“What did you do?” I asked, feeling apprehensive.
“I lost it. I told him he could get back on the fucking plane because there was no way he was touching my book. Then I stormed out.” He shook his head as he relived the moment. “It was a stupid thing to do; I know. I should have just sat through it like a trained monkey and not made an ass of myself. I mean, this guy was a real heavyweight, you know. Not the person you want to piss off. That night I got really drunk, like stupidly drunk. I burned the hard copy of the manuscript and then deleted all the digital files. It was one of those apocalyptic ‘fuck you’ to the universe kind of moments.”
“Oh shit, Rad. You didn’t.”
“Of course, when I woke up the next morning,” he shot me a wry look, “it wasn’t pretty. I searched everywhere for a backup, but I had been really thorough. The whole thing was gone.”
“Jesus.”
“So I thought, ‘That’s my writing career—over. Done and dusted.’ Since I was unemployed with no prospects, I wasn’t going to keep making rent, so I figured it was better to leave than to spiral down the path into eventual eviction. I went to Freddy’s house and dropped off some of my stuff, then I just got into my car and drove.” He finished his story with a sigh, staring sullenly at the horizon. “So that’s me. Now you’re all up to date.” He turned to look at me, his expression unreadable. I turned away, looking out toward the ocean.
“Let’s go for a walk on the beach,” I said.
Over the next few weeks, we walked a lot. Up and down the length of the beach, slogging up sand dunes and climbing rock pools. After my insensitive slip of the tongue about Gabe that first day, I was careful to avoid the topic. Rad told me about a brief fling he had with a Swedish tourist. Even though it didn’t come to anything, the mere mention of it drove me mad. I imagined her blonde and gorgeous in a tiny bikini, Rad kissing her smooth, tanned shoulder. I wondered if he found her fascinating, if he ever talked about me when he was with her. I wondered a thousand things, but all I said was, “Oh, she sounds nice.”
Being around Rad felt like I had never left, as if my time in Delta was a dream that had happened to someone else. Even after all the time away, the love was still there, bright as the sun. At least on my end—I wasn’t sure how he felt about me, and I was afraid to ask.
The thick of winter arrived, and, one after another, the summer holiday campers packed up and left, giving the park a melancholy vibe.
I finally saw the inside of Rad’s trailer one day. He invited me in after a long trek on the coastal path. It was small but had a nice and cozy atmosphere, kind of like a fort. There was a small table stuck to the wall with a bench on either side. Piled on top were Sudoku puzzle books and old newspapers.
One night we built a bonfire. It took much longer than expected to get the fire going, but, eventually, it created a warm, intimate atmosphere. We found marshmallows in one of the cupboards and speared them onto sticks, pointing them at the swirling flames.
It was a beautiful, clear night, and we sat on his green-and-white striped lawn chairs and tipped our heads up to the sky. He reached toward me, wrapping the crook of his finger around my rubber band like he used to.
“You’re still wearing this.”
I remember the first time he brought it up. It was that magical night in Newport when we kissed for the first time. “Interesting piece of jewelry,” he had said. Over the course of our relationship, he would play with it absentmindedly during our conversations in bed, his fingers gently flicking the elastic against my skin.
Now, the touch of his finger against my wrist brought the warm memories back in a flood, sending an unexpected thrill through my body. He looked as though he wanted to kiss me, and I was readying myself. But then he looked away, and the spell was broken. We sat in quiet contemplation for a time, listening to the ocean crashing in the distance. When he turned to face me again, his eyes were unbearably sad. “I used to think people were like lighthouses. That they were there to protect you. But they’re not. People are like whirlpools. They pull you in; they drag you under. You have to work so hard just to keep your head above water.”
During the weeks that I spent at Bell Rock, I got to know Maud pretty well. Back in the ’50s, her late husband ran a small theater that screened art house films. When he passed away, Maud sold it (just wasn’t the same without him, she explained) and bought Bell Rock, fulfilling her lifelong dream of living by the sea.
Most of her clientele were vacationers, but she also had a few permanent residents. One was an elderly man who kept mostly to himself. We saw him some mornings, sitting outside his trailer on a foldout chair, reading the paper. “Hey, pretty girl,” he’d call out to me whenever I walked by. There was also a young hippie couple with a baby boy and a mysterious woman who always wore dark sunglasses and never smiled. Aside from renting out trailers, Maud also told fortunes for the locals. When she was young, she traveled around the United States with a small circus troupe. She told wonderful stories of her adventures, including the time she did a tarot reading for a famous movie star during the year she spent at Coney Island. I saw her life captured in pictures pressed into old leather-bound albums, their plastic sleeves sticky and yellow with age. It was hard to believe the young spirited gypsy girl draped in velvet and lace was Maud. “Wasn’t I gorgeous?” she’d say. It was a rhetorical question.
