by Trish Morey
“You know, the last bid they had tonight was for eighteen hundred dollars?”
“What? You are kidding me?”
“No. And it will go higher while the exhibition runs.”
He shook his head as they unpacked takeaway containers. He’d gone all out and bought half a dozen dishes tonight because a celebration deserved a feast, and that was what they had from red duck curry and chilli prawns to the soft shell crab he knew she loved. They sat cross-legged on the rug with the dishes set out on the coffee table between them, glasses of champagne at the ready.
“To you,” he said, toasting his clever Ava.
“And to you,” she added, “my amazing, accidental life model.” She took a sip of her wine and said, “Oh, wait. I’ve got something for you.” And she rose to her feet and moved away with that fluid, silken grace thing that stirred his senses like a physical caress. Moments later, she was back. “This is for you,” she said, handing him a twelve-inch square package wrapped in brown paper and tied up with a big white bow.
“It’s to thank you for being my inspiration. Even if inadvertently.”
“I didn’t mind,” he said, undoing the bow and pushing the ribbon aside. He’d discovered that being a life model came with benefits, like that skin tingling awareness that someone was watching you. Someone that you were about to get down and dirty with.
He tore the paper away and felt like he’d been sucker-punched. “Wow.” It was a painting of the flowers he’d given her from his place, the frangipani with the snow white petals and their yellow centres bold against a black satin backdrop. That was the night after the show, the night he’d thought she’d been going to end it, the night she’d put him on notice to keep things cool. And while the latter gave him pause to wonder about what he wanted to tell her tonight, the former gave him hope. She hadn’t ended it, which had to mean something, surely? “You did this for me? Seriously?”
She nodded, then screwed up her nose. “It’s not too girly, though, is it? A picture of flowers is probably the last thing you want on your bachelor flat walls. Maybe you could give it to your mother.”
“Maybe,” he said, the picture propped up in his lap, although he knew he’d never let it go. “It’s amazing.” He looked over at her. “Like you.”
She beamed. “Thank you,” she said, as she propped herself up on her knees and reached across the table then, wrapping her arm around him and planting another one of her sizzling kisses on his mouth, her tongue coaxing his to play, until his cock twitched and he damned well near forgot about the food in front of them.
He tried to gather her closer, wanting more of her, when she pushed him away. “Eat first,” she said, “and then you can play.”
He grinned. She was right, there was celebrating to be done first, and it was a feast of colours and spices and tastes they shared, before they peeled each other’s clothes away and turned to feast on each other, this time a sensual, passionate feast for the body and the senses.
“You’re really something special, you know,” he said, after they’d fallen apart, boneless and breathless, their bodies glistening with sweat on the sheets of her big, wide bed. It was too hot for even a sheet tonight. The curtains were flung apart, windows open, hoping to catch a breeze and letting in the twinkle of the city lights far below, while above them a fan did lazy laps that blew the sluggish night air around.
Their faces scant inches apart, he stroked the pad of his thumb across her lips, the puff of her ragged breathing warm against his flesh.
She kissed his thumb as it made its passes. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not, when it’s the truth? You’re amazing, Ava. Talented, beautiful, and caring. You’re the whole package.”
Against his arm, she squirmed and shook her head. “No.”
“You realise our secret is out. Richo twigged. And once that photo of us gets in the paper, everyone’s going to know.”
“I know.” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to happen. I haven’t worked out what to do about that yet.”
He waited a beat, knowing he was setting something in motion that he didn’t know how would end, but he knew she’d had the chance to discard him once before, and she hadn’t taken it, and all he could do was try to get through to her. “I’m not sorry.”
Her head rolled towards his. “Why? We agreed from the beginning this was our secret.”
He watched the rotating blades doing laps above the bed. “I know,” he started, but slowly, knowing the very least he was risking ruining this sublime evening between them, and recognising there was much more at stake than that. But there was no going back now, not if they were ever going to move out of this damned rut they were stuck in once again, and finally move forward. “But the way I see it now, we’re a bit like that fan up there, spinning around and around, always on the move and yet ultimately going nowhere. Maybe it’s good the secret’s out. Maybe now we can go out together for a meal or to the movies because we don’t have to pretend that there’s nothing going on.”
He felt her stiffen beside him, warm responsive flesh turning hard and impossibly cold for such a hot summer’s night. And even though she was still there, alongside him, he was aware of her shifting away from him, the distance between them growing by the second, and he hated that he was doing this, but this time, he had no choice.
“Like you said, it’s been more than a year and, despite the odd bump in the road, we’re still together. Doesn’t that tell you something, Ava? Doesn’t it suggest that maybe it’s time to set what we have free from these constraints, to give this thing some oxygen, and to see if it will survive in the real world?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
He closed his eyes. Even her voice, so husky from their recent lovemaking, was edged with cold. Then he opened his eyes and turned his head to hers, her face a play of light and shadow and like her life, he suddenly realised, filled with shadowed depths no light could see into, and he ached to shine a light in and find out what was lurking there. “Because we can. Because we don’t have to hide it from the world any longer because soon the whole damned world is going to know. But, most of all, because it’s time.”
