Jarvis had become distant. He was signing off his messages with a lazy xxx rather than love always, or yours always, or mad love, as always, or capital XXX (which I knew meant hardcore kisses). I felt like I should pick up the phone and tell him about the message I’d seen on Luke’s phone, assure him that we were on track and everything was working out as I’d planned, but something held me back. Perhaps I was waiting to see what he would do. Maybe I felt as though he had to prove himself before I made that one final step away from Luke and into Jarvis’s world.
I thought that maybe Jarvis was busy and distracted. He was working on a new series of mini-zombies that he wanted to submit in the Deakin University Small Sculpture Award. After his success with the McClelland survey, he was filled with hope, and I admired his dedication, how he could work at the abattoir some days, yet still stay up until three in the morning working on his zombie figures in the studio, listening to Mahler on the stereo. I didn’t want to ruin this period of intense creativity, so I took a backwards step and left the ball in his court. I knew he was still there, his messages said that he still wanted me, that we would only be truly happy once we were together. It was just those lowercase xxx’s that bothered me and planted some doubt in my mind.
I began to wonder what exactly Luke was doing with Suzi. Were they just sending each other nice messages? Or had they consummated their passion? I checked his phone every night while he was in the shower, but I couldn’t find another thing; he must have been careful about deleting everything.
I started making impromptu visits to the Patch. I’d casually ask a staff member what everyone had been up to earlier, seeing if I could find out whether Luke had been there all day. He always seemed to have been there. When I dropped by, Luke would take time out from whatever he was doing and we’d get a coffee together. He seemed less distracted, as though he enjoyed my company. Sometimes he would walk me around the Patch and with pride show me the new areas he was developing.
One day, while we were walking hand-in-hand up the back of the Patch, the sun reflecting off the skyscraper windows around us, I said, ‘This is how it’s always supposed to have been.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You and me . . . like this. Don’t you feel like we’ve reconnected or something lately?’
He looked at me, his eyebrows dipping in the middle. For a moment I felt as though I may have annoyed him again, that I shouldn’t say stuff like this. But then he said, ‘I feel that, too. Like we’ve come out of some big, dark stretch, into the light again. I’ve been thinking about that a lot, too.’
‘Really? So you admit it.’
‘Of course. Life got hard. Maybe we’re coming out the other end of it.’ And he gave me a big pash at the back of the Patch, not caring if his staff or clients saw it. We were like teenagers, our hands all over each other, slobber around our mouths. It was tacky and passionate, and was the magic that had been missing for years in our relationship. I thought perhaps the fire hadn’t gone out in his belly after all, it had just needed a gust of wind to fan those flames of passion inside him.