No Place Like You

by Marnie St Clair

  ‘Needed to be said, I reckon.’ They walked along in silence for a moment, then Katie said, ‘You know, you’ve been totally amazing about the ball. There must be heaps to do. I’d be happy to help. If you want me to.’

  Lily smiled. ‘Sure. We’re going to have a massive weekend of painting, try to get the ballroom knocked over. The more the merrier.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Given what Katie had just confided, she’d better give her a heads up. ‘Josh might be there too.’

  He might be. She wasn’t sure after what had happened last night. Could they really stand side-by-side and paint together with things the way they were?

  ‘Believe me, I’m over it.’

  ‘The way I feel at the moment, you’re welcome to him.’ Not quite the truth, but not too far off either.

  ‘What’s going on between you guys?’ Katie asked, curiosity evident.

  Like she knew. Josh hadn’t come in today, and she was grateful. She wasn’t ready to face him. She didn’t regret last night, but the way he’d treated her afterwards … That wasn’t okay. She wished she’d told him it was going to be her first time, but she didn’t think he should have asked her to go like that. ‘Beats me. He doesn’t give too much away.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t.’ She came to a standstill, stopping Lily’s progress towards the café they’d almost reached with a hand on her arm.

  ‘Saxon’s going to be there on the weekend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is probably a stupid question, but you two aren’t … involved?’

  ‘No. Never. Just friends.’

  ‘He’s very …’ She hesitated, eyes on Lily, asking for assistance.

  ‘Beautiful?’ Lily filled in.

  ‘I didn’t want to say it like that. It sounds so … feminine.’

  The implicit question was so obvious, Lily had to bite back a laugh. ‘He’s not gay. If that’s what you’re trying to ask.’

  ‘I didn’t think so. I mean, when I was there last night, it didn’t seem that way.’

  Meaning that there’d been some sparks between Saxon and Katie?

  ‘He’s too young for me anyway,’ Katie continued.

  ‘I don’t think so. How old are you?’

  ‘Twenty-seven.’

  Same as Josh.

  ‘Saxon’s twenty-four. No big deal.’

  ‘Really? He looks younger than that.’

  He might look young on the outside, but he wasn’t really. Not on the inside. ‘It won’t be a problem.’

  Katie absorbed that in silence for a moment. ‘I hope you and Josh sort things out.’

  ‘Me too.’

  They walked back into the café together.

  ‘Oh good, you’re back. Come and sit down,’ Maureen said matter-of-factly, as if there hadn’t been some kind of explosion in the room only a few minutes ago.

  ‘What’d we miss?’ asked Katie as they sat.

  ‘We were talking about Lily’s grandmother. You’re right, Helen,’ Maureen said, turning to look critically at Lily. ‘She’s just like Jemima. I don’t know how I missed it.’

  Jemima, her mother’s mother, had died before Lily was born. ‘You knew her?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Louise replied. ‘We all did.’

  ‘What was she like?’ she asked, heart in her mouth.

  ‘She was a lady,’ said Helen. ‘That’s the best way to describe her.’

  Shit. Just like that, Lily was battling tears again.

  ***

  Josh pulled up in front of the front entrance to Mirabook. He cut the engine, but made no move to leave his ute. He needed a few moments to steel himself.

  He’d behaved badly. Again. It was getting to the stage where it was just his new standard operating procedure. He’d just been so angry with Lily, and truth be told, he still was.

  She should have told him. How could he have anticipated that?

  It was hard to figure out why exactly she’d still been a virgin. She must have had plenty of offers. Would-be suitors beating down her door. But she’d said no. Obviously.

  She’d waited.

  What she’d given him was a gift. If he were a better man, maybe that’s how he’d think of it. But he hadn’t asked for it, and he didn’t want it.

  He could still feel her hand gripping his, still feel her breath at his ear. Her dark eyes looking up at him. It had never felt like that. Never. She’d forced a degree of intimacy, a connection, that he didn’t want. It was supposed to be just sex, but it wasn’t.

  She should have told him.

