Chapter Six
Milo
Allie and I have not spoken a word to each other since the whole bears and coats deal. Nothing.
And in a scene I thought I’d never wind up in, we are right out here, on the snow, a short distance away from the station, by something they call ‘the garage’ but which is more like an auto-repair shop with Disneyland-blue wooden slats.
This place – it’s truly something. Breath-taking.
Almost . . . divine in some way; the way the sun never leaves, the total white-blue expanse and boundlessness of it, the jagged white of the mountains, like thick, crumpled copy paper.
The edge of the world. Earth before humanity.
It’s why the buildings – the lodges, the station – look out of place.
A Coke can that should’ve been edited out in the background of a period drama.
Allie jangles keys in her hand.
She’s prepping a blood-orange snowmobile we’ve got to ride, and we’ve got ride it together.
I still can’t get past Polly partnering us off.
I almost laughed out loud when she said it, but instead I just pretended I was totally OK with the whole thing, just in case Polly thought I was an asshole, and Allie and I just silently allowed the awkwardness in like a sour smell through an open window.
Everyone else though – they seem just fine.
Peachy. Polly’s with Lars, the dude who’s sailing us to the island, and Jameson is with Iris, who seems to be cool with me.
She keeps shooting me warm – albeit slightly apprehensive – smiles, and she and Jameson are getting along like a house on fire, because, well, this is Jameson and he’d obviously get along with a week-old dinner roll.
From what I can remember from everything Allie told me, Iris is the same breed.
I wonder what she thinks of all this. If she even knows the truth: that Allie sold the story for Bermuda, and squashed the B those dominos falling in that order.
Money secured for Bermuda suddenly. B collecting them like pieces of humanity, in fiction, and reality.
A crack in the voice on a particular word.
The way someone orders their eggs. A laugh when you’re not expecting it.
But we’re worlds away from when we first texted. In every single way there is.
I slip the helmet over my head and Allie puts on her own.
‘Visor,’ she says.
‘What?’
‘Pull the visor down.’ And before I can do it, she reaches over with her hand and slides it down over my eyes with a hard clack. ‘We’re running late. We can’t keep wasting time.’
‘Heard,’ I say, but God, she is being stick-up-her-ass self-important right now. As if it’s my fault I don’t know how to work a snowmobile or know whatever helmet protocol this is.
I can feel myself slipping into wanting to strike up a two-year-old conversation I’ve been having in my head with her.
Why did you do it? Why didn’t you just ask if you needed help; needed money?
Was any of it real? Were we? I really thought it was the best thing I’d ever had.
Because how can we just not acknowledge the fact we’re here together?
It feels ridiculous not to mention it. Unbearable.
And I want to, but I swallow it back down.
Doesn’t help that I can’t stop sneaking glances at her either. She is, annoyingly, totally beautiful. Even more so than I remember, and I remember that pretty damn clearly.
‘OK, so, snowmobile rules, for safety,’ Allie says, muffledly. Apparently, Allie finds it very easy to not acknowledge the fact we’re here together.
‘All right.’
‘I’ll run through the basics . . .’
‘OK.’
‘And we’ll have to move quickly because we’re running out of time. Jameson and Iris are already at the boat.’
Eerily, we planned this, back then; loosely, the way you do during whispered, midnight conversations. Things that feel half-plan, half-daydream. Our friends meeting. Us meeting, as a foursome. At Jameson’s farm. Or touring us around June House; all the pink, the gnome décor.
‘Allie . . .’ Her name drifts from my mouth. I knew it would at some point, but I was hoping I might be able to keep it in a little longer.
She stops, mid-running-through-the-basics. ‘Yes?’
‘I . . . I uh.’ I lift up my visor. ‘I . . . Before we go, I just wanted to say that . . . I really didn’t know.’
Allie freezes. Behind the clear glass of her visor, her round blue eyes blink just once. A strange tinge of irritation I recognise – like I’ve messed up and forced someone to break character mid-scene. ‘Know what?’ she asks, coldly.
‘That you were here. I just wanted you to know that. That I really didn’t know.’
She says nothing. Regardless of this whole horrible thing, her betrayal, this will be as shitty for her too.
She’ll be embarrassed. And while there’s a part of me that thinks, Good, actions have consequences, I don’t want her to think this is how I do things.
Showing up out of the blue, two years later, like, ‘Time to pay for what you’ve done! ’
‘Right,’ she says. ‘OK, then. Sure.’
Oh. But her tone.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I ask.
‘I said OK, Milo.’
‘No, but . . . but you said it like you don’t believe me.’
She gives a harsh scoff, moves past me, starts to pull at a strap holding her backpack in place on the rack at the back of the machine. ‘Milo, I’m working. We have a lot to do, I don’t have time for this right now.’
‘No, I know, I just . . . wanted to acknowledge it,’ I explain. ‘Because I’m finding this hard and weird and intense and confronting and—’
‘You’re finding it hard?’
I stare at her.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ she says, harshly.
‘And I haven’t done anything wrong either.’
And now she stares at me, unblinking, nostrils flared, as if she’s holding back a gazillion words she wants to drown me in. Then she says, jaw tensed, ‘Snowmobile rules.’
I swallow down my irritation and instead nod, like a scolded dog.
She continues, talking in the tone of a bored store clerk, and I listen, but all I can think about is how it is tough, being here.
Not just having to face her, this woman who as good as sawed through every fibre of trust in my body.
But having to . . . look at her. It’s harder than I thought it ever could be.
Equally, it isn’t easy looking away either, from those familiar, lost eyes, that impy little quirk that means one of her eyebrows is always slightly cocked, as if she’s always got a little attitude that makes me sort of want to piss her off on purpose—
‘Milo?’
‘S-sorry. What?’
‘Hand,’ she grumbles.
‘Hand?’
Like a robot, I put my hand on hers, two cushioned gloves, one on top of the other.
She jolts it back like I just poked her with a hot skewer. ‘W-what are you doing?’
‘You said hand—’
‘I said when the snowmobile is moving,’ – she lifts the visor – ‘I’ll be communicating with my hand. My hand. And we like you to mirror back with your left hand, so we know you’re aware.’
‘Oh. Sorry. It’s just . . . jet lag,’ I say.
‘So, this,’ she continues, holding her hands in a wave, then closes her gloved fist, ‘it could mean something on the track. So, I’ll be braking, so brace.’
‘Right. OK.’
‘Why are you saluting at me?’
I laugh. Plainly because it’s such a stupid, farcical sentence. ‘No, I just . . . I don’t know, I don’t want you thinking I’m not listening.’
‘I can make my own mind up,’ she says. ‘I can think whatever I choose to.’
‘. . . OK?’
‘And Polly isn’t stupid, by the way,’ she adds, and it’s released in one rushed sentence as if she’s been dying to say it. ‘Jumping in like that, when she paired us up. Acting like you were totally fine with it, leaving me to look like the one who wasn’t.’
I hold my hands up at my sides. ‘I was being polite, Allie. Keeping up appearances or whatever. I thought you might be grateful.’
‘Grateful? Oh, right, thanks,’ she scoffs, giving a taut, false laugh. Then, she says, ‘Keeping up appearances,’ as if only to herself.
‘Yeah, keeping up appearances,’ I say, folding my arms. ‘Saving face, or like, keeping my composure, in case Polly—’
‘You were spinning the narrative, you mean?’ she shoots at me.
‘I mean, I keep asking this, but what? Like, are you being serious right now?’