He’d briefly talked about Nick with his mother, and she’d gotten that concerned look on her face: the one that made him think he’d done something wrong. One of the reasons he’d wanted to avoid the whole family thing until later. Much later.
‘I think it was her way of finding out how honourable you are.’
He laughed. ‘Do you come with a dowry?’
‘Nope, just the dimples.’
‘And they’re worth more than any number of goats.’ They pulled up to a traffic light and Nick kissed him. The knots in Lyall’s neck relaxed their grip from death to monkey, and his shoulders stopped trying to smother his ears. But the kiss wasn’t long enough to melt all his tension. It would never be long enough while he had to hold back his fear.
A horn beeped. Nick jerked back and put the car into gear.
‘Do you want me to come to dinner with them?’
He paused, wiped his bottom lip with his middle finger to hold onto Nick’s kiss a little longer. But it wasn’t the same. He wanted more. He wanted forever. That meant problems. His family would add to them. They might want answers that no one had been able to give after all this time.
‘Hey.’ Nick put his hands over Lyall’s clenched and wringing hands. ‘Are you ok?’
He managed a shaky breath, holding Nick’s hand until he needed to change gear.
‘Yeah, sorry, I’m fine. I’d like you to, eventually, but right now I want to know it can work just us.’ Why bring someone into the family if they might not be around for long?
‘I’m happy with that.’ He held back a grin. ‘But you just say the word, and I’ll be there with a bottle of wine.’
Hopefully he’d be this obliging when that day came.
‘What about your dad? Want me to meet him?’
Nick’s nose scrunched. ‘We’ll see. I try not to involve him too much in my life.’
‘Really? Why?’ Wasn’t it just the two of them? If Nick didn’t have his family to get through the hard times, who did he have?
‘It’s complicated.’ Nick paid extra attention to the road, the traffic signs, the lights and pedestrians, the odometer. Nick looked about as enthusiastic to talk about his dad as Lyall was about flying.
‘Like you said, whatever you want, but I’m glad it’ll just be us for a while too.’
Nick smiled at him. ‘Same. Hungry?’
Once his stomach stopped rolling. And even then his hunger couldn’t be sated with food.
He had been hoping Nick would cancel everything else and reroute to his place, but that didn’t happen. At least they had all afternoon and evening to get to know each other better. Plus, the idea of seeing Nick on the beach had him twisting in his seat. Now that meeting his parents had been dealt with, nothing was going to get in the way of enjoying Saturday with Nick.
His hand found Nick’s. ‘Starving.’
9
‘Is anything the matter?’ Nick asked as Lyall checked his phone for about the twentieth time since he’d picked him up.
Lunch at Sponda had been successful. They’d talked, a mix of filling in the gaps of their lives—where they went to school, a bit more about family, though most of that was Lyall’s rather than his—and then how their weeks had unfolded. No mention of Lyall’s fear or how it had affected him, and Nick wasn’t about to rattle that cage. Considering how phobic Lyall was, he wanted to make sure there was as little chance of hurting him as possible. That hadn’t stopped him asking around the other pilots and staff whether they knew of a psychologist who worked on aviophobia.
Just his luck to fall for someone with a severe case of it. He’d read up on it all week and his head was crammed with more than he’d ever wanted to know. Personal accounts, treatment options, how common it was: he’d read so much he’d forced himself to stop or else he’d have developed it himself.
He’d help Lyall but there seemed to be more on Lyall’s mind than his fear of flying, what with the messages pinging his phone.
While Lyall had tried to do the right thing and keep it in his pocket, every time it beeped, he pulled it out of those tight shorts to check it. Like freaking Pavlov’s dog. And even though he apologised and put it away again, he didn’t put it on silent.
It continued when they were on the beach until a swim put a stop to more communication and they could focus on each other. And that was magic. The water warm, the only shivers coming from their hands caressing bare skin. Fingers stretched waistbands and slipped below to tease and stir, making them hard, making it harder to get out.