  At the same time, he was angry for her almost as much as he was angry with her. If it was a gift, it shouldn’t have been given to him. A man who hated her. Who was waiting to throw her out of her home. And she’d turned around and presented him with that. It shouldn’t have been him. She’d waited that long, she should have waited longer, for someone who loved her.

  And the way he’d treated her afterwards … Nothing to be proud of there. He shouldn’t have told her to go. It’d been her first time. He should have been holding her. But he hadn’t. She’d left in a terrible state. But he’d been pretty shattered too.

  The whole situation was royally fucked up.

  He’d thought Lily was toxic to him, but maybe the reverse was true too. It seemed all he did these days was mistreat her in one way or another. He couldn’t do it anymore. Enough damage had been done, and the time had well and truly come to end it for good.

  He knocked on her door, grated his teeth when Saxon answered. ‘Lily in?’

  ‘Nope.’ He stood leaning against the doorjamb, stance casual, expression anything but.

  ‘Know when she’ll be back?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you let her know I came around?’

  Saxon crossed his arms. ‘You should leave Lily alone.’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  A long pause and an assessing glare. ‘Glad we’re on the same page.’

  ‘Just tell her I came.’

  Saxon dipped his head slightly, though whether that was assent or not Josh had no idea. He was like a sentinel guarding the door. Good. Whatever else he was feeling, he was pleased Lily had someone like that in her corner.

  ***

  ‘I’m making pasta. You hungry?’ Saxon asked, chopping broccoli into florets.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve eaten. Smells good, though.’

  Saxon was so tense, his shoulders were up around his ears, and she knew what the problem was. She was late home and he thought she’d had dinner with Josh.

  ‘With Katie and Helen. At the pub,’ she supplied.

  He relaxed immediately.

  Dinner had been great. She remembered her parents scoffing about ordering seafood this far from the sea, but the fish and chips had tasted pretty good to her. Fish and chips, a glass of crisp dry riesling, and hours of talking. Pretty close to perfect.

  Katie and Helen had wanted to hear all about her plans for Mirabook. Helen said everyone she’d asked today was sure it would get through council. She couldn’t understand why Josh’d thought differently. Small towns didn’t have the luxury of being picky about which businesses to support.

  It was incredibly sweet that Helen had been asking around for her, but Josh must’ve had something in mind. Maybe it was to do with zoning. After all, until recently, the house had been bang in the middle of a massive sheep station. Maybe he’d thought all his sheep and her brides couldn’t co-exist.

  ‘Katie was there tonight?’ Saxon asked, drawing her back to the current moment.

  ‘Yep,’ she replied, corners of her mouth tipping up. So, the feeling was mutual. Should she tell him Katie had asked about him too? Why not? Her own love life was up the creek without a paddle, she might as well play Cupid. ‘She thinks you’re hot, by the way.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Words to that effect. Hot and nice.’

  Saxon was smiling as he returned his attention to his broccol
i. ‘I missed you this morning. You must have been up and out of here before the sparrows.’ He turned from his pot, looked at her properly for the first time. ‘You seem much better.’

  ‘I am.’

  She was so glad she’d had work to go to today. Not only had it kept her busy through a pretty rough patch, she’d ended up having an incredibly therapeutic air-clearing session. Like Katie said, sometimes these things needed to come out.

  ‘I don’t want to rain on your parade, but you just missed Josh.’

  Her heart stopped at the mention of his name. As always. So, Josh had been here looking for her. Well, that was something. With how things had ended last night, that was definitely something.

  After this afternoon, she knew how she wanted approach things. They needed to talk it out. Everything. She’d thought making love would solve all their problems. It might have brought them closer in one way, but it had driven them apart in others. Because they had all these things they hadn’t talked about. She knew it was going to be a lot to work through, she wasn’t burying her head in the sand about that, but she wasn’t giving up on them either. The night hadn’t ended well, but she failed to see how Josh could have made love to her like that if he didn’t have feelings for her.

  Saxon dumped the broccoli into the pot of boiling water. ‘He asked me to let you know he came by.’

