It is a doodle of a wolf howling at a moon with the uneven script of a child’s hand looping above: ‘When we’re together, you’re never alone … wolf.’
I grin. ‘I did this.’
‘You were nine, maybe ten. I’d had another row with Jeffrey and turned up at your door.’
It was winter, the December cold like iron in your chest, and there was Jack in a T-shirt and jeans, too desperate to get away from his dad to think of grabbing up a coat. We sat on my floor, huddled together beneath the duvet I’d dragged from my bed. Jack was quiet and shivering. There was a new cut above his eye, the corner of a book maybe, or an ashtray like last time. He whispered, ‘I don’t belong in that family.’ And I didn’t just hear the pain and rejection and loneliness in his voice, I saw it in his face too. So I tore a page out of my English book, took my blackberry gel pen, drew the wolf and scribbled the caption.
‘Jack,’ I am breathless with incredulity. ‘You’ve had this in your wallet for almost twenty years?’
‘It goes everywhere with me. It’s a piece of history. Of us.’
My heart leaps in my chest. I turn the paper over in my hands. It’s proof that I am important to someone. Important enough to be gently rehomed, again and again, in a lineage of wallets, and while they became weather-worn and battered over time, thrown out and replaced, my drawing was not.
Jack reaches out to take it. Our fingers touch. Our eyes lock. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but he’s watching my mouth with an intensity that makes heat pool low in my stomach. I could kiss him. Right now. This moment is pulsating with possibility if only I am brave enough, bold enough, to lean forward, to tilt my mouth to his; but I know a butterfly beating its wings in China can cause a hurricane in Texas weeks later, and I am not enough of either to risk a swarm of butterflies sweeping chaos across the serendipity of our friendship. So I let go of the paper, breaking our connection.
Keeping my eyes averted, I reach for my hot chocolate and watch the lightning set the sky on fire, illuminating the sea below, white with foam and spray.
‘What’re you thinking?’ he asks.
I’m thinking about the petite blonde again. About him slipping in and out of her. About the musty smell of sweat and sex. And though I don’t want to lie, I don’t want to be honest either, so I plump for somewhere in the middle. ‘Why don’t you ever let those girls get close?’
‘What girls?’
‘Ones like the blonde I saw you with.’
‘I guess I’m just waiting.’
‘For?’
Silence.
I glance at him. He’s smiling like he has a secret. His eyes on mine are too much so I look away again. ‘Don’t you want to know love?’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I have.’
‘With?’
‘Noah.’
I feel him shrug. The scent of him, sandalwood and leather, mixing with sea salt and rain. ‘That might be the kind of love you know, but it’s not the kind you want. Or need.’
Eyebrow arched, I turn my face slowly to his. ‘And what do I need, Jack?’
His breath is on my lips. I glance down; he has a beautiful mouth. I watch as it curves into an easy smile. ‘You need a love that burns,’ he tells me. ‘A love that consumes. Something exciting, unpredictable. Maybe even a little dangerous.’
When I raise my gaze to his, our faces are so close, I can stare straight into the depths of those Icelandic blue eyes. When the lightning hits, they glimmer like chips of ice. I lean into him, tilting my mouth up to his.
Then he pulls back, gets to his feet and holds out his hand.
Disappointment swirls. ‘What are we doing?’
His smile tells me we are doing something wild and reckless and when I hesitate, he invokes those magic words, ‘How far will you go?’ Downstairs, he flings open the front door.
I dig my heels in. ‘What if someone sees me?’
‘No one else would be mad enough to go out in this.’
So I follow him into the storm. The rain is icy. Just for a second, I can’t breathe through the shock of it. Then we are running barefoot down the path to the little beach, just as we did when we were children. The sand is wet and slides between my toes. The sea rages. The sky sounds like it’s being cracked into pieces. We stop at the foaming sea line. The silk pyjamas cling wetly to my body.
Jack’s soaked hair has turned the same colour as the sodden sand beneath our feet. He is all beautiful angles and a wide, white smile. Lifting my hand above my head, he twirls me; I laugh at the absurdity of being out in the pouring rain. He spins me out and pulls me back, one hand on my waist, as though we are dancing to smooth Frank Sinatra, but the growling sky and howling winds are our melody. Electric gold strikes the horizon, and I’m trying to decide exactly what the rain pirouetting in the flash of light looks like. Not glitter, exactly. But close. It falls between us.