Me Without You (11 page)

‘Let’s have a drink and watch the sunset, then go get some dinner.’

‘But your foot—’

‘There’s an elevator,’ she shrugged.

Her mind was apparently made up. Again. I laughed.

‘You’re a four-foot bulldozer, you know.’

‘Oh come on, Cal. I’m not
that
short. And you only live once. When are you going to be here again? Let’s just enjoy the moment.’

I popped the cork from the champagne and poured us each a glass, then carried it out to her. I sat the glasses on the coffee table and pulled Lilah down into a seat.

‘Rest,’ I instructed her. ‘I asked the receptionist to send you up an ice pack. If you rest for a while, I’ll help you limp back down to the restaurant and we can eat, okay? But it’s a fancy place and we’re both dressed like bushwalkers.’

‘Who cares?’ She raised her glass towards me. ‘To adventure.’

‘To adventure,’ I echoed. ‘Also, to taking the railway back up next time.’

‘If we’d taken the railway, my ploy to trap you here in a romantic suite overnight wouldn’t have worked.’

‘You could have just asked.’

M
uch later that night
, something woke me. Maybe I bumped Lilah’s foot accidentally and she made a sound, or maybe I rolled in my sleep and triggered a sore muscle of my own. For whatever reason, I found myself wide awake, and as minutes ticked by, I realised I wasn’t going back to sleep anytime soon.

Conscious of Lilah sleeping on the bed beside me, I rose. The hotel had taken our clothes to launder them overnight, so I donned a fluffy white bathrobe and walked to the windows. We’d pulled the curtains shut earlier, but now I opened them just a crack and stared out into the valley.

I thought about staring at the stars the previous week with Lilah, and her comments about the city washing out the detail. Surely here the view would be even better? It was far too cold outside to go out though, especially in just a bathrobe; I could feel the chill just standing by the window.

Some strange impulse triggered and I opened the door and quickly slipped out onto the balcony anyway.

The air was utterly still outside, and the valley was again shrouded in mist. When I looked up, though, I saw the creamy swirl of the Milky Way and the thousands of stars that had been hidden by the light pollution of the city. If the cold air hadn’t already done it, the sight would have taken my breath away.

The balcony door cracked open, just a little.

‘Sorry, Lilah, I didn’t mean to wake you.’

She stuck her head out the door, peered up at the sky and then gave a little squeak of protest at the cold.

‘Now that’s more like it,’ she said, still looking up to the stairs. ‘And believe it or not, it’s even better at my place up north, where there’s almost no light from houses. But as much as it warms the cockles of my heart to see that you’re freezing your balls off just to look at the stars, I’m going back to bed.’

‘I’ll just be a few more minutes.’

I stayed out on the balcony until my fingers and toes became stiff with the cold, and then I went back in to crawl into bed beside Lilah.

E
ven Lilah managed
a sleep-in the following morning, but still looked pale when she woke.

‘Do you need to see a doctor?’ I tried to gently prompt as we made our way back to the city on the train, but she made a dismissive sound out of the corner of her mouth. It was after lunch when we finally found ourselves back at the Manly Wharf. By then, she couldn’t bear weight on it again, and I could see she was never going to be able to walk the three city blocks home.

‘That’s it,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ll go get my car and drive you back to your place.’

‘I really—’ There was genuine pain on her face. Protesting her independence was such a habit to Lilah that she couldn’t help but do it, even when she didn’t want to.

‘Lilah. It’s
my
turn to be the bossy one.’ I sat my hands on her shoulders and looked directly into her eyes. ‘I’ll let you drag me to get dunked in the frozen ocean or torture me up and down nineteen hundred stairs any time you want, but just this once, you have to let me take care of you. I’ll take you to the coffee shop and you can wait for me to get back.’

She pressed her lips together and nodded curtly.

7
September

I have waded into dangerous territory.

Oh who am I fucking kidding? I’m
scuba-diving
in dangerous territory.

I made a mistake, and then a bunch of other mistakes which have just compounded my first stupidity. I am full of good intentions nearly every day, promising myself that I will immediately put some distance between me and Callum and get things back to normal.

