Page 27 of Crashing Into You

“Oh, come on.” Matt drops his head back. “You know you’re going to end up in bed with her before the month is out. Before the week is out, probably.”

“It’s not like that! She’s… I like her. I want to hang out with her.”

“But not actually date her. Just pretend.” Kylie shakes her head. “You are something else.”

“We both benefit from the arrangement. And we’ve set some boundaries.”

“Oh my god.” Kylie snorts and gets up from the table, taking the empty pasta bowls with her. “Boundaries. How about just having an actual relationship?”

“It is a relationship. For a month.”

“With an NDA. Sounds very romantic.” Matt gets up from the table. “Come on outside.” He jerks his head towards the huge glass doors leading to the deck.

“Maybe I want to help Kylie with the dishes,” I say.

“He’s going to be softer on you than I would be,” she says. “Besides, they’re all going in the dishwasher. Go on.”

Fuck. Accepting my fate, I head outside. Matt is sitting on the edge of the timber deck. The ground drops away below it, a gentle incline lined with boulders and native grasses that always remind me of fireworks, their spiky tops moving in the evening breeze. The ocean hums below us, the lights of Lorne visible through the gum trees. It’s beautiful.

I sit down next to Matt and wait for him to tell me what an idiot I am. I kind of feel like I deserve it, to be honest. But instead, he takes another pull from his beer, staring into the eucalyptus-scented night.

“You came back for Millie, right?”

His question surprises me. “Yeah. Mum said she was worried, so I came back.”

“Is that what it takes, though? For you to be here with your family? With your mates? A crisis.”

Matt is twenty-eight, the same age as me. He’s known Millie since she was born, when we were both six years old. She’s like a sister to him. And that’s the only reason I’m not arcing up with rage right now, why I let him get away with saying this shit to me. That and the fact that, deep down, I know he’s right.

“What’s going on?”

“What’s going on is that we’re not getting any younger, mate. You make a good living. You have a fucking awesome life, let’s be honest. I know why you left, and why you stay away. I know you have to travel for work, too. But maybe it’s time for things to change. For your life to change. Jeff was right, and you fucking know it.”

“Yeah,” I mutter. “I guess.”

I hate that he’s correct. That they both are. I am running away. From my past, from my family, from all the stuff that feels too difficult. The girls, the drinking, all that shit is a distraction from what really matters. It’s a moment of clarity, sitting there in the darkness. I think of Claire, then. She didn’t run. She faced her past–isfacing it, every day. Living where her parents died, dealing with the truth of their deaths. Living in the house they built. I want to bring her out of the shadows. Maybe she can help me face my own shadows, too.

“You can’t fuck around forever,” Matt continues. “Wherever you go, you’re carrying all that shit with you. At some point you have to face it and ask yourself, what do you really want from life?”

I shrug. “I don’t know what I want.”

Matt says nothing. Because he knows I’m lying.

“Uh, okay. I want Millie to be okay,” I say.

“I asked about you, not Millie. But do you have any reason to think she isn’t?”

I shake my head. “She seemed good, when I saw her. Said she was going to school, looked well. I didn’t see anything to be worried about.”

“So why stick around, then? Surely you’ve got waves to surf somewhere.” The affection in his words mitigates their sting, somewhat.

I don’t say anything.

“What do you really want?” he says again. “If you could have anything right now, what would it be?”

I don’t say anything, because despite all that’s happened to me, the first thing that comes into my mind is a surprise. Or maybe it isn’t.

Claire.