The Twenty-One (Emerald Cove #2)

by Lauren K. McKellar

  Silence stretches between us, and even though I’m still angry, and even though he’s still a jerk, there is genuine sadness in his eyes.

  “You’re wrong,” I finally mutter.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’ve thought a million times about how I could have done things differently—”

  “I meant about this being my problem.” I curve one side of my lips up in a smile. “I need to retrieve the picnic basket.”

  “Oh.” Joel laughs, and and it feels good to make him smile. Too good.

  My heart and brain war and I take a step closer, shoving my hands in my pockets. “So ... she wasn’t the hot-air balloon, romantic picnic type, huh?”

  Icy eyes slowly travel up my jeans, my shirt, to my face. A small, half-hearted smile graces thin lips. “No. I guess not.”

  I step closer, closing the gap to just a few steps between us. “Well, in my opinion, she’s an idiot. I mean, hot-air balloon!” I gesture to the death machine behind him, but try to interject some light into my tone. “Champagne.” I point toward the basket on the ground. “If that’s not enough to make her swoon, she has problems.”

  I inch around him and pick up the forlorn basket. It’s weighty, as if they’ve barely touched the contents, and my heart goes out to the couple again.

  Then I pull it back, chain it in. This boy broke my heart. And now someone else has broken his.

  Fair is fair.

  “I have to go ...” I wave in the direction of the lot. “So if you don’t mind ...”

  “Moping somewhere else?” he asks.

  “Pretty much, that would be great.” I laugh, not unkindly, and a twinkle reappears in Joel’s eyes.

  “I deserve that, huh?” he asks, falling in step beside me.

  “Yeah.” I nod. “Yeah, you do.”

  We walk, side by side, back toward the parking lot. Magpies conduct their early-morning gossip sessions, screeching from one tree to the next. The soundtrack of rural Australia.

  Every now and then, I sneak a look across at him. He’s still got the same beautiful face, but there’s a hard edge there now, as if he’s somehow more gaunt—as if life has not been kind. Tension stretches taut between us. I’m almost afraid to speak in case it snaps.

  We stop when we reach the parking lot edge. I scan the dirt yard, my white sedan and Colin’s blue Audi ... and the truck rumbling past on the freeway. I turn to Joel, a questioning look on my face.

  “We came in the same car.”

  “Oh, man.” I shake my head. “Rough.”

  “Yeah. Left me here without any way of getting home.” He smiles, but this time there’s no mirth in it.

  “Let me call you a cab. Or ...” I suck in a deep breath, as if through a straw, my lips rounded in an O. “Or you could grab a ride back to Emerald Cove with me.”

  “Really?” he asks, his head to the side. “That’d be great, if you don’t mind.”

  “It’s fine. Where are you headed?”

  “Just to the beach at EC.”

  “No worries,” I say, all the while my head argues with me, listing the reasons this is not a smart plan.

  He left you, and doesn’t deserve it.

  He’s heartbroken.

  He’s still the guy you sometimes dream about ...

  I push that thought down as quickly as it enters my mind. Before I can think if that’s even really true, my body takes over, working on autopilot. “I’ll just say goodbye.” I jerk my head toward the office, and Joel nods, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  My trip to the office is done with power, just in case Joel is watching. Long, determined strides. Strides that I hope say I’m confident and I’m happy and I don’t miss you all at the same time. When I arrive at the rusty red container, I slide the door open. It’s dark in here, one suspended light hanging from the ceiling offering a yellow glow. Colin’s set up on his black leather desk chair, his laptop open in front of him, the bright white screen casting most of the light in the room. A filing cabinet whose colour could only be described as Manila is to his left, and a stack of paper a few centimetres thick sits next to his laptop on the shiny black desk surface. Colin hunches over the computer, his fingers furiously working the surface in front of him.

  “See ya, Colin.”

