The sink’s tap in the corner of her room is dripping. My head spins as I pick at the Blu-tack on the wall behind me, alternating between breathing in time with the leak and with Sal snoring next to me.
Drip, drip, drip.
Sharing the single bed is like trying to sleep in a matchbox. My left foot hangs over the edge, poking out through the sheets, while my right foot presses against Sal’s leg. I struggle to breathe through her hair, which is damp with sweat and twisted up in her singlet.
Drip, drip, drip.
My left arm is flopped over Sal’s body, resting in the curve of her lower back, while my right arm has nowhere to go, so I switch between squashing it between our bodies and curling it up near my face.
Drip, drip, drip.
Jamie’s words ring in my ears: Why are you still in dumb-ass Durnan?
Four knocks strike Sal’s door, so soft I wonder if I’m hallucinating.
‘Sal,’ a deep voice says. ‘Sal. It’s me.’
Not hallucinating. Someone’s out there.
I nudge Sal to wake up, but she murmurs, ‘I don’t know where the baking paper is, Mum,’ and hugs her pillow tighter.
Three more knocks, this time they’re louder. I tug at my boxers, which hang low around my hips, and hobble towards the crack of light squeezing under the door. Bleary-eyed, I poke my head out to see Woody, who’s also in his boxers.
‘Ah, hey.’ I try not to make eye contact with the dusting of hair coating his chest.
‘Damn, sorry, bro, forgot you were here.’
‘Yeah, still here. What’s up?’
‘Locked myself out again.’
‘Ah, shit.’
‘Yeah, yeah …’ He runs his fingers through his hair. ‘You know what, security can sort me out. Yeah, I’ll call the big fellas, they’ll get it done.’
‘You sure, man?’
‘Yeah, bro, all good. My bad. I’ll, ah, I’ll see ya later, yeah.’
Woody collects a bucket of fried chicken from the floor, then disappears down the hallway towards the fire exit.
Too wired to sleep, I fumble in the dark for my phone and head for the kitchen. Plastic cups half-filled with punch litter the coffee table and the telly is pumping infomercials. I crash down on the ratty couch between an inflatable palm tree and a torn-open packet of chips.
‘Overwhelmed? Lost? Something missing in your life?’ a lady with a frozen smile chirps, drilling into me through the screen. ‘Sounds like you need the Supermop 33-20 to clean up your mess!’
I turn off the telly and stuff a handful of soggy chips in my mouth, stomach churning as I remember Woody standing half-naked in Sal’s doorway.
I reckon I’m going to need more than a Supermop.
* * *
The line of passengers waiting to climb aboard the coach to Durnan wraps around the side of the bus station. Sal and I sit side by side on a bench, waiting until the last minute before I have to get on. I’ve scoffed a bacon and egg roll that tasted like it’d been sitting out all night. Sal’s only taken a few bites from hers.
‘Better get going,’ I say, pointing to the shrinking line. ‘Alright, um, well, I love you.’
The sentence flip-flops out like I’m mumbling a secret. We’ve only been saying it for a few months so it still feels alien hearing it come from my mouth, like I’m the cheesy hero in one of the trashy rom-coms Mum watches when she’s hogging the remote.
Maybe ’cos the first time I said it was by mistake.
We were watching re-runs of The Simpsons in the dark in my room and Sal cracked a joke so I mumbled, ‘Ohhh, you,’ through a mouth of chocolate and she turned and whispered, ‘Oh my God, Milo, I love you too.’ Then she kissed me fast and hard on the lips, then my neck, then my lips again, and we missed the rest of the episode. We’ve never stopped saying it after that night and I’ve never told her about the mix-up. Besides, she texted all her friends what I’d said — what she thought I’d said — five minutes after she removed her tongue from the back of my throat.
Sal gives me a hug as the bus rumbles behind us. ‘You had fun last night, yeah?’
‘Yeah. Yeah. It’s just … this distance thing …’
‘Don’t tell me it’s too hard already?’ She laughs. ‘Forget what Jamie said. She was off her head.’
‘Yeah, I know, but you’re right: I’m a halfwit. I’ve stayed. And you’ve already got this whole other life.’
‘It’s not an “other life” — it’s my life. You’re a part of that.’
‘You heard what Trent said before you left.’
‘You’ve lost it. Just ’cos your brother’s footy mates can’t handle long-distance doesn’t mean we can’t do it. It’s only three hours. Besides, we’ll talk lots.’ She pauses. ‘Unless you don’t want to do it?’
‘I never said that.’ I kiss her lips. ‘Text you when I get home, yeah?’
‘You better.’
‘And you’re back soon to pick up the rest of your stuff?’
‘A whole weekend,’ she says with a nod. ‘None of this one-night-only business.’
It’s not until later when I’m crashing out on the bus that I realise she never said, ‘I love you too.’