But today promised to max out at a near perfect twenty-eight degrees Celcius under a cloudless sky and that promised to bring the show’s biggest crowds ever. Already before lunchtime they were doing brisk business with the barbeque. There was something about the smell of sizzling snags on a barbie that sure pulled the punters in.
Richo was wrangling the bacon and eggs on the next barbeque while Caleb tackled the sausages and onions. A couple of the junior members of the CFS crew were busy handling the orders and the cash before sending the customers Richo and Caleb’s way to pick up their food. And just across the wide driveway that circled the football oval, across the groups of people wandering between the stalls and attractions around the perimeter, sat Ava at her small table stacked with face paints and a couple of chairs for her patrons, under a shady fold up umbrella.
She was busy today. Pretty much flat chat, and a lot busier than last year when they’d met, making Caleb wonder when he was ever going to get a chance to get a word with her. He couldn’t leave things the way they were when they’d parted last night. He’d spent sleepless hours last night worrying about her and thinking about how wrong it was, the way they’d parted, and he couldn’t bear to let it go any longer.
“Caleb!” Richo called.
“What?” Caleb came to, to find three teenaged boys waiting in front of his barbeque.
“Two sanger sandwiches with onion,” Richo spelt out beside him. “And one without.”
“Oh, sure,” he said, and quickly loaded up three slices of bread with sausages. “Help yourself to sauce or mustard,” he said, as he handed the plain one over before piling the other two with onions.
“Awesome!” said one of them, clearly an onion fan, before reaching for the sauce. “Thanks.” The three moved off, munching on their sausage sangers, but a sudden rush of orders meant it was a good ten minutes before Caleb had a chance to check out what Ava was doing again. She’d finished on the little girl she’d been painting and was handing her the mirror so she could study her new face.
He couldn’t make out what she said, but he could read her delight on her brightly painted face when she turned to her mother alongside. Another happy customer, he thought, as the recently painted butterfly took off excitedly for the next attraction, the vacated chair already taken by the next customer in line.
Damn but she was busy. But maybe if he could catch her eye, she might spare him five minutes? She had to have a break some time.
“Earth calling Caleb.”
“What is it now?” he growled, because he checked and there were no waiting customers this time.
Richo chuckled, flipping eggs. “Boy, have you got it bad. Is she your girlfriend then?”
“What?”
“Come on! The one you were whistling about the other week. Is that her? Only you’ve been staring at her with puppy dog eyes all morning, and so I figured...”
“I have not been staring. I need to talk to her, that’s all.” And apologise for the dumb as shit way he’d tried to tell her how she should react to the news of the death of her parents.
It still blew him away that she’d been so blasé about their deaths, but she’d been right. He’d been reacting from his own worldly experience and it had never occurred to him that hers might have been different. Very much different by the way she’d reacted.
Meanwhile Richo just raised his eyebrows and flipped some bacon. “If you say so, buddy.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Well,” he said, adjusting the gas, “if I didn’t know better, I reckon the last thing you’ve got on your mind is talking. I’d say that’s a look of lurve you got going on there.”
“Bullshit!” Caleb scoffed, topping up the sliced onions on the plate to prepare for the next rush. “She’s a friend, that’s all.” Nobody was supposed to know anything different and nobody would. They hadn’t gone public with their relationship because it wasn’t like it was a normal relationship. It was convenient for them both, that was all. Not to mention that it was nobody else’s damn business. “I’m just worried about her.”
Richo glanced through the strolling families and groups. “So what’s wrong? She looks fine from where I’m standing. Real fine. One good-looking woman all right.”
Caleb bristled, not sure he liked the idea of somebody else openly admiring Ava. But Richo was right. Her Eurasian good looks and her smile and the way she engaged with her small clients made her magnetic to children and adults alike. She came across as if she didn’t have a care in the world. That was part of the problem. He looked over at his mate, wondering how much information was too much. And then he figured he’d had a gutful of keeping quiet and if it distracted Richo from all this ridiculous lurve talk... “Look, this is just between you and me right? But Ava just got word yesterday that her parents died in a car crash.”
“Sheesh. Both of them? That’s rough. Pretty amazing of her to even turn up today in that case.”
“I know.”
They both studied the smiling Ava a few seconds longer, Richo tugging on his ear lobe before he got back to work with his slide. “You sure wouldn’t know she’s just been dropped a bombshell like that. Nothing worse than a death in the family and having a funeral or two to look forward to.”
“Yeah. Only she’s not going.”
“No? Her own
