CAN'T IMAGINE

CHAPTER 7 - "YOU DON'T REMEMBER, DO YOU?"

There were many chores that had to be done, just like in a normal home, such as cooking and cleaning, washing clothes and bedding, gardening, looking after the chickens. It reminded Camila of the couple of months between tours and albums when they had just hung out, redecorated, planted a garden, learned to cook, slept in and had early nights if they wanted, watched lots of old movies and binged tv series they had never had a chance to watch. It had sped by way too quick, and then things had gone downhill. Now, they had a second chance. With no outside input. And no electronic devices. Kind of.

"Look what I found!" They had just hung out the washing and she was sitting outside reading a book from the library when Shawn ran out, excited.

"What?" she asked, looking confused. He didn't seem to be holding anything, she wasn't sure what he was talking about.

"Come with me," he laughed and she followed him into the living room where he had rigged up the tv. "Look!"

She wasn't sure what he was pointing to.

"It's a DVD player, I found it when I was looking through the instruments and stuff, along with a box of old movies!" He was like a little kid as he held up the first Harry Potter movie. She laughed, he was so adorable.

"Lets watch it tonight," she said and later that night they snuggled on the couch watching the scratchy old DVD on the ancient player that glitched every ten minutes and enjoyed every minute of it. When it got three quarters of the way through, the movie totally bugged out but by then they didn't care. She had turned in his arms and began kissing his neck as the intrepid Hogwarts trio tiptoed past Fluffy and Shawn fought it for a moment or two before giving in. Things moved fast from there and as they tried to struggle out of their clothes, they fell onto the floor and burst out laughing until the laughter turned to kissing again, so that when the movie froze just as Professor Quirrel unwound his turban, the action was rather more x-rated on the rug in front of the sofa. As she lay panting in his arms afterwards, she thought of all the times they had watched the Harry Potter movies on their enormous state-of-the-art 4D TV in the media room in their Miami house, stretched out on the double chaise lounge beneath a big blanket if the aircon got too cold, eating microwave popcorn, then they'd turn it off at the end, clean up, go through their routines for bed, read maybe, and then they might make love before lights out if they were in the mood or not too tired. Not that it wasn't good, it always was, but she realised even their sex life had been given a slot on the agenda. Here on the island, if they felt like it, they did it. If they were on the beach, in the kitchen or on the sofa watching a scratchy old copy of the movie that would previously have had them so annoyed they would have turned it off and sat on their computers instead. It didn't matter if they'd already had sex when they woke up in the morning, if they felt like it after lunch or in the shower before bed, they just went with it.

She wondered, if they got through the troubles that had led to their big fight, would their life go back to that ordered, almost bland, existence? Or would they take this new spontaneous, carefree attitude with them? If you had asked her how their relationship was before the lead up to 'the incident', she