Chapter 26
Twenty-Six
always back up your phone
Dylan
‘It says we can’t walk here.’ I point a blackberry-stained finger at the rusted sign on a dilapidated wooden fence that, in
no uncertain terms, tells us to stay out.
Our only company on this morning’s pre-breakfast walk is the birds soaring above and the waves crashing out of sight below,
which means there’s no one but me to stop Max from being so Max.
He shoots me a wink over his shoulder before scaling the fence and landing on the other side, grass coming up to his knees.
The blue of his open flannel shirt brings out the colour of his eyes, and when he leans his elbows on the rail, they fill
with challenge. ‘I think you should join me.’
‘It could be unsafe,’ I get out. The weak sunlight’s effort to filter through the clouds feels a lot like my attempts at convincing
Max not to do something stupid.
‘Then I guess I’ll need a hero to save me.’ With that, he starts walking away through the overgrown grass on the other side,
calling out, ‘Don’t even think about making up an excuse about needing help getting over the fence. I saw you rock climb the
other day.’
For the first time in my life, I ignore a warning sign.
I scowl at his retreating back while I climb. He could at least check I got over safely instead of just assuming I’m competent enough to do it myself. How dare he?
I follow the trail he’s cut through the grass and catch up with him. ‘When you told me you wanted to join my morning walks,
I didn’t realise you were going to completely hijack them. We need to make sure we’re back in time. We have a long day.’
He waves a flippant hand. ‘We’ll be fine.’
‘This detour wasn’t part of the plan, Max.’
‘Shit, why didn’t you tell me you didn’t want to go this way?’
At my scowl, his laugh echoes across the empty space. And I want to storm off, but I definitely don’t want to be the one to
lead the way either, so I settle for seething behind him as he chuckles.
Since the day with Tahlia, our routine has shifted. Without fail, we walk together every morning. And then we come home and
drink our coffee, and maybe Max gives me a look, or I give him one, and suddenly we’re in the shower, or against the kitchen
counter, or he’s pressing me into the mattress and showing me a hundred reasons why he walks around as arrogantly as he does.
But there are the softer moments too. Sitting on the sofa, my nails at the nape of his neck, gently dragging through his hair.
His hand at my waist when I’m doing the washing-up. A brush of fingers against my hip when he passes in the breakfast queue.
A bite of my pear, then two pairs of sticky lips behind the dining hall afterwards. A touch for him. A touch for me. It just
happens.
We’ve been here for a month now, and time seems to be slipping away faster and faster. But away from home and heavy expectations,
I can enjoy this arrangement with Max for what it is. I can be this person trying new things, and I can wear this new version
of myself, and Max can get whatever he needs from it too. And then I’ll go home, and I’ll move on, and it’ll be time to set
the wheels in motion for the rest of my life. My chest twinges at the thought, and I can’t tell if it’s excitement or apprehension.
My mind still lingers on confusing what ifs, so I turn to the kind with answers. ‘What if the sign back there was warning us about flash floods? Or,’ I think about
what perils may befall this part of the country, ‘a flock of homicidal sheep?’
He pointedly looks around the empty clifftop, the sound of the waves all those metres below. ‘I reckon we’re good on both
fronts.’
‘We should turn back.’
But we’ve already started a descent, our Max-made path becoming rockier the further down the decline we go, until we pass
through a narrow gap between two large boulders and step out on to a deep ledge built into the side of the cliff. It’s big
enough for both of us, but far below, the sea rages, battering the rocks at the bottom. It’s the kind of brute force that
reminds me that we’re all entirely at Mother Nature’s mercy, and it keeps me pressed as far back against the cliff face as
I can manage.
Max, meanwhile, advances a few paces and looks out at the view for a bit, before pulling out his phone to film.
‘Sometimes, I wish I’d been your plus-one somewhere more relaxing,’ I mutter. ‘Like . . . Greece or something.’
He peers over his shoulder at me. ‘Would you like that?’
I gesture disdainfully to the granite ocean, as uninviting as any water has ever been. ‘At this moment, absolutely.’
