‘How does that feel?’ asked Lucas.
‘Fine. But don’t let go.’
He blinked, swallowed. ‘I won’t.’
I didn’t lift my head, I didn’t want to see the people gawping at me as we made our way through the crowd and out the front into the crisp night. I sucked in the glassy air, it splintered in my throat.
With Lucas’s arm still firmly around my waist, we headed to his car and he drove to his house. He stepped me up the garage stairs, through the kitchen and into his lounge room. I sat down on his leather couch.
‘Would you like me to get you something to eat?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m fine.’
‘When was the last time you ate?’
I couldn’t remember. Surely I ate today. Yesterday? ‘I haven’t eaten since the night you left.’
His eyes widened. ‘You haven’t eaten anything in two days?’
I nodded slowly. ‘I guess I haven’t.’
‘That’s not good enough. You must take care of yourself, even if I’m,’ he hesitated before finishing, ‘not here.’
‘I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t anything. I can’t feel when you’re not here with me.’ The tears started again, tracing a path down my cheeks.
He closed his eyes, breathing heavy through his nose. ‘Wait here while I order a pizza. In the meantime I’ll get you something to snack on.’
He raced off into the kitchen, and I curled up on the lounge, trying to ease the throbbing in my chest, which I was strangely grateful for, for the pain, as much as it hurt, was at least a sensation, a step above being numb.
Lucas came back and I sat up so he could sit beside me. He placed a plate of cheese and biscuits on the coffee table in front of us.
‘Eat, please,’ he said, motioning towards the plate. With shaking hands, I placed a piece of cheese on top of a biscuit and popped it into my mouth. Lucas waited silently as I ate a few more.
‘You know, it’s no wonder you fainted,’ he said as he watched me put another biscuit into my mouth.
‘I didn’t faint because I was hungry.’
He lifted to his feet and rubbed at his jaw. He was trying hard to be brave, to disguise his hurt, but I could see it all over his face — in every line, in every look.
‘I love you so much,’ he said, his voice straining. ‘I love you so much that even contemplating not being with you makes me…’ He stopped and drew a deep breath in. ‘I can’t even think about it.’ He sat down again and took my hand, rubbed it with his thumb as he steadied his breathing. ‘I was paid a visit by the council when I went home.’
‘Who is the council?’
‘They’re a group of elders who oversee the Earth’s population. I guess they’re a kind of government.’
‘So did you tell them about me?’
‘I told them everything.’
‘Are you in trouble?’
‘Not how you would understand the term
trouble
. But what I’ve done, coming here, is not acceptable and there are definite consequences for having done it.’
My stomach knotted. ‘What did they say?’
He sighed. ‘What I’ve done, travelling back here, has changed the course of Earth.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘It has?’
‘Yes. But it’s also not changed it at all. The council knew about it all, long before I did. They already knew that someone would go back to the past and change the future. How I’ve altered Earth by being here has created my history, and will shape your future.’
‘So we’re not insignificant?’
He leant over, kissed me on my forehead. ‘No. We’re not insignificant.’
‘But still you can’t stay?’
He breathed deeply and leant back against the lounge. ‘I’ve come back to say,’ he lowered his voice to a whisper, ‘to say goodbye.’
I couldn’t draw my next breath. I desperately tried to suck in air, but all I could manage was short bursts. The room was spinning again.
Lucas lifted me from the couch onto my feet and held me in his arms. ‘Anthea, please. I need you to be strong tonight. I want us to enjoy our last…’ He couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘You can’t leave me. You promised me you would never leave me.’
‘I don’t have a choice. I shouldn’t have come here in the first place.’
‘You truly believe that?’
He sighed. ‘I don’t mean it like that. I’ll never regret being with you here. I’d do the same thing a thousand times over, because, as brief as our time together has been, it’s better than the alternative.’
‘No love at all,’ I said quickly.
‘Yes. No love at all.’
I sat back down on the couch, Lucas falling in beside me. ‘So the council are making you go back?’
‘Yes and no. They talked it through with me and I decided for myself that going back is really the only option I have.’ He rested his hands on my shoulders and looked at me intensely. ‘Brendt is supposed to be with you and I ruined that by being here. This blow up with Brendt and Rachel, it’s all because of me. The universe is pulling one way and I’m forcing it to push another.’
