“I loved this town as a kid,” Nick said after they’d parked and found their way to the pretty little main street, a slope crowded with cafés and antique stores. “It looks exactly the same as I remember it, down to the quilt shop and the lolly shop. And the view of the valley.” He gestured toward the bottom of the street where the bush took over again, and Carly could see down into a vast gully full of dense trees and dotted with orange terra-cotta roofs.
When Carly returned from the public restrooms, it was to find Nick with a coffee in each hand and his camera around his neck. Without the ocean breeze, it was even hotter up here than it was in Sydney, and she hadn’t realized until she saw the sweating iced coffee that she was parched.
“Ready to work?” he asked, holding out the cup to her.
She took the coffee in one hand and gave him a mock salute with the other, and he led her down the street toward the bush.
“Remember my policy about going into dark alleyways with strange men?” she asked as the shops and pedestrians dropped away.
“I do,” he said.
“I have the same policy about going into deserted forests with strange men,” she said.
“Well, this isn’t deserted, it’s a very well-known track to a very well-known lookout,” he replied, gesturing toward a sign that read BRIDALVEILLOOKOUT. There was a group of outdoorsy-looking people walking their way, having apparently just come from said lookout. Which sounded very pretty, and very on theme.
“You’re still a strange man,” she said as they turned down the path, and she was rewarded by the sight of Nick Jacobssticking his tongue outat her. Like he’d been bodysnatched or something. Or like he was just in a rare good mood.
I want whatever you have. Whatever you can give me.
The track snaked down through the ever-thickening forest, the many gum trees that hung over them still and silent in the unmoving air. In addition to their own footsteps, she could hear the high pitched trill of some unseen bird, and the throaty, reproachful cawing of another bird that almost sounded like it was arguing with the first. As they walked, the grasses and ferns along the path occasionally rustled with sudden movement.
“Just small marsupials,” Nick said when she started and stepped into the middle of the path. “Or lizards.”
“Or deadly snakes,” she added, picturing a snake taking a bite out of her ankle and wishing she’d worn something other than shorts.
“Nah, if it was a deadly snake, you’d be dead by now,” he said, as if that was supposed to be reassuring.
After about ten minutes of steady decline, they came to a set of uneven stone steps with a handrail that had been drilled into the rock. Nick climbed down first, then turned at the bottom of the steps and waited as she stepped down carefully. As she reached the last few steps, he held out his hand, and she took it, letting him guide her down onto a steel viewing platform that hung improbably off the face of the mountain.
He gestured to her right, and, following his gaze, she gasped.
About a hundred feet away, a waterfall was tumbling and spraying over the rocks and into the valley below. The water was narrow and dense at the top, but it widened as it fell, stretching thin and diaphanous over the rocks, looking just like delicate, shimmering lace. Bridal Veil Falls. The mountain was too high to see where the water landed, but Carly knew that somewhere in the dense green eucalyptus forest below them, there must have been a creek or a river flowing through the enormous valley that was laid out in front of them, interrupted by rolling tree-covered hills and dotted with jagged rock formations. Above it, an ultramarine sky stretched forever, cloudless and triumphant.
“Damn,” Carly whispered. “Beats the Lincoln Center fountain.”
“Say cheese,” Nick said beside her, and she turned her head, grinning. He was waiting with his camera up, and she heard it click rapidly.
She turned back to the waterfall and watched it for a few minutes, taking in the sound of tumbling water and bird calls, and the smell of earth and eucalyptus. And then the sight of Nick. Face half-obscured by his camera, his forehead visible but damp with sweat, his hands wrapped around the device like it was a part of him. A natural extension of his muscular forearms and long, agile fingers. Beneath it, she could see half of his smile, just his full bottom lip. She wanted to bite it.
But instead, she slipped off her sneakers and yanked off her sweaty socks, and walked to the very end of the viewing platform. Just like at the Freshwater pool, there was a railing here. She fanned her feet out into first position and slowly lifted one foot into passé, then extended it until it landed on the railing. She heard the camera click again, and heard Nick padding behind her to find the best angle, and after a while she rotated her hips and pivoted on one foot until she was facing the spectacular waterfall and the barre was holding her foot up in an arabesque. Then she lifted her arms into a high fifth position and pressed the ball of her other foot down until she was on relevé.
“That’s perfect,” Nick said from behind her. “Can you lift it off the railing?”
She was going to retort that if she somehow fell off this little lookout and down the side of a mountain, she’d haunt him forever, but instead she pulled up through her obliques and lifted her foot until it hovered a few inches above the warm metal. Peering down into the valley, with just the ball of her foot tethering her to the earth, she felt like she was almost floating.
Nick walked around her, clicking away and murmuring encouragement, and she let the sound wash over her, along with the birds and the water and occasional rustle of a feeble breeze in the leaves.
Forty minutes later, though, her face was beaded with sweat and no longer fit to be photographed. Nick had shot her from every conceivable angle, in a range of positions, though he’d refused to let her do any jumps, muttering something about the platform giving out and her haunting him forever.
“No more,” she groaned, dragging herself up off the ground and brushing dirt and pieces of leaves off her knees. Hunched over and sweaty, she paused when she heard the camera click and looked up at him.
“Don’t get this,” she frowned up at him.
“But you look so graceful and elegant,” he chuckled, but he put the camera down.
“Can we please find some shade, and some water? Maybe a nice cold beer?”
“In a second,” he said.
