Someone Like You(16)

'I don't know … '

Lizzie stepped in close to him and slipped her hand into his, her  fingers soft and warm in the cool of his palm. She tugged him closer.

What the hell?

'C'mon,' she whispered. 'It's not far.'

He was stuck. Silent. There he was, in the dark, holding the hand of a  beautiful woman and he remembered something about himself. About the way  he used to be. And in that instant, he decided to let himself enjoy  this moment, this one small slice of not feeling like crap, a sliver of  time he might look back on one day and remember that he'd been standing  with this woman, who was holding his hand with gentle insistence, like  he was a real man. And he was holding hers like it was the most natural  thing in the world. Like it was exactly where he wanted to be.

'Dan,' she said softly. 'Come with me.'





CHAPTER


8


Dan's hand was large and strong and Lizzie's felt small and delicate in  its cocoon. They walked along the roadway in silence. There was nothing  but the waves on the sand as a sound effect in the night. Step by step,  they fell into an easy rhythm with each other, his long strides slowing  to meet hers, accommodating her, meeting her relaxed saunter.

Lizzie hadn't planned to reach out and touch him, to entwine her fingers  in his, to capture his attention that way. But she'd seen a flicker of  hesitation in his eyes, a moment of vulnerability, and she'd acted  without thinking. Going to the pub seemed like a first step and she  knew, some part of her was convinced, that it was one he really wanted  to make.

So they walked. It was safer for him now, empty and shadowy in the  streets. They weren't likely to meet anyone who might want to stop and  chat. No one would want to interrupt two people walking in the darkness,  holding hands, looking like clandestine lovers.

A wind picked up, swept off the water and it cooled her cheek, tickling  her silver earring against the soft skin of her neck. She glanced up,  watched the breeze play with Dan's black hair, rustling it around his  eyes. There was definitely something different about his face tonight,  she noticed with a nervous tightening in her throat.

She needed some safe ground. 'You know Ry and Julia are planning the wedding?'         

     



 

'Don't tell me. Vegas and a fake Elvis marriage celebrant?'

She laughed. 'I don't think so unless Julia has some plans that this bridesmaid doesn't know about.'

'That's nice. You as the bridesmaid.' She felt a tightening in his grip. 'Haven't you been best friends since you were kids?'

Lizzie smiled at each memory, most of them created on the beach just a  glance away or on these seaside streets. 'Besties since she sat next to  me on the first day of primary school and shared her coloured pencils  with me.'

'You like it that Julia's come home.'

She gave him a quick glance but had to look away. His gaze was too open,  he looked too interested. As if he was opening himself up to take her  in.

'Nothing was quite the same around here when Julia was in Melbourne for  all those years. No matter how many new friends you make along the way,  no one really knows you like your best and oldest.'

'True.'

'You and Ry have that, don't you?'

Dan smiled and nodded. 'Are you a born and bred Middle Point girl or a blow-in like me?'

Lizzie chuckled. 'Lived here my whole life.' Give or take a few months.  He didn't need to know the exact truth. 'After I was born, Mum brought  me and my brother, Joe, down here to live with my nanna. That's her  house I live in.'

Dan's eyes became curious, full of questions. She knew what he was thinking.

'And your father?'

Lizzie scoffed, looked up to the flickering stars in the southern sky. 'What father?'

'It's like that, is it?'

'The man who fathered me was never a part of my life or my brother's. We made a family without him.'

'So where are they? Your mum, Joe, your nanna.'

Sometimes Lizzie forgot there were people who didn't know her history.  It had been a long time since she'd met someone new who didn't have the  Lizzie Blake story as part of their collective memory. It was so much  safer to live in a place where people knew but had forgotten, so she  never had reason to dredge up the memories or the heartache of her past.  She hadn't had to explain it to anyone in years, had locked the pain  away in a place that still hurt to look at. So she didn't.

But there was something about this man next to her, holding her hand in  the darkness. The mysterious confidence she'd been trying to find welled  in her at that moment, fluttering in her stomach and lifting her  shoulders. Would the truth scare him away? Would finding out make her  seem desperate and clingy? Would he think of her as the loneliest girl  in Middle Point?

