I don’t want to move. I’m afraid to breathe. It’s so quiet, so comfortable, and so unbelievably perfect that I don’t want to risk waking him and ruining everything. I’m so grateful for his company, for his acceptance, for his friendship, that I can feel tears working their way out. I refuse to let them fall. I refuse to destroy this one, perfect moment.
Instead, I close my eyes again and wish myself back to sleep.
When I wake the second time, I’m alone. Luke is not beside me and I’m wrapped in the blanket, my head buried in the crook of my elbow. For a long moment, I wonder if last night was a dream. Was he even here? Did any of that happen? Is it my mind playing tricks on me by not robbing me of memories, but inserting ones that were never there to begin with?
I stretch, pulling the blanket with me as I sit, squinting into the morning sun. The heat is coming, I can feel it. It’s in the air, a promise on the breeze. As I wait for the remnants of sleep and confusion to clear, a mother duck waddles across the grass mere metres from me. Her three babies waddle after her, hurrying to catch up as she heads for the cover of the bushes near the boundary with Luke’s property. She is extraordinarily lucky, yet completely oblivious.
I scan the view before me, the lake stretching out to the opposite hills, the surface rippling gently in the soft breeze. A noise near the deck catches my attention and I turn. Geezer is keeping watch over me, lying near the bottom step. Maybe last night wasn’t a dream after all.
“Come on, boy,” I murmur, holding out my hand to him, making a poor, half-asleep show of snapping my fingers.
He comes anyway, probably out of pity, and sits beside me, half on the blanket, now taller than me. I rub his chest and his glossy ears and he pants contentedly. We sit there for a while, watching the ducks and the water while I finish waking up properly.
When I finally decide I’m ready to face this day, I stand up and gather the blanket into my arms. He follows me up the steps and I shake the blanket loose of the accumulated grass, then fold it up and drop it on the armchair just inside the door. The shower is running and for a moment my heart lurches forward.
James.
Then it falls again.
Not James. Luke. Luke is in my shower. I repeat the sentence to myself again, trying to convince my heart, even as my head waggles a knowing finger.
Luke is in my shower.
I need coffee. Lots of coffee. I detour into the kitchen and switch on the fancy coffee machine that Ana bought me. After last night, I need the good stuff. It’s worth the wait, and a few minutes later I’m walking through to the living room with a cup of pure, unadulterated caffeine.
Just at that moment Luke emerges from the bathroom, towel wrapped around his waist, t-shirt in his hand. His hair is wet, as is his beard, but it’s neither of those things that hold my gaze. We both freeze, and I’m overcome by the unspoken realisation that he wasn’t expecting to see me here, now. He’s not naked, but he may as well be. I’m seeing more of him than I’ve ever seen before, and I can tell it’s the last thing he wants.
My gaze is immediately drawn to the seared, melted, puckered skin of his chest and abdomen. One of his shoulders is also covered with the tell-tale scars of a burn that makes my own skin crawl. Whereas the skin on his arms and legs is smooth and tanned, peppered with a healthy smattering of sun-bleached body hair, the horrific burns are pale, flecked and completely hairless, making the distinction even more noticeable.
There is no muscle definition, just crumpled flesh that sends a bone-deep shudder crawling up my spine.
As fleeting as this moment is, it feels like hours that he is standing before me. Neither of us move. Neither of us speak. My eyes find his, and hold them. I want to say something, but I can’t think of anything appropriate. He recovers from our unexpected encounter before I do.
“Sorry,” he says, breaking eye contact. “I didn’t know you were awake.”
Then he quickly pulls last night’s t-shirt over his head, covering the scarring I can’t pretend I didn’t just see.
“The temptation was too great,” he says, smiling tightly, doing his best to recover while all I can do is just stand there. “I hope you don’t mind.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“The shower,” he clarifies. “It’s kinda a luxury.”
I want to tell him he can use the shower whenever he wants to. But I don’t.
“No, I don’t mind.”
“Thanks.”
We stand there awkwardly, waiting for someone to mention the elephant in the room. Neither of us does.
“That looks good,” he says, indicating the steaming mug of coffee I’d forgotten I was holding. “Do you mind if I help myself to one of those?”
