Second Hearts (The Wishes Series) - By G.J Walker-Smith
1. Sober Words
It was shaping up to be a bad day.
We’d been in the tiny south-western African town of Kaimte for almost three months, the longest we’d stayed anywhere since leaving Australia over a year earlier. Kaimte was a haven for backpackers over the summer months. Constant sunny weather and brilliant surf were a huge drawcard. Casual work was easy to find and short-term rental properties were in abundance, thanks mainly to a local landlord called Leroy Van Der Walt. He owned a long row of decrepit old shacks along the beach, affectionately known as the cardboard village. The miniscule rent he charged made them perfect abodes for non-discerning tenants like us.
Mitchell maintained that one big winter storm would be all it took to send the huts toppling like a deck of cards. On days when the wind shifted the loose roof tiles and we could see sunlight bleeding through the cracks in the ceiling, I believed him. Not surprisingly, our plan was to be long gone before winter.
Leroy was a great landlord – unless you owed him money or needed something repaired. It wasn’t unusual for residents to pack up and skip town in the middle of the night rather than face him over a couple of hundred dollars in owed rent. Defaulters often came home to find their possessions scattered along the beach in front of their house. He was by far the most intimidating man I’d ever met. And that was partly the reason it was shaping up to be a very bad day.
Our rent was due.
Mitchell and I had secured jobs within days of hitting town. I waitressed at a local café and Mitchell laboured for a local building company. The money wasn’t great, but we were managing. Every Friday afternoon Mitchell would walk to Leroy’s office in town to deliver the rent. It was a routine that had gone off without a hitch for weeks – until today.
Taking a short cut through an industrial estate didn’t work out so well. Mitchell was a big guy, over six feet tall and brawny, but he was powerless against the three men who knocked him to the ground and emptied his pockets. Sore and shaken, he made his way home sporting a nasty cut above his eye.
“I think it needs stitching,” I said, working hard to keep the worry out of my voice.
“We don’t have money for rent, Charli. We definitely don’t have money for a doctor,” he grumbled.
Gingerly removing the cloth from his forehead, I held it out to him. I didn’t need to speak. Mitchell grabbed my wrist and pulled it back to his face, catching the trickle of blood as it ran down his cheek. “I’ll go to Zoe,” he said shakily.
We’d met a lot of travellers during our time in Kaimte. Mitchell had fallen head over heels for an English nurse called Zoe. I don’t think it was quite love – just major like. She was a female version of him. Blonde, tanned and good looking.
Twenty-four-year-old Zoe and her best friend Rose lived a few houses down from ours, at number sixty-three – a curious number considering the shacks totalled eighteen. Maybe the other forty-five had succumbed to the weather or a rampaging Leroy.
By the time we’d made the short trek down the beach to their house, I was exhausted. Mitchell’s arm was slung over my shoulder and I did my best to prop him up, but it was hopeless. Woozy and weak, he was dead weight.
Zoe appeared on the balcony as soon as I called her name. “What on earth happened?”
“He was mugged,” I explained, staggering to the side as Mitchell did. “I think he needs stitches.”
“Oh, dear.” She sounded nowhere near as horrified as I thought she should. “I’d better take a look then.” She walked out the door a minute later, armed with a small toiletry bag filled with medical supplies. Mitchell sat on the edge of the veranda and she knelt in front of him, humming a tune as she stitched him back together.
“It could have happened anywhere,” she reasoned. “I once had my handbag snatched in Knightsbridge. Any place can be rough.”
I wasn’t used to rough. I was used to Pipers Cove. The only crimes to happen there were crimes against fashion. And as strong and tough as Mitchell was, he was clearly traumatised by the ordeal. His hands were shaking.
“There. All done,” Zoe announced, quickly kissing his lips before leaning back to admire her work. Mitchell snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her in close again. That was my cue to leave. He could thank her in private. I needed time alone to think.
Hanging out at our shack wasn’t exactly inspiring, so it wasn’t something I did often. It was tiny and tragically underfurnished. Our beds, two beanbags and an old tea chest were just about all we had, and unless I could come up with a way of paying the rent, we were about to lose it all.
Daylight had long since faced by the time Mitchell arrived home. He looked a mess. A jagged line of sharp black sutures ran horizontally across his brow, and in the few hours since I’d seen him his eye had blackened.
He smiled. “No real harm done, Charli.”
“It doesn’t look that way.”
He flopped down beside me on the beanbag, pushing me aside. “What are you doing?”
I shoved back with all my might, and didn’t shift him an inch. “Trying to work out how we’re going to make up the rent.”
“What did you come up with?”
“I think we should move on,” I suggested. “We can fly north to Dakar and go just about anywhere from there.”
He half-frowned, then brought his hand to his head. The expression must have hurt. “I like it here. I thought you did too. What happened to our plan of staying until the end of summer?”