  Hadn’t he just said that already? She turned assessing eyes on Saxon, who seemed very casual about Josh’s visit and very fixated on his task. ‘Why are you telling me this? You hate Josh.’

  He smiled, small and tight. ‘I had to think about it.’

  ‘So why did you?’

  He just shrugged, looked intently at the boiling water. ‘What is it for blanching? Like two minutes, then plunge in iced-water, right?’

  ‘What’s going on, Saxon?’

  He didn’t reply, just retrieved the ice from the freezer, and dumped the cubes in a large pot waiting in the sink.

  ‘Saxon. Do not mess with me on this.’

  He leaned back against the sink, arms crossed, ankles crossed, eyes filled with what looked suspiciously like sympathy. What the hell was going on?

  ‘Look, I probably shouldn’t be saying anything, but I don’t want you going in blind. I think Josh is going to end whatever it is you two have going on.’

  ‘He can’t do that.’ Light-headed, her hand came up to her hair. ‘He can’t do that,’ she repeated. And it hit her. Josh was going to end it. She hunched over, struggling for breath, feeling like she’d just been sucker-punched in the gut.

  ‘Lily …’ Saxon came around the bench towards her. ‘I know this sucks, but it’s a good thing. Really.’

  ‘No.’ She leapt out of reach of the hand he would have put on her shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know what happened last night, but you were so messed up when you got back here. Whatever’s going on with Josh, it’s not good.’

  ‘I’m not having this conversation with you again, Saxon.’

  She turned away, began pacing in front of the island bench. Saxon must have it wrong. Josh couldn’t seriously intend to end things between them. He just couldn’t. Not after last night.

  ‘He can’t do this. He just can’t do this.’ She said it over and over, before at last she managed to pull herself up. Pacing and panicking weren’t going to help. She took a deep breath in, let a deep breath out. She knew what she had to do. She’d decided already. ‘We need to talk. I have to go talk to him.’

  Saxon expelled a heavy breath. ‘So I’ll be here. Always. You know that, right?’

  He was worried. But he didn’t have to be. This was good. Things had come to a head, and tonight, she was going to go sort them out.

  She managed a quick smile in his direction. ‘It’s going to be fine.’

  Saxon didn’t look convinced, but she was too pumped and edgy to care. One way or the other, for better or for worse, they were having this out. It was the only thing to do.

  Without giving herself time to second-guess her decision, she set off for Josh’s house like she had yesterday. The difference a day could make. Yesterday had been uncharacteristically warm—all sunshine, wildflowers and sweet-smelling breezes. Tonight was cold and grim, and the drizzle was turning heavier by the second. She didn’t let it slow her down.

  They needed to talk. Seriously. She was done with all his attempts at putting her off. They were having this thing out. Tonight.

  It was late now, and his ute parked out front, so he was home. Good. She was resolved, and she couldn’t bear to wait a moment longer. She knocked, shivering. Perhaps she should have stopped long enough to grab a coat. Spring had officially started, but no one had told the weather gods. It was freezing.

  Impatient, she knocked again, and peered in through the long narrow glass panel which ran along the door. It looked warm in there, beautifully warm. She loved his place. It was Josh, with its rough-hewn natural materials, earthy tones and solid ruggedness. Big, warm, and generous. The Josh she wanted. The Josh she was about to go in and fight for.

  Chapter 13

  Josh took one look at Lily, hair matted to her skull, clothing drenched, and pulled her inside. ‘Jesus, you’re freezing.’

  ‘We have to talk. Promise me you’ll listen this time, Josh. Promise me.’

  She was shaking like a leaf. What had she been thinking, walking through the now bucketing down rain in such light clothing? ‘Sure,’ he agreed. Anything she wanted. ‘Just let me get you warmed up first.’

  She talked non-stop as he stripped off her shoes and wet layers—something about coffee and posters and Katie, and her grandmother and spit roasts, and clearing the air, and he was trying to follow with the half of his attention that was free but he was much more interested in stopping the whole-body quakes that were wracking her slight frame. Finally, he had her wrapped in a blanket and deposited on the sofa, close to the fire.

