CHAPTER 55
The bitumen of the car park is baked to a silvery grey after decades withstanding the Sydney sun.
The grassy clearing in the distance is ringed by bushland and dotted with picnic tables and the odd magpie pecking at discarded hot chips.
The leaves of every gum tree are bathed in a crisp sunlight which has sucked the night’s dew back into the atmosphere.
Archie turns off the ignition and extends a giant leg out of the car door.
I wonder if it will ever stop amusing me that he is too large for normal human contraptions (i.e. cars).
‘So tell me again what this Arabella Flint lady said,’ he says, speaking to me over the roof of the car.
I step out and close the passenger side door. ‘She wants to catch up for coffee,’ I say. ‘To discuss “future plans”.’ I use air quotes for the last bit.
‘Her future plans or yours?’ asks Archie, pulling his arm over his chest to stretch his shoulder.
‘I dunno.’ I shrug and lift my heel to my backside in a hamstring stretch. ‘Maybe both. She just reached out, out of the blue.’
Archie starts stretching his other arm. ‘It’s hardly out of the blue. She knows Harcourt lost. She knows you’d be looking for work.’
‘Maybe,’ I reply, quietly hopeful. I switch legs.
Archie smiles. ‘Stop being coy, Hatton. I knew you were destined for greatness. You’re going to be the next big star in the PMO.’
‘You think so?’ I ask, wincing at the audacity of even considering it.
‘If she doesn’t give you a job then I’ll streak across the field after the next State of Origin.’
‘Deal,’ I say, walking around the car to shake his hand. Either way, I’ll win. And so will Australia. The man has the most delicious buns of steel.
We’re standing at the bottom of Lane Cove National Park. Around us are hundreds of kilometres of mountainous cycling tracks, framed with acacias and paperbark eucalypts. Archie is wearing something clingy and navy-coloured with a bright pink stripe around the bicep. He assures me it is very suave.
‘Now don’t be nervous,’ he says, pulling two bike frames off the roof racks. ‘I’ll be with you the whole way.’ He clips a wheel into the frame of the bicycle he’s procured for me from some friend of a friend. (Larry’s niece, I think.)
‘Are we going up there?’ I ask, pointing to a road that coils up to the lookout.
‘That might be a bit steep for your first ride.’
‘I reckon we could try.’
He rolls the borrowed bike over to me and laughs quietly. ‘If you want to go straight up the mountain, let’s go for it.’
In that moment, if such a thing is possible, I like him even more. I want to wrap him in my arms and melt into him, absorb everything about him and fuse the two of us together so we can keep this game going forever. Find a guy who doesn’t doubt you. I should make bumper stickers about it.
Archie finishes attaching his own wheels. ‘How about we go around that,’ he says, gesturing to a wide roundabout about twenty metres away with a fountain in the middle, ‘and then go up the hill? It’ll give you time to get used to the cleats before we hit the incline.’
I inspect the cleats on the bike pedal which are supposed to attach to the weird clippy shoes I’m wearing (also borrowed from the same generous, sporty stranger who lent us the bike).
I nod. ‘Good decision.’
The shoes look and feel similar to the ones I use for spin class, but maybe they’re different.
I throw my leg over the bike and connect my shoe to the cleat on the pedal with a satisfying snap. Okay, turns out they’re exactly the same. This bodes well for me.
Archie raises his eyebrow. ‘You managed that easily.’
‘Mmm,’ I agree, a bubble of laughter threatening to burst from my throat.
It has been one week since the election.
Everything has changed and nothing has. Kids are still going to school, teachers are still teaching, the government should still be doing more.
I know that they can. Boss is apparently in line for an executive directorship at a multinational conglomerate, and Alex is helping Dad to build a boat. A boat! I have never been so proud.
Yesterday was Remi and Tyler’s rehearsal dinner, and Archie and I walked through the doors right on time.
‘Wa-wa-wa-WAIT!’ Remi exploded as soon as she spotted us. ‘Did you two arrive together together?!’
I looked at Archie, he looked at me, neither of us spoke, and then we both laughed. ‘You choose now to be speechless?’ I teased him.
