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“Oh, where will you sleep tonight?” Norah asked.
“Paul’s got a spare bed. It’s fine,” I said dismissively, hoping they’d drop it.
By Marit and Kari’s smirks, I think it might have been too late anyway.
“Breakfast is ready,” Paul said a little too loudly. He gave me a ‘please shut up’ look before he turned his smile to his guests.
Breakfast was great. Back home, I’d have been lucky to choke down a coffee for breakfast on my way to work, but out here, getting up with the sun and having a full breakfast, then doing activities all day, outdoors in the fresh air... well, it was invigorating.
I felt like a different person.
Being with Paul and clearing away our pasts certainly had something to do with that. But being out here, surrounded by sunshine and wilderness... it was something I could get used to, that was for sure.
Paul said I needed a plan.
If we were going to move forward, I needed to figure out a sustainable way to do that.
To earn money, to pay my way, to help him.
If I wanted it bad enough, I’d find a way.
And I did want it. It was all I wanted.
“You okay?” Paul asked me quietly. We’d set off on our day of adventure, this time taking in Indigenous cave and rock art, and we were getting ready to hike in to the site. “You’ve been kinda quiet. At breakfast, on the drive out here.”
I slid the backpack out of the back of the Cruiser. “Just thinking.”
“About?”
“Making this happen,” I said, lifting the full weight of his backpack. “Christ, this is heavy. Are you training for the Special Forces?”
He laughed. “Not quite.”
“Here, turn around.” I helped him put on the backpack. “Did you want me to take something out of here for you? I could halve your carry weight.”
He shifted the bag on his back until he was comfortable. “Nah, I got it. I’m used to it now.”
I mean, it certainly explained his physique. Hauling a twenty-five kilogram kit bag through the scrub, climbing over rocks and up and down rough terrain was no small feat.
I turned him around, not really giving him an option. I unclasped his backpack and took out the first aid kit and the top two insulated containers of food. It wasn’t much, maybe five or six kilos at most. But surely it had to help.
“If I had a bigger backpack,” I said, shoving them into my bag.
Paul tried to be annoyed but he relented a smile. “Thanks.”
We began the hike in, Paul at the front, then Marit, Kari, and Norah, then me. It was getting warm, and this hike was all scrub. There were no overhead trees, no canopy for shade. We stopped a few times for water, and once Paul stopped, his hand up like a marine, and he pointed to his right.
There were two wallabies about twenty metres away. Marit and Kari were most excited, and they managed to snap some photos before the wallabies hopped away. Further along there was a huge goanna, maybe two metres long from its nose to the tip of its tail. Marit, Kari, and Norah werenotexcited to see that.
Paul put his arm out in a keep-back fashion, and we all sighed with relief when it sauntered off into the scrub.
It was so freaking awesome.
Better than my soul-sucking office job. Every day there was like purgatory, and I could kick myself for ever thinking Paul was crazy to want to do this.
I wondered if I could do it with him.
I wondered if he’d think that was a good idea.
