It hadn't always been that way. When they'd met, as students late one night at the Adelaide Uni bar, it had been instant, combustible. It was an intense two years with Anna. The whole time, his stubbornness butted up against hers, fuelled by the constant complaints from her family telling her that he was all wrong for her. That he wasn't Italian enough for her. That he wasn't sensible enough for her. But mostly it was all about him not being Italian. She fought it, as any modern woman would have. In the end though, it was probably their stubbornness about her interfering parents that kept them together longer than they would have otherwise lasted. They'd been given a mutual enemy to rail against and it pulled them closer. Eventually, they realised that fighting wasn't passion – it was just painful – and they came to a mutual decision to end things. By the end of their years at university, they'd become friends instead of lovers.
When Anna had married a few years ago, Dan had gone to the wedding and had felt genuinely happy for her. She'd married an accountant, Alexander who, interestingly, was not Italian. Dan figured it had been his job to wear down her parents' resistance for the true love of her life. It had clearly worked. The Morellis had been so happy to see their daughter finally married that they'd embraced Alexander with open arms.
And now Anna was in his kitchen, without her husband, sitting across from him at his kitchen table. Her huge dark eyes were bearing down on him and she was fighting a quivering lip. Jesus, was she going to cry?
'Anna, I've been all right.'
'If you're so "all right", why are you down here hiding away from everyone and everything?'
'This isn't hiding, Anna. Believe it or not, it's actually living.'
'Dan … '
'You know what happened to me in the accident, right?' His voice had grown louder than he wanted it to.
Anna reached over and held his hand. 'Of course I do. But your physical injuries should have healed by now, for the most part.'
He dropped his eyes to the table. He had to be honest with somebody. Up until now, no one had actually really asked him how he was. And that one simple question, from someone he trusted, from someone he knew so well, from a woman he didn't have to conceal anything from, unleashed what he'd been hiding from so many people for so long.
He scraped a hand through his hair. 'Sometimes I think I'm going backwards. Just when I think I've got everything under control, it hits me like a fist in the chest.'
Anna propped her chin in her hand. 'I'm interested in why you think that everything has to be under control.'
He shook his head, allowing himself a wry grin. 'Fuck you, Anna. Don't go all doctor-y on me now.'
'Comes with the territory,' she smiled serenely. 'Of being an actual doctor.'
He thought for a minute on how to describe it. 'I don't like feeling out of control. I never know when it's coming. I don't want it … this thing … to have that power over me.'
'You don't remember me coming to visit you in hospital, do you?'
'You came?' Anna had been there? The revelation only served to remind him, once again, that Elizabeth hadn't.
'Of course I did. I had to make sure they were taking care of you.'
'I must have looked like shit.'
Anna let out a laugh that sounded suspiciously like a sob in disguise. 'Yes. You did look like shit. But still a heartbreaker.'
'My nose has never been the same. It's crooked now.'
'Where? I can't see it.'
'I was pretty banged up, you know.'
'You had two black eyes like a boxer after their first fight.' She stopped, considered him. Thought for a minute. 'Do you actually remember what happened that night?'
Dan shook his head. 'Not much.'
'Do you remember how you got to hospital or what happened immediately after the accident?'
'No, none of that. Apparently, when I first came to, I said some things that made people laugh.'
'What did you say?'
'They told me the first words out of my mouth were "pub" and "Elizabeth".'
A slow smile crept over Anna's face. 'Elizabeth. That's Lizzie, right?'
'Yeah.' And he smiled too, at hearing her name.
'Why don't you pour us a glass of wine and we'll talk.' Anna chuckled and waved a hand dismissively in the air. 'What the hell am I talking about? Forget the wine. Got any vodka?'
Dan lay still on the unfamiliar bed, flat on his back, one hand under his head, the other resting on his stomach. With the window wide open, the damp sea spray blew over him from toes to forehead, and the repetitive splash and drag of the waves on the beach lulled him into a peaceful drowsiness. The sky was just clear enough, the moonlight just strong enough, for him to see around Ry and Julia's spare bedroom. A quick glance and he judged it was bigger than his whole living room. The white walls and whitewashed furniture looked classy and the white sheets he was resting on felt crisp and clean under his skin. There was a huge photograph on canvas on one wall, an image of two backlit surfers, their boards flicking into the air in a huge swell.
