‘Well, let me just say that you have much better coffee. He only has instant. It’s like the Third World next door.’ Lizzie took a sip and then blew across the milky froth to cool it.
‘C’mon Lizzie. Spill. What’s it really been like working with him? No more door slamming?’
‘No, none. We’ve done most of our communicating by text message. I don’t believe there’s an emoticon for “door slam”.’ Lizzie searched around in her handbag for her phone.
‘You mean you haven’t seen him in the flesh?’ Julia sounded perplexed.
‘No. He’s a man of very few words, our Dan. I get lots of messages like this: “Bobcat organised for Thursday 7 a.m.” Or,’ Lizzie scrolled down the screen with a fast index finger. ‘“See pix and choose pavers”. ’
‘Such a sweet talker.’
‘Sweet? No. Talker? Not exactly.’
‘He really is the strong, silent type, huh?’ Julia grinned.
For a week, Lizzie and Dan had been going back and forth like that. Since their first discussion, when she’d propositioned him in his living room and he’d given her some feedback on her rough plans, she hadn’t seen him face to face. He still hadn’t emerged from his house. One of the young waitresses had volunteered to do the meals on wheels run every night and for some reason didn’t need much convincing to take on the task. Lizzie was glad to be relieved of that duty, what with the extra work on the car park, on top of her regular job. And although Dan hadn’t been seen on the site, he was obviously working all hours because things had been happening. The bitumen had been ripped up, deposited in a battered old truck and taken away to be recycled. The paving crew from Victor Harbor had had a cancellation – conveniently facilitated by a 25 per cent bonus on their payment for doing the job more quickly – and were starting the next day. It was all going too smoothly and with a lot less face time than Lizzie had anticipated. While part of her was relieved about that, another part was just the slightest bit disappointed. He’d been keeping his distance for a reason. But, she reminded herself, the most important thing was that the work was being done and done quickly and they would meet their deadline.
‘Lizzie?’ Julia clicked her fingers in front of Lizzie’s face.
‘Huh?’
‘You were off with the fairies.’
‘Sorry, thinking too much.’
Julia smiled. ‘I was saying how much this means to Ry and me.’
‘Stop it.’
‘I’m serious, Lizzie. We didn’t know how to help Dan. And then you come up with your brilliant idea for the pub. Maybe all he needs is to get back to work.’
Lizzie knew it wouldn’t be as simple as that by a long shot. But what Julia said was true. It was a start. ‘Everyone wants to feel useful, Jools.’
Julia exhaled in frustration. ‘Arrrgh! Tell me about it. I’m so bored I baked cupcakes yesterday. With real icing. And then I ate them all.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Tell me about it. I had to go for an hour-long walk on the beach today to atone for my sins. And that wasn’t even enough to work off the icing.’
Lizzie put her cup down on the bench, spread her fingers out on the marble, feeling the cool stone.
‘So work not pouring in?’
Julia sighed. ‘A few small jobs, but if things don’t pick up I’m going to have to change the name of my business from Middle of Nowhere Consulting to No Consulting.’
‘Why don’t you just take the summer off? I’m sure we can do a lot of scheming and planning for your life out there on the sand under a beach umbrella.’
Julia sighed. ‘Crises don’t have seasons, Lizzie. I’m a consultant. We never take holidays. If the work flows in I’ll have to grab it. But until it does, there is already something I need your help with.’
Lizzie propped her elbow on the bench and rested her chin in her hand. ‘In the spare few seconds I have in the day, in between managing your fiancé’s pub, working on the renovation with Dan and sleeping — all by my little old self, I might add — I’m all yours.’
Julia walked around the bench and sat on the stool next to Lizzie. ‘Do you think you can spare a minute or two in your busy schedule to be my bridesmaid?’
