Me Without You (17 page)

‘You have manicures and facials too, don’t you?’

‘I don’t have them like
regularly
, but I’ve had a few. Haven’t you heard of the metrosexual? I’m just on-trend.’

‘Whatever floats your boat, Cal.’ Lilah was still laughing. ‘Do you know that you fold your briefs and group them by colour—and you do the same with your socks?’

‘Like a normal person.’ I knew she was mocking me, but I was enjoying it—mainly because Lilah was inadvertently reminding me how well she knew my life.

‘That’s not normal, Callum. It’s anally retentive. You also line your shoes up, from what I can tell, in order of formality.’

‘It’s in order of preference, actually.’ I was surprised she’d noticed
that
level of detail. ‘Have you been snooping when we’re at my place?’

‘I didn’t need to snoop—it’s right there in plain view because you don’t have a bloody cupboard.’ She was right. I really needed to get around to that, but the finish on the wardrobe doors had undone me. ‘And, of course, you spend more time getting ready than me. Even though my hair is at least fifty times longer than yours, and getting longer than yours by the day, because I never cut mine and you cut yours every hour on the hour.’

‘Is this an official complaint or are you just ego bashing me to keep me humble?’

Lilah laughed and shrugged.

‘I’m not complaining. Just don’t you think it’s hilarious how we seem so compatible in some ways, and so utterly opposite in others?’

‘We have a lot in common too.’ I stood and arched my back, which was already beginning to ache, not that I’d have admitted it aloud. ‘We’re both successful and focussed on our careers, we both work too hard, we both have no social life worth noting. We both chose to live in the same city, even the same suburb. It’s the areas where we’re different that make things interesting, and the areas we have in common that meant we found each other.’

Lilah fell quiet again as she abandoned the weeds and picked up some sheers. She wandered here and there through the vegetable patch, cutting various plants for a salad. When she returned to me a few minutes later, her arms were full.

‘Do you think we have a good mix of same and different?’

The vulnerability in the question surprised me. Lilah had wiped her cheek and there was a smear of dirt over it. Her hair had been contained in a pony tail but was beginning to frizz in the heat. I hesitated just a second before I wiped my filthy hands on my otherwise clean jeans and picked up my camera. Lilah self-consciously smiled while I snapped a few photos. As I put the camera back into its case, I tried to keep my tone light.

‘I actually can’t imagine a better blend.’

A
fter the weeding
was done and we’d eaten the fresh salad Lilah had picked, we retired for a lazy nap on the deck. Lilah suggested it, which nearly floored me. She barely slept at night at home, let alone during the day.

It occurred to me that during our visit to Gosford I’d actually found a few ways to make her slow down and rest. I was pleased with myself, thinking forward to the positive impacts the downtime would have on her.

I worried about Lilah sometimes. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I had a feeling she was headed towards some kind of burnout. The only concession I saw in her towards her own physical health, other than the borderline-obsessive diet, was the way she always squeezed in at least a powerwalk every day. Some days she worked from sunrise to sunset, long after I’d fallen asleep myself. And she slept fitfully, jumping around her in sleep as if even in her dreams she couldn’t be still.

If I could have frozen in time a single instant in our relationship, it would have been that half-doze on the cane chairs over the ocean. Our conversation became ever slower, and she snuggled into me as her eyelids grew heavy, and then her breathing slowed into a deep and steady rhythm. I half-slept, not really giving into slumber as she did, but mainly because I was so transfixed by the moment. The softness of her red hair against my arm, the scent of her perfume in the air, and the sound of her breath in time with the waves below—it was intoxicating, and as drunk on her presence as I was, I was also in love.

The realisation wasn’t a shock, although it did slip into my consciousness for the first time that day. I’d loved my parents, I loved my brothers, maybe I loved my work. But this—this was different. The love that had blossomed between Lilah and I, even in the space of just a few months, started from the very centre of my being and it was as solid and real as the earth itself.

When I was in my twenties, Dad would sometimes talk to me about settling down. He worried about me, and sometimes his well-intentioned chats would diverge into long-winded sermons about how much finding Mum had changed his life. I think—
hope
—I was respectful, but I was so frustrated with his fairy-tale view of the world. By then, I’d known enough girlfriends to know how the system worked and what the emotions involved were.

Until Lilah, I had never understood Dad’s insistence that the right partner could really kick-start my life. After decades of dismissing his thoughts on the matter, I suddenly realised that I was a lot like my dad after all. We were men who fell hard and fast into love, even though it had taken me half a lifetime to meet someone suitable and discover that about myself.

I wondered if—
when
—I could tell her. Maybe it would be still more months or maybe years, and maybe the words would bud within my throat thousands of times and wither and die at her insistence that we take it day by day.

It wouldn’t matter what she did or said from that afternoon on, not really. She could be barefoot for the rest of our lives and I’d love her disgustingly filthy feet with every bit of strength I had.