But this relationship is like a compulsion for us both. Callum makes jokes about me being a bulldozer all of the time, but it’s really not me that he needs to worry about. It’s this connection between us: the easy sharing, the simple laughter, the fun in the normalcy and the spark when our eyes meet. I can see his mind ticking over, looking to the future that we won’t have.

A bond has formed between Callum and I, which I need to dissolve—and already it’s going to hurt both of us.

I don’t need him. Of course I don’t need him.

I
cannot
need him, and there is no way I can continue to play with his emotions.

I don’t want to stop seeing him, but I have to—or at the very least, I have to put the brakes on big time. The irony is of course that he’s letting me lead on how often we meet, and I’ve just been selfish because I like being with him. I’ve been telling myself that these cheeky catchups on the ferry and even our daytrip on the weekend wouldn’t do any harm.
More friend territory than boyfriend
, I remember thinking Friday morning as I was plotting the trip to the mountains.

Stupid. Foolish. Reckless.

That stops tonight.

I stumbled yesterday. Exactly three times. It happened as soon as I started feeling tired, and it ended when I nearly fell all the way to the bottom of the valley while we were climbing the stairway. After that I barely walked all night, and I barely thought, because I knew if I let myself start thinking that, I would work myself up into the panic I’m feeling right now.

I’ve never had the misfortune of being stalked by an obsessed lover, but I can imagine the fear. He’d be there lurking in every shadow. I’d see his face in every crowd, and feel his breath on my neck even when I was alone. It’s been like that for me these past five years, hearing the pounding steps of the sickness on the ground behind me when I run, seeing its fingerprints everywhere, even where it was not.

So I stumbled. Everyone stumbles sometimes, especially when they’re tired. I mean, Callum was right there and he obviously didn’t think anything of it. He wears every thought he has right there on his face for me to see and I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if he was overly concerned about why I fell. It’s probably nothing. It’s probably the breeze in the curtains instead of a machete-wielding maniac. It’s probably a coincidence that the black car has been behind me for the last twenty minutes. It’s probably ordinary, garden-variety tiredness and clumsiness that had me nearly tumbling to the valley floor.

But what if it’s not?

Callum has fallen asleep on my couch. He insisted on staying over, and he’s been playing nursemaid to me since we got back, fetching me supplies from the chemist and dinner. I’ve tried to console myself with the reality that even Callum, who is definitely not sick, is exhausted even a day later and is now snoring like a buzz-saw even at eight o’clock at night. But Callum didn’t fall over.

The truth is, the sprain will pass, and so will this anxiety. This isn’t the first scare I’ve had since I’ve been well, not by a long shot. I’ve periodically seen signs where there were no signs and felt symptoms that were all in my mind and that passed as soon as I was distracted. It’s a small part of why I need to keep so busy, because if I let myself be idle, I think too much and I talk myself into the worst-case scenario.

There is one thing, and one thing only, that I need to remember from the way I feel tonight. The nervous thud of my heart against my ribcage and twirling turmoil of the fear will probably be gone by the time the bruise fades, and that’s why I had to hop over to my desk to write this down. Right now. While it’s real.

I’ve been swept up in this Callum thing. In the last week or so I’ve gone with the flow of it, letting the chemistry pull us forward, thinking I could be good for him and he could be good for me and maybe we could just play normal for a little while and no one would get hurt. When we bumped into each other on George Street I remember thinking to myself that if I believed in
meant to be
, this would be it. I imagined myself telling Mum about how I tried to do the right thing and spare him the complexities of my life, and then he just popped up again right there in front of me, the very next day. She’d get that wise-old-sage look she likes to shoot for with her students and tell me that the universe was telling me something, and I’d laugh at her but I’d secretly love it because it’s what I want to believe too.

But in spite of his protestations that he’s a lifelong bachelor, all I see when I look at Callum is someone who wants to love and be loved. We’re falling for each other. It’s in its infancy, but every time we see each other, the words flow and the emotions are following them. Every day I prolong this is making it harder.

I’m going to distance myself as of tomorrow. I know I’ve been saying that to myself for a week, but I have to channel this scare into some action.

