we would use our sharpest words to fight off against each other and defend our pride or motives in a verbal round of sword fighting.

… She didn't look like the smiling young woman who would greet anyone who walked into the room and be one of the first to help out and make her stay with me and the other boys as unburdening as possible.

… She looked sixteen...For the very first time.

She looked small, maybe even a little weak and vulnerable. She didn't look like the same girl who would fight in her own defense against my probably unnecessary attacks as though the age difference between us was no issue in the slightest. She didn't look like the strong, confident girl who appeared completely comfortable in any situation and with any person, be it my housemates or I.

… The most startling facet of her appearance was that she looked even more like me.

She looked like the same weighed down sixteen year old that I had been. For the very first time I could see her walls come down...the walls that I had never knew had existed before this very moment. Her walls were so natural that she didn't appear to fight with the same effort that I had to keep them up. The only explanation for her ease was that she had so much practice with guarding herself, and while my own faux walls were crafted from a carefree spirit and comfortably being a loner, Tam's were significantly more friendly and natural. But it was those moments when you are alone, when you need to pull your walls down and recharge their power to keep living your façade when you could really see a true person as they remember who they are, too.

I didn't blame her for having her castle walls, her protection from deflecting the difficulties of day-to-day life. In fact, I tried my hardest not to pity her. I didn't want to pity her. I didn't even want to feel anything towards her.

I hadn't realized that the walls that were guarding me from caring for my sister had slowly been being chipped away at, weakening. I had been trying to ignore the slow and gradual crumbling of my minds creation of my mother and the life she had lived, with my sister, since she had left. However, the figment of my imagination for all of those years that my mum had left us was so warped from the reality of it.

While I never appreciated being wrong, it was deeper than that and it spread to ruining my coping mechanism for dealing with my mother leaving… When I imagined the perfect life that I thought she would be leaving us for, and henceforth the life that my sister had inherited, it fueled by ability to be able to hate her, and then Tam too when she came into my life. It was my coping mechanism for being able to hate her lifestyle, hate her selfishness, telling myself that I had no desire, want or need for her in my life when that was the sort of life she had created for herself at the sacrifice of my dad and I.

However, the fact of the matter was that even though I wanted to hate Tam for living the perfect life our mother had given me up for to live the most of my life and the entirety of Tam's, I'd had dad and Tam had mum. I've had my problems that made my life hard, and Tam's had her problems that made her life hard… Our mum isn't living in the lap of luxury. But she also isn't living each day feeling as though she was missing a part of herself from not having me in her life.

Just as she had selfishly neglected her care for me by taking off, she had also selfishly neglected the girl I had been willing myself to do anything but accept as my sister, for her own needs.

"Hey" Tam quickly greeted as the noise of opening the squeaky glass screen-door caught her attention, snapping her out of her thoughts and immediately putting up her walls. "Enjoy your walk? Is there much to see around here?"

I shook my head to partially answer her questions, in an attempt to bite my tongue and avoid confronting her straight out about her own walls. "No. Nothing at all."

I quickly left the room and made the decision to leave the matter alone for now and use my knowledge of Tam's walls for later, at a better moment and point of time…

A while later we had just finished eating lunch which Tam had offered to make (even if it was only toasted cheese and spaghetti sandwiches). I'd done the dishes to counteract the work of her cooking, before looking for something else to do, wondering how else I could kill the time I was imprisoned with my sister.

"What are you planning on doing now, Rikki? Zane didn't really leave us with an endless supply of entertainment options..." Tam mused from across the room as she opened and shut drawers and cupboards around the small cabin room. Normally this action would be considered weird or unusual, but I wasn't really one to judge remembering that I had followed a similar pattern of boredom earlier, looking through the cupboards for the hope of uncovering something vaguely interesting. Instead, the only results of the search had only concluded in finding four coat hangers, a small heater, address and phone directory and the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

"Don't know. I was going to go through a couple of theories of how I could murder Zane and categorize them into practicality and how effective or satisfying they would be. You can give me some suggestions if you wish."

While I could see Tam fight a smile of amusement at my comment, being suppressed by a sigh, it was only when she started to speak that I noticed the conflict between what she felt and what she believed.

