“She said that you stopped– that you couldn’t move.”
His response was a slow nod of his head, and a clenched jaw.
“She also said that they all thought you were dead. It must have been bad, Tyler. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I don’t want to fucking talk about it,” he stated simply.
“Why Tyler? Do you think I can’t handle whatever is happening with you? I mean, I don’t know if you’re going crazy, or if you’re dying and I’m fucking scared. I’m in love with you, and I don’t know what’s going to happen from one day to the next. I don’t know if I’m going to wake up and have you next to me or if you’ll be gone and it scares me.”
“Then say the word, Sarah, tell me I’m hurting you, and I’ll leave.”
Tears burned in my eyes. “Don’t leave, Tyler. Don’t leave and tell me you won’t hurt me.”
“I told you how this was, sweetheart. I told you I don’t do relationships, and I don’t do futures. I just do now. If you can’t handle here and now with me, I’ll walk away. It’ll fucking hurt, but hurting you is worse, and I don’t want to hurt you, Sarah. I’m not strong enough to stay away from you for good – unless that’s what you want. I’ll do anything you want.”
“Except tell me what’s going on with you, right? What is it, Tyler? I Googled the things Erica told me, and I freaked myself out, but I thought it might be panic attacks – is that what’s happening? Are you having panic attacks?”
“No.”
“Are you dying?”
“We’re all dying,” he said, and I slapped his chest.
“Answer the question, Tyler!”
“No. I’m not dying.”
“Then what? Tell me.”
“Please, don’t do this, can we just spend the day together?”
“I don’t want a day, Tyler. I want every day,” I cried.
He released a long sigh then wrapped me in his arms, kissing me on the top of my head. “I want that too, sweetheart.”
I held him tight, listening to his heart as I put my head to his chest and wished for things to be different. Why did the most beautiful man in the world, also have to be the most complicated one?
“Your mum said I should forget about you. She said that your love for me was a problem.”
His arms tightened around me again. “She gives good advice.”
“Do you want me to take it?”
“No. I don’t want you to take it all, I just know it would be for the best.”
“You are without a doubt, the most infuriating man I’ve ever met. You talk in circles, you won’t answer any of my questions, and you put the entire existence of our relationship in my hands. That isn’t fair, Tyler.”
“It’s selfish, I know. But, unless you tell me to stop, I’m going to keep coming back to you.”
“All that does is tell me you’re going to keep leaving me.”
“Yes, and I’m going to keep hurting you, but I’m going to love you too, above everything else.”
“God, I don’t want to feel like this,” I cried.
“Then tell me to go, sweetheart. End it before we go too far.”
I looked up into his eyes for a long time, thoughts flying through my mind, confusing me even more. Logically, I knew I should have told him to end it. I should have protected my heart. But for the life of me, I couldn’t say the words.
“Stay,” is all I said, before pressing my face back into his chest and sobbing into his shirt, hating the situation I was in, but loving him more. “You’re an arsehole, by the way.”
“I know, sweetheart,” he replied softly.
He held me for a long time without saying anything, his hand moving up and down my back in a soothing motion, and when it seemed that I’d finally stopped crying, he pulled away and held me at arm’s length.
“I bought you a gift,” he said, before releasing me and walking out into the living room. “It’s nothing much, but it’s just something to show you how much you mean to me.”
“What is it?” I asked, wiping at my swollen eyes and sniffling unattractively.
“Open it,” he said softly, handing me a small gift bag. When I reached inside, I pulled out a navy blue velvet pouch that contained a bracelet with what looked like coordinates stamped on it.
“What’s this?” I asked, slipping it onto my wrist and admiring the silver and brass in the cuff design.
He sat beside me and ran his fingers over the stamping. “It’s the coordinates of the very spot that I broke your ankle, or as I prefer to think of it, the moment you fell for me.”
I grinned despite myself, loving the thoughtful gift. “You know, this goes pretty perfectly with what I got you,” I said.
“Really?” he asked with a curious grin.
“Yes, I bought you a GPS tracker so you can’t take off on me again.”
“Seriously?” he laughed.
“No,” I replied. “But I did buy you a gift – well, it’s kind of something for the both of us.”
His brow rose as I reached into my bedside drawer and pulled out the envelope with his gift inside and handed it over.
“Wow,” he said, sliding out the card and looking inside. “A weekend in Noumea?”
“Well, I couldn’t afford France, and you said you wanted to travel, so…” I shrugged, not sure if it was still something he wanted to do together.
Holding out the printed booking confirmation, he ran his fingers lightly over the date stamp. “You bought this while I was gone,” he stated, a smile playing on his lips as he met my eyes.
“You promised you’d always come back,” I whispered.
“Sweetheart, this is the most perfect thing,” he said, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to my lips. “When do we leave?”
“It’s for the New Year. Do you think can you stick around until then?”
“Sweetheart, if I could help it, I’d be right by your side forever.”
“Forever would be the perfect amount of time,” I said, wrapping my arms around him and burying my face in his neck.
