Someone Like You (11 page)

‘I don’t know…’

Lizzie stepped in close to him and slipped her hand into his, her fingers soft and warm in the cool of his palm. She tugged him closer.

What the hell?

‘C’mon,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not far.’

He was stuck. Silent. There he was, in the dark, holding the hand of a beautiful woman and he remembered something about himself. About the way he used to be. And in that instant, he decided to let himself enjoy this moment, this one small slice of not feeling like crap, a sliver of time he might look back on one day and remember that he’d been standing with this woman, who was holding his hand with gentle insistence, like he was a real man. And he was holding hers like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like it was exactly where he wanted to be.

‘Dan,’ she said softly. ‘Come with me.’

Dan’s hand was large and strong and Lizzie’s felt small and delicate in its cocoon. They walked along the roadway in silence. There was nothing but the waves on the sand as a sound effect in the night. Step by step, they fell into an easy rhythm with each other, his long strides slowing to meet hers, accommodating her, meeting her relaxed saunter.

Lizzie hadn’t planned to reach out and touch him, to entwine her fingers in his, to capture his attention that way. But she’d seen a flicker of hesitation in his eyes, a moment of vulnerability, and she’d acted without thinking. Going to the pub seemed like a first step and she knew, some part of her was convinced, that it was one he really wanted to make.

So they walked. It was safer for him now, empty and shadowy in the streets. They weren’t likely to meet anyone who might want to stop and chat. No one would want to interrupt two people walking in the darkness, holding hands, looking like clandestine lovers.

A wind picked up, swept off the water and it cooled her cheek, tickling her silver earring against the soft skin of her neck. She glanced up, watched the breeze play with Dan’s black hair, rustling it around his eyes. There was definitely something different about his face tonight, she noticed with a nervous tightening in her throat.

She needed some safe ground. ‘You know Ry and Julia are planning the wedding?’

‘Don’t tell me. Vegas and a fake Elvis marriage celebrant?’

She laughed. ‘I don’t think so unless Julia has some plans that this bridesmaid doesn’t know about.’

‘That’s nice. You as the bridesmaid.’ She felt a tightening in his grip. ‘Haven’t you been best friends since you were kids?’

Lizzie smiled at each memory, most of them created on the beach just a glance away or on these seaside streets. ‘Besties since she sat next to me on the first day of primary school and shared her coloured pencils with me.’

‘You like it that Julia’s come home.’

She gave him a quick glance but had to look away. His gaze was too open, he looked too interested. As if he was opening himself up to take her in.

‘Nothing was quite the same around here when Julia was in Melbourne for all those years. No matter how many new friends you make along the way, no one really knows you like your best and oldest.’

‘True.’

‘You and Ry have that, don’t you?’

Dan smiled and nodded. ‘Are you a born and bred Middle Point girl or a blow-in like me?’

Lizzie chuckled. ‘Lived here my whole life.’
Give or take a few months
. He didn’t need to know the exact truth. ‘After I was born, Mum brought me and my brother, Joe, down here to live with my nanna. That’s her house I live in.’

Dan’s eyes became curious, full of questions. She knew what he was thinking.

‘And your father?’

Lizzie scoffed, looked up to the flickering stars in the southern sky. ‘What father?’

‘It’s like that, is it?’

‘The man who fathered me was never a part of my life or my brother’s. We made a family without him.’

‘So where are they? Your mum, Joe, your nanna.’

Sometimes Lizzie forgot there were people who didn’t know her history. It had been a long time since she’d met someone new who didn’t have the Lizzie Blake story as part of their collective memory. It was so much safer to live in a place where people knew but had forgotten, so she never had reason to dredge up the memories or the heartache of her past. She hadn’t had to explain it to anyone in years, had locked the pain away in a place that still hurt to look at. So she didn’t.

But there was something about this man next to her, holding her hand in the darkness. The mysterious confidence she’d been trying to find welled in her at that moment, fluttering in her stomach and lifting her shoulders. Would the truth scare him away? Would finding out make her seem desperate and clingy? Would he think of her as the loneliest girl in Middle Point?

