Page 82 of Down the Track
She shifted in her chair—just a bit, but it was a defensive movement.
A knife to the heart movement.
‘Jo?’
‘I don’t know why you’re asking me that, Hux. It was a long time ago.’
‘Well, we could have had this conversation then, but you did a runner.’
He’d intended that to come out in a matter-of-fact way. But a bitter edge had crept in.
He dropped his voice, so only Jo and the smouldering logs of the campfire would hear. ‘Because I loved you, and you broke my heart.’
She was stressed, he could tell, but he was stressed too. And he was the injured party here. Why didn’t he deserve to know why she’d left him? Not the physical leaving; he understood that her career had been—was—important. But the leavinghimbit.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘It’s the only answer I’ve got.’
He bunked down by the campfire on the yoga mat he kept in the chopper for just such occasions as this. Yes, umpteen venomous snakes could have sunk their fangs into him. Yes, the stars were so infernally bright he had to wrap his head in a tea towel he found in one of Jo’s crates. Yes, he’d done fuck all to help Charlie in the time he’d been at the dig site, supposedly using his awesome detective skills to work out The Mystery of Dodgy Dave. None of these was what was keeping him awake, though.
What was keeping him awake was the sound of crying inside the swag on the other side of the fire.
TYSON: Hey, buddy, next time you’re writing a romancing-the-Jones chapter with me and Lana, you might want to think about subbing it out to a ghostwriter. Someone who actually gets the whole man–woman thing.
‘Shut up, Tyson,’ Hux muttered into the tea towel.
TYSON: And while we’re on the subject of Lana, it’s been a long drought, if you get what I’m saying. What say in the next book, you get some bad guy to rough me up a little and I’m in the hospital with busted ribs and a black eye or something, and there’s, like, this montage scene where Lana hears I’m injured and does a lights-and-sirens speed race until she’s by my side. It’s late. The lights are dim in the hospital room, and I’m all bare-chested and buff and yet oddly vulnerable-looking in the bed. My ribs aren’t so busted I can’t get my Marvin Gaye on, if you get what I’m saying. And Lana, she’s all warm and worried and soft under that tough persona she puts on, and she lets me—
Hux closed his eyes and willed the scene in his head to cut off. His life wasn’t a novel or a damn TV script, and he wasn’t taking life advice from a fictional character. Even if that fictional character wasn’t totally wrong.
Although, now he thought about it, perhaps all this time he’d been spending reading and commenting on the scripts for the show had skewed his thinking a little. Skewed his reactions. Screenwriting was all about the visual (the swags, the stars, the camp chairs) and the aural (the words, the insects buffeting up against the lantern, the timber in the fire crackling). There was nowhere in screenwriting for reflection. No opportunity for the idiot who’d just blurted out how effing wounded he felt, without stopping to consider what the other person might be going through, to think:Congratulations, Hux, you’ve just been a total dick.
Screenwriting was all about drama and finishing a scene with a hook, a question, a problem.
He was tired of problems. He was ready for the happy ever after.
But Jo apparently wasn’t interested in a happy ever after, because that would mean living in the present. Living in the now. Acknowledging what you were feeling and acting on it, rather than just bundling it into the I-can’t-deal-with-this-now basket and going to hide amongst dinosaur bones.
Healing a broken heart was no bloody fun … Been there, done that. He’d be mad to open himself up to heartbreak again, hope to rekindle something with Jo.
Mad, mad, mad.
TYSON: Reality check, mate. Pretty sure you never healed your heart last time.
‘Shut up, Tyson.’
CHAPTER
32
REVISIONS: THECLUELESSJONESSERIES
Episode 7: Low Tide
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