‘I don’t want to be with Brendt. I only want to be with you.’
‘And you will. You will be with me. Because I’m already here, as Brendt. And when I’m gone, things will start to go right and you’ll be happy. I know you can’t see that now, but you will.’
‘I can’t be happy without you,’ I whispered.
‘Anthea, how much I love you and how much you love me is exactly the love that Brendt feels for you, because he is me. I know you’ve already felt that on a certain level otherwise you wouldn’t have kissed him. And in time you’ll feel the same about him as you do about me.’
‘But what about you? What happens to you?’
He smiled as bravely as he could. ‘It’s either me, Lucas — or me, Brendt. I can’t escape the fact that one of me won’t be with you.’
My bottom lip trembled as I frowned. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘It’s not fair that I took away Brendt’s chance to love you.’
I lowered my head into my hands. I knew what he was saying was right, but I still couldn’t accept it.
He stroked my hair behind my ears and tilted my face to his. He kissed me softly on the lips. ‘Don’t feel sad for me tonight, Anthea. I’m actually the luckiest man alive, because I get to spend the night with you.’
‘I love you, Lucas.’
Again he kissed me. ‘And I love you, always.’
‘I promise I’ll try to find you, to be with you, so you’re not alone.’
He lowered his eyes to the floor and smiled weakly. ‘I hope you can keep that promise.’
Anthea
Time can play tricks on you. Lull you into a false sense of security by giving the illusion of order in the universe. But that was time’s most cunning trick because there wasn’t any order, not when time itself was endless, recurrent and obscured so masterfully where the past begun, future ended and the present collided.
Oh, but when you’re in love, that was when time was most devilish. When you’re in love, time seemed to stop, slow down and speed up all at once. Every moment I spent with Lucas seemed to exist only fleetingly, whereas every moment spent waiting for him ticked by at a snail’s pace. Every moment he touched me or looked into my eyes that way he did, as though I was the most perfect woman he had ever laid eyes on, time ceased to exist altogether, and Lucas and I were all there was and all there needed to be.
As I lay there on his bare, perfect chest, time willing my eyelids to close, waiting for, and yet all the while resisting that time when I would never see his face again. In that moment, time was my enemy, for I knew that it was time that would keep Lucas from me, and it was time that would keep the lucid pain of his absence embedded in my heart. Time was what brought Lucas to me and it was time that would creep up all too soon and take him away.
31 December 2011
Anthea
What a year. It started with graduation, then the much needed removal of my mother’s wings from around my shoulders and a steep dive from the nest, which landed me in this amazing city I now called home. Comparing this year to the last, I could see the moments where I had managed to swim to the side of the tar pit, dig my fingernails in and climb my way up to the sunlight — now finally able to incline my face to the sky and feel the warmth of freedom.
I was living in a fantastic apartment with my two best friends, had snagged a job I genuinely enjoyed, and I was finally living life — my life. Gone were the dark shadows that were clinging to my back and whispering their venom in my ears.
Had this year been perfect? Far from it. I still had that heaviness, that gritty pain in my heart, unstitched tethers desperate to be mended. By what? By who? I wasn’t sure. But that was my wish for the New Year — to finally receive those tight little sutures that would stitch me back together.
I looked down at my wrist, at the scar that was slowly fading, somewhat hidden now behind the ink I got last month.
Stitch me up until I’m whole again
. That was what I was sending out to the stratosphere now, to the presiding gods, to my inner-deity, to whomever, whatever, would help me grow, repair and move forward, because I never wanted to go backwards again. I never wanted to even dip a toe into that tar pit again — ever.
I slid my hands along my tight-fitting, blue chiffon gown. It felt sensual under my fingers, exciting. I hadn’t dressed this glamorously since my school formal. My veins sparkled, that long pink scar up my wrist tingled. Despite the hardship that this constant yearning and aching had caused, I felt strangely positive, as though my wish for the New Year wasn’t so unrealistic. If I could make so much positive change in a year, perhaps this coming year could be the year where those unstitched pieces of my heart would be repaired.
‘You ready?’ asked Roslyn from my doorway.