‘Of course I can.’ Lizzie half-laughed, half-cried as she jumped to her feet and threw her arms around her best friend. ‘I’ve been wondering when you were going to ask me. I’m thrilled. Beyond thrilled.’ Lizzie let go and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Julia smudged hers away too. ‘Unless, of course, you make me wear a disgusting dress. Can it please not be lavender? Or purple of any description? God, I hate purple.’
Julia laughed. ‘I promise you can choose whatever dress you want. It can be black for all I care. I just want to marry Ry and throw a fantastic party for all our family and friends.’
Julia’s bottom lip trembled and Lizzie knew exactly why. There was one person who would be missing the wedding – Julia’s mother, Mary. She’d died suddenly eighteen months before and it had taken a year after that for Julia to return to Middle Point and work up the courage to sell the family home. And now, being home again, living among the memories of her childhood and her family, with both parents gone, was hard. It showed in Julia’s eyes. Julia’s mum would never know that she and Ry were getting married after all those years. Would never meet any future rug rats, who might, at certain times in their lives, look like their grandmother.
Lizzie regarded her friend, tears welling, her own heart swollen with love. She knew that Julia would come to realise, as she had, that people have a way of creating families of their own with their own unbreakable bonds of friendship and trust and love.
‘Have you set a date yet?’
Julia shook her head. ‘Nothing specific. We were thinking maybe February next year, after the holiday season is over and it’s quieter at the pub. But it’s all a bit up in the air. Ry wants to wait until Dan is…ready.’
Ready was a loaded word where Dan was concerned, Lizzie figured.
‘Has Ry actually asked him to be his best man?’
‘Not yet. You know what guys are like. Ry keeps finding spurious reasons not to. I think he’s just worried Dan’ll say no. But that doesn’t have to stop us from driving up to Adelaide and visiting a few wedding boutiques, does it?’
Lizzie tried not to let her face fall. She pressed her sweaty palms onto her skirt. The thought of going to the city left a lump in her stomach that felt like concrete.
‘Wedding dress shopping in the city? I think I might be washing my hair that day.’
Julia tugged at Lizzie’s fingers. ‘C’mon. I thought we could have some girly shopping time together, just you and me. No boys.’
Lizzie frowned. ‘I’m so out of practice with the whole girly shopping thing.’
‘The truth is, Lizzie, I wondered if trying on a few gowns might help me decide.’ Julia took a deep breath and fresh tears welled in her eyes. ‘I found Mum’s wedding dress a few months ago when I was cleaning out her wardrobe.’
‘Oh Jools.’ Lizzie reached out to squeeze her hand.
‘It’s beautiful and hippie-ish and so her. And it fits me perfectly. I just don’t know that it’s me. I thought trying on some other gowns might help me make a decision. Will you come with me and help me decide what to do?’ Julia asked.
Lizzie nodded. ‘Of course.’
Lizzie spent the rest of the afternoon ordering stock, meeting the winemaker from a McLaren Vale winery who wanted to spruik their new variety, accommodating a couple of roster requests and probably a good deal too much time simply standing out in the sun checking out progress in the old car park. Pallet loads of pavers had been delivered and were sitting in the far corner, having arrived after lunch on the back of a semi-trailer, and small wooden stakes connected with blue string marked out the edges of the new garden bed around the fenced boundary. The boundary. Where the trees would be planted. Lizzie grabbed her phone from her pocket. After one ring, Dan picked up the call.
‘Elizabeth.’
‘Dan, the trees.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Originally I was thinking plane trees but now I’m worried they’ll grow too big and what if they don’t survive down here along the coast? We need to decide on something else.’
‘Lucky I haven’t ordered them yet.’
‘Oh. Good.’ Then she stopped. ‘Why haven’t you ordered them yet? Didn’t we decide on that last week?’
‘You decided on that last week. I’m still waiting on quotes from nurseries and they’re checking on availability. They can’t just pluck mature trees out of the air.’
‘Okay. Will you ask the nurseries what might grow best down here? They’ll know.’
