TWENTY-ONE
I stare out the window above the kitchen sink for ages. The sky is fully black now, the porch light humming outside. Luke hasn’t moved. He’s still sitting on the weathered bench, legs spread, back hunched slightly forward.
I’ve folded the tea towel six times now. Every part of me wants to retreat. Curl up on the couch, fake a yawn, maybe scroll through old emails to pretend I’m a person with a plan.
Instead, something traitorous pulls me forward.
Not just my feet – my body. As if I’ve been possessed by the ghost of a girl I used to be. A girl who believed being needed was enough. A girl who walked towards complicated men as if they were lifeboats, even when there were clearly holes in the hull.
I slide the screen door open before I realise what I’m doing. It creaks, and the chill night air touches my bare legs.
Luke doesn’t turn. He keeps staring into the dark, towards the tree that rained pink flowers over the place where they buried his father, two headstones side by side.
‘Hey,’ I say, stupidly.
He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t flinch.
His silence makes me want to die. Or at the very least, disappear. Something, anything, to remove myself from the single most humiliating moment of my adult life. I shift my weight to retreat – foot already on the top step of the porch, hand reaching for the door—
‘Don’t go.’ His voice cuts through the dark, rough and frayed around the edges. I glance back just as Luke’s head tilts, slightly. He looks at me. Really looks at me.
And that’s when I see it. Not anger. Not annoyance. Not regret.
Fear.
It’s the quiet, aching kind of fear that settles behind your ribs and builds a home there. The kind that says, I don’t know how to do this alone.
I go to him. My hand smooths my silk dress instinctively; it’s too crumpled for grief, too formal for comfort. I sit beside him on the bench. Not close enough to touch, just close enough to feel the warmth radiating from his body.
He offers me his beer. I take a sip. It’s warm and flat and exactly what I need.
When he takes it back, we sit in respectful silence.
‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he says eventually.
I swallow the tightness in my throat. ‘Me too.’
He tilts the bottle towards me again. I shake my head. If I drink more, I’ll either cry or make out with him. Possibly both.
There’s a pause, and then he asks, ‘How’s Dylan?’
I wince. ‘We’re not together anymore.’
Luke nods. He takes another long sip, his gaze locked on the dark horizon. I expect him to say something biting next. A joke. A jab. Something dry and deflective because that’s what we do. We fight.
Instead, he exhales – the kind of breath that’s smothered in pure anguish.
‘I thought I had more time,’ he says quietly. ‘That’s the part no one warns you about. You always think there’s more time.’
I think I stop breathing.
‘One minute you’re angry at your dad for forgetting to fill up the ute again, and the next you’re standing at his grave, wondering if the last thing you said to him was “Piss off.”’ He laughs under his breath, but it’s the saddest sound I’ve ever heard.
‘We were supposed to build a fence next week. Just a fence. That’s all.
Swearing and yelling at each other over the distance between stumps.
He was a stubborn prick, and it used to drive me mad.
And now I’d give anything to argue again with the sorry bastard.
’ His thumb traces the label on the beer bottle as if hoping the answer lay in the fine print.
‘You know, he still set Mum’s coffee cup out every morning after she passed.
Wouldn’t miss a day. Said the kitchen looked wrong without it. ’ His voice cracks. He doesn’t hide it.
I reach for his hand without thinking. Not in a romantic way. In a ‘sister wiping away your tears’ kind of way like I used to do for Issy. In the ‘I’ve got you even if you break’ kind of way.
He doesn’t look at me, but he squeezes my hand.
Just once. ‘I keep walking into rooms expecting him to be there. And then he’s not.
And it hits me all over again. Like getting the wind knocked out of you by someone who’s not even here.
’ A tear slips down his cheek, followed by a second.
He swipes them away and looks up at the sky, his bloodshot eyes pleading for the pain to end.
I shift closer to him on the bench. I don’t say anything, just press my side to his and let the silence do what words can’t.
He doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t make a joke.
He leans into it, just enough to let me know that I’m allowed to be here.
Just enough to let me hold some of the weight he’s been pretending not to carry.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a parent, let alone both.
But I do know what it feels like to carry more than you should, to be handed the sort of responsibility you never asked for.
I haven’t lost my parents in the traditional sense.
But I’ve spent most of my life grieving the version of them I never got.
And that kind of absence tends to leave a jagged scar.
One that aches in moments like this, sitting beside someone who’s hurting in a way I don’t fully understand but recognise all the same.
For a long moment, we sit still like that in shared silence. One grief, two bodies. Then, slowly, he turns his head to look at me. I meet his eyes in the dim glow of the porch light.
Something shifts.
‘How long are you staying with Ella?’
I hesitate. ‘Just the weekend.’
Luke studies me and then says softly, ‘Thanks for coming.’
