Lovestruck

by Bronwyn Sell

  ‘Touched?’

  ‘But all those mistakes got us here. We may not be perfect and we may not be living perfect lives, and we may want things we can’t have, but there’s so much good stuff, too. So much love and so many jokes that wouldn’t exist if everything had been perfect for everyone. And Mika gets to grow up surrounded by people who love her, and that’s way more important than any mistakes we may or may not make along the way. Does any of that make sense?’

  ‘You’re the actual best,’ Carmen said, the words dissolving into a sob. ‘You know that? The best.’

  ‘There you are,’ Rosa called from behind them. She walked up and sat on Carmen’s other side. ‘I just caught up with what happened. You all right, honey?’

  ‘I will be. I should get Mika to bed, poor thing. Glad I brought the stroller down. I figured she’d conk out at some point.’

  Amy glanced inside, where Mika was sleeping on Josh’s chest. He was looking at her with that indulgent smile. ‘You stay here,’ Amy said, standing. ‘I’ll get the stroller.’

  She took a second to steady herself, and walked inside, using the dancer’s trick of fixing her focus on one steady spot (Josh) to maintain her balance. She felt emboldened, suddenly, by the alcohol, by her awesome speech to Carmen just now, but also by this new theory that was forming in her brain, fuzzy at the edges. Maybe someday she’d make the right mistake, too. Maybe she already had, last night. Imperfect times called for imperfect measures. Goddammit, she was going to take the risk she’d promised Harry she’d take.

  She caught Josh’s eye and jerked her head, indicating he should follow her. He pointed at Mika, a question in his expression. ‘Bring her,’ she mouthed. She walked toward the doors to reception, trying to arrange the thoughts in her head into an epic impassioned speech that would fix everything.

  Josh looked more appealing than ever as he followed her into the office behind reception, his hair mussed, his jacket and tie discarded, his top shirt buttons undone, a shadow on his jaw. She knew just how that stubble would feel against her cheek. And of course, he was carrying the accessory to end all accessories, the cherub dribbling onto his shirt.

  ‘How’s Carmen?’ he said.

  ‘She’ll recover. She’s been through childbirth without painkillers. Nothing can break that girl. And Pippa, is she okay? Dad said it was her and Sanjay’s wedding dance.’

  ‘Nothing breaks her, either, and she’s faced far worse.’ He smiled sardonically. ‘My family may be small, but we can pack in a lot of drama. Does everyone know everything within minutes of it happening around here?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. Except my mum, bless her. You know that almost everyone knows about us?’ Her stomach flip-flopped. She was unleashing the ‘us’ for the first time. But yeesh, she wanted it to be reality. An us, a we. She unlocked the stroller, which was parked at the far end of the long, narrow office, beside Carmen’s disturbingly tidy desk, adjusted it to slant back into more of a bed, and rolled it toward him. ‘Speaking of secrets, I know that line you fed me about your inheritance was bollocks.’ He lowered Mika, cradling her neck and grimacing. From strain or embarrassment? ‘You didn’t have to lie to me to push me away.’

  ‘Yeah, I kinda figured that out pretty much as soon as I said it.’ He stood and pulled one arm across his body in a stretch, and then another. She knew just what that would look like with his clothes off, the dragonfly tattoo distorting. She got a flashback to last night, when she’d traced its lines with a fingernail while he’d explained its meaning. They’re the ultimate survivors. No matter what the world throws at these guys, they adapt and keep on going. ‘Basically, I’m an arse,’ he said. He dropped a concerned gaze to meet hers. It filled her with warmth, like it had every time it had landed on her this past week. ‘And that has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with any of the women I date. It’s all me.’

  She swallowed. It’s now or never. She opened her mouth but he spoke first.

  ‘Aims, if we did go there …’ Her throat clogged up with hope and fear. He was considering it? Considering the us? ‘You’re not a woman I could easily walk away from, and I’m not just talking about our family situation.’

  ‘So maybe don’t walk away?’

  ‘Please, don’t,’ he said, stepping closer, so she had to tip her head back. ‘Don’t.’

  Amy’s jaw shook. She clamped down on it. ‘Because you only date women you can easily walk away from?’