She decided to open the door to her past. But only a crack. She would only tell him what he could easily find out if he were curious enough to ask anyone else in town. She knew he’d been through his own private hell. Would that make him understand hers?

Lizzie felt a familiar weight across her chest. ‘My beautiful nanna died when I was ten. Joe left for Sydney when I was fifteen.’

Dan stopped and Lizzie took two steps before she caught up with that fact. Their arms were stretched out between them but he didn’t let her go. He must have guessed there was more.

Lizzie reached deep inside for the truth. ‘When I was twenty, mum died of breast cancer. I cared for her for the last six months of her life and she died in our house.’

Dan pulled her close, so they were face-to-face, almost body-to-body in the dark, the wind the only thing in the small space between them. She looked directly up at him and he saw the challenge in her eyes.

‘Jesus, Elizabeth.’ He fought the sudden urge to pull her into his arms, comfort her, settling instead on resting his other hand on her shoulder, gripping tight through the cool cotton of her shirt.

She took a deep breath. ‘It’s quite the sob story, isn’t it?’

‘And this brother of yours, Joe. Did he come back?’

‘When he could. For the funeral.’

And then Dan knew why she’d never looked at him with pity. She would know better than anyone he’d ever met that it didn’t help someone who was suffering. It turned you in on yourself, made you want to push other people away. He reckoned she must have had more than her fair share of sympathetic looks, enough to last two lifetimes. She’d clearly lost so much more than he ever had.

Everything he’d thought about Lizzie was turned on its head. ‘That’s terrible, what happened to you.’

‘That’s what I think too. But that’s life, isn’t it?’ She shrugged and he felt her shoulder shift under his touch. He soothed his hand from the top of her arm, up and down in gentle strokes, to the tender skin of her neck and held it there.

‘Not for everyone.’

‘Shit happens,’ she said and he felt her shiver.

‘That’s a lot of shit to happen to one person. Too much.’ A fleeting thought crossed his mind. Maybe she’d figured out the trick to getting on with life. He wondered if she’d share it with him.

She turned away from him and he dropped his hand from her neck, tracing a line with his index finger down her arm, past her elbow and wrist to her hand. Then he let it go. When she tugged his other hand, he followed her. The way he was feeling, he would have followed her into the ocean if she’d led him there.

‘I think so, too, but that doesn’t change anything.’

He pulled her closer to him and her hip bumped against his thigh. ‘Do you ever ask why?’

She shook her head. ‘I used to. There was a time when it was all I could think about. Then I came to the conclusion that there’s no grand plan or science to any of it. Shit happens because it happens. You can drive yourself crazy and waste so much time if you keep on asking
why
. In the end, it doesn’t help.’

Bloody hell. Was she talking about him or her?

‘Eventually I figured out that I just had to keep getting up and brushing my teeth.’

‘What?’ Dan couldn’t stop the laugh on his lips.

She smiled back at him. ‘It’s true. If I got up every day and brushed my teeth I knew I was on the way to having a regular day. Sometimes that’s all you can ask for. Not a crappy day or a spectacular one. Just a regular day.’

A regular day. What did that look like now, he wondered, in this new life he was building in Middle Point? So far his days had been filled with retreat, solitude and anger. Wallowing had come naturally, way too easily. He’d been doing too much of it. But tonight, walking along the quiet esplanade with Lizzie’s hand in his, felt anything but regular.

‘So where’s your brother?’

‘Joe lives in Sydney. He couldn’t wait to get out of here. Can you believe he left all this behind? Crazy, huh?’

Before he could reply, Lizzie stopped and turned to face him, a smile on her lips that set his heart thumping.

‘We’re here.’

When he shifted his gaze from her, Dan realised where they were. The rough-hewn sandstone walls of the pub looked grey at night and its single porch light cast a glow over the heavy wooden doors and slate steps. Through the windows they could see a few people inside, locals at their regular spots at the bar. The fuzzy light from a wall-mounted TV seeped through one of the front windows creating a luminous haze.

‘Let’s go around the back,’ Lizzie said, and led Dan down the small laneway to the rear of the old building.

