Still, I clock the restraint. How she’s keeping herself together with discipline. Which means I’m not watching the film any more than she is.
Where’s Nevin?
When the credits roll, I wait like I always do. Let the room empty first to reduce the chances of blocking the aisle or bumping into anyone, having to make small talk about the weather or a match. But while I wait for everyone to scarper, I’m also watching her.
She hasn’t moved. Still upright and composed. The trembling stopped, though, or she’s buried it deeper. Hard to tell from here.
Fuck’s sake. That’s Nevin’s ball to tidy up, not mine.
Except Nevin’s not here and she is, and the whole thing is a grit in the gears that makes my heart stall.
The last couple near the front get up. They leave through the double doors, and the cinema goes quiet except for the music still trickling through the speakers.
Standing with a spine straight as a ruler, she smooths her coat, adjusts the strap of her bag across her body, turns, and starts up the aisle.
She’s even shorter than I thought. Barely reaches my shoulder, probably. Moves with careful economy, one foot placed more cautiously than the other. She’s only ten feet away now, about to vanish through the door.
Then she tilts her face toward me, and our eyes meet.
She clocks me and stops. Total freeze. She knows who I am, or at least that I could know who she is.
Great. Now I have to deal with the fallout of being seen. The ‘Oh, hi’ and the awkward chat.
A fraction of a second where the air between us goes combustible. The breath I was taking gets stuck. It’s absurd. I’ve faced down rows of 130-kilo props sprinting at my chest and kept my cool.
She scans me in a quick pass and grasps, somehow, that I have no intention of adding to whatever the hell her problem is.
Then she lifts a single trembling finger to her lips. Her eyes hold mine, wide and greyish blue and full of something I can’t name. Fear, maybe. Or trust. Or both.
Don’t tell anyone. Please.
Not a gesture someone would make after their dog crossed the rainbow bridge. No, she’s asking for silence, trusting me to hold a door shut without knowing what’s behind it. Something is not right with her.
And, that means it’s not even a choice – I see the gap, and I fill it.
I don’t need to know who hurt her. I need to be the wall they can’t get through. I’ve been one my whole life.
I give her a single nod. It’s the way I dig in my boots and anchor my weight when I’m hitting a ruck. You’re safe. It’s an easy, familiar promise.
She drops her hand and disappears through the door.
I remain sitting, staring at the blank screen. What the fuck just happened?
Chapter 2
Ava
If you can keep a still face while your feet bleed inside pointe shoes, you can hold your tongue when a man yells in your ear. It uses the same emotional muscle.
Not any man, though.
My boyfriend.
A tremor starts in my left hand. I clench my fingers and press my nails hard into my palm. The sensation grounds me. Pain, when you can choose it, is a relief.
Up on the screen, a woman in a red jumper twirls in fake snow.
No more twirls for me. At least not for the next few weeks.
