Pointe of Pride

Chapter 16

The road twisted and climbed, taking them through towns with names like Lapstone and Warimoo, and the charmingly named Knapsack Reserve. Carly wanted to pull over and investigate that one, but Nick insisted they keep moving. In each village, they drove through a small strip of stores—a café, a newsagent, a supermarket, a bottle shop, which she had learned was what Australians called a liquor store—before passing clusters of old houses and the occasional public school. Signs in each town informed her she was on Darug and Gandangara land, and as they kept climbing and one town gave way to the next, the forest that encroached on the scattered buildings became thicker and thicker.

After almost an hour of winding roads, Nick pulled off the highway, and a sign announced their arrival in Leura, the “Jewel in the Mountains’ Crown,” and Carly breathed a sigh of relief. Her knees were tight and achy, and she needed to pee.

“I loved this town as a kid,” Nick said after they’d parked and found their way to the pretty little main street, a slope crowded with cafés and antique stores. “It looks exactly the same as I remember it, down to the quilt shop and the lolly shop. And the view of the valley.” He gestured toward the bottom of the street where the bush took over again, and Carly could see down into a vast gully full of dense trees and dotted with orange terra-cotta roofs.

When Carly returned from the public restrooms, it was to find Nick with a coffee in each hand and his camera around his neck. Without the ocean breeze, it was even hotter up here than it was in Sydney, and she hadn’t realized until she saw the sweating iced coffee that she was parched.

“Ready to work?” he asked, holding out the cup to her.

She took the coffee in one hand and gave him a mock salute with the other, and he led her down the street toward the bush.

“Remember my policy about going into dark alleyways with strange men?” she asked as the shops and pedestrians dropped away.

“I do,” he said.

“I have the same policy about going into deserted forests with strange men,” she said.

“Well, this isn’t deserted, it’s a very well-known track to a very well-known lookout,” he replied, gesturing toward a sign that read brIDAL VEIL LOOKOUT. There was a group of outdoorsy-looking people walking their way, having apparently just come from said lookout. Which sounded very pretty, and very on theme.

“You’re still a strange man,” she said as they turned down the path, and she was rewarded by the sight of Nick Jacobs sticking his tongue out at her. Like he’d been bodysnatched or something. Or like he was just in a rare good mood.

I want whatever you have. Whatever you can give me.

The track snaked down through the ever-thickening forest, the many gum trees that hung over them still and silent in the unmoving air. In addition to their own footsteps, she could hear the high pitched trill of some unseen bird, and the throaty, reproachful cawing of another bird that almost sounded like it was arguing with the first. As they walked, the grasses and ferns along the path occasionally rustled with sudden movement.

“Just small marsupials,” Nick said when she started and stepped into the middle of the path. “Or lizards.”

“Or deadly snakes,” she added, picturing a snake taking a bite out of her ankle and wishing she’d worn something other than shorts.

“Nah, if it was a deadly snake, you’d be dead by now,” he said, as if that was supposed to be reassuring.

After about ten minutes of steady decline, they came to a set of uneven stone steps with a handrail that had been drilled into the rock. Nick climbed down first, then turned at the bottom of the steps and waited as she stepped down carefully. As she reached the last few steps, he held out his hand, and she took it, letting him guide her down onto a steel viewing platform that hung improbably off the face of the mountain.

He gestured to her right, and, following his gaze, she gasped.

About a hundred feet away, a waterfall was tumbling and spraying over the rocks and into the valley below. The water was narrow and dense at the top, but it widened as it fell, stretching thin and diaphanous over the rocks, looking just like delicate, shimmering lace. Bridal Veil Falls. The mountain was too high to see where the water landed, but Carly knew that somewhere in the dense green eucalyptus forest below them, there must have been a creek or a river flowing through the enormous valley that was laid out in front of them, interrupted by rolling tree-covered hills and dotted with jagged rock formations. Above it, an ultramarine sky stretched forever, cloudless and triumphant.

“Damn,” Carly whispered. “Beats the Lincoln Center fountain.”

“Say cheese,” Nick said beside her, and she turned her head, grinning. He was waiting with his camera up, and she heard it click rapidly.

She turned back to the waterfall and watched it for a few minutes, taking in the sound of tumbling water and bird calls, and the smell of earth and eucalyptus. And then the sight of Nick. Face half-obscured by his camera, his forehead visible but damp with sweat, his hands wrapped around the device like it was a part of him. A natural extension of his muscular forearms and long, agile fingers. Beneath it, she could see half of his smile, just his full bottom lip. She wanted to bite it.

