Walking Shadows (14 page)

His smile was faltering self-consciously and I realised I was staring. "Hey. Do you want
coffee or something?" Well, it covered the embarrassing silence.

"That would be lovely," he said, gracious as anything, "Where do you
recommend?"

I added his deep voice and elegant, hard-to-place accent to the checklist of his immediately fine
qualities. The strong 'r's might have been North American or even Irish. The rounded vowels were
more British but for the occasional twang. Was this what the mysterious 'trans-Atlantic' accent
sounded like? I longed to listen to him talk some more.

"Depends on whether you want a view of the sea or the park."

"The sea, I think," he said, his smile growing warm, and it made me feel warm too.

"I'm Lissa," I said as I led him down the steps.

"Evan," he replied, managing to shake my hand as we walked, "It's a pleasure to
meet you. I hope I haven't taken you away from anything important."

"Not really. I came down here looking for distractions."

He laughed again, that woof of surprise, and I belatedly realised I'd possibly been rude again,
but he said: "I will endeavour to be distracting, then."

I had the nous not to comment that between his height, his eyes, his voice, his smile and his use
of words like 'endeavour', that was pretty much guaranteed.

Chatting about the weather and how it compared with the Melbourne summer norm, we
crossed the road to the St Kilda baths. The sea baths, all gussied up since the old days, looked
like someone had made a giant sandcastle based on the Arabian Nights and then corporatised it. We
strolled around the front of it, past people walking their dogs, ambling with their kids, or zipping
past on roller blades and bicycles, and found a seat under the giant umbrellas at the outdoor
café.

Cake and coffee were duly delivered. Evan started heaping in the sugar and paused, mid-scoop, to
watch me watching him with an expression of awe at his capacity for the stuff. His sheepish shrug
made me laugh out loud, at which he stirred his sugar-with-coffee with an air of cocky defiance.

Squeals and laughter in the water a few metres away commandeered my attention. St Kilda Beach
isn't a surf beach, lying as it does on the bay, but people have plenty of fun in the sand and
saltwater nonetheless. A group of little kids were running at the low swell and then fleeing,
screaming in exhilarated glee-fear back to mum and dad on the shore. The eldest of them was
practising being brave by being the last back to his laughing parents.

Further along in the water a stocky guy, dressed in long blue boardshorts and a black T-shirt,
was mock-wrestling with a young woman in a purple one-piece. His physique reminded me of Gary -
broad shouldered, slightly overweight in a huggable way. The T-shirt, wet and plastered to his body,
spoke of physical self-consciousness, all momentarily forgotten in the way he romped with his girl
in the surf. He scooped her up easily in his arms and dumped her in the crest of an oncoming wave,
sliding under the water with her. They resurfaced, laughing madly, her arms wrapped around his neck.
A brief, salty kiss and she was diving away from him, he splashing after her, snagging her feet and
coaxing her back for a kiss.

They were - there was no other word for it -
frolicking
in the waves. I don't imagine Gary
had ever frolicked in his life. Come to that, nor had I. We were not, it had to be said, the
frolicsome type.

"Euro for them?"

"A eurocent is about all they're worth," I countered with a rueful smile.

"It's these indecent modern times devaluing the intangible," Evan assured me.

I laughed sheepishly. "I was thinking of a friend of mine."

"They seem like pensive thoughts."

"A little."

"More of your weird week, I take it?"

"Part of a whole weird year, actually." I didn't really want to start getting into that
whole bizarre part of my history.

Perhaps he sensed my reluctance to talk about the past. He regarded me thoughtfully. "I'll
stop asking about it," he said after a moment, "if you will allow us to get to know each
other somewhat better."

The offer of an exchange of details was appealing. "Deal." I reached across to shake on
it, and he shook my hand firmly and then failed to let go for several seconds. We blushed, sipped
coffee, then caught each other's eye and burst out laughing.

This was going to take some serious editing. "I'm a librarian," I started. "I live
in the city with my sister and my dog. You?"

"I'm a chemist."

"What kind?"

He looked surprised. "Most people don't think to ask. I'm a pharmaceutical chemist, mainly.
It's sort of a family calling."

