Chapter Twenty-One
Milo
Allie and I kissed last night – and I can’t stop thinking about it. Her mouth. The tiny gasps of breath. A slow, beautiful smile dawning across her face as we pulled away the first time.
And I want to do it again and again.
It’s all I’ve thought about. Can’t get her out of my damn head.
We kissed more after the first – the ankle bath poured away, more wood on the fire – pressed next to each other on a creaking camp bed.
Her hands cradling my face, her leg bent and L-shaped over my thigh, my hand skimming the curve of her breast, the sounds in the back of her throat, her body moving into my hands .
. . God. It was difficult to stay in the moment.
That woman. I’ve never wanted someone more.
I got up to light more candles, to reinforce the door, the wind thrashing it angrily, and Allie fell gently to sleep, a tiny smile on her face.
I kept throwing glances over at her sleeping soundly, thinking about how much like the rest of my life it felt, and how I wanted to kiss her again.
The whole day was a glimpse into something that could be.
And, in the camp bed next to hers, I fell asleep too.
Fast. And yeah, I never just fall asleep.
But, while I’d been daydreaming, Allie had been formulating an itinerary for our final day here in Cote Rock in her sleep. She woke me up already dressed and raring to go this morning. Work mode: activated.
‘We need to head to my puffins, then go back to camp,’ she’d smiled from the old wooden table. ‘Weather’s better today.’
I wanted to take her hand, drag her over to the bed, fold her into me, put my lips all over her warm skin. But of course I didn’t. I just agreed, jumped up, got dressed, pretended not to see her glance over when I took off last night’s shirt. Obedient, as Iris said. That’s me.
And that’s where we are. The sky a clean-slate blue, the way it is after the spring clean of a storm, standing on a cliff face.
Surrounded by puffins. And I am totally terrified of falling to my death, but also, like always out here, in awe.
These birds, they’re completely, totally awesome.
Their beaks like orange windsails, their neon feet.
Real-life cartoon characters. I can’t stop filming them.
I can’t believe these things exist. The babies are called pufflings, too. Pufflings. The cutest shit.
Allie is in full work mode, investigating their burrows.
‘Would you mind passing me my camera, please?’ she asks.
I’m in charge of the bag again.
‘Is that the, uh – the same one we had with the auks? The black probe? Is that what I’m looking for?’ I laugh at the word ‘probe’, and although she would normally totally not, Captain Lake’s mouth twitches. Her arm is deep into a crevice in the rock.
‘That’s the one.’
I want to tell her she’s hot when she’s in work mode.
That she’s hot in every mode, but when she’s all badass like this – smart, that goddamn genius brain with all those polished cogs, whirring – I have to fight every urge to pull her into me .
. . I wouldn’t. She’d kick my ass if I did.
I mean, she is currently headfirst in a hole in the side of the same mountain that’s turning my legs to banana pudding.
Which is just a very Allie thing for her to do.
She is not thinking of last night, like I am.
She is not thinking of our mouths together, like I am . . .
She emerges, takes the probe from me, and she inserts it into the burrow.
‘I just . . .’ Her voice is muffled, she’s practically lying down on the side of this cliff. ‘I need to get a good angle.’
‘Jeez. Be careful, Allie.’
‘It’s fine.’
‘But it’s high up here. Like, insanely.’ I’ve been trying not to look down. I’ve been pretty distracted, but I did not notice how high we were. Until, well, now. ‘We were not this high before. Right?’
‘Try and sit your body somewhere, if you’re feeling the height,’ she says, reasonably.
‘It helps with grounding.’ She emerges again, squints, fishing her hand deeper and deeper into the burrow.
She holds a little screen, watches. ‘They’re nestled so far in .
. . Is that . . .’ She’s fully in her head. Laser-focused.
‘Little puffin dudes are probably wondering what the hell is going on,’ I mumble, letting out a long breath. ‘Kind of like I am right now. I still find it crazy we don’t have a safety harness? Or like . . . I don’t know. A parachute.’ I laugh, but I do sort of mean it.
‘Little puffin dudes are just fine,’ she says. ‘It’s minimal disturbance for them, I assure you. At the very least, they – gosh, this is such a bloody deep burrow – they might just be raising a single proverbial eyebrow.’
‘Hm,’ I say, pressing my hands against the rock behind me, placing my back against it. Grounding my ass . . . ‘Do puffins have eyebrows then?’
‘I said proverbial,’ she repeats with a tiny smirk. ‘Oh. Oh my God. No. H-hang on—’
‘What?’
Allie has brightened. Suddenly. Like someone has run a fingertip on the stiff end of a paintbrush, spraying stars onto a calm, still canvas. ‘They’re— Oh my God.’ She looks up at me. ‘They’re back together.’
‘Who – what?’
‘Milo, this is . . .’ She smiles, then starts to laugh.
It’s beautiful, her laugh. Her smile, that slightly wonky tooth, that gasped breath on her inhale.
The way she says my name. All lightness and music.
‘Lucky and Mart – we try not to name them normally, because you can get attached and it can get sad, but . . . well, we named these—’
‘Lucky and Mart . . .’
‘Yes! A researcher named them, a few years ago, can’t remember the reason why. This colony’s pretty small, so it’s easier to get invested. But the first year I was here, they’d broken up. Like, full on broken up and switched partners.’
‘That happens?’
‘Not normally, but occasionally, yeah. I mean, like humans, anything goes sometimes. But anyway, Lucky and Mart – they were always together. And then suddenly they weren’t.’ She laughs. She talks fast, excitedly. It’s infectious, and I’m already smiling.
‘Cute shit,’ I smile.
‘Yep. Well. Lucky and Mart appear to have missed each other, because . . . they’re back together.’ Then she does the cutest thing. She squeaks and claps her hands together. ‘They’re in there, Milo! Together again.’
‘What? Seriously?’
‘And there’s an egg too.’
‘Oh, man, really?’ and suddenly I’m invested.
I am so invested in Lucky and Mart and their little puffling baby.
I’m so happy for Lucky and Mart that I kind of want to reach on in there and take them for a pizza and karaoke.
Maybe have them sing ‘Perfect Day’ with me, buy ice-cream on the way home . . .
‘Wanna see?’ she asks, sliding her arm back into the burrow.
She holds the screen up to me and I take it.
And I genuinely feel emotion at the sight of it.
A wave of it. These two cute puffins totally snuggled together, in the dark, away from the cold and away from the world. A small egg nestled beneath them.
‘Wow. They’re . . . they’re awesome, Allie.’
‘I know.’ She smiles down at me. ‘Isn’t it just the most perfect sight?’
‘I dunno,’ I say. ‘I think seeing you this happy is.’ Allie looks down at her feet, but a smile prods the corner of her mouth. ‘If that’s not too corny to say.’
‘It is,’ she says. ‘But thank you for saying it.’
We stay there, together, watching Lucky and Mart in calm, happy silence for a while.
They’re so beautiful. Like creatures from a Pixar movie.
They snuffle next to each other, eyes blinking, beaks occasionally clacking together.
They look like they’ve always been this way.
I wonder what made them leave. And what made them find their way back?
‘How long?’
Allie looks over at me, sun in her eyes. ‘How long?’
‘Yeah,’ I ask. ‘How long have they been apart?’
And she clears her throat. ‘Two years,’ she says. ‘They’ve been apart two years.’