But instead, she slipped off her sneakers and yanked off her sweaty socks, and walked to the very end of the viewing platform. Just like at the Freshwater pool, there was a railing here. She fanned her feet out into first position and slowly lifted one foot into passé, then extended it until it landed on the railing. She heard the camera click again, and heard Nick padding behind her to find the best angle, and after a while she rotated her hips and pivoted on one foot until she was facing the spectacular waterfall and the barre was holding her foot up in an arabesque. Then she lifted her arms into a high fifth position and pressed the ball of her other foot down until she was on relevé.

“That’s perfect,” Nick said from behind her. “Can you lift it off the railing?”

She was going to retort that if she somehow fell off this little lookout and down the side of a mountain, she’d haunt him forever, but instead she pulled up through her obliques and lifted her foot until it hovered a few inches above the warm metal. Peering down into the valley, with just the ball of her foot tethering her to the earth, she felt like she was almost floating.

Nick walked around her, clicking away and murmuring encouragement, and she let the sound wash over her, along with the birds and the water and occasional rustle of a feeble breeze in the leaves.

Forty minutes later, though, her face was beaded with sweat and no longer fit to be photographed. Nick had shot her from every conceivable angle, in a range of positions, though he’d refused to let her do any jumps, muttering something about the platform giving out and her haunting him forever.

“No more,” she groaned, dragging herself up off the ground and brushing dirt and pieces of leaves off her knees. Hunched over and sweaty, she paused when she heard the camera click and looked up at him.

“Don’t get this,” she frowned up at him.

“But you look so graceful and elegant,” he chuckled, but he put the camera down.

“Can we please find some shade, and some water? Maybe a nice cold beer?”

“In a second,” he said.

“We’ve taken every photo it’s possible to take, Nick. What more could you want?” she whined as he lifted his camera up over his head and set it down carefully on the steps.

He turned around and walked across the platform in a few short, determined strides and didn’t stop until they were face to face and the railing was prodding lightly at her back.

“Oh, I see,” she said, with a knowing smile. All thoughts of shade and icy beer vanished as his hands found her hips and pulled them toward his. His gaze was as hot and intense as the sun on her shoulders, and as much as she wanted to hold it, to stare back until he broke first, she wanted his mouth on hers more.

When she got it, when her tongue slipped between his sweat-salty lips and claimed his mouth and he pulled her even closer, until their damp bodies were flush against each other, she had a fleeting, absurd thought. I could get used to this. Which was ridiculous, she knew. Whatever Nick said, whatever he thought he wanted from her, this arrangement of theirs had an expiration date. In two weeks the wedding would be over, and she’d go back to New York, back to real life, just in time for Nick to realize that he wanted more from her than she could ever give him. Before she had to watch him be disappointed, before he could go back on his word that he’d take anything she had and didn’t need more, she’d be gone. It was a perfect arrangement, really. Heavy on making out in beautiful public places, light on any Carly-esque failures. And if her climbing follower count was anything to go by, it would be a professionally fruitful arrangement, too.

After a few minutes, he pulled away, panting and hard, and swallowed with what looked like a lot of effort. She watched his Adam’s apple bob and resisted the urge to lick the stubbled, salty skin there.

“We should go,” he murmured, undercutting his point somewhat by putting a hand in her hair and tugging lightly until her head tipped back and he could kiss her where her neck met her jaw.

“You first,” she groaned, squinting against the sun. “Don’t we have cocktail testing to do?”

His only reply was a growl against her skin.

“A compelling counterargument,” she replied, putting a hand on each of his shoulders and pushing him away. “Come on, Heather and Mucus are counting on us.”

With a reluctant chuckle, he took a few steps back, then retrieved his camera from the steps, and they returned the way they came. But not before she’d taken one last look at the falls and the valley, wondering if she’d ever smell eucalyptus again without thinking of Nick’s lips on her skin.

They climbed back up the hill to Leura’s main drag, and Nick scrolled through his photos as they walked. He’d gotten some great shots, and some that could be improved with editing. Certainly a few that were worthy of his portfolio. Behind him, Carly was checking this morning’s Instagram posts and reading him some of the more effusive comments. Her follower count was steadily rising, and they hadn’t had a squabble in almost twenty-four hours. It was hard to bicker with their tongues in each other’s mouths.

“Listen to this one: ‘This photo belongs on a billboard or an ad for Australia.’ Pretty cool, right?”

Nick nodded, still scrolling back to the beginning of the afternoon’s work. “Very cool, and let’s hope that Tourism Australia agrees with—”

“Nick?”

