Authors: Mila Gray
can tell everyone thinks this is just the interval between
acts. There’s a humid anticipation in the air. Everyone’s
eyes stay locked on my father, waiting for the thunder-
clap that will announce the next act.
I can’t move. My breathing is coming in small, broken
gasps, and my focus is fixed on my father. If there were
no witnesses I know he’d explode right now. Furniture
would fly, curses would rain down and my mom and I
would duck for cover. But with so many eyes on him he’s
having to keep a lid on it. It’s like watching a bubbling
pan. His face has gone all shades of red and sweat beads
around the edges of his hairline.
He gives a grimacing sort of smile and holds his hands
up to the crowd. ‘Well, I guess the show’s over, folks,’ he
says with a forced laugh. ‘He was a gatecrasher anyway.
Who invited him?’ He looks jokingly around at the crowd
and there are a few guffaws that sicken me. That’s his
response? To turn it into a joke at Kit’s expense?
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Mila Gray
Suddenly all that Kit just said hits me with the force of
a clanging bell, vibrating through me, making me un-
steady on my feet. He just stood up to my father. no one
has ever done that before. And he put his job and his life
on the line to do it – to stand up for me and my brother
and my mom. And I just told him to leave. What the hell
did I do?
I start running towards the back door.
A hand grabs me around the wrist and yanks me to an
abrupt stop. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
It’s my father. The forced smile still on his face makes
him look deranged.
‘I’m going to find Kit,’ I say through gritted teeth,
trying to tug myself free.
My father frowns briefly at me, his grip tightening.
‘You walk out that door now, don’t bother coming back,’
he says.
I stare at him. His words take a moment to sink in. He
can’t be serious? The smile fades, and for the briefest of
moments the shades pull back and I see a glimmer in his
eyes that I can only describe as despair, and a splinter of
terror too. It’s as if he’s staring down over a precipice into
a black abyss, and it startles me to see my father look so
vulnerable and so scared. For a moment I waver, but then
I remember the way he just spoke to Kit and something
inside me comes undone. All the invisible chains I’ve
been wearing slip from my shoulders and crash to the
ground at my feet.
‘It’s not just his father who’s worth a hundred of you,’ I
say.
I wrench my arm from my father’s grip and run inside
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the house. I slam the back door behind me and race
through into the hallway, expecting at any moment to
hear footsteps stampeding after me. As I make for the
front door, through blurry vision my eyes snag on the
sight of my dad’s car keys hanging from their hook.
I snatch them and run outside. Kit’s truck is nowhere
to be seen. Shaking now, adrenaline finally catching up
with me, I stagger to my dad’s car parked in the drive-
way and race around to the driver’s side. It takes me a
frustrating thirty seconds to figure out how to move the
seat forward and how to drive with only two pedals, and
by the time I ease off the handbrake the front door has
flown open. I stamp on the gas but someone steps in front
of the car and I have to emergency brake, my head almost
smashing into the wheel.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
It’s Riley. He gestures at me to wind down the window.
‘I’m going to find Kit,’ I tell him.
‘Since when do you have your licence?’ he asks me.
‘Since yesterday,’ I answer.
Riley looks stunned. But then he steps aside. ‘OK, fine.
Are you OK?’ he asks.
I nod vigorously. I’m suddenly more than OK. I’m free.
‘Are you?’ I ask Riley.
He gives me a weak smile and rests his hand on the
roof of the car. ‘When you find Kit, tell him − ’ he pauses,
frowning − ‘thanks from me.’
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Kit
I slip my key into my front door, the voice in my head
yelling at me so loudly about what a dick I am that I
barely hear the engine roar of a car, and it’s only when I
hear the screech of brakes that I turn around.
Jessa’s dad’s car slides to a halt at an angle, the front
wheels mounting the sidewalk. Crap. He’s followed me.
My heart rate spikes as adrenaline floods my system, but
then Jessa throws open the door and starts running
towards me. She throws herself into my arms, crying and
out of breath.
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbles against my neck.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say at the same time, pressing her close,
unable to believe that she’s here, that she followed me.
Thirty seconds ago I was sunk in a dark pit of misery and
despair, and now I’m standing in the sunlight again.
‘I was a dick,’ I say, the words flooding out of me. ‘I
should have kept my mouth shut.’
‘No. You stood up to him. For the first time, someone
stood up to him.’
‘You stood up to him first. You called him an asshole.’
Jessa wipes her tears away with the back of her arm.
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‘Well, he was. And he just kicked me out. Which makes
him twice the asshole.’
‘He kicked you out?’
‘He said if I followed you then I shouldn’t bother
coming home.’ Her eyes brim with tears again.
Fuck. I stare at her. She followed me anyway? I pull her
against me again. ‘It’s OK,’ I reassure her. ‘You can stay
here. Everything’s going to be OK.’
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, her body trembles.
‘You want to come inside?’ I ask her, turning towards
the door, my mind spinning with everything.
Jessa shakes her head at me. ‘Can we go somewhere?
Anywhere. I don’t care where. I just want to get away
from here.’
I nod and take her hand, pulling her towards the truck.
We drive mostly in silence, Jessa leaning against my arm,
and there’s a comfort in the silence, in the knowledge that
words are unnecessary, that we know exactly what the
other is thinking and feeling without needing to speak.
With just twelve hours left before I have to report to the
base, every second is weighted, shot through with long-
ing and sadness.
