“This reminds me of that lolly scramble you had at your tenth birthday. Remember? Your mum was throwing bags of lollies onto the lawn, and the kids went nuts, pushing and shoving each other to get at the loot.”
“Someone grabbed my hair and wrestled me to the ground—all for a Sherbie,” said Lucy.
We laughed.
“Time is going by so quickly, isn’t it?” she said, gazing out at the ocean.
“Yeah. The last year has gone by in a flash.”
“Now Candela’s married, and you’re off doing amazing things. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who is standing still.” She twisted a lock of hair around her forefinger.
“Lucy.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “There’s plenty of time left to do anything you want to do.”
“I suppose.”
“Plus, you have Freddy. He’s a real sweetheart.”
“Yeah,” she said with a smile. “But he was my first real boyfriend. I don’t have anyone else to compare him with. What if he isn’t the love of my life and I’m just sticking with him because I’ve never known anything else?”
“You love him, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. More than anything else in the whole world.”
“It’s a beautiful thing, Lucy, to love someone and have them love you back. Everything pales in comparison.”
She smiled at me. “Audrey, why don’t you tell Rad how you feel? What have you got to lose?”
“What if he doesn’t feel the same way about me anymore?”
“You love him, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation. “I do.”
“Well,” she said, tossing another handful of scraps at the overzealous seagulls, “don’t you think he has a right to know?”
Later that night, I tossed and turned in bed, going over my conversation with Lucy. With a sigh, I got up and pulled on my jeans. Minutes later I was knocking on Rad’s door. He opened it almost right away, and his alert face told me he couldn’t sleep either. “Hey,” he said, opening the door wider, to let me in.
We sat side by side, our legs hanging off the side of his bed. There was a copy of Snow Crash sitting open, by his pillow. “How long are you planning on staying?” asked Rad.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure if I will go back.”
“What about Gabe? Is he still in the picture?” he asked, his tone casual.
“No, that ended before I came here.”
He looked thoughtful for a while. “I’m really glad you’re here,” he said finally. He looked down at his hands. “To be honest, I didn’t think I’d see you again.”
“It was hard to come back home to Sydney. At least in Delta I could pretend I wasn’t the girl who told that lie.”
“Do I remind you of that?”
“Yeah.” I gave him a reassuring smile. “But not in a bad way. Not anymore.”
He bit his bottom lip, and his expression grew distant, as though he was thinking hard about something. After a while, he turned to face me again. “Do you ever think about us, Audrey?”
“Of course I do.”
He looked relieved, as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
“Do you?”
“Yeah,” he said, his voice heavy with emotion. “All the time.” He reached over, cupping my face in his hands and gazing softly at me. Then he kissed me. It was a deep, yearning kiss, like his mouth was searching mine for all the words that belonged to him but had been kept from him in his self-imposed exile.
A deep realization reverberated through my body, like the ringing of a church bell. All at once, I understood why the pain of separation, that carving out of the insides, had to happen. I used to have this sense that I felt too much for Rad, that the feelings inside me would start spilling over and I wouldn’t be able to contain them. Now I knew why I had been hollowed out, why my insides were chipped away with a chisel and mallet. It was to make room for this new feeling, this love that was so vast, so expansive it could not have fit into the vessel I once was.
He undressed me with a rough urgency that felt fresh yet familiar, his fingers pulling and tearing at my clothes, until I was naked and breathless. I felt a new strength in his arms as he pulled me down with him onto the tiny bed. “I’ve missed this,” he murmured, his face buried into my neck.
Afterward, we lay silent, lulled by the hypnotic sound of waves beating against the rocks. Gradually, I could tell from his breathing that he had drifted into a peaceful sleep. I turned to face him, my fingers curling gently around his dark brown hair. A feeling of tenderness swept through me like an ache; it almost felt maternal. “I’m going to take care of you,” I whispered.
The next morning we were shy with each other when we made our cups of coffee with unnecessary clumsiness in the cramped space. “So,” said Rad, letting out a deep breath, “last night.” I grinned at him, without meaning to. It was as though my mouth had a mind of its own.
“Last night,” I echoed.
We stood there, half-empty coffee cups in our hands, grinning at each other with a comical awkwardness that made me want to burst into laughter. Or perhaps it was because I was so damn happy. He put his cup down and held his hand out to me. I took it, and he pulled me to him. I crashed into his chest with a soft thud, and my coffee tipped over the edges of the mug and spilled onto the linoleum floor in splotches like inkblots.
“What now?” he asked, searching my face.
I kissed him warmly. “If you’re still up for it, I want us to start again. Clean slate.”
“Yes,” he said, letting out a breath. “I’d like that.”
It was different this time around. There was a realness to our relationship, a grounding that had never been there before. I’d never felt so sure about anything in my life. I knew I didn’t want to be away from Rad ever again.
I moved into the trailer, and we spent one blissful day after another, our hearts filled with love and our heads full of dreams. The happiness we had found at the start of our relationship was always tinged with a shade of uncertainty, but now that had lifted, and I felt like I could surrender myself completely.
“Do you know what I thought, the first day you came here?” asked Rad.
We were cocooned in his tiny bed, where we had spent most of the morning. Outside, the sky was a moody gray. I looked up at him as the first drops of rain drummed softly on the tin roof.
“No, what was going through your mind?”
He smiled at me. “When I opened my door to find you standing there, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘I’ve been here all summer long, but for the first time, the sun’s come out.’”
Later that day, I was on my way to the shower block when I ran into Maud. She was just about to take Gin and Tonic for a walk on the beach.
“Audrey,” she said.
“Hey, Maud.” I bent down to pat Gin and Tonic, who were both vying for my attention by climbing over each other.
“I was actually just about to stop by your place. You know the winter solstice is next week.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t realize. I’m losing track of the days.”
She smiled at me. “The bohemian life.”
I grinned at her. “So what’s the significance of the solstice?”
“We’re having a party.”