I smile weakly, because it’s clear he doesn’t want to talk about what just happened, and I need to honour that.
“No, of course not. I’ll make you one.”
I turn, taking my coffee with me as I set about making him a cup and wondering how the hell someone with burns like that could be so
normal
. Visions of roadside bombs, dusty roads, blood and scared young soldiers blend with helicopters and hospitals and pain and suffering.
I don’t have much to compare his experience to, but I know what I went through. The road back was harder than anything I’ve ever done. I remember not being able to brush my own hair, not having the co-ordination to use a knife and fork, the frustration when my limbs did not do as they were told. Hospital, rehab, a memory full of holes, gaps that would never be filled, whole days and weeks lost. I can’t help but think that it was a drop in the ocean compared to what he probably went through.
“Hey.”
Luke’s hand on my shoulder nearly sends me through the ceiling. He reaches around and takes the coffee mug – his coffee mug – from out of my hands.
“I’m sorry,” he says from behind me. “That was the kind of thing no one should have to see, especially before their first cup of coffee.”
He’s trying to make a joke of it, but it’s not funny. Not even remotely. I try not to think about how much heat is required to melt a person’s skin like that.
“Believe me, I know I’m no oil painting. More of a watercolour maybe, or a piece of really bad surrealism.”
He’s not giving up and I can’t stand any more bad jokes, especially not at his own expense. I turn to him, and he lets go of my shoulder.
“It’s not funny,” I say, my bottom lip trembling.
“I know it’s not.”
His tight smile is gone, and he looks at me as though he’s searching for something. Understanding? Acceptance? I don’t know, I can’t quite read him. He can be really open sometimes, and his eyes give away everything, but other times, I can feel him shutting me out, and as much as it annoys me, I know I’m probably the same. Some things aren’t meant to be shared. Maybe his pain is one of them, just as mine is. Maybe pain is personally coded to each of us.
Taking a chance, I throw my arms around him. I just want him to know that I care, and that I’m sorry, for everything he’s been through, but the words won’t come.
“Whoa,” he whispers, but he wraps his arms around me just the same.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper back, finally finding my voice.
“It’s okay. Not your fault.”
I don’t let go. Neither does he. Now that I know what’s beneath his shirt, I’m afraid to hold him too tight in case I hurt him, and I relinquish my hold slightly, just in case. In response, he rubs my back, as if reassuring me.
“Come on, now. Let’s have that coffee,” he says.
When I pull away from him, the shutters are still down. We’re not going to talk about this again until he wants to. A sense of relief floods through me. I’m not sure I’d know what to say anyway.
I’m starting to see Luke in a different light. He has a depth that I haven’t even begun to plumb yet, secrets that I’m not sure I want to know. I can’t begin to understand what it must be like to have seen what he’s seen, to have walked in his shoes. Yet, despite all of that, he passes for normal, or more normal than me, which I guess isn’t saying much, considering. I don’t know how he does it, but part of me yearns to find out. It’s almost as if the universe has given me a key, I just have to find the lock.
Luke finally deems me worthy to be left alone after lunch. I mark off the last few days on the calendar, bold red crosses that bring me up to date in more than one sense. As I stand there, staring at the red crosses, it occurs to me that they signify more than just the disappearance of my black pen. My fragile world has been shaken up. Again.
For the first time, I wish I had internet access here. I want to research constellations, I want to know what I’m looking at in the night sky. I consider phoning Ana, but I can’t share what’s happened over the past twenty-four hours without telling her about what happened at the rock, and I don’t want her to know about that. Besides which, my friendship with Luke is based on a shared grief that I’m not sure he would want anyone else privy to. His secrets deserve to be kept as much as mine do.
Instead, I watch as he heads over to the shore in his boat, and find myself tuned into the sound of the engine as he comes back. I sit at my table and write in my notebook as his hammering forms a background soundtrack that’s strangely comforting. Hours pass, the day comes to a lazy end, and I try not to think about the fact that I haven’t heard James’s voice in days.
