The Arrival of You

by Cranford, B.

  I really didn’t want Lucas to be pissed at me. Which, based on his follow-up messages, he definitely wasn’t.

  Lucas: And I mean genuinely fine. Not like, fine fine.

  Lucas: Some might even say I’m fine as fuck.

  Snorting at his bragging, I decided to just go for it—say what I wanted to say and see what his response was.

  Bianca: Some = ME

  Bianca: Anyway, I just want to clarify: Even though I’m traveling, even though I didn’t stay, I do like you. A lot.

  Lucas: I like you a lot too.

  Bianca: More than a lot, actually. Definitely more than I should.

  Lucas: More than you should? Who cares about what you *should* do?

  Bianca: Is it too much to ask that you be mine, even while I’m gone?

  Lucas: Depends.

  Bianca: On what?

  Lucas: On whether you’re mine in return.

  I played with a handful of responses to his last message, ranging from playful to serious, and finally settled on the easiest, clearest one.

  Bianca: I am.

  13

  Lucas

  Despite knowing it wasn’t likely, the knocking on my front door made me picture Bianca standing there, having decided she’d seen enough of Australia but not nearly enough of me.

  She’d been gone for six weeks, so it wasn’t completely outside the realm of possibility, I figured.

  Except it wasn’t Bianca at all. It was Rose. My beautiful, beloved younger sister who was definitely not the woman I wanted to be inviting in for breakfast on a Saturday morning.

  “You’re leaving soon, right?” I asked her, motioning her toward the kitchen so I could make some pancakes. It was the only breakfast food I could make and considering she was vegan, even those were going to be a stretch.

  “I literally just got here,” Rose retorted with an eye roll. Instead of sitting at the table, she shouldered her way past me into the kitchen and set a bag on the bench. “I bought food since I figured you might not have stuff I could eat.”

  Wrapping an arm around her, because even though she wasn’t the woman I’d wanted to see that morning, I did love her and I was bloody relieved not to have to make her vegan pancakes, I smacked a kiss on her cheek. “Brat. You know what I meant. You’re going back to the States this week, aren’t you? Pretty sure that’s what Mum said, anyway.”

  “No, week after.”

  “Still soon. Are you sure about this?” I knew she’d been homesick while she’d been living in North Carolina, especially during the final months of her stay, so it was a valid question. I also knew, though, that she was stupidly in love with her veterinarian, and given my tendency towards being a romantic, I was happy for her.

  She answered me with a shrug and a small tilt of her lips, as if some fleeting memory caught her attention and made her smile. “I’m sure about Liam.”

  I opened my mouth to respond—to tell her that I was happy for her or whatever—except she kept talking.

  “What about you and your American?” Her question wasn’t exactly a shock. I’d brought Bianca to my parents’ place the day we’d arrived home—well, home for me, in any case—and I’d probably talked about her more than once in Rose’s presence.

  And by more than once, I mean all the bloody time. I couldn’t help it. She was on my mind all the bloody time.

  “What about her?” I asked instead of giving an answer, wanting to stall the inquisition. Talking about Bianca dredged up . . . feelings. Ones that I’d been so sure of when we’d walked off that aeroplane, that now seemed distant.

  “How is she? Where is she? Are you together?” Rose shook her head, an air of disappointed confusion about her. “What do you mean, ‘what about her’? Good god, man.”

  Not wanting to shrug—and give away my inner battle—I controlled the urge and instead just gave Rose what I hoped was a mildly interested smile. “She’s good, in Darwin, and kind of. It’s complicated.”

