by Max Henry
“Rugby Boy?” Bevan suddenly finds his balls, stepping forward into the fray.
“That young thing out there who gave me water to drink.”
They exchange another look before Bevan announces, “I’ll go talk to him.”
“Honestly,” I call after him before the door swings shut. “He’ll be fine with it.”
I have no idea if he will, but just because my love life spent all of six days trying to fly before it crashed from its nest in an angry, wrinkly pink ball doesn’t mean Susie and Bevan can’t start something beautiful here tonight. Even if it is rather shocking and somewhat unhygienic in a bathroom stall.
Each to their own, I guess.
By the time I’ve wiped my face clear and chewed a dozen of Susie’s mints, Bevan returns looking suitably satisfied.
“Nixon will take her home,” he tells Susie. “He’s not drinking. On that mega-serious training shiz for the provincial team.”
“Nixon?” I ask, double-checking there’s no vomit in the ends of my hair.
“Yeah. Jimmy Nixon. That’s who you were talking to.”
“Oh.” Winning. “Thanks for checking with him. You two go enjoy yourselves.”
I shoo them out the door as two drunk women crash in, doing a double take at Bevan standing in the ladies.
“I’m leaving,” he acquiesces, his hands raised.
Susie pushes him out the door, but not before placing a quick kiss to my cheek. “Be careful. And message me if it turns ugly; I’ll come right back.”
“Go,” I repeat, waving them goodbye as the pair disappear up the hallway back to the bar.
I manage to make it back to the table in a singular straight line, but Jimmy’s not there. Whatever. I take a seat anyway, knocking back half the glass of water.
“Hey, you’re back.”
I turn my head to my left to find my chivalrous rugby boy standing with a huge grin on his face.
I plaster a matching, yet fake, one on mine to say, “I sure am,” with as much gusto as possible.
Yep, I’m back. Because if not here, then where? Not as though I have anything to go home to anymore.
Or anyone.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Duke
“These are great.” The government-appointed therapist flicks through the pages of the journals I’ve kept these past weeks.
It’s been twenty-four days since I left Cammie in Burbank, and the only way I’ve coped through the dark hours is by throwing myself into the journaling she suggested I do.
“I have a lot of time on my hands,” I say simply, leaving out the part where I’m still living with my mother at thirty-two years old because I can’t find a job, journaling in the dark, with a torch by my side.
One step at a time.
“Well, I can tell from the few words I’ve read that you really pour your heart into them, Duke.” Dr Dench sets the books aside, placing her hands one atop the other on her sensible suit skirt. “How about we start with a little about you. If I were to ask you to describe yourself in three words, what would you say to me?”
She gives me her undivided attention, which I don’t like. I’ve only tolerated that from one person, and she’s not here right now.
“I don’t know.”
“Take a moment to think about it, and then give me the first words that spring to mind.”
Selfish. Stubborn. Dead.
“Strong, I guess.”
“Good.” She sits patiently, watching me as though waiting for more.
“Honest, and lo—” I stop myself before I say the lie: loyal. “Um, resilient.”
“Good.” Her eyes narrow in on me, yet her expression manages to stay soft. “What else can you share with me, Duke?”
“I’m not sure what you’re expecting.” I shift around on the seat, the vinyl tacky under my hot legs. I’m an anxious mess.
“We might be new to each other,” she says carefully, “but I’ve been at this game for a while, and I can see when one of my clients has something on their mind.”
She doesn’t say it outright, but I can tell she’s not going to let us carry on until we’ve addressed this particular issue. I could bullshit, give her something inconsequential, but I’m guessing she’d see right through that, too.
“It’s in the journals,” I say, pointing to the pile. “Reading that will probably be better than trying to get me to voice it.”
“Okay,” she says, resting a hand on the stack. “How about we leave our session here today. We’ve managed to establish ourselves, get the introductions out of the way.” Her fingers tap the top journal. “I’ll have a read of these tonight, and we can pick up where we left off in a couple of days when I’m scheduled to see you again.”
“Sure.” I rise when she does, taking her offered hand and shaking it firmly in mine.
“As always, if you feel you need to talk to someone you can ring through to our offices any time; there’s an option to divert to the helpline after hours.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She lets my hand go, standing with her hands folded before her as I take my leave. The receptionist gives me a shy smile as I pass by—her flirting when I arrived didn’t escape my notice. Truth is, I’m just not interested. In anything. Especially life now that I’m back in the same old rut.
Coming home was a good thing in that I’ve spent time with Mum like I said I would. I treated that woman like utter and complete crap for the first year or so after I returned. Every ounce of resentment and injustice I felt I took out on her, and I never once thanked her for what she did for me.
For what she sacrificed.
My mother took a second job to ensure that I didn’t have to, making sure I was available to attend every physical therapy session I could to get me to the point I’m at today: where I can walk without a limp.
My leg is a scarred mess, and if Cam noticed it when she saw me naked, she chose not to say a thing.