  “Cool. You going to the Constantina gallery thing on Wednesday?” He doesn’t look up from the computer as he talks, tap, tap, tapping.

  “Yeah.” I sigh, thinking of the hours of polite chitchat at my mum’s art event I’ll have to endure.

  “I’ll see you there.” I know there’s a sly smile on his face, even if I can’t see it. “If you manage to get away from the front desk. How you do such a boring job just to help your mother is beyond me.”

  “It won’t be that bad.” It will be worse. The small talk. The judgmental elite. The need to watch Dani. “Anyway, I’m outta here. Have a good one.”

  “Going home with desperate and dateless.”

  I don’t even ask how he knows. The office has no windows, so it’s not like he’d have heard. My boss can sometimes just be all-seeing, all-knowing like that. “Nope. I’m driving him to the city.”

  “Gonna have sex on the freeway.”

  “No, I’m not, Colin.”

  “Don’t forget to use protection!”

  I slam the door shut and roll my eyes, then take a deep breath and head back over to Joel, who is not desperate and dateless or someone I plan on screwing on the side of the road.

  I rifle around in my pocket for my keys then unlock the car, popping the boot and taking care not to touch the surface of the car with anything other than two fingers to avoid getting covered in the dirt that shades my white sedan. I stash the basket in the back and slam the boot shut again.

  When I walk back around the front, Joel has already seated himself on the passenger side, his seatbelt firmly in place, his long legs next to the dusty dash.

  I turn the key in the engine and pull out of the lot, heading to the freeway that will take us back to Emerald Cove, about an hour away from Swallow Fields, where Colin’s hot-air balloon business is located.

  The radio blares some incredibly loud pop-tastic music from so many years ago, and I turn the volume button down on Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” to off with such force my wrist hurts. “Sorry.” I shake my head. “I don’t usually listen to stuff like that.” I totally do.

  I chance a quick look over to Joel. He stares out the window, a vacant expression on his face.

  The car picks up speed and the steady hum of the engine swallows us up. The sun waxes its pale golden light down over the freeway that in parts is still shrouded with mist, dancing between the white trunks of the green-leaved native trees that sway as ghoulish spectres in the winter morning breeze.

  “So what have you been doing for the past three years?” I ask, keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the road.

  Joel heaves in a breath and lets it out with a whistle. “Study. I do communications, but part-time. And I work for one of those charity corporates in the city.”

  “Sounds ... rewarding.” And nothing at all like the Joel Henley I used to know.

  “It is.”

  The rumble of the road amplifies between us. It’s going to be a long hour-trip back to Emerald Cove.

  “So ... how was your balloon ride? Aside from ... you know ...” I say, more to break the silence than anything else.

  “Ha.” Joel’s voice lacks mirth. “I didn’t really notice, to tell you the truth.”

  Cars fly past us, their noise coming toward and away from us.

  “Have you been up in the balloon before?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Have you been—“

  “Sorry.” God, this is awkward. “No. I’m ... I don’t like heights.”

  “Heights?” He furrows his brow. “So hot-air balloon rides—”

  “Yep. Terrify me.” I shudder, thinking of being suspended in that tiny basket, held aloft by a simple balloon. “Did you know that 761 people wer
e killed in flight incidents in 2014?”

  He blinks. “That’s a very ... specific quote.”

  “CNN.” I shrug. “Anyway, I will not be the seven hundred and sixty-second. I happen to like keeping my feet planted firmly on the ground.” I smile, indicating to change into the right-hand lane to overtake the slow-moving caravan in front of me while still keeping well within the speed limit.

  “Do you know what fraction of people that is? Compared to the amount of people who fly in planes, and hot-air balloons, and space?”

  I wave a hand in his direction. “Don’t even try to make the number seem smaller or less likely. Colin does that all the time, and it’s not the point. Heights aren’t ... they’re not safe. I like being safe.”

  My safety, and that of my mother and sister. They’re the only things I have to be able to control.

