***
Daylight had faded by the time I arrived home. It wasn’t until I stepped up on the porch that I began to regret staying out so late. I had no idea what sort of mood Alex would be in. I could smell something cooking and it made me shudder.
He’s punishing me, I thought.
In the kitchen, Alex stood at the stove with his back to me, stirring the concoction he would soon be passing off as dinner. I wasn’t sure whether to speak or sneak down to my room.
“Where’s your car, Charli?” he asked, doing nothing to disprove my theory that he had eyes in the back of his head.
“Adam brought me home. I left my car at Gabrielle’s.”
He lifted the pot and carried it to the table. I slide a placemat underneath it to stop him burning a hole through the laminate. Ignoring my save, he pulled out a chair and sat.
“Are you hungry?” He almost sounded hopeful.
“Is this another peace offering, Alex?” I asked. “I keep telling you, chocolate cake would be much more appropriate.”
“I didn’t think I needed another peace offering. You ditched school. That makes us even.” He motioned for me to pass my plate.
“I only want a little bit,” I murmured, trying not to sound offensive.
“I didn’t cook this, so you’ll live to see another day,” he said sarcastically.
“Gabrielle cooks for us now?”
Alex smirked – before he loaded up my plate to the point of overflowing. “No, Floss does. She stopped by the café this afternoon to give me a casserole and a lecture about not keeping her in the loop where my love life was concerned.”
“She won’t tell anyone, Alex,” I assured him. “Besides, I think people should know.” It was the truth. I saw no reason for them to be sneaking around. And I was looking forward to seeing the crushing blow served upon Jasmine Tate when she found she’d lost out to the Parisienne beauty queen. She’d either retreat with her sequined tail between her legs or fight harder to win Alex over. Both options had their appeal, and thinking about them made me smile. “Gabrielle puts up with a lot for you. You know that, right?”
“I keep telling her I’ll make it up to her.”
“She wants to go home, to Marseille.”
Alex rubbed his brow, as if my words had caused him pain. Maybe it was the food. Floss was a hard-core vegan. The only way her green bean casserole could have tasted worse was if Alex had cooked it.
“I know she does.” He spoke slowly, edging his food around his plate with his fork. Suddenly the conversation had taken a serious turn.
“You should go with her,” I urged, keeping my tone casual.
“Impossible, Charli.”
“You know I’m leaving at the end of the year. There’s no reason for you to stay. You’ll be a free man.”
Alex was unamused. He stared at me as if I’d just sworn at him. “I’ve always been free. I’m not tied here.” His voice was low. “I’ve given up nothing for you.”
“We both know that’s not true,” I murmured.
He changed the subject. “This is really awful, isn’t it?” he asked, looking at his plate of food.
I nodded.
Alex’s chair scraped he pushed it back. He scraped his food into the bin, clearly keeping his temper in check. Any reminder I gave of the sacrifices he’d made for me instantly got his back up. Following his lead, I dumped my dinner and rinsed my plate.
“I’m going to my room,” I said, pushing past him.
“We’re okay, Charli. Nothing has changed.”
I turned to look at him and he met my gaze. “Plenty has changed, Alex. And none of it’s bad. I just wish you could see that.”
I went to bed that night feeling smug. I had been right all along. The universe was shifting and Alex’s misguided attempt to reassure me that nothing had changed proved that he was feeling it too.
12. Translation
Some days, surfing was more important than breakfast. Unless I got at least an hour in at the beach before school, those days seemed doomed from the start.
Alex sat at the table, reading the newspaper while he ate. “Quarter past six, Charli,” he announced, reminding me that I was late.
I rushed past him, swiping a piece of his toast along the way. “I’m not waiting for you,” I told him, annoyed that he wasn’t ready. I swung the front door open with the zest of someone making a prison break… to be met by a startled – but still impossibly beautiful – French woman, hand raised to knock.
“Alex is inside,” I told her, waving my toast.
I wasn’t surprised to see her. I’d seen so much of her in the past week that I wondered how on earth he’d managed to keep her a secret for as long as he had. Stepping aside, I ushered her through the door.
The excitement of stealing a few minutes with the one she loved was obvious. She practically skipped into the kitchen, into the arms of my brother, who pulled her in close the minute she was within reach. I left them to it.
My mood wasn’t great. The minute I got out of the car I could tell the waves would be nonexistent by the direction the wind blew my hair. The early morning rush to get there had been for nothing.
Onshore winds are the worst for surfing. The wind blows in from the ocean making the waves crumbly and shapeless. I cursed Alex. He didn’t bail on me because Gabrielle was coming over. He knew the swell was useless but letting me trek down here anyway was a great way to get me out of the house early.
The frigid water lapped at my feet but that was as far as I was prepared to go – until I caught sight of the Beautifuls. Jasmine and Lily walked their revolting dog most mornings so seeing them wasn’t a surprise, but I was usually better at avoiding them.
