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She ran her hands over her face, then through her hair, tugging at knots in the messy waves, then trudged into the bathroom to splash water on her face. As she wiped it dry, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Eyes dark. Mouth down turned.
She blinked and for a moment saw herself at fifteen, locked in the bathroom of the tiny flat she’d shared with her mum, and this feeling, the same familiar, cutting pain, crawling beneath the surface of her skin. It wasn’t the pain of a girl pining for a man in her life. It was the pain of a girl who’d never been bright enough, good enough, devoted enough to fill the subsequent hole in her mother’s heart.
How could an invisible girl like that ever hope to be enough to fill anyone else’s heart?
Rosie licked her dry lips, then wiped fingers beneath her moist eyes. Time to go. Focussing on the colossal mystery of the universe would render her woes less important. It had to.
Too cold and too miserable to get completely naked, she pulled her clothes on over the top of her flannelette pyjamas—a fluffy wool knee-length cardigan she’d picked up in a thrift shop years before, a thick grey scarf, a lumpy red beanie with two fat, wobbly pom-poms on top, and the jeans she’d worn the day before. She didn’t bother with her contacts, leaving her glasses on instead.
The hike to the plateau with her massive backpack was not in the last bit invigorating. It was cold, uncomfortable, and when she hit the spot the night sky was covered in patchy cloud.
She popped up the one-man dome tent which was just tall enough for her to stand up in, threw in all her stuff to keep the dew away and laid a canvas-backed picnic blanket upon the already moist grass. She set up her telescope. And turned on the battery-operated light attached to her notebook.
She sat on the ground cross-legged, waiting for the cloud cover to open up, revealing a sprinkle of stars.
Time marched on and the sky gave her nothing.
No mystery, no majesty, nothing to take her mind off the world at her feet and all the heartache that came with it. She slumped back onto the rug and closed her eyes.
She and Adele had both been wrong. Cameron wasn’t really any different from any of the others. They all left her eventually; location had no effect on the matter.
She heard a twig snap, and her eyes flew open.
It could have been a possum. Or there had long since been rumours of a big cat loose in the area. And crazy axe-murderers were a genuine fear for some people for a good reason.
Rosie was on her feet, spare tripod gripped in her hands, eyes narrowed, searching the shadows, when Cameron appeared through the brush, tall, imposing, stunning. It was as though a girl could simply imagine a man like him into existence through sheer wishful thinking.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Rosalind cried, waggling a big black metallic object Cameron’s way.
He snuck both hands out of the warm pockets of his jacket and held them in front of him in surrender. ‘I tried calling your mobile several times but you didn’t answer. So I called Adele.’
‘Adele?’
‘She gave me her home number when I first rang you at the planetarium. I assumed in case of emergencies.’
Rosalind glowered, but at least she was lowering her weapon at the same time. ‘Sounds like her. Though you’ve got her motives dead wrong.’
‘Either way, she told me how to find you in the dead of the night in this crazy middle-of-nowhere place, where anything could happen to you and nobody would ever know.’
He stepped forward, shoes slipping in the soft, muddy earth. By the look in her eyes—behind glasses that made her look smart enough to be an astrophysicist, yet somehow still her usual effortlessly sexy self—she was far from happy to see him.
He didn’t blame her. He’d acted just the way Dylan had when they’d been boys, wiping the chess board clean at the first sign the game wasn’t going the exact way he’d intended it go.
After she’d gone, he’d lasted about three hours before his furniture had begun mocking him. The stool she’d sat upon when he’d kissed her stuck out from under the bench stubbornly. The beige rug on which her pink shoes had been haphazardly dumped, and the cream couch where her bright poncho had been suggestively draped, had seemed drab and bare. Even the fire had hissed at him, and, whereas for her it had been roaring, for him alone it had crumbled into a sorry pile of ash.
He’d told himself he felt like there were ants crawling under his skin because she was out there feeling upset and it had been his fault. But the truth was his home had felt empty because she wasn’t in it. Because he’d expected more of their night together. Before he’d acted like such a lummox, he’d planned on having more time to familiarise himself with her soft skin, to let her sexy hair slide through his fingers. To know those lips as intimately as he could. And the rest.
