So Much to Learn (61 page)

Jack and I
followed in behind him, our hands just as full, bags hanging from
our elbows. "Not especially," I replied dumping a whole heap of the
presents I was carting onto the couch. "You're still walking
straight."

"Hmph, then I must be so tired I
feel
drunk," Matt snorted, throwing
down his burdens on top of mine. There was an ominous crunching
sound and I winced knowing that something had just been broken. "So
was I drunk when I organised the leaving do for the night before
Jack left?"

I exchanged an
amused look with Jack. "I don't know, probably," I replied.

"It was a bad,
bad idea, I'm knackered." Matt yawned and stretched. "Ah, what the
hell, a good idea is a boring idea anyway. I'm going to bed."

And I watched
in astonishment as he stumbled past me and wandered into his
bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him. I had thought for
sure that he would want to stay up and spend as much time as
possible with Jack while he was still here. Did that mean I was
supposed to be all mature and go to bed to allow Jack to get his
rest before he did his major journey? I sure as hell hoped not.

"Well," Jack's
voice pulled me out of my ponderings and I looked round at him
questioningly, "he handled that with better subtlety than I would
have thought him capable of."

"Meaning?" I
asked.

Jack smiled
enigmatically and leant past me behind the couch to reappear with a
large folded blanket that I hadn't noticed before.

"Come on." He
took my hand and led me back out of the flat and into the
corridor.

"Where are we
going?" I laughed as he began to take the stairs going up at a bit
of a run. I trotted obediently behind him for the two flights of
stairs until we came to the heavy metal door marked 'Roof Access'
and I felt a wide smile stretch across my face.

Jack held the
door open for me and, as I stepped past him, I breathed in deeply.
It had been a scorcher of a day and so, despite the sun having set
several hours ago, there was still that hum of warmth in the air,
that distinctive smell which told you that the next day was going
to be just as hot. I loved evenings like this where the clear sky
is awash with stars and the slightest breeze brushes past to make
sure you don't get too hot.

"I wish the
weather had been as nice as this when we had our first kiss," I
said, opening my arms to encompass the velvety darkness threaded
with silver from the moon and the streetlights. "My hair went
everywhere in the wind."

"Did it?" Jack
asked with a shrug. "I don't remember, it wasn't your hair that was
drawing my attention."

I grinned in
return and then slipped off my shoes, delighting in the feel of the
warm cement beneath my feet. Who cares how much crud and grime I
was probably getting on my soles, not to mention the odd sharp
pieces of who knows what? I was too young and the night was too
nice to worry about things like dirt or tetanus.

While I was
delighting in the balmy weather and drowsy peace of the night, Jack
spread out the blanket he'd been carrying on a flat bed of concrete
that stuck up about half a metre above the rest of the roof. As he
beckoned me over I realised that he'd chosen that spot because it
meant we could see over the protective barrier and out across the
skyline.

I settled
myself down between Jack's knees, my back resting back against his
chest, and he wrapped his arms securely around me. It was so late
there was hardly any noise drifting up to our rooftop and it felt
as if we were the only people left in the world.

As I snuggled
into Jack, I tried to ignore the painful, throbbing feeling lodged
down deep in my chest which had been there since I found out Jack
had won the scholarship and which had steadily become harder and
more obvious as the weeks had gone by. On this night, the last one
before Jack left me for a year or more, it felt like a huge
malignant tumour steadily leaking toxic chemicals out into my body,
but I was determined to pay no attention to it. I had promised
myself I would remain positive and happy around Jack, there was no
way I was ruining the little time we had left together.

We had
discussed briefly the possibility of me following him to England,
but it’d quickly become apparent how impractical that idea was. For
one there was the cost; Jack had been provided with accommodation,
tuition and even living expenses money and that was the only way he
could even consider affording to live over there. There would be no
way I could come up with the money for it. The second reason we
discounted my going to live with him was that the scholarship was
something Jack needed to do on his own, to prove to himself that he
could. This combined with the fact that my whole life was in
Australia and that I had my own degree to complete put paid to any
wonderfully romantic but ridiculously unfeasible ideas of me
following my love across the world.

No, we had
decided to leave things as they were and just see what happened.
What with emails and cheap international calls it was hardly as if
we were going to be out of contact, it was only the physical
contact that was going to be severely lacking.

At this thought
I lifted one of Jack's hands and brushed my lips across his
knuckles, as if to reassure myself that he hadn't left yet, and
felt him drop an answering kiss on the top of my head.

"I think this
is my cue to say something romantic like: 'while I'm away look at
these stars and I'll look at them at the same time and we'll be
connected,'" Jack murmured as we both gazed heavenward. "But we'll
be in different hemispheres so they won't be the same stars."

"The moon will
be the same," I pointed out helpfully. "Maybe you can say something
romantic about the moon."

"Maybe," Jack
agreed. "But since the moon won't be visible to both of us at the
same time that doesn't really seem to work either."

"I guess you
could say 'while I'm away look at the moon and I will have been
looking at it approximately 12 hours ago and so we'll be
connected,'" I suggested and, even though I couldn't see him, I
could hear the smile in his voice as he replied,

"Doesn't really
have the same ring to it though does it?"

"No," I agreed,
"but who needs the bloody cosmic landmarks to stay connected
anyway? I'd much rather rely on email and phone calls."

I felt his
laugh rumble in his chest and reverberate against my back and
savoured it. Over the last few months I'd seen Jack smile and laugh
so much more than he used to, perhaps he was just trying to drag
all the happiness out of every situation to give himself good
memories when he left, but I liked to think it was because being
with me made him happy. That was certainly the case for me. My
sometimes seemingly crippling irrationality had kind of faded into
the background along with the vast majority of my insecurity about
myself. Not that it was all gone, that would be too much to hope
for and would definitely take longer than three months, but it was
definitely on the wane. I guess security and happiness does that to
a person.