She sat up, reached for her blue robe and slipped it over her arms. “You know what we agreed, right? You remember?”
“I remember. I also remember you walking out when I told you I wanted more. I never thought I’d see you again, but here I am. Why do you think you let me back in?”
“Because of the exhibition. Because you had such a part in that.”
He reached over and put his hand over hers where they lay in her lap. She didn’t shy away from his touch, but neither did she make any effort to turn her hand and lace her fingers in his. “You honestly think that’s all it was?
She scoffed, rising from the bed and crossing to the window, her hands clutching her arms, her outline illuminated in the glow from the city. “You’re kidding yourself, you know that?”
He raised himself up onto one elbow. “No, I think you’re the one doing that. I think you’re a fake.”
Her head spun around. “What did you say? This coming from the person who was, not two minute ago, telling me how amazing I was supposed to be?”
He rolled himself higher on the bed. “And I still think you’re amazing, on so many levels, and I’m still so proud of you. But I get this impression you like to make out you’re made of Teflon, and that you can glide through your life and the people you meet, and nothing and nobody sticks. I think you like to believe I don’t feel anything for you and you like to pretend that you feel nothing for me, and maybe in the beginning that was true for both of us, but I don’t believe it now. Because I do care about you, and I keep getting this feeling, that you care for me, more than what you want to let on.”
“Why are you doing this?” She put her hands over her face. “You’re risking everything!”
He snorted. “But that’s just it, Ava. What is this everything we’re supposed to
be having? We skulk around having furtive rendezvous and secret sex. While the rest of the time we go around pretending we’re strangers who mean nothing to each other. Don’t you see? When it all comes down to it, we have nothing. So the answer to your question has to be, yes, I am willing to risk what little we have for the chance of a proper relationship. A normal relationship. With you and me and no more secrets, and we’ll see where it takes us.”
“It will take us nowhere!”
“That may well be true. But what if it’s not? What are we throwing away by closing our eyes and not even looking? We could be together. Maybe make a family together. Have children.”
She looked aghast. “I told you from the very beginning that I wasn’t looking for a relationship. You said all you wanted was sex. They were your words, your terms, and all I did was agree with you! And now you want to change things you dare to tell me I’m fake?”
“Why do you keep going back to that? That was twelve months ago, an entire year. Are you the same person you were back then? Because I’m sure not. I’ve had twelve months of being with you and getting to know you and, yes, having some of the best sex I’ve ever had, and what I’ve learned from that, is that the more I’m with you, the more I want to be with you. And not just for the sex and not in brief snatches of time. Not in secret. Jeezus, Ava, now that it’s going to be out in the open, can’t we at least give a normal relationship a try?”
And in the glow from the city lights, he could see her downturned lips and her sorrowful eyes. “I knew I should have ended it.”
His gut jerked but he wasn’t about to give in. “You had the chance, but you didn’t, did you? And why was that, did you ever stop to think, unless you didn’t really want it to end? You care for me, I know you do. Just like I care for you. I just don’t understand why you can’t admit it. Why are we insisting that we mean nothing to each other, when, from what I can tell, each other is the one thing we both cling to? When each other is all we have?”
She stood against the window, unmoving, unrelenting, and as still and cold as a statue. A column of blue ice impervious to the smothering heat.
“I think you should go now.”
“I’ll go,” he said, gathering up his scattered clothes, knowing he’d said all he’d wanted to say, hoping she wasn’t as impervious to his words, “but only to give you time to think. And this time I really want you to think, Ava, about what we could be together, instead of this pathetic little half-life we’ve been squeezing ourselves into until now.” He pulled on his shorts, not bothering with his underwear, and snatched up his few remaining items. “And I’m not going to wait this time. I’m not going to hang around waiting for you to see sense. I’ll be back tomorrow for your answer,” he said, not making a move towards her when he knew that was the last thing she wanted. “I’ll talk to you then.”
Ava stood under the shower for a long time after Caleb had gone, letting the water stream over her head and body, wanting it to wash away this sense of emptiness and utter desolation, willing anger to fill the void. Why did he have to make it so complicated? It had started out easy enough, the boundaries clear, finding pleasure in each other’s bodies and as well as enjoying an easy rapport that had been fun – for a while. But lately, just lately, things had started to go wrong.
She wanted to turn the clock back and return to those simpler times.
But now he was talking about becoming a family. Having children. Dear god, what kind of mother would she be? What kind of parent could she be after the parents she’d had? After what they’d turned her into, her bed a revolving door for her father’s business cronies?
