Come Back To Me (30 page)

can tell everyone thinks this is just the interval between

acts. There’s a humid anticipation in the air. Everyone’s

eyes stay locked on my father, waiting for the thunder-

clap that will announce the next act.

I can’t move. My breathing is coming in small, broken

gasps, and my focus is fixed on my father. If there were

no witnesses I know he’d explode right now. Furniture

would fly, curses would rain down and my mom and I

would duck for cover. But with so many eyes on him he’s

having to keep a lid on it. It’s like watching a bubbling

pan. His face has gone all shades of red and sweat beads

around the edges of his hairline.

He gives a grimacing sort of smile and holds his hands

up to the crowd. ‘Well, I guess the show’s over, folks,’ he

says with a forced laugh. ‘He was a gatecrasher anyway.

Who invited him?’ He looks jokingly around at the crowd

and there are a few guffaws that sicken me. That’s his

response? To turn it into a joke at Kit’s expense?

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Mila Gray

Suddenly all that Kit just said hits me with the force of

a clanging bell, vibrating through me, making me un-

steady on my feet. He just stood up to my father. no one

has ever done that before. And he put his job and his life

on the line to do it – to stand up for me and my brother

and my mom. And I just told him to leave. What the hell

did I do?

I start running towards the back door.

A hand grabs me around the wrist and yanks me to an

abrupt stop. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

It’s my father. The forced smile still on his face makes

him look deranged.

‘I’m going to find Kit,’ I say through gritted teeth,

trying to tug myself free.

My father frowns briefly at me, his grip tightening.

‘You walk out that door now, don’t bother coming back,’

he says.

I stare at him. His words take a moment to sink in. He

can’t be serious? The smile fades, and for the briefest of

moments the shades pull back and I see a glimmer in his

eyes that I can only describe as despair, and a splinter of

terror too. It’s as if he’s staring down over a precipice into

a black abyss, and it startles me to see my father look so

vulnerable and so scared. For a moment I waver, but then

I remember the way he just spoke to Kit and something

inside me comes undone. All the invisible chains I’ve

been wearing slip from my shoulders and crash to the

ground at my feet.

‘It’s not just his father who’s worth a hundred of you,’ I

say.

I wrench my arm from my father’s grip and run inside

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the house. I slam the back door behind me and race

through into the hallway, expecting at any moment to

hear footsteps stampeding after me. As I make for the

front door, through blurry vision my eyes snag on the

sight of my dad’s car keys hanging from their hook.

I snatch them and run outside. Kit’s truck is nowhere

to be seen. Shaking now, adrenaline finally catching up

with me, I stagger to my dad’s car parked in the drive-

way and race around to the driver’s side. It takes me a

frustrating thirty seconds to figure out how to move the

seat forward and how to drive with only two pedals, and

by the time I ease off the handbrake the front door has

flown open. I stamp on the gas but someone steps in front

of the car and I have to emergency brake, my head almost

smashing into the wheel.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

It’s Riley. He gestures at me to wind down the window.

‘I’m going to find Kit,’ I tell him.

‘Since when do you have your licence?’ he asks me.

‘Since yesterday,’ I answer.

Riley looks stunned. But then he steps aside. ‘OK, fine.

Are you OK?’ he asks.

I nod vigorously. I’m suddenly more than OK. I’m free.

‘Are you?’ I ask Riley.

He gives me a weak smile and rests his hand on the

roof of the car. ‘When you find Kit, tell him − ’ he pauses,

frowning − ‘thanks from me.’

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Kit

I slip my key into my front door, the voice in my head

yelling at me so loudly about what a dick I am that I

barely hear the engine roar of a car, and it’s only when I

hear the screech of brakes that I turn around.

Jessa’s dad’s car slides to a halt at an angle, the front

wheels mounting the sidewalk. Crap. He’s followed me.

My heart rate spikes as adrenaline floods my system, but

then Jessa throws open the door and starts running

towards me. She throws herself into my arms, crying and

out of breath.

‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbles against my neck.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say at the same time, pressing her close,

unable to believe that she’s here, that she followed me.

Thirty seconds ago I was sunk in a dark pit of misery and

despair, and now I’m standing in the sunlight again.

‘I was a dick,’ I say, the words flooding out of me. ‘I

should have kept my mouth shut.’

‘No. You stood up to him. For the first time, someone

stood up to him.’

‘You stood up to him first. You called him an asshole.’

Jessa wipes her tears away with the back of her arm.

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‘Well, he was. And he just kicked me out. Which makes

him twice the asshole.’

‘He kicked you out?’

‘He said if I followed you then I shouldn’t bother

coming home.’ Her eyes brim with tears again.

Fuck. I stare at her. She followed me anyway? I pull her

against me again. ‘It’s OK,’ I reassure her. ‘You can stay

here. Everything’s going to be OK.’

Her fingers dig into my shoulders, her body trembles.

‘You want to come inside?’ I ask her, turning towards

the door, my mind spinning with everything.

Jessa shakes her head at me. ‘Can we go somewhere?

Anywhere. I don’t care where. I just want to get away

from here.’

I nod and take her hand, pulling her towards the truck.

We drive mostly in silence, Jessa leaning against my arm,

and there’s a comfort in the silence, in the knowledge that

words are unnecessary, that we know exactly what the

other is thinking and feeling without needing to speak.

With just twelve hours left before I have to report to the

base, every second is weighted, shot through with long-

ing and sadness.

