Page 97 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon
‘How is it your fault?’
‘I should have told you he’s gay. That way you wouldn’t –’
‘Why? That’s ridiculous. Me falling for your brother isn’t your responsibility.’ Even if she’d like to make it so – that way she could absolve herself.
‘I know. I just …’ He sighs and puts his hands on his head. ‘I would never want you to be upset, Evie. Never.’ His hands drop. ‘I only want the best for you.’
She has long known this about him, she thinks. After she told him they couldn’t work romantically, he wasn’t upset with her. He wanted to stay in her life. He wished her well. What she doesn’t understand is why, considering she has never given him much time or done anything amazing – for him, for anyone. Sure, she takes care of Billy but being a mum isn’t amazing, it’s just a fact. Who is she, to be deserving of this man wanting the best for her? She decides to find out.
‘Why?’ she says.
Now a car drives past, its muffler clearly in need of replacing.
‘I care about you,’ he says once it’s quiet again.
They’re so exposed here on the street, yet the way he says it makes her feel as if she’s in a cave with him, just the two of them.
‘Yes, but … why?’
It’s the biggest question she could ask him, yet also mundane. The moment feels freighted with something but she doesn’t know what.
When he smiles it’s full of warmth and understanding. ‘Do we ever know why?’ he says.
That’s not an answer she understands, so she frowns.
‘I love my brother because he’s my brother,’ he goes on. ‘We’re family. I love my friends but if you think about it, why do we love our friends? Because we know them. Because we grew up with them, maybe. Not usually because we stop and think about their personalities.’
‘So … love is just familiarity?’
And why are they even talking about love?
‘Maybe,’ he says lightly. ‘Maybe it’s just something that happens. You know – you meet someone and you just like them, right? If they asked you why you liked them you couldn’t really say. Once you get to know them you might be able to say, but it doesn’t change the fact you liked them to begin with.’ He smiles again.
He smiles a lot, she’s noticed.
‘I’ve always liked you,’ Oliver says. ‘I could try to explain it but it just …is. I don’t need to do anything with it. Except I want to.’
Is he talking about apologising to her for Sam? Because she feels fine about Sam now, for some reason. Not embarrassed any more. Maybe Oliver has done that for her.
‘I know you don’t feel the same way,’ he says. ‘But I really hope you’ll give me a chance to spend more time with you.’ Another smile. ‘Maybe you’ll change your mind.’
She knew this was coming. On some level, this has always been coming. She and Oliver have always been moving toward each other. Over the past few years, in and out of each other’s lives, him showing up, her not seeing it for what it was. Love. That’s what he’s talking about. That’s what he’s offering her.
That could be why, standing on this Terrigal street, with no wind and no cars and hardly any birds, it feels as if the world tilts on its axis and she has the choice to tilt with it or resist.
She closes her eyes, feels the air over her skin. Notices how seconds feel like minutes then hours, how time is changing shape and she is zooming backward and forward and it all feels more certain than it ever has.
When she opens her eyes he is standing right in front of her. As he has, in some ways, always been.
‘Maybe I will,’ she says.
CHAPTER FIFTY
It took her dead husband to get her live son to visit Trudy again.
Dylan said something about how he hadn’t been to Laurie’s grave in a while – Trudy thinks he hasn’t been since Laurie died, but she wasn’t going to say it, not wanting to antagonise – and she suggested they visit together.
Trudy goes to the cemetery every now and again. She’s torn on the matter. Some people like to visit dead relatives all the time, and possibly there’s a tinge of martyrdom about it, or showing off, or maybe it’s genuinely done out of love and she’s a curmudgeon. However, she doesn’t feel motivated to visit that often because Laurie’s not in this cemetery. His remains are, but remains aren’t a person. It’s even in the word:remains. What remains of the man she held and loved and made love to is now disintegrating into the earth, as it should, because ashes to ashes and dust to dust and all that, buthe’snot there. He’s gone. He’s in the air and the trees and the sun. And he’s also nowhere. There’s nothing she can touch or feel of him, not at the cemetery, not anywhere. All she can do at the cemetery is look at his headstone.