  Rose regarded me, leaving me to worry about what she’d see. What my face might betray. So, instead of letting her get more questions in, I gave her what little I had to give. “We agreed that we’re together in the sense that I’m not about to start dating anyone while she’s gone, and she’s not going to leave a string of hookups in her wake. We talk, usually on her schedule, though it’s been a lot more frequent in the last couple weeks, and I miss her.” This time, I did actually shrug, but only because I didn’t know what else to do. “She still needs time and space to travel and figure some stuff out, so there are no plans for her to be back here anytime soon. That I know of, anyway. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

  I really wanted it to not be complicated. I thought about her on the plane, sad eyes looking me over like I was a contestant and she was the judge. I thought about her in my bathroom, trying to explain about how her gorgeous hair needed special care—something I wouldn’t have considered in a million years.

  I thought about saying goodbye when I didn’t want to, and how she’d suddenly become jealous when I’d mentioned being hit on by someone else. And I thought about how much less complicated it could’ve been if she’d just stayed. Which, for the record, made me feel like an arsehole.

  Letting all that drift off for the time being, I brought my attention back to my sister, who was looking at me like I was someone else. “You really like her.”

  “Um, yeah?” I frowned. “I would’ve thought that would be pretty obvious.”

  “It is. But—” She cut herself off abruptly, rocking her head gently from side to side, as if weighing up whether to keep talking.

  “But what?”

  “Don’t hate me for saying this, okay?”

  “Jesus. That’s like saying ‘no offense’ and then saying something really fucking offensive.”

  “Luc—”

  “Just say it. I won’t hate you.” I paused, then added, “Saying that makes me feel like I’m a kid again.”

  Rose’s face lit with laughter, thankfully killing some of the tension that had crept up on the conversation. “Sorry. I just—I mean, I don’t want to see you hurt or be the one to hurt you.”

  “It’s fine, Rose. Come on, out with it.”

  “Usually, you’re all about a woman right away, right?” she asked, looking at me for confirmation. At my nod, she continued, “So, you’re all about her and you think it’s love or fated, and then you’re together all the time. Except after a while, you’re not together all the time.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Well, it’s like the first couple of weeks are super intense. And then you’re unable to maintain the intensity, and you don’t see them as much. And then it’s over.”

  “Again, yeah, so? You’re describing a regular relationship.” I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. I was expecting some big revelation, or some deep insight, but instead all I got was Rose just stating the facts. “I promised not to hate you, but I kind of hate that you built it up like you did. Now I’m just disappointed you didn’t have all the answers for me. What kind of therapist are you?”

  “The kind that’s actually your sister, isn’t getting paid, and didn’t get a chance to finish?” Glaring at me, which is actually a lot scarier than it sounds, she threw her hands in the air. “You move on like that”—a snap of her fingers—“and then act like it’s some big tragedy. But, bro, I think you’re always getting caught up in the excitement of those first feelings with an eye for the future. The real future. You don’t want a relationship—if you did, you’d give these women you proclaim to love after five minutes and one halfway-decent conversation more than a couple of weeks to prove themselves.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You give up on them so fast. And look, in the case of Erin, we were all relieved, because she was a knob. But otherwise, it’s like you love the idea of falling in love like Mum and Dad, but you don’t want to actually do it—fall in love and stay that way. Do the work to stay that way.”

  My own voice interru
pted me before I could explain to Rose all the reasons why she was wrong. “You and me, pretty girl. It’s going to work. It has to work because you—you’re the one.” It was something I’d confessed in the dark of night to Bianca, something I didn’t think she would hear, but something I had to get off my chest.

  It was also something that proved Rose was talking complete and utter shit.

  “I don’t agree.” I breathed deep, thinking that I needed a moment to compile my argument when I was actually using that time to replay a series of short but intense relationships. I’d had a few of them over the years, and they’d all fizzled out after varying lengths of time, but one thing was consistent—they didn’t last longer than a few weeks before I realized I’d been wrong about them.

  “I can tell from the look on your face that you think I’m wrong, and that you’re trying to come up with examples why, but I don’t think you’re gonna be able to. Because I’m right—you do it all the time. You confuse lust and attraction with love and go gung-ho at pursuing a relationship, and then you do one of two things—”

  “No, I don’t think—”

  “Let me finish, okay? You do one of two things. You follow them and realize you were wrong about them, or you decide that they shouldn’t want to be apart from you and you give up on them.”