  ‘Yeah. And because I like this family. I don’t want to not be invited back for Christmas. And I would screw up and you would hate me. I’d hate for you to hate me.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Aims, I don’t need a girlfriend,’ he said, and just like that, all her irrefutable arguments pirouetted out of her head. ‘I don’t want a girlfriend. I have lots of girlfriends. The thing I don’t have is family. I’ve hardly had a single platonic relationship with a woman my age. I’ve always wanted a brother or sister and I’m definitely not screwing it up by screwing you again.’ He turned to the windows at the far end of the office. ‘Last night was a mistake,’ he said, smoothing his thumb knuckles over his eyebrows. ‘We should never have gone there.’

  ‘Mistakes can lead to good places, too,’ she said weakly, but it fell flat without the context, without the big passionate argument that was supposed to make it into an offer he couldn’t refuse. She wanted to grab him and shake him—or, better still, kiss him—until he saw what she saw. She grabbed fistfuls of her dress and stood there, rigid.

  ‘I’m going to change my flight,’ he said quietly.

  ‘What? To when?’

  ‘I’m going back to Perth with Pippa tomorrow. I’ll spend a few days with her there, just to check that she’s okay.’

  ‘Of course,’ was all she could manage.

  ‘And I’m not going to move in with you, okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ she said, shrinking.

  ‘Shall I push this thing out?’ he said, gesturing at the stroller like he was sussing out how to drive it. The conversation was at an end, along with everything else. She’d got ditched without saying a word, without even creating a relationship to get ditched from.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ she said, pulling it toward her. ‘I’ll see you back out there.’ She needed time to put this jigsaw back together in her head. He nodded, and left.

  Sometime later, she parked the stroller in front of Carmen and Rosa, who were still chatting on the deck. ‘I might need your sofa bed tonight,’ she said, sitting next to Carmen.

  ‘You’ll have to fight Mum for it.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  Rosa smiled weakly. ‘Viggo just announced he’s flying back tomorrow—some work crisis—and he needs a good sleep tonight because he’s going straight into the office.’

  ‘Bastard,’ Amy said. ‘I’m so sorry. And is that it for you guys?’

  Rosa made a clucking noise. ‘He promised to look at his schedule and get his assistant to “try” to fit me in, but I told him—diplomatically—that I don’t want to be some convenient woman who slots into a man’s life where and when it suits him.’

  ‘Well said, Mum.’ Amy held up her palm, and her mother weakly high-fived. ‘He’s a dick if he doesn’t throw everything away to have you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel comfortable about that either. Oh, don’t look so glum, girls. It might not necessarily be the end. He might come round. And he was lovely about it all, just clueless. He offered to pay for my flights to Melbourne to visit him, like money was my chief concern. It’s like he honestly thinks I live such a simple life that I’d be happy to fit into his “demanding” schedule.’

  ‘Simple!’ Carmen cried. ‘Life on an island is the opposite of simple.’

  ‘People don’t understand that. If he’s not prepared to inconvenience himself to make time for me, it’s never going to work. There’s a time to compromise, and a time to put your foot down. And it’s better to sort all that out earlier than later. If you bend over backward at the beginnin
g, you have to keep doing it, and I’m not as flexible as I once was.’

  ‘I guess,’ Amy said mournfully.

  ‘It’s not like in the movies,’ Rosa continued, like she was the one doing the consoling, ‘where everything gets wrapped up all neat and tidy and then the credits roll. Sometimes, there’s unfinished business and maybe that’s how it’s meant to be. Life is messy. Especially in paradise.’

  Carmen squeezed Amy’s knee. ‘You can have my bed, Aims. I’ll sleep on the rollaway next to Mika. You know, I can’t even say her name anymore without thinking about …’

  ‘All us girls together.’ Rosa tried and failed to make it sound like a positive.

  Jaz and Lena wandered out of the pavilion. While Lena dragged another bench up to join the first one, Jaz walked up to the stroller and laid the backs of her fingers on Mika’s forehead. ‘We can top up her paracetamol in half an hour.’ She sat between Rosa and Lena, and all five women stared into the inky darkness like there was something to see.

  ‘Where’s the captain?’ Rosa said.

  Jaz groaned. Unlike the rest of them, her makeup and hair looked as flawless as it had that morning. ‘He found an excuse to leave. For once in my life, I didn’t want to be the dateless one, so I got up the courage to ask him here today.’

