The Last Love Note(14)
Justin swings the front wheel of the bike into the kerb to steady it and leans it onto the kickstand. He takes my helmet and extends his hand as if I’m Daphne Bridgerton alighting from a horse-drawn carriage at a nineteenth-century ball. As I prepare to dismount, I realise those Regency women had longer and more voluminous skirts and didn’t inadvertently flash everyone behind them in the drop-off queue like I do as I swing my leg over the back of the enormous bike, stumble backwards over the gutter in a poorly executed Frosby Flop and tumble into the waiting arms of my exceedingly unimpressed boss.
Hugh steadies me, sighs heavily, glares at Justin over my head, props me onto my own two, very uncoordinated feet and bends down so we’re at eye level. ‘Are you drunk, Kate?’
The hide!
‘Excuse me, I haven’t had more than half a glass of anything in weeks. You saw me tip Grace’s glass down the sink last night in front of you.’
Alcohol doesn’t mix with grief, I’ve found, so I’ve been largely avoiding it. And that thought brings me up sharp. For twenty or so liberating minutes, I’d actually forgotten that I am heartbroken. No, it’s worse than that. You’re heartbroken after a break-up. You can grieve a break-up too, and grieve someone’s absence from your life, but when someone dies, it’s soul-deep. An impossible-to-grasp, endless absence not just from you, but from the entire world. You won’t run into them by accident in the supermarket. You can’t stalk them on social media. Your best friend won’t furnish you with gossip about their next steps. There’s just nothing. Forever.
Justin hands me my bag, pulling me from my thoughts. I step back and admire the bike properly now. On the back of it, for the very first time since the night Cam died, there’d been a sliver of time free from obsessing over the sheer awfulness of it all. Obsessing over Cam. And how much I miss and adore him and can barely gasp for air sometimes in his absence. What a precious escape this ride was.
Reality chases the dream. I’m definitely thinking about Cam now and feeling really bad about how effortlessly sexy I imagined myself to be just then, perched behind Justin, all leather and legs and Biker Chick Energy . . . before misjudging the dismount, obviously, annoying Hugh and snapping straight back into the real world.
I start to unzip the leather jacket, but Justin grabs my hand and pauses the action at my chest.
‘Nobody’s going to need that before you get back,’ he explains, still holding onto my hand. ‘Keep it. You look hot.’
I glance at Hugh. If I’m scouting for a second opinion, I’m not going to get it.
When I pull out my phone, Justin lifts it straight out of my hand and inputs what I assume is his number, whether I want it or not. Hugh and I watch silently as he saves the contact, hands it back and says, ‘I put it on speed dial.’ This is a man who has clearly experienced very little social rejection. He must have god-like status in the largely introverted actuarial world.
‘We board in ten minutes,’ Hugh says, his tone brisk. I toss the strap of my tote over my shoulder and mumble an inadequate thank you to Justin, launching myself at him for a lightning-fast hug.
He hugs me back so tight I’m breathless. Then he readjusts the strap of my bag, which is now all caught up in the zipper of his jacket somehow. Hugh sighs as I peel myself off my neighbour and a police officer wanders over and says, ‘Move on, please.’ This is strictly a drop-off area, and not a place for awkward and premature public displays of affection, regardless of how cinematic this scene looks in my imagination. There’s always been a lot of Anne of Green Gables about me, imagination-wise.
‘Two police incidents since we met,’ Justin observes, swinging his leg over the bike again and kicking the stand. ‘You’ll get me in trouble, Kate.’
He makes an exit as dramatic as our entrance and I stand on the pavement, staring after him and trying to turn off my inner-Anne. Of course she’s well on her way and by the time I catch up with Hugh, who’s had it with the whole performance, he’s removing his belt for his second pass through security this morning. He hands me a tray for my phone and laptop and another for the jacket and my bag, which is bulging with the latest Mhairi McFarlane novel and one of Emily Henry’s gems. I have a personal rule never to run out of book chapters in the air, without a backup.
‘Buy yourself a Kindle,’ Hugh mutters. I would mount a defence of paper books but the security guard is eyeing my generous bounty and sighs, very deeply, as though he hates people. Hugh picks up one of the novels and I grab the rest, only to be beckoned over for a random explosives check, which doesn’t seem random in the slightest, because I’m stopped for it every time.
‘No gunpowder residue from last night,’ Hugh notes, as I’m released, clean, and we stride towards the gate. ‘That would have been interesting.’
‘That whole thing was a complete overreaction,’ I remind him. Secretly I’m relieved, because I hadn’t even thought about the grenade and don’t know how I would have explained it to the police if Charlie had smuggled it into my bag or something, instead of showing me.
‘This is an announcement for passengers Lancaster and Whittaker, on flight QF1456 to Brisbane. Please proceed to Gate 11 as your aircraft is preparing for departure.’
We are the last two to board the plane. Hugh is definitely a ‘first to board’ type of person. We jostle ourselves down the aisle and my bag won’t squash into the overhead locker, because it’s already full with the bags of the punctual people.