I need to go to the toilet, but don’t want to be alone. Obviously, I’m not asking Hugh to come with me. But what if I go in there, freak out in the solitude and lose all emotional control? Are these the weird thoughts I’ll have now?
I find the courage and go in and shut the door. I can’t believe Cam is dead. Can’t believe it. How can this be true? He was just here! Even with all the time I’ve had to get used to the idea that this day would come, I’m not remotely prepared for its reality.
I wash my hands, go back to the lounge room, and curl up under the blanket again. Hugh stares into the fire.
‘I am alone in this,’ I say, after a long while. ‘Completely alone. Even with you and Mum and Cam’s parents and Grace, it’s just me, really.’
‘Mmm.’
‘Until I drag Charlie down into this hell with me in the morning.’
Sweet, happy, inquisitive, carefree, pre-schooler Charlie. I’ve never dreaded anything more.
37
I have pulled Hugh over my line in the sand on the beach in the storm and now I don’t know what to do with him.
‘I didn’t think this through,’ I divulge honestly, now he’s just inches away from me, the fabric of his shirt still twisted in my fingers, which won’t seem to let him go. In truth, I didn’t think at all. Just couldn’t leave him standing there in the rain for another second.
Wanted him standing here in the rain, instead. With me. Despite the fact that I’ve just outlined all the reasons why this will never happen – particularly the fact that he won’t bend on Cam’s secret – and it’s a watertight case.
The last time I kissed a man, he died. I don’t think there’s a causal link, but it’s playing on my mind, obviously. That and the fact that my last kiss was over two years ago, but it’s been more like three years since I did it properly. And more than two decades since I kissed someone other than Cam – some boy at the Year Twelve formal in an unmitigated disaster that I don’t have time to think about right now, due to circumstances rapidly becoming beyond my control.
Hugh takes my face in his hands. Handles it like it’s precious and he’s an expert. Like I’m breakable. Which I suppose I am.
‘Hugh . . .’
He moves towards me, slowly, and I just stand there, waiting to receive. I can’t move. I’m a flight risk. Any sudden movements, even my own, might break this trance.
A kaleidoscope of images from my life with Cam flashes through my mind the way it’s supposed to just before you die. Not before someone new kisses you. But when Hugh’s mouth finally touches mine, the images disappear. Warmth floods through me and he sighs as if this is something he’s wanted to do for a very long time. Centuries, maybe. And I panic. Where have the images gone of Cam? Have I lost them?
‘You with me, Kate?’ Hugh whispers, pulling back and checking.
‘Y-es?’
This is not something I’ve had the luxury of thinking about for years. It’s been mere hours, perhaps since the airport just yesterday morning when I first realised Hugh was very much a ‘man’ with regard to me. Not just a colleague, or a friend.
And now he’s kissing me for real and I’m in a zero-gravity chamber . . . Oh my God.
‘Am I doing this right?’ I think as his lips wander towards my neck, and he pulls his face away again and smiles.
Tell me I did not say that aloud.
‘Are you asking for feedback, Kate?’
Yes. No. God! Am I this out of practice?
‘I thought this was meant to be like riding a bike,’ I say. Because how romantic. ‘Don’t let me talk!’ I suggest.
He laughs. ‘But that’s the best part,’ he replies. ‘I love the way you talk.’
‘Well, I love the way you kiss, apparently.’
‘Apparently?’ He smiles again. All these smiles – it’s like Christmas. ‘Do you think we could try this again, Whittaker, this time with your brain disengaged?’
Constructive criticism. I’ve taken it from him before, so why should this be any different? The man clearly knows what he’s doing. All those one-night stands . . . The incredible Genevieve . . . Gah! I shouldn’t have cancelled that last waxing appointment . . .
‘Hugh, I don’t know how to switch off my brai—’
He switches it off for me, finishing my sentence in a way that’s unarguable. This kiss isn’t slow and sweet and testing the waters. It’s hungry. Urgent. Years in the making. All-consuming. And it’s scrambling my brain and my body as my hand travels up his chest to his shoulders and neck and rakes through his wet hair and grasps it, because I need him even closer.
The deluge from the sky intensifies. The cardigan, heavy with rainwater, slips off my shoulder, and he trails his mouth down my neck, along wet skin. He grabs my waist and pulls me against him, hard. Unprofessionally. Exquisitely.
His hands move up my back in the privacy beneath my cardigan, triggering nerves and muscles that flex and arch as my head drops back, face to the sky into the torrential rain, giving him access to my throat, which he kisses so gently I have to half-feel it and half-imagine. His fingers trail lightly down my neck, drop to my chest, stop over my heart. And we come up for air, as if asking ourselves what on earth we are doing, because this is intoxicating and exhilarating. Brand new. Years old.
We stare at each other, breathing heavily. Surprised to be here, and yet not surprised at all.
‘Your heart is racing,’ he informs me, his hand still on my chest.
‘It’s not used to you,’ I explain, and he puts his arms around me and pulls me into the most delicious hug . . . possibly ever. How can that be? ‘Will it always be broken?’ I murmur.
It’s the scariest question I’ve ever asked anyone – particularly someone who has a definitive answer on this topic from his own experience.
‘Always,’ he says carefully. ‘This is not about fixing that.’
I feel a major freak-out coming, but I’m just as certain I’m more centred than I have been in a very long time. ‘What are we doing?’ I ask. We’re barely halfway through our first kiss but I need to know what his intentions are and where this is heading, so I can risk-manage any potential carnage.
‘I don’t know,’ he replies.
Then we’re in real trouble now.
‘You always know!’ I accuse him, and he doesn’t answer.
‘Is this the moment where you push me away?’ I ask tentatively, and I feel the strength of his hug start to weaken. The ground we’ve clawed towards each other is lost. I’m slipping backwards. Dangling over a cliff, while he holds me by the wrist and considers his choices. ‘Hugh, is this too close for you?’
He stands back a little, taking me in. Drowned by the rain. Steam from the heat of my body rising off my skin because of him – at least, I imagine it to be.
‘Being with you the day Cam was diagnosed was too close,’ he says calmly. ‘Sitting with you at the hospital when you lost the baby was too close. The night Cam died. The next morning, watching that piercing wail of grief come out of a child’s mouth, like nothing I’ve ever heard before or since and nothing I ever want to hear again.’