The last time I kissed a man, he died. I don’t think there’s a causal link, but it’s playing on my mind, obviously. That and the fact that my last kiss was over two years ago, but it’s been more like three years since I did it properly. And more than two decades since I kissed someone other than Cam – some boy at the Year Twelve formal in an unmitigated disaster that I don’t have time to think about right now, due to circumstances rapidly becoming beyond my control.
Hugh takes my face in his hands. Handles it like it’s precious and he’s an expert. Like I’m breakable. Which I suppose I am.
‘Hugh . . .’
He moves towards me, slowly, and I just stand there, waiting to receive. I can’t move. I’m a flight risk. Any sudden movements, even my own, might break this trance.
A kaleidoscope of images from my life with Cam flashes through my mind the way it’s supposed to just before you die. Not before someone new kisses you. But when Hugh’s mouth finally touches mine, the images disappear. Warmth floods through me and he sighs as if this is something he’s wanted to do for a very long time. Centuries, maybe. And I panic. Where have the images gone of Cam? Have I lost them?
‘You with me, Kate?’ Hugh whispers, pulling back and checking.
‘Y-es?’
This is not something I’ve had the luxury of thinking about for years. It’s been mere hours, perhaps since the airport just yesterday morning when I first realised Hugh was very much a ‘man’ with regard to me. Not just a colleague, or a friend.
And now he’s kissing me for real and I’m in a zero-gravity chamber . . . Oh my God.
‘Am I doing this right?’ I think as his lips wander towards my neck, and he pulls his face away again and smiles.
Tell me I did not say that aloud.
‘Are you asking for feedback, Kate?’
Yes. No. God! Am I this out of practice?
‘I thought this was meant to be like riding a bike,’ I say. Because how romantic. ‘Don’t let me talk!’ I suggest.
He laughs. ‘But that’s the best part,’ he replies. ‘I love the way you talk.’
‘Well, I love the way you kiss, apparently.’
‘Apparently?’ He smiles again. All these smiles – it’s like Christmas. ‘Do you think we could try this again, Whittaker, this time with your brain disengaged?’
Constructive criticism. I’ve taken it from him before, so why should this be any different? The man clearly knows what he’s doing. All those one-night stands . . . The incredible Genevieve . . . Gah! I shouldn’t have cancelled that last waxing appointment . . .
‘Hugh, I don’t know how to switch off my brai—’
He switches it off for me, finishing my sentence in a way that’s unarguable. This kiss isn’t slow and sweet and testing the waters. It’s hungry. Urgent. Years in the making. All-consuming. And it’s scrambling my brain and my body as my hand travels up his chest to his shoulders and neck and rakes through his wet hair and grasps it, because I need him even closer.
The deluge from the sky intensifies. The cardigan, heavy with rainwater, slips off my shoulder, and he trails his mouth down my neck, along wet skin. He grabs my waist and pulls me against him, hard. Unprofessionally. Exquisitely.
His hands move up my back in the privacy beneath my cardigan, triggering nerves and muscles that flex and arch as my head drops back, face to the sky into the torrential rain, giving him access to my throat, which he kisses so gently I have to half-feel it and half-imagine. His fingers trail lightly down my neck, drop to my chest, stop over my heart. And we come up for air, as if asking ourselves what on earth we are doing, because this is intoxicating and exhilarating. Brand new. Years old.
We stare at each other, breathing heavily. Surprised to be here, and yet not surprised at all.
‘Your heart is racing,’ he informs me, his hand still on my chest.
‘It’s not used to you,’ I explain, and he puts his arms around me and pulls me into the most delicious hug . . . possibly ever. How can that be? ‘Will it always be broken?’ I murmur.
It’s the scariest question I’ve ever asked anyone – particularly someone who has a definitive answer on this topic from his own experience.
‘Always,’ he says carefully. ‘This is not about fixing that.’
I feel a major freak-out coming, but I’m just as certain I’m more centred than I have been in a very long time. ‘What are we doing?’ I ask. We’re barely halfway through our first kiss but I need to know what his intentions are and where this is heading, so I can risk-manage any potential carnage.
‘I don’t know,’ he replies.
Then we’re in real trouble now.
‘You always know!’ I accuse him, and he doesn’t answer.
‘Is this the moment where you push me away?’ I ask tentatively, and I feel the strength of his hug start to weaken. The ground we’ve clawed towards each other is lost. I’m slipping backwards. Dangling over a cliff, while he holds me by the wrist and considers his choices. ‘Hugh, is this too close for you?’
He stands back a little, taking me in. Drowned by the rain. Steam from the heat of my body rising off my skin because of him – at least, I imagine it to be.
‘Being with you the day Cam was diagnosed was too close,’ he says calmly. ‘Sitting with you at the hospital when you lost the baby was too close. The night Cam died. The next morning, watching that piercing wail of grief come out of a child’s mouth, like nothing I’ve ever heard before or since and nothing I ever want to hear again.’
Darling, Daddy died last night . . .
‘The time to push you away was right at the start, Kate. It’s been overtaken by events.’
So many events. Each of them awful. Can you base a relationship on suffering and support?
‘It feels straightforward in my body,’ I say.
‘You don’t have to worry about your body.’
Thank God.
‘It’s your head I’m concerned about. And mine.’
And well might he be concerned, because my head has declared a state of emergency. Sirens. Flashing lights. Red flags. Warnings of danger being broadcast through every channel.
We’ve got tonight and tomorrow. Then the spell of this place will be broken and we go home. Me, to a house I’ve already decided to sell.
‘I need to move,’ I explain. ‘Charlie and I need a fresh start, and not just another house in the same city.’
‘You need the beach.’
‘Yes. And to quit my job – no offence, Hugh – and let the equity from the house support me for a bit while I rent and write my book. Without the book, I don’t think I can truly move forward with my life.’
I’m pacing the sand now, threatening to hyperventilate. Is this a midlife crisis? Surely I’m too young. Or maybe the crisis already passed and this is what happens after it.
I don’t know how anyone processes grief without expressing it in words. I don’t know if Hugh ever really has. To have spent so long running from anything that felt too similar to what he lost – that’s unhealthy. Unless he fixes himself, there’s a risk he’ll break my heart, and his. We can’t afford that. I am not his medicine any more than he is mine.
‘Kate, you’re making me nervous.’
‘You won’t ever feel completely mine,’ I explain. ‘I will never be completely yours. How does that even work?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What if the secret you’re keeping suffocates us?’