by Gabi Moore
“No, no I understand exactly what you mean. Like, we’ll never starve again, or have to worry about where to sleep for the night, but I almost feel like that was a better kind of stress than, well… you know,” I said and held up my own books.
She giggled again.
She had a rich, soft laugh that felt like a warm breeze in mid-summer. Hearing it again like that I realized that all this time I had been missing it.
“You too, huh? I feel you. A few rounds in the ring with my new tutor group isn’t exactly life-threatening, but it sure feels like it!”
We let the smiles fade from our faces slowly, and then we were there together, again, and it felt very much like something should happen.
“I thought about you a lot, after everything,” I said quietly. She looked away and then back into my eyes.
“Me too.”
“You never got in touch though,” I added.
She frowned.
“Neither did you,” she said simply.
I shifted my weight. To hell with the lecture.
“But …I didn’t feel it was right to contact you. It wasn’t my place,” I said. Her frown softened and she sighed.
“I don’t know what to say. I thought about it. I thought about finding you and calling you up. I saw you gave that interview as well but then I thought, you’re probably moving on, probably continuing with your training…”
“I thought about you every moment,” I blurted. She looked at me quickly. In those eyes was all the same gentleness and openness that had drawn me in that first night I had literally run into her on the deck of the ship. But she looked pained.
“I never got in touch because of …well, you know. Because of Anthony. It still weighs on me, Ellie.”
“Me too,” she said quietly. “But Todd, please don’t blame yourself…”
“I do blame myself. I had no right. Say what you want about him, you were his fiancée… and that’s not the sort of man I want to be.”
She sighed loudly and looked away again.
“Todd, Anthony killed himself.”
I was taken aback. What an odd thing to say.
“What? But the cut Charlie gave him…”
“Charlie had nothing to do with anything. Anthony had a history with alcohol. It doesn’t make anything any easier, but I understand a little better now why it happened. He poisoned himself. The doctors chalked it up to a big mistake, that he was delirious from the heat, or dehydrated, or he just didn’t realize how much he drank. But I know Anthony. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about any of this. I’ve spent months in therapy, and I’m finally getting out of it now, you know? And a lot can change in six months…”
“Eight months.”
“What?”
“It’s been eight months since we last saw each other.”
She gave me a slow, loaded look.
“Hey, Todd?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you wanna just start over again?”
“What …do you mean?”
“I mean… I’ve only just bumped into you and already everything is so serious. I’m too young to carry around ghosts, Todd. I’m done mourning and moping. Can we just…” here she screwed her eyes as she stared towards the sun and thought for a moment. “Can we just pretend that none of it ever happened?”
I was surprised.
“Let’s just imagine that you and I have never even met before, and see what happens?” she said cautiously.
I smiled at her, a little unsure. But the look on her face was so light and welcoming I couldn’t help but nod.
“Yeah, OK. Why not? Like, we just pretend this is the first time we’re meeting?”
The look on her freckled face was so deliciously mischievous.
“Yeah! Let’s leave all of that in the past. No guilt, no memories and dredging up stuff that’s already over. Just you, me, and whatever happens today, right here,” she said, and swooped her hand to gesture across the courtyard.
“No pressure?” I said, and gave her a naughty wink.
“No pressure,” she said with smile.
I exhaled and looked around at the courtyard. The students had filtered off to the surrounding lecture halls. But making that class was the last thing on my mind right now.
I extended my hand to her.
“Well, in that case, Todd McGregor,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”
She grinned.
“Elinor King,” she said and nodded cordially.
“Can I call you Ellie?”
“Sure.”
I leant forward and lowered my voice. She leant forward to hear me.
“Before we start, though, there is just one thing I’d like to dredge up from the past,” I said, suddenly serious.
“What’s that?”
“Well, I still owe you that second cigarette,” I said with a grin.
She laughed.
“Fair’s fair! Pay up then so we can start with our clean slate,” she said and held out her hand.
“Trouble is… I don’t smoke anymore,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows.
“Really? Hm, I’m impressed.”
“Yes, well, as you said, a lot can change in six months!”
“Eight,” she said and winked back at me.
When we decided to ditch classes for the rest of the day and head over to my apartment, it felt like we had both been washed away by a deluge of stories and jokes and questions and anecdotes. I had never spoken so much with anyone. We had spent at least three hours that afternoon chatting away and I still felt like I hadn’t said enough. She was the same Ellie I remembered, but with so many other, different facets to her it was like seeing a 3D version of something you had only till then known from flat pictures.
There was no topic we didn’t jump into and yack away at. It felt so easy and wonderful and happy. And after some time it really did feel like we had started anew. She slowly started to become a new person to me, and I realized in talking to her how different I myself was. There was a comfortable familiarity that was set off just there, off on the horizon, where we could come and find it later. I already knew, in my own small, unacknowledged way, that I loved her. I already knew that my body understood and adored hers. I already knew that should we look closely enough, we could find depths of passion between us …after all, we’d already done it.
