And the reasons for my tattoos don’t matter to Cora, because I don’t matter to Cora. We barely know each other. This is sex. Her curiosity in my tattoos is simple—she presumes they’re pretty decorations, each one chosen for its aesthetic appeal. Her question was light because she expected the answer to be.
‘I thought about getting a tattoo once,’ she says, her voice casual, but there’s a brittleness beneath it that has me pulling myself out of my own self-obsessed thoughts, wondering if her flawless skin carries invisible marks nonetheless.
‘You didn’t?’
Her smile is a flash, wiping away whatever I imagined I saw or heard in her voice, whatever complexity I intuited. ‘Too painful. I don’t like needles.’
She kisses me and I let her, surrendering to the sheer physicality of this, letting it push everything else from my mind.
* * *
I didn’t mean to fall asleep here in his incredible bedroom in this penthouse above Sydney, but I was exhausted. Now the sun is rising, streaking hesitant colour through a bleak winter’s sky, and instincts I have carried within me from childhood stir. I push the sheets back quietly, sparing a glance for Holden that becomes so much more, because a glance is never enough.
It’s the first chance I’ve had to observe him properly. He’s asleep, no likelihood that his intelligent gaze will shift and catch me like this, so I linger, my eyes scrutinizing his face first, the tension and hardness in it lessened by sleep. Like this, his features are still chiselled, stone-like, but his expression is relaxed. Vulnerable. Something in my chest shifts.
Vulnerable? Holden Hart?
I’m being delusional. Too much sex. I let my eyes drop to his body, circling across the tattoos, landing on the rose and t
hen, last of all, the Greek word beneath that quite frightening-looking picture.
Reluctantly, I push away from the bed, grabbing a shirt of his rather than my own clothes—which are tangled in the sheets and beneath the bed—sliding it over my head and inhaling unconsciously, breathing him in so my nipples tighten and my insides warm. It’s a freezing cold morning—his shirt won’t be enough. Fortunately, there’s a blanket on the edge of one of the leather sofas. I lift it up as I go, grabbing my camera backpack last of all.
The photos I took the day before, attempting to grab the shadows of the Opera House to show the juxtaposition of light and dark, manmade structure versus untamed ocean, are insufficient. I can’t say why, but they don’t work.
I click the doors open softly, moving to the edge of the balcony and opening the collapsible tripod first, extending each leg and snapping them into position before locking my camera in place. Then I wrap the blanket around my shoulders and I wait. It’s still too early. Night is winning the battle, reluctant to surrender supremacy of the sky. I wrap the blanket more tightly around my shoulders, contemplate making a coffee—except the noise might wake him and I don’t want to do that—and I wait some more.
Curiosity has me looking around this penthouse balcony—every bit as palatial as the inside of this place. It’s enormous, of course, and looks to wrap around the building, which I hadn’t noticed before. There are several areas set up—sitting areas, a barbecue zone, and as I continue to look I notice a hot tub and a pool, so it really does have everything you could ever need. There are even potted plants—lemon trees and some kind of vine that’s growing over a gazebo construction near the pool.
It’s a shame he doesn’t live here full-time.
The thought bursts into my brain, surprising me, so I physically freeze, staring towards the harbour again, trying to make sense of that.
For his sake, I mean, relaxing. It’s so beautiful, surely nowhere on earth could offer what this does? Here, high in the sky, you could forget you were above a casino, forget you were in the middle of a bustling city. It’s a kind of bliss, far removed from that, beautiful and striking and peaceful and pleasurable.
The sun is getting stronger. Rays of insistent light penetrate the night, and I return to the camera, switching the viewfinder on, looking at the way the lens interprets what I’m seeing. I have to make some adjustments to the settings in order to more closely capture the truth of this day’s break. Changing the ISO and aperture, I set the timer—I left my remote switch at home—and press the button, waiting for the timer to count down and snap the image. I’m impatient—as I always am—to see the result.
I move back to the tripod, covering my eyes to remove any additional shade and replay the image. My heart thrills because yes, it’s close. Not quite perfect but almost. I try again, going through the same motions, a few additional tweaks, and then snap.
I don’t know how long I stand here doing this, long enough for the sun to rise higher in the sky, for the light to get brighter, for night to capitulate entirely, leaving only a smudge of grey on the horizon as a reminder that the fight is merely delayed, not lost. And I lose myself in this perfection—rendering the magic of something like a sunrise onto film is one of the reasons I became enamoured of photography, and it’s one of the reasons I’m sure it’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. I’m ready to stop running and start living.
I lose myself in the act of photo-taking and forget almost everything else.
* * *
I reach for her instinctively when I wake. My body thunders with needs and my mind isn’t alert enough to stand in my way, to fight against that dependency and craving.
But she’s not there.
Her side of the bed is cold, no hint of her sweet body remains in the sheets so I could almost wonder if I dreamed that night, except no. I feel her jeans tangled at my feet.
It doesn’t guarantee that she’s still here. In fact, it could simply mean she didn’t want to speak to me before she left.
Something like panic flashes in my gut because I wonder if I deserve that. Did I say or do anything that could have hurt her? I wasn’t exactly sober when I went to her place. Could I be forgetting something?
But no, I don’t think that’s it.
I push out of bed, pausing only to drag on my jeans. I button them up as I stride down the corridor, checking rooms as I go, until I reach the living space. No sign of her. My sense of foreboding increases.