A Sunset in Sydney

by Sandy Barker

  Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice. “Oh, that’s right—school holidays. I guess that means every day is like a weekend.” He grinned at me from the screen and I felt a pang of guilt for the lie—and any others I’d have to tell to save his feelings.

  “So, you said you’ve got some news?” Please let it be good. And by that I meant anything that didn’t perpetuate the whole “vacationship” situation.

  Because I didn’t want that.

  I didn’t want a part-time vacation lover. If I was going to be with someone, I was going to be with them—long-distance, yes, probably at first, but I wanted a proper relationship, a home with someone, a life together.

  Or, nothing. I was prepared to be on my own if it came to that, but I hoped it wouldn’t. I held my breath, steeling myself for the worst.

  “Yes!” he replied excitedly. “I wanted to show you something.” Oh-kay. I let out the breath, intrigue trumping nerves. “Hang on a sec,” he said, as he faffed about with his iPad. “Here,” he said, finally. “This is what I wanted to show you.”

  I would never in a million bazillion years have guessed what it was. It was the view of a city skyline and peeking over the top was the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

  Josh was in Sydney.

  Dozens of emotions flooded through me, each competing for my attention—excitement, relief, bafflement, guilt. In moments, elation barged its way to the forefront. Josh was in my home city.

  “Surprise!” he said, turning the camera back around to face him.

  I was laughing and heard myself say, “Oh, wow. Oh, my god. You’re here!” He grinned.

  Lindsey’s curiosity must have got the better of her, because she was suddenly behind me, leaning over the back of the couch and peering at the iPad.

  “Hi,” she said to Josh over my shoulder.

  “Hi!” said Josh to my best friend. I figured I should introduce them.

  “Josh—Lindsey—Lindsey—Josh.” They waved at each other. The whole thing was surreal.

  Lindsey patted me on the shoulder and left the room. She must have thought I’d be okay on my own and that I wouldn’t completely screw everything up.

  Then I blurted out my most pressing question. “So, what are you doing here?” Oops. No, that’s not right. “Sorry, I mean, it’s great, but …”

  “But what am I doing here?” He laughed good-naturedly and I shook my head at my own ineloquence. It’s a miracle that I’m paid to teach English.

  “Well, things have moved incredibly fast with the new team and I’m in Sydney to set it all up. Anyway, there’s lots to tell you about, but most importantly, I’m here for another week and I want to see you!”

  The details started to sink in. “So, they chose Sydney then?”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Sydney over Mumbai.”

  “Oh, yes. They did. I’ve been dying to tell you.”

  Then it hit me with full force. Josh was in Sydney. He was just a car ride away and he wanted to see me, and I so wanted to see him. I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed him, even though it had only been a few weeks since Hawaii.

  And yet …

  He was only in Sydney for a week. Then he’d be gone again, and I’d still be waiting for him to figure out what he wanted. I’d still be in a vacationship.

  Maybe it was best that I didn’t see him. Maybe I really had decided to be on my own. I felt the prickle of tears in my eyes and blinked them back.

  Josh must have seen the procession of wretched thoughts register on my face, because he looked crestfallen. “Hey, is everything okay, Sarah?” When had I developed this knack for making the men that I cared about feel like rubbish?

  “Yes, yes, it’s … of course. It’s just so surprising, that’s all.” I wanted a time out from the conversation so I could catch my breath, but there was no way to do that without making him feel worse.

  “But a good surprise, right?” My heart lurched at his earnestness, and I knew then that I needed to give him a chance—to see him, to see about us.

  “It’s a wonderful surprise, Josh.”

  “That’s a relief,” he replied with a shy smile. “’Cause, now you’re back, I was hoping to take you out for dinner.”

  “You mean like a date?”

  He laughed. “Yes, exactly like a date. Tonight, if you’re free, but I totally get it if you already have plans.” I was guessing he didn’t mean my plans to curl up on Lindsey’s couch and drink myself into oblivion while suffocating my cat with affection.