And yet it felt easy to merely put that aside for a moment and just… talk. Like we could take our time wading back up to that far point again, assured of its existence, guaranteed of what delicious things were waiting there for us when we were ready for them. It was like we had jumbled all the usual milestones of a typical relationship. We had ticked off the gut-wrenching parts, the steamy sex parts, the soft, tender parts. What we hadn’t done was be silly. We hadn’t goofed around and talked nonsense and relaxed on a sofa with one another. But we were sure as hell catching up on that front.
“You know what I think?” she said suddenly, putting her coffee cup off to the side. We were already on our third pot and the sun had just set.
“What?” I said.
“I think you and I should go on a date.”
“A date? Then what the hell have we been doing all this time?” I said laughing. She playfully slapped my forearm.
“I’m serious! Consider yourself vetted for a real, proper, genuine date.” I looked down at her hand touching my arm, right where she had left it.
“Vetted, huh? Awesome. Glad it only took…” I checked my watch. “Five and a half hours!”
“God, has it really been that long?” she said.
I nodded.
“I shudder to think what a big, long, serious, genuine date would look like with you,” I said. She laughed.
“Well, first of all you’re going to meet me at that little pizza place on fourth, you know the one? The one that has all those pot plants on the wall?”
“Carlucci’s or something?”
“I don’t know. But there. We meet at 6pm,
to give us lots of time.”
“Time for…?”
“Wooing. You’re going to woo me, you see,” she said.
“Uh huh. I see. How am I going to do that?”
“Well, you’re going to pitch up with some random little gift. I’ll say how you shouldn’t have, but really I’ll love it. Then you’ll say something sweet, and you’ll ask if you can kiss me.”
“Damn. I sound charming.”
“You are charming,” she said and flashed me sparkly eyes. “I mean, will be charming, on our date…”
She couldn’t help but giggle.
“What happens next?” I said, putting my chin in my hands.
“Well… after a lovely meal and amazing conversation, we head out for a walk over the commons, to see if we can spot the moon. By that point, you’ll probably be wanting to hold my hand.”
“Sounds about right.”
“Then, I’ll suggest we come back to my place, for a coffee, only, I won’t be really asking you for a coffee,” I said.
I gave a phony gasp.
“What! You don’t mean to say…”
“Oh yes. By that point I’ll be seducing you.”
“You minx, you.”
“I know. Thing is, you’ll be a little reluctant. You’ll say, are you sure?”
“And…?”
“I’ll understand that it’s too soon. We agree to reach a friendly compromise.”
“A compromise?”
“We settle on a long, sexy kiss against a tree on the commons, and bid each other adieu,” she said with a nod of her head.
“Oh god, do I get another date?” I asked.
She laughed loudly.
“Depends on how the kiss goes, I guess.”
Epilogue - Ellie
Four Years later
Saint Majella. Patron saint of expectant mothers. And the island on which all of this started.
It was ridiculous how close it was to the mainland, when you really looked. Because of its size, it wasn’t shown on most regular maps. Though it was only an unassuming 12.4-acre hunk of ground in the middle of nowhere, it had actually taken up much, much more room in my mind. My mother and sister were horrified when I told them our plan to return. They’re superstitious thinkers, though. I’m not.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” I announced, and went into the cabin bathroom to heave a little. I came back up, hand clamped over my belly. Todd looked concerned.
“We can anchor here and wait a little? Till the nausea passes?” he said.
I shook my head.
“No, let’s keep going. I want to make it there before noon.”
He nodded and turned again to the wheel, looking like he was born to sail small watercraft out on the blue yonder.
The ocean below was a jeweled blue, and chopped through with waves and soft undercurrents that made it look like shattered but still intact glass. The sky up overhead was equally elemental – far up and unconcerned with us below. It had been four long months to plan this trip. Todd already had some yachting experience but he first needed to get a proper license. Then we needed to rent and insure little ‘Honeybee’, get special permits to visit the island, and then get prior approval to make sure we weren’t pitching up on the island during seal pupping season.
We had both laughed hard at the conversation we’d had with the environmental protection bureaucrats. A surly woman had informed us, “you have to think of the seals… it’s one of their breeding grounds. Of course they’re not always there.” Without skipping a beat Todd had replied, “Yes, I know that, there weren’t any seals last time I was there” and she gave us both a doubtful look. “Sir, it’s a highly-protected island, with restricted access. When did you possibly visit it?” Cheery Todd had replied “When I was training to be a seal” and man, we had laughed for days about the look that came over that surly woman’s face just at that moment.
But all the paperwork was done now, all the boxes were ticked and the fees paid, and now we were allowed to hunt out this tiny, obscure little patch of island that had once been our home for three long, strange days. And we couldn’t have chosen a more perfect day. The sun was warm but not hot, and seagulls wheeled silently in the clear breeze, a pleasant wind that also blew into the sails and stretched them taught, like giant canvas lungs.
