I collect the coffees and follow Leo. He is staring up at the wall of images.
‘Do you know which one it is?’ I ask him as I slide the coffee in front of him.
‘Thanks,’ he murmurs, and he shakes his head, confusion distorting his features. I point to a photo on the bottom corner. We are both soaked to the bone, our hair plastered to our foreheads, my make-up has run all the way down to my chin. We are smiling so hard that it hurts my heart just to look at it.
‘Why are we wet?’
‘I was working very hard.’ I sit down beside him. ‘But you didn’t tell me you were worried about me. The Foundation had just bought the land for the Centre, and I had just hired Tobias and we were trying to pull together the plans for the buildings so that we could start looking for corporate sponsorship. You rang me one Friday afternoon and told me I needed to leave work early, but you wouldn’t tell me why.’
‘How mysterious and romantic of me.’
‘Indeed. Well, we went straight to the airport, and you had booked two economy class tickets to Yulara.’ He raises an eyebrow at me, and I laugh. ‘I’d never flown economy class before. I didn’t say anything to you at the time, but I was mortified.’
‘Poor me,’ Leo protests. ‘That sounds like such a sweet gesture. I was taking you to Uluru?’
‘We’d had a few conversations about it. You told me it was the spiritual heart of Australia and that it was negligent of me to have never visited.’
‘That does sound like something I’d say.’
‘Yep… So we flew in those cramped seats all the way to Central Australia and we stayed in the hotel there, and the next morning you woke me up at four in the morning so we could go and watch the sunrise over the rock. Does any of this ring any bells?’
‘Not yet. But keep talking.’
‘And the sunrise… it was breathtaking,’ I murmur. ‘The way the colours of the rock changed as the light hit it… It was an amazing experience. Later in the day, clouds came over, but we’d booked to do a walking tour around the base and you were pretty insistent that a bit of rain wasn’t going to stop us.’
‘We walked off from the tour, didn’t we?’
I glance at him and smile. ‘Yeah, you convinced me to break off and try to get all the way around before the rain started.’
‘Was I trying to get you alone to propose? I don’t remember that.’
‘I think you were just trying to get me far enough along the walking track that I couldn’t insist we turn back if it started to rain,’ I laugh.
‘So…’
‘We started walking, and it was so beautiful. I was so happy, and so – content.’
‘That’s right… It was peaceful, wasn’t it?’
‘It really was. Until…’
‘There was a crack of thunder.’ Leo says slowly. Our gazes lock, and the atmosphere between us is as electric as the earth’s had been the day of that storm.
‘The rain clouds were obvious,’ I whisper. ‘But we didn’t realise it was going to storm. The thunder started, and then lightning, and it didn’t just start to sprinkle rain – it poured.’
We’d been drenched in seconds – not just by the rain, but by the instant waterfall that the sides of Uluru had become. Water was coming at us from every direction and the wind picked up too. It was hard even to keep our eyes open. Leo took my hand and made me run. So there we were, running along the track – red mud splashing up my calves – and shivering from the cold but laughing hysterically because – well, what else was there to do?
‘I was going to shelter you in a cave,’ Leo says softly. ‘I remembered it from the first time I visited.’
‘But you didn’t realise it was much further ahead, and after a few minutes running, I started to complain.’ Leo, this is ridiculous! Are you sure this cave even exists?
I’d been out of breath from the sprint I had to maintain to keep up with Leo, but still somehow, laughing. The joy of the adventure with him was brighter than the cold discomfort of the rain; more invigorating even than the adrenaline that surged through my body with each clap of painfully loud thunder.
‘I remember now,’ Leo says suddenly. ‘I stopped to scoop you up into my arms, and I looked down at you and you looked like a drenched cat. But – you were still beautiful.’
‘Oh, please!’ I roll my eyes at him. ‘I was a mess. But you did pick me up, and you stopped running and then while you were standing right there while the rain poured down all over us and the thunder raged above us, you just said…’
‘Marry me,’ he whispers, just like he had the first time. My heart leaps, and I realise with some shock that even if he proposed again right now – even knowing all of the heartache that would follow – I would still say yes in an instant.