‘Do you hate me?’ he said.
She moved, and it might have been a nod, but it might also have been a shake.
‘Was that a yes or a no?’ he said.
She reached over, grabbed his hand and pulled it back onto her knee so she could hold it between both of hers.
‘I don’t hate you, you big idiot. Carol told me you hated medical intervention; it just took me a while to remember that this evening, what with the whole fainting drama and everything. Sure, at first, when you made yourself scarce in our hour of need, there may have been some hate cells forming, I cannot deny. But then I remembered, with a bit of prompting from Carol, and she kindly pointed out that I was in no position to be throwing stones at people with unresolved emotional baggage.’
He breathed in the night air and smelled jasmine from the front fence. ‘That’s a very generous way to think,’ he said.
She squeezed his hand. ‘Not generous. Understanding.’
‘Yeah.’
They sat in silence.
‘Carol’s doing well,’ she said after a bit. ‘Sleeping now, I hope, but she was cheerful when I left. The nurses found her a clean, hospital-issue nightie to wear, she’s been given a cup of tea and a biscuit, and she very much enjoyed flirting with those two beefcake paramedics once she gave in to the idea of being looked after for a change.’
‘That sounds like my Carol,’ Will said.
‘So … are you going to tell me?’
He could have pretended he didn’t know what she was talking about, but there was something very real and very raw about sitting on a small wooden step in the garden in the quiet of night. This was not a time for prevarication or obfuscation.
‘When I was last in a hospital,’ he said, ‘the very last time, I saw a kid being rushed into emergency. And I knew who the kid was. Although, when I say “kid”, he was a young adult in the law’s eyes. But a kid, you know? I doubt he’d even kissed a girl. Or a boy. Or anyone.’
She leaned in closer to him, so they were pressed together from knee to shoulder, but she didn’t say anything.
‘It was one of those full-alarm moments—where doctors are being paged and alarms are sounding. But the kid was dead. Pills. He was my patient. I worked in the clinical psychology department at the hospital. He’d been released against my wishes, but bureaucracy and bed availability counts for more than good sense sometimes. And the thing about this kid was he was bloody good at convincing the people around him that he was in a good place; that he was gonna be okay.’
Jodie’s hand patted his in a rhythmic sort of way. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘Yeah. Me too. It set off a cascade of events. I put in a complaint to the hospital about letting the kid check himself out. The family put in a complaint about me. I chucked in my job. Did nothing for a while, then I found my calling as a publican. Long story short: even a psychologist can’t get their shit together when life goes bad.’
‘And I thought it was just me.’
He smiled into her hair. ‘We’re a pair, aren’t we?’
‘It’s funny you should say that.’
‘Yeah?’
‘These last few weeks, I’ve been feeling very much like wecouldbe a pair. If we both wanted it. It wasn’t until you dragged me into that romantic clinch by the dumpsters earlier that I truly believed you felt the same way.’
‘The dumpsters did it, huh?’
‘Oh, yeah. Only a besotted fool would think a declaration of love would be acceptable with a side serve of prawn heads on a thirty-four degree day.’
‘Iambesotted. And a fool. Also—now that you know how very good at not coping I, too, can be sometimes, maybe you need to think about that.’
She shook her head. Then she shimmied herself up a little and over a little until she was sitting across his lap and she had her arms around his neck, and she had her face so close to his face.
‘I’m done with thinking. Maybe we both need to realise it’s time we forgive ourselves. It’s time we decide that it’s okay for us to feel happy again.’
‘I’ll be happy if you stay in Clarence,’ he said, and he pressed a kiss just below her jawline. Just below her ear. ‘Be a physio, be a couch potato, be whatever you like. I don’t care, I just want you here.’
‘I’ll be happy,’ she said, ‘if you drive with me to Katoomba to collect all my belongings and then drive with me back here so you can be a publican.’