L
ilah was much better
the next morning. Her foot was obviously still tender, but she could limp around without too much difficulty. I made a joke about her having an excuse to forego shoes for the day. Lilah was different this morning: focused solely on getting to work from the moment she woke up. She kissed me goodbye when I left to go get dressed though, and as I walked home I convinced myself that this was probably just her usual weekday morning focus.

But she didn’t answer my text that evening about the ferry ride home, and although I lay awake until nearly midnight waiting, she didn’t respond that night. When I woke the next morning, there was a text waiting.

Sorry, Callum, the appeal I feared has happened. It’s all systems go here for me at work. I’ll call you when I have some time but I’m not sure when that’ll be.

I allowed myself to acknowledge the bitter disappointment that rose within me. I wanted to see her, but of course I understood. She had frogs to save, or insects, or something vitally important to the ecosystem.

For the next few days, I texted Lilah every day, and she responded every day.

Busy with the Hemway case. Sorry, Callum. I’ll let you know if things change.

Thanks for checking in with me, will catch up with you if it quietens down.

Sorry, Cal, still up to my eyeballs. I’ll call you when I get some time.

I saw her case on the news. It was making headlines, and her name was often mentioned in the coverage, although usually with an old photo of her and a quote from a media release.

‘Saoirse McDonald, senior partner with Davis McNally who is opposing the mining operation on behalf of several environmental lobby groups, had this to say:
Hemway Mining is well known for their dirty tactics and determination to pillage natural resources at their own convenience, and this case is a perfect example. Davis McNally, as well as our partners from the community, will throw the entire weight of our combined resources behind this case. The financial benefit to Hemway Mining does not offset the extreme risks to rare species in the Minchin National Park area
. ‘

I was impatient, but I recognised the genuine demand on her time, and I well understood that even if our relationship was increasingly important to her, I would always come second to a case like this.

I
t was just
after eight on Thursday night when I heard my intercom buzz. It almost never sounded, given how rarely I had guests to my home, and it took me a moment to remember what the noise was.

‘Hello?’

‘Cal, it’s me.’

I buzzed her in, and while I waited for her to come through the small lobby to my apartment, I raced around tidying my lounge room. Unfinished renovations aside, I am something of a neat freak, so there wasn’t much to do, but I had a sudden burst of emotional energy I needed to expend. There had been a strange tone to her greeting, a tension I didn’t quite understand.

When she knocked on the door, I paused before I opened it.

‘Hi,’ I said. I was shooting for a warm, welcoming tone. I know my face fell when I saw her.

She was crying. There were heavy teardrops running down her cheeks, and judging by the red rims to her eyes, she’d been crying for some time.

‘I tried to get another injunction and I lost.’ She hiccupped and her face crumpled. ‘I can’t convince anyone to testify for me. I failed the frogs, Callum.’

‘Oh, Lilah.’ I pulled her inside and wrapped my arms around her. ‘It’s okay, Lilah. I know you did your best.’

‘The fracking will raise the methane in the waterways and the frogs and the water bugs will die. I can’t understand how I’ve lost this case.’

‘Is this the end of the road? Are there other options left?’

I pulled her down onto my couch and she leant into my chest. Another sob loomed.

‘No, I couldn’t even get another temporary injunction so they’ll be on site tomorrow. Not that I have any angles left to come at them with; without any experts willing to tell the court the reality of the situation in the ecosystem, it really is over.’

I didn’t know what to say. I could feel the tension in her body. Her disappointment and sense of failure was palpable. I held her closer and just let her cry.

That’s the thing about having a job with cosmic importance, I suppose. If I failed, I lost a client, maybe I got a wrap on the knuckles from the board—but that was about it. When she failed, something irreplaceable could well be lost. I thought about this as I stroked the hair back from her damp face. Caring so deeply about her work meant she opened herself up to the highest levels of hurt when she failed.

‘I’m so sorry to come here like this,’ she said after a while.

‘I’m really glad you did.’ I genuinely meant it.

