The treehouse is bursting with red balloons. As I get closer, crunching on the dried leaves on the Perkinses’ lawn, I notice streamers hanging from each corner, loosely plaited together. And then I see her. She has a paper crown on her head — the Christmas bonbon kind.
Layla wriggles to the edge of the treehouse and hangs her legs over the side. ‘Surprise,’ she whispers through the dark. ‘Happy birthday, MD.’
‘What is this?’
‘Welcome to your early birthday party, silly.’ She gestures to the ladder. ‘Quick, get up here.’
‘This is break-and-entering, right?’
‘We’re not breaking anything, only entering, so no.’
I climb up to join her. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi,’ she says, squeezing a crown onto my head, jamming a party whistle in my mouth and tossing confetti in the air over us.
I blow on the whistle and the paper tube unravels, nearly hitting Lay in the face. She giggles as she swats it away.
‘I can’t believe this,’ I say, still struggling to take it all in.
She edges closer to straighten my hat, which keeps slipping off. ‘You really do have a huge head. Lovely,’ she adds with a grin, ‘but huge. I never noticed that before.’
I laugh. ‘It’s my party and you’re paying me out?’
‘Come here,’ she says, swiping balloons out of the way so I can wriggle in further. Closer to her. ‘Got you a present.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Well, you’re leaving me and you suck, and I like to give people who suck presents.’ She hands me a long slim tube. ‘Go on. Open it.’
I pull off the lid and take a look. As suspected there’s a large sheet of paper rolled up inside.
‘If this is a blown-up photo of us as naked babies in the bath . . .’
I stride out the paper and uncurl it, then flatten it out across my lap. It’s a world map, each continent and ocean decorated with pinks, oranges, greens and blues.
Layla leans in, tracing her fingers around Europe and Asia. ‘It’ll help you get lost … and found, if you ever want that too,’ she says.
Clearing my throat, I lean in and hug her. It’s over too quickly.
‘This is great. All of this. Thank you.’ It doesn’t sound like enough, but I don’t know if anything will right now. ‘You’re the best.’
‘It is and I am. I do have a confession though.’
‘Here we go.’
‘I was kinda freaked when you told me you were leaving.’
‘You mean when you bullied me into telling you, even though I had a plan for how I was going to do it?’ I grin. ‘Sounds familiar.’
‘There I go, getting in the way again,’ she says with a smile. ‘Don’t worry, nothing you could’ve done would’ve made it any easier ’cos … well … it just wouldn’t have.’
I’m trying to stop myself from filling in the blanks, but it’s hard to think straight.
‘I feel like an idiot ’cos there’s part of me that never thought you’d go through with it,’ she admits. ‘That you’d stop yourself. But I know what it means to you to walk away from this town, so now you’re doing it, despite everything, and it means …’ Her voice catches.
Maybe this isn’t about everything. Maybe this is about leaving despite one thing. One person. Or maybe I’m listening for what I want to hear.
‘It means …’
‘Yeah?’ I say.
‘It means you have to go. I know that sounds crazy ’cos you are going — it’s happening, you’ve told me — but I want you to know I get it. All my reasons for wanting you to stay can never make you forget all the reasons you need to leave.’
A rustling in the tree above us, probably a possum, interrupts the growing silence.
‘That was a good speech,’ I say. An embarrassed snort slips out.
‘I try,’ she says with a small smile. ‘Besides, there’s thousands of girls who’ll be lucky to meet you overseas. But if you stay any longer in Durnan, you know we’ll end up with each other.’
I nearly choke. ‘Excuse me?’
‘You know I’m right. There’s no-one else in this town — sorry, Trenticles, love him, but no — so if you stay, then we’ll probably get hitched one day ’cos we’re bored, stack on the weight from eating all that gelato, then I’ll take up chain-smoking ’cos I’m stressed out, and you’ll yell at our ratbag kids for not putting away their toys, and then I’ll yell at you for not pruning the pergola properly.’ She grins and throws a balloon at me. I tap it back towards her. ‘I’m thinking of me and my bum. It’s a nice bum, but it can’t handle a lifetime of our eating habits. We’re too good at it.’
‘We are high achievers in the field of gelato consumption. Married though? With a pergola? And kids?’
‘Yep, ratbag ones.’ One strap is sliding off her shoulder, but she doesn’t seem to notice. I try to stop noticing. ‘The kind you see losing it in the lolly aisle. And you’ll probably be bald — or at least have a thinning hairline.’
I shoot her a wry look. ‘Jesus, who knew it was all downhill from here.’
‘It’s why you have to go. I’d make you lose your hair. I don’t want you to lose your hair. You have nice hair.’
I turn the map around so it’s facing Layla and place it back on my lap. ‘Shut your eyes and give me your finger.’
‘Perve.’ But she shuts her eyes and stretches out her left hand.
Gently holding her wrist, I move her closer so her fingers hover over the map. ‘Put out your finger — no, not your middle one — and touch the paper. Eyes closed, please, Chicken Girl.’
‘If this is a way to make me touch —’
‘Piss off!’
‘Fine!’ She slams her finger down in the middle of Australia. Peeling one eyelid open, she looks down. ‘Oops.’
She covers her face with her left hand and swirls her right hand above the map. This time she plonks her finger down in Europe.
We both strain forward.
‘Corfu.’ Her nose scrunches in confusion.
