Inconsolable (Love Triumphs 2)

Could he? Could he make her understand the scope, the breadth of what he’d done? The number of people he’d hurt. The A to Z of it. Those words were dammed up inside his head, a frozen wave of pride and error, of arrogance and greed that would hold him down and drown him. He took a step towards the cliff edge. He’d prompted this and he didn’t understand why, only that it was too much.

“I didn’t think so.”

She stepped onto the first ledge, but she’d left already and he’d lost something he could only define as an ache in his limbs that he had no right to feel.

13: Meditation

Foley stood on the shore and twisted her hair into a knot. She would run Drum out. It was easy. Harden up and do what needed to be done. It wasn’t good for either of them, this odd dancing around each other they were doing, as if they were more than a pain in each other’s butts. So run him out of her head she would.

It was screwy he’d thought it was appropriate to organise dinner for her as though they were long lost friends. And she was so seriously stupidly starry-eyed about him, she’d convinced herself it was reasonable to stay, eat, get some answers and encourage him to move out again. She had some kind of saviour’s reverse Stockholm stupid syndrome. Had to be it. Otherwise, where was this idiocy coming from?

Like that crack about him not being what her mother would have chosen for her. Holy fuck. Of the two of them it was hard to tell who had the more serious mental problem. Drum who needed to live on a cliff face, or Foley whose subconscious thought the hermit squatter was a serious contender.

God that was embarrassing. Bad enough the thought was rattling around inside her head, but she’s said it out loud and he’d looked at her as if she was central heating set to steamy on a freezing night. And about that. He looked at her now. He turned those eerie pale eyes on her and they didn’t hive off as soon as she met them, they didn’t flicker all over her body measuring her for fit, they were steady and open and told her things she was afraid to know.

It wasn’t appropriate, it wasn’t reasonable and whatever it really was—was absolutely done with.

If she still needed her conscience soothed, one of the rangers would check in on Drum and give her a report. And she was going to recommend to Hugh they boarded up the cave so Drum had to find somewhere else where the air was clean enough for him, or whatever his reason for needing to live in a cave was.

The guy was obviously disturbed and she should’ve paid more attention to that. She’d been too busy imagining he was some kind of charming, gorgeous, intelligent eccentric.

Just thinking about him she was prickling heat all over without a warm-up; flushed from fingernails to hair follicles. She bent her knee, took her foot in hand and stretched her quad. She would run Drum out of her system if she had to lap the beach a dozen times. She swapped legs. She would run till her head cleared, till thoughts of him were exchanged for puppies, unicorns, world peace.

It didn’t matter what else was in her head: a naked Hugh, a well-dressed Nat, Gabriella on an unemployment line, so long as Drum’s shy smile wasn’t.

She did a few lunges. It’d been a month at least since she’d last run, so this was going to hurt. This was going to put her to sleep without the need to entertain herself before drifting off by wondering what it would be like to touch Drum’s chest without wanting to beat him senseless. It was going to give her another physical sensation to worry about other than the way her traitor body got all squirmy and needy when she was near him.

She glanced over her shoulder at the cliff. Tonight, he’d be eating for one; he’d be keeping company with the wind and debating with seagulls, because she was not setting foot on that dumb ledge, in that stupid cave, ever again. This run was her cliff edge, her drop-off point, where she’d leave Drum and his weirdness behind and start fresh and clean with no regrets.

It was a beautiful evening, almost the last of daylight savings, the surf was a gentle swell making the beach more like a giant swimming pool. All the surfers had decamped for somewhere with a break and there wasn’t a single fisherman. With no crashing waves there was a gentle peace about the place. She took a deep breath and tried to fill her lungs with it, absorb it through her skin.

There would be a few more nights like this and then autumn would turn to winter and she’d switch to running in the mornings before work, which was so much harder to do, to drag yourself out of bed when it was cold and dark, and winter clothes hid your excess padding.

She started out with a brisk walk on the hard packed sand at the shoreline, then kicked it into a jog. When her muscles stopped complaining, she upped her pace so she’d become that rhythmic placement of foot after foot with no space to think about anything except the next breath. That got her as far as the opposite end of the beach with a shocker stitch in her side. She kept moving at a brisk walk pace, taking shallower breaths, knowing the spasm would ease off.

The last two weeks had been anything but easy, long days at work and lots of tension. Sculptures by the Coast was a huge success, and despite threatening weather it’d received a record number of visitors, from pop stars to princesses. Geraldo proved to be worth the money he’d been paid to curate, and Roger was in his element, especially the day the state premier and the Danish Royal Family did the walk and news coverage spread around the country, even showing up on international websites.

Hugh managed not to deck Walter Lam while not giving in to any of the demands on his ten point plan for council action. Foley managed not to overly antagonise Gabriella. Gabriella managed to take credit for anything good that was happening.

Nat ran her petition in support of Drum’s right to live on the cliff, and a bunch of stories focusing on homelessness that ranged from the plight of street kids to the nuisance of traffic light window washers, and the great work done by local restaurateurs who supported a food bank for the destitute.

The one downer was another letter from the agent handling the Beeton house. Record crowds to the coast must’ve flushed new interest out. If only it could’ve inspired someone to love Sereno back to life.

Foley should’ve felt relieved that she could work a normal day for a few weeks until planning the Winter Wonderful festival needed her full attention. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, eating on the run, the strain between her and Gabriella, but she was Frustrated Foley all over again.

She tried to run and the stitch came back. She did a few stretches and couldn’t shift it. She needed to chill. Maybe take a couple of days off. Maybe go on a date with someone and give herself something to think about other than work. She walked on. So much for a life less ordinary.

And whose fault was that. It was two years since Jon, two years since she’d had more than a few dates with anyone she was interested in. It was easy to be ordinary when all you did was sideline your personal life to work, and amuse yourself by hiding the TV remote from your likewise work obsessed flatmate.

Oh God, that was worse than ordinary.

Ordinary wasn’t stalled at work. Ordinary probably got flirted with at least occasionally, had her hand held, went out to dinner and pashed in the car after drinking too much. Surely, Ordinary had awkward one night stands with men who were less than appealing in the cold, hard light of a hung-over morning, and occasionally did the walk of shame in last night’s clothes while worried about running into the guy again. Ordinary at least had things to laugh about and regret.

Foley had the beginning of headache and a stitch that wouldn’t go away and the most interesting thing in her social calendar was a school reunion she was most definitely not going to, and being godmother for Hugh’s new baby.

She’d walked almost the entire length of the beach when it all clicked into place. This whole thing she’d been doing with Drum, thinking about him all time, wondering if he was okay, wanting to see him with her own eyes, all of that infatuation, as Nat was right to call it, was because she’d boxed herself into too tight a corner.

She was all work and more exasperating work and the play was all missing.