Yet another tiny detail I realised I appreciated while journaling my thoughts about her. At first, the differences between us drove me nuts, but as I filled the pages with my scrawled words, I realised those quirks were part of what I loved about her. I love the woman for not only her qualities but also her faults. I love all of her.
All I can hope is that this space gives her time to heal, to remember who she was before her life got torn apart. I need Cam to remember how to swim.
How to survive.
How to love herself.
TWENTY-EIGHT
April Dench sat down in her oversized armchair with the man’s journals in her hand. She pulled the cashmere blanket over her legs and made a space for her cat, Sunny, to fit in beside her.
Lance Corporal Harwood was experiencing a definite case of denial if ever she’d seen one. All army men started out the same: stubborn and staunch. But there was something different about Duke. He knew his faults, and yet he still tried to deny their existence.
She shuffled the pile, moving the black bound book to the top. His eye had tracked to it repeatedly, so logic indicated she should start there. She drew a deep breath and opened to the first page. Intricate designs were scrawled over the paper in no particular image or shape, more like somebody was doodling while they tried to work through a thought. She flicked to the next page—blank—and then the third.
With her heart in her throat, she tracked over the inked words, absorbing the information laid out before her in such vivid detail that she felt as though she were there with him, serving right alongside. This man, this soldier … she’d never encountered such a tortured soul.
But what made her set the book down in her lap and take a moment to breathe was the way he spoke of her. Whoever this woman was, this “Cammie” or “Cam” as he sometimes referred to her, she was instrumental to the beginning of his healing; a blind man could see that.
Duke had to reconnect with Cam.
April reached for her notepad laid out on the side table, Sunny mewling his protest at
being jostled in her haste. She brought the jotter to her lap, laying it out on top of the journal and scratched the simple word at the top: Cam.
With her pen in between her lips, she stared at the jotter before setting it aside and continuing with the journal. The hours passed, Sunny shifted to the rug on the floor, and yet April kept going, absorbing, consuming, detailing until the last page had been turned.
Dawn crept on the horizon as she set her jotter aside, the corner of the pages crumpled from her constant flicking back and forth. Words were scrawled so hard in places, the lines repeated on rote as she worked through a train of thought, she’d literally pushed through to the page beyond.
But through it all, through the story of this man’s life, she’d found one thing he hadn’t. A crucial element to his personality that he had neither named or recognised during her questioning.
Hope.
Duke still possessed hope, still retained the simple ability to look beyond, to plan ahead, and some of his counterparts didn’t.
And that, his hope, would be the thing that brought him salvation.
She was sure of it.
TWENTY-NINE
Cammie
Sunlight dances in patterns across my palm as I lie on the sofa, my arm slung over the side to rest on the floor. I twist my fingers back and forth watching the slivers of gold that morph and merge on my flesh.
“Are you only taking the three boxes to the Salvation Army, love?” Mum flits between the entrance and Taylah’s room, finishing what I started.
“At this stage.”
It may have taken me four or five attempts, but finally, after changing my mind almost daily about it, I stepped inside her room last week to begin the task of selecting what to keep and what to be donated to children in need.
The agent has a fair offer on the house—not my parents’—and if nothing else, I know for certain that my time here is limited.
Five weeks have passed since Duke left, and I think it’s fair to say my last reason to stay here left that day, too. I’ve let go of the torment over Taylah that kept me shackled to this house as though it were a shrine to my daughter. The only good memories I had left here were those I shared with him. And now he’s gone and ruined those, too.
“Mum?”
She pokes her head around the corner. “Yes?”
I can almost smell how eager she is from here. She’s been on at me to talk to her for weeks … since Duke left, really. But I’ve kept her at arm’s length, a little mad and harbouring a grudge over the fact it was her meddling that got us involved to begin with.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.” She adjusts her messy bun as she glides into the room, settling on the floor beside me.
“Do you believe in love at first sight?”
Her hands go to her chest as her eyebrows rise in the middle. “Oh, Cam.”
“Is it possible to know in such a short time the truth of how you feel about a person, or do you think that feelings will always change?”
Her hands drop to her lap, and she places one to the side to lean her weight on it. “I believe that yes, people’s feelings do change over time, but it’s more of an adjustment. You learn to accommodate a person, to live with the things that may have irked you at the start, and likewise, you learn to adjust the things you do that irk them.” She pauses, rubbing her lips together. “But … I also believe that the root of what first brought you together never changes. If you love someone, you love them; it’s that simple.”
“Do you still love Dad, then?”
She shrugs. “I love him, but I’m not in love with him. Regardless, the way I feel about him is still different to how you love a friend.”
“Hmm.”
She picks my hand up, massaging the palm with her thumbs. “What have you been thinking about, love?”
“Everything.”
The way I coped in the first two weeks after Duke left can only be described as chaos in motion. The after-show drinks at the pub turned out to be the first of several nights when I ended up so shit-faced I couldn’t remember how I got there.
But then the show ended.
And with that went my last reason to keep busy, keep occupied. I crashed hard and spectacularly, breaking down in the middle of the office at work, tears tracking over my face no matter what I did to try and stop them.