18
“AHHHH! YOU’RE crazy!” I squealed, laughing as I watched Tyler do a complete three-sixty while kite surfing in the pure blue waters of Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia. We’d arrived the Friday night, and after making good use of our hotel room that overlooked the sea and had a tub big enough to fit two, we slept in late then ventured out to see what the French-speaking city had to offer.
I’d already tried to kite surf and had failed miserably, ending up in the water more times than I was able to stay upright. But Tyler, well, he was his usual golden self and picked it up easily since he already knew how to surf.
“Très bien!” commented the young guy who had given up trying to teach me and was just sitting beside me in a small boat as we both watched Tyler skilfully dance over the waves.
I only had my high school French to rely on while we were there, so I knew he’d said ‘very good’.
“C'est fantastique,” I responded, grinning happily as the wind whipped at my wet hair, and I bounced along in the water, just drinking in the sight of Tyler and his fearlessness.
“You wish you could?” the young guy asked in stilted English, pointing to Tyler and his tricks.
With a slight shrug of my shoulders, I shook my head. “Really, I just like watching him.”
I watched for another fifteen minutes before returning to shore and sitting in the soft white sand to wait for Tyler to finish, and by the time he was done, I’d had a lovely conversation with another Aussie girl who told me all about the tourist train that would take us to a lookout so we could see the whole island. Standing with my back to the surf, I was so engrossed talking to her that I didn’t notice Tyler was beside me until he shook his head like a dog and sprayed me with sea water.
“Tyler!” I shrieked, apologising to the girl for my boyfriend’s antics, while also laughing as he wrapped his arms around my waist and basically growled into my neck. She didn’t seem to min
d, in fact, I’m pretty sure she happily caught an eyeful of Tyler’s ripped abs the way her gaze lingered before she walked off in the opposite direction.
I turned around in his arms and laced my fingers behind his neck, playing with the base of his wet hair. “What are you – fifteen?” I asked with a laugh as he held me against him.
“Somewhere around there,” he responded, planting a wet kiss in my lips before squinting up at the sky. “I need food.”
“Me too. Let’s get lunch then afterward that girl was telling me about a lookout we can ride some street train up to. You want to go? You can see all around the island, it’s supposed to be really pretty.”
“Anything you want, sweetheart,” he said with a wink before giving my arse a gentle pat and leading me up the beach.
There were plenty of restaurants around, but we ended up eating from a vendor at a market while we walked around and checked out everything they had on offer. We were only there until lunchtime the next day, so we didn’t really want to waste time sitting down.
After the market, we spent a while asking for directions by playing English versus French charades. Eventually we found where we had to go to catch what was called the Tcho Tcho Train. Basically, it was this big yellow open air tourist train that drove us on the roads of Noumea and past several attractions, most notably the man-made harbours, and a beautiful old church with golden statues. Then we began to climb the mountain and below were flowering trees and box-like houses that dotted their way all across the landscape.
“We’re hoping to get a really beautiful sunset tonight,” the driver said as we were let out at the Ouen Toro Lookout, which was a large grassy area with a massive old cannon preserved in the middle of it.
“This is pretty amazing,” Tyler said in my ear as we looked down on the spectacular view of rolling green hills that were surrounded by a sea littered with small boats in one direction and water that was almost glass-like in the other.
He wrapped his arms around me as I leaned into his chest. “It is,” I sighed. “I just wish we weren’t going home already tomorrow.”
“Don't think about it, sweetheart. Just think about right now,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to my temple. “Right now is perfect.”
“I love you, Tyler,” I said, resting my head against his shoulder as we watched the sun slowly drop beyond the horizon.
“I love you too, sweetheart,” he said, tightening his arms around me and just enjoying the view until it was time to go.
***
With the holiday period over, it was time to start focusing on what I was going to do with my life. Since I’d graduated, it meant that my parents weren’t going to fund me forever, and I’d have to get a job to pay my rent.
Even before I had graduated, I’d been sending query letters out, and I’d gotten a few replies that meant that when we returned from Noumea, I needed to send them my resume and try to set up an interview with them.
“I thought you guys were thinking of doing the whole work and travel thing like we are,” Janesa said one hot afternoon in January while we were sitting around Alex’s pool. They were due to leave the country in a fortnight after being accepted in a work exchange program to Mexico.
“I think working, saving then travelling might work out better for me so I don’t lose my apartment, and Tyler, well, who really knows what his plans are. I don’t think he could be contracted the work-study programs work. He could be overseas for a couple of months then disappear and god only knows what he does then.”
“What did he tell you when he came back this time?” she asked, fanning herself with the latest issue of Cosmopolitan.
“Nothing. He won’t tell me anything.”
“Shit, Sarah, that’s got to be hard. Why are you putting up with that? I mean, Alex and I haven’t been together much longer than you guys have been, but that guy seriously has no secrets. I even know how many times he takes a shit each day.”
“That’s disgusting, Nesa,” I responded, rolling my eyes from behind my dark glasses.