‘I think I’m more frustrated than anything. To lose when we just should have won is so unfair. So many of my cases are in the grey areas…this one is black-and-white.’ Lilah sat up away from me and wrapped her arms around herself. She was still in a black suit. I noticed now the mascara on her cheeks and realised she’d been in court that day. I hadn’t seen her wear much make-up except for those first days, when I knew she’d been before a judge. ‘I can’t tell if I made a mistake or I missed something or I’m slipping or… or maybe this is just one of those unjust things that happen and even if I didn’t miss any opportunities, I would still have lost.’

‘Can I get you a water?’

She nodded and I walked through to the kitchen and slowly poured her a glass of water while I thought about my next move. When I returned to the lounge room, she was on her feet and looked as if she was getting ready to head back towards the door.

‘I’m sorry, Callum. I shouldn’t have come here. This isn’t your problem.’

I extended the water towards her, and when she hesitated, I moved it towards her hand, and then I placed it in her palm and closed her fingers around it.

‘Of course you should have come here. Even if we’re nothing more, surely by now we’re friends, and I want to be here for you.’

She took the water and stared at me, drank the glass in one long series of gulps, then passed it back to me.

‘What do you want to do now?’ I asked her.

Lilah looked from me to the door, and then back again, so skittish that I suddenly realised that, busy or not, she’d been avoiding me this week. I sat the glass on the coffee table and opened my arms wide.

‘I’m all yours, Lilah. If you want to sit here and bitch at me, I’m up for that. If you want to watch dumb pay-TV shows, I’m up for that. If you need me to go buy you a few dozen bottles of wine, just say the word.’ Again she hesitated. I reached forward and took her limp hand in mine. ‘You came here because you wanted to see me. Now please let me be here for you.’

Lilah nodded and let me pull her close again. She rested her head on my chest.

‘I don’t suppose you have any decent vegetables in this place.’

‘I’ll have you know I have a pre-cut packet of stir-fry veggies in the crisper and some Hokkien noodles in the cupboard.’

She sighed and glanced up at me.

‘I’m just hungry enough to eat that, even though your pre-cut veggies have probably been washed in chlorine to stay crisp longer and if the Hokkien noodles can survive a cupboard, they’re loaded with preservatives.’

‘You’re welcome,’ I grinned. ‘Shall I cook you a feast?’

I saw the way she clenched and unclenched her fists at her thighs. I saw the tension in her shoulders and the set of her jaw. And then suddenly the tightness seemed to drain out of her and she gave me a teary smile.

‘I’d like that.’

L
ilah tried
to nibble around the burnt patches on the broccoli and cauliflower florets I’d let stick to the pan. She had protested at the ingredients and binned the teriyaki sauce I’d tried to add to the stir-fry, and instead I’d attempted a creation based on some honey, soy and vegetable stock. Apparently I got the order wrong, or mucked the heat setting up, or maybe both—because what Lilah now had before her looked like it had survived a nuclear explosion.

‘You know, you’re really, truly, honestly a very shitty cook.’

‘Yes, I did know that,’ I muttered. She laughed and took a determined bite of a snow pea. While I cooked, she sat on the kitchen cupboard beside me and tried to explain the dangers of coal seam gas. After filling the charred wok with water to soak, I gently helped her down and led the way through to the couch.

‘A shitty cook,’ she repeated as she followed me, ‘but you’re one seriously sweet man.’

‘Thank God,’ I exhaled. ‘I thought I’d blown it.’ I watched her push the food around the oversized bowl I’d served it in and felt weak. ‘I can go out and get you something, Lilah. I don’t mind.’

‘No, stay.’ She took another almost-convincing bite. ‘Some of these crunchy bits are almost…’ She chewed, then swallowed. Hard. ‘Almost edible.’

She curled her legs up beneath her as she sank into the couch. I turned back into the kitchen and retrieved a glass of wine for her and a beer for myself, then sat beside her.

‘I still can’t believe you live without steak.’

‘I mostly don’t miss it.’ She motioned towards the plate with her fork and laughed. ‘Except on nights like tonight.’

‘I don’t think I could give meat up entirely. I like it too much.’

‘Of course you could. You can live without almost anything. In the scheme of things, food is a pretty small factor. Besides which, if you can live with half a kitchen, you can probably put up with anything.’