He shrugged. ‘I thought you’d prefer to control the narrative.’
I leaned my head against his chest and he wrapped his arm around me. ‘Yes,’ I said to Remi. ‘We arrived together.’ I feared I would blind her with my shining.
Archie rolls his bike over to me. ‘I’ll be by your side the whole time,’ he tells me again. He lifts his hand to my shoulder and gives it a squeeze. I lay my hand over his and squeeze him back.
My chest feels like it’s overflowing with something warm and luminous, like the waterfall of fireworks that rains down from the Harbour Bridge on New Year’s Eve. The mere sight of him smiling makes my heart lift, and when his smile is directed at me, it’s like a shot of joy so pure I could burst.
There are words I want to say but I catch them on the tip of my tongue.
My automatic reaction is to swallow them whole before he notices, but at the same time, I want to share them.
I want to open every door in my life, point to the mish-mash of ordered thoughts and frazzled chaos inside, and say to Archie: What do you think about this?
I want the joy of sharing what’s in my brain and my heart and seeing it reflected back to me through his lens, intensified, the way the aurora lights shine brighter through a camera.
I want to discuss and debate things, hear his opinions and let him hear mine.
I want to trace my fingers over his thoughts like an archaeologist who’s discovered the first stone of a buried castle.
I’m impatient to explore but I want to savour every moment.
‘What?’ Archie asks, noticing my expression.
I can’t help but grin. There’s so much I have to say to him and it’s such a luxury to know that I can.
There’s no time limit, no deadline, only the peep of the morning sun and the buzz of the clock radio telling us to wake up because it’s another day and we can spend it together—however we want.
My heart feels full to the brim, and simultaneously as spacious as it could ever be.
I swallow the flutter in my throat and push my foot against the pedal.
The bike takes off towards the roundabout and Archie clambers to catch up as I clip my other shoe neatly into place.
‘I have something hilarious to tell you,’ I say, as we pedal shoulder-to-shoulder along the warm bitumen.
‘So tell me,’ says Archie.
My smile spreads wider. ‘Actually there are two things.’ We glide around the roundabout, heading back onto the road that leads to the lookout. I catch his eye as I start pumping my legs faster. ‘Firstly, I love you.’
‘What?!’ Archie’s eyebrows shoot up, but I’m already pedalling ahead.
‘Yep,’ I call over my shoulder. ‘I just realised, and I really needed to tell you because I’m done with keeping secrets.’ The wind streams onto my face and the cold air fills my lungs. ‘And the second thing is—’
‘Millsy, what the hell?’ calls Archie, catching up with me. ‘Stop the bike.’ He groans over the whip-whip-whip of the wheels. ‘I didn’t want to do it like this. I had big plans! It was going to be romantic.’
‘Too late,’ I sing merrily, as we whiz through the bushland. ‘I love you, Archie Cohen.’
‘Well, pull over,’ he pleads. ‘I want to kiss you. I want to tell you I love you too, and I didn’t want to do this when I was wearing padded-bum shorts.’
I can’t keep the delight out of my voice. ‘Let’s keep going until we get to the top; we can pull over there.’
‘That will take ages!’
The bubble of laughter surges again. ‘Well actually, Archie, that may not be the case.’
I glance at him and his eyes go wide. ‘What … no?!’ His legs start pedalling faster. He’s worked it out!
‘Yep!’ I shriek, tears of laughter streaming down my face as I match his speed. ‘I’m actually awesome at cycling.’
He’s pedalling furiously now, but he’s laughing so hard it’s ruining his form.
‘Millsy!’
‘Race you to the top!’
Archie’s smile is incredulous, and I know the disbelief isn’t directed at me—it’s directed at himself. He should have known! We’re two forces of a current, two sparks of electricity; we’re competitors and teammates who love the game for the simple fact that we get to play it together.
Archie rolls his shoulders and readjusts his grip as he flashes me a grin that lands like a golden net over my heart.
When he speaks, there’s no fake-posh drawl, no newsreader intonation, just the familiar lilt of his voice and the knowing twinkle in his eye.
‘Game on, Millsy,’ he yells at the road ahead of us. ‘Ready, set, go!’