  I was already shaking my head before she finished her sentence, swallowing back a too-aggressive retort. “Rose,” I started, clearing my throat as an excuse to temper my reaction, “that’s a bit unfair. You’re making me sound like a dick.”

  I’m not a dick . . . am I? The plea was coupled with the memory of Erin, standing in front of me, confessing that she’d found someone else.

  “You checked out ages ago. About the time the wheels touched down on American soil, I’d say.”

  “Excuse me?” Shaking my head, because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, I scoffed. “You’re the one who decided that you didn’t want to do anything or go anywhere. Not to mention the whole cowboy thing.”

  “I never decided I didn’t want to do anything—I just didn’t want to do what you wanted me to do. This was my trip before it was yours, so sorry if I didn’t make the right plans to suit you and your whims.”

  The echo of the argument lingered in my mind long after Rose left—not that I even really acknowledged her grabbing her uneaten breakfast, saying goodbye, giving me a hug, and shutting the door gently behind her like anything more aggressive might startle me. I let her leave because my mind was going over and over and over all the relationships I’d had that had started with so much promise and ended with a pathetic whimper.

  I’d been telling Bianca for weeks that she was different. And my sister’s words were making me really think about why that was.

  Because I was still as desperate for her as I’d been on the flight.

  Because I didn’t give up on her when she wanted to leave—or follow her even though I’d considered it. Perhaps that was just good luck, or bad timing, or bad luck, or good timing. I couldn’t have followed her, even though I’d wanted to. But I hadn’t decided that meant we shouldn’t or couldn’t be together either.

  Emily. A long-ago girlfriend, who I’d met at a footy game and talked to all afternoon. Like me, she’d grown up watching Aussie Rules football, and she’d been a blast to chat with about it. Damn, she’d known her stuff. But about three or four weeks after we’d met and started dating—I’d asked her out after the game and kept asking her out because I’d been infatuated with her—she’d told me she was moving north of the city to be closer to work.

  Jesus, it hadn’t even been that far, but as far as I was concerned, it was too far. An hour with no traffic, longer at peak hour, and I’d decided that it wasn’t worth it. I’d stopped asking her out, until eventually it just . . . died.

  Fuck. I was an arsehole.

  I grabbed my phone, unlocking it quickly and, more than a little bit desperately, opening my recent calls and hitting the number before I gave it a second thought. Rose answered almost immediately. “I’m a dick, aren’t I?”

  My sister’s familiar laugh eased enough of the pressure that had built on my chest that I could elaborate. “Do you remember Emily? She moved to, like, Craigieburn and we broke up.”

  “I remember.” Her voice held no trace of the laughter I’d heard only moments earlier. “I remember most of them.”

  “Most of them?” Squeezing my eyes closed, I rolled my shoulders to try and loosen the muscles.

  “Your girlfriends. The ones that you’d bring to the pub so we could meet them and then talk about constantly for a while and then—”

  “Never mention again?”

  “Pretty much, yeah,” she confirmed. “My favorite one was Caitlin. She was the one who went to the Gold Coast without you for a week, and you dumped over the phone, right?”

  “Fuck. Yeah, that was her. That was definitely a dick move.”

  “What about Jenna? What happened with her?”

  “Uh, she, ah, she got that internship with the weird hours, so we hardly had any time to spend together. To be fair, though, she was relieved when I ended it, and even told me she’d planned to do the same.” I knocked my fist against my thigh, restless about this conversation and revelation about myself. “God, it’s like I can’t remember some of the others.”

  “Lucas.” A long sigh followed, the sound one that made my muscles bunch and my hand tap even more. “Look, you’re not a dick. I promise. If you were, I’d have said something long before now. We don’t have to go through all your exes for me to know that.”

