“You don’t remember what happened.”
“Neither do you.”
He looked up. If he planned to say anything he buried the words, and she couldn’t read his expression.
Her email pinged. That would be Malcolm. She didn’t want to deal with him right now. She wanted to see where this conversation could go. Mace swivelled the chair back to face the desk but she caught its arm and stopped it. “You made me laugh. You were gentle. You made me feel desirable and you made me forget my world was coming apart and this morning you made me feel...” God, he’d made her feel, secure, happy, “nice.”
“Nice?” He said it on an exhale that was full of disbelief. He turned his head back to the screen. “I don’t remember.”
6: Man on Fire
It was almost impossible to leave the television, though there’d been nothing new said in the last hour, just a continual rehash of the morning’s events from minutely varying perspectives. Jacinta drank her way through a bottle of chilled water and knew this was doing her no good, it was fuelling her anxiety. She’d normally have done a gym session and hit the office by now, so sitting on her tail doing nothing and seeing the pictures of the victims over and over was messing with her already bruised head. She could still be working but she wanted to give Mace some privacy.
He’d been on the phone when she took him a bottle of water. She heard, “What do you suggest I do about it, Dillon?” as she entered the room, but whatever frustration he was going through, he bit down on it when he saw her.
So she’d retreated to give him space. But he’d reached the end of that rope of consideration. She was about to go reclaim her office. She picked up the remote to shut the TV down when he appeared in the room with the empty water bottle and glass. “Anything new?”
“The heroes are starting to emerge now; the people who were down there and ran towards the explosion instead of away from it. I can’t imagine how you make your body do that.”
He put the bottle and glass on the kitchen counter and came across to the lounge she was sitting on. He walked oddly, using only the ball joint of his hurt foot. He sat at the other end of the lounge and faced the TV.
“What switch goes off in your head that tells you to run towards certain danger?” she said.
“Same one that went off in yours when you tried to get that cop on the door to see your way of thinking.”
“No.” She shook her head. “That was trying to be practical. I wasn’t walking into any danger.”
“You didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t either.”
“I couldn’t sit here.”
“Which is what we’re doing now. This just sitting around is getting to me.” She should’ve felt okay about it because she’d done something positive to help, but inactivity wasn’t her friend, and unfortunately neither was the man weighing down the other end of the lounge suite. Forced rest with a lover might’ve been a welcome respite given the shit storm she’d get hit with on Monday. “Dillon was giving you a hard time.”
Mace glanced across. She met his eyes. Her home, she didn’t have to hide what she’d heard.
“That’s what Dillon does.”
“Brother?”
“No.” He sighed and turned back towards the TV. “As good as.”
And that was it for a while. They watched the broadcast until he said, “Your nickname is, er, interesting.”
“Jac?”
“Jay called you Cin.”
She pulled her legs up on the sofa. “Yeah, but he’s the only one.
“What made Dillon so annoyed with you?”
“I owed him time today. I let him down.”
The words, I’m sorry sat on her tongue, but it wasn’t her fault he was trapped here. “I guess you’d be out enjoying the world today.”
Mace picked up the remote and flicked the channel. She almost laughed; such a stereotypical male thing to do. He got several channels of sport, movies, music videos and more bombing coverage. He left it on the channel he’d started from. “I’d be working.”