My chest tightens. ‘I hope I didn’t impose.’
‘You didn’t.’ His hand moves – cautiously, testing the weight of the world – and rests over mine. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
And that’s it. The olive branch. The open door. The beginning of something that could matter, if I don’t run from it.
I don’t say anything. But I nod, just as he leans in and kisses me. The kiss is soft at first, tentative, as if he’s waiting to see if I’ll pull away and run like I always do.
I don’t.
Because his lips feel like home. Because his hand on mine feels like an anchor. Because I came here with nothing but a carry-on bag and the hope of being forgiven.
And this?
This feels like maybe I already am.
The kiss ends before it becomes something more. Luke pulls back first – slowly – and his hand lingers on my jaw longer than it needs to.
There’s a breath of space between us. And then he stands up.
‘Come on,’ he says, hand outstretched.
I follow him through the quiet house, my heartbeat so loud I’m sure Daisy could hear it from the spare room.
We pass the living room and walk down the hallway before Luke pushes the bedroom door open.
The room is small and unpretentious – like everything else about him.
Soft grey linens, off-white walls, a few framed photos on the dresser that I’m too nervous to look at.
His Akubra hangs on the back of the door.
A flannel shirt is slung over a chair. The bed is tucked in the corner, the comforter wrinkled – signs of a restless sleeper.
Luke unbuttons his shirt, takes off his shoes. He doesn’t even look at me when he says, ‘You don’t have to sleep here if you don’t want to. I just figured you’d prefer this than the fold-out couch.’
I hover in the doorway, trying to appear casual. ‘I don’t mind sleeping on the fold-out.’
He glances over his shoulder at me, hair now dishevelled and a hint of stubble shadowing the sharp angle of his jaw.
I wave a hand around the room. ‘I mean … I don’t want you to feel like you’re doing me a favour if you don’t want—’
‘Jamie?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Get in the bed.’
I bite my bottom lip to stop myself from saying something stupid to the grieving man before me.
Instead, I nod and slip into the bathroom to wash my face.
Then, quietly, I slide under the covers beside him, keeping a cautious arm’s length between us.
Just two people in a room where silence is safer than the truth.
The ceiling is barely visible in the dark. It feels weirdly appropriate to be staring at it as if it might offer some answers.
‘It was weird,’ Luke says eventually, his voice low, ‘seeing you here today.’
‘Weird good? Or, weird, “Get the hell off my property?”’
‘Just unexpected.’ He pauses. ‘I told Ella it was fine if you came, but I wasn’t expecting you to show.’
I glance at him. His face is a soft blur in the dark. ‘I thought you’d slam the door in my face.’
‘I thought about it,’ he admits.
I swallow, suddenly self-conscious.
‘If I did, I figured you’d never come back. And for some reason that made me even angrier.’
My chest pulls tight. I want to say something. Something big and perfect and healing.
‘I’m sorry,’ I confess.
‘For what?’
‘Everything.’
He lets that hang for a moment, then exhales.
‘One summer when I was a kid, I tried to fix the bore pump. Dad was out with a busted knee, so I figured I’d make myself useful.
’ He shifts a little, the bed creaking beneath him.
‘I cracked a pipe. Flooded half the paddock. Lost twenty head of cattle in one week.’
I wince. ‘Jesus.’
‘He didn’t yell. Just walked me out there, handed me the right tools, and said, “Stop apologising. Fix it.”’
I smile faintly.
‘Out here,’ Luke says, ‘you don’t have time to stay stuck. You move forward or you drown in it.’
Silence stretches between us again.
‘What was it like?’ I ask. ‘Growing up here?’
Luke shifts slightly on the pillow as if the question nudged something loose in his chest. ‘It was a dream,’ he says quietly.
‘I didn’t know that then, of course. I thought it was normal.
Spending everyday outside. Bare feet, covered in dirt, running behind Dad while he worked the property.
’ He pauses. ‘Mum used to call me Shadow,’ he adds.
‘Said I never left his side. Always watching him. Mimicking him. Thought if I could walk the same way, talk the same way, I’d turn out just like him. ’
My throat tightens. ‘Sounds like you really loved them.’
He takes a slow breath. ‘I did.’
I reach across the small space between us and find his hand beneath the blanket. Luke squeezes my fingers.
We lie there, hands twined together, facing the ceiling.
The silence stretches around us, warm and still. And somewhere in the space between heartbreak and safety, I fall asleep.
I don’t mean to. I don’t even notice it happening.
One minute I’m staring at nothing, breathing in sync with a man I’ve hurt in every way that counts – and the next, I’m pulled from sleep by the thin, unmistakable wail of Daisy.
Half asleep, I turn slightly, blinking into the dark.
Luke’s still there. Still holding my hand like it never left.