He raised his head at the new voice, and his fingers slipped around the camera. Nina. What the hell was Nina doing here?

“Uh, hi,” he said awkwardly. His sister stared back at him, mouth half open, eyebrows scrunched together in confusion.

“Uh, hi, yourself. Aren’t you meant to be in Paris right now?”

“I … Marcus is getting married,” he said, running a hand over his hair.

“I heard. I just figured you weren’t gonna come home for it. After last time—”

“Well, I did,” Nick said, a little too abruptly, and he felt, rather than saw, Carly’s frown and the sharp sideways look she threw at him.

He forced himself to meet Nina’s eyes, which were the same colour and shape as his own. She’d cut her hair to her shoulders since he’d seen her last, and it was darker, too. She was looking up at him, an expression of mingled confusion, expectation, and disappointment on her face. Nick felt sweat gathering at the base of his spine, his T-shirt clinging to his skin there, and knew it wasn’t all from the summer heat. Nina’s eyes darted from him to Carly, then back again.

“This is Carly Montgomery. She’s the maid of honour, from New York City. We’re, euh, running some wedding errands and working on a project. Carly, this is Nina. My sister.”

He watched as Carly gave a little nod of confirmation, as if she’d suspected just by looking at Nina they were family. “The horse girl,” Carly smiled, extending her hand. Nina looked confused for a moment, then shifted her shopping bags to shake it.

Nick watched uncomfortably as his sister performed the polite, perfunctory pleasantries with Carly, asking her how she was enjoying Sydney, where she was staying, what sights she’d seen so far. All the while, he could feel her watching him in her peripheral vision. Nina lived a few towns down the mountain, in Blaxland, and worked as a nurse at a dental practice in the city, and he hadn’t expected to run into her here in Leura. Then again, he realized, shame creeping up his spine, regret squeezing his chest, he had no idea how his younger sister spent her weekends. For all he knew, she went shopping up here every week.

“What, euh, what are you doing up here?” he asked, once Carly had finished telling Nina that she’d eat a lamington for every meal if she could.

Nina raised an eyebrow and levelled a cool look at him. She looked annoyed, and hurt. “I live here, Nick. What are you doing up here?”

“I told you, we’re running errands and taking some photos,” he said. He’d wanted to take Carly to one of his favourite mountain towns, the most picturesque place he could think of, but he realized now it had been a huge mistake, a stupid risk.

“That’s not what I … argh,” Nina replied, cutting herself off in frustration. “Carly, would you please give us a minute?” she asked, without taking her eyes off Nick. Nick felt Carly’s questioning glance and answered it with a stiff nod.

“I’ll go get some coffees. Nina, do you want one?” When his sister shook her head, Carly hoisted her bag up over her shoulder, walked quickly to the nearest café, and disappeared inside. Nick watched her go, but his attention snapped back to Nina as she spoke.

“Were you seriously going to come home, after all this time, and not tell any of us you were back?” she asked, shifting her bags again so she could put her hands on her hips.

“Neens,” he started, but the nickname only made her glower more fiercely.

“Don’t ‘Neens’ me, Nicholas. Answer the question.”

“I was going to text you; I just wanted to get through the wedding first. I’m staying down near Marcus’s mum’s place, and I’ve been busy with—”

“Yes, errands and projects, I heard you.” Errands, projects, and the human hurricane who had been distracting him from both, and from how hard and complicated it felt to be home after so many years. Distracting him enough that he would take her to this place where they risked running into all the things he’d been hiding from.

“I was going to text you when it was over, when I had a little more time.” She didn’t look like she believed him, but it was the truth. He’d thought about it as they’d driven up to Leura, Carly’s “yet” fresh in his mind.

“Uh-huh,” Nina said, the sound dripping in skepticism. He glanced over her shoulder at the coffee shop, hoping Carly would emerge soon. She might be a hand grenade, but for once she wasn’t the angriest woman in his vicinity, and he wanted her back beside him.

“I was planning to text you, I promise, but like you said, last time …”

“Last time was between you and Dad and Mum, not me. I wasn’t even there. Don’t cut me out just because things are hard between you three. You and me, we’re a whole separate thing. Or I thought we were.”

Nick ran his hand over his hair again and sighed. She was right. As stilted and infrequent as his contact had been with his parents since his last trip, things had been okay with Nina. They texted; they did occasional video chats. He sent her birthday cards, mailing them a month in advance to make sure they got to her on time. When she called him, she provided vague updates about his parents’ lives—Dad had retired and joined the local men’s shed, Mum’s ladies’ bushwalking group was planning a big trip to Victoria—but mostly they talked about safe topics. Work, travel, TV, podcasts.

