41
‘C AT, I’m trying really hard here. I don’t want to be a dick about this, I know you say you’re just friends and all that, but the way he looks at you? Calling you gorgeous all the time? Baby girl? His hands all over you? That doesn’t look like friends.’
‘For someone trying not to be a dick that’s pretty much all that’s coming across,’ I say.
‘JB and I are friends. Just friends. I don’t know why it’s such a difficult concept for you to understand.
Maybe because you constantly have girls throwing themselves at you that you have no idea what it’s like to connect with someone on a different level.
’ My fingers tap against the window of Paul’s car as he drives along the coast road.
My legs crossed, my chest tight, the air between us feels like a snarly rabid dog.
‘Anyway, I don’t care what it looks like to you or to anyone else.
JB’s been there from the start, he’s like a brother to me. He’ll always be there for me.’
‘So, you’re telling me you’ve never gone there.’
‘Are you kidding me? Even if I had, would it matter? Could you be any more hypocritical?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe the fact that you said yourself that you’ve been with more girls than you can count.
Everywhere we go you have Isabel Dillon all over you.
And you think it’s okay to question me and JB?
’ Ugh, here we go. My throat scratches as I feel the telltale prickle of tears behind my eyes.
I jam my fists into my sockets and take a deep breath.
‘I’m not in the mood for the night market anymore. Let’s just forget it.’ My voice breaks.
He pulls onto the shoulder of the road and I clutch the grab handle to stop from sliding off the car seat, feet now firmly planted on the floor.
Paul pulls the handbrake up and turns to me. ‘I’m so sorry, Cat. I feel like such a dick, please don’t cry.’ His Adam’s apple shifts slowly up and down his throat.
‘I’m not crying.’ A tear snakes its way down my cheek.
‘What’s this then?’ He holds it aloft on his thumb. It glistens in the late afternoon sun streaming through the window, a tiny rainbow prism within. He sighs. ‘I’m sorry, this is my shit, not yours.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘It means I shouldn’t have put all that on you like that. I felt like I was third wheeling there and JB? He’s from your world, babe. His mother is friends with yours. He’s the private school, golden boy, rich kid, he’s your future in the city, he’s more you than...’ He chokes on the last word.
‘Stop,’ I interrupt. ‘The private school, golden boy, rich kid? This jealous thing you’ve got going on is one thing, and let me tell you, it’s doing absolutely nothing for me, but having a crack at JB? He has shit going on that you couldn’t even imagine.’
‘I’m just saying, I wouldn’t blame you.’ He looks down at his interlocked fingers, then opens his palms, shrugging. ‘He’s a good one.’
‘You’re my good one, don’t you get it?’ I unclick my seatbelt to hurl myself across the seat. My hands over his ears, I lift his head to look me in the eye. ‘You hear me?’
‘I hear you,’ Paul says, ‘they can hear you in the city.’ He kisses me. ‘I really am sorry. Seriously, there’s no words for how sorry I am. You want me to take you home?’
‘No way.’ I wriggle my way onto his lap, my legs stretched across the seat, the window hot against my back, my body twisted against his. ‘I’m sorry I yelled. But if you want to go do your own thing it’s all good.’
‘My own thing?’ His finger traces its way across my face and my neck. ‘I just want to be wherever you are.’
A car horn honks in passing and my body jerks, the steering wheel jamming me right in the sweet spot between my ribs. I wince. ‘Then let’s not be here, hey? Night market?’
‘Sounds like a plan.’ He turns his indicator on. Ten minutes later we’re parking in town.
‘How good is summer?’ I say. The jetty is packed, the parkland adjacent crammed with market stalls selling everything from scented candles through to wind catchers, preserves and chutneys, and framed prints.
As we wander past the stalls, I pause in front of a glass cabinet filled with jewellery.
A kaleidoscope of green, amber and aquamarine glints in the late afternoon sun, luminous.
‘Do you make these?’ I smile at the woman behind the table. ‘They’re beautiful.’
‘I do,’ she says. ‘I live a couple of hours up the coast, and every morning I walk on the beach collecting sea glass, then every afternoon I turn them into these pieces. Are you visiting from the city?’
‘No, I live in the next town. I collect sea glass too. I’ve never seen aquas like yours.’
‘This is going to sound super woo-woo, but I feel like I made this piece just for you,’ the woman says.
She unlocks the cabinet and holds a necklace towards me.
‘The aquamarine would look stunning against your beautiful tan.’ It’s an off-center long oval, wider at the top than the bottom, like a lopsided heart.
It’s half the length of my thumb, connected to a silver chain with a casing that’s so delicate it almost disappears against the vibrance of the glass.
She places a mirror on the cabinet, and I hold it against my chest. ‘It even goes with your shell,’ she nods at my fishing line and shell necklace.
‘It’s beautiful.’ I hold it up to the light, furtively looking at the price tag. ‘Whoa, and it’s a little bit out of my price range.’ I hand it back.
‘We’ll take it.’ Paul pulls out his wallet.
‘No, it’s all good,’ I say. ‘I’m just looking.’
‘And I’m just buying. You want to wear it now, Cat?’
‘Are you sure?’ I run a tentative finger over its glossy finish.
‘Done and dusted,’ he says. ‘Can you please take the tag off?’
‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘I want to,’ he says. ‘Turn around and let’s put it on.’