“Charli,” purred Jasmine as soon as I was within earshot.
“What?” I snapped, focusing my attention on the ridiculous dog. Mitchell had presented his sisters with a cute designer puppy – bizarrely named Nancy – a few years earlier. The Beautifuls thought she was the ultimate fashion statement, carrying her around in a handbag and dressing her up. Unfortunately, Nancy developed a bad case of eczema, which made big patches of her fur fall out. The designer puppy soon became the most hideous dog in the southern hemisphere. Two years on she was still half bald, but at least she no longer had to wear a plastic cone around her neck to stop her biting herself. I laughed every time I saw her.
“No surf today. Whatever will you do?” Jasmine asked condescendingly.
She was definitely the brain of the operation. Nothing Lily ever did or said seemed to be as caustic as her sister. I was certain that somewhere underneath the grey velour tracksuit was a fairly decent person. But I wasn’t going to see it today.
“You look like a little baby seal,” said Lily, scrunching up her nose as if I smelled like one too. Jasmine threw back her head and cackled, giving Lily the approval she needed to continue. “I hope no one comes along and clubs you.”
The wetsuit I wore wasn’t designed to be pretty. The thick neoprene was necessary to protect against the twelve degree water. If someone came up with a suit that protected against the Tate sisters, I would have worn that.
“What do you want?” I asked, still focusing on their aesthetically challenged mutt.
“We don’t want anything. We’re just out walking Nancy.” Jasmine tugged on the small dog’s lead. The pooch gave a meaty little growl and stumbled into line.
It was too much to think they’d leave it at that. They had the gall to follow me as I walked up the trail to retrieve my gear.
“The car park is that way,” I said, pointing to the sandy path.
Jasmine continued smirking at me but Lily turned around and looked. “Oh, look who it is!” she said excitedly.
I couldn’t help turning. Adam jolted to a stop so suddenly, it was a miracle he didn’t sprain both ankles.
Running recreationally, without the threat of something terrible chasing you, seemed pointless to me. But Adam loved it. He jogged the length of the
beach along the Cove most mornings, so seeing him there was no great surprise.
He ripped the headphones from his ears and swept his brow with the back of his hand. The thick scrub concealing the beach until the very end of the track had blinded him. The music blaring through his headphones had rendered him deaf. And the fact that he didn’t turn around and run straight back the way he’d come as soon as he saw us made him dumb.
“Ladies,” he said cautiously, his eyes darting between Jasmine and me and bypassing Lily altogether.
Jasmine gave him a limp wrist and a pouty look. “I’m glad we ran into you,” she said. “We haven’t seen you around much lately.”
He stared at her, focused and granitic. “Don’t lose too much sleep over it.”
I knew he couldn’t stand the Beautifuls, especially since I’d told him why they were so despicable but it was still shocking to hear him speak so rudely to them. Judging by their looks of horror, they weren’t expecting it either. Jasmine recovered quickly, clearing her throat and glancing down at Nancy while she pulled herself together. Adam took the opportunity to wink at me.
“You should come to our house sometime,” suggested Lily, leading me to wonder what planet she’d been on during the last few seconds of conversation.
“Yes, you should,” agreed Jasmine. “You too, Charli. You haven’t come to the vineyard in ages.”
A disgusted groan escaped me. “Never,” I muttered, slinging my bag over my shoulder and preparing to make my getaway.
Jasmine blocked my path. “You used to visit all the time. Remember?” Her mascara caked eyes narrowed. I hesitated too long, prompting her to continue. “The last time you came over was to see my brother…to give him his going-away present, if I remember correctly.”
“How embarrassing,” whispered Lily before bursting into a fit of giggles.
Adam’s promise of keeping quiet was not going to hold. His arms were folded tightly, and as hard as I tried to catch his eyes, his glare remained solely focused on Jasmine.
I pushed past Jasmine so forcefully that she stumbled in the sand, almost stepping on Nancy in the process. I’d only made it a few steps when Adam called my name. I turned around, praying I wouldn’t regret it.
“Are you going to leave me here with them?” The amusement in his voice put me at ease. “I couldn’t stand it.”
Both girls stood still, their expressions confused and disbelieving. The only movement came from Nancy, who was also trying to make a getaway by chewing through her pink diamante-encrusted lead.
“What’s the worst that could happen, Adam?” I teased.
“Please, Coccinelle,” he said, moving towards me. “I’d save you if you needed me to.”
“I know what that word means, Adam,” I said sourly. “I looked it up.”
When Adam spoke French, it was intoxicating. I never cared that I didn’t understand it. Alex called Gabrielle sweetheart. It was cringe-worthy and unoriginal, but it was her word, and to Gabrielle, no one said it better than Alex. Coccinelle was my word. It was the sweetest expression on earth – until I spent ten seconds translating it online.