She decided to open the door to her past. But only a crack. She would  only tell him what he could easily find out if he were curious enough to  ask anyone else in town. She knew he'd been through his own private  hell. Would that make him understand hers?

Lizzie felt a familiar weight across her chest. 'My beautiful nanna died  when I was ten. Joe left for Sydney when I was fifteen.'

Dan stopped and Lizzie took two steps before she caught up with that  fact. Their arms were stretched out between them but he didn't let her  go. He must have guessed there was more.

Lizzie reached deep inside for the truth. 'When I was twenty, mum died  of breast cancer. I cared for her for the last six months of her life  and she died in our house.'

Dan pulled her close, so they were face-to-face, almost body-to-body in  the dark, the wind the only thing in the small space between them. She  looked directly up at him and he saw the challenge in her eyes.

'Jesus, Elizabeth.' He fought the sudden urge to pull her into his arms,  comfort her, settling instead on resting his other hand on her  shoulder, gripping tight through the cool cotton of her shirt.

She took a deep breath. 'It's quite the sob story, isn't it?'

'And this brother of yours, Joe. Did he come back?'

'When he could. For the funeral.'

And then Dan knew why she'd never looked at him with pity. She would  know better than anyone he'd ever met that it didn't help someone who  was suffering. It turned you in on yourself, made you want to push other  people away. He reckoned she must have had more than her fair share of  sympathetic looks, enough to last two lifetimes. She'd clearly lost so  much more than he ever had.

Everything he'd thought about Lizzie was turned on its head. 'That's terrible, what happened to you.'

'That's what I think too. But that's life, isn't it?' She shrugged and  he felt her shoulder shift under his touch. He soothed his hand from the  top of her arm, up and down in gentle strokes, to the tender skin of  her neck and held it there.         

     



 

'Not for everyone.'

'Shit happens,' she said and he felt her shiver.

'That's a lot of shit to happen to one person. Too much.' A fleeting  thought crossed his mind. Maybe she'd figured out the trick to getting  on with life. He wondered if she'd share it with him.

She turned away from him and he dropped his hand from her neck, tracing a  line with his index finger down her arm, past her elbow and wrist to  her hand. Then he let it go. When she tugged his other hand, he followed  her. The way he was feeling, he would have followed her into the ocean  if she'd led him there.

'I think so, too, but that doesn't change anything.'

He pulled her closer to him and her hip bumped against his thigh. 'Do you ever ask why?'

She shook her head. 'I used to. There was a time when it was all I could  think about. Then I came to the conclusion that there's no grand plan  or science to any of it. Shit happens because it happens. You can drive  yourself crazy and waste so much time if you keep on asking why. In the  end, it doesn't help.'

Bloody hell. Was she talking about him or her?

'Eventually I figured out that I just had to keep getting up and brushing my teeth.'

'What?' Dan couldn't stop the laugh on his lips.

She smiled back at him. 'It's true. If I got up every day and brushed my  teeth I knew I was on the way to having a regular day. Sometimes that's  all you can ask for. Not a crappy day or a spectacular one. Just a  regular day.'

A regular day. What did that look like now, he wondered, in this new  life he was building in Middle Point? So far his days had been filled  with retreat, solitude and anger. Wallowing had come naturally, way too  easily. He'd been doing too much of it. But tonight, walking along the  quiet esplanade with Lizzie's hand in his, felt anything but regular.

'So where's your brother?'

'Joe lives in Sydney. He couldn't wait to get out of here. Can you believe he left all this behind? Crazy, huh?'

Before he could reply, Lizzie stopped and turned to face him, a smile on her lips that set his heart thumping.

'We're here.'

When he shifted his gaze from her, Dan realised where they were. The  rough-hewn sandstone walls of the pub looked grey at night and its  single porch light cast a glow over the heavy wooden doors and slate  steps. Through the windows they could see a few people inside, locals at  their regular spots at the bar. The fuzzy light from a wall-mounted TV  seeped through one of the front windows creating a luminous haze.