“As we prepare for landing, please take your seats and fasten your seat belts. Also make sure your seat backs and folding trays are in their full upright position.”
Nell closed her eyes. It had been a long day with three separate flights, layovers, and too much overpriced airport food. Though her feet were sweaty in her boots, her body felt cold, and she wished she hadn’t put her jacket in the overhead bin. Worse than physical discomfort, though, was her nervousness. While this trip had seemed like a good idea when she was booking it back in Cape Breton, now that she was almost at her destination she wondered what she’d been thinking. Nell loved science precisely because it was evidence-based, but there was no evidence to indicate that Charlie wanted her to come. He’d never said he did. She had uncharacteristically acted on emotion rather than reason. She clutched her nervous stomach and glanced toward the washroom, regretting she hadn’t used it while she was still allowed.
The touchdown was smooth, and as they taxied along the runway to the gate she turned her cellphone on. “Hi, Charlie. Surprise! I’m here in Fort Mac. I’ll grab a cab and arrive at your place in an hour or so.” She stared at the text and her finger hovered over the send button, then pressed delete instead.
Charlie’s jaw was healing. His surgeon had removed the wires last week so he could open and close his mouth. Movement was coming back slowly and painfully, but it was coming. The bruising and swelling had almost disappeared and Charlie could finally bear to look at his face in the bathroom mirror again.
The razor made a satisfying scratching noise as he dragged it up his cheeks. He was relieved to see even skin tones underneath and that his jaw looked squarish once again. Done, he walked to the kitchen, grabbed all the bags of peas he’d used as ice packs out of the freezer, and threw them in the garbage. The pity party had to end. Yes, he’d had a setback, but it was time to turn things around for himself and to prove to his grandfather and the rest of the world that he could make it here.
He pulled on sweatpants, tightening the drawstring around his thinner waist. He was weaker, too; six weeks lying around would do that to a guy. He wanted to join a gym to start rebuilding his strength but didn’t have money for that so was working out a plan to rehabilitate at home. He’d found some half-full paint cans his landlord had left behind in a closet. They’d have to do as weights. It wasn’t much, but it was a start. He longed for his grandpa’s well-equipped workshop, where he would have been able to build himself a workout bench, but he’d sit on an armchair and curl paint cans instead. What a life.
When he finished three sets of reps on each arm he lay on the floor and began doing push-ups. Twenty, thirty, forty, and then Charlie heard the doorbell. He sat back on his knees, catching his breath before standing up. It had to be either Rex or his landlord and he hoped like hell it was the former, since he owed his landlord rent money. He threw open the door.
Nell. There she stood. The girl he’d fallen in love with in the pews of St. Andrew’s Church. His best friend. He stopped breathing for a few seconds. A cab pulled away from the curb.
“Hi, Charlie. Happy New Year.” She stood between snowbanks with a small suitcase at her feet. Her hands were stuffed into the pockets of her parka. A striped tuque with a pink pompom on top sat high up on her head, and her dark blond hair fanned out over her shoulders. “So this is Alberta, huh.” The tip of her nose was red. Charlie fought the urge to press his own nose against it.
He had trouble speaking. Not only was he out of practice, words escaped him. After the longest ten seconds of his life he managed to get just one out: “Nell.” Charlie opened his arms. Nell walked into them and her cheek found the familiar groove in his clavicle, now deeper than before given his new gauntness. They stood there on the porch, on a frigid winter’s night, for a full minute before pulling apart.
“Are you going to ask me in? I can’t feel my toes.”
“In a minute. Look up.”
A streak of emerald green cut across the indigo sky. It quivered and widened, then peaked into the shape of a mountain range before arcing.
“Are those the northern lights?” Nell had never seen an aurora before, and its beauty was mesmerizing. She stood still and forgot the discomfort of being cold.
“You bet. Ford McMurray is in the auroral zone. Isn’t it something?”
A second green wave appeared and undulated in time with the first. They pulled apart from one another, then rushed together and pushed vertically upward. It was a graceful dance between partners, light waves bouncing off each other, retreating and then rushing back together before merging into one luminous mass of electrons and protons.
Then, as quickly as the light appeared it disappeared, and the sky was black again.
“Where’d it go?” Nell continued staring at they sky, searching.
“It’ll come back. It always does. Maybe not tonight, but it’ll come back.”
Nell righted her head and smiled at Charlie, who escorted her inside.
After setting down her suitcase and having a look around, Nell couldn’t resist asking any longer. “What happened to your face?”
“It’s a long story,” Charlie answered.
“I’ve got time.”
He told her about getting decked in the bar. She suspected she wasn’t getting the full picture—the guy who’d beat him up must have had provocation, though Charlie made it sound like a random attack—but in due time she hoped to be able to piece together the tale. For now, though, after four months apart, it was enough just to be able to touch him again. They sat on his couch and Nell pulled a Tupperware container from her suitcase. “These are from Flo.”
Charlie opened it and peeled back waxed paper to find the marshmallow peanut butter squares he’d loved as a boy. He was still having trouble chewing, but his grandma’s thoughtfulness was sweeter to him than any squares.
“How’d you get time off to come here? Don’t you have to work?”
“Laid off for the winter. You know how it goes for us Capers.”
“That sucks. How’d you scrape together the money for a plane ticket, then?” Charlie was breaking a square into tiny bites and chewing them with his molars. They tasted like home.
“Flo helped me out with the ticket. I’m going to pay her back. She wanted to come too, but we decided I’d make the trip for both of us. Everyone’s worried about you, Charlie.” Not only did his battered face concern Nell, Charlie was jumpy. He fidgeted constantly, tapping his feet and drumming his hands on his leg.
Charlie tilted forward until his forehead touched hers. He had tried so hard not to think about Nell and his family back home, but seeing her now made him realize how much he missed them all. “How’s Grandpa?”
Nell pulled away and shrugged. “I don’t really know. He was grumpy at first but now seems to be warming up to Alex. That’s something.”
“Right. Alex is still there.” Charlie just couldn’t picture a young boy living with his grandparents. And it had been over a month now.
“His mom’s gone, though. Went back to Toronto. No one in Falkirk Cove took to her.”
Charlie knew what it was like for your only parent to leave you behind. Poor Alex.
“Charlie, I don’t want to presume anything, so I have to ask: is it okay if I stay here with you?” Nell cast her eyes around the apartment; the paint cans propped by an armchair, the overflowing trashcan, the bare beige walls.
“In this shithole?” Charlie was smiling.
“Yeah, imagine. What do you say?”
Relief flooded Charlie’s face and once again the words caught in his throat before tumbling out of his injured mouth. “Stay as long as you want. Or as long as you can stand it.”