One Night on the Island(97)
‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘I’m coming.’
My money’s on Barney, at Delta’s behest, come to insist I wait out the snowstorm at the pub, or Cameron bringing extra supplies at Brianne’s insistence. I’m just about to drag the door back, and then I stop and hold my breath, because I can hear music. My fingers pause on the catch. Bruce Springsteen is playing the harmonica. I squeeze my eyes closed for a second and listen, my forehead resting on the door, shaky fingers pressed against the beginnings of my smile. And then I swing the door slowly open, knowing it isn’t going to be Barney or Cameron standing on the porch.
‘Mack.’
‘You didn’t come to the exhibition.’ He pulls a large black photograph album from inside his coat and places it in my hands. ‘So I brought the exhibition to you.’
‘You came three thousand miles to give me this?’
He smiles, those beautiful odd eyes of his, gentle. ‘I’ve been having trouble sleeping.’
I’m overwhelmed by the unexpectedness of him, by the wash of pure relief that slides through my veins at being in his orbit again. Narnia snowflakes fall steadily around the lodge, melting on the shoulders of his stupid red coat. ‘How … when …?’ I can’t formulate the questions queuing up behind my soaring, absolute joy. I want to hurl myself into his arms, pull him inside into the warmth of the bed, but I don’t do any of those things because I don’t know what’s going on here yet. I put the album down and gather the patchwork blanket closer as I lean my shoulder against the door frame. ‘What’s been keeping you awake?’
‘Ah,’ he says, running his hand over his snow-damp hair. ‘Well, my watch isn’t right. I keep it set to Salvation time so I know what time it is where you are.’
I tuck my foot behind my ankle and look down. God, Mack Sullivan, you sure know how to deliver a line.
‘Cleo, my life’s complicated and messy, but I’m a different man because of our time together. Susie kissed me on Christmas Eve and I couldn’t kiss her back because I wanted it to be you.’
I listen, letting his words unlock doors I’ve closed for the sake of my own sanity. I’ve worked hard to convince myself that I’d never see him again. That he’d found a way back into the life he’d left behind, that my life needs to move forward without him in it.
‘Someone exceptional told me a while back that my heart hadn’t got the memo,’ he says. ‘But I’ve got it now.’
I nod, drinking in every inch of his face because I’ve missed him more than I thought possible. ‘And what did it say?’
‘It said to travel three thousand miles to ask you to dance to Springsteen on the porch because you deserve that kind of big-gesture romance.’ He glances over his shoulder. ‘Hell, I even ordered snow, Cleo. Do you have any idea how hard that shit is?’
He reaches out and holds my hands. ‘Look. I have to be, I want to be, where my kids are until they don’t need me around as much. But coming here, meeting you … you kind of blew my mind, you know?’ He pulls me closer. ‘Will you come to Boston? Not permanently, but sometimes? And I’ll come to you when I can, wherever you are. We can have a hundred holiday romances.’
He has no idea how perfect that sounds to me. After everything I’ve discovered about myself, if he’d asked me to bend myself fully into his complicated world, I don’t think I’d have been able to do it. But he hasn’t asked that of me because he isn’t that man. He’s this man, one who understands how much I’ve come to value my freedom and solitude, that my Salvation story has chapters still unwritten.
‘I guess I would like to see that weather tower,’ I say.
Relief softens the tension in his jaw and I realize how nervous he was, that it wasn’t easy for him to come here and lay it all on the line. We look at each other for a few silent heartbeats, and then he restarts the Springsteen track and squeezes my fingers.
‘Dance with me?’
Tears catch in my throat as he tugs me out on to the porch and folds me inside the warmth of his ridiculous red coat, into the familiarity of his arms. I lay my cheek against his chest as Bruce plays his bluesy harmonica, tears in my eyes as I look out towards the snow-dusted beach and remember the last time we danced like this. I don’t know what the future holds for me and my inconvenient American. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to stand on one leg long enough to be my flamingo, and I’m okay that there are so many empty pages waiting to be filled. That’s a story for another time, though, because right now, this snow-globe Salvation moment feels just about as good as life gets.
Eighteen months later
Women Today
Guest editor: Cleo Wilder
Hello,
Remember me, the flamingo hunter who went away to marry herself on a remote island and never came home again? It’s been eighteen months now since my final sign-off, and I feel as if every cell in my body has been reprogrammed. Did I ever find my flamingo? Reader, I found more than that. I found my flock.
During my years as a dating columnist I made finding love my all-consuming mission, each new date a cocktail of hope, expectation, disappointment and despair. I downed hundreds over the years, and all I ended up with was a purse full of paper umbrellas and a jaded heart. I thought it was a numbers game, that the law of averages meant that if I just kept rolling the romantic dice, eventually I’d win. I was wrong. I was never going to win like that because although something essential was missing from my life, it wasn’t a partner.