What she wanted was the director’s job she’d worked for, but in its absence she’d accept strong hands and good conversation, a nice face and a sharp wit. She wanted to dial up admiration, laughter and humour in the form of a confident man who was complex and thoughtful, who liked great food and being outdoors, who could make her laugh and think and feel like she was more than a desk, a chair, a phone and a keyboard.
She wanted kisses that stopped clocks, touches that pleasure drugged. She wanted endless hot sex without fear, or guilt, or responsibility before her insides dried up from lack of use. And none of
that was out of the ordinary. That was what most people, who weren’t news obsessed Nat, wanted; to have someone who loved them and to love them right back for a day, a week, a month, so long as it was genuine and felt good.
And it wasn’t so hard to achieve ordinary. She had online profiles if she could be bothered checking them, and there was the old-fashioned way, picking up a guy in a bar. At least that way you could see what he really looked like first. That’s the way it used to work before Jon. She’d been confident, brave, excited about meeting new people. After Jon, she’d been hurt and scared, and here she was two years later, Frustrated as all fuck Foley.
But if she could be duped that badly by a man she was close to, how did that bode for building something with a suspect online profile or a random hook-up in a dark bar?
Maybe if Nat could be bothered, they’d have gone out together, been each other’s wing women. But Nat would rather read a week-old copy of a foreign language newspaper than stand around in a bar hoping for some action. Nat hadn’t had a case of boy germs since her uni years and appeared to be in peak health without them.
Foley stopped walking. She looked out at the horizon where storm clouds shifted and shafts of rain caught the last of the sunlight like godly glittery curtains. Those storm clouds were all threat and no action. Just like she was. She’d wanted this life less ordinary and she was living like a nun with a vocation.
She eyed the other end of the beach. She should be running, burning the frustration off: Gabriella, Drum, work, feeling lonely and unsexy and unloved, but if she couldn’t have a good hug, what she really wanted was food less ordinary: a greasy hamburger, a pile of hot chips with vinegar, a cheesy pizza, a whole packet of Tim Tams.
That at least was instantly actionable. She turned her back on the sea and the storm clouds to go in search of comfort food she could regret in a few hours like an ill-advised hook-up, and there he was, sitting cross-legged in the sand with a straight back and his eyes closed, his hands on his knees and expression so calm, so perfectly peaceful she wanted to kick sand in his face.
Shit. He had the whole beach, the whole coast and his own freaking cave and he had to be right there. Not that she had to talk to him. Even if he opened his eyes, she didn’t have to. He wasn’t the job anymore. She could pretend she didn’t see him, she could trudge straight past him, she could go the other way, she could …
He opened his eyes and he smiled at her and all her nots and coulds and wasn’ts reformed into a fast heel pivot and a swift walk in the other direction. She got a few car lengths away before she pulled it together.
Drum wasn’t a bushfire and she wasn’t a tree he could burn through. He was a mentally disturbed man and she was behaving like lunatic.
She turned back. He hadn’t moved. When she got closer she could see he’d closed his eyes again and she felt slathered in foolish sauce for the second time in as many minutes.
She stood a little in front of him. There was a man who begged at the main intersection of the town centre. He was often shirtless. He wore his hair in a plait. He went barefoot and the soles of his feet were black and tough, cracked thickly like the tread in a car tyre. He smelled dreadful. He held a piece of torn cardboard that said, “Please halp me. Good bless.”
There was another man, Asian, so filthy his skin was the colour of tea steeped for too long. His hair was one long mat, shaped like a beaver’s tail, almost reaching his knees. He wore a plaid dressing gown all year round. Neither man would stay in a shelter long. Neither would allow the council, charity, or church services near them. Both annoyed local businesses and frightened children, and both lived hard, sad, disconnected and heartbreaking lives.
Drum looked like a surfie dropout or one of those hippie types who lived out of a camper van. He was clean and healthy and, if you put aside his unstable attachment to the cave, he was an educated and interesting man. He was heartbreaking in an entirely unexpected way.
He opened his eyes. They connected directly with hers as if they were a homing device and her breath stalled.
She took a couple of steps towards him. “I’m sorry, that was plain rude of me.”
He inclined his head. “It’s okay, you’re mad with me. I get it. It shows you have good strong self-preservation instincts.”
Foley shook her head. Her preservation instincts were gift-wrapped with her way too ordinary life. “How can you get it?”
“I can see it in you.”
She huffed out a laugh.
“You’re ambitious, you’re dissatisfied, you’re anxious. But mostly you’re wondering if I deliberately came down here to annoy you. For the record I come here every night, weather permitting, to run and to meditate.”
She frowned. His guesses were general, vague and spot on. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”
“Whatever it is you want, Foley. Whatever it is you’re looking for, I hope you find it.”
She shifted her weight onto one leg and jammed her hands onto her hips. “Don’t go getting all mystical on me. I had you pegged for a rational hermit squatter guy and here you are going all transcendental and wishful thinking on me.”
He smiled. “Don’t knock it till you try it.”
“You were really meditating, not just sitting there listening to the sea?”
“That can be a meditation, so can chanting or exercise.”
“If you start chanting, I’m out of here.”