  She’d stopped talking. Her big dark eyes, always his point of weakness, were fixed on him. With so much of her covered by the cream-coloured merino blanket, it was like they were all he could see.

  ‘You’re going to have to start from the beginning again, Lily. I missed all that,’ he said, taking a cautious seat at the other end of the sofa.

  ‘Saxon told me you came around. He seemed to have the impression you were going to end it. I told him he must have got it wrong.’

  As opposed to her earlier ramblings, these phrases were succinct and cleanly composed. Good. And good that Saxon had given her a head’s up. Hopefully they’d be able to discuss this briefly and rationally.

  ‘Lily … This thing isn’t good for either of us.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. That’s not true.’ She shook her head as she spoke, as if to convince herself of her words.

  ‘After last night? You still don’t believe it after what happened last night? And let’s not forget the night before.’ She didn’t respond, so he went on. ‘You think I like the fact that I act like some kind of brute around you? It’s not me. It’s not who I am.’

  She half-smiled down at the blanket surrounding her. ‘Yeah, what a brute.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’ He shifted his gaze to look at the flames flickering in the stone fireplace.

  ‘I should have told you,’ she said. ‘You were right. That wasn’t fair. I suppose I didn’t realise how important it was.’

  Yeah, well, he hadn’t known either, had he? He’d been thinking about it today—of course, as if he’d been able to think about anything else—and he wasn’t so sure it was the virginity thing that had been the problem. He’d blamed that, and blamed her, for how he’d felt when he was with her.

  Maybe the fact that it was her first time, that she’d trusted him with that, had made the connection more intense. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe he would have felt that hopelessly and madly and dangerously lost in her anyway. Had he honestly thought that having sex with Lily would lessen the pull he felt towards her? He’d convinced himself he’d be able to make
love to her, then walk away, that somehow finally sating all his teenage lust was going to release him from how he felt. What a joke. It hadn’t. It had pulled the threads that bound them together even tighter. In those moments after they’d made love, he’d realised exactly how deep it still went in him, and it had terrified him.

  He should have stuck with his original plan of avoiding her until she left town. Sure, it would have left things unresolved between them, but unresolved was better than this—still unresolved, but with further complications, deeper hurt. All he could do now was to take a massive step backwards.

  ‘I didn’t handle it very well.’ He didn’t handle anything to do with Lily well. ‘I shouldn’t have asked you to leave like that. I apologise. Again.’

  Another long pause. She was quieter now, calmer than when he’d opened the door to her, looking like some kind of bedlam escapee. But that damn shaking still hadn’t quit. He shifted off the sofa, added another log to the fire.

  ‘Would it have changed things? If you’d known beforehand?’ she asked quietly.

  It took him an age to respond, and even then, ‘I don’t know’ was the best he could come up with. He hoped it would have. He was an old-fashioned kind of guy in some ways, and he hoped that he would have seen that his desire to ‘work her out of his system’ and Lily’s virginity were incompatible. But he wasn’t sure. He didn’t make good decisions around Lily. That was why—one reason why—they had to stop this thing.

  ‘I did try, you know. To tell you.’

  ‘Look, Lily … It’s okay. It’s done.’ He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He’d been angry earlier that she hadn’t told him, but he wasn’t anymore. He’d made his decision—the only decision he could make. It had been a mistake to start anything with her. His mistake. The only way to fix it was to end it for good, before any more damage was done. ‘Let’s just forget about it.’

  He realised that had come out wrong the moment before she spoke.

  ‘Let’s just forget about it? Are you for real?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that exactly. I meant …’ Shit, what did he mean? ‘It shouldn’t have happened. None of it. I was the one who started it, and I take full responsibility.’ He looked along the sofa to where she was staring at him, uncomprehendingly. It wasn’t that hard to understand, was it? ‘Like I said before, we’re not good for each other. This whole thing has been wrong from the start.’