  The courage? If even Jaz’s confidence was no match for the curse, what hope did the rest of them have?

  ‘Be happy he came,’ Lena said.

  ‘Did you invite someone, Leenz?’ Cody appeared behind them, holding a beer.

  ‘Who?’ said Harry, stepping up beside him.

  Lena clasped her hands together and brought them to her lips. ‘Nobody.’

  ‘Lieutenant Nobody, I assume?’ Cody said, sitting beside Lena. Harry split off to the other end of the bench and took the space beside Amy. ‘Let me guess,’ Cody continued, ‘he said he’d rather go out on the firing range, facing the bullets?’

  ‘Jerk,’ Lena said, listlessly.

  ‘Bitch,’ Cody retorted reflexively, though his heart evidently wasn’t in it.

  Jaz inhaled loudly. ‘Maybe it’s just as well, hon. Turns out inviting a new guy to a crazy family wedding is not the best way to ease him in. Oh, and Carmen? Duc felt really bad about the whole Mike situation. He said to say he’s sorry.’

  ‘Oh no! It wasn’t his fault. Poor guy. Sorry I scared him off.’

  ‘Nothing was anybody’s fault,’ Amy said, pointedly.

  ‘Uh, I’m sorry too, Carmen, for the record,’ Cody said, sounding like someone was pointing a gun to his head. ‘I shouldn’t have made a joke of it. Though it really is pretty fucking funn—’

  ‘Shut up, Cody,’ said most of them.

  ‘Give it time,’ Cody said. ‘Hey, who’s that down on the beach?’ As they fell silent, angry voices rose up, too muffled to discern words. ‘Is that Nan and Reg?’

  The Reg silhouette stalked off toward the jetty and the smaller figure stormed up the steps to the deck, turning into a three-dimensional, colourised Nan on the way. She’d relented to letting Jaz style her hair into a chignon for the wedding but at some point it’d reverted to the usual single plait.

  ‘Mother?’ Jaz queried as Nan ordered Cody to squeeze up for her.

  ‘He’s got a blinkin’ bee in his bonnet,’ Nan said, sitting. ‘Says he should have been invited to the wedding. Says he’s sick of being the hired help. He’s been offered a job at Hamilton Island, would you believe? Twenty years he’s been here. Where’s the blimmin’ loyalty?’

  ‘Give me strength,’ said Jaz. ‘That’s everyone in my entire extended family single, not counting my ex-brother-in-law. We are all losers.’

  ‘Good pep talk, Mum,’ Cody said.

  Harry sniggered, and elbowed Amy. ‘I think we know where Cody gets it from,’ he whispered.

  ‘Is this a bad time to ask for my twenty bucks, Hazza?’ Lena called down the line.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I gave the bride a week to fall in love with you and hightail it. She was gone in five days and …’ and Lena made a show of counting on her fingers. ‘Five hours. Is that a new record?’

  Harry laughed. Amy patted his knee.

  ‘Ah well,’ Nan said. ‘Maybe Tam and her kids are having a better time. Maybe one of them’s found someone who’ll have them.’

  ‘They’re at a memorial service, Nan,’ Lena said.

  ‘Still.’

  ‘I’m glad two people on this island are happy,’ Harry said, spinning on the bench to face the function room.

  One by one they all turned. In the pavilion, Geoff and Sanjay were slow dancing, oblivious to the world. Amy’s focus zeroed in on a table where Josh, Pippa and Viggo sat, their slumped backs to the deck, also watching the newlyweds.

  ‘Is that too much to ask for?’ Amy said to Harry, looking at the dads again.

  ‘I’m not the best person to answer that tonight.’

  ‘That taking a risk thing really worked out, didn’t it?’

  He held up a fist. ‘Solidarity,’ he said as she bumped it.

  She turned her fist to Carmen. Carmen smiled as she bumped. ‘Solidarity,’ they both said. She turned to Rosa, and the fist bump went down the line.

  ‘The most pathetic Mexican wave ever,’ Lena said. ‘Curlew Bay: Come and break the love curse. Please.’

  ‘We should host a desperate-and-dateless ball,’ Nan said, perking up.

  ‘No!’ said everyone else.