‘Good to know,’ he says, typing something on his phone before pocketing it.
And then, to my great confusion, he inhales so deeply his shoulders almost touch his ears, and lets out an emphatic whoop that careens across the vast emptiness, until it’s swallowed up by the sea.
He does it a few more times, completely ignoring me and my progressively more dumbfounded expression. Eventually, he faces
me again, cheeks flushed, eyes alight.
‘Are you finished?’ I ask delicately.
This deceptively strange man sweeps an arm across the view like a magician performing a disappearing act. ‘The floor is yours.’
‘And what is the purpose of this?’
‘Fun. It’s this thing we try to have, sometimes.’
‘I can be fun.’ He grins, and I don’t let him continue before I add, ‘People are going to think we’re in trouble if we keep
shouting.’
‘People rarely notice when you’re crying out for help.’ A strange look flickers over his face before he clears his throat
and settles back into the expression I’m used to: indolent confidence, a smirk just the right side of debauched, brazenly
looking over every inch of me. Before I have time to question what he’s said, he sets his hands on my shoulders, and the heat
from his palms bleeds through my jumper. ‘You’re always so tense.’
‘I’m tense right now because you’ve led me out to the edge of a cliff.’
‘Humour me on this.’ His hands shift to the base of my neck. When he lightly squeezes, the effort it takes not to let out
a noise has me pressing my lips together. ‘Screaming releases tension in your muscles, and that releases endorphins. We love
endorphins.’
‘Do we?’
‘Yes. Try it.’
I let out a sigh. ‘I’m not very good at screaming.’
‘We both know that’s not true.’
‘Max!’
‘See? You remember.’ He releases a low chuckle and folds his arms, and his voice is quiet when he says, ‘It’s just you, me
and the sea, Dylan.’
He stands expectantly, shirt fluttering in the breeze, the corner of his mouth tipped up in that familiar way of his. Maybe
it’s because it’s only the two of us here on this outcrop, maybe it’s because he still infuriates me, maybe it’s because I’m
increasingly worried that my heart’s going to betray me, but I open my mouth and yell. He circles his finger in the air, telling
me to go again, so I do. This time, I’m loud enough to scare a seagull perching on a nearby rock.
‘How’d that feel?’ he asks.
‘Silly.’ But a smile pulls at my cheeks, and there’s an eager look in Max’s eyes at the sight. As he watches me, I can’t help the question that spills out. ‘Why do you need to scream? What tension are you letting out?’
His expression shifts, his throat bobs, and his lips part like he’s about to say something, but then his gaze catches on something
at the far end of the ledge, where it narrows to no more than a couple of feet wide. Rather than answer my question, he says,
‘Is that a cave? I’m gonna check it out.’
If I felt uncomfortable on this ledge before, watching Max move away from me sends my panic into overdrive. ‘Max, come on.
You might fall.’
‘It’d be an impressive way to go though, wouldn’t it?’ He steps on to the narrowing path with no trepidation whatsoever, his
feet almost too big for it, and calls out, ‘Social media star Max Monroe dead at twenty-seven doing what he did best; getting a great shot.’
He takes his phone from his pocket to pull up the camera, wind whipping hair into his eyes, and my stomach drops. This can’t
end well.
He lets out a disgruntled noise the second he reaches his destination. ‘Ugh, there’s nothing here. It’s just an indent in
the rock.’ Still, he balances his phone on a piece of rock protruding from the cliff face and starts filming himself while
his shirt whips around him and his hair moves in every direction, performing for the camera the way he always does; his gestures
bigger, his voice more animated.
I keep my eyes on him the entire time. Maybe I can keep him safe through sheer force of will. Relief hits me when he collects
his phone from its makeshift tripod and starts heading back towards me, but in one heart-stopping moment, it happens. I see
it in slow motion. A rock that Max is standing on loosens, and as it shifts under his feet, he loses his balance. He flings
himself against the rock face, letting go of his phone in the process and sending it plummeting into the ocean. By the way
my throat hurts, I must scream or gasp or something, but he stabilises himself and slowly makes his way back to me, adrenaline surging through my veins with every drawn-out
second.