Her gaze drifted back to the kitchen, and I grimaced.

‘What do you think the meaning of life is, Lilah?’

‘Shit, Callum, that question is way too heavy to throw at me after the day I had and when I’ve only had half a glass of wine.’

‘Do you think people have a purpose, or are we just here to enjoy what we can? Because it’s not
really
your job to save the earth.’

Lilah propped the bowl between her knees and reached for her wine.

‘It
is
my job to save the earth, actually. I decided that’s my job, and so,’ she shrugged, ‘that’s now my job. I can’t do it alone, and I can’t do it all, but I can have a serious impact.’

‘What if it’s not saveable?’

‘I’ve wondered that.’ She sat the wine glass down and looked back to me. ‘I’ve wondered if all of these small victories are irrelevant, and if the world has passed the point of no return for the ecosystem.’

‘And?’

‘And what if it has—but what if it
hasn’t
. This is quite literally the struggle of my lifetime: optimism against realism. I have had times when the odds have been stacked so high against me that I can’t even see where the tower ends, and I’ve still come through. But my luck has to run out sometimes…’ she sighed. ‘Like today.’

‘And still you’re sitting here eating burnt broccoli when I have half a cow in my fridge which has already been raised, pooped and farted its little heart out, and been slaughtered.’

‘I have to keep trying.’ She was sad again and I realised I had to change the subject pronto. ‘I feel like I am such a blessed person—not blessed by any god, just
blessed
, lucky, fortunate… whatever. I owe life my best shot at making a difference.’

‘What’s the ethical thing to do with my dead cow—can I donate it to a homeless guy?’

She laughed and nodded.

‘Yes, when I finish this delicious accidentally barbequed stir-fry, let’s go find some homeless people and gift them a freezer full of frozen meat they can’t cook. That is definitely ethical.’ Lilah wound a noodle around her fork and ate it slowly. ‘The noodles are actually undercooked. I am almost impressed at the extreme contradiction in textures.’

I had run out of smart retorts, so I poked my tongue out at her, and she grinned.

‘I didn’t notice in your bathroom last time I was here… do you have a bath?’

‘I do have a bath.’ The bathtub was huge and, like the rest of the bathroom, an odd shade of bright blue. One of my ‘to-dos’ was to rip it out and expand the shower—finally now my procrastination was working in my favour. ‘I probably don’t have fancy bubble bath though.’

‘Oh, please, Callum.’ Her tone was positively bitter. ‘Fancy bubble bath is like soaking yourself in a drum of toxic chemicals. Warm water would be more than fine.’

I chuckled and kissed her head as I walked past.

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

A
fter her bath
, Lilah had relaxed and was calm and affectionate. We lay on the couch together and shared an in-depth debate on the health and environmental benefits of the vegan lifestyle vs Why
I
Love Steak. Of course I lost. Subjective taste versus the actual facts Lilah knew regarding the atmospheric impact of the dairy and beef industry alone was always going to be a tough battle, but throw in the fact that she was quite an experienced lawyer who had just lost an important day in court, and I was beyond doomed. We fell asleep on the couch, but I woke again at midnight to easily carry her through to my bed.

She didn’t stir as I lay her down gently onto the mattress, nor as I climbed in beside her and wrapped my arms around her. As I drifted back off to sleep though I felt her gaze on me, and when I opened my eyes again, she was staring at me with a contented smile.

‘Thanks, Callum.’

I kissed her softly.

‘Absolutely any time.’

S
omething had been set
in motion the night Lilah came to me for comfort. There was a distinct shift in the tone of our relationship, and I was aware of it immediately. Suddenly we were lining up dinner every night and sleeping at each other’s apartments more often than not.

When we had agreed to take it slow, I had genuinely meant it. That’s not to say I wasn’t out-of-my-mind overjoyed that Lilah and I had fallen into a pattern of spending every single night together—but it truly wasn’t my intention to entwine our lives the way we did. As far as I can tell, it just happened. I am sure Lilah would say the same. I suppose we were both lonely in our own way, and the companionship and emotional intimacy we’d shared had become addictive. Nobody decides magnets will attract; it’s just what they do.