I was hopelessly, beautifully lost to her—and at last, that day, I knew it. All that I had to do now was to make sure she didn’t slip away from me.

I
’d been wondering
about the Asian man in Lilah’s photos since the first night at her apartment. Sometimes, when she wasn’t looking, I’d stare at the photos of them together looking for clues as to how close they were. There was a definite romance vibe there, I’d concluded, and they’d been together long enough to traverse at least three continents together. After so many weeks of staring at him, he started to look familiar, and it was driving me crazy wondering who he was.

One night, Lilah was out on the balcony. Darkness had fallen but she’d bought a new plant that day and it was looking a little wilted so she’d decided to repot it then and there. There was a gentle breeze and I had been watching her work through the waving of the light curtains in the wind. I had also been making an attempt at reviewing the day’s emails on my laptop, but the task had failed to catch my interest. I got up to get a glass of water, and on my way back to the chair as I passed some of her photos, I tried to slip a casual question out.

‘Looks like you did a lot of travelling with this guy—was he a friend?’

Lilah turned to see who I was referring to, then returned her focus to the pot plant.

‘No. He was a lover.’

She’d have left it at that, if I didn’t push her. I continued back towards the lounge and kept my tone light.

‘Were you together long?’

‘A year or so.’

I waited but she fell silent again. It was like pulling teeth.

‘And…’

‘And… ?’

‘And… I don’t know. Something?’

‘Are you jealous?’

‘Nope. Just curious.’ Of course I was insanely jealous. Especially now that she’d told me they’d been together for a
whole
damn year
and she usually got jumpy if I tried to get her to commit to something a week in advance.

‘His name was Haruto Abel. We were together for a while, and then he died. End of story.’

Her words hit me with force. It wasn’t just the shock of what she’d said, but the quick-fire casual way she’d spoken, as if she was hoping I’d miss it altogether.
And then he died
. I’d been about to sit back on the couch. Now I stopped and stared at her.

‘Lilah, shit. I’m sorry.’

She shrugged and dusted off her hands over the plant, then poured some water onto it from her watering can. It didn’t escape me that I was having this conversation with her back and had no way of judging how upsetting it was to her because I couldn’t see her eyes.

‘People die, Callum. It’s not nice, but it is life.’ She sat the watering can down on her balcony table and turned back to me. ‘I’ll just wash my hands then we can go—I could really do with that ice cream tonight.’

‘Hang on a minute, Ly. You can’t just drop that on me. When did he…’ I couldn’t even bring myself to say the word. ‘When did this happen?’

Lilah frowned at me.

‘About five years ago. I really don’t want to talk about this. Can we just go please?’

‘But… you’ve never even mentioned him.’ I was bewildered. ‘How has that not come up even once in conversation? We’ve talked about everything.’

‘I’ve just told you what happened. We met. We were together. He died. Life moved on. That’s really all there is to it.’

‘But…’ I swallowed and forced myself to press on, even though I wasn’t exactly sure how to be sensitive on the issue, ‘how did he die?’

‘I
don’t
want to talk about this.’ The tension in her wound tighter and she stepped inside and pulled the sliding door shut with a little too much force. ‘If you can’t drop it, maybe I’ll go for a walk alone tonight.’

She walked straight for the door and I hastily sat my glass of water down to follow her.

‘Listen to me, Lilah, I want to understand. That must have been horrific for you, but you’ve never even said his name to me before. Can’t you see why I’m curious?’

She slammed the door behind herself and I was left standing in her apartment. When I’d collected myself enough, I walked over to her wall of photos and looked again at the images of her with him. They were sitting on the floor eating noodles maybe in China, they were rugged up in the snow somewhere, they were standing before a sign that said Mexico City. In every photo, his arm was around her shoulders and she was smiling.

I looked closer, closer than I ever had before, and, glancing between those images, I realised that there was something different about the Lilah captured within them. There was a dullness to her eyes. Maybe it was because she’d been travelling for a long time or maybe the trip hadn’t been the life-affirming adventure I’d assumed it was, or maybe even the years between now and then had faded the photos and I was reading too much into it. But now that I really looked at those photos, I felt an instinctual concern surge.

It was easy to assume that carefree, million-miles-an-hour Lilah had
always
had it all together. But I’d seen cracks in her façade, only rarely, and usually she came out swinging rather than weeping. But just seeing the sparkle missing in those photos triggered an urge to comfort her instead of push her, and I scooped my keys from the bench and ran after her.

I was nearly at the ice cream shop when I realised that she wouldn’t be there. Lilah was hardly the type to comfort eat—in fact, when she was stressed, I’d noticed that she barely ate at all. Crossing the road, I headed north along the beach, and wasn’t at all surprised when I found her sitting on the sand just down from her unit. Her legs were crossed and she was lifting handfuls of sand and watching it fall through her fingers.

She didn’t look up as I approached, and I sat beside her silently. The waves rolled on before us, and Lilah quietly shifted closer to me. It was an apology, and a plea for comfort, and her own admission of guilt. I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and rested my head against her hair, answering her wordless conversation with a silent apology of my own.