"You are the
best person in the world, Jack Morgan Whitby," I sighed. "I'm going
to miss you so, so much."

"Rubbish,
you'll be too busy single-handedly trying to keep Matt under
control," Jack replied. "It'll be me that will be missing you."

I tilted my
body sideways so I leant back against his left arm and could
clearly look up at him. "What did I tell you about telling someone
you will or had missed them? There has to be a gap or else it's
insincere!"

"Of course,"
Jack agreed, clearly also thinking back to that time we'd sat in
his ute by the beach. "God, that seems so long ago. What lesson
were we up to then?"

"Number 3," I
said instantly, all those lessons were burnt forever in my memory.
"It's so funny how all this started," I continued. "I mean, what if
I had just gone home, eaten a whole block of chocolate on my own
and cried myself to sleep like a girl is supposed to do when she
breaks up with her boyfriend? Do you think we'd have got
together?"

"I don't know."
I liked that Jack was telling the truth rather than making up some
nonsense about how we were fated to get together. "Probably not
before I left, I wouldn't have wanted to start something before
going away. Then again, I probably wouldn't have wanted to start
anything with you anyway because of Matt. I guess I would have just
dealt with a bit of the unrequited stuff."

"Except it
would have been requited, you just wouldn't have known it," I
pointed out before grinning and adding, "So what you're saying is
that it was actually a good idea of mine to bully you into becoming
my teacher otherwise this would never have happened! And there was
me thinking it had been a stupid idea."

"It
was
a
stupid idea." Jack pulled me around so that my legs went to the
side and I was able to more comfortably curl against him. "It was
dumb luck that it all turned out OK in the end."

I ran my hands up his chest and then looped them lightly round
the back of his neck. "Hmm, Jack it seems to me that
you're
the one that now
has a lot to learn." I kissed him lightly on the underside of his
jaw and continued. "That was luck combined with a whole load of
sexual chemistry and perhaps a bit of destiny."

"I don't
believe in destiny," Jack said, his voice becoming deeper with
desire as I continued to run soft kisses across his throat and
jaw.

"Me either." I
pulled away to look him squarely in the eyes again. "But I believe
in you and you believe in me and I think that'll be enough to get
us by."

A year was a
long, long time. So much could happen in a full twelve months, look
at how much havoc and mayhem I'd caused in only two! Still, that
had turned out alright in the end. Could we make it work? We had no
idea. But we were going to muddle along and give it a go anyway
because, if there was one thing I'd discovered through all this,
it's that, in the end, life and love is all just one big
educational experience. You just have to be prepared to learn along
the way.

From: Jack
Whitby

Sent: Tuesday,
30th June 2011 2:30 pm

To: Glenn
Whitby

Subject:
Update

Hello Dad,

A lot of time
has passed since I've tried this but some recent events have
prompted me into taking another shot at getting in touch with you.
I'm sorry you didn't feel you could come to my graduation all those
years ago, it was a good day and, despite what you might think, you
were missed.

There is so
much to cover here, I'm kind of at a loss for where to start. I
suppose I'll stick to the basics for now. I know in that email I
sent you previously I mentioned that I had applied to serve my
internship at Preston and Wise Architecture. The day after
graduation I found out that I got it and I'm now in my fourth year
of working with them having been promoted to Assistant Junior
Partner. I am the youngest architect they have ever employed in
this position and I recently won the Young Australian Architect of
the Year Award. I'm not telling you this to brag but rather because
I hope that you will appreciate the hard work and dedication I put
in to get where I am. Perhaps in the back of your mind you might
even be proud of what your son has accomplished.

I consider my
status at work to be a major achievement but I'm not so arrogant to
imagine that I'd have made it on my own. I know you brought me up
to think that steps in life should be undertaken alone with only
yourself to rely on but I can't believe that this philosophy has
done either you or me any good. I'm not discounting your
experiences, I'm just trying to explain my own.

As I said in
that email I sent you before, Talia Davenport has been instrumental
in my success as I pride myself in being for her. We got together
just before I left for England in January 2006. However, although
we tried hard to make our relationship work, the distance combined
with the opportunity offered to me to study a second year at
Cambridge prompted us to decide, towards the end of my first year
away, that we should try to just be friends. Yet, on my return to
Australia in December 2007, it became apparent that neither of us
had been happy with the split and we made the decision to get back
together, a decision which I consider to be the best of my life. We
rented a flat together the next year sharing with Matt Davenport
and his girlfriend, Kristin.

We lived in the
university district a further two years until Talia finished her
degree and began working at a legal aid agency. The agency takes on
cases pro bono for those who can't afford legal representation and
Talia loves it there, despite how draining it can be. Her
tenacious, occasionally confrontational, nature ensures she often
gets what she wants and she's such a formidable opponent in the
courtroom it has often been joked that it's a good thing she
decided to use her powers for good instead of evil.

I'm not sure
how I’ve ended up telling you so much about our jobs because the
very purpose of this email is to explain how our careers have taken
a backseat over the last few months. This is because, in the
November of last year, Talia discovered she was pregnant, despite
how careful we’d always been. I can't really explain how scared,
confused, delighted and overwhelmed we were when we found out. It
seemed like such awful timing as Talia had only been working for 10
months, I was still getting myself established at Preston and Wise
and we had spent all our savings in buying our house. Still, our
relationship was, and is, stable and loving and we knew that we
could make a good life for our child even if it was earlier than we
had anticipated.