“I know, but that’s love. You learn all this stuff about each other, and if you aren’t too grossed out to continue sleeping with them then you probably have something. If you don’t learn about the bad, how can you really know if you’re going to make it?”
“You can’t know, Janesa – even with all that stuff, you just never know if you’re going to make it. People break up over stupid stuff like leaving the toilet seat up and not doing dishes. Things are great when we’re together, and we just, work, you know?”
“Except you don’t know if or when he’s going to piss off on you again.”
“Yeah, there’s that. I feel a bit like the Time Travellers Wife in that respect.”
She shrugged. “Maybe that’s what happens?”
“Seriously?” I laughed. “You think he might be a time traveller?”
“Explains a lot, don’t you think?”
I started laughing at the absurdity of it all, attracting the attention of the men who were busy barbequing meat for our dinner.
“What’s so funny?” Alex asked, walking over to where we sat under the shade umbrella with our feet dangling in the water. Tyler followed and slid down so he was sitting beside me.
“Nothing really, we were just wondering if maybe Tyler’s a time traveller since he vanishes without explanation,” Janesa blurted out, and the moment she said it, I wished she hadn’t, because although Tyler was smiling when he responded, I could see that he didn’t find her question very funny.
“No, Janesa, I’m not a time traveller,” he stated, before lifting his legs out of the pool and standing before heading straight back over to the barbeque, his posture stiff.
“Did he seriously just get upset about that?” Janessa asked, her eyebrows raised as she looked between Alex and me. Alex ran his hand over her head affectionately.
“He’s all right, Nes. He’s just a bit touchy about the time he’s away. He doesn’t like talking about it. Don’t worry about it, OK?” He kissed her cheek then headed back to the barbeque with Tyler and tried to joke around with him and get the mood back to what it was before.
But Tyler didn’t snap out of it. All the way through dinner he was very quiet and not overly affectionate toward me. We left early and when he pulled up in front of my apartment blocked, he kept the engine running.
“I’m going to stay at my place tonight,” he said, wiping his hand over his mouth as though he was annoyed at something.
“Why? Because of the time travelling comment? It was just a joke, Tyler – a shit one, I know, but we were talking and I just said that I feel like I’m The Time Traveller’s Wife because I don’t know how much time I have with you. And I worry, OK? I fucking worry every day that I’m going to wake up and you’ll be gone and then I worry even more that you’re going to go and not come back. You won’t tell me what’s going on with you, but you expect me to just be OK with this limbo we’re existing in. Why can’t you just tell me where you go?”
“It’s got nothing to do with the time travelling comment. I just need some space, and by the sounds of things, you need space too.”
“No, Tyler. I don’t need space. I need you to let me in. I don’t need you to push me away. I’m not getting out of this car. We have an issue, let’s just sort it out like adults. Where do you go? Why do you go?”
“Please Sarah, I don’t want to fight over this.”
“This isn’t all about you, Tyler – what the hell is going on? Why did you go all weird at dinner?”
He gripped the steering wheel hard. “Because I’m obviously hurting you. You just said yourself that you’re constantly worried.”
“Of course I’m worried, Tyler – I love you for fuck’s sake! Don’t you get that? I am one hundred percent, head over heels in love with you and that fact does scare the crap out of me because you yourself said you’re going to go and come back, and go and come back, and I love you so fucking much that I’m willing to be with you desp
ite that. I want every moment I can have with you, Tyler and if that makes me pitiful or a doormat, I don’t care. I just want you, anyway I can have you.”
When I finished, he didn’t speak, he just sat with his hands still on the steering wheel and his eyes straight ahead, the engine still running.
“This isn’t working, Sarah,” he said finally.
“Excuse me?”
Turning his eyes to meet mine, I saw the muscle in the side of his jaw working. “You and me. This isn’t going to work.”
“I thought I was the one who got to decide whether this was working or not?”
“I changed my mind.”
“You changed…what? So, I don’t get a say in this anymore?”
“I was stupid thinking I could do this. I can’t. I’m sorry, Sarah, I just can’t.”
My eyes began to burn. “Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?”
“Sarah,” he said, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “Please don’t make this any harder than it already is. Please let me go.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I promised you I wouldn’t. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Fuck, Sarah,” he growled. “Please! I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “No.”
“Fine,” he said, reaching down to shut off the engine. “I’ll fucking walk.”
Then he got out of the car and slammed the door, jolting me for a moment before I undid my seatbelt and got out as well, but the time my foot hit the pavement, I looked around in the darkness and he wasn’t even there.
“What the hell?” I said to myself, squinting to look in every direction. But, he wasn’t anywhere – either he ran, or he really was a bloody time traveller. “You fucking arsehole,” I cried, realising he was gone. “You’d better come back this time. I didn’t ask you to stop.”
19
“I’M GUESSING you’re calling because something went wrong with that boy you ran back to Sydney for at Christmas time,” mum said on the phone a few nights later when I’d managed to stop crying.
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