by Amanda Dick
I needed Maia, and the realisation came like a bolt from the blue.
I DROPPED HENRY OFF at the RSA and drove back down the main drag, parking on a side street. I wanted to kiss her, like I had last night. I wanted to ask her where she went after she left me. Where did she spend the nights? Parked up somewhere in her car, obviously. That seemed both unsafe and unnecessary. I wanted to talk to her about that, too.
I also wanted to ask her if she would like to come to another one of my favourite picnic spots for dinner tonight. I wanted to show her the beauty of this place and see it through her eyes. In truth, I just wanted to be with her. She was like a drug. The more I had, the more I wanted. It was an addiction I was more than happy to feed.
I walked along the side street towards the main entrance on the corner, expectation humming through me. It’d been such a long time since I’d felt this way, I’d forgotten how all-consuming it could be. I glanced along the service delivery lane as I passed, and there she was. Sitting outside the café, sunglasses on, head bowed. I knew from her posture that all was not well. She was bent double, her elbows on her knees, fingertips massaging her temples. I hoped like hell it was nothing to do with me, or last night.
I walked along the lane towards her, expectation turning into something else. Dread, I think. Concern, definitely.
“Hey,” I said as I got closer to her. “I was just coming to see you. Have you finished work already?”
She looked up, pale and drawn. “Hi.”
She tried her best to smile but it was obviously an act. The smile wasn’t hers. It looked like it belonged to someone else.
“Are you okay?”
“Headache,” she mumbled, sitting upright. “Migraine, I think. I’ve made it this far through the day, but it’s not going away. Feels like my head’s going to explode.”
For a second, I was relieved. It wasn’t anything to do with me. Thank God. Then concern took over. I’d never had a migraine myself, but both Bridget and Em had suffered from them and I knew the pain they could cause.
“You need a quiet, dark room and lots of water. Come home with me. The last thing you need now is this sun.”
I reached out to take her hand, not expecting her to argue. She didn’t look like she had it in her anyway. She glanced back at the doorway, gesturing vaguely with her hand.
“Bridget –“
“Don’t worry, I’ll talk to her. You wait here – I’ll just be a sec.”
I didn’t hang around for an answer, jogging over to the door and finding Bridget loading the dishwasher.
“Hey, I’m just gonna take Maia home to my place to sleep it off, okay?”
Bridget looked relieved. “Oh good, you’re here – I was going to call you and get you to run her home. She looks awful, poor love.”
“The spare room’s ready and waiting. I’ll look after her, make sure she gets some sleep.”
“Perfect. Somewhere to sleep it off in peace and quiet.” She abandoned the dishes and walked outside to give Maia a brief, gentle hug. “You feel better soon, love. And if you don’t feel up to it tomorrow, don’t come in. I can call my friend’s daughter, she’s home from uni and can work the odd day here and there for extra cash. It’ll all be fine, you just rest up, okay?”
Maia didn’t argue, not that I expected she would.
“Look after her,” Bridget said to me. “And make sure she has plenty to drink.”
“I will.”
She gave my arm a squeeze on her way back into the kitchen.
“You two are something else,” Maia mumbled, squinting up at me from behind her sunglasses.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, taking her by the hand and pulling her gently out of her seat. “Come on, I’ve got a cool, dark room with your name on it.”
“I don’t want to be any trouble,” she said, as we walked slowly back to my truck.
“You’re not.”
The short drive to my house was made in virtual silence. I switched off the car radio and cranked up the air-con to cool the cab down. She leant back against the head-rest and pulled the visor down to keep the sun out of her eyes. It brought back distant memories of Emily and the debilitating migraines she suffered three or four times a year.
“Here we are,” I said quietly, parking the truck in the shade of one of the overhanging trees lining my driveway.
“Thanks,” she said, climbing out and closing the door carefully behind her. “I really appreciate this. Sorry I’m not going to be very good company for the next little while.”
“That’s not why I offered you my spare room,” I said, waiting for her to come alongside me before walking with her to the front door. “You can entertain me with stories and songs some other time. For now, just relax and try to sleep it off.”
I unlocked the front door and went straight to the spare room, opening the windows in there and drawing the dark blue curtains, turning the room into a cool, dark cave. I switched the ceiling fan on to the lowest setting as Maia stood watching from the doorway.
“I’ll get you some water,” I said, walking past her. “Just make yourself at home, okay?”
“Thanks.”
I poured her a tall glass of cold water from the fridge, then went into the bathroom, digging around for some over-the-counter painkillers. When I got back to the bedroom, Maia had taken her sunglasses off and was sitting on the bed, looking lost and miserable.
I put the glass of water and the packet of pills on the bedside table. “If you take two of these, they might help.”
She nodded slightly, but didn’t make any effort to move. “Thanks.”
“Come on,” I said gently, picking them up and handing them to her. “They’ll help you sleep, if nothing else. Hopefully, you’ll wake up later feeling better.”
She sighed, but did as she was told, putting the water down on the bedside table again when she’d finished.