Three forced sick days later, and I assured my boss that I could return to work without combusting at the simplest word or sound. I came back swinging, stronger than ever, doing things I had avoided for years.
Like sorting Taylah’s room.
But through it all, I’ve remained empty, devoid of direction as I float under the surface of my black sea, watching the sunshine make patterns on the surface. I’ve achieved a lot, and yet the victory seems so hollow.
“You know I have his number, Cammie.” Mum squeezes my hand, begging me in her silent way to accept it, to try.
“What would I say?”
“That you’re a stubborn old mule, and that you miss him.”
I snort, closing my eyes. “He made it clear his life wasn’t here with me, Mum. If he thought it could be, he would have come back.”
In hindsight, I guess that’s why the first weeks were the hardest—I lived in the limbo Duke had spoken of, hoping he would return to sweep me off my feet.
But he didn’t.
“Then I don’t know what else I can say,” Mum tells me as she sets my hand down and stands. “You know the answer, and yet you’d rather suffer than bruise your ego by accepting you both made a mistake in choosing to carry on with separate lives.”
“How am I bruising my ego?” I cry. “He left me.”
“And you did nothing to change that,” she says. “Make a damn phone call, Cam, and be done with it. If he rejects you twice, you can let it go and move on. I’m sick of seeing you miserable over something you could fight to change if you really wanted another chance with him that badly.”
She doesn’t get it. I might be miles from the shore, but my drifting has distanced me from the shipwreck all the same. If I call him, hear his voice, bring the echoes to life, then I put myself back at the start. If he rejects me again, then I’m forced to hang up and face the fact he lives somewhere else, has a life away from here all over again.
I’m forced to say goodbye a second time, and I don’t know if I’m strong enough do that.
“What time does the Salvos shut?” I swing my legs around and sit myself up.
“Four,” Mum mumbles, heading back into Taylah’s room.
“I’ll throw these boxes in the car then and get them into town.”
Because the sooner we get this over with, the sooner Mum goes home. And the sooner my mother leaves, the sooner I can go to bed and lie awake pretending my nightmares aren’t my life, and my dreams aren’t where I wish to be.
THIRTY
Duke
“I’ve put the last of the things that were in your wardrobe in the attic for sorting another day, Son.” Mum dusts her sleeves off as she stands in the kitchen doorway, bits of insulation clinging to the cotton. “You know, I’ve enjoyed having you home, even if you have been distracted for the more recent part of it.”
“I enjoyed it, too.”
She lifts her chin to look me squarely in the eye. “Any idea when you might be back?”
I shake my head. “Not yet. I’ll try not to leave it too long though.”
She nods tightly, her jaw hard as she fists her hands in the front of her baggy T-shirt. “Okay.”
“Come here.” I stick my arm out for her and pull her into my side.
Cody moved out a couple of weeks ago, and now I feel as though I’m committing the ultimate betrayal by leaving Mum on her own. She’s a fighter though, and I know she’ll be resilient through the transition to having the house to herself. Still, it sucks.
“I’ll give you a call during the week, make sure you remembered to put the rubbish out on the right day,” I
tease.
She tickles me in the ribs, a sad yet content laugh falling from her lips. “Go on, you. Hit the road before you’re stuck halfway through the pass when dinnertime calls.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I let her go, crossing the room to collect my duffle from where it sits packed against the skirting board. “Has Cody organised the guy to come get those donor cars out of the back yard?”
“Yeah. He said the man will turn up Thursday. I think he only gets one hundred dollars per car, but it’ll be nice to have the full use of my section again.”
“I bet.”
“I thought about putting in a vegetable garden, but who am I going to feed when both my boys are gone?”
“Do one of those community patch things,” I suggest.
She lifts her brows and tips her head in acknowledgement. The project would be right up her alley—giving back to those in need. We hit hard times after Dad left, and if anything, it gave Mum a new respect for the ways in which people pull together when you’re on the bones of your arse like that. She tries where she can to repay the help she received, to assist women who are in the same situation as she was.
“Take care, Mum. Love you.”
She crosses the kitchen to place a kiss to my cheek. “And you, Son.”
She busies herself tidying some invisible speck on the counter top. I know she’s doing it to avoid watching me leave, distract herself, but she’ll be okay. I came back to tie things up, to set things straight, and these past few weeks I’ve done just that.
That’s why it’s time to move on. My work here is done. I literally did everything I came back for.
Except get a job.
A chill taints the air as I step out of the house and head to the car to throw my bag in the back. The indicators on the HQ flash—yeah, I bought it off Cody—as I unlock it. I’ve made a few upgrades to it, mostly the central locking I installed, and a new, better stereo system, but overall, it’s still the same grey beast I broke down outside Cam’s with.
Seemed only fitting it’d be the car I returned in, then.
Eight sessions with the shrink was all it took for her to uncouple me from my fear of failing, and to push me gently in the direction I belong in. Every excuse I put up, she countered with a reasonable alternative.