  “Uh, no, no plans. I’m all yours.” I mentally slapped myself for the poor choice of words—all yours? What if he didn’t want me to be all his? Our conversation had more twists and turns than a pretzel.

  Josh grinned, seeming to miss my faux pas. “Great. I’m staying at the Star Grand Residences in Darling Harbour. Do you know it?”

  “Oh, yeah, I know where that is.”

  “So, how far away are you?”

  “Oh, um, not far. I’m staying at Lindsey’s—the one you just met—” He remembers what happened three minutes ago, Sarah. “It’s near the beach, so about eight kilometres—five miles.”

  “Well, which would you rather? I can come to you, or you could come to me.”

  I wasn’t ready to introduce Josh to Lindsey in person—or Nick—especially not Nick. I mean, who knew what he’d say to the “young one”? “I’ll come and meet you in the city.”

  “That sounds great. Um …” He bit his lower lip. “You could stay here tonight if you wanted.” It wasn’t an unreasonable thing for him to say since we’d just shared a bed in Hawaii. But before we shared another bed, I knew I had to tell Josh I wanted a proper relationship. If he only wanted to meet up for sleepovers in hotel rooms, I had to end it.

  I was staring down my second break-up in as many days—either the unluckiest woman in the world, or a total bad ass for drawing a line in my romantic sandbox.

  Still, there was no way I was saying any of that on a call. Despite (some) evidence to the contrary, I was not a total cow and even I knew it was bad form to break up over the internet. There was also a sliver of a chance that Josh had changed his mind about relationships. I almost laughed aloud at that thought.

  But underpinning all this toing and froing, was an intense need just to see him—badly. I loved him, remember? I wasn’t not going to see him when he was just down the road.

  We made plans to meet—I stayed noncommittal about the sleepover—and I tapped the big red icon to end the call. Nick chose that moment for a snack run to the kitchen. “Hey,” he said, patting my pom-pom of hair on the way past the couch.

  “Hi.”

  “How’s it goin’?”

  I twisted around to see him elbow deep in the fridge. “Yeah, good, I guess. Um, where’s Lins?”

  He stopped looking in the fridge and closed it. “She’s in our room, but I’m right here.” He held out his arms like Jesus does in those pictures from Sunday school, but a benevolent being Nick was not, and I wasn’t keen on raking through the debris of my love life with him.

  “What? I can be a person, Sarah.”

  I sighed audibly, which he took as an invitation. He sat at the end of the couch and looked at me expectantly. I knew Nick’s jokey, blokey personality wasn’t all there was to him. Deep down—sometimes, way deep down—he had a good heart and I knew he thought of me as a sister. I took a deep breath and launched into the digest version of my situation. He listened without interrupting, his brow slightly furrowed, and he nodded in the appropriate places. I wrapped it up with, “So, I’m going to dinner with Josh. Tonight.”

  “But you don’t know if you want to sleep with him, because you’re worried he just wants some sort of ongoing holiday romance.” It wasn’t a question. Nick was just confirming he understood, and hearing it said back to me made me feel better—like my feelings were reasonable and valid.

  “Exactly,” I said. He nodded solemnly.

  “You know, Sarah, we’ve been friends for
a long time.” He was right. I’d known him since he and Lindsey started dating more than a decade before. But we’d also forged a friendship separate from mine with Lindsey. Yes, he was a massive pain in the bum sometimes, but I knew that if I needed his help—even in the middle of the night, for whatever reason—he would be there, no questions asked. He really was like a brother to me.

  “And I’ve watched you go out with some of the biggest wankers in Sydney.” I laughed at my own expense, and he gave me a warm smile. “No really, I don’t know how many times I’ve asked Lins where the hell you meet these tossers—” I signalled for him to get on with it; his digression was getting depressing.

  “Anyway, you know I love ya”—I started getting teary—“and even if you don’t know this, I mean really know it, you deserve someone great, someone who loves you, and someone who’s going to be here. Not some wanker who faffs about and strings you along.” It was the most he’d ever said to me about that sort of thing and I blinked back tears.

