‘Ah, good. You wouldn’t be the first if you were. Anyway, you seem like you might be bossing this illness thing.’
Bossing it! Ha!Most days Carli was like a swan, keeping it serene above the water, paddling frantically under the surface. ‘I don’t like to let it define me,’ she said. ‘I try my best to “boss it” but some days it’s in charge, so it’d be a biggish thing for anyone who dates me. I’m in bed by nine thirty most nights, the only pills I pop are supplements and painkillers. No different from your average wellness influencer, except nobody invites me to open gyms.’ Carli tried to put her life into a context Jonah might recognise whilst presenting a caveat.
‘You might have more of a personality than most wellness influencers,’ he countered. ‘You’re a cracking girl.’
A cracking girl. Carli’s grandad had called her that. Ugh! She’d been here already with the platitudes. Jonah was trying his best, but the robustness in his voice was faltering, like he’d discovered that a once-close acquaintance had died. And that was fine. That was why she’d given him his hall pass, so to speak. Now she wouldn’t be waiting fruitlessly for her phone to buzz with a ‘fancy another date?’ message.
Carli’s older sister, Luci had warned her to stop withthe early reveals, give the guys a chance to get to know her first – become invested – but that risked Carli becoming invested too. And if they pulled out, she lost her capital. So, knowing that most men would ultimately leave when they found out that chronic illness wasn’t a cute personality quirk she could try harder to change, Carli gave them a get-out clause early on. And most of them took it.
‘So, how long are you in Scotland for?’ Jonah asked as he walked Carli back to her nearby home.
‘Two weeks. I’m going to the place my mum’s ashes are scattered and tour the country a bit, visit some of her favourite towns and villages. There’s also a birthday party with a family who kind of nurtured me after she died.’
‘Oh, wow! Like a foster family? I didn’t realise…’
‘No, not a foster family. It sounds weird, but when my mum died, my dad was only interested in his own grief and getting back to Australia. He didn’t pay much attention to how my sister and I were doing. Luckily some others did, and I spent a lot of time kind of under their wing.’
‘Who were they?’
‘Just a local family.’Just. Ha!There was no ‘just’ about it. The Butler family – centrifugal force of the local community. Lynchpin of Kintyre with their world-famous distillery and whisky. And the beating heart of Kinshore with their seven children, three of them adopted, each of them a vibrant character in themselves, who made Carli feel she was part of something incredibly special. One of them in particular.
‘Sounds like you’ve been through a lot. Told you, you’re a cracking girl, Carls.’
There was that word again. ‘Not sure it makes me cracking,’ Carli countered. ‘I did what I had to to get by. When Mum got hit by the drunk driver, I may as well havebeen in the car too. The impact was like being slammed by a truck. Dad wanted to get out of Kinshore and back to his home country and gave us a year’s deadline until me and my sister finished our exams. It was unsettling, but luckily my friends and their family got me by.’ Carli didn’t include the key element that helped her cope in Kinshore – the main reason it had ever been manageable at all. Jonah didn’t need any of this detail, given that this was their last date, and Niall Butler certainly was not on the conversational menu. She didn’t want to consider Niall anyway.
When they reached Carli’s apartment, Jonah said, ‘Well, have an awesome trip. Look me up when you get back.’
Okay, I won’t.
‘It’s okay, Jonah. I don’t expect you to wait for me or anything. See whoever you like while I’m away.’
Jonah shrugged. ‘Let’s play it by ear, hey?’ He gave her a peck on the cheek.
It was all code for catch you in another life. Carli had opened the window a crack to let him out and, like Peter Pan, he was flying off into the night. Well, at least she wouldn’t be hankering after him while she was in Scotland. Or anyone, for that matter. It turned out relationships were easy when you ended things two dates in.
‘So how did the date go last night?’
Standing in the doorway of her South Yarra townhouse, Carli’s heavily pregnant sister, Luci, tried to take the leash of Carli’s black Lab, Glen, but Carli held tight. ‘Not in your condition,’ she said. ‘Glen’s a little rambunctious today.’
‘Oh, I’m used to rambunctious males.’ Luci waved her hands in dismissal. ‘I’ve got one already and potentiallyanother on the way. I’ll have to deal. Plus, we’re going to be hanging out for two weeks, aren’t we, Glen?’ Luci waddled through to the open-plan kitchen diner, where expensive art decorated the walls, and fixed Carli a glass of homemade lemonade.
‘Adam will be here, won’t he?’ Luci, an in-demand graphic designer, was married to an exceptionally hot biker who was also an in-demand graphic designer. Money was not in short supply and Carli was glad that her sister could enjoy a long maternity leave and indulge in time with her first child.
‘Sometimes, yes,’ said Luci.
Carli sat at the kitchen table, Glen obediently by her side, and sipped her lemonade. Her cheeks tightened at the taste of the drink. ‘Did you run out of sugar? There’s way more lemon than “ade” in here.’
‘Oh, I was trying to make it sugar free for my healthy sister. But I only had a few spoons of honey left. Sorry. Anyhoo, listen, how did the date go?’
Carli placed the glass on the table. ‘It was dating euthanasia day, and he took his medicine like a good boy.’
‘Ah! No way. Not another one, Carls. You’ve got to give them a chance.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes. You’ve got to at least get to the rooting stage so I can live vicariously through you.’
Carli raised an eyebrow at her sister. ‘Are things okay with Adam?’ she asked. ‘I mean, if you’re looking to live vicariously through a yoga teacher with Fibromyalgia, who spends more time with dogs than humans and hasn’t had a decent lay in forever, then I might have to be worried about you.’