When I park, in almost exactly the same spot I brought
Jessa to on that first date, the sun is sinking heavily
beneath the ridge and the sky’s going up in flames. I grab
the blankets I have stashed in the back and lay them out
on the flatbed of the truck, taking Jessa’s hand to pull her
up alongside me.
We lie down in each other’s arms and watch as the sky
fades to black and the stars switch on one by one.
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Mila Gray
‘It’s so beautiful,’ Jessa whispers. ‘The first night we
were here I didn’t really notice them so much. I was too
nervous.’
I grin at her. I didn’t notice them much either.
‘Come here,’ I say, pulling her towards me. While the
stars are beautiful, I’ve only got twelve more hours to
drink in this girl. I tip her chin up and kiss her slowly,
loving the way her body relaxes instantly against mine
and her hands run through my hair.
In silence we start to undress. I watch in silence as
she rises up on her knees and undoes the buttons on her
sundress, slipping it down over her shoulders and shim-
mying out of it. In the starlight she gleams like something
otherworldly, or like the phosphorescence I saw once on
the ocean. She helps me off with my shirt and pants and
then, naked, we burrow beneath the blankets.
Pressed together, our legs entwined, our lips find each
other and we kiss. I’m desperate to memorize every taste
and every sensation and it seems like she is too. Her
fingers skim my shoulders, my chest, my arms, and with
every sigh she makes, with every moan, as my own
hands and lips trace their own path along her limbs and
over her hips and waist, the blood pumps faster in my
veins.
I throw off the blanket, wanting to see her, and she
obliges by sitting up and straddling me. Holy shit. That’s
an incredible view. I slide my hands over the contours of
her body and she smiles down on me, her hair like liquid
silver flowing over her shoulders. This is how I plan on
remembering her.
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‘I love you, Kit,’ she says as she lowers herself slowly
onto me.
I exhale loudly, more stars bursting on the back of my
eyelids than there are in the sky above us. Jessa rocks
gently back and forth but soon we’re both breathing fast
and she starts driving me deeper, grinding against me as
though she can’t get enough. And I grip her hips and pull
her down because I can’t get enough of her either and
when I open my eyes I see her head is thrown back, her
back arched and she’s shivering.
I sit up, clasping her around her waist and then lift her
in one swift move, flipping her over and lying her down
on the blanket and pushing into her. She cries out and her
legs wrap around my waist, drawing me deeper. I want
to take her, inhale her, own her. I want to press myself
into her flesh like a thumbprint into wet clay, leaving a
maker’s mark. I want to take a piece of her with me and
leave a piece of me with her. How do I get enough of her
to last me a year?
With every thrust I feel her muscles clench around me,
the tendons on her neck growing tauter. She’s biting her
lip, but when I kiss her neck she lets out a cry that’s loud
and uncensored and which brings me straight to the
brink.
I know from the way she’s moving, from the way she
whispers my name in my ear, that she’s close, and within
seconds we both come and collapse, panting, onto the
blankets.
‘Holy shit,’ I say, trying to catch my breath.
Jessa laughs, sighing happily.
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‘Well, I’ll definitely remember that for a year.’
I roll onto my side and kiss her shoulder. ‘I’ll remember
that for the rest of my life.’
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Jessa
We pull up outside Kit’s house just as the sun is rising.
For the whole way back I’ve been too scared to talk,
scared that the lump in my throat will burst and I’ll cry. I
can’t believe it’s been four weeks. It feels like a lifetime
and yet it doesn’t feel nearly long enough.
‘It’s just twelve months,’ Kit says, reading my mind.
I turn to him.
‘Three hundred and sixty-five days,’ he says, running
his thumb over my cheekbone. ‘It’s nothing. Not com-
pared to what we’ll have.’
I nod, tears stinging the backs of my eyes.
We climb out the car and Kit takes my hand and leads
me into the house. His dad is in the kitchen. He makes no
comment about Kit and me having stayed out all night,
he just asks if we want coffee.
Kit goes upstairs to shower and pack the last of his
things, and I stay downstairs with his dad. I’m so tired
all of a sudden. The reality of where I’m at, of Kit leav-
ing, of Riley leaving, of having no home to go back to,
hits me with the blunt force of a sledgehammer. I sink
down onto one of the kitchen stools and bury my head in
my hands.
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Kit’s father places his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s OK,’
he says. ‘It’s going to be OK.’
Kit said those exact words. I look up at his father. He
gives me a warm, reassuring smile before crossing to the
stove to turn off the kettle.
‘Your brother came around last night to get your dad’s
car,’ he says as he busies himself pouring the water into
the jug. ‘Told me what happened.’ He fusses with the
coffee for a moment longer before he hands me a steam-
ing mug. ‘You know you’re welcome to stay here, Jessa,
as long as you like. I’ll be glad to have you around. Gets
lonely without Kit.’ He offers me the milk. ‘I want you to
treat this place like your own. OK?’
‘Yes. Thank you,’ I stammer. ‘I appreciate it, Mr Ryan.’
‘Ben. Call me Ben.’
‘OK.’ I take a sip of coffee, not able to look him in the
eye. I’m feeling too tired, too overwhelmed, too sad.
Kit walks back in a moment later – his hair wet, wear-
ing his uniform – and my heart swells big enough to
burst and my vision starts to blur. I don’t think I can do
this. I stagger off the stool and look around desperately