I turned from the mirror to face her and smiled. She looked gorgeous dressed in a long, tight black dress with the deepest plunging neckline I had ever witnessed. If someone was going to get away with wearing a dress like that, it was Roslyn.
Roslyn noticed where my eyes had strayed — her modest cleavage. She grinned wide and shimmied, her breasts jiggling. ‘It’s my fishing dress.’
I arched a brow, already smiling, anticipating the answer. ‘Fishing?’
‘Yeah, this dress is my bait and I hope to snag a really big fish with it.’
I lowered my head, laughing. ‘I’m certain you’ll have no problems there.’
‘Oh, Anthea, you look gorgeous,’ said Rachel, sliding in beside Roslyn.
‘Thank you. You look amazing yourself.’ And she truly did. Her petite frame and bright blue eyes complemented by the softest cornflower-blue silk dress.
She jumped up and down on the spot, squealing. ‘It’s just like our formal all over again except we aren’t underage, don’t have to go home to parents, and can do whatever we like.’
My chest thrummed, my tummy tightening. I was vibrating with excitement. ‘Come on then, let’s make this the best New Year’s ever.’
***
City Hall was blooming with colour — a myriad of gowns and dresses, and the accompanying men wearing suits in shades of black. For a glamorous event, the guests were partying with a recklessness I envied and desperately wanted to emulate.
The dance floor was the biggest I’d seen, and the music was surprisingly boisterous. After a few warm-up flutes of sweet champagne, I led the girls onto the dance floor, pumping my hands in the air, swaying my hips to the bass. We danced and drank and danced some more. We, and the others, rocking out in their gowns and garbs, were like a vibrant breathing beast, the music our master, our bodies a writhing instrument of happiness. The Queensland summer heat snuck inside the hall and misted our skin, but we didn’t care, kept on dancing. My mouth was sore from endlessly laughing and smiling.
The music’s tempo slowed and sapped a little of my energy. I used the time to take a breather at the bar with Roslyn. We ordered vodka ice with big slops of raspberry and drank it down like cordial at our table.
‘Now see him there,’ Roslyn said, pointing to a tall guy with white-blond hair standing with a group of guys off to the side of the dance floor.
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m going home with him.’
I sucked quickly on my straw as I nodded. ‘He’s cute.’
She crossed her legs and bounced her heel on her foot. ‘Yes he is.’
My eyes roamed over the faces of the group. They were all fairly good-looking. It did make me wonder what was in the water here in Brisbane that bred guys like that. And then my eyes landed on a face that stuttered my heart. ‘Oh, now he is more to my liking.’
‘Who? Who?’ said Roslyn, neck craning to find the culprit.
‘The tall guy there with brown hair. He’s wearing the blue tie and grey dress-shirt.’ I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He was broad, his face perfectly symmetrical. Long kissable lips. His eyes caught mine for a heartbeat, two, then he looked away. I was blushing, flustered. His eyes were amazingly blue. The type of blue I could stare deeply into as I sat on his…
My God, I’m starting to think like Ros
.
‘Which one?’ Roslyn asked.
‘The one just taking a drink of his beer now.’
‘Oooh, yeah, he is sexy.’ She stood and adjusted her breasts in her no-room-for-error dress (quite the point I’m sure) and emptied her drink in a single gulp.
I started to stand. ‘Are we going back to dance?’
She shook her head, her focus squarely on Blondie. ‘Nope. I’m going to introduce myself.’ And she strutted off before I could stop her.
So I sat back down and watched the huntress at work. Was I envious? Yeah, I guess I was. It would be freeing to have Roslyn’s confidence. It would be a relief to have the freedom to choose a guy, rather than being shackled by these aching chains that dictated my love life, or lack thereof, for me.
Roslyn didn’t introduce herself to Blondie like she said she would, instead made a beeline to Blue Eyes.
My
Blue Eyes.
She smiled her charming smile at him, flicked her long hair over her shoulder and pointed right at me while whispering something in his ear.
His eyes found mine and heat rose all the way from my toes to my cheeks.
Bitch.
My breaths thinned, and I sat straighter as he headed towards me. He was smiling, but I could barely look at him, could barely manage a smile back. Then he was standing in front of me, no,
towering over me
would be a better description.