“I want to leave, Mitch.”
“Look, if it’s about the rent –”
I shook my head. “It’s not about the rent. Didn’t today frighten you?”
Mitchell drew in a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “I’m sure it was a one-off. I shouldn’t have been anywhere near that area.”
“What if I had been with you?”
“I would never have taken you down there,” he scoffed.
I changed tack, trying to talk him around. “We’ve been here a long time. There are other places to see.”
Levering himself off the beanbag, he reached for my hand, pulling me to my feet. “I like it here, Charli.”
I had no right to argue with him. Mitchell had made so many concessions for me over the past year that pushing the issue would have been criminal.
Whether I liked it or not, our partnership was never going to be equal. Throughout our trip he had protected me, watched out for me and sometimes carried me, never once complaining. I don’t know what I did for him, other than provide company. And judging by the string of broken romances he’d left along the way, companionship was not something Mitchell Tate ever lacked.
We never argued. It wasn’t something he was good at. When we disagreed, he’d walk away before I had a chance to kick up. He didn’t respond to being given the silent treatment, either. If anything, he seemed to enjoy it. That meant I had no choice but to let the subject drop – for now.
It took three days for Kaimte’s very own dictator to catch up with us. Leroy was sitting on our porch when we arrived home from our morning surf. We’d had fair warning that he was there. His paisley shirt could be seen half a mile down the beach.
The aging man with wiry long grey hair walked with a wooden cane. It was an unnecessary prop. There was nothing frail about him. It was more likely a big walloping stick for his delinquent tenants.
I approached the shack with my arm hooked tightly around Mitchell’s.
“I’ll deal with it,” he promised, leaning down to whisper the words. I nodded stiffly.
“I’ve been waiting for you two,” roared Leroy, levering himself off the deckchair with his cane.
“We just need a few more days,” explained Mitchell.
“Impossible!” he boomed, smashing the cane down on the concrete floor. “You’re out!”
“We just need a couple more days, Leroy,” pleaded Mitchell.
Pointing his cane, Leroy stared straight at me, narrowing his already beady eyes. My grip on Mitchell’s hand tightened.
“I’ve been more than patient with you two. You have twenty-four hours.”
It didn’t sound like much but coming from Leroy, it was a remarkably generous gesture.
“We’ll have it for you tomorrow,” promised Mitchell, relieved.
I said absolutely nothing during the exchange. Leroy hung around much longer than necessary, raving about how irresponsible we were, occasionally whacking his cane on the floor for effect. By the time he left, I was a wreck.
I followed Mitchell into the house and paced around the small room, trying to calm myself. Mitchell didn’t look anxious at all. He flopped on the beanbag, leaned back and closed his eyes. I hoped he was hatching a plan and not sleeping.
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to pay him,” he replied flatly.
“With what? Good intentions?”
He opened his eyes, tilted his head and grinned craftily. “Since when have I been full of good intentions? We’ll just have to dip into the travel money.”
His lax solution infuriated me. Keeping money aside for plane tickets was the most sensible thing we’d done. Neither of us had saved a cent during our time in Kaimte, so our travel kitty was the only hope we had of being able to move on.
“If we use that money, we’ll never save it up again. We’re never going to get out of here.”
“Charli, have I ever let you down?” I glared at him and he laughed. “Okay, let me rephrase my question. Have I ever let you down since we left home?”
“No,” I mumbled.
“So trust me.”
I trusted Mitchell implicitly, but that was beside the point. My desire to leave was growing stronger. Unfortunately, he didn’t feel the same way.
“I’m not going to be able to talk you around, am I?”
“I like it here, Charli,” he repeated for the umpteenth time. “I just want to see the summer out.”
I shook my head, defeated. I walked out of the room giving him the false impression that the subject was closed.
I was less than thrilled with the idea of using our travel money to pay the back rent, but we had no choice. Mitchell retrieved it from our hiding spot under the floorboards in my bedroom and took it to Leroy the next day. We were square. The monkey was off our back. I took every extra shift at work that was going over the next week, to build up our savings again. Being a grown up was beginning to suck.
Free time was usually spent at the beach or hanging out with our friends. Any precious free time I had lately was spent sleeping, which is why seeing a group of people partying on the beach in front of our shack when I got home made me groan out loud.
“Charli!” Mitchell called, rushing toward me. He lifted me off my feet as he hugged me much too tightly. “I’m glad you’re home.”
I wondered if that was because his party was already out of hand and he needed me to tell them all off and send them home. It had happened before.
“Why are we having a party, Mitch?”
He slung his arm around my shoulder. “I only invited Zoe and Rose for a few drinks, but you know how word travels.”
He wasn’t kidding. All our fellow cardboard villagers seemed to be there. A huge bonfire roared. The sun was setting, slipping behind the line where the ocean met the sky. The air was still and warm. It was the perfect night for a party.