“Thank you for this,” she said again, staring up at me blankly, as though everything required far too much effort.
“You don’t need to thank me. Just lie down and get some rest.”
I pulled the door closed behind me and left her to it. The house was like an oven, and I opened the French doors to let the cool breeze in. Grabbing a beer from the fridge, I sat out on the deck overlooking the harbour and drank it.
The harbour was sparkling at high tide, a kayak and a couple of paddle-boards in the distance, making their way towards the river mouth. The afternoon was perfect, and I’d been looking forward to spending the evening with her, but not like this. I wished I could do more to help, but I knew from experience there wasn’t much more to be done except wait it out.
I remember Em once describing migraine pain as “crippling.” Judging by how pale and acquiescent she was, I thought Maia was probably in a position to agree. Sensible genes were useless against migraines, and I hated feeling so helpless. That weird sense of déjà vu hit me again.
Bridget had said she was going to call me to get me to take Maia home. Clearly, she didn’t know Maia was sleeping in her car. Was she deliberately keeping it a secret or had the subject just not come up? I didn’t blame Maia for not divulging it willingly. I doubted she’d have told me about it if I didn’t see the evidence with my own eyes. It was clearly a sore point. One thing was for sure, she couldn’t have slept off a migraine in her car, in this heat.
I took another sip of beer. Whatever reason she had for living in her car, it wasn’t good enough. There was no need for it, not with me here, and a spare room available. As soon as she was feeling better, I was going to present her with that option.
I glanced back through the house at the spare room door, my heart pumping as if I had just run a marathon. I’d known her a total of six days and now I was contemplating asking her to move in with me.
Holy shit.
EIGHT O’CLOCK CAME and went and Maia hadn’t roused. I didn’t want to wake her, so I made dinner for two, just in case she was hungry when she wok
e up. After I ate, I turned the TV down low and lay on the couch with a beer in the dark.
In spite of the circumstances, it felt good to have someone else in the house. When we weren’t together, she crept into my thoughts. I wondered where she was, what she was doing. When we were together, she seemed to fill the space around us, and not just with her physical presence, either.
Maybe it wasn’t her, maybe it was me. Whenever she was near, I felt better. Being with her made everything seem brighter, more hopeful. I felt alive again.
Almost as if she could hear me, the spare room door opened and she stood there, dishevelled and half-asleep and yet looking so completely enchanting I was momentarily speechless. She was the epitome of untamed beauty. She brushed her hair away from her face and finger-combed it into place at the crown. As soon as she laid eyes on me, she gave me a small smile.
“Hi,” she said, standing there, completely oblivious to the effect she was having on me.
“Hi,” I sat up, taking control of my senses again. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Much better.”
“Good. Hungry? I made you some dinner, just in case.”
“You did?”
She looked shocked. Still foggy, but shocked nonetheless.
“I mean, don’t get excited, it’s nothing fancy – just pasta.”
“It sounds great. Thank you.”
My heart floated inside my chest, buoyed by an overwhelming sense of contentment. I wanted to make her happy, surprise her, spoil her. She deserved it, for all she had done for me this past week, whether she knew it or not.
“Do you want to go freshen up or something while I heat it up? There’s fresh towels in the bathroom, if you want to take a shower.”
She glanced down the hall to the bathroom, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Are you sure?”
“Positive,” I said, standing up. “How does fifteen minutes grab you?”
She smiled. “Plenty long enough. Thank you.”
I went into the kitchen and began to heat up her dinner. I heard her turn the shower on. She was only a few metres away from me, with a couple of thin, old walls between us.
Life has a funny way of reminding you of stuff just when you least expect it. A flashback came at me from out of nowhere, this one just as clear as the last.
Em was in the shower, and I went in to watch, leaning back against the bathroom cabinet. She grinned at me, not in the least bit surprised to see me there, and grabbed me, pulling me into the shower with her. She let me wash her, all over, with shower gel and my bare hands. We were in there so long, we used up all the hot water.
God, I missed her. I missed the way she smelled and the way she seemed to know what I was thinking even before I did. I missed how much she trusted me. I missed the little things she used to do for me, like make me coffee in the morning. Like letting me finish the crossword in the Herald in peace and quiet. Like knowing when I just needed to hold her close to me. Like the way she never went to sleep without a part of her body touching mine – a foot, a hand, a knee. It was as if she was assuring herself that I was going to stay there all night, that I wasn’t going to leave her.
And then she left me. How’s that for irony?
I looked up and it was Maia who was standing there, not Em. It was like a reminder – this was the present, that was the past. Time to put them back into their rightful places.
“Feel better?” I asked.
She nodded, but something was wrong. She didn’t look relaxed, she looked nervous. For a moment, I wondered if she had been inside my head. Had I said something aloud, something I hadn’t meant to?
Her damp hair had left watermarks on the shoulders of her shirt, and I couldn’t take my eyes off them as she sat down at the table. Determined to play it cool, I set the dinner plate down in front of her.
“Sorry,” I said with a tight smile. “I might’ve over-heated it. Just give it a minute or two.”