‘Are you absolutely positive?’ I’m already piling my hair on my head. ‘Thank you so much.’ I kiss him and turn back to the mirror, grinning. ‘I love it.’
Seagulls squawk and squabble in packs up and down the beach, fighting for chips.
We lean against the jetty railing watching kids jump between fishing lines into the sea, ignoring the ‘no jumping’ signs plastered everywhere.
I have an ice-cream cone in one hand, my other is resting against the waistband of Paul’s board shorts, my fingers curled against his skin.
There’s a cheer as a fisher triumphantly lands a calamari.
He mock bows right as black ink squirts all over the jetty’s timber, sending a pair of tween boys squealing out of the line of fire.
He’s removing the hook, a posse of little kids with their heads peering into his catch bucket when a passerby trips over his rod and the hook sinks into the fleshy base of a small thumb.
A little girl’s scream pierces the air and blood spurts, mixing with the squid ink and fish scales.
‘Livvy!’ A woman tears across the jetty.
She so closely resembles the child that she has to be her mother.
She sinks to her knees next to the little girl.
A curious onlooker pauses to see what’s happening and the colour drains from her face.
Her eyes roll back, and she faints, stopped from hitting the decks by the fisher who’s also holding the child’s arm upright, blood flowing over the fisher’s fingers.
Paul’s ice-cream goes into the water as he moves next to the fisher and gently lowers the woman to the deck.
People crowd around, stickybeaking. The blonde girl, who wouldn’t be more than five, is red faced and snot nosed.
She wails and reaches for her mum whose mouth is gaping like the fish that are being reeled in up and down the jetty.
Ice-cream dribbles down the cone onto my fingers, sticky.
I quickly do a cleanup job around the rim of the cone with my tongue while Paul crouches down on his haunches before the little girl.
‘Liv? Is that your name?’ says Paul. ‘What, is that short for? Olivia?’ She nods her head, her wails softening into small sniffles. ‘I love that name! It’s weird though, I didn’t know fish could be called Olivia.’
‘I’m not a fish. I’m a kid!’ Paul takes a closer look at her finger and her sobs pierce my eardrums. ‘It hurts. It hurts.’
‘What? You’re not a fish? Then let’s get you unhooked. Mate, cut us some line?’ The fisher slashes through the line on the rod and winds out metres of it. He hands a loop to Paul.
‘Shouldn’t someone call an ambulance?’ asks the fisher.
‘Maybe for her.’ Paul gestures towards the woman passed out on the deck.
A man kneels over her, using a cap to fan her down.
‘Help me out, mate?’ Paul loops the fishing line around the hook.
‘Just press down here for me. Better with your thumb, hold it down flat, not too hard, yeah? Okay, Liv, how old are you?’
‘I’m four!’ she wails.
‘Four? Okay, you’re a big kid then, aren’t you? I want you to count to three with me. Can you do that? One, two...’ Paul yanks the line, and the hook comes clean out of her skin.
‘Three,’ says Liv.
‘It’s out, little mate,’ Paul says. ‘Look!’ He brandishes the hook. ‘You’re such a brave kid.’
‘No three?’ she asks, incredulously.
‘No three! You’re all good. Here, just hold this tight.’ He pulls a napkin from his ice-cream cone from his pocket and pads it against her thumb to stem the blood.
‘You are just a bundle of never-ending surprises, aren’t you,’ I say to Paul as he comes to stand beside me, hands awkwardly by his sides. ‘You saved that kid’s life. How’d you know how to do that?’
‘I don’t know how many people die each year from a fishing hook in a thumb, but yeah, I’m basically just a hero,’ he says, ‘they’ll make movies about today. Meanwhile, thanks for saving me some ice-cream.’
‘Yeah, sorry about that, I was just too caught up in watching my superhero boyfriend save the day.’
‘You crack me up,’ he says. ‘There’s blood everywhere, people are fainting and there’s you, calmly watching it all unfold, eating ice-cream. You’d be an amazing doctor.’
‘It’s weird; I’m okay with blood but no good with vomit. Besides, I knew you had it all under control. Maybe you’re the one that should do medicine?’
‘Yeah, right, as if.’ He scoffs.
‘Don’t you dare go limiting my boyfriend’s potential.’ I poke him in the chest. ‘But I’ve been thinking about that, actually. Something you said to me, about if I want to be a doctor, do you remember?’
‘When we had that bonfire, just you and me?’
‘Yep. The thing is, I don’t think I do. I don’t even like hospitals; even the smell of them gets to me.
’ I screw up my nose, thinking of that weird laundry smell, the acrid handwash, the food, oh god, the corn smell of the food.
‘And you know my issues assignment? I keep looking at the articles about climate change and asylum seekers and I’m not saying they’re not important, they are, but I keep gravitating towards articles about misogyny.
If I’m interested in that, then wouldn’t that tell me that law is where I should go? What do you think?’
‘I think you should breathe.’ he says, and he’s right. I’m almost panting after getting that soliloquy out. ‘But Cat, that makes perfect sense. If anyone’s going to tear shit up, it’s you, and a law degree is only going to help you do that. Go for it.’
‘So, I’m going to be a lawyer then,’ I say.
‘Looks like it.’
‘Meanwhile, I wouldn’t mind washing my hands, they feel so gross.’
‘Yours feel gross?’ Paul holds his aloft, smeared with blood and squid ink. We walk across the car park to the fish cleaning platform where some kind soul has left liquid handwash.