Rose and Zoe sat on the front step talking to Melito and Vincent. Mitchell had nicknamed them the sleek Greeks because of their Casanova-type personalities. They lived in the shack next to ours and were forever bringing us trays of pastries and other homemade treats. “From our motherland,” Melito would proudly announce. Mitchell would tease me, insisting it was their way of wooing me. Mitchell was missing the bigger picture. I was certain that middle-aged sleek Greeks had eyes only for each other. The residents of number four were a Lebanese couple, Rashid and Sabah. Their English was poor, so conversing with them was difficult. Our friendship was based purely on smiles and hand gestures. Bernie and William, two twenty-something Brits taking a year long sabbatical from their jobs in advertising, found their way to Kaimte after reading a travel brochure at a bus stop in Tanzania. Our new friends were the most eclectic bunch of people imaginable.
It was Vincent who called to me first, raising his glass in my direction and speaking loudly. “Welcome, Charli!”
Before I’d even stepped up on to the porch, I had a glass of cheap wine in one hand and a plate of food in the other.
The last of our guests left at three in the morning, relocating to Melito and Vincent’s shack, lured there by the promise of ouzo and Greek pastries. I collared Mitchell at the door. The last thing he needed was more alcohol. “Stay here with me.”
I tugged on his shirt and he staggered back as if I’d tripped him. It was impossible to think I could save him if he’d fallen. I stepped aside to stop him squashing me on the way down. He remained upright by leaning against the wall. “You’re my best friend,” he slurred.
“You’re my best friend too.”
“Leaving the Cove was a good decision. We have fun, don’t we?”
Mitchell was very reflective when soused. It made a nice change. He wasn’t renowned for deep conversation when sober.
“We do. Are you ready for bed?”
“That wouldn’t be a good idea for three reasons,” he said, holding four fingers in the air.
“What reasons?”
“One, I’m scared of your dad.” He took a heavy step toward me. “And two, I’m very afraid of your dad.”
I had to laugh. Alex was scary where Mitchell was concerned, even from half a world away.
My dad Alex and his girlfriend Gabrielle had packed up and left Pipers Cove a couple of months after us, arriving in Marseille in time to spend Christmas with her family. That was supposed to be their happy ever after. But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Through no fault of Alex’s, they were back in Pipers Cove six weeks later, in time for Gabrielle to resume her teaching position at beginning of the school term. She had got homesick, and small town gossip and her little cottage on the cliff trumped Marseillaise castles and baguettes. I doubt Alex tried hard to talk her out of returning to the Cove; nor would he have needed to. He was never thrilled about leaving in the first place. He was, however, still thrilled by anything to do with the Parisienne.
Mitchell took another step forward; so unsteadily that it couldn’t possibly have been intentional. Both of my arms shot out. Luckily, he managed to steady himself.
“What’s the third reason?” I asked.
Mitchell turned and staggered toward the beanbag. He fell into it so hard that I was worried it might explode. “The third reason doesn’t matter. Reasons one and two cancel out the need for reason three.”
“Tell me reason three,” I demanded.
He looked at me through lazy eyes, probably seeing little more than a blurred form in front of him. “Reason number three. Never sleep with a girl who’s in love with someone else.”
“Yeah, okay. You got me. I’m madly in love with Vincent.”
He groaned. “I’m not an idiot, Charli. It’s written all over your face… and your diary. You still love Adam, and no matter how far away you go it’s not far enough.”
“You read my journal?” I was appalled and embarrassed. It was the first diary I’d ever kept. I’d always maintained that pouring your heart out via pen and paper was asking for trouble, and Mitchell’s snooping confirmed it. My journal had nothing to do with documenting our trip or my day-to-day life; that was taken care of by the thousands of pictures I’d taken. I wrote about things that were too hard to explain, and too private to tell anyone. Mainly, I wrote about him.
Even in my head, I referred to Adam as him.
I had travelled thousands of miles from home but hadn’t moved an inch. A year apart had changed nothing. I loved him. I had always loved him. And my decision to end our relationship had grown into the most painful regret of my life.
“I didn’t mean to read it,” he said, unconvincingly. “I didn’t even know you kept a diary.”
“You weren’t supposed to know,” I barked. “It was private.”
“I read the whole thing. Every word.”
“Ugh! Shut up!”
“It was actually pretty good. March was pretty dull but it picked up again in April.”
“Shut up, Mitchell!”
I wanted to clout him but it wouldn’t have been a fair fight. He was clearly disadvantaged by the alcohol he’d consumed. It was acting as a truth serum and it also seemed to make him keep talking. “You should find a better hiding spot if you don’t want me to read it.” He shifted to the side, producing my journal from under the beanbag. “Ta-daa!”
I snatched it. “There’s something seriously wrong with you.”