  “Were you afraid of heights back when we ...” Joel kills the sentence slowly, then snaps his fingers together. “No, no way. I remember we dove off the Rip Bridge together.”

  Images rush through my mind. Hands, tightly gripped. Air, sucked out of our lungs. The smash of water against our skin.

  Then skin on skin, salt water mixed with our passion.

  It’s all it takes to undo me. All it takes for me to snap. “You don’t get to talk about what I used to be like. You don’t have the right.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Sorry?” I spit. The car jerks as I glance at him, and I overcorrect back into my lane. “You broke my heart,” I say, hurt bleeding from my mouth.

  Joel stills, and looks me dead in the eye. “I left a piece of mine with you.”

  The line makes me melt. It’s as if he has the power to take me back three years. Back to when we were happy. Back to when I didn’t have to worry about exams, or my dad, or my sister.

  Back to when I was just a girl in love with a boy.

  “Do you remember that time we stole a boat?”

  “Borrowed!” I open my mouth in mock outrage, but I can’t stop my smile. “I would never steal.”

  “Liberated, then.” Joel laughs. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

  I hesitate before replying. “Sure.”

  “What happened to the girl who was going to write a novel? Who was going to university to study literature and then change the world with her love of books?”

  My chest expands. It’s as if my lungs are too big for the small space inside of me. “I don’t know what happened.” Death. Death happened. “I guess ... I guess it was just easier to work for Mum, and then when this picnic stuff came up with Colin, I took that on board, too.”

  Joel frowns. “What does your dad think about that? He was always—”

  “He’s dead.” I cut him off with blunt words. “Cancer. One year ago.”

  This time, Joel’s hand connects with my knee. It’s warm there. Comforting. “I’m so sorry.”

  I shake my head and give a wan smile. “Don’t be. You didn’t do it.” It’s my standard response to a statement I’ve heard too many times. Too many times to want to discuss it further.

  We’re quiet for a few minutes, and when Joel takes his hand away, I miss the heat on my leg. And then I hate myself for missing that.

  We stop at a set of lights and my hand goes to the pocket of the door, searching for a distraction—something, anything to fill this weird space between us.

  My hand crackles plastic, and I pull a bag of lollies up, victorious. “Snake?” I offer the bag to Joel.

  He eyes it suspiciously, a smirk on his lips. “When exactly did you open these?”

  Even after all these years, he knows me so well. I pause, and twist my lips. “Yesterday,” I say, and silently add or sometime last week.

  Joel gives the bag one more look then takes out a lolly, popping it into his mouth. I do the same, a long red snake dangling between my lips.

  The car is quiet as I think more about Joel. About the way he used to make me feel. How he used to tie me in knots—

  “Did you just do the thing?”

  Joel’s voice is so out of nowhere, I almost swerve. I steady my hands on the wheel and shoot him a quick glance. “What thing?” I ask around the snake in my mouth.

  “With your snake.”

  My tongue pushes at the cherry-flavoured gelatine in my mouth. Without meaning to, I’d tied it in a knot.

  Three guesses who’s to blame for that ...

  “I guess I did.” I balance the lolly between my lips and part them, allowing Joel to see the treat inside.

  “You know in high school, people would say that doing that was a sign you gave good head,” Joel says.

  I arch an eyebrow at him then bite down on the snake with a snap. “Oh yeah?” I chomp down on the snake, spearing it in two, then poke my tongue out, showing him the two separate pieces. “What do you think this means?”

  Joel laughs, and his face changes, his lips flat-lining, then curving in a smile. “Remember that time when you made me learn all the words to the male half of the Grease mega mix, so we could sing at your school’s talent quest?”

  I cringe. “Oh God.” I make a face. “Was I really that bossy?”

  “To this day, I can never hear that song and not think of you.”

  The words hit a little too close to home. I’m so quick to fall back into an easy rhythm with him. I always have been. I roll my eyes. “What song makes you think of your ex?”