"I agree, Zane deserves to be punished, we can work out how to get back at him later, but he has a point. It takes confining us in the middle of nowhere to get us to bond, so I know I've suggested this several times, but shouldn't we at least give it a go?"

My initial knee-jerk reaction was to decline and put down Tam's suggestion, as I had done so for several months now, but as I remembered the girl without the walls, I felt more inclined to accept the offer so I could get to know her better and understand what her walls were guarding. Even if I was unsuccessful, it would at least give me something to do and occupy myself, killing the time that was creeping by way too slowly.

"Okay then… Bonding… What do you suggest? It's been a while since I've read: 'Bonding with Illegitimate Sister's for Dummies'."

"Well... Its cliché, I know, but we could always play truth or dare. It's a good, honest way of getting any doubts of each other we have out in the open... And if either of us answers dishonestly and the other one of us catches it or has reason to believe so, that person has to... Sleep outside, in the cold, wildlife-infested wilderness of the Glasshouse Mountains! Deal?"

"Deal... I'll start with a truth. Have you had a boyfriend before?"

Tam laughingly rolled her eyes as she got comfy in her position closer to me. "Wow and I thought truth or dare was a cheesy option... That question oozes it!"

"Answer the question already, kid" I answered back simply and intolerantly, noting the hesitation that Tam took to answer the question after she had batted off the humour.

"No. No I haven't" Tam finally responded, all the while I raised one suspicious eyebrow at my sister.

"What is with your hesitation...? Care to explain that?" I questioned, raising my skeptical view at her answer.

Tam replied back to my speculative query, with a smirking shrug that lacked any further explanation of her initial comment. "I answered your question, didn't I? Asking anything else exceeds your question limit..."

"Fair enough," I answered back with the smugness of my response and my voice matching that of hers. It is as though the sharp replies and feistiness of our personalities which is what keeps our walls up, is actually far more similar than I had ever realized before this point. Besides, I knew I would be able to bring up the right questions to know what I really wanted to know throughout this stupid game of truth or dare instead of badgering her over the pointless of minuscule and mediocre facts.

"My turn then... I'll stick to the theme you set. Truth. Why didn't you tell me that you and Zane were together and how long since you guys broke up?"

I rolled my eyes at the question, only realizing after fulfilling the action how the trait had almost mirrored Tam's in her reaction to my initial question that had begun our 'bonding' session.

"Firstly, that is actually two questions, but I cannot be bothered arguing, because 1. Zane is old news... 2. I also didn't bother to feel the need to inform you of 2009's Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, just in case you didn't already know about it, but I can get you up to date with those events too, if you like? I broke it off with him around 3 or 4-ish years ago... I don't count the days, sorry."

She nodded as I fed her my multiple answers, with the sarcastic modifications and additions I made to the response which could have been far simpler. There was a pause from either of us talking, with the silence prompting me as a reminder that it was now my turn to ask another of the questions I was so longing for an answer to.

"Okay... You know that I've been skeptical about you since you turned up. I dare you to give me one reason or instance that you've proved me right. Tell me something that you've said or that you've done to me which was a lie."

Tam let out a really deep sigh before proceeding to answer the question I posed to her about her motives. "I know I've always said that turning up here was never about the money, but honestly, for about five minutes it was. I had this brief dream when I first heard about dad dying that I might have been able to inherit a few thousand and that I could start living my life the way I wanted to down the coast and away from mum. I promise you though, Rikki, the second that I walked in the door and first met you was when it hit me that I truly had a sister and that not all family could be completely monstrous. From that first minute, knowing you was all I was interested in. I didn't even have to know that dad was flat-broke to decide that."

"Wow..." I barely managed to say. For the first time I finally had the ammunition that I had been dying for to ridicule my sister. The truth that Tam hadn't been all about knowing me from day dot and that at one point she was interested in the money was just what I needed. However, unfortunately for me, it was also the first time that I was completely uninterested in holding what I could against her, since I could read the genuineness of her confession.

"Thank you. Thank you for telling me."

She shrugged as though she had to make the decision about paying an extra 5 cents for a plastic bag at the shops or not. She shrugged like it was no big deal. "You asked me a dare, so I told you the truth about it. It wasn't really that worth holding onto to risk a night outside..."