But as soon as they got back to their towels, Lyall picked up his phone. And frowned.
‘Mmmm?’ Lyall replied.
‘All the messages.’ Nick lay back on the towel, determined to temper his annoyance. He slipped on his shades and let the sun dry the water.
‘I’m sorry. There’s always something.’
‘Any emergencies?’
‘No but …’ He sighed. ‘You’re right. It’s not important and I’m being rude.’
‘It’s ok. Just lie next to me and forget about it for a while.’
To his relief, Lyall switched the phone to silent and lay down. Their hands touched. He unwound. No need to get upset. But after the initial meeting with Lyall’s mother … How many of those messages were from her?
‘Have you heard from your dad lately?’ Lyall asked.
If he didn’t want Lyall’s family intruding on their time together, he definitely didn’t want any talk about Dimitri.
‘Nope. He’s away.’ Melbourne? Sydney?
‘Lucky him.’
‘Lucky me,’ he chuckled.
‘I’m sure you miss him.’ Lyall looked down on him.
‘Really, I don’t.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘Absolutely not.’ He lifted his sunglasses. ‘How often do I mention my dad compared to how often you talk about your family?’ He hadn’t come up during lunch; he’d been sure to steer it that way.
‘Well, my family’s bigger than yours.’
His skin prickled, worse than the time he’d woken in a Mexican hostel covered in cockroaches.
‘Why do we have to talk about either of our families?’
‘Kind of a package deal, don’t you think?’
‘Not really. I get it that your family is really into each other but it’s not like that with mine.’
That information shuttered through Lyall’s eyes with the kind of disbelief passengers had when told they’d been bumped from their flight. ‘But why?’
The skin across his torso pulled taut. Nick sat up, drawing his knees closer to his chest. This was beginning to sound like an argument. All he’d wanted was to spend time with Lyall and peel him off that damn phone.
‘I don’t see him very often. He’s away a lot, we don’t talk much, and that’s fine.’
‘But he’s your family.’
The tension deepened, spreading beneath his ribs, protecting him. ‘Ever since Mum died there’s been less reason to stay in touch and as we don’t really see eye to eye on a lot of things, there’s not much point in trying to make it better when I know it never will be. He’s got his life. I have mine. That works for us.’
‘That’s really sad.’
Lyall’s words didn’t penetrate through to his heart.
‘I can understand why you might think that but really it’s not.’
Eleven years after his mother’s death—not to mention the nineteen years together before that—and his relationship with his father was as good as it was ever going to get. Dimitri wasn’t Avarina any more than Tehran was New York.
Lyall wiped the sand off his legs. Nick’s stomach pitched. His shield vanished and left him vulnerable. Was Lyall getting ready to leave? He had to reassure Lyall fast.
‘You don’t have to worry about me.’
Those dimples were well and truly packed away.
Great one, dumbass. You’ve upset him.
He took Lyall’s hand, but it sat limp in his own
. ‘Talk to me, please.’
‘If you say you’re fine, then I’ll leave it. For now. But I would like to meet him one day.’
Nick wanted to sigh. Dimitri would ruin everything like he always did. He plunged his fingers into the sand. The dampness an inch or two below the surface eased some of his strain.
‘Ok.’ He smiled. ‘But not for a while, alright?’
‘Deal. When you’re ready.’
Which would probably be about the same time Lyall was ready to get on a plane. He could live with that. Especially as one of Lyall’s dimples settled in.
Nick lay back down, but Lyall looked at him with a question written in the lines of his forehead.
‘What?’
‘If you won’t talk about your dad, will you tell me about your mum?’
He didn’t need any armour to talk about her. ‘Sure.’ He smiled and patted the towel next to him.
Lyall got in close, his head resting on Nick’s arm, his torso lined up alongside him. At the point of connection a thrill spiralled through Nick’s body. He stroked Lyall’s shoulder, the top of his arm, his hair, happy to be touching him again.
