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My stomach twisted.
Sweat broke out down my spine.
What would he and Anna say later tonight when I admitted that I’d touched Neri in ways that were definitely not platonic. That I’d done things for her that were definitely not legal. And that I wanted to keep doing those things for as long as we both shall live?
“Go and check on her for me, will ya?” Jack patted my shoulder again as he strode into the corridor. “I’m gonna go help Anna with the second course.”
He left me on the threshold.
I looked at Neri’s closed door, knowing I couldn’t do what he asked because if I did, I’d end up inside her.
She’d touch me, kiss me, and use my oversensitivity against me until I submitted and succumbed.
I couldn’t fuck her today.
Not while my mind swarmed with the past and our future hung so precariously.
It took everything I had to walk in the opposite direction.
The cold slithering around my heart returned, along with the feral whispers in my head.
If I told Jack and Anna and they refused me, where would I go?
If I told them I’d been with their teenage daughter—even though she was of legal consenting age—would they throw me out or worse...?
Could I survive never seeing them again?
Never being welcome in their house and hearts?
You don’t have a choice not to tell them.
Not anymore.
The ring box glowered at me as I walked past the tree.
The ice-cold beer in the esky on the deck promised to dull my rapidly building fear of tonight.
Grabbing a bottle, I sucked the alcohol down, begging it to take the edge off as Jack and Anna laughed in the kitchen and my heart didn’t beat right without Neri.
I missed her.
I loved her.
I felt like I’d already lost her.
* * * * *
1 P.M.
“Having fun?” I asked, sitting at the outdoor table where copious amounts of homemade pizzas had been eaten and I’d had the privilege of watching Neri grow, year by year.
She’d had five birthdays around this table and was inching ever closer to her eighteenth in April. Even I’d been forced to smile as the Taylors lavished me with the same treatment a few weeks ago when I’d turned twenty-two.
She looked up, her eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, a big floppy straw hat on her head to protect her from the searing sun. “Yeah, surprisingly, want to try? It’s just like cross-stitch but with diamantes instead of thread.” She passed me the plastic pen with a smirk.
I clung to my fifth beer of the day, shaking my head at her offer. “I think I’ll just watch.”
She laughed, but it wasn’t her usual sparkling, effervescent laugh. This was dull and flat, like soda left out too long. Dropping my eyes from her shaded ones, I eyed up the diamond painting spread out over the table. Plastic trays held glimmering rhinestones in every colour, waiting for her to stick them onto the large canvas of a stunning seascape with turtles, whales, orcas, and coral. Moonlight speared through the water with stars twinkling in the sky, turning the entire mood silver and mysterious with mystical pink and green splashes on the horizon.
It meant nothing more than a gift given by a father who knew his daughter’s favourite things, yet...the moon on the sea and the stunning aurora australis reminded me all too well of our marriage vows in the shallows of Low Isles. Of the way I’d slid inside her for the first time. Of our promises to always be one.
My heart pinched.
My hand strayed toward Neri’s, desperately needing to touch her.
I froze as she looked up.
We shared so many unspoken things, but then she bit her bottom lip, shook her head, and returned to her painting.
Scowling, I did my best to shove aside the fog of blackness. Blackness that’d returned with a vengeance. I hadn’t felt its oppressive presence in a while, but all day, it’d gathered at the base of my head, swallowing up my happy thoughts, turning my mind darker and heavier, swirling with ghosts and terrors.
Neri didn’t notice my inner struggles or see what I saw when she pressed another jewel against the artwork. She didn’t seem to fear what would happen tonight. We hadn’t talked about it, or about anything else really. She hadn’t told me if she’d had any nightmares recently or if she’d looked online for a therapist.
I wanted so much to talk to her, but sitting at the table beside the open doors where her parents squabbled and flirted in the kitchen was not the place.
So I sat quietly and watched her following the symbols on the graph, slowly making a starfish come alive.
“Nice of Jack to give you a present early.” I lifted my bottle to my lips, annoyed to find it almost empty.
The alcoholic dullness that I’d been searching for hadn’t arrived. But I’d kept drinking...I’d drunk more in one go than I ever had before, mainly thanks to Jack plying me with three in the pool when he’d come to join me. We’d sat on a rock and dangled our feet in the cool water, discussing his plans for next year’s research projects and how he wanted to go back to Southeast Asia.