‘Greece. It’s an island in Greece.’
‘Island, huh? You’re going to be one of those people who shares photos of amazing beaches all the time, aren’t you? I hate you already.’ She smirks in such a cute way it makes me want to sprint home and rip my passport to shreds. Either that or move into this treehouse with her and never leave. ‘More than usual, I mean.’
Layla has no idea how gorgeous she looks surrounded by the balloons. Her hair is wavy and wild, and her eyes sparkle in the night. She’s radiating a lightness that I’ve only seen glimpses of recently. I bite my tongue to stop myself from asking her to come overseas with me one last time.
* * *
My arse aches from sitting on the floor, the air’s getting cold and our fingers are stained Twisties orange.
There’s nothing left to say. Well, nothing left I should say.
Faking a cough to get Layla’s attention, I pull out the small velvet box that’s been pressing against my thigh for the last hour.
‘So you’ve done this amazing thing for me,’ I say, gesturing to the balloons and streamers, ‘but, ah, I kinda have something for you too.’
Her gaze darts between me and the tiny box. ‘Holy … MD, I was kidding about marriage. We’re embryos! And what about my bum and your hair?’
‘What? No! Not that.’ I open the box and hold up a fine gold bracelet, then thrust it into her hand. ‘Just take it.’
She stares at me, stunned.
‘It’s fine if you hate it. I kept the receipt. I wanted to get you something for when I told you the news, and now I’m looking at your face and I should’ve gone with something that doesn’t scream “desperate loser” and —’
‘Shut up. I love it.’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s similar to another one that was … well, it was special,’ she says, trying to do up the bracelet. It slips from her hands, wedging itself into the wooden planks of the treehouse. ‘Crap!’
This is so ‘us’.
Layla swears as she struggles to tug the bracelet out from between the boards. After careful manoeuvring, she frees it, then wraps it around her wrist again.
‘You know, it’s been alright hanging out with you, Mr Dark.’ She grins. ‘Maybe for a second anyway.’
‘Just a second, huh?’
‘Yeah, a split one. After all, you did come into my life — again, I mean — at the worst possible time, and we somehow made it here despite that.’
‘Rules annihilated … but we’re here.’ Her lips curl upwards into a smile. ‘You’re becoming as soft as a marshmallow, Miss Montgomery, you know that?’
‘Hey, take that back! Although it was bound to happen, I suppose, spending time with a dorkatron like you,’ she teases, before leaning over and pressing her lips against mine.
I’m caught off guard but I sink into the kiss, my hands running through her hair. Tonight there’s nothing blurring the edges so everything is sharp: from the urgent feel of her hands tracing over my back to her warm breath as she nuzzles into my neck. When she pulls away, she’s slightly out of breath.
I wonder if I’m as flushed as her.
Layla rests her head on my legs like she did at the river, knees pointing to the sky, but this time I relax at her touch. I even let my fingers trace her forehead and wipe away a twist of hair threatening to tangle with her eyelashes.
‘This whole friends-who-kiss thing is kinda nice, hey?’ She holds up her arm to admire the bracelet again and releases a sigh. ‘I’ve gotta say … you’re not even leaving yet, so why does this feel like we’re saying goodbye forever?’ She exhales again.
‘It’s not forever. Just a bit.’
‘You’ll be shacked up with an English supermodel in no time. And if I ever leave Durnan, I’ll be a movie star on her way to winning an Oscar.’
‘That’s … specific.’
‘How do you know we’ll see each other again?’ she asks, twisting around to face me. ‘All this was a fluke. It aligned perfectly. If one little thing had gone differently that day, or every day since — if I’d thought, stuff trying to get a job at the bookshop, or I’m going back to Sydney on my own, or a million other little choices — then we wouldn’t have to say goodbye ’cos we’d never have said hello.’
She’s quiet. Sad, I think.
Jesus, I want to kiss her again.
Forget the islands. Forget adventures. Layla makes me want to stay in Durnan despite all the reasons why I shouldn’t. Despite all the reasons why I can’t.
Because I can’t. I can’t.
‘Lay … here’s what I think’s going to happen.’
‘This’ll be good,’ she mumbles. ‘This’ll be great.’
‘I’ll be back in six months. Done. That’s it.’
She rolls her eyes. ‘You don’t know that. You don’t even know where you’re going to be in six weeks. Months will pass, then instead of coming back you’ll get a visa and live overseas and get sponsored to stay then … poof! Gone.’
‘Okay, say that happens — just hypothetically — and years pass. I reckon you’ll be walking along one day — I don’t know where, somewhere good, doesn’t matter — and you’ll see a familiar face. And you’ll think, Damn, I know him. He looks like this hot guy from Durnan who I always wanted to —’
‘Your point?’
‘Just saying you might remember he was a bit of alright. Good friend, great kisser.’
‘Loved nuding up at inappropriate times.’
I laugh. ‘Anyway, you’ll come up to this guy and —’
‘No, he’ll come up to me, he’ll definitely come up to me.’
‘You’ll go up to him, this familiar guy, and you’ll say, “Milo Dark, is that you?”, and then he’ll say, “Do I know you?” Then you’ll kiss him to try to make him remember and —’
‘No way, you’ll definitely kiss me and —’
‘Then we’ll …’
‘What? We’ll what?’
‘That’s all I have so far.’ I grin. ‘But you’ll see me. And you’ll kiss me.’