Nora lowers her phone then. Looking sad but certain, and for once, not scared.
And I hear what you’re saying, Nora, I do, Bren says. But sometimes I think, if we’d dated, you and me? Then we’d never have stopped.
He feels as if he has taken his heart from behind his ribcage and rolled it towards her.
Whether we’re an ideal match or not, he says, we’d have gone all the way. Wouldn’t we.
Another roll, of his marble heart.
And Nora breathes out. A sigh that travels through her.
I don’t know, she says. But then: I’d have liked to.
Her voice, so quiet.
But we didn’t, she says. Even if I’d got your message, and joined you out there, Bren, I never wanted to travel the worldforever. I’m a home body. I like to be rooted. You like to be … free.
I wonder if you can be both, Bren says, and Nora says she wonders that, too. They face each other for a long moment, after this. Motionless. Bren, for once, not wanting to move. Then he says, for the record, Nora? He’s a really good guy. Robin, I mean. I … want to be happy, for you both.
I don’t need you to be, she says, as she tips the whiskey side to side in her glass. I thought I did, but I don’t. You’re. We’re – small shrug, palm out – what we are. Whatever that is; it’s hard to define. But I actually think that’s okay. After all I’ve learned, recently.
Bren doesn’t know what she means exactly, but he’s so tired, so drained, so sort-of-not-drunk-but-wanting-to-be, he doesn’t ask. Forces himself to sit with the pulsing in his hands and feet. They have scattered his father’s ashes today, and with it, he has decided to accept more than one thing: he knows Nora is going to marry Robin. And yet, there is still something he needs to make clear.
Nora, he says.
Bren, she says back, half serious.
He peers over the edge. Thinks about the years below them. This day, between them, like his father between his fingers. The ash of him but also the matter, and atoms, the straw of his hair, paler than Bren’s, his voice he can hear if he tries to, calling him and Nora inside after dark, come on, you two, it’s time.
What I wanted to tell you is not right to tell you, now, he reiterates. And he feels like he’s bungee-ing off a bridge as he says it – body falling in slow motion, like he’s not really doing it, because why would you, why throw yourself off a ledge when it goes against all your instincts but you do, people do.
But I want you to know, he says, even if I don’t say it. Because how youthinkI might feel, about you, Nora? I do.
Beat of his heart, in his chest.
Slower, steadier, than he’d expected.
I was just … scared, I think. Of feeling that way. Because that’s when things hurt the most, so I guess I figured it was better not to. And I’m not asking for it back, I know you’ve made a choice, you’ve got your life. But I do. Feel that way. And I just … thought you should know.
He expects Nora will blush harder, or chastise him for his terrible timing; elbow him in the nose on purpose, this time. But instead, she sighs again.
You’re an idiot, Bren Ferguson.
Your idiot? he says, and she smacks him on the arm, and they laugh, and they’re still them; everything light and heady like the whiskey in their blood or the wind rushing past as he sails through the air on the bungee cord that did not break. And when they’ve been quiet for a long while, Nora no longer laughing but resting against his shoulder, he says her name, in a low voice. Nora.
Hm?
Won’t you always … wonder about us?
Stillness, between them. No sound.
I think, she says, slowly, we’re far past wondering, Bren. Don’t you?
And it seems she has nothing else to say to him, about that. Falls asleep, eventually, in an upright position, as the night lightens to dawn and Bren sits there and listens to her grinding her teeth, feels her flinch, as if she’s dreaming, her face pressed against his arm.
Without waking her, he takes his phone and amends his flight as the sun comes up. Feels his world opening again, because it does that, when you have no ties, when you canreact, when you make a choice to keep moving, and he gets up and heads to the bottom of the garden with the oak and his dad and the morning chorus is a din, by sunrise. He emails the Queenstown adventure centre; tells them his arrival date. Thinks, as he looks up, about how he helped him make this bird feeder, right here. Casting back to that day, the radio drifting through the kitchen window, the sandwiches they’d stopped to eat in the shade, and it all wells up inside him, love and pain both, strange, to him, how they go hand in hand. His dad. His heart. Gone, broken; still beating. And when Nora is awake he goes back inside and makes her a coffee because he hasn’t noted she doesn’t drink the stuff and she takes it from him and smiles, at his mum, too, in her slippers, coming downstairs. And it is over, whatever it was, whatever it never nearly became; it is done, and now he can go.
TWENTY-ONE
