It goes down like a lead balloon. He glares at me over his shoulder, then, concluding his assessment of the vehicles, he rises to his full impressive height and begins to scrutinise me: wet clumps of toffee brown hair stuck to freckled skin, threadbare Tshirt rapidly soaking through, and frayed denim shorts. I seem to be dressed like a teenager and can blame only the incoming perimenopausal crisis Sara has monitored in recent months with the meticulous fascination of a meteorologist tracking an offshore storm surge.
‘Obviously, I’ll pay for the repairs,’ I promise, hoping I sound more mature than I look. The Viper frowns and pulls me out of the rain under the protection of his heavy-duty awning, critical gaze settling on the bright yellow thrifted Wellington boots on my feet.
‘How do you drive in those?’ he asks, deep voice surprisingly warm in the chilly air.
Is it a rhetorical question?We have the evidence right here of how I drive in them.
But as I try to think of an answer, he takes a giant step across the A-frame of my trailer, walks around the Wrangler, and opens the passenger door. ‘Get in,’ he instructs, nodding at the driver’s side as if his senses have taken leave. Surely it would be irresponsible to let my negligent driving loose on the rest of the South Coast holidaymakers ensconced for the night at Pretty Beach?
I’ve had a casual flirtation with my own death ever since I lost Fraser. It’s nothing serious. I just occasionally glance its way. But getting in the car with this stranger, facing potential danger for real, it hits me that perhaps I’m not in so much of a rush. Maybe I don’t want to die just yet. Certainly not on the eve of myfortieth birthday. Not when everyone has promised that, after emerging from such a stormy few years, life is about to begin again.
The magnificent realisation that I don’t want to be murdered by this man and its birthday-eve timing is so intoxicating that I allow it to seep in, rain pelting on my skin as I glance skyward just for a second, eyes shut, gratitude beaming, and breathe in this newfound, invigorating desire to endure …
‘Is this some sort of incantation to the gods?’ the Viper asks when I look back at him, rain soaking his Tshirt as he waits for me. ‘What are youdoing?’
‘Wouldn’t it be better ifyouparked it?’ I suggest. He looks like the practical sort of man upon whom my epiphany would be lost. ‘I’ll take copious notes.’
He ignores me and swings into the passenger seat as we fall into a stalemate, sizing each other up through the windscreen while I stand in the mud, illuminated by the Jeep’s headlights, wipers mirroring my indecision as they flick relentlessly back and forth until he holds up his hands, questioning the delay. It’s only a brilliant flash of lightning and an almost instantaneous clap of thunder that hurry me to the driver’s door. But I find it jammed.Another broken thing in my life.
‘It only works from the inside,’ I yell, tapping the glass and nodding at the latch while I rub my arms in the cold and have an unwanted flash of Fraser and the unruffled, scientific way that he would have handled this. But I can’t think about him now. This is my Fresh Start. I didn’t stagger to my feet, pull myself through a drunken apocalypse, anddo the work(when there was just so much of it to do) only for him to barge to front of mind and interfere with the fight-or-flight response when I need it most.
The Viper leans across the driver’s seat, pulls the door handle, and surveys me through the car window with exasperated darkblue eyes. I get in and slam the door, shivering. For a few seconds we stare at each other, cocooned in the relative warmth of the Jeep, rain pouring on the vinyl roof. Actually, it’s not just pouring, I notice. It’s leaking straight through!
‘Sorry,’ I say, reaching between his muscular thighs and wrenching open the glove box. A roll of gaffer tape tumbles out, along with a bunch of papers, which flitter into his lap. Top of the pile is the very last document I want this man, or anyone, including me, to see. The death certificate. I snatch it before he can register what it is, fold it in half, and shove it down the side of my seat, instantly remorseful. It feels like I’m shoving Fraser down there with chewing gum wrappers and the receipt for the sump gasket.Out of sight, out of mind?How ironic when, even three years later, he is the permanent backdrop to every scene …
The man hands me the tape with the demeanour of a surgical assistant. I stretch a length from the roll and bite it off with my teeth, then stick it to the roof where the rain is getting in, heart pounding with the exertion of holding myself and my car—and my life—together in this moment becauseeverythingis going wrong.
‘Let’s get this parked,’ he says, in a softer tone. Unexpected kindness will wreck me. But when I turn the key and the car pairs again with my phone, my Broadway playlist springs to life, belting the soundtrack fromWickedand detracting from the defences I intended to mount about my careful, undistracted driving. I shut it off with a flourish.
‘I’m writing a musical!’Trying to, anyway.‘That was research.’
How is this helping?
I hope he doesn’t ask me the topic of my show. I’ll have to explain how it is that I’m qualified to writeWidowed: The Musicaland that it’s funnier than it sounds—like that menopauseproduction that was a global smash. It’s not a conversation we should enter with my foot on the accelerator.
‘Seatbelt,’ he commands, nodding at my body.
‘But we’re barely going anywhere.’
‘From where I’m sitting,’ he says, ‘we seem to be in an accident hotspot.’ At least he’s acknowledging it was an accident. Perhaps he’s not going to bury me in a ditch after all.
I’m busy weighing my risk of botching this again and making the whole thing worse when he sighs and reaches over me, grabs the belt buckle, and pulls it gently across my shoulder and chest, clicking the lap sash into the slot at my hip. It’s been so long since a man has been this familiar with me, it feels like one of those overly romantic slow-motion scenes in those South Korean romcoms I’ve become obsessed with, and I tell myself not to fall for these antics. Not with him. Or at all. I can’t afford to.Be Sara!
‘Now, inch the car forward,’ he instructs as I let go of the handbrake, press the accelerator, and wish I hadn’t shut off Elphaba, because all we’re listening to now is the hideous sound of vintage metal scraping just-off-the-assembly-line chrome. I move us safely forward a couple of metres and brake.
‘Throw it in reverse,’ he says, stretching his arm behind the back of my seat, twisting his body so he can check the rearview. I’ve barely recovered from the intimacy of this manoeuvre before his other hand closes over mine on the steering wheel, his fingers wrapping tight as I attempt not to dissolve in his grasp.
‘Every move you make is counterintuitive,’ he explains quietly as he concentrates, gently turning the wheel. ‘Slow and steady will give you more control …’
There is no personal space. None. We’re so close, I’m able to monitor a single raindrop as it falls from his brown hair and runsdown his jaw and through the maze of stubble on his chin, disappearing into the hollow at his neck. And now the windows are fogging up! My eyes flick back to his, and I find him transfixed by the extent to which I am not paying attention to the right thing. He’s probably wondering if I even have a licence.
‘The most important thing is to focus,’ he says.
Well.‘Is it my fault the poster boy for off-road adventure is whispering instructions that sound like caravan-related ASMR?’
His brows rise.
‘You know, pleasing sounds that give you a brain orgasm—’