  “So, if this Josh guy doesn’t want to get serious, give him the flick. And if he does, I promise to be nice to him.” I laughed through my tears.

  He scooched down the couch and gave me a Nick-style bear hug. I didn’t get them very often, but he seemed to know when I needed them most. The last one had been after my previous cat, Lucy, had died.

  Eventually Nick let me go, then stood up, looked over my shoulder and smiled. I turned around and saw Lindsey leaning against the doorway watching us. “She’s all yours, love,” he said to his wife. He gave her a quick kiss as he passed her in the doorway and followed it up with a smack on her bum. She rolled her eyes, smiling, then came over and plopped down next to me while I blew my nose.

  “Two things,” she said. “First, no more crying. We’re running out of tissues.” I nodded and managed a smile. “Second, Josh is way hotter than his photos!”

  I threw my head back and laughed, and she raised her eyebrows at me. “So, what are you going to wear to dinner?”

  *

  Five minutes before I was due to meet Josh, I paused in front of the restaurant to steady my breath.

  I needed to be a swan—graceful and elegant above the water, when below the water, my stomach was in knots and I was moments away from a full-blown panic attack.

  Breathe, Sarah.

  I looked at my reflection in the restaurant window. At least I looked good.

  I was wearing one of Lindsey’s dresses, a 70s-inspired wrap dress by Sass and Bide, which went with the heels and clutch I’d packed for New Zealand. Raiding her wardrobe was far easier than raiding Cat’s, because Lins and I wore the same size. It also meant I could put off going home to my empty flat for at least another day.

  I pressed my clutch to my chest and took another steadying breath. Before I left Lindsey and Nick’s, I’d packed it with a clean pair of knickers and my toothbrush—just in case.

  I met my own eyes in the reflection. This was it.

  The maître d’ smiled as I made my way into the restaurant. When I told her I was there to meet Josh Walker, she nodded and led me through the restaurant to a table with a one-eighty panoramic view of Darling Harbour, the top of the Harbour Bridge just visible in the distance, and Centre Point Tower standing sentry over the cityscape.

  The sun was beginning to set, the sky blanketed in herringbone clouds, and the waning sunlight illuminating them as though they were on fire. The city was painted with countless colours, the hues of orange, pink, indigo, and violet reflecting off the glass towers and dancing on the little glassy water in the harbour.

  Sydney truly is a stunning city.

  Josh had his back to me, and my breath caught at the sight of his broad shoulders and dark curly hair, still damp from the shower.

  He glanced up as the maître d’ approached and when he turned around, the look on his face as his eyes met mine made me melt. Oh my, he’s handsome. He stood and enveloped me in a hug, his arms around my waist. I wrapped mine around his neck and held him tightly. He smells amazing.

  He let go and we stood looking at each other. “God, it’s good to see you.”

  I smiled, and my stomach did cartwheels of joy, the giddiness a welcomed relief from the twisted knots. “Thanks, it’s great to see you too.” Understatement of the century. Part of me wanted to skip dinner and go straight to his room. Instead, I let the maître d’, who’d been waiting patiently, seat me and place a napkin in my lap. Josh sat and immediately reached for my hand, squeezing it.

  “Nice view, huh?” I said, gazing out the window.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Sydney does pretty spectacular sunsets,” I bragged as my eyes roved the cityscape.

  “I was talking about you,” he said quietly. When I looked at him, there was a shy smile on his face.

  “Oh,” I replied, suddenly a little shy myself. “Thank you.”

  From there, dinner seemed to happen as if it was onstage and I was an audience member. Josh and I chatted, as though we were a normal couple having dinner. We looked at the menu, we ordered food and sake—both came, both were delicious. He asked me about Lindsey and I told him all about her and Nick and how I had my own room at their place.

  We talked and laughed and flirted—there was a lot of flirting—and the whole evening felt familiar, like Josh and Sarah from Greece, or from our trip to Hana—like people who met and became friends, then flirted and became lovers, like people who had discovered together that they wanted a bigger life.

  But we didn’t talk about us.