Dan had staggered over late, after he and Anna had spent hours drinking and talking. When they realised they'd downed a whole bottle of vodka between them, they decided the wise choice was for Anna to stay the night. He'd basically pointed her in the direction of his bedroom and she'd fallen forwards on to the mattress, asleep within seconds. And since he didn't have a spare bed – and there was no way he'd fit on the orange vinyl sofa he'd inherited with the house – he'd knocked on Ry and Julia's door asking if he could crash.
Ry and Julia's bedroom was next door and he could hear their voices, indistinct, mumbling, as if they were trying really hard to be quiet because they had a guest. He smiled to himself. There'd be no shout-out-loud sex for those two tonight.
And thinking about sex made him think of Elizabeth. He kicked off the sheets, wanting to feel the chill breeze all over him. When hadn't he been thinking of her lately? It wasn't just the booze that had left him slightly pissed and feeling sentimental and maudlin. He'd talked that night until he was almost hoarse, Anna listening, asking him questions now and then, letting him get it all out. It was easy to talk to Anna. She knew who he was before the accident. She knew that this wasn't the real Dan, she could remember the person he used to be.
And most importantly, she wasn't Elizabeth.
There were things he didn't want to talk to Elizabeth about. He couldn't burden her when she'd gone through her own hell, what with losing her mother and her grandmother, and having to deal with that all on her own. Sounds like her useless big brother had flown the coop and left her to handle everything. She'd really only been a kid when it had all gone down but had found the strength to get through all of it. To keep brushing her teeth, isn't that what she'd said? To keep getting up each morning and hoping for a regular day?
There were a lot of things he wanted from Elizabeth. Laughs? He definitely wanted more of those. Her baby blues? Yeah, he could stand looking into those eyes a few million more times. And sex? He wanted more of that too, kind of obsessively.
The one thing he didn't want was her pity. He didn't want her to think of him as some kind of basket case who needed fixing, someone she needed to look after. She'd spent enough of her life taking care of other people. It stunned him to realise that he wanted to look after her. He wanted to see her smile, needed to make her happy, and his life would be complete if he could make her come on a regular basis.
What did he want for himself? Not much. He just wanted to feel like the old Dan. Was that really too much to ask? The one who had confidence and didn't need to hide down here in this beachside town in case anyone from his old life saw him and reminded him who and what he used to be. Some days lately, when he'd been busy working on the pub renovation with Lizzie, he'd felt closer than he had in a long time.
His best day? Hands down, waking up with Lizzie in his bed, watching her asleep next to him after a night of unforgettable sex. The best thing about that day? She made him happy. And he sure as hell wanted more of that.
The next day, Dan woke up with a vodka fog in his head. Propping himself up on one elbow, he glanced around the white room, confused for a minute about exactly where he was. He saw the surfers on the wall. Oh yeah, the show home. Dan and Julia's spare room.
When the unmistakeable smell of sizzling bacon hit him, he sat up gingerly, waiting for the hangover to pound his brain. When it surfaced as a pulse instead of a hammer, he swung his legs over the side of the bed, pulled on his jeans and discovered the bathroom behind a white door. Perfectly folded white towels hung on the rail and there was a brand-new bar of soap on the hand basin. White. He rolled his eyes and closed the door behind him.
A few minutes later, Dan looked down from the top of the stairs and discovered a perfect domestic scene. Julia was buttering toast. Ry was frying the bacon and cracking eggs into a separate frypan, both of them sipping from designer coffee cups on the bench top. Ry was in his running gear and Julia was wearing some kind of dress that skimmed her knees and showed lots of skin. They fitted into this house perfectly. Seeing them working together to make breakfast, like a well-oiled machine, made him think of Elizabeth again. They hadn't had a chance to have breakfast after their one night together. She'd stormed off, angry. He'd stayed in bed and eventually gone back to sleep.