“You did your research. I’m impressed.” He grinned victoriously.
“I’m not,” I snarled. “It’s not nice to call someone a piglet.”
Adam burst into hysterics, laughing so hard he clutched his stomach. The Beautifuls – obviously reading the humiliation on my face – began cackling like demons. I didn’t wait for him to compose himself. I turned to walk away, but he caught my hand, stopping me.
“Your translation skills need some work,” he said, still laughing.
I snatched my hand away, giving him a look that should have reduced him to ash. The Beautifuls suddenly went quiet, probably anticipating an argument.
“Coccinelle. Piglet,” I hissed.
“No. Cochonnet, piglet,” he corrected. “It doesn’t even sound similar.”
“Oh.” I looked at the ground.
“Are you mad?”
“Very,” I muttered, digging my feet into the cold sand.
“Too mad to rescue me from the clutches of the Beautifuls?”
I finally looked up. “Oh, fine,” I grumbled, sounding inconvenienced. “But let’s not make a habit of it, okay?”
We left the Tate sisters standing. The view of the beach disappeared the minute we entered the trail. Strangely enough, all thoughts of the Beautifuls did too.
13. Gift
There had been method in Adam’s madness. He’d given the Beautifuls enough information to keep them guessing, but not enough to keep them talking. Not only had they not bothered me for days, they’d changed tack completely and begun ignoring me.
“How long do you think they can keep it up?” asked Nicole on the way to Biology class.
I smirked, partly because of her comment but mostly because her hair was a garish shade of red. “Nic, did you voluntarily do that to yourself?” I asked, pointing to her hair.
“You don’t like it?” she asked, fluffing it with her fingertips.
“It looks like something bled all over your head.”
“I know,” she said wistfully. “I’m going to change it this afternoon.”
I would have been sobbing in a corner somewhere if my hair looked that awful. Nicole saw it as an inconvenience rather than a tragedy. It was amazing she had any hair at all considering the hours she spent in her mother’s salon torturing it. Other than turning a progressively darker shade of blonde as I got older, my hair hadn’t changed much since I was a kid. Even the style had remained the same.
“You have a lot of time on your hands lately, huh?”
“I don’t mind.” She smiled reassuringly but I still felt a twinge of guilt. “Besides, four more weeks of staying out of trouble sounds like a good thing.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, slow on the uptake.
“I’ve realised that I don’t get in to nearly as much trouble when you’re not around,” she explained, grinning impishly. “When Adam goes home, things will go back to normal.”
Nicole’s words rang in my ears for hours. I had always known he was here temporarily, but having her put a time frame to it was like being sucker punched. I’d gone from feeling like I’d just found Adam to the much darker place of having to prepare to let him go.
I wasted no time in getting out of class at the end of the day. It wasn’t until I got near the car park that I began to worry that he might not be there. Standing around waiting for him meant dealing with at least one of the Beautifuls. He’d picked me up every afternoon for weeks. The covert operation was executed flawlessly each day; but now I was tired of it. He never complained but I’m sure it grated on him too.
I saw the little blue Festiva immediately. I’d picked the wrong day to get out early. Jasmine Tate stood leaning on the car while she waited for Lily.
Jasmine had worked in Carol Lawson’s hairdressing salon since leaving school the year before. It was unusual for her to be here. I wondered if she’d been fired and made a mental note to ask Nicole later.
Thankfully she didn’t speak, but the icy lock her eyes had on me as I walked across the car park was unnerving enough. The Audi peeled into the car park not a minute too soon, and I quickened my pace.
Until that moment, I’d been confident of making a clean getaway. All hope disappeared the minute I saw Lily and Lisa walking across the car park, eyes firmly on Adam’s car.
Lisa tapped her arm and pointed at me. “I knew it!” yelled Lily. Even if she had been capable of showing some decorum, she was too far away to berate me discreetly. “You are messing around with him.” Her tone was angry, as if I’d stolen something from her and was refusing to give it back.
They stopped walking as I passed them, probably expecting me to stop and explain myself. It could also have been because it was a better vantage point than Jasmine’s car.
Adam had the sense to stay in his car until the last minute. He met me with a smile bright enough to rem
ind me that I had no reason to hide anything. Without a second of hesitation I dropped my bag and threw my arms around him. My feet left the ground as his arms tightened around my waist. We were eye to eye and my lips easily found his.
“Hello,” he said, choking out the word as soon as I released his lips from mine. Loosening his grip on my waist, he lowered me to the ground.
“I’m not hiding any more. No more wasting time.”
A grin swept his face. “I’m glad you feel that way,” he murmured. He glanced in the direction of Lily and Lisa. I didn’t bother turning, their poses wouldn’t have changed much in the ten seconds since I’d passed them. I think the smile he gave was designed to be reassuring. “We should go. I’m getting nervous. They seem to have expanded their pack.”