‘I’ve already asked, Elizabeth.’
‘Oh. Okay. Hey, the pavers arrived today.’
‘I know.’
Lizzie decided that having a conversation with Dan was totally infuriating. It was like talking to someone who was already two chapters ahead in the same book. ‘How do you know? Have you been down here?’
‘The paving guys called me. Hey, I need to ask you…’ And then he stopped.
Lizzie waited. ‘Ask me what?’
‘No, it doesn’t matter. I’m waiting on costings for the outdoor furniture. I’ll email you when I get it.’
‘Okay.’
‘Okay,’ Dan replied.
Was Lizzie imagining it or was he hesitating again? ‘I’ll wait for your email then.’
‘Cheers.’ And he ended the call.
Dan didn’t want to ’fess up. The truth was that he had been down to the pub. He’d just done it late at night, in the darkness, when he could be sure the rest of Middle Point was tucked up in bed. Elizabeth had called him a vampire, only coming out at night. Maybe it was a fitting description.
She’d seemed suspicious that he wasn’t on top of the project. He couldn’t blame her, given his project management style was a little experimental, but he knew exactly what was going on. Right down to the number of pavers he’d calculated for the new dining area and the exact cost of dumping the bitumen. He’d created all the documentation he needed and cost projections for Ry on his laptop, the same laptop that had become his connection to the world. He could order groceries, Skype his parents, keep up with what was happening in the rest of the world, all from a twelve-inch screen and a phone line.
The only drawback was that he was doing it in isolation. He regretted that he hadn’t been on site with the tradies, felt the sun on his face or the cool breeze on the back of his neck when he was covered with sweat. He had to see the site coming together to get a real feel for how it was working and what else needed to be done. None of that came from staring at a computer screen or sending text messages. He looked through his front windows and checked the sky. It was already growing dark. He decided it was time for another walk.
Dan had grown to appreciate Middle Point at night. He loved the quiet, the rhythmic and relentless breaking of the waves interrupted only by the barking of a curious dog or the occasional car passing on the esplanade. When it wasn’t too windy he could hear the relaxed chatter of people sitting out on their balconies, taking in the last of the light before the blanket of night fell over the point. He’d come to learn the rhythms of the place in the past four months. On weekends he watched from his living room as the street teemed with cars and people and surf school trailers and body boarders and little kids with buckets and spades and faces white with sunscreen.
By nightfall it was very different. He’d been able to walk the beach with barely any other person for kilometres. He figured the fresh air and sunlight exhausted people down here. Everyone was out on the beach during the day and sound asleep when the sun fell.
The thing about coming out at night was that he missed watching the surfers. Man, he’d wanted to be one of them. He’d always liked watching them out in the water, wherever he’d been in the world. It looked so Zen, the way they sat floating on their boards, waiting for a wave. Not just any wave. They’d learned to read the rhythms of the ocean and, most importantly, they were patient. He wished he’d learned as a kid when he still had a low centre of gravity and little fear. He doubted he’d be able to stand up on a board now without looking like an arse.
‘Dan?’
He stopped in his tracks.
‘Is that you, Dan?’
He knew Elizabeth’s voice, even in the distance and above the crash of the waves. He’d know it in his sleep. She was heading towards him from the other direction, coming along the esplanade from the pub. It was like a scene out of a movie, he thought. The dim glow of a streetlight, a beautiful woman, a man with empty arms, suddenly wanting her in them.
‘Hey,’ he called out. And then she was right there, looking up into his face with her smiling, generous eyes. The night breeze teased the soft golden strands of her hair and he was confounded by a sudden urge to run his fingers through them, wondering what it would be like to hold her face in his hands and pull her lips to his in a kiss.
‘Where are you off to?’ If Lizzie was surprised to see him out at night, she didn’t show it. It might be what she’d ask anyone she came across on the streets of Middle Point in the evening.
‘Just walking,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘What about you?’