  He sighs, and runs a hand up over his face, pushing back his hood. His head is shaved, as he’s had it since he turned sixteen, and I want to run my hand over it, feel its smoothness beneath me.

  But I don’t.

  Because that would be creepy.

  “Vanessa doesn’t get a song,” Joel says in a soft voice. A voice that’s just been hurt.

  I pull up at the traffic lights and take the moment to really look at him. His lips draw in a thin line as he gazes out the window. There’s something entirely captivating about Joel Henley. And it petrifies and thrills me, all at once.

  The car behind me beeps its horn angrily, and I jolt back to reality. I flick my gaze up to the traffic light to discover it’s green, and I rush to move the car forward and continue on our way.

  Minutes later, we arrive at the beach parking lot. I pull over and double park, leaving the engine running.

  He pauses, one hand on the door. “When it comes to us, for what it’s worth? I wish I’d tried harder.”

  I steel my gaze against his. “Well, have a great ... life.”

  He nods, as if accepting this fate, and turns away. “You too.”

  He opens the door and the sounds and smells of the beach roll in—crashing waves, gulls crying, children laughing and squealing, despite the cool wintry air. Salt and coffee and petrol assault my senses, and I smile. This smell to me is home.

  Joel hops out of the car, and I can’t help but smile. In another life, another time, he would be the kind of guy I’d fantasise over. The kind of guy I could love. I once did love.

  He turns to shut the door, and just when I think he’s about to swing it closed, he pauses. “Oh, and Ellie Mayfield?” he asks.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “So let me get this straight,” Hope, my flatmate, says, her hands out in front of her, as if she’s reading them like a book. “You ran into Joel love-of-your-life Henley?” Her voice rises in pitch on the last word.

  “Shh!” I hiss, my gaze darting around the bar to make sure no one has overheard. It may be a cold Saturday afternoon in winter, but Class is still almost standing-room only. Girls in too-tight jeans and boys in even tighter ones fill the lounge seats, laughing and flirting as they knock back cocktail after cocktail. I don’t think there’s anyone here I know, but still. Better safe than sorry.

  “Sorry,” Hope whispers. She takes the empty glass of wine from in front of me and turns to Lia, the third member of our group. “You want anythi
ng else?”

  “Just an OJ, please,” Lia says, smiling. She doesn’t often drink. When your mother is a recovering alcoholic, it’s not really that surprising.

  “Okay, press pause on this story till I’m back with more.” Hope skips back behind the bar where she works, slipping past the other two bartenders and Jase, Lia’s boyfriend of two years, who owns the place.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out, sliding across the screen to read the latest message.

  Mum: Reminder about the event at Constantina this week. Need you there stuffing bags at five. Do not be late. And make sure your sister is on time.

  My breath streams out of my body. Lately, Dani has been anything but on time. Still, I’ll somehow make sure she’s there. It’s what I promised Dad I’d do.

  It’s what I always do.

  Lia reaches across the table and grabs my hand, bringing me back to the present. She lowers her voice so I have to strain to hear her against the backdrop of bar noise. “Listen, I am so sorry again that I just took off.” It takes me a few seconds to realise she’s talking about our past. “I should never have left you. Especially when you were going through—”

  I shake my head and cut her off. “It’s forgotten.”

  Lia left our school and our town when we were sixteen. It turned out, it was because her mother was into some pretty serious shit, and she was worried we’d all find out. Well, find out more than we already knew.

  That her mother had driven the two of them into a lake.

  She pauses and deep brown eyes gaze at me again. “Still, that would have been rough. Your father ... me ... Joel ...”

  I flick my hand in the air, as if it were nothing. As if those weren’t some of the loneliest years of my life. “The point is, you’re here for me now. It’s not like Joel ever came back.”

  Lia pauses, studying the grainy table top, then turns back to my face. “Ellie, you chased me.”