  Before I knew it, the bill came, and Josh tucked his credit card into the black wallet, then left it at the side of the table.

  “So,” he said, turning back to me.

  “So,” I replied, not wanting the night to end. His fingers found mine and laced ours together.

  “There’s something I want to ask you,” he said, suddenly serious. Oh, god. I’d been waiting for him to tell me something, to give me some indication about what he wanted, but what could he possibly want to ask me? I dismissed the idea of a proposal. This wasn’t a TV movie, and we were nowhere near that kind of commitment.

  Maybe he was just going to ask me back to his room. Though, I wasn’t sure how I’d respond if he did. My resolve—not to sleep with him again until I knew how he felt about me—had ebbed away over dinner. There’s only so much flirting from the man you love that you can ignore.

  I nodded, prompting him to ask me his question, while my tuna carpaccio felt like it had come back to life and was swimming around my stomach.

  “It’s about James.” The tuna flopped about, definitely still alive and fighting for its life. I gulped. I hadn’t expected Josh to ask me about James, and I wasn’t sure I was prepared to lie like Lindsey had told me to.

  “I just wanted to make sure—” He seemed unable to finish the sentence, his expression pained as he concentrated on the candle in the middle of the table. And then I understood.

  “It’s over,” I answered. His eyes met mine.

  “Really?”

  I knew I needed to reassure him. “Yes. We’re not together.”

  His relief was so obvious that my heart broke a little for him. How had he been so talkative, so charming and attentive over dinner, all the while holding back that incredibly difficult question? I tightened my grip on his hand.

  He dropped his eyes, shaking his head as if dislodging something awful. “I was so worried.”

  “I know you must have been. I’m so sorry.”

  He looked up and smiled. “It’s okay, I mean, you and I, we’re not—” He stopped short, and I pulled back my hand as though I’d been burnt. “We’re not …” he’d said. As in, “We’re not together, we’re not a couple, we’re not in a committed relationship …”

  I had the answer to my own question, and I hadn’t even asked it.

  “No, sorry, that’s not what I meant. Wait …” His face was awash with confusion and frustration. Mine likely looked the same. He took a deep breath. “I
don’t know how I manage to mess this up every time, but what I meant was, until now I haven’t given you any reason to not be with someone else.” His syntax was crap, but I was starting to follow his train of thought.

  “In Hawaii, I wasn’t being honest with myself about what I wanted, which meant I couldn’t be honest with you either. I’m just relieved it’s not too late—that is, if I don’t completely screw this up right now by being an inarticulate dick.” That made me laugh, and he joined in.

  “You do suck at expressing yourself sometimes, but I do too,” I said, letting him off the hook.

  He took my hand again and I let him. “What I wanted to tell you, what this whole night was supposed to be about, is that I’m not just here for the week.”

  “What?” I realised my mouth was hanging open and I closed it.

  “Sorry, I mean, I am. I am here for this week, and I have to go back to the States for a bit, but then I’m coming back. Sarah, the whole team’s moving here in March for a three-month secondment. That’s why I’m here this week—I’m making the arrangements.”

  I was speechless and my mind struggled to process what he’d told me. Josh was coming to Sydney. For a long time. For months. It was exactly what I’d hoped for, only …

  “But what does that mean for us?” There. I’d asked my question.

  He looked confused. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  I couldn’t believe I had to spell it out. “I mean, if you’re going to be here for three months, what do you want to happen between us?” I asked snarkily. I watched his thoughts play across his face. Then a smile, one that lit up his eyes, made me realise I’d been too harsh. I bit my lip, suddenly contrite.

  “It means, Sarah Parsons, that I want to be in your life, for real, because you are my favourite person in the world—and I never thought I would say this—to anyone—but, I love you.”

  Well, that shut me up.

  He reached for my face, cupping it in his hands, and kissed me while I sobbed into his mouth. I know, but I couldn’t help it. He didn’t seem to mind, though, and I finally pulled myself together enough to kiss him back. When we pulled apart, we were both grinning like idiots.