There was another silence before Tam was prompted to pose another truth or dare question to me, as the momentary pause had reminded me to do so before.

"Truth this time... I want to know why you got so flared up when you caught Zane and I kissing if he is 'old news' to you. Like how you compared not telling me about Zane to Black Saturday, I don't get sad and start crying like I did when I first heard about the hundred that died that weekend. Emotions wear off in time, but that still seemed fresh for you."

For the first time in quite a while, I was rendered speechless. There were very few moments that my tongue would fail me to produce a sharp comment in retaliation, but this is one of those moments. I didn't know what to say.

Firstly, if I had needed any proof passed our blaringly obvious physical appearances that Tam is in actual fact my sister; then that is it right there.

Not only had she somehow managed to use my verbal combating to kamikaze straight back into me, which takes some serious effort and luck, but she had also raised a question in a manner that was almost as though she knew I didn't have an answer to it.

"Honestly, I don't really know. I guess it's not one of those things you prepare yourself for... You don't expect to see an ex-boyfriend-slash-current housemate and your sister slobbering all over each other on a normal day."

Tam nodded, before quickly adding a comment while she had the chance to and before the ship sailed. "I'll forfeit a turn to ask you a question if it's okay for me to ask you a second question in a row? Can I?"

"Fine..." I agreed, far too freely and without realizing in the slightest that I already should have started to dig my own grave.

"Have you had another serious boyfriend since Zane...?"

"No."

There was no number of acting lessons or forging history rewrites that would change the fact that Zane had been my last and only serious boyfriend, which really, for a 22 year old was quite tragic.

I doubted and never really believed that the guy had ever been the love of my life, but it was only when Tam raised the question that I had realized that for some unbeknownst reason, I never really had moved on after him after he allowed his hunger for power and riches slowly get between and chip away at our relationship, proving his true love and where his loyalties laid.

"I'm going to take a stab in the dark here, and I know that I do risk receiving an actual stab from you by doing so, but I think that you still have feelings for Zane, Rikki."

As soon as the words had left Tam's mouth, I scoffed in a disgusted retaliation.

"You have got to be kidding me! Just because I'm focused on living my own life and not involving myself in relationships, means I'm not over Zane because he was the last guy I was with?! Give me a break... Now my dare for you is to 'shut up about Zane'."

"Fine, there's no way for me to really tell that you're lying and that you have to stay outside, but I'm just saying, the signs are all there, Rikki. Perhaps you've spent the last 3 or 4 years trying to unsuccessfully be able to override them instead. Just calm your farm and I'll drop it."

I didn't reply to Tam's elaboration on her latest prediction, instead using silence and my lack of response to hopefully signify the calming of my 'farm'.

"My second turn... I want to know the truth about if you could, what is one thing that you would change about your past?"

There was another pause as had become a frequency over the course of the day as I allowed my question to sink in as Tam pondered an answer to it.

"I know that it's the answer you're expecting, and I know you'll mock it because you were expecting it, but honestly, I wish that I could change what happened with mum and dad, or even just when it happened. If I could, I'd at least slow down time so that you and dad could have known about me and so that I could do something about knowing you earlier. Either that or, I know it's morbid, but stop me from existing at all."

I nodded slowly and read the much younger girl's expression knowingly. "No, I understand. Sometimes you just wish you could be anywhere and anyone but yourself. I felt a little bit like that when I was your age. Of course, I didn't know I had a kid sister out there to deal with too!"

"Yeah," Tam replied and I could hear the reluctance in her voice through the one word, which made sense when she quickly diverted the subject back to its main theme and course. "Anyway, I've got another truth for you. I want to know, what's the kindest thing that anyone has ever done for you?"

I considered Tam's question mentally, silently and privately and the first answer that shot to my mind relatively quickly was my own name... My name, which Zane had used as the base of his business; Rikki's Cafe... Using my name was his display of commitment and kindness; if you ignore the typically Zane fact that he had stolen my idea in the first place, before allowing the business to go ka-put.

However, that first answer that was born within my mind never surfaced to my sister's ears and did not become publicized between us.