“I know,” he agreed. “But there’s nothing wrong with you.”
I shook my head, scowling. “What are you talking about?”
He made a half-hearted swipe for the book, but was too uncoordinated to take it from me. “I read it. Have you ever read what you’ve written? If you did, you’d see that there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re just scared. You were scared when we left home and you’re scared now.”
He’d hit my rawest nerve, dead on. “And you’re drunk.”
“Of course I’m drunk. Do you think we’d be having this conversation otherwise? Get brave, Charli. Toughen up and go after what you want.”
Within days of leaving Australia I’d made my decision. I planned to spend a few weeks travelling with Mitchell before jumping on a plane to New York.
But time was my enemy.
After three amazing weeks of surfing in Mauritius we found our way to Madagascar. By the time we arrived in Johannesburg six weeks after that I was second-guessing my decision. What if Adam had moved on? What if he’d met someone else? Or worse, what if he’d forgotten all about me? The longer I spent without him, the more I’d convinced myself that Adam Décarie was doing just fine without me.
Writing down my fears had preserved my sanity. I was on the trip of a lifetime, visiting some of the most beautiful places on earth, and yet I couldn’t shake the hopelessness of being completely in love with a boy I’d known for only two months – a very long time ago.
“It’s not that simple,” I mumbled.
The beans crunched beneath him as he struggled to lean forward. Grabbing his hand, I helped him to his feet. Once upright he fell forward, pushing me backwards. I lay flat on the floor, struggling under his weight.
“It’s totally simple,” he said, ignoring the fact that I was gasping for breath beneath him. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Answering him required air in my lungs. With both hands on his chest, I managed to heave him off. “What if I go all the way to New York and he doesn’t want me?”
“Then you put it to bed. But at least you’ll know you’ve given it your best shot.”
I turned my head to look at him, marvelling at the fact that Mitchell Tate managed to become smarter when intoxicated. “What would you do without me?”
“I’d manage. I’ve matured a lot lately,” he insisted. A huge burst of laughter escaped me but his tone remained serious. “It’s been a long time since I did anything dumb like try to cook popcorn in a frying pan.”
“Mitch, that was just a week ago,” I reminded him, between giggles.
He reached across for my hand. “I’d be fine, Charli. And you would be too.”
***
I dragged myself out of bed at ten the next morning. Mitchell was already up, sitting on the front veranda soaking up the morning sun and eating something that looked like one of Melito’s filo pastry creations from the night before.
“Is your stomach made of cast iron?” I asked, appalled. He turned to face me, grinned and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth.
We sat on the raised veranda, dangling our legs over the edge and gazing at the uninterrupted view of the ocean ahead. The veranda was the only redeeming feature of the shack. Some days, when the ocean was a millpond and we weren’t working, we’d waste the entire morning out there.
“You just missed Bernie and Will,” he said. “They were on their way home from the sleek Greeks. It turns out that the party got a whole lot rowdier once we left.”
“What did they have to say for themselves?”
He shrugged. “Not much. They said they’re thinking of heading up the coast next weekend. I wouldn’t mind a weekend up north. Too bad we’re broke and trapped like rats.”
He bumped my shoulder and I looked across at him. I couldn’t help smiling at his goofy expression. Mitchell was back to being carefree, content and sober. Nothing fazed him – not even the prospect of being a broke, trapped, rat.
That’s where we differed. I was beginning to feel as though I was failing, and it was starting to weigh me down. The whole purpose of this journey was to find my place in the world. We’d travelled thousands of miles. How far was I supposed to go, for crying out loud?
I had to consider that I’d been wrong all along. What if happiness wasn’t a place? What if it was enough just to be with the person who made you happy? Surely then I’d be content wherever I was – even if it was New York City.
I looked at the bigger picture. There was a possibility that I had thrown away the best love I would ever know. And going through the daily grind of surfing, working and sleeping was doing nothing to get it back.
“Mitch, do you remember our conversation last night?”
A smile crept across his face. “Refresh my memory.”
I rolled my eyes. “We talked about me going to New York. I think I’m going to do it.”
“It’s about time,” he teased. “I was beginning to think I’d be stuck with you forever.”
I nudged his shoulder, faking annoyance. “Don’t get too excited. It’s going to take months to save up.”
“Why don’t you just call Alex? He’d send you money if you needed it.”
The mere suggestion bordered on lunacy. As far as Alex knew, I was comfortably living on the proceeds from the sale of Adam’s boat. If he ever got wind that we were broke he’d have a coronary.
“I’m going to work it out for myself.”
“I’ll find extra work, Charli. I’ll do what I can.”
“You don’t need to do that. I only need one thing from you.”
“Name it.”
“Don’t let me talk myself out of going. No matter how long it takes.”
Mitchell slung an arm around my shoulders. “You got it, sister.”