‘Her name was Avarina and she was this beautiful Greek woman. I always thought of her as a bit of a movie star, always had her hair and make-up done, always looked immaculate. My father’s sisters hated her because she’d managed to stay thin throughout her marriage, through having and raising a kid. They didn’t really think of her as a proper mother.’
Later, when she got sick, he’d wondered if her maintaining her figure and looks was due to nervousness, a low-level stress that had eaten away at her body, or if it was the only thing she could control. Dimitri had dominated everything else, overseen the money, dictated what it could be spent on, while Avarina dreamed of getting out of Australia and seeing the world. She’d been only a baby when her parents had left Greece so had no memories of life off this prison island.
‘She took care of the house, looked after her parents until they died, was a stalwart of the Greek Orthodox Church until it became obvious that I was gay and they’d never accept me. She sacrificed everything for Dimitri, for me, and all she wanted to do was—’
His weakened heart ached to tell Lyall everything but he tripped on the wounds. He couldn’t talk to Lyall of flying, of planes, of getting out. She never summoned the courage to walk away. That’s why he’d become a pilot. He’d done it for her. He was going to take her away and Dimitri couldn’t have done anything about it.
‘She wanted to see the world.’ That was a better way of putting it. ‘But she never did and then she got cancer and died at thirty-eight. I was nineteen. I miss her.’
The scabs ripped open. He had to stop. There was no need to tell Lyall about his plan, his act of repayment, to take her where she’d always wanted to go.
‘I’m sorry,’ Lyall said. ‘I would have loved to have met her.’
‘She would have liked you. She had a good feeling about people.’ Shame she hadn’t trusted that when she’d met Dimitri and he’d gotten her pregnant. ‘She liked people who had skills. She was interested in what they could do, what drove them. She had this way of making you think you were the only person in the world. If you were talking to her, she focused on you entirely.’ And it had been a long time since he’d felt the radiance of that sun.
‘You’re a lot like her, aren’t you?’
Nick laughed. ‘Are you calling me a Greek woman?’
‘No, I mean when I’m with you, I feel all your attention on me.’
His heartbeat picked up. It stuttered but it had life in it yet. Life enough to love. ‘Not too creepy?’
‘I just hope you’ll always like what you see.’
As if there were anything greater to adore. Nick rolled to prop himself up and gaze down on Lyall, removed his sunglasses and deliberately surveyed Lyall’s muscled taut body. ‘Oh, I like it very much.’
He leaned down and their lips met, possibility, excitement, rushing through him and patching his wounds. His free hand stroked Lyall’s cheek and caressed his face, his neck and moved onto his chest. He rubbed Lyall’s hardening left nipple until it was firm.
Lyall kissed him harder, pressing his mouth to stifle his moan, causing Nick’s speedos to bulge. He stopped stroking Lyall and pulled back. Lyall shook his head with a cocky grin.
Nick flicked up an eyebrow to tease him. ‘How committed are you to the idea of seeing that movie?’
Wickedness lit Lyall’s eyes. ‘Not at all. And I’m kind of done with the beach. If only there was something we could do instead.’
10
Nick sat on the edge of his bed in a Bangkok hotel room, his thumb hovering over the video call button. During the month he and Lyall had been together, Nick hadn’t phoned while overseas for fear it would set off a bad reaction in Lyall. Messages were fine, so long as they lacked details. But now Nick was stuck in Bangkok, he’d have to tell Lyall face-to-virtual-face he wasn’t coming back as planned. Lyall was going to freak. He took a deep breath and called.
Lyall answered after a few rings, the camera kicking into action and shaking as he bounded up from the dinner table and away from his family. Nick instinctively smiled when Lyall’s worry-carved face filled the screen.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lyall was in his bedroom in seconds.
‘Nothing’s wrong, babe.’
‘Then why are you calling?’ His eyes flicked to the top of the screen. ‘Why aren’t you flying? You’re supposed to be home tonight. What’s wrong?’
‘Calm down, take a few breaths. I’m fine. I’m not in any danger.’
