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“We can report them to the police, you know.”
He shook his head, “I don’t want that kind of trouble.”
“But it’s as much theft and destruction of property as it would be if they broke into a house.” She wasn’t entirely sure of the legal point of distinction there, it likely wasn’t that simple, but her bet was neither was Drum, and she was correct at least in principle.
She smelt the rain before she felt it, hot tar and cooling engines, interrupting their conversation. Drum moved to gather their rubbish and dispose of it. She followed him down the stairs, through the kitchen and out onto the street.
“Wait, I haven’t paid.” She fumbled for her wallet. She’d have to go back inside the restaurant.
“It’s taken care of.”
“What, you paid for me? No, no, no.”
“We’re getting wet.”
“We’ll dry.” His line, her turn with it.
“You can buy coffee,” he said, and walked off.
She was forced to jog to catch up to him. He took her to the takeaway window of a coffee bar, and he did let her pay, explaining that he’d do some odd jobs for Paul to earn the meal. When their coffees were ready, he led her to one of the covered picnic table pavilions fronting the beach. From where they sat you could see the part of coastline where his cave was. It was a craggy, dark shadow, gothic fairy story forbidding.
They’d avoided getting too wet, most of the distance travelled being under shop awnings, except for the last dash to the picnic table. Had the weather been better, all of these tiny bright-coloured pavilions would’ve been taken by families, by couples eating their takeaway meals and picnic dinners, as they watched the beach and shooed scavenging gulls away.
Foley slid into the bench seat with her back against its wall. Drum sat opposite, but he was being dripped on from the roof. He dodged it, a second drip started up, he dodged that too, until a whole line of drips came down on him.
She patted the seat beside her and he moved into it. They faced the ocean and drank their coffee. If this had been a proper date, this is where they’d have talked, told each other secrets, kissed, made out in the rain with the salt drift, the smell of barbeques hastily abandoned, and the thrill of each other’s hands, sheltered from discovery by the bad weather, by their lack of care what anyone thought.
Drum sat stiffly beside her, holding his body away, but he was less remote, less anxious than he had been at the beginning of last night. Looking at each other was awkward, but she was intensely aware of him all the same.
“You let me touch you last night. You held me.”
There was something wrong with her that she wanted to prod at him like this, wanted to be with him at all. Nothing stopped someone being friends with a homeless person, but what she was doing was inappropriate, it was unprofessional. She was tense inside out for his reaction.
He angled his chin to look at her out of one eye. “You were asleep.”
She blushed. “I was aware of you. I knew you put your arm around me.” She was an idiot. Maybe she was the one with a mental illness.
He grunted, shifted, banged his knee on the underside of the table.
She sipped the last of her coffee and tried to feel bad about being caught out, about what she was doing, about flirting with a homeless guy it was her job to help.
“Did you hear anything my flatmate said?” If Nat could see her now, hear her. Shit.
He shook his head, looked out at the beach. She wasn’t sure she believed that. Nat was loud, but he can’t have heard it all, or he wouldn’t have been so far up the hill.
“It’s going to rain all night. And even if it doesn’t, you’ll be drenched before you get home. Let me take you somewhere dry for the night.”
“You need to stop.”
Foley looked down at her hands, fingers twisted together in her lap. “I can’t stop.”
It was the simplest thing she could say when her chest was crawling with feeling, writhing with the sense of him. It was more than the desire to make sure he was safe. This wasn’t the job that was making her throat tight, making her desperate to touch him again, lean her head on his shoulder and have him put his arm around her.
She hadn’t felt this way about a man for a long time, not since uni and Jon and his lies, maybe not since that smirk of Hugh’s drove her libido mad. That’s all this was, surely. Drum was a beautiful man, an interesting puzzle. It was the equivalent of Jon’s incredible intellect and Hugh’s once maddeningly sexy grin slammed together and bound up with ropes of intrigue and a manner that put her body on red alert.
Drum would be oblivious to the turmoil that seethed in her. They sat there saying nothing, not touching, facing out towards the beach. They might’ve been two strangers waiting for a bus as the rain fell in a steady pattern, bringing cooler air with it.
“I shouldn’t be around you, Foley.”