“I’m sorry. I should have told you I was coming.”

She shrugged, the paper bags at her side crackling with the movement. “How would you like it if I came to Paris and didn’t tell you I was there?”

He tipped his head to the side, a smile sneaking into his voice. “Who would you stay with? Who would you force to go to a rave with you even though they had company class in the morning and needed more than an hour and a half of sleep?”

Her face cracked into a sly grin, possibly against her will. The whole family had come to visit him in Munich for his mum’s fiftieth, and Nina, newly eighteen and celebrating the end of high school, had stayed an extra week, dragging him out on the town every night. The morning after that rave, no amount of spotting could have kept him from feeling dizzy and nauseated during pirouettes. He’d never let her hear the end of it.

“Fair point. But I don’t do raves anymore. I’m a tired old lady.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “You’re not even thirty.”

“How long are you staying?”

“Up here? We’re not. We were about to drive back down to Sydney.”

Nina gave him a look that said she knew he’d understood her question, even if he’d chosen to answer a different one.

“I don’t really know yet. Work is—”

“Skim cappuccino for you, and an American iced coffee for me,” Carly called from a few metres up the hill, and a second later she appeared at his side.

“Thanks,” he said automatically, giving her a grateful smile. She’d saved him from having to invent some lie to tell Nina about his work. Or worse, from telling her the truth. And as far as he knew, her career was on track, steady and reliable. Unlike his. Their fingers brushed as Carly handed over the warm cup, and Nick watched as Nina’s eyes flicked from their hands to his face, then to Carly’s.

“How’s Delphine going?” she asked pointedly. Shit. Yet another thing he’d hidden from her. Nick swallowed, then glanced sideways at Carly. What choice did he have? He couldn’t stand here and lie about still being with Delphine right in front of the woman he’d kissed barely half an hour ago. He looked down at his sister and told her the truth.

“I don’t know. We broke up a few months ago,” he said, keeping his voice level and matter of fact. Which it was. It was a matter of fact that he and Delphine Delacroix were no longer together. That she no longer loved him. And that since he’d met Carly, since Carly had half killed him with her luggage trolley, he’d barely thought about his ex-girlfriend.

“Crap, I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Nina said, and he nodded. She didn’t know because he hadn’t told her.

“It’s okay. I’m okay.” She raised an eyebrow and looked like she was about to ask about him and Carly, but he was too quick for her. “We should get going; we’ve got another wedding errand to take care of tonight. But I’ll call you after the wedding and we’ll hang out, okay?”

“Wait, you should stay for dinner. I’m going to Mum and Dad’s. I know it’s short notice, but they can make enough for two more.”

Nick’s stomach somersaulted and he felt his pulse speed. “Neens, I can’t. Not today.”

“Come on, please? I’ll be there. And I know they’ll be happy to see you, even if … even if things are off.”

“I—”

“You came all this way and didn’t tell us. Now you’re not even going to come home for dinner?”

Fucking hell, Nina Elizabeth Jacobs was good. Were all younger siblings like this? Did they all come out of the womb with guilt-tripping, will-bending genes that didn’t stop working even if you lived on the other side of the world? Nick looked over at Carly, who was watching him expectantly, the late afternoon sun washing her face in warm, low light and turning loose strands of her hair into fiery gold.

“Fine, fine. I guess cocktail testing can wait.” Even though he’d love to be a little bit buzzed for what was about to happen.

“Great!” Nina chirped, not even bothering to conceal her self-satisfied smile. “I’ll text them now and pick up an extra bottle of wine on the way there, just in case. I’ll see you soon. You still remember how to get home, right?”

“Yes,” he said irritably. Though perhaps he’d conveniently forget and just keep driving down the mountain.

“Well, call me if you forget. Again.” Nina fished around in her purse and pulled out her car keys. “Carly, any dietary restrictions?”

“No, I eat anything,” Carly said distractedly, looking curiously between them. Nick groaned inwardly as he thought about how much he’d have to explain to her and how unpleasant dinner was going to be.

“Great!” Nina said again, and Nick wanted to scream at how happy she looked at the idea of the whole family being together again, when the same thought made his stomach clench and anxiety grip at his throat.

“See you soon,” he said weakly as she turned and walked up the hill towards her car.

She waved over her shoulder, keys jingling in her hand. “See you at home.”