  “Then explain it to me. I’m listening.” And I was. I hadn’t really been listening to—or at least, not taking on board—what she’d been saying when she’d come to visit. But now I’d had time to process it, I was ready to hear it.

  “You’re just idealistic. And that’s not a bad thing. You’re the only guy I know that’s actually a nice guy who believes in love without some kind of hang up about not deserving it, or not wanting to be tied down, or not having what it takes.”

  “Except you said I think I want love but don’t really. Also, should I be concerned about Liam if I’m the only guy you know like that?”

  Her laugh was light. “No need to worry about him, I promise. And as for you, it’s not that you don’t want love, it’s that you want it to be easy. And if it’s not, you dismiss it as not right. With Emily, she dared to move too far away.” She gave a dramatic gasp, and, in my head, I could see her clutching her chest. “All the way to the other side of Melbourne? How dare she? How very dare she?”

  “I feel mocked.”

  “And Erin? Okay, she was a twat, but she didn’t want the same holiday as you and you, and I’m guessing here, mentally bailed, which made her actually bail.”

  “She ‘bailed’ with a cowboy in Texas called Dallas.”

  Silence. It could have been the fact that Erin cheated, or picked a cowboy, or maybe the fact the cowboy was named Dallas. Whatever the reason for it, my confession rendered my little sister speechless.

  Which just gave me time to think.

  Maybe I had mentally bailed on Erin and written off Emily. And Caitlin and Jenna. But Bianca? I hadn’t given up on her. In fact, I wanted her more with every day that passed, not less.

  It frustrated the hell out of me that she wasn’t with me because I knew it would work. I’d told Bianca the same—we just had to work at it, and we’d be okay.

  Is that what Rose was telling me in a very roundabout way?

  “Poor Dallas,” Rose finally said, her voice sounding a little shaky and a lot amused.

  “Why, because of Erin or his chosen profession?”

  She hummed. “The bitchy part of me that hasn’t joined the feminist wave yet wants to say Erin. But that’s mean and beneath me. Isn’t it?”

  I shrugged, though she couldn’t see me. She kept talking. “But she was so rude, you know? Mum didn’t like her, and Mum likes most everyone.”

  “Did she te
ll you that?”

  “Hmph,” she scoffed. “Tell me? No. Lecture me about it when I called to tell her we’d FaceTimed and Erin had faffed about in the background, yes.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “I called her to say you’d introduced Erin to me, and we’d talked about you coming to visit. She then proceeded to give me a lecture about that girl”—Rose did an uncanny impersonation of our mother—“and that’s exactly how she said it, by the way, and how she’d ignored Dad when he’d tried to talk to her.”

  Wracking my brain to try and dredge up the memory of Erin meeting my parents just about caused me a headache—I couldn’t seem to remember it, which was probably a case of selective memory loss. And by probably, I mean definitely.

  “Anyway,” Rose said, interrupting my furious thinking, “to get back to what we’ve been talking about. You’re different about your American, just like I’m different about mine.”

  My American. I liked the way that sounded, actually. “Yeah,” I agreed, knowing she was right.

  “You sulk now, instead of moving on. Like I said, you really like her. And when you like someone, being away from them doesn’t make you forget or want to move on. It makes you want to be with them more.” Her smile was evident in the way she talked and caused me to do the same. Which is how we finished up our conversation—each of us smiling, probably both thinking about our Americans.

  And how we couldn’t wait to see them again.

  * * *

  It wasn’t exactly easy to give my last client of the day a smile, but somehow, I managed it. It was late—later than it should have been, because she’d shown up late and then lingered to “chat” long after I’d finished treating her. I knew why she’d tried to keep the conversation going and I felt bad about it, but the fact was, I wasn’t interested.

  And ultimately, I’d had to make that clear by blatantly telling her that I was late for a date with my girlfriend. I just didn’t mention it was via phone and that even though we’d agreed we were together, we weren’t physically together.