Nick said nothing. He stared, a little disoriented, at the shopfront.
“Nick? Hello?”
“It was a camera shop,” Nick said quietly. “I guess that was a long time ago.”
“Did you want to buy a new camera?” Carly asked through another yawn. “There have to be other camera stores in Sydney, right?”
“No, it’s not that,” he muttered. “It’s—Never mind. Not important.” He’d missed so much in the fifteen years he’d been gone. This city’s secret places had changed and vanished, and he hadn’t even been here to notice it happening.
“Tell me,” Carly said. She said it as though she was curious, and as though she resented that curiosity. She was looking up at him expectantly, the way she had when she’d been awaiting his apology at the printer’s the other day. Like she was going to get this information out of him as a matter of principle.
“I came here a lot as a kid, is all. And when I was trying to figure out what to do after I stopped dancing, I kept having dreams about this place.” Nick didn’t believe in the universe sending him signs, but those dreams had felt like a compass pointing him in the right direction. Of course, it turned out to be a disastrous direction. Even if the old man had still been here, Nick probably would have been too ashamed to go inside and lie to him about his new career. His stomach twisted with the familiar anxiety that had haunted him for months now, coupled with a new guilt at lying to Marcus, to Heather, to everyone around him.
“I’m going to go in and get a coffee,” Carly said suddenly. “You stay here.” It was as though she had intuited that he didn’t want to go inside and see the place gutted and renovated, unrecognizable to anyone who remembered what it had once been. The ride here had created some kind of fragile peace between them, he thought, which she confirmed when she stopped a few feet from the shop door and turned to him. “What do you want?”
After she’d gone inside, Nick leaned against the rough concrete wall of the office block, staring across the laneway at the storefront. Based on the steady trickle of customers in and out, the place seemed to be doing all right. He thought back to the quiet hours he’d spent in the photography shop, when he was often the only customer. Not even a customer, as he’d never had the money to purchase anything. But the proprietor had let him wander and browse as though he did, showing him lenses and film like he had money to burn. In truth, Nick realized now, the man was probably happy to have someone to talk to, a little company in his quiet, tucked away shop. And Nick had been happy to spend a few hours away from the ballet school and the dorms, relieved to think about something that wasn’t ballet.
He glanced down the alley, thinking about all the times he’d snuck back here and felt like he’d unlocked one of the city’s secrets. It felt so strange now, to be a tourist in the place that had been home. Eventually, he supposed, he would feel that way about Munich, and about Paris, too. He’d be a tourist everywhere and a local nowhere.
A few minutes later, Carly reappeared with a coffee in each hand. She handed him a hot cup with “SK C +1”—a skim cappuccino with one sugar—scrawled on the lid, and he thanked her, making a mental note that the next round of coffees would be on him. Carly held her own plastic cup up to show him, a victorious smile on her face. Like everything else about her, Carly’s smile was a lot. She smiled with her entire face, and every crinkle and freckle lifted and lit up as she showed a dozen white teeth, gleaming to match her brown eyes. Like him, she’d spent her life performing in heavy stage makeup, probably false eyelashes and deep red lipstick. But he had a feeling her smile would reach the cheap seats without any help from L’Oréal.
“Finally, I found iced coffee in this town. I’ve been dying for a bodega iced coffee for days, but it’s not on any menu here. These guys had it and I’m so excited.”
He was about to warn her when she lifted the straw to her lips and took a sip. Her eyes widened in surprise and she swallowed quickly, then gave a spluttery cough.
“What the hell is in this thing?” she exclaimed, peeling the lid off the cup and peering in at its contents.
“Ah, Australian iced coffee is a bit of a different animal,” he said, suppressing a smile. “It’s more like a coffee-flavoured dessert. There’s probably ice cream and chocolate syrup in there. Maybe whipped cream, too.” He looked down into the sweating plastic cup and nodded. “Yep, whipped cream. I used to love a good iced coffee when I was little.”
Carly raised her eyebrows at him. “So is there any actual coffee in here? Or is it just a milkshake pretending to be caffeine?”
“Probably the latter,” he shrugged, and she groaned with her whole body, throwing her head back and letting the sound bounce off the walls of the laneway. It was petulant and ridiculous, and some people might have found it endearing.
“What does a girl have to do to get a plain, unadulterated, nuclear-strength iced coffee with half and half around here? I’m not drinking this. It might as well be a sundae.”
“I’m sure we can find you one somewhere in Freshwater. In the meantime, drink your milkshake.”
On the drive home, Carly sipped at her iced coffee until she was making quiet slurping sounds and moving the straw around to catch the final drops of it.
“I see you hated your milkshake,” he said drily, as they sat in traffic on Military Road.
“Shut up,” she grumbled, stashing the empty cup in the car door. She leaned back in her seat and sighed, and when he glanced over he saw that she was once again slumping dejectedly and worrying her bottom lip again, all traces of her sparkling megawatt smile gone.
“What’s wrong?” Because something did look really wrong.
“Nothing,” Carly said, too quickly. Nick didn’t bother telling her he didn’t believe her. Subtle she was not, and her body language was a dead giveaway. “Fine,” she said mulishly after a long silence, and Nick suppressed a triumphant smile. She couldn’t win every round.
“I need to get promoted this season.”
“Okay,” Nick said, not following.
She ran her hand through her hair and exhaled a sharp, exasperated sigh.
“Like,beforethe season starts, which is in a few weeks. But I’m here, and as long as I’m here, I can’t make a good impression on the AD before she makes her decision.”
“And you won’t go back any earlier.” It was a statement, not a question. He knew a few things about Carly Montgomery now, including a few rather intimate things he suspected she’d rather he didn’t know. And he knew that she wouldn’t even consider leaving Heather in the lurch on her wedding day.
“Of course not,” she muttered, confirming his assumption.
