She frowned up at him. “They’re saying I breached my contract and unless I bring you in like a big fish, they’re going to sack me and come after me. I could lose this job if I don’t hook you.” She looked away. “And it’s the wrong reason to even try.”
He sat beside her, but didn’t touch her. She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I’m not happy about this shit they’re heaping on you. But Lois, I expected you to disembowel me after what I did to you. I have no problem helping you out with this.”
“It’s not enough to want to help me out. You can fly out of here tomorrow and be free of all this. It’s not what you need.”
She was so skittish she might stand up and stalk around the room again. He wanted her close but he did nothing but gently lean his shoulder into hers. “Hell and back, Lois. This hardly scratches the surface of hell and back.”
“Real world, Will. This is using you as a ratings grab. This is using you to solve my personal problems.”
He shoulder bumped her. Tried to catch her eyes, but she kept them down. “I can say with authority I’ve been used for worse.”
She made a sound like a hiccup. It might’ve been a sob, might’ve been a laugh.
“Some of the other times included handcuffs, gags and terrible prison fashion.”
“How can you joke about this?”
“I survived it, how can I not?”
Now she turned to look at him. “All of this only happened to you because of what I did. Why don’t you hate me?”
He put his hands on her shoulders and saw his own shadow reflected in her big doll eyes. “Darcy, we’re not having this conversation ever again. I did this entirely to myself. You gave things a nudge, but didn’t I deserve it? I was an arrogant prick, and after that, well, you saved me by going to Tengtou. And you saved me when I was too out of my head to even know it was you. You don’t owe me anything. If you don’t want to interview me then I guess I’ll have to offer myself to Liarne Bennett.”
She blinked but otherwise didn’t move.
“So what’ll it be?”
“If you so much as think Liarne Bennett’s name, Will Parker, you’ll wish you were back in those ugly prison pjs.”
She looked so serious. Mouth drawn in a thin line, arms pressed rigidly at her sides. He laughed. She didn’t laugh with him, but God this was funny. He’d come to Tara to try to put the pieces of his life back together, make good decisions, make peace with all of his bad ones. He was reconciled to Darcy being a piece he could never afford to fit in his life, but here she was, unexpected and angry as a roused snake. What could he do but laugh?
“Will, I’m not joking.”
“I know,” he managed to get out. He let go her shoulders and wrapped his arms around his ribs, his laughter louder, harder. She was looking at him as though he’d popped another gasket. That made him laugh more.
“Are you all right?” She put her hand on his arm, apprehension on her face, and for no good reason that was funny too.
“Will?”
He couldn’t have gotten an answer out past his laughter. She kept saying his name, with concern, but her voice was higher, lighter, until she was laughing softly too.
“I don’t know what we’re laughing at,” she said, her smile so wide, so young.
“Ugly pjs!” he spluttered. “Liarne Bennett!”
“I told you,” she broke off laughing, “not to even think her...” She shoved him in the chest, her laughter bright and quickly as close to out of control as his was. “She’s a cow.”
Will got a moo sound out that was so demented it set him off again. Darcy was virtually in his lap now, her face so close, her breath on his neck. Her giggling the best sound in the world.
She took a fist full of his shirt, “They had frog toggles.”
He knew he shouldn’t, but it was too funny. “Ribbit!”
Her head went down on his chest, her whole body shook with laughter. They were laughing about his prison experience and it felt so good.
He and Pete had laughed like this, when Norman was in town, and they’d been left to fend for themselves, sometimes for days at a time. They’d laughed till they made themselves sick, till they had sore ribs. And it was always at nothing, at each other, at the stupidity of being blockies living in a shipping container in the middle of the bush.
A favourite trigger was the word, ‘ahoy’. It had the power to set them both off into hysterics and never got old. He said it now. “Ahoy,” remembering two skinny boys trying to make a life and avoid a daily beating.