I’m sitting on the deck later, wondering what I can be bothered making for dinner, when Geezer comes ambling over the lawn. I’ve missed him, even though he’s only been gone a few hours. He bounds up the stairs as if he’s done it a million times, and sits at my feet. I notice immediately that he has a small, empty plastic Coke bottle in his mouth.
“What’ve you got there?” I ask, as if he’s able to answer me.
He just stares at me with big brown eyes as I reach down to remove it. At first, I don’t think he’s going to let it go, but eventually I lever it out of his jaws. It’s then that I notice it’s not actually empty – there’s a piece of rolled up paper inside. I frown at Geezer, but he doesn’t seem to want to tell me, so I open the bottle and tip the paper out into my hand. It’s small, about the size of my palm, and rolled up tightly. I unroll it, and the handwriting is like chicken-scrawl.
I owe you dinner. Follow the hairy, four-legged delivery guy – he knows the way.
“Really?” I ask.
Geezer barks, looking very prim and proper as he sits before me.
I smile – I can’t help it. It’s the most original dinner invitation I’ve ever received.
“Wait here, okay?” I say to Geezer, standing up.
He ignores me, following me into the house as I search the kitchen for something to take with me. Opening cupboards and the fridge, I settle on baked apples, which I haven’t made for years. I peel and core two apples, prepare them, wrap them in foil and put them into a bag. I finger-comb my unruly hair in front of the bathroom mirror and set off across the lawn, Geezer leading the way. He takes his job very seriously, stopping to check on me as we reach the tree-line, before forging ahead through the shrubbery.
When I emerge onto Luke’s side of the trees, he’s nowhere to be seen, but I can see the smoke from his campfire. Geezer leads the way again, and as I walk around the side of the cottage, I see Luke working studiously over a makeshift table.
“Hi,” I say, as Geezer abandons me for his master.
He turns, smiling warmly.
“Well hi. I thought it was about time I paid you back for all those times you’ve fed me.”
“There was no need, really.” I’m sure I’m blushing. “But thank you. Do you need a hand with anything?”
“No, I think I’ve got it under control. What’ve you got there?”
I dangle the bag in front of me, slightly embarrassed.
“I couldn’t come without bringing something, and it’s all I could think of. It’s nothing exciting, but I thought it might be kind of fun.”
“I’m intrigued.”
I dig into the bag, pulling one out to show him.
“Baked apples. Have you ever had them? They’re cored and stuffed with brown sugar, chocolate bits and raisins. You put them onto a campfire and they cook in the embers, then you just eat them straight out of the foil.”
He nods, impressed.
“We do something similar back home, but with butter and cinnamon. I like the sound of yours, though.”
“So, what are you doing there, exactly?”
He really does seem to know his way around a kitchen. I take a closer look, putting the apple back into the bag and placing it down on the workbench, out of the way.
“It’s nothing too fancy since my options are pretty limited here, but I bought some steak in town today, and I thought I’d just do some baked potatoes and fresh corn. Hope that sounds okay?”
“That sounds great. Are you sure I can’t do anything?”
“No, no way. You never let me do anything to help at your place, so same rules apply here. Can I get you a drink? I bought some beer, and a bottle of wine if you’d rather have that. I notice you normally drink wine, so I took a chance – it’s New Zealand wine, so I’m pretty sure it’s good.”
“Thank you,” I smile. “Wine would be perfect. And if you tell me where it is, I’ll pour myself a glass and get you whatever you’re having. Beer?”
“Good guess. And that would be awesome – except that there’s a kind of a trick to it, and I don’t want you to have to get wet.”
He smiles, abandoning his post and heading for the lake. Fascinated, I watch him wade into the water and pull out a heavy plastic bin, setting it on the shore.
“My fridge,” he says, with an air of pride.
He pulls out a beer and a bottle of white wine and sets them on the shore, then returns the box to the water.
Wading back into shore, he grabs a white enamel mug and hands it to me, then pours the wine.
“Sorry, I don’t have any actual wine glasses, so this’ll have to do.”
“It’s fine, really. I don’t mind.”
It’s a screw-top bottle, and he lays it on the sand so that the water just covers it. Then he opens his beer bottle and takes a swig.