CHAPTER 43
I haul my trolley bag and Boss’s suit to the reception desk as a message buzzes in from Maxy. Have you told Jessie?
He’s been machine-gunning me with texts all morning to check on me, and I hate being made to feel like the family’s brittle china doll. I shove my phone into my handbag. No, I haven’t spoken to Jessie. I don’t want to be reminded that I really upset her.
I’m desperate to ask someone though: Was it my fault? Was Boss reading signs I didn’t know I was giving?
I pull the hotel room swipe card out of my handbag, my mind circling around a conclusion that I’m desperate to avoid: Archie’s the only person I can ask about what happened.
No one else knows the backstory and he’s the only person I can count on to tell me the harsh, unfiltered truth. Archie never goes easy on me.
I think of his serve, of how the tennis ball skidded at my feet and how that thrilled me—to know he knew I could handle it. He can be goading and silly and ruthless in the way he hunts down stories, but he’s never treated me as anything less than an equal and he’s not a liar.
‘Are you okay?’ asks the receptionist as I arrive at the front desk. ‘You look a bit pale.’
No. Definitely not. I’m about to vomit in your pot plant. ‘I’m fine,’ I lie, handing over my swipe card. ‘Just keen to get on the road. Has Archie Cohen checked out yet?’
The receptionist peers at me over her computer. ‘We don’t give out personal information about our guests, but if he’s one of the journalists, they’ve already gone. Their bus left at five-thirty.’
‘Oh.’ I nod.
I drag my bag into the car park under the cloudless blue sky. The sun now hangs above the crown of the eucalypts, searing my eyes. The bus parking bay is empty.
I make my way along the path that follows the highway to the car hire depot. Vehicles are whizzing past leaving flurries of bitumen, dust and exhaust fumes in their wake. The sound of a ute roaring past is like a battering ram against my temples.
I suddenly wish I could teleport myself back to that day when Archie took me on the media bus.
I miss our banter. I miss laughing at him.
I miss laughing with him. Over these past weeks, I’ve missed the challenge of trying to outsmart him and the see-sawing balance of our games, where winning hinged on every word so you could never relax, but that made it so fun and worth the effort of seeing him eventually crack and smile—and the way it made me soar, knowing he was smiling because of me.
I miss his body too. I almost laugh maniacally at how ridiculous it sounds in my head. I miss his body—and not even his naked body. I miss his fully clothed body. I want to sit next to him on a bus and lay my head against his suit-jacketed shoulder and absorb his steadiness by osmosis.
I pause to readjust Boss’s garment bag over my forearm as a semi-trailer trundles past. I need to yoga-breathe myself back to sanity.
I simply want to cry on a starchy form of men’s clothing.
Not Archie’s. I don’t really miss his body.
I miss the idea of his body. The shoulder to cry on could be anyone’s.
The memory of Boss pinning me to the wall slingshots into my brain and my eye catches on the garment bag. A wave of nausea billows through my organs. I never want to cry on Boss’s shirt. Never, ever, ever.
At the hire car depot, I open my phone to pay and frantically swipe away my screensaver photo: ten-year-old me, flanked by Jessie, Maxy, Dad and Mum, grinning after conquering Wet’n’Wild’s Super 8 Aqua Racer.
It’s my inescapable reminder that if you let yourself get distracted, life can change in an instant.
I slide the image away into the ether.
The original photo from that day still hangs on our living-room wall, but no one’s been in that room in six years. The memories of what happened in there are too painful. That’s why I can’t move home. That’s why I work so hard.
I hate to look back. I hate scrolling through the what-ifs and the should-haves, because they can’t change a thing.
I plan, I look forward, I work hard, I have goals.
That’s what I do. Looking back is useless, and worse than that, it’s painful.
It’s only in moments of extreme weakness that the chink of light from my past manages to stream through the padlocked door, and it’s happening now.
My brain is going to places I usually close off, and it’s all because of this garment bag and the memory of what Boss did last night.
What have I been doing for six years? Has it always been like this? Have I always excused his behaviour, rationalised it, smiled and nodded even when it made me uncomfortable?
I suddenly feel seasick, as though my insides are suspended in gravity while I wait for everything to rebalance. A rumble in my stomach tells me to move.
I hurry outside to the car park where there’s a foul-smelling steel bin with ibises picking through it. The stench triggers the metallic bile. I run towards a railing that separates the car park from an embankment and heave last night’s anchovy toasts and malbec down onto the tussock-y grass below.
My eyes sting and my throat burns. I’m wiping my sweaty hair from my face when the realisation hits me, and I stand up dizzily. It feels as though by purging myself, the radio antenna in my brain has picked up a message from my subconscious and now it’s dominating the airwaves.
I don’t just miss teasing him, I don’t just miss his body. I miss all of him. The whole kit and caboodle. Everything.
I miss Archie Cohen. I miss him so, so much.