Lyall didn’t look convinced but he stopped the questions and got a full breath. Hopefully that would sustain him through a lot of trigger words.
‘The flight I was meant to bring home has been cancelled. They’ve offered to leave me up here to take a shift back next week or put me on a later flight as a passenger.’
‘So? You’ll take the later flight.’
How was he going to say it without telling Lyall what he was up to?
‘You want to come back next week,’ Lyall guessed.
A fist wrapped around the base of his spine, cushioning it in preparation for a bumpy landing. Better get it over with.
‘There’s a flight to Mandalay I want to catch.’
‘You’re meant to be having dinner with my family tomorrow.’
The fist tightened. ‘I know.’
‘And you cancelled last week.’
Tighter. ‘I know.’
‘Is this all because you don’t want to spend time with them?’
Lyall’s question knocked him to his feet. ‘What? That’s ridiculous.’ He paced the room, his spine still in lockdown.
‘Then get on the plane.’
The flight to Mandalay would take him into Myanmar and then he could scatter more of Avarina’s ashes.
‘This is something I need to do.’
‘You can go any other time.’
Her fiftieth birthday was too close to let this opportunity slip. ‘It’ll just be a few extra days, and I can come to dinner next week.’
‘You’ll be seeing Dimitri then.’
Fuck Dimitri. If it weren’t for him, he wouldn’t be doing this.
‘I’ll cancel.’
Lyall’s eyes bulged.
‘I’ll come any other night, then. I do want to spend time with them.’
‘But not enough to be here when you said you’d be here.’
His spine vibrated with the surge of blood rushing to his ears. He stalked the carpeted floor of his hotel room. ‘This is important to me. Just because you don’t want to see these places—’
‘I never said I didn’t want to see them.’
‘No, but you’re unlikely to, aren’t you?’ He’d tried hard the past month to be supportive but he had his mission.
Even if he hadn’t, the person he was with should at least be happy he was doing what he loved.
‘Whatever. Do what you wan
t. Bye.’
‘Lyall—’ But he’d already hung up.
Nick threw the phone onto the desk and fell face-first onto the bed. Burying his head into his pillow, he roared until his throat hurt. The conversation with Lyall shouldn’t have gone like that. It wasn’t Lyall’s fault that he was afraid of flying, but, if he were being selfish, it was Lyall’s fault he wasn’t doing anything about it. Nick kept half his life bottled up because he didn’t want it to hurt his boyfriend, but how long could that last? When he pictured his future, he wanted someone with him sharing these experiences, laughing with him, getting the same thrill that he did. He thought Lyall might have been that person. Until now.
Nick rolled onto his back and stared up at the smoke-stained ceiling of his nonsmoking room. Perhaps he needed to push Lyall a little bit and give some encouragement. What was he saying? There probably wouldn’t be an opportunity to do so anyway. Lyall was pissed and Nick was in the Thai doghouse.
He’d known exactly what Lyall was going to say before he’d said it; he’d just hoped he could sail through it unscathed. Fat chance.
He walked over to his suitcase on the luggage rack and pulled out his mother’s antique pillbox. Inside were the last two capsules of his mother’s ashes. It was large enough to fit ten at once but these two were all that were left, awaiting their turn to join the wind and carry his mother’s memory to discover places even he’d never reach. Once they were gone, he wouldn’t need to keep it from Lyall.
Like he had something Lyall didn’t.
Nick had looked up the details of the crash of SR252 and wished he hadn’t. It wasn’t just the destruction he saw, it was the media frenzy that came after. The inquest too, the endless conjecture, the demand for answers, the compensation, and the stories from the victims. Lyall and his family hadn’t fronted the media but he’d found a photo of sixteen-year-old Bryce Turner among the victims: one face among two hundred and twenty-six others. There’d been no body to bury. Nothing to say goodbye to.
He couldn’t tell Lyall what he was doing, but he still had to finish what he’d set out to do after Avarina had died. Perhaps he’d find another way to make it up to Lyall when he got back.
The Love Left Behind Page 7