One night, Rad and I were walking barefoot along the beach when the subject of Maud came up in the conversation.
“She wants to read my fortune, but I don’t know if that’s such a good idea—knowing what’s ahead.”
“Well, you should take everything she says with a grain of salt. I know what she’s like when she’s had a few too many.”
“Has she ever read yours?”
“Yeah, she says one day I’ll have people lining up for my autograph.”
“Well, I’d better get mine now.”
“Sure, do you have a pen on you?”
I laughed. It was the first time since I came here that Rad seemed almost like his old self again. We walked in silence a little longer.
“Tell me about your book. The one you wrote when I was away.”
“It was called Honeybee. I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“I wish I could have read it.”
“Do you know the Chinese have a tradition of burning fake money because they believe it goes to their dead relatives in the spirit world?”
“It’s a nice idea.”
“Well, that was going through my mind when the manuscript was burning. Maybe in some other alternate universe, there are people reading my book. Who knows?”
“Maybe.”
“I think writing is over for me,” said Rad. “I’ve sat for ages with a pen in my hand, and nothing comes out. So I end up doing Sudoku puzzles.”
“It’s probably just writer’s block.”
“Or some karmic force that is punishing me for destroying my own book.”
I reached out and put my hand on his arm. “I don’t think it works like that.”
He stopped and turned to face me. “It’s weird, isn’t it? The coincidences, I mean. It’s almost like everything is decided for you, like it’s already been written.”
“Yeah, you know me. I have an existential crisis every five minutes.”
He smiled at me. “I love that I can talk to you about all this stuff. Most people wouldn’t get it.”
“You can talk to me about anything.”
“I know.”
I followed his gaze upward, and we thought our individual thoughts, sending them out into the universe like parallel lines. At that moment, I felt a sense of something that was bigger than us, an inexplicable force that willfully drew Rad and me to this convergence, to this particular alignment with the stars. We were always meant for each other. This was something I knew right down to the depths of my soul.
“You know,” said Rad, his face turning toward me, “Maud was right about something.”
“What was that?”
“She said you would find me again.”
The next day, I was awakened by a sharp knock on my door. I got up and pulled on my robe. “Who is it?” I called.
“It’s me!” announced Lucy.
“Lucy!” I opened the door and grinned widely at her. “What are you doing here?”
“Surprise!” she said, throwing her arms around me as I squeezed her tightly.
“Why didn’t you call to let me know you were coming?” I was suddenly aware of how messy my room was, and I began picking up bits and pieces from the floor.
“Relax, Audrey.” She came inside and shut the door behind her. “I used to live with you, remember?”
“I know,” I said, tossing a pile of clothes into the bathroom. “How did you get here?”
“Borrowed Mum’s car,” she said, walking over to the window. “Wow, you’ve got a great view.”
“It’s really pretty here.”
She turned to face me. “You look great. How’s everything? Is Rad doing okay?”
“He’s doing a lot better. He’s even writing again.”
“Oh, if I’d known, I would have brought up his laptop.”
“Never mind. He tends to stick to pen and paper, so we get by sharing mine for now.”
She sighed. “I’m glad he’s getting back on his feet again.”
“Do you want a coffee?” The motel room had a small Nespresso machine, and I popped in a capsule.
“Sure.” Lucy sat down on my bed. I made us both a coffee and sat down next to her. “Do you think you’ll get back together with him?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s up to him.”
“So you don’t think you’re going back to Delta?”
I shook my head. “Rosie said Gabe has left, so there’s no real point in going back. It wouldn’t be the same without him.”
“Are you guys still in touch?”
“No. He said he didn’t want to do the friend thing.”
There was a short pause.
“He was pretty special to you, wasn’t he?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
“More than he’ll ever know.”
Lucy and I had lunch together later that day. There was a little fish and chips place by the local wharf, and we sat at one of the tables watching ships sway in the docks and throwing bits of our chips at the seagulls. “Look how crazy they are,” said Lucy, as the squawking birds clawed and pecked each other for the scraps of food.
“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.”