"Holy shit!"

"Grant!"

"The fuck is wrong with you, you absolute cunt!" Bo grabs Robert, and helps him up. "Lemme see that, oh shit. Grant, you ass-hole!" The side of Robert's face is rapidly swelling.

The smell of beer radiates off of all of them, but they're all a bit too passed buzzed to notice. The joy has gone from the group, it left as soon as Grant threw the punch; even Gage's perpetually cheerful expression is a bit confused.

Bo leaps over the table and at her brother, hitting him square in the nose. "Why the fuck would you do that?" His blood comes away on her knuckles.

"Oh, you bitch!"

"OI!" the bartender yells. "Don't make me call the cops."

"He's my brother!" Bo snaps. The man considers this a moment, then shrugs.

"Someone's got to keep you in line, Bowen," Grant sneers. "Can't have you thinking you're all high and mighty just 'cause you moved to Sydney."

"Oh, so you punch him, he punches you, and I suddenly hate him? Just gotta love that family logic!" Grant is only a handful of centimeters taller than Bowen, and she shoves him back against the table. "You're such a fucking cunt!"

Robert stares in amazement, a cold glass pressed to his cheek. Bo grabs his hand and tugs him away with a 'let's go.'

"You're not good enough for him, Bo!" Grant calls. "Just a slut from Lake Heights!"

"Better a slut from Lake Heights who made it out than you. You're turning out just like he wanted, Grant: drunk and angry!"

The night air is like a balm on her hot cheeks as they push out of the pub.

"I'm so sorry. I really did not want you to meet them for a reason."

"Yeah, well, I really liked all them before Grant hit me." Robert stretches his jaw and groans.

"Oh don't be a child, you'll be fine."

"Easy for you to say, you didn't get hit." The turn down the street towards his flat.

"I've been hit by Grant many a time, and trust me: I avenged you. Your honour is intact."

"Why did he hit me?"

"Cause the Harding clan is about ten different shades of fucked."

"And they don't want you to be friends with me?"

"I think it's a little too early in the friendship to begin sharing painful family stories just yet."

Robert laughs sardonically."I think we're there."

"C'mon, then. Let's get inside. You're gonna want to get something on that."

"Thanks, four years of med school left out that bit."

She snorts and shoves him with her shoulder."Well luckily, I've been in way more fights than you have."

"Have not."

"Have too."

"I went to an all boys school."

"I went to public school in Lake Heights."

"You're a girl."

"Who was very protective of her younger brother."

Robert chuckles as he unlocks his front door. "You just like picking fights."

"I won't deny it." she waltzes in as if it's her home as well, though its nicer than anywhere she's ever lived. "Now-" she props open the fridge (the first time she did it, he commented on it, but he's since grown used to her lack of boundaries) and produces a beer and a water - "more drunk or less drunk for story time."

"More drunk," he says, stretching out on the sofa. "Always more drunk."

"My kind of man," she jokes, popping the two bottles open. "Budge up."

With a grunt, he lifts his legs long enough for her to plop down.

"So Grant thinks I'm playing you?"

"No."

"He thinks you're playing me?"

"Also wrong."

"You gonna stop stalling and tell me? I've got to be at work in twelve hours."

"Oh, well then, guess it'll have to wait for another time."

"Wally!"

"All right, all right." she takes a swig of beer, then sighs and looks at Robert. He's lying down, beer bottle pressed to his cheek. "So, my dad's a bit of a dead beat, yeah?"

"Mine too, we should form a club."

She rolls her eyes. "I should have given you the water. You gonna let me go on?"

"Fine."

"Anyway, my dad. He grew up in a shithole and instead of getting out drank himself into a shithole. He's a smart man he just…hated himself, I think, for never bothering to do anything with his life, and he took that anger out on us."

"He hit you?"

"Nah, he was just a cock. One day when I was ten, Jill brought home this friend, right? Oh, fuck. Hold on a sec." She flips open her ringing phone. "What is it?…No, I'm fine. I'm at Robert's. Yeah, love you too Jillie." she tosses the phone across the room. "Okay, so she brings this friend home, and it's not like the girl is super posh or anything, but she's better off than us - a lot better, and Dad throws a fucking fit. He's like smashing bottles, yelling, swearing, I think he even brandished a knife at one point. He wanted to scare her off, and he succeeded.

"Once she was gone he laid into all of us, saying how we didn't need to be getting ideas like that into our head, how people like that would make us ungrateful for what we had, make us selfish. Jillie was thirteen or so, and that's when she stopped being so happy. And it wasn't, like, an isolated incident, it was just how it was: Dad was a deadbeat, so we were expected to be deadbeats too. I got out, Jillie and Bastille and Gage just kind of left, but Grant is still involved with Dad. Maybe he's better than all of us, cause he still has hope, but evidently he's turning into him."

There's a long stretch of silence during which her face flushes for saying too much. Robert looks at her, eyes traveling from her red cheeks down to her collar bone. Her t-shirt is falling off her shoulder, revealing the strap of the bathing suit she's still wearing from the tournament earlier.

"Come here."

She eyes him. "Why?"

"I'm drunk and in the mood to make a decision I'll probably regret later."

"Takes two to make that decision." she's dubious, but maneuvers out from under his legs so she's hovering over him. They look at each other, noses almost touching. His mouth is so close to hers; its as if she knows what it would feel like, pink and soft."Seems to me like you just want to piss off your father by fucking the slut from Lake Heights." Her heart trembles; if he was to kiss her neck at this moment, he would feel just how fast it's beating.

He shrugs, eyes moving to her bottom lip. His hands are tight on her back, resting in the hollow above her shorts. "Never a bad side-effect." he grins. "besides, I like a girl with experience."