‘He had an accident.’ Her voice was tiny once she’d settled into my embrace. If I wasn’t holding her so close, the ocean would have drowned it out altogether. ‘In Mexico. They transferred him back here, but he was in a coma for months and then he died. I don’t like to talk about it; I don’t even like to think about it if I can avoid it.’

‘Thanks for telling me.’

That night, I naively thought I’d figured it out. There’d always been an undercurrent, even as we settled into something of a stable relationship, some part of herself she was always holding back from me.

It made such sense that she’d be resistant to commit to someone after she’d lost a partner like that, and I even felt a smug satisfaction that I finally understood her better. She’d
had
a partner, someone who had seen the world with her, and he’d been cruelly taken from her. Maybe she’d even seen it happen, or maybe she’d been first on the scene and had tried to save his life. There were enormous blanks in the story she’d told me; I knew only the barest details, but my fertile imagination was happy to fill them in with a few possibilities—I suppose my way of feeling in control of the situation.

And in the flood of thoughts as I digested the discoveries of that evening, it eventually occurred to me that in some way, Lilah was still hung up on Haruto. I heard the thickest of emotions in her voice in the few words she spoke about him, and I remember being sick to the stomach with my jealousy and disappointment.

‘I finally did it,’ she said after a while.

‘Did what?’

Lilah slid her leg forward and rubbed her bare, sand-encrusted foot against mine.

‘I got you to the beach with no shoes on.’

N
ovember 17

I fell today. I had been out talking with Bridget and I was carrying a folder back to my desk to review a document. I went to sit down, missed my chair altogether, and wound up on my arse under the desk.

No one saw it. No one heard me go down. I didn’t hurt myself; in fact I got up without too much hassle and sat on my chair successfully the next time I tried and then I opened the folder as if nothing had happened.

But the words swam on the page. I wasn’t crying—I was fighting the panic so hard that I think I forgot to see or breathe. Dread rose in me and threatened to overwhelm me, and I battled it down until I could get back to the task at hand. For the rest of the day, until tonight, I did not spare one single thought on the fall.

Cal thinks it’s hilarious that I’m so clumsy and I laugh along with him. But every single time he says anything about it I realise again how obvious it must be for him to comment. Has he noticed a deterioration in my coordination? Or have I been clumsy since he met me but now he feels safe enough to poke fun?

It’s four a.m. and I’m sitting alone in my apartment. I can’t sleep and for once I can’t blame Callum’s snoring, because for the first time in weeks we’re sleeping apart. We’ve alternated between his place and mine for a while now, and I’ve grown accustomed to the comfort of having his arms around me, as if that could actually keep me safe.

I told him I really had to focus on work tonight and he was supportive and decided to go work on his wardrobe project. I haven’t even turned my laptop on; instead I’ve just been worrying. I need to get checked out. If I rang Lynn now, even though it’s the middle of the night, she’d take my call and she’d see me first thing.

I can’t do it.

When Dad got sick, and Mum sent me to live with Grandma and Pa, I was suddenly a fish out of water. I remember my first day at high school in Gosford, looking at the sea of classmates and trying to wrap my mind around the reality that I would have to spend six years with them. Six years
felt like eternity to me. The longest we’d ever lived in one place was the year in California, and we’d moved house twice during that time.

But I was never the kind of kid who hid from the worst of life. Those first few months at Gosford were brutal, but I faced them head-on, with Grandma and Pa right behind me like my own personal cheer squad. I didn’t disappear into daydreams or television or books. I learnt the hard way how to manage friendships and worked my arse off to catch up with my schooling.

I could never pretend that things were good when they weren’t. I don’t shirk confrontation; in fact at work I find it somewhat addictive, and I know it makes me difficult to work with. When I came back to work after Haruto died, I went through five legal secretaries in four months before I finally found Bridget, and she’s threatened to resign a dozen times. I still lose paralegals, all of the time. Alan says I confuse them with my friendly attempts at break-room chats after chasing them into the toilet yelling when they’ve dropped the ball on a case. So, fair to say I’m no coward under normal circumstances… but since I met Callum… well, here we are. Three and a bit months in, and not only have I let this casual encounter turn into a relationship, I’m now playing head-in-the-sand about my health.

I think I’m going to ask Callum to go away with me for Christmas. He’s not exactly subtle about his thoughts on my activity levels, which is fine, because I’ve not exactly been subtle with my thoughts on his. Most of the time I tend to think we do balance one another out; he calms me, I motivate him, and the push/pull of that dynamic is where so much of the fun lies.

But then again, maybe he’s just plain right and what I do need now is a break. I have become over-cautious with my health, and all of these supposed symptoms I keep seeing could also easily be explained by a little burnout.

Yes. A month at Gosford, just a month to recharge my batteries. I might well bounce out of there back at full steam dragging Callum behind me.