Todd was busy and completely engrossed, so I had time to perch on the edge and feel the ocean spray kiss my legs. There was still no sign of it. In fact, we had to hit the GPS coordinates just right if we expected to find this little speck. Todd was shirtless and lost in his work, as he always was when something required his hands. That’s one of the things I loved about him – the fact that he was somehow at his most still and calm when he was in motion. He wasn’t a man built to sit on the sidelines and watch. He had insisted on learning to sail this boat and, remarkably, he had picked it all up pretty quickly.
I looked down at the ruffled hem of my skirt whipping and rippling in the wind, and smiled. It wasn’t happiness I felt, but something like a slow, quiet contentment. It was the knowledge that the thing that was meant to happen was happening.
“Todd …am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?”
I shaded my eyes with one hand and pointed to the horizon with the other. Hands on his hips and his feet spread wide, he glanced over then grinned at me.
“Of course it is, did you think I wouldn’t get us there?” he said and laughed.
“Not for a second,” I said and turned my squinting eyes back to the faint snatch of brown in that uniform blue landscape. From this far away the whole place looked meager and bedraggled. The trees seemed to be clinging to the place like they knew they were surrounded on all sides by salt water. The whole place had a ramshackle feel about it.
Todd was expertly hopping around the deck, busying himself with ropes and grabbing hold of the rudder in his strong hands. We were heading right for it. I’m not a very practical woman, I’ll be the first to admit it, but it’s times like these I can see exactly where Todd was coming from. There was a simple, noble beauty to the whole expedition. Using nothing but wind, water and brainpower to navigate the wild and hone in on the single precise thing you desired. If you could know the pleasure in that humble activity, you’d also know everything you’d ever need to about a man like Todd.
It took us at least twenty minutes more to approach land, and I watched in a dozy, half-meditative state as the speck of brown grew and grew on the horizon and eventually expanded to cover all of it. We were only a few yards out when Todd dropped anchor, lowered the steps into the water and invited me, smiling ear to ear, to step down.
I hobbled a step at a time. He had fought me on it, but I wasn’t going to bring my prosthetic with me. Not for this trip. It was silly, I know, and a little stubborn, but it felt right. It was like confronting an old bully or someone from your past I never quite forgave. I wanted to meet the island as I was: one foot less but in every other way, much, much more of a person than the first time I had stepped foot here.
I took the first step, took the second, then plunged to the waist into the cool blue, Todd holding out his hands down below to support me. I lifted up my skirt high and was momentarily glad I had slipped my bikini on underneath everything.
The coarse sand sieved through my toes as I walked up and towards the land, legs in slow motion through the water. The ocean had a way of doing that: of slowing everything down, whether you liked it or not. The landscape before us was still alien to me: after all, I had only woken up on this island long after all the main drama had passed. For me, it had been the neatest scene change. I had blacked out on the ship, and come to, right on these sands.
But not Todd.
I scanned his face to try and read what he was feeling, to find any little sign of recognition. But he was simply engrossed in the task at hand, and held my hand firmly as we walked over to the dry sand.
Once we set foot on land, I lowered my skirt hem and took a full breath. The wind took it up again
and played with it, as it did my hair, and all the strange yet almost familiar smells of salt and fish and rock introduced themselves.
“So this is it,” I said.
“This is it.”
Soon, life would whirl around on its axis again and everything would change forever. Both Todd and I were entering into a new life stage together, and so coming here to say goodbye to this place was a now-or-never deal. Hadn’t we both dreamt of this island frequently for the past five years? Hadn’t we both laughed and smiled whenever someone ask where we had met, and cast sidelong glances at the other? It was now time to move on. Time to get the ‘closure’ I had tried in vain to explain to my mother and sister.
“Can I take that for you?” he said and gestured to my backpack.
“It’s OK. I want to hold it,” I said.
“Did you… did you want to do it now?”
I thought for a moment.
“Yes. Let’s do it.”
After we had both taken our fill of the views in all directions, we walked in silence deeper into jungly part of the island. In my memories, the trees had seemed so much denser and foreboding than they seemed now. They just looked like aging, non-threatening versions of themselves. It was cooler in the shade as we walked on.
“What about here?” he asked.
I looked over at the big palm tree he was standing beside.
“Yes. That looks good,” I said.
I told myself I wouldn’t cry. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit down hard to gather myself for a second. I slid off my backpack, unzipped it and reached inside. I took out two things as Todd watched me solemnly.
The first was a little wreath I had made from willow branches and flowers. A ribbon with the letter ‘A’ painted on it was tied to the top of the wreath. The second object was an envelope, and inside that envelope was a letter that I hadn’t ever read.
Hands trembling, I opened the envelope and took it out. Todd reached out to help but I waved him off. This was something I had to do myself. I opened the folded letter, smoothed it out and set it aside. Then I put the wreath at the base of the tree, and cleared my throat. I tried my hardest to hold off on my tears. I wasn’t sad. I wanted to be here, and I wanted to do this. But that didn’t make it hurt any less.