When I park, in almost exactly the same spot I brought

Jessa to on that first date, the sun is sinking heavily

beneath the ridge and the sky’s going up in flames. I grab

the blankets I have stashed in the back and lay them out

on the flatbed of the truck, taking Jessa’s hand to pull her

up alongside me.

We lie down in each other’s arms and watch as the sky

fades to black and the stars switch on one by one.

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Mila Gray

‘It’s so beautiful,’ Jessa whispers. ‘The first night we

were here I didn’t really notice them so much. I was too

nervous.’

I grin at her. I didn’t notice them much either.

‘Come here,’ I say, pulling her towards me. While the

stars are beautiful, I’ve only got twelve more hours to

drink in this girl. I tip her chin up and kiss her slowly,

loving the way her body relaxes instantly against mine

and her hands run through my hair.

In silence we start to undress. I watch in silence as

she rises up on her knees and undoes the buttons on her

sundress, slipping it down over her shoulders and shim-

mying out of it. In the starlight she gleams like something

otherworldly, or like the phosphorescence I saw once on

the ocean. She helps me off with my shirt and pants and

then, naked, we burrow beneath the blankets.

Pressed together, our legs entwined, our lips find each

other and we kiss. I’m desperate to memorize every taste

and every sensation and it seems like she is too. Her

fingers skim my shoulders, my chest, my arms, and with

every sigh she makes, with every moan, as my own

hands and lips trace their own path along her limbs and

over her hips and waist, the blood pumps faster in my

veins.

I throw off the blanket, wanting to see her, and she

obliges by sitting up and straddling me. Holy shit. That’s

an incredible view. I slide my hands over the contours of

her body and she smiles down on me, her hair like liquid

silver flowing over her shoulders. This is how I plan on

remembering her.

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‘I love you, Kit,’ she says as she lowers herself slowly

onto me.

I exhale loudly, more stars bursting on the back of my

eyelids than there are in the sky above us. Jessa rocks

gently back and forth but soon we’re both breathing fast

and she starts driving me deeper, grinding against me as

though she can’t get enough. And I grip her hips and pull

her down because I can’t get enough of her either and

when I open my eyes I see her head is thrown back, her

back arched and she’s shivering.

I sit up, clasping her around her waist and then lift her

in one swift move, flipping her over and lying her down

on the blanket and pushing into her. She cries out and her

legs wrap around my waist, drawing me deeper. I want

to take her, inhale her, own her. I want to press myself

into her flesh like a thumbprint into wet clay, leaving a

maker’s mark. I want to take a piece of her with me and

leave a piece of me with her. How do I get enough of her

to last me a year?

With every thrust I feel her muscles clench around me,

the tendons on her neck growing tauter. She’s biting her

lip, but when I kiss her neck she lets out a cry that’s loud

and uncensored and which brings me straight to the

brink.

I know from the way she’s moving, from the way she

whispers my name in my ear, that she’s close, and within

seconds we both come and collapse, panting, onto the

blankets.

‘Holy shit,’ I say, trying to catch my breath.

Jessa laughs, sighing happily.

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Mila Gray

‘Well, I’ll definitely remember that for a year.’

I roll onto my side and kiss her shoulder. ‘I’ll remember

that for the rest of my life.’

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Jessa

We pull up outside Kit’s house just as the sun is rising.

For the whole way back I’ve been too scared to talk,

scared that the lump in my throat will burst and I’ll cry. I

can’t believe it’s been four weeks. It feels like a lifetime

and yet it doesn’t feel nearly long enough.

‘It’s just twelve months,’ Kit says, reading my mind.

I turn to him.

‘Three hundred and sixty-five days,’ he says, running

his thumb over my cheekbone. ‘It’s nothing. Not com-

pared to what we’ll have.’

I nod, tears stinging the backs of my eyes.

We climb out the car and Kit takes my hand and leads

me into the house. His dad is in the kitchen. He makes no

comment about Kit and me having stayed out all night,

he just asks if we want coffee.

Kit goes upstairs to shower and pack the last of his

things, and I stay downstairs with his dad. I’m so tired

all of a sudden. The reality of where I’m at, of Kit leav-

ing, of Riley leaving, of having no home to go back to,

hits me with the blunt force of a sledgehammer. I sink

down onto one of the kitchen stools and bury my head in

my hands.

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Mila Gray

Kit’s father places his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s OK,’

he says. ‘It’s going to be OK.’

Kit said those exact words. I look up at his father. He

gives me a warm, reassuring smile before crossing to the

stove to turn off the kettle.

‘Your brother came around last night to get your dad’s

car,’ he says as he busies himself pouring the water into

the jug. ‘Told me what happened.’ He fusses with the

coffee for a moment longer before he hands me a steam-

ing mug. ‘You know you’re welcome to stay here, Jessa,

as long as you like. I’ll be glad to have you around. Gets

lonely without Kit.’ He offers me the milk. ‘I want you to

treat this place like your own. OK?’

‘Yes. Thank you,’ I stammer. ‘I appreciate it, Mr Ryan.’

‘Ben. Call me Ben.’

‘OK.’ I take a sip of coffee, not able to look him in the

eye. I’m feeling too tired, too overwhelmed, too sad.

Kit walks back in a moment later – his hair wet, wear-

ing his uniform – and my heart swells big enough to

burst and my vision starts to blur. I don’t think I can do

this. I stagger off the stool and look around desperately