I turned around. Jasmine, who was still leaning on the open car door, was scowling at me, and Lily and Lisa, still in the same spot, had arms folded with matching pouts on their faces. Soon, everyone in town was going to know about us, and unbelievably, I didn’t care.
But old habits die hard, which probably explained why we spent the rest of the afternoon in Gabrielle’s shed – or boathouse as Adam now jokingly referred to it. He was keen to show me the progress he’d made, and I had to admit it was impressive. In little over a week he’d already scraped a good few layers of paint off.
“So what do you think?” he asked, reminding me of a keyed-up child.
I paid more attention to him than the boat. His paint spattered jeans looked old and battered but I remembered him wearing them before he started playing with paint. The faded blue jeans looked old and distressed in all the right places then too, and I didn’t doubt that he’d paid a fortune for the privilege. Clearly his family were wealthy. He was extremely well travelled, impeccably dressed (even with the paint stains) and considered buying an Audi A6 to drive around in for eight weeks no big deal.
“Charlotte,” he said, reminding me that I hadn’t answered him.
“I think you’ll be finished in no time,” I said, embarrassed that he’d caught me staring.
Adam ran his hand along the boat in a long sweeping motion, openly proud of his progress. “I hope so. It would be a shame to have to leave her half finished.”
“What are you planning to do with her when you leave?”
Adam reached for my hands, pulling me in to him. “I thought you could sell it, bump up your travel kitty a little.”
I leaned back. “If that boat is Huon, it’s worth thousands of dollars,” I pointed out.
“I’m not going to just leave it to rot for another fifty years, Charli,” he reasoned. “It’s not like I’ll be coming back for it.”
His words unintentionally cut me to the quick. My reply didn’t come easily. “No, I guess not.”
“I hope it is worth thousands,” he mused. “You and Nicole could go anywhere you wanted.”
New York is where I want to go! I silently screamed. Why didn’t he know that?
Either the internal screaming didn’t show on my face or Adam ignored it.
“Alex mentioned that Norm Davis knows a lot about boats,” he said. “I’ve asked him to come and appraise it for me.”
I escaped the circle of his arms with a sharp shove. I paced the shed, trying my best to appear unaffected by the dark thoughts in my head.
“Have I said something wrong?”
“No, no of course not,” I mumbled. “It’s a very generous gesture.”
“It’s just a boat, Charli.”
“How can you give her up so easily? You’ve put so much in to it.” My voice was shaky, doing little to disguise the fact that I wasn’t talking about the boat any more.
“It’s just a boat,” he repeated.
I feared I had become a poster child for idiocy, repeating mistakes of old. Falling head over heels for a boy who was never going to stay with me wasn’t a good idea the first time round. Allowing myself to fall even further a second time, knowing from the beginning that it wasn’t going to work out was nothing less than soul destroying.
“You’re absolutely right,” I agreed, smoothing the front of my coat with my hands as if that was all I needed to do to pull myself together.
“We’re talking about the boat. If you’d like to discuss things about Pipers Cove that I am going to have trouble leaving behind, please feel free.”
“I know what – ”
He cut me off. “Here comes the heavy head. You don’t know what I’m thinking, Charlotte. You can’t possibly know how many nights I’ve lain awake trying to figure out a way around this.”
Perhaps regretting the outburst, he looked to the floor, unable to maintain eye contact.
“What did you come up with?” I asked.
Leaning down, he kissed my forehead. It wasn’t the usual heart stopping, lingering touch. I felt pitied – until I leaned back and noticed that his eyes looked just as stricken as I felt.
“I’m not selfish enough to ask you to come with me. Who am I to do that?” he whispered. “You dream bigger than anyone I’ve ever met. I could never ask you to give it all up for me. New York is not for you. Not yet anyway.”
“I think I belong with you.”
Adam released me and began pacing around the shed as if he was looking for an escape route. “You don’t know where you belong. That’s the whole point.”
“So that’s it then?” I asked throwing up my hands in defeat. “I crash and you don’t even stumble?”
He turned back to face me and gave a half-smile, as if amused by my theatrics. “I stumbled and fell hard, Charli, the minute I met you.” He thumped his heart with his palm. “We found each other once; what makes you think we won’t find each other again?”
“I might get lost. The world is a huge place.”
He laughed humourlessly. “When you’re done conquering the world, I’m going to be there, ready to pick up right where we left off…if you’ll still have me.”
“Nothing will change. I’m always going to want you,” I replied, finally speaking with enough strength to sound like I actually meant it.
“I’m counting on it, Charli.”
I closed my eyes, trying to convince myself that it wasn’t as hopeless as it seemed. We were both in exactly the right place, for now. I was prepared to endure the pain of an unhappy ending, as long as he was with me at that moment.