"Um, probably Cleo wanting me to be her maid of honour when she married Lewis. Especially because she asked me, despite the fact she could have used her little sister Kim. That meant a lot to me... Anyway, it's my turn again. What about you? What's the kindest thing anyone's done for you?"

"It was probably when you and the boys offered for me to move in with you guys. I know it's pretty stupid and only recent, but I've never really been given many 'gifts' or random acts of kindness and it might not seem like it since I'm outgoing, but I tend to be a bit of a loner."

This afternoon, and especially after the seed had been planted within my mind, my reasons to believe just how similar my sister and I were, even if I had wanted to deny it the most part, just kept on expanding. Every word she spoke was giving me more and more reason to helplessly believe her and her motives.

Aside from her natural inclination to dream about what could have happened if there was money to save her from her undesirable life, she isn't a money-hungry teenager who wants to hit the jackpot and never work another day in her life. She isn't a scoundrel with a secret agenda to worm her way into my life, only to betray my trust. She isn't a dodgy stranger. She's just a young girl who is trying to find her way in life, passed the family difficulties, seeking out relationships that separate her from loner tendencies she's fallen into in the past. She's just like me at her age; she's just like me before I found my way and identity shortly after meeting Cleo and Emma...

"My turn... Rikki, I've got a dare for you now... I dare you to trust me. I want you to give a chance and actually trust me. I want you to actually do it with a hope in me, instead of just doing it half-heartedly to shut Will and Zane up."

"I will" I answered back solemnly, affirming my answer with a slow, confident nod. I knew there was still a chance that I might regret it later, but I owed it to Tam to help her out the way that the girl's helped me. I could never be sure that I am making the right decision, but Tam had given me far more of a reason to trust her than I had ever given Cleo or Emma for a long time. It was my turn to let what went around, come back around.

"Honey's! We're home!" Tam bellowed out from the front door of our share house as we entered our home for the first time in a few days.

Consecutively, two boys came out from two different directions with Will plodding down from upstairs after assumedly surfacing from his bedroom, while Zane came from the lounge/family/dining room that I had no doubt he had been monopolizing with us girls away.

While Will firstly began with offering a greeting and hug as we all stood idly in the entrance, Zane failed to share the same kind of tact and self restraint.

"So how did it go girlies? I hope it wasn't a waste of my money."

Tam and I shared a glance at each other, knowing exactly where we would proceed from that point.

"Well, it was, actually. You are in an idiot for thinking that confined spaces would fix anything from getting more familiar with every tiny detail on each other's faces" I scoffed at the unimpressed brunette, with the taller blonde beside him gloating silently at his reaction to his own failure, that honestly, hadn't exactly failed, but we weren't going to let him have the glory of knowing that just yet!

With a final glorious look at Zane's horrified face as he absorbed the fact that he hadn't won, I stormed off in triumph, as I had done all those other times when Zane's forcing me to discuss Tam had gone beyond what I felt that I could bear.

From a distance as I listened in I heard Tam playing along with the charade-lie that I had started after our extensive planning, announcing to the boys that she was famished and sleep-deprived, since I'd made her sleep outside and without any food. Tam's believable acting, along with my enjoyment at humiliating Zane for the situation he had thrown us into was well worth it, teeing matters up nicely.

Despite the fact that it sort of had been Zane's handiwork that had resulted in me finally letting Tam in and trusting her, this was just the last laugh for all the unnecessary interfering that we had to endure over that time.

However, Tam and I would tell him the truth later...

Maybe.

So! I have been absolutely, positively, extremely dying to know your thoughts on this chapter ever since I wrote it, which was a couple of months ago, and the time has finally come! Are we team 'Trust Tam', like Rikki has just been convinced into, or are you still not sold? Anyway, I'm pretty sure that this is the last Rikki POV of the first Far From Perfection aside from the all-in final chapter.

Next chapter: Will confides in the wrong person regarding his insecurities and difficulty with Allie, with even more disastrous consequences, in the lead up to the cliffhanging chapter end.

P.S. If you review, I'll love YOU and rejoice as I read each new review, celebrating them with a three-day dance. Easy as that.