"Where are you from, Evan-from-a-long-line-of-chemists?"

I played with strips of torn sugar-packets, trying to find an excuse to brush against his fingers
again.

"Oh, here and there. Mostly there." And never mind my unsubtle attempts at contact - he
stretched his own fingers out to press against mine to stop their fidgeting. I turned my hand up so
our fingertips met. His grin widened, and my sudden infatuation got more…infatuous. His proper
smile was unexpectedly goofy and delightful. "I was born in Boston. USA. I was schooled fairly
equally between the UK and the Americas."

"Is this your first trip to Australia?"

"Yes. I've travelled the northern hemisphere and the Americas extensively. This is my first
time in the Antipodes." Evan's eyes never left mine, but his long, knobbly-jointed fingers slid
across my own, into my palm and along it to my wrist where they paused, delicately brushing across
my rapidly increasing pulse, then back to the well of my hand. My own fingers curled up so that they
brushed against his. Neither of us drew away.

Part of my brain wondered very loudly what I was doing, reminding me stridently that I had never
been very good at picking up guys, and certainly never before I'd known them at least tangentially
for a one month minimum.

Another part of my brain told the first bit to shut the hell up, this was fun, and fun was good.
What had all the caution ever got me except awful boyfriends and Daniel, the most devastating missed
opportunity of my life?

Damnit brain, it is high time to get in some frolicking.
I simply had to remember to not
be intense, or distracted, or brusque, or cryptic. Though Evan struck me as a man who didn't mind a
bit of cryptic. I
so
wanted to kiss him. The idea made me want to run away or alternatively
to launch myself across the table at him. The vivid mental image of that held me in my seat.
Way
to impress the fellers, Wilson.

I felt like those little kids on the beach, all exhilarated glee-fear. Ready to brave the sea
anyway. There was always time to run ashore if it got too scary.

An expectant pause brought me out of my thoughts and I found Evan regarding me with a mixed air
of humour and bemusement. And then I twigged that we were already holding hands.

"Thinking of your friend again?" he asked.

"Not this time." I smiled and hoped my blush wasn't too obvious.

"You seem very intense."

"I'm not normally like this," I blurted, not entirely clear myself what I meant.
Especially since, actually, I am.

"You said you'd been having a weird weekend," he said conversationally, encouraging
confidences.

"Yeah." I couldn't reasonably expand on that and expect him to keep sitting with me,
"It'll pass." I grinned. "Things are improving steadily."

Another of those crinkle-eyed smiles of his and I wondered what he saw when he looked at me.
Intense brown eyes; high cheekbones; flyaway hair; and what? An awkward, pear-shaped girl with
attention deficit issues?

"I want to know more about you." The fervour of his declaration took me by
surprise.

"There's not much to know, really."

"That's not true."

"No," I admitted, "it's not. But we only met an hour ago and I don't want to scare
you off." Good heavens, the things that were coming out of my mouth.

Fortunately, they didn't seem to bother him. "I'm not easily frightened, and I find
you," he cocked his head a fraction to one side, considering, "fascinating."

"Oh." I couldn't take my eyes off his. "I've always wanted to be fascinating. I
thought I'd have to settle for peculiar."

Evan lifted my hand and gave it a quick, gentle squeeze. "Let's go for a walk." He
folded some notes and coins under the bill that had been left at the table and rose. Trying not to
look too keen, though possibly it was way too late for that, I joined him on the footpath.

The breeze was picking up and the clouds that had been out at sea were heading landward. Ignoring
the signs of oncoming weather, we walked along the pedestrian path towards the ferry terminal. Maybe
if the Spirit of Tasmania was berthed when we got there, I could convince him to run away with me to
Tassie, away from the horrors of my everyday life. Not forever. For a few days, maybe. Or weeks. A
month or two at most.

"So," he said, looking out to sea, "How did you get to know about, you know."
Ah. The V-word.

Flashes of the past year made my muscles tense. "Let's not," I said. "Today I want
this," I gestured around me, at the scenery and sunshine, the normality of it all, "Just
this."

A tension seemed to leave him, too. "Yes. That would be good."

