Chapter 41 #2
Ronnie relaxed and let gravity lengthen her spine, detaching her vertebrae like plastic beads on one of Rainbow’s elastic bracelets.
A riflebird called through the dark like a whip snapping.
Nev appeared deep in silent conversation with the line of scar tissue that ran above the zipper of Ronnie’s jeans, studying it the way she had the ocean in Cairns, the way she stared at the sheep.
Ronnie felt like she was intruding.
She cleared her throat. “That’s cool that you’re into scars.”
“I don’t like it.” Nev’s accent was always so sexy.
It took Ronnie a moment to decipher what her friend had said. Liar, she thought. You wouldn’t look like that unless you did. Ronnie’s tongue separated from the roof of her mouth with a click and she exhaled through her nose. It was too dark to see Nev’s eyes.
Relaxing her arms, she let her weight hang from the ropes. She would have bruises on her wrists tomorrow.
Nev licked a line down the scar, tracing one end to the other. It tickled, followed by a cold line spreading horizontally.
Nev was not indifferent. She was doing the telltale hand thing, when someone’s hands got big and grippy and squeezed her like a meal.
Ronnie closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Hanging in a community theater passion play position, it was hard not to feel like she was being worshipped.
Something gave inside her.
Surprising herself, she stepped back up onto the broom and wriggled her wrists out of the rope, then threw herself on the leaves with Nev beneath her. The ground was pliant, springy with deep layers of leaf detritus and moss. Nev’s breath rushed out with an, “Oof!”
Ronnie groaned, straddling her friend and sinking her knees into the loam. “God, yes… I want leeches…” On impulse, she tossed fistfuls of dead leaves in the air, provoking a startled giggle.
High on freedom, she pressed her forehead to the ground and her arms around her tiny, androgynous, ageless, mercurial sprite who still suffered the misconception common among farmers that she could own something warm-blooded without it owning her back.
Nev chuckled. “Crushed by an angel…”
Ronnie let Nev hold her and touch her, and everything was soft and nothing hurt.
After, but not long after, lying pressed together in the circle of leaves inside the strangler fig, lights dancing inside Ronnie’s eyelids, Nev played “Because You Loved Me” by Celine Dion on her phone.
Ronnie winced in a good way, furrowed her brow and shook her head. “Yes! Slow it down, Celine! Preach!” She knew all the words and sang along, pretending Nev’s hand was a microphone.
Reunited with her shirt and phone after thorough inspection found zero leeches, singing under her breath and doing a little shimmy with her shoulders, Ronnie checked her messages. Thirty missed calls from Maude.
She swore and called her back.
Car crash. Had to be a car crash.
When Maude answered the phone, she sounded frantic. “She’s missing! She won’t answer me. She’ll answer you.”
“Right. Bye.”
Holding her breath, Ronnie dialed her daughter’s number. It rang.
The line picked up. “Hi.” It was Rainbow.
Ronnie sucked air into her lungs, then sank onto a nearby log. “Where are you, babe? At a mate’s?”
“I’m at Charlotte’s house.”
“You can’t go off grid like that. Your mama’s been worried sick about you.”
“Sorry.”
“She needs to know you’re okay. Call her.”
Ronnie called Maude to let her know Rainbow was at her friend’s house, then hugged Nev with a shaky laugh. “I’m buzzing. That was terrifying. Everything’s fine. Feel my heart racing. I’m shaking. I almost had to go looking for her. Can you imagine?” Nev would have gone with her. Total nightmare.
“Shh, it’s all right. Karma owes you a few good ones. Now you say it.”
“Karma owes you a few good ones.”
“Cheeky.”
“If it’s true for me, it’s true for you.”
Horses waited for them in the dark rainforest. Bush stone curlews wailed like ghosts. Refreshing drop in temperature, like jumping into the lake. Dreadnought followed Uni back to the barn. Ronnie felt raw in a good way—sensitive and sore.
Spotted catbirds meowed and night cicadas droned.
They had left the barn light on.
She hung up Dreadnought’s leather tack while Nev returned the brooms to the wall. Alongside Nev, Ronnie put away saddles and brushed horses, preoccupied by memories of nights in small towns in hotter, drier parts of Queensland—visions of the Outback, gum trees that looked like these…
They walked the horses into stalls.
“I used to go on walkabout when I was her age,” Ronnie admitted.
Nev was only half listening. “That tracks.” She disappeared into the barn office, emerging holding an Outback hat.
Ronnie recognized the style of the black leather crusher. It looked like the one her mother had worn. She turned it over in her hands, found the small hole. It was the same hat.
“She asked me to give it to you. I forgot.”
The white lie uttered as an afterthought was so obvious that Ronnie understood it was an apology.
She showed Nev the puncture near the band from the time she had hung it from a road sign and used it for target practice to sight in a Tikka Super Lite. “You met my mum. When did you meet her?”
Nev jammed half a flake of hay into the empty haynet on the wall of Uni’s stall. “She tried to visit you in hospital.”
Ronnie shuddered.
“We should have asked if you wanted to see her, but it felt like emotional heavy lifting.”
“Good call.” Conversations with Matilda-Jane always disappointed her. Her mother and Maude were in the same category as Eastern Brown snakes and car accidents. Rainbow’s behavior tonight unsettled her more than she cared to admit.
“What is it?” Nev asked, partially backlit by the barn light. She cast a shadow on the barn floor.
“Rainbow’s making my mistakes.”
“Nah, she’s making her own.” Nev’s face was closed, her feelings guarded. In the fever-dream inside the strangler fig Ronnie had forgotten to kiss her on the mouth. Rectifying that omission now, she leaned down.
Nev’s lips were soft.
It was a closed-mouth kiss until it wasn’t. Ronnie’s shirt chafed her chest. An invisible string drew tight. She hummed.
She felt where Nev’s little belly touched hers through her clothes. Ronnie’s breath slowed. Warm in all the right places, happily exhausted.
Nev barely moved. “I love you.”
Ronnie recognized the wide-eyed look of a bandicoot in headlights, frozen, unwilling to save itself.
You feel bad for it and slam on your brakes.
She licked her lips, then straightened with a smile.
“That’s random, mate, but I love you too.
” Words they had said to each other a hundred times before to mean goodnight or goodbye.
She put on the hat.
Nev flushed. She looked angry, but no, that couldn’t be right. Probably embarrassed.
Ronnie tried to set her at ease. “I had fun tonight.” She rolled her shoulders. “Tomorrow’s a leg day.”
Two spots of red appeared on Nev’s cheekbones. “Hat looks good on you.”
Ronnie winked.