“Thank you,” she managed, smiling that foreign smile that didn’t belong to her.
I sat down at the table opposite her, bringing my beer with me. Something was definitely up. The question was, was I game enough to ask her what?
“I saw Emily’s things in the bathroom,” she said, before I could decide. She stared at the plate in front of her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snoop.”
I scratched my chin, waiting for her to look up at me so I could see her face properly, see what was going on inside her head. But she wasn’t obliging. It wasn’t like I’d tried to hide any of this stuff from her. Maybe I should’ve.
“It’s crazy isn’t it?” I said quietly. “After five years, you’d think it’d get easier.”
She looked up at me, and for a moment, it felt like we were connected again, just like we’d been the first time we’d met. It felt as if she had reached out and plugged into me, as if she knew how I was feeling without me having to say it. As if she knew how hard this was for me, and yet how much I wanted to do it anyway.
“I don’t know if it gets easier or not,” she said gently. “I think that maybe you just get used to carrying it around with you, like extra weight. It doesn’t get easier, so much as it gets familiar.”
That sounded like experience talking. Had she lost someone, too – is that what we had in common? Was that the thing that had drawn us together? It seemed logical to me. Kindred spirits, united by the common thread of grief. It would explain a hell of a lot.
“I can’t get rid of it,” I said finally. “I mean, she’s been gone five years and I can’t make myself get rid of anything of hers. Clothes, make-up, shoes – none of it. It’s all still here. Throwing it away just feels…” I shrugged helplessly, the words just beyond my reach. “I think the worst part is not knowing. If she were dead, we’d be able to grieve, have a funeral, get on with our lives. But just not knowing, that’s the really tough part – the questions, the second-guessing, the endless speculation… ”
Maia reached over and laid her hand on top of mine. I looked up and her eyes seemed larger, deeper, fuller. I knew then that I was right. It leaves a scar on your soul when you lose someone you love. You’re branded. It changes you in ways you never imagined it would. You can’t prepare for it, you can’t anticipate it or how you will react to it. I think that’s because you’re too scared to think about it, in case you will it into being. Instead, you try to make it through your life oblivious, living day to day, constantly moving forward.
But when the unthinkable finally happens, it forces you to stop. To feel. To lose a part of yourself to the horror. And you’re never really the same.
“I used to feel her, all around me,” I admitted, shocking myself. I’d never said that to anyone before, not even Vinnie. “It was like she was watching me. But lately… I don’t know. It’s different.”
I wanted to explain how different, but I didn’t know how. When it came right down to it, I’m not sure it was something I was capable of understanding, much less explaining.
“She’s so lucky,” Maia said, tears gathering in her eyes. “To have so many people who love her, who miss her.”
If only loving her, missing her, could bring her back to me. If it could, she’d have been home long ago.
I moved my hand to enclose hers. I wanted her to know how much it meant to me, that she could let me talk about Em like this, but I couldn’t find the words. Instead, I just sat there, holding her hand on the table.
Like everyone kept telling me, it was time to move on. I couldn’t dwell anymore – literally. It hurt too much. I glanced down at the plate in front of her and summoned up a smile from somewhere.
“You better eat up before it gets cold and I have to re-heat it again. That’s if I haven’t completely destroyed your appetite already?”
Her smile softened. “No, I’m still hungry. And you can talk about Emily any time you want to. She was a big part of your life – it’d be weird if you didn’t talk about her.”
The more time I spent with her,
the more I was starting to believe in fate, karma, destiny and all that stuff. How else could I explain this? She seemed to be exactly what I needed, when I needed it.
I squeezed her hand. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”
I gave her some space to eat, and then we did the dishes together. She was still a little fragile from the migraine, but she said she felt a lot better, which was good news. There was something we needed to talk about and I wanted her full attention when we did. We sat down on the couch together, the TV still turned down low, the lights even lower.
“I need to ask you something,” I said, turning to her.
She looked a little nervous. “Okay.”
I was nervous myself. I didn’t want to offend her.
“This sleeping in your car thing,” I began carefully. “It makes me really uncomfortable, knowing you’re out there, God knows where, each night. It just doesn’t seem right to me.”
She sat back on the couch, her knees pulled up, chin resting on them as if she was barricading herself against me. I reached over and rubbed her leg gently.
“I’m not judging you,” I murmured. “I just want to help. I have a spare room, and it’s yours if you want it, for however long you want it. No expectations, no conditions.”
She looked like she might burst into tears and I didn’t know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“I’m not trying to pressure you into doing anything you don’t want to do,” I said quickly. “And like I said, the room doesn’t come with any strings attached. I just want you to be safe.”
Suddenly, she released her knees and sat forward, wrapping her arms around me with a little whimper that took me completely by surprise. We sat there, holding on to each other, for several long minutes. I still wasn’t sure – was this a yes-please? Or a no-thank-you-but-thank-you-for-caring?
“I know all of this – us – is moving pretty quickly, but it just… I don’t know. It doesn’t feel wrong, not to me anyway.”
In fact, it felt more right than anything else had in the past five years.
