Page 110 of Lyrebird

‘Not my parents.’ She makes a face, backing away.

‘Jack?’ he asks again.

‘You need to get over him,’ she says, annoyed.

‘So do you,’ he replies, and she rolls her eyes and turns away.

And despite the situation, Solomon hates Jack even more and wants to hit him even harder.

‘I’m helping StarrQuest with Laura’s final performance, you just need to get her to the studio tomorrow. I’ll come back for the rest of my stuff during the week. Stay away from my underwear drawer.’

‘I’ll try,’ he says, folding his arms and watching her. ‘It’s just the feel of the lace that gets me.’

She tries not to smile as she opens the door. ‘This is the weirdest break-up ever.’

‘It was the weirdest together ever.’

‘I can think of weirder,’ she says, looking over his shoulder.

He turns around, expecting to see Laura and is faced with the closed door of the spare bedroom. By the time he turns back to Bo she has left, and shut the door behind her. He only realises then that his body is trembling lightly, from the shock, from the loss. He looks at Laura’s closed door again and thinks of what Bo said.

In love with her.

Of course he is. He knew it the second he saw her.

He knows now the solution to his dilemma, whether it’s better to protect something precious and rare, or to share it. His love for her was precious, and the intensity of it was rare. His love for her was better not shared. She’d do better without him, he brought her to this point and he hadn’t done her any favours. He was no good for someone like her. Precious was better kept protected.

His role now is to fix the mess he got her into, the mess he made of her. He took her from her nest, fractured her life, left her. He’ll do everything he can to mend and rebuild. He closes his bedroom door and hears a sound from Laura that breaks his heart. Silence.

39

Close to five a.m. Solomon wakes to the sound of the television in the living room. Laura is still awake. He doesn’t hold out much hope for her performance that is technically tonight now that the sun is shining brightly and the morning has begun, and he’s not sure he cares. He weighs up the damage if she doesn’t show up at the studio; Laura doesn’t owe anything to the show, but she certainly owes it to herself. The public have got the wrong impression of her, and while nobody should care what people they don’t know think of them, when somebody has something so beautiful to show the world, when people can benefit from her just being, that’s when they should be understood. She owes it to herself to perform one final time, as herself, in the way that she wants to. He has no idea what Bo has up her sleeve, but he trusts her. The woman she has been for the past twenty-four hours has cemented in his mind her greatness, the reason why she’s won so many awards this year. She’s a champion in her own arena, she can capture hearts and minds through her storytelling.

He can’t go to sleep, and while he’s trying to stay away from Laura, especially in such intimate surroundings, he can’t lie here while she’s out there. He’s hardly going to jump on her without her permission, but he bloody well wants to. Best to stay away. Yet knowing that, he gets out of bed, doesn’t bother with his T-shirt. He opens his bedroom door. She is sitting on the couch, her back to him. She’s watching The Toolin Twins.

He watches her. Wearing one of his T-shirts, her long legs folded on the couch beside her, her hair falling lazily down, messy from her restless lie in her bed. His heart pounds. He’s about to say something, something comforting, something warm about her father and uncle, when she rewinds it for a few seconds and plays it again. He doesn’t want to disturb her hearing whatever she wanted to see or hear again. He waits, watching her. And then, when it’s finished, she rewinds it and plays it again, her back straightening. He looks at the TV, at the brothers on the mountain surveying their sheep. She rewinds and plays it again.

It’s not the right time for him. He was right about it probably never being the right time. He closes his door softly and falls asleep to the sound of Laura rewinding and replaying her father and uncle.

Laura keeps her eyes on the television as she hears the door behind her open. Her skin prickles, goosebumps rise on her skin. She sits there, frozen. Just him and her in the flat; she heard Bo leave, heard some of their conversation, tried not to listen as a mark of respect. She has felt so in the way of their relationship she should at least stay out of their goodbye, let them own that. So she’d lain in bed, eyes wide open, not at all tired despite the hour, the room smelling of Solomon, the same smell she’d smelled in the forest the first day they’d met.

She’d sensed him before she’d smelled him.

She had smelled his scent in the wind long before she’d seen him.

She’d watched him long before he even sensed her.

Watching him from behind the tree she had an overwhelming desire to be seen by him. Not like when she was a child. She’d watched other children playing in the woods and she’d wanted to play with them, but she knew better; most of the time she was happy just observing. That felt like enough. But in the forest on the day she first met Solomon, she had lost all reason and selfishly wanted his eyes on her. She’d deliberately made a sound so he would turn around. That moment had made her life change. It wasn’t her mother dying, Gaga moving her to the cottage or her father dying. The biggest risk Laura had ever taken was in making a sound so that Solomon could see her. A man like that, she wanted him to see her.

And for a moment, in those woods, he’d been hers.

Everything for her changed; life before she’d met Solomon, and life after.

She swallowed the hard lump gathered in her throat. She’s dreamt of his hands on her body, his kiss on her skin, she’s imagined his touch, what he would feel like. Would he be gentle or strong, how he would kiss? She’s watched him with Bo, from the corner of her eye, she’s seen the tenderness he’s capable of and wonders, would he be that way, or different with her? She can’t help but wonder how his skin tastes, the feel of his tongue. From the moment she saw him, she hasn’t been able to stop these thoughts.

She knew it was wrong to feel it. She’d tried to stop, but she kept being pulled back to him. She knew from her mum and Gaga that there was no place for a woman who took another woman’s man. They would have disapproved; she already disapproved of herself, even though they were only private thoughts. She’d clung to him, like a life raft, not thinking about anybody else. She’d thought being so far away from him in Australia would end it, keep her away from him, the other side of the world. It hadn’t. She’d thought meeting other men would distract her. Maybe because he was the only one she knew, that’s why her feelings were so heightened. That hadn’t been the case either. It seemed ironic, romantic and twisted that the first man she’d met would be the only one she ever wanted.

None of the distractions in the world would work. And his scent … it wasn’t just his cologne, it was his skin. Sleeping in his room, living in his home, she felt like she was embraced by him. When she turned her head to the pillow and buried her face in it, it was like burying her face in him. She’d groan lightly with frustration because it wasn’t enough. To be surrounded by him, on the outside of him, near him. It wasn’t enough. She’d moved to the couch to distract herself.