I found myself telling him about Kate and her weekend away with Anthony, and how happy I was that
she was happy. I told him that I thought Nanna would have liked Anthony.

When I told Evan about Belinda and Paul, I studied his reaction. Evan didn't give me any of the
usual dramarama I was used to from new friends who finally got the story, but at the end of it he
lifted my hand to kiss my knuckles gently, a sweet gesture of understanding.

"How about you?" I asked.

"I have a sister, a historian in fact. She lives in Tokyo usually. She's in Boston caring
for my father at present. He's not been well this year. It's nothing drastic, but he's getting on.
He's not as agile as he once was, and it is making him curmudgeonly. My brother died last
year." The faintest hesitation hovered around that statement and I, in my turn, squeezed his
hand to let him know I empathised.

"I have a son, too." This he dropped on me carefully and I studiously did not react
while he continued. "Nathan's mother died some 10 years ago." His tone expressed more
resignation than sorrow. "He's in senior high in Boston. My father is helping him
study."

"In between being curmudgeonly?"

Evan laughed. "Oh, during, I've no doubt. They get on well. Nathan's a bright boy, and he
refuses to let the old man's temper dampen his spirit. Quite the opposite, in fact. My father
appears to enjoy that about him."

"It's nice they get on."

"Yes. I suppose it makes up for me." A suppressed sigh, then. "My father and I
respect each other, but I suspect we don't like each other very much."

"I got on better with my Nanna than with Mum. That's how life is sometimes."

"Indeed."

Cue the rain, one of those sudden summer squalls that Melbourne provides to keep things
interesting. Evan led us off the footpath to hide under the insufficient protection of a palm tree.
Those Victorian-era Melburnians were charmingly optimistic in thinking these would give their
southerly colony a more tropical look. The temperature dropped by a degree or two, but the
atmosphere remained muggy.

"Ah screw it," I decided out loud, pulling away to stand in the rain. I grinned at
Evan.

"You'll get wet," Evan cautioned, though I could hear the humour in it.

"So will you, in a minute. That tree's worse than no use at all." To prove my point, a
steady patter of water, having gathered on the broad leaves above, dribbled onto his shoulder.

"Really, Lissa, you'll get soaked to the skin."

"So?" I spread my arms wide to feel the drops spatter against my arms and hands,
"I won't shrink."

"No, but your clothes might."

"It's lucky I wear 'em loose then." Water was gathering in chilly rivulets in my
hairline, dripping around my ears and over my nose. My hopeless hair was sticking to my face.
"Why don't you come out here with me?"

He regarded me warily. "And stand in the rain?"

"Yes!"

Evan hesitated.

"Don't you ever feel like breaking out of what everyone else expects of you?" I
challenged.

"Oh, Lissa. Every single day."

I succumbed to the urge to kiss him, reaching up to take his face in my hands, lacing my fingers
behind his sticking-out ears. A hearty, brief pash and I let him go, afraid I'd been too audacious,
but he was grinning like a perfectly gorgeous idiot. As we stood there, the rain eased, stopped.
Passed.

"There's a lot of crap in life," I said. "You've got to celebrate the good stuff
when it's there, no matter how small, or it's all just mourning."

"I see." He did that thing again, cocking his head slightly to watch me. Then he bent
to press his lips to mine. He began to draw away. I followed him, and he leaned back into me, and
the next thing we were wrapped up on the footpath, arms around each other, kissing like they do in
the movies.

Damn,
but he was a good kisser.

A passer-by had to dodge around us, and that made us stop for breath.

"You're all wet," he observed. "I told you that would happen."

In response, I shivered slightly, the dropping temperature conspiring with the sea breeze to give
me goosebumps.

Evan drew me out of the way of an oncoming damp and grumpy cyclist, "I'm staying at a hostel
around here. If you want to come back. To dry off." His tone was a combination of hesitancy and
invitation.

"Sure." My heart was thudding. "That'd be good."

As it turned out, by the time we walked to the big red hostel on Carlisle Street, I was at least
half dry again, but the temperature had fallen five degrees or so, as it sometimes does in
Melbourne. The damp cotton pressed to my skin was starting to chafe.