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“You get holidays though, right? Like four weeks a year?”
“Well, yes, but...”
“But what?”
“But I don’t exactly have the funds to do this again. I don’t...” I sighed. “I don’t earn a great wage.”
He frowned, a sad pout, then he shrugged. “You’d just need the airfares. I got the rest. I’m coming out here anyway. It’s no extra cost to have you here. The food, the fuel, the water, I gotta bring all that whether you’re here or not.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. The offer, the invite, was very generous. Very kind, if not a little premature.
He laid down with a huff. “If you don’t wanna, that’s fine. It’s just been kinda nice to have some company. Especially someone who likes storms as much as I do. I’m normally out here for a week or two on my own, which is how I’ve always liked it. I brought my brother once, and I wanted to kill him by day two. First and last time for that, lemme tell ya.”
I snorted. “You could have thrown his body in the river with the crocs. No one would have ever known.”
He nudged me with his elbow. “I told him that! But he didn’t think it was funny and he made me drive him home. He told Mum and Dad what I said.”
I laughed, and the warm rumble of his laughter filled something inside me. “I’d like to come back,” I admitted. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that... you know. Money.”
“Hm.” I felt him shrug. “’S okay.”
“I’ll be paying off my uni debts forever,” I mumbled.
“You did a lot of years, right? To be a doctor?”
“To earn my doctorate,” I amended gently. “Yes. I did get a partial scholarship for the first four years. There were bursaries and stuff later on, but it was hard. My dad never understood why I chose meteorology and fulminology. I mean, he knows why, obviously. But he didn’t agree with it. He thinks I’m trying to bring my mother back or something. Like what I’m studying will honour her memory, but that’s not why I chose it. It’s not why I do it.”
“You do it because it changed your life. That day when you were two. It put you on a certain path.”
I nodded, my heart blooming with the warmth that he understood. “Exactly. And we never had much money. Dad did what he could do, but his life changed forever that day too and certainly not for the better. I think he resents lightning. He hates it. And I understand that,” I admitted. “He said if I’m so smart, I should have used my brains to be a real doctor or an engineer or something that earned a lot of money. He doesn’t understand why I’d want to choose to be broke my whole life when I had the option not to be.”
Tully rolled onto his side, his head propped up on his hand. He was close, we were sharing a small double bed after all, and his face looked a silvery blue in the dark. “Parents just want what they think is best for us. But that’s not who you are,” he said. “And you should be proud that you followed your heart. Not many have the courage to do that. They fall for the pressure to do what they’re supposed to do. Like me, I work in a family business that I have no real interest in. But it’s a cushy job and it pays well—well, they pay good money because I’m family. I’m good at my job, get shit done, produce the numbers that make people happy, and I’m told I’m very good at it. But I don’t love my job. I don’t live for it. My eldest brother and my sister, they love what they do. They live and breathe that shit, and it makes them happy, so good for them. But to me, it’s just a job.”
“A job that gives you time off during the storm season to camp out here for weeks on end.”
He grinned, his teeth white in the dark. “Exactly.”
Then something between us shifted. The air, the pressure, the electrical charge between us, and it had nothing to do with the weather.
He stared at me, and I couldn’t look away. His gaze felt like lasers burning everything in their wake. He licked his lips and I gasped, or moaned, or... leaned in. Or maybe it was him leaning in. The dark was disorienting, or maybe it was the fact I hadn’t breathed in a minute or two...
Then he blinked and pulled back, shaking his head a little. “Oh wow, yeah, okay,” he said, falling down onto his back with a huff. “That probably shouldn’t happen.” He turned his head to look at me. “Your eyes are really fucking blue and I feel like I’m falling into water or some shit.”
I had to put my hand on my chest to try and calm my hammering heart. “Ah, yeah, I hear that a lot.” I shook my head. “Not about the falling into water thing. That’s new. But yes, blue.”
“But they’re a weird blue. Like freakishly blue. Is that from the lightning?”
I scoffed. “What?”
“Like a superpower from being struck by lightning. Are you secretly an X-Men member? Can you shoot laser beams out of your eyes?”
I sighed but was glad he was joking. I thought he might have been serious... “Pretty sure that’s Cyclops, and no, I’m not him. Or any member of the X-Men.”
“Shame.”
“Yeah, not really.”
He chuckled. “So I almost kissed you before,” he said with a sigh, as if he was discussing something completely mundane. “Just in case you weren’t aware.”
