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He watched until he attracted attention. A staring kid, the strained smile and hasty turning away of a harassed mum. He hadn’t washed or trimmed his beard, or changed his shirt. He hadn’t cared. He’d stood on the cliff edge this morning before he let hunger win. He turned to go and then he saw her. Foley’d seen him first, was watching. She raised her hand then shook her head and turned away. He was close enough to see she was pale, unhappy.
He walked back to the cave, his head full of wild fantasies. Foley in his arms on the ice, screaming her fear, laughing her pleasure. In the afternoon a storm built. Purple clouds with a green underbelly full of ice. If he was lucky it would roll out to sea.
Foley came over the ledge just before dark, as the rain arrived. She wore a dark jacket and bright red scarf, and she brought the storm.
She jumped down already fighting, her scarf whipped about in the rising wind. “There are two key reasons for someone to be homeless.” She ticked them off on fingers raised in anger while the sheet lightning electrocuted the sky. “Need and choice. Which are you?”
She was fierce and he loved her for it. “Both.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s my answer.”
“Homelessness can be a deprivation, basic lack of facilities. It can be about politics, squatting to conserve a place people care about, or breaking buildings so they’re torn down to make way for something new. Are you trying to make a political statement?”
He shook his head and the first rumble of thunder growled.
“And you’re not deprived, because there are places you can go. You’re intelligent, you can work, you can earn a living. But you don’t. Why?”
It was seriously raining now. “Foley, come in the cave.”
“I’ll dry.”
He sighed. He wanted his arms around her, he wanted his lips on her, but she was furious with him.
“I need answers.”
He needed her. “You won’t like them.”
“I kissed you. You’re a homeless man and I kissed you, and I can’t stop thinking about it.”
He took a step towards her and she backed off. “No. You’re sick and you need help and I hate that you won’t do something about it.” She pointed off to where the clouds were low and menacing and shifting fast. “Despite that edge, you’re a coward.”
So she knew that, without him saying it. Her eyes were open. He took another step towards her. “I can’t stop thinking about it either.” He was consumed by it, like he’d once been obsessed by research results and financing options, by experimentation and trials.
“I didn’t come here to kiss you again.” She had one arm wrapped over her stomach as if to protect herself. “I’m never kissing you again. Never, do you understand that?”
The wind snatched her scarf, she tried to catch it but it lifted from her collar and slid through her grasp. The storm swallowed it, a flash of passion in the gunmetal sky. A flare of defiance like their kiss, blown away to nothing.
“It’s pissing down. Come in the cave before we both drown.”
She stalked passed him as fork lightning joined sheet lightning and the sky crackled with savagery, bringing a driving wind.
He ducked under the cave roof, but they were going to get wet still. The back wall was already saturated, as was the couch and his small stash of clothing and books. Foley was trembling, cold, angry. He needed to get her warmed up, but rain had doused his fire.
“Don’t come near me.”
Rain dripped off her jacket, her boots squelched as she moved, her hair was slick to her scalp, her ponytail thinned. A clap of thunder boomed almost overhead and a ripple of sheet lightning showed him her face. It wasn’t the cold, or anger—she was terrified.
“It’s only a storm. It’ll pass.” He might’ve been talking about them. They had the same characteristics, sudden, brooding, cataclysmic crashing together, damaging.
She jumped at the next crack, her hands flying up over her ears as the first of the hailstones started bouncing on the rock ledge and pelting in at them. They were in the storm now, no visibility; the beach, the sea, the sky melted together in one grey, purple green mass of cloud. He moved in front of her to shield her, opened his arms, feeling hailstones ping against his legs, the noise of them a strange roaring patter.
She kept her distance. “Storms like this freak me out.”
“They end, Foley. It’ll be okay.”
In her eyes was a cloud of indecision, a burned-out rainbow of resolve, and then a sonic boom, a crack that stood the hair on his body on end, and she was in his arms. She huddled into his chest, her whole body trembling. He tucked her against him, into the wound in his heart that was made from wanting and knowing he couldn’t have her.
