I blush red. Again. ‘Actually, there is a small logistical problem—’
‘It’s the battery,’ he diagnoses, before I can continue. ‘Heard the engine failing to turn over from bed.’
I imagine him, starfished on the mattress in those boxers, listening to my ailing vehicle. Stop it! There’s no time to call for roadside assistance. No time for any conceivable option beyond begging this man for help. ‘Hugh is in the Qantas lounge,’ I tell him. ‘He’s probably ordering me a latte as we speak.’ I’m so churned up now, the thought of dairy makes me nauseous. ‘Of course, he sensibly lives in a high-rise Kingston apartment just minutes away from literally everything—’
‘Does he?’ Justin pulls me across the threshold into his bunker out of the cold. ‘And miss the charms of suburban life?’
I almost lunge at him. ‘I’m so sorry to be banging on your door. The front light came on—’
‘It’s a sensor.’
‘You must be exhausted from moving in yesterday.’ I gesture at the moving boxes piled high on polished floorboards all around us. It’s like he’s hauled it all in and run out of steam to unpack anything. Or maybe he ran out of time, given last night’s furore. ‘Justin, I am an incredibly desperate woman!’
He draws his mouth into a slow smile. ‘Are you?’
There isn’t a minute to spare. We cannot stand here, the only two people awake in the southern hemisphere – apart from Hugh, and hopefully our pilot – exchanging flirty innuendo about my apparent level of desperation. This is an emergency. The second emergency, in fact, of our brief and dramatic acquaintance.
‘Why don’t I give you a lift?’ he suggests.
I could kiss him. Of course, now I’m picturing exactly that, and exhibiting the social graces of my inner bookish teenager.
‘Give me two minutes,’ Justin says. ‘Pull up a box. Make yourself at home.’
6
Justin saunters down a long corridor and my trance is broken only after he’s completely out of sight. I scrabble for my phone, bash out a quick message to Hugh: ‘Car trouble. Getting a lift.’ Then try to distract myself admiring the warm neutrals of Justin’s bachelor pad. Lined up along the gallery-styled corridor are some large framed prints underneath where they’ll presumably be hung. They’re incredible landscape photographs – driftwood on the beach at sunrise, a forest waterfall in long exposure, an old tin hut in the outback with leading lines of cracked red soil. The box beside me is labelled ‘camera equipment’ and wrapped in tape marking it as ‘fragile’.
Is he a photographer, too? Oh, I hope so. I’ve graduated from my phone camera to a proper one and I’m still at the stage of being discombobulated by the exposure triangle. Perhaps he’ll tutor me.
Last night’s flannelette shirt is lying where it was tossed on top of a box of dumbbells. I pick it up, just for a second, and turn the fabric over in my hands. It’s reminiscent of two days ago, when I’d spent three hours sitting on the floor of my bedroom picking up every one of Cam’s shirts in turn. I pored over each one, searching for even a hint of Cam’s scent, hugged it, ‘thanked it for its service’, and even then I couldn’t let go.
Dots on my phone screen indicate Hugh is typing something back. Then they stop. Then start again. His dithering is making me nervous, and I stick the phone on silent and toss it in my handbag, because I’m a rebel. Or a coward.
When Justin returns, he’s back in his fabled ripped jeans, boots and a fresh white T-shirt under a well-worn brown leather jacket.
‘Wow,’ I gush, before I can stop myself. My situation is not helped by the fact that I’m still holding his shirt, like some teenage fangirl at a concert. This is worse than the birdwatching debacle. What did you do next? Grace will ask. Get him to autograph your boobs?
‘The leather is just . . .’ I stumble on, deflecting my enthusiasm towards the garment instead of the man who is modelling it. My fingers get in on the ruse and reach out to massage the sleeve of the jacket while I examine the stitching closely, like a Florentine leather connoisseur who isn’t very late for a flight.
Justin smiles kindly, a cool kid making amends in one simple transaction for all the attention I didn’t receive from Out-Of-My-Leaguers in high school. The internal access to the garage is blocked off with furniture, so we head back outside, where he locks the house and then clicks a button for the roller door. I check the time on my watch and calculate that we’ll just make it. And then I stand there, gaping.
‘It’s a motorbike,’ I inform him.
He takes the tote and my phone and keys out of my hands and stores them away in the saddle bag. ‘This is not just a motorbike, Kate. It’s an Indian.’
I don’t know what that is. I just know I’m not getting on it. Granted, the matte black and polished chrome complements the whole late-90s Jon Bon Jovi experience he’s offering, but this is just not for me.
‘But you’re an actuary,’ I argue, as if his sensible career choice somehow precludes him from the bad boy archetype.
‘And you’re late.’ He produces a second leather jacket from the trunk and holds it up while I thread my arms into it.
As I zip up the front, I can’t help wondering who wore it last. Some Hell’s Angel in figure-hugging, black leather pants instead of the classic black business skirt and tailored white shirt I’m wearing. At least my knee-length boots are vaguely protective, I guess. I figured they’d keep me warm until we got to Cairns, and then I could swap shoes and be good to go for the presentation.
Justin tosses me a heavy black helmet. ‘Nice catch,’ he praises me.
‘Seven years of rep netball at school,’ I hear myself answer inanely, feet still planted firmly on the concrete floor of his garage while my plane takes off and my boss fires and replaces me and I lose the house.
He swings a leg over the seat and pats the space behind him. I’m meant to climb onto it, I realise, but I’ve never hoisted myself onto a motorbike before. Is it just like a horse? Although, what am I saying? I couldn’t easily mount a horse in this skirt either. He hits the keyless ignition and the engine roars to life, scaring the daylights out of me and probably waking half the street.
‘Come on!’ he yells over the top of it. ‘You’re late for Hugh.’
He’s found my kryptonite. I approach and place one hand tentatively on Justin’s shoulder, pull my skirt up with the other, and throw my right leg inelegantly over the seat. The skirt is affronted. It threatens to split at the seams but opts instead for riding way up my legs, just as he reaches back, grabs my hands, brings them around his waist and slides me forward on the leather saddle.
Right. Michelangelo’s angel is now clamped between my thighs. Pressed up against him, I’m sure I’m leaving nothing to the imagination, but he has exorcised my free will and I can’t move to adjust things.