When he reaches me on the main ledge and takes the hand I extend towards him when, I expect to see panic in his eyes, or fear, or any level of stress.
What I don’t expect is his face to be lit up by a grin so bright it burns. He lets go of my hand and runs his through windswept
hair, and simply says, ‘Hope those clips went on to the cloud before they drowned.’
Relief that he’s okay turns into rage, and I boil over. ‘You’re such an idiot. Why did you do that?’
He recoils, bewildered by my response. ‘I didn’t intentionally throw my phone off a cliff.’
‘I don’t care about your phone,’ I grit out. ‘I care about you almost splatting against those rocks.’
Only now does his expression betray a hint of panic. ‘Don’t. I’m serious, Dylan. You don’t need to care about me. There’s
no point.’ He moves past me and steps back through the gap between the two boulders we came through.
I let out a sharp breath. ‘At this stage, it’s not something I really have a choice in.’
‘I’m fine. It’s all fine. I was being an idiot, like you said.’
I refuse to let him walk away as if nothing happened, as if my heart didn’t drop into the ocean when I saw him stumble. As
if, for a second, I didn’t have to confront the idea of a world without him. I breathe out a quiet, ‘You could’ve died.’
He strides through the trampled grass back the way we came. ‘Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.’
A wall collapses into rubble in my mind, and exasperation shoots out of me. ‘Exactly!’
My tone finally gets him to pivot and look me in the eye, and I think he uses those spent bricks of mine to put his defences
up, because his voice is flat when he says, ‘Go on, then. Tell me what you think.’
I take a deep breath. ‘I think you have no sense of self preservation, and you push the boundaries too hard. That was dangerous
for no reason, and you know it.’
His jaw clenches. ‘You’re all right with me pushing boundaries if it means pushing you out of your comfort zone, but as soon as I have a little fun, it’s a problem? Where has this come from? I’m not hurting anyone.’
‘You might hurt yourself.’
‘And? I don’t know how to make this clearer, but my decisions aren’t your concern. This time next month, you won’t need to
worry about me at all. Don’t get in the habit of doing it now.’
His comment stings, and it shouldn’t, because cutting things off in a couple of weeks is exactly what we agreed. ‘I just think
you’d benefit from being more careful, that’s all.’
He lets out a groan. ‘You sound like my parents. Coddling me and trying to persuade me away from doing what I want to do.
We get it, I was sick. I’m fine now. Let me live my life my own way.’
‘Maybe the reason your parents coddle you isn’t because you were sick.’ I swallow hard, and it comes spilling out. ‘Maybe it’s because they got a taste of losing you once,
and now they see you do stupid things day after day, and they don’t know how else to stop it from happening again.’ He watches
me, expression cool and unyielding, and my voice shakes, but all I want is for him to hear.
‘You do irresponsible things all the time, and I try not to pay attention, but I can’t help it, because you’re everywhere.
You never pay attention to warning signs or listen to safety instructions or buckle your life jacket the way you’re meant
to, your shoelaces are never tied properly, you always stand way too close to every single edge. You never care about anything that might keep you safe.’
‘Forgive me for not being overcautious.’
It feels like a dig, but I don’t care, because this isn’t about me. It’s about how Max is too reckless for his own good, and
it’s going to destroy him. ‘You’re not outsmarting the system by not following the rules.’
His lips flatten into a line. ‘I’m a living, breathing broken rule. I shouldn’t even be here.’
‘But you are. And you play with your life like it’s meaningless.
You’re willing to throw everything away for one silly spike of adrenaline, and everyone who cares about you has to stand by and watch you do it.
Someday you won’t be so lucky, and it’ll be a waste of your second chance, all because of some pointless choice you made. ’
‘Yeah, but don’t you get it?’ His voice is dangerously low. ‘That’s it. This time, it’s my choice. If something bad happens
to me, it’s on my terms. If I want to be reckless or stupid, that’s on me. You don’t get to tell me what I should or shouldn’t
be doing with my body. It’s mine.’ There’s a break on the last word, and with one final exhale, he turns and walks away.