Page 48 of The Lucky Escape

‘I’m starving,’ I volunteered as we slowed down to get the lay of the land. ‘Can we eat?’

‘You read my mind,’ Patrick agreed. ‘Let’s park up and see where our noses lead us.’

We climbed out and headed off.

‘It’s really cool that you do that,’ I said. I was shy saying it, but I wanted him to know I’d noticed.

‘Do what?’

‘That you trust everything’s cool. That it will all work out. Even just parking up and saying we should follow our noses. It’s spontaneous, but not reckless. I’m learning from you.’

He nudged his shoulder up against mine, something I noticed he did whenever he was trying to connect or reassure me.

‘There’s not much I can teach you,’ he replied. ‘And I mean that.’

We approached a little quaint café in a market square, with tables and chairs scattered outside and views of the central town hall. We didn’t even say out loud that it was where we would settle – we just instinctively headed towards it and pulled up a chair each.

Patrick closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the sun.

‘Heaven,’ he said.

‘Heaven,’ I agreed.

We ordered an early lunch of coffee and tortilla wraps with avocado and cheesy eggs before deciding, after the café owner’s suggestion, to head for the back of town towards the estuary of the river. It was wide, with huge grassy banks along the trail. The water was still and perfectly reflected the odd cloud from above, like the water by the lodge had done onthe night of our arrival in Margaret River. I wondered, again, what it would have been like to travel here with Alexander. Would he have hired a car and driven us places? Would we have ended up straying from the itinerary and finding a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, an adventure tailor-made for two? I doubted it. He couldmaybehave surprised me with something as romantic and spontaneous, I suppose but … no. Alexander and Patrick were polar opposites. Totally.

I liked how Patrick talked with the waitstaff and the owner at the café. I liked how he talked to everyone. Alexander sometimes treated service staff like they were beneath him, but I don’t think I ever really let myself notice at the time. It was just Alexander, who he is. When you love someone you accept them for who they are, don’t you? You don’t ask them to change or alter themselves, because then they wouldn’t be who you fell for. But being in such close quarters with another man I was starting to see all the ways Alexander wasn’t right. Or, some of the ways, anyway. I couldn’t deny that I still missed Alexander, and I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like if he was, indeed, here instead. It was hard to think of him, but I couldn’t not, either. He was all I’d known for so long. He made me who I am. But then Patrick did something kind – offering me the first bite of his vanilla slice or surprising me with a road trip – and I’d think,Is this what I’ve been missing? Did I settle for scraps and this a full meal?

Not that it was romantic with Patrick, of course. I was only making that comparison because he was a man. I wouldn’t be having those thoughts if Jo was with me, or Kezza or Bri.

Obviously.

‘Let’s climb out onto the rocks, shall we?’ Patrick’s voicecut through my thoughts. ‘Whoa, you were miles away there. You okay? You’ve been quiet since the café.’

‘Yeah,’ I told him. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. To be honest with you I was thinking about Alexander. Again.’

I’d meant to poke fun at myself, but Patrick’s face fell and he set his mouth in a firm line.

‘Not in a good way,’ I offered. ‘But, just thinking about what a different trip this would have been with him.’

‘Sorry you’ve got second prize,’ Patrick said. His voice was light, but something about his body language wasn’t.

‘Hey, you.’ I tugged at his sleeve. ‘Thank you for today. This is amazing.’

He nodded, and took a seat away from me on a massive boulder. After a while he said, ‘Do you wish he was here instead of me?’

There was something about the weight of our silence that meant I wasn’t surprised he’d picked the conversation back up.

‘No,’ I said, from where I balanced a few boulders away. ‘I don’t know what I’ve done to make you think that, but obviously that’s not true.’

‘What makes it obvious?’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘No.’

There was a good stretch of rock between us, so I couldn’t reach out and touch him like my instinct was telling me to. I couldn’t see his eyes beneath his sunglasses, either, but the edge to his voice was new.

‘Patrick,’ I said. ‘Every time Alexander has crossed my mind I’ve actually thought how much crappier this trip would have been with him. I can’t believe I get to be here with somebody so present. You’re twenty times the man he is, and I think I’m having some self-doubt where the blinkers are comingoff and I can’t believe I ever thought being with him was a good idea. I didn’t know there was another way for a relationship to be.’

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