The water rained down on her and she let it run, for once casting off all thought of conserving the water in her rainwater tanks. There was rain forecast for the coming week and tonight she needed the touch of something against her flesh that might wash away the bleakness of her soul.
She slapped her open hand against the tiled wall, embracing the sting, searching for anger. She wanted to be angry, not to feel this deep sense of loss.
Why couldn’t he have listened to her? Why had he had to go and make things so complicated?
She leaned her forehead against the wall and let the water course down her spine, knowing Caleb wasn’t the one she should be angry with.
Because wasn’t this the way it always ended?
And she knew, she damned well knew in her heart, that she’d been a fool. She should never have trusted him to keep his end of the deal.
Not when there was nobody she could trust.
Chapter Eight
Caleb woke to the news of a fire that had broken out overnight in the Adelaide Hills, and his heart slammed into his chest, his first thoughts for Ava. He tried to call her, only to have her phone go straight to message bank. Every time he tried it went straight to message bank, and finally he left one telling her to turn on her radio and listen for updates or better still, get out now.
He headed to the station consumed with guilt. If he’d still been at her place this morning – if he hadn’t gone home – if he’d left his bloody I-care-about-you speech for another time, a later time, he would have brought her down to the city with him, even if kicking and screaming. He wouldn’t have let her stay up there. He would have given her the keys to his unit. Then whatever happened, he would at least have known she was safe.
The station was buzzing. Every available firey had been called in for what they had been dreading all summer long. And every single one of them knew the monster they could be facing and what was at stake. In no time from those first reports, from the city and suburbs, it looked like the entire range was alight, palls of thick grey smoke rising like massive clouds.
He’d grown up in the Adelaide Hills. Half the people he’d gone to school with still lived there. The house he’d grown up in at Reynolds Ridge, the little stone school house where he and his brother and their friends had gone to school, the scout hall where he’d stuck a fork through his foot planting tomatoes, all of it under threat.
Along with Ava. He’d left her alone up there – was she still there? – and with a fire breaking out and already burning on so many fronts, god only knew where the fire would break out next.
His crew screamed out of the station, lights flashing, heading to a tiny hamlet in the direct path of the flames to help out the local CFS crews who had radioed for assistance. There was no time for regrets then, no time for guilt, when one hundred percent of his energies was required to focus on the job. Working with the local CFS crew and pumping water out of a backyard swimming pool, they managed to push the flames back from one house while the house next door couldn’t be saved and was razed to the ground. They came upon two dogs tied up outside another home, tying themselves in knots as they reared in panic, howling in fear as the roaring firestorm approached, and managed to cut them loose them before a fireball leapt from the tree tops and flames engulfed that house too. They found a woman in tears running along the road, her car and trailer broken down, desperate to get to her beloved horses and begging them to save them, when they’d just come from that direction and knew it was futile and there was no hope for any poor animal caught up in that, and they snatched her, weeping in despair, to safety too.
Time after time, they battled the flames and sometimes they won, but sometimes they were beaten back and had to retreat and just let the fire have its head and try to attack it from a different angle.
But when finally, exhausted, they stopped in at the local sports club taken over for feeding and watering the emergency workers, Caleb had time to pay heed to the roiling feeling in his gut. His phone proved useless, telephone towers down, communication limited to radio contact. Even learning that Dylan was up there in Uraidla at Fire Command Centre was no damned good to him when he couldn’t get a bloody signal to ask him for updates.
All he knew was that, like the sick feeling in his gut, the fire was growing.
Watered and fed, they were sent back out to the fire ground, working side
by side their fellow crews and the water tankers to try to get a handle on this massive roaring beast.
At night they battled on, the clouds glowed red from the fire dancing over the range and looking like the very gates of hell.
And, as one day rolled into the next, the fire relentless in its hunger, devouring everything in its path, it was nothing to the hell he felt inside.
Where was Ava?
In the end, it was two days he hadn’t been able to contact her. Two days of fires raging out of control and taking out phone towers and huge trees falling and blocking roads and not knowing whether she was still at her home or evacuated and holed up somewhere.
Two days of hoping and praying that if she was still home, that the fire didn’t make it into the Uriarra Gorge or there’d be no stopping it.
Two fucking days and nights of not knowing and he had never felt more powerless in his life.
But there was one thing Caleb did know. That he’d been wrong that night, to tell Ava that he cared for her, wrong to let her think that was all it was.
Because you didn’t feel like a part of you would die if anything happened to someone you merely cared about. You wouldn’t feel like you had lost everything there was to lose.
No, this thing he felt for her had grown bigger than that. And when he finally managed to track Ava down, he was going to damn well tell her.
The promised rains arrived on the morning of the third day, delivering relief to weary firefighters on the fire ground and terrified residents who’d been in the path of the fire alike, but there was still no rest for Caleb and his crew, no rest for any crews, the smoking fire ground needing to be monitored while roads had to be cleared of fallen trees while still others deemed unsafe needed to be cut down.