Page 42 of Andrew’s Outback Love

Make love? “Your shoulder.”

“Fuck it, I want you. We can be careful.”

He gathered my hand and led me down a small hallway to his bedroom. Like the rest of the apartment, it was beautifully appointed and I specifically noted the king-sized bed which was positioned to take advantage of the ocean views through the floor to ceiling windows.

Drew led me to the bed and spun me against his chest. The kiss which followed had my toes curling in anticipation.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Andrew

Three Weeks Later

I sealed the top of what I hoped was the final moving box and plonked myself down on top. How had I accumulated so much stuff? I knew I had a lot of books but when had I taken to buying DVDs? I wasn’t someone who could sit still long enough to watch television or movies. I always seemed to be active – at the gym, taking long walks. At night, I would read before going to bed. I have to admit the discs had come in handy in the past weeks. I’d found out my shoulder wasn’t up to fucking as much as I’d wanted to and my stamina, thanks to not being able to go to the gym, was sadly lacking. It was all slowly changing though.

I had almost full movement and feeling in my arm, but the tips of my fingers still tingled and often became numb. When I’d met with the doctor a couple of days ago, he’d assured me I was making excellent progress. He hadn’t wanted another appointment which freed me up to move to Bourke. It would be at least another three weeks before I could perform surgery, but in the meantime, I could make the changes I wanted to my home and oversee the progress on mine and Barry’s new medical centre.

Linda entered the living room from the bedroom, struggling with a box full of who knew what. Her face was flushed, her hair was scraped up into a mess on top of her head and she looked frazzled. When she dropped the box on the floor beside me, the one I was on, bounced.

“Fuck, that must have been heavy.”

I felt guilty that I was unable to help as much as I needed to. I’d been given strict instructions I wasn’t to lift anything heavy for at least three months. There was no way I was going to ignore the warning; my arm was far too important to me. Even if I had thrown caution to the wind, Linda was a like a Sergeant Major with telling me what I could and couldn’t do until I’d fully healed.

Linda flopped herself on top and pushed stray tendrils of hair from her sweat covered face.

“It was. When I first came here, I thought your apartment was sparsely furnished and you didn’t have much in the way of material stuff. Boy was I wrong. You have more shit than I do.”

I laughed at her incredulous tone.

“Where is it written that guys can’t have as much shit as women?”

“Very funny. Seriously, you have about a thousand match box cars and hundreds of Star Wars figures. They were all shoved in the back of the wardrobe so why the hell do you keep them.”

“The apartment isn’t big enough to have them on display and I didn’t want to give them away. They might be worth money one day.” I gave her what I hoped was a petulant look.

“Sweetheart, you’ll probably be dead and buried by the time they are.”

“You don’t collect things?”

“Nope. If I don’t use it, I don’t keep it. I don’t like clutter and knick knacks all over the house.”

“So, I’m guessing my cars and figurines won’t be displayed in our new place.”

Linda spun to face me. “Oh, Drew, I’m sorry. I would never stop you from putting them out in your own home. I didn’t mean to tell you what you can or can’t do.”

“We need to get a couple of things straight.”

I watched the dread cloud Linda’s eyes and gathered her hands in mine.

“First off, it’s going to be our home and we will both need to compromise when we have different viewpoints, likes and dislikes. So, my compromise is..... we use one of the rooms as a study/office and I’ll have glass cases made up to display my collections on the walls in there.”

Linda leaned over, encased my face in her hands and kissed me. Before she could pull away, I wrapped my arms around her waist and deepened the kiss.

“How about a shower and I’ll take you for dinner?” I offered.

“Chinese?”

I laughed. Linda had fallen in love with David Kim who owned a Chinese restaurant about five minutes from my apartment. He was a man in his eighties, maybe nineties and he spent hours talking to Linda about his native China, a country she wanted to visit one day. Every time we visited the cosy restaurant, David had some small token of memorabilia which he gave her. Each piece always had a story attached and Linda would bring it back to the apartment and place it carefully into a metal box she had purchased just for that reason. There was no doubt what David gave her was special. She always gave him a huge hug and kiss and thanked him profusely before promising she would take great care of his precious memories.