Even in the dark, Dan could see the project coming to life. Dirt and stone crunched under his runners as he walked and, protected from the wind, it felt strangely quiet and peaceful. The place had the familiar smell of a construction site, of dust and gravel and freshly turned earth. He looked around in the darkness and could vaguely make out pallet-loads of paving bricks and recognised the string line edging the area that was to be paved. He looked back over his shoulder to the main building and wondered about power access and what heritage restrictions he might be breaking if he opened up the back of the place with big windows to the kitchen and folding glass doors that could be pushed open all the way in summer. He could see it all coming together in his head, fast-forwarding a month to people and noise and life and community. Lizzie’s plan for the place was perfect and he was helping create it.

‘It’s going to be amazing, isn’t it?’ Lizzie stood in the middle of the empty lot and turned back, her arms spread wide, a smile on her face so content that it floored him.

‘Where exactly do you want to put the trees?’ he asked, taking a few steps to her to get closer to that smile.

‘There, there and…’ she strode over to the north-eastern corner, ‘…here. That reminds me. Did you hear back from the plant nursery?’

‘No, not yet.’ He crossed his arms over his chest and just watched her. Damn it if her excitement wasn’t just a little bit contagious. ‘Where were you thinking for the shade sails?’

‘I thought they might work best on this western side to create some protection where the sun is hottest in the afternoons.’ She came to him, stood by his side. She nudged him with her shoulder, kept it close. ‘What do you think?’

He looked at her face in the dark, found her lips, full, slightly parted. The sexiest mouth he’d ever seen.

I think I want to kiss you
.

‘Dan?’

He jammed his hands deep into his pockets. ‘Huh?’

‘The shade sails. Where do you think we should put them?’

‘You’re the woman with the plan. I’m just the hired help with the instant coffee.’

‘Sure you are.’ Her eyes locked on to his. ‘We’re in this together, remember?’

Dan turned to her. ‘Oh, I remember.’

Lizzie blew out a breath and half a laugh at the same time. Dan heard some frustration mixed up in there, too. ‘I promised Ry this would all be done and dusted by Christmas. We’ll get it done, won’t we.’

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of intent, words of confidence in him, in the way he worked. Most of all, she was saying something about the way the two of them could get this thing done. Together.

‘Yeah.’ He would make sure of it.

They strolled home, neither wanting the evening to end. Dan didn’t reach for her hand and Lizzie didn’t take his. She dared not touch him again in case she burst into flames. Every inch of her was on high alert and his tender touch had made her feel nervous of him. She tried to keep her distance on the way back, no shoulder bumps, no arm grazes. Nothing that would tip her over the edge.

Finally they reached Dan’s place. Lizzie stopped in front of the green beach shack but Dan didn’t seem to notice that she had. She opened her mouth to call him back, then hesitated. It was only fair she had another few seconds to enjoy the view from where she stood. There was something about his stride, the way his long, long legs carried him as he walked, that totally did her in. God. Now she was getting turned on by the way the man walked.

‘Dan,’ she called. ‘This is your stop.’

‘No it’s not. I’m walking you home.’ He didn’t even look back but he did slow up.

‘That’s totally unnecessary.’

‘No, it’s not. C’mon.’

Lizzie had been walking these streets since she could literally walk. The only threat to her personal safety was the chance of being gnawed by the feral rabbits which bred like…well, rabbits…in the farmland at the back of the point and scampered all over the place at night. But if Dan wanted to be chivalrous, she could indulge him. He was loosening up and she was enjoying being with him. It was as simple as that. They were in on the renovation together and she’d seen the look on his face when he’d looked around the car park. He was starting to think like the old Dan, the one who was used to managing projects a thousand times bigger than a pub car park makeover.

When they reached the pink flamingo house, Lizzie opened the door and stepped inside, reaching around to switch on the light. A flicker of awareness ramped up her pulse. She didn’t need to see him because she could feel Dan right there beside her, his breath hot on the side of her neck as he moved close. She took a deep breath and turned.

‘Elizabeth…’ The word remained half-buried in his beard. His full lips were parted slightly and she could see and hear and feel her name still hanging there.