  Trip Review: Curlew Bay

  Rating:

  Review: There’s no gym! Not even a treadmill or exercise bike. There was yoga but nothing for men. When I complained, the old woman in charge suggested I go for a run or a bike ride! She said it would be good for my soul!

  39

  AMY: Hi sis. Texting you coz my internet is shite today. So I finally got up the courage to go to Dad’s for Sunday dinner. Well, ran out of excuses, TBH.

  CARMEN: And Josh was there?

  AMY: Yep. And everything was fine!

  CARMEN: Really?

  AMY: Okay, it might have been awkward at first, but after a while everything was back to normal. It’s been a couple of months, so …

  CARMEN: Is this the normal in which you’re hot for him and he keeps slapping you on the back and calling you his baby sister?

  AMY: Shut up.

  CARMEN: Or normal as in you’ve got the pull and you’re pretending it’s not for real?

  AMY: I thought you didn’t believe in The Pull? (Note capitals.)

  CARMEN: But you do, and don’t change the subject. You still feel it, don’t you?

  AMY: So anyway. I said he could move in with me.

  CARMEN: WHAAAAAAAAAAT?

  AMY: See, he moved into a flat last month but then the landlady announced she was selling it, and meanwhile my new housemate decided to find a place with her boyfriend, and thank the stars for that because ugh they were disgusting with their PDAs all over the kitchen and bathroom and *shudder* so yeah it just felt right.

  CARMEN: Sort of like fate?

  AMY: Shut up.

  CARMEN: You shut up.

  AMY: Okay.

  CARMEN: No, don’t. So you’re still kidding yourself that you don’t feel the pull?

  CARMEN: Sorry. The Pull.

  AMY: Wait, weren’t you the one who said the pull wasn’t the best way to judge a potential relationship?

  CARMEN: INITIAL CAPS PLZ!

  AMY: Gotta go. He’s just pulled up outside! Eek!

  CARMEN: What?

  AMY: He’s moving in today. Right now. Bye!

  CARMEN: I DEMAND HOURLY UPDATES.

  CARMEN: WHERE’S MY HOURLY UPDATE? It’s been three hours and 36 minutes. ANYTHING COULD HAVE HAPPENED AND PROBABLY HAS.

  AMY: Sorry, been chatting, and helping him set up his room. He has seriously good pots and pans!

  CARMEN: Have you had sex yet?

  AMY: Don’t be gross.

  CARMEN: It’s not like it’s an irrational thought.

  AMY: Like I
said, everything’s cool again. Like nothing ever happened. Such a big relief to be friends again.

  CARMEN: I bet you four mojitos at Christmas that you sleep with him within the week.

  AMY: I’ll see your mojitos and raise you two Sazeracs coz it ain’t happening. In other news, I see Harry has friended Sophia!

  CARMEN: Really??? Who friended who?

  AMY: Don’t know. It just this minute popped up on my timeline.

  CARMEN: VERY interesting. Hazza and I had a bit of a heart to heart the other day, about Mike, about how the imperfect thing can be the perfect thing.

  AMY: So says Little Miss Perfectionist.

  CARMEN: And where’s that got me?

  AMY: Same place as Little Miss Imperfectionist here.

  CARMEN: Ha ha. Anyway, we were talking about how you regret the things you don’t do more than the things you do. And that maybe it’s better to try and fail than get the what-might-have-beens, which are just horrible, right? And then I realised we weren’t just talking about me.

  AMY: Interesting.

  CARMEN: IKR? He said something like, sometimes you have a choice between wading through a messy situation and maybe getting to the other side, or standing there too scared to step off dry land, and knowing for sure you’ll never get anywhere.

  AMY: Oh I hear that. Give him a big bear hug for me. But don’t say anything about the friending thing with Sophia. You know how he hates being talked about behind his back.

  CARMEN: Course not

  AMY: Carmen …

  CARMEN: I swear on the four mojitos and two Sazeracs you’ll be making me at Christmas. Gotta go. Organising an executive retreat.

  HARRY: How’s Operation Get Your Shit Together going?

  SOPHIA: Hi stranger! A bit shittily, to be honest.

  HARRY: Hence the name. What’s up?

  SOPHIA: Oh, you know. Logistics. My mother complaining that ALL her friends keep asking about what went wrong and that she’s sick of telling the story. But she secretly loves the attention, so