‘I left my phone at work so I had to go back. It was right there on my desk as it turns out. I’m the one the cops call if we get broken into or if the place burns down so I need my phone.’
‘Right.’
‘I was just heading home. Again,’ she laughed.
Over her shoulder, the lights of the pub in the distance flickered in the twilight, beckoning him. Maybe he wouldn’t get there tonight after all.
‘Actually,’ she started and then paused before searching his face. ‘Why don’t you come and have a look? See how things are going?’
‘I don’t know…’
Lizzie stepped in close to him and slipped her hand into his, her fingers soft and warm in the cool of his palm. She tugged him closer.
What the hell?
‘C’mon,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not far.’
He was stuck. Silent. There he was, in the dark, holding the hand of a beautiful woman and he remembered something about himself. About the way he used to be. And in that instant, he decided to let himself enjoy this moment, this one small slice of not feeling like crap, a sliver of time he might look back on one day and remember that he’d been standing with this woman, who was holding his hand with gentle insistence, like he was a real man. And he was holding hers like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like it was exactly where he wanted to be.
‘Dan,’ she said softly. ‘Come with me.’
CHAPTER
8
Dan’s hand was large and strong and Lizzie’s felt small and delicate in its cocoon. They walked along the roadway in silence. There was nothing but the waves on the sand as a sound effect in the night. Step by step, they fell into an easy rhythm with each other, his long strides slowing to meet hers, accommodating her, meeting her relaxed saunter.
Lizzie hadn’t planned to reach out and touch him, to entwine her fingers in his, to capture his attention that way. But she’d seen a flicker of hesitation in his eyes, a moment of vulnerability, and she’d acted without thinking. Going to the pub seemed like a first step and she knew, some part of her was convinced, that it was one he really wanted to make.
So they walked. It was safer for him now, empty and shadowy in the streets. They weren’t likely to meet anyone who might want to stop and chat. No one would want to interrupt two people walking in the darkness, holding hands, looking like clandestine lovers.
A wind picked up, swept off the water and it cooled her cheek, tickling her silver earring against the soft skin of her neck. She glanced up, watched the breeze play with Dan’s black hair, rustling it around his eyes. There was definitely something different about his face tonight, she noticed with a nervous tightening in her throat.
She needed some saf
e ground. ‘You know Ry and Julia are planning the wedding?’
‘Don’t tell me. Vegas and a fake Elvis marriage celebrant?’
She laughed. ‘I don’t think so unless Julia has some plans that this bridesmaid doesn’t know about.’
‘That’s nice. You as the bridesmaid.’ She felt a tightening in his grip. ‘Haven’t you been best friends since you were kids?’
Lizzie smiled at each memory, most of them created on the beach just a glance away or on these seaside streets. ‘Besties since she sat next to me on the first day of primary school and shared her coloured pencils with me.’
‘You like it that Julia’s come home.’
She gave him a quick glance but had to look away. His gaze was too open, he looked too interested. As if he was opening himself up to take her in.
‘Nothing was quite the same around here when Julia was in Melbourne for all those years. No matter how many new friends you make along the way, no one really knows you like your best and oldest.’
‘True.’
‘You and Ry have that, don’t you?’
Dan smiled and nodded. ‘Are you a born and bred Middle Point girl or a blow-in like me?’
Lizzie chuckled. ‘Lived here my whole life.’ Give or take a few months. He didn’t need to know the exact truth. ‘After I was born, Mum brought me and my brother, Joe, down here to live with my nanna. That’s her house I live in.’
Dan’s eyes became curious, full of questions. She knew what he was thinking.
‘And your father?’
Lizzie scoffed, looked up to the flickering stars in the southern sky. ‘What father?’
‘It’s like that, is it?’
‘The man who fathered me was never a part of my life or my brother’s. We made a family without him.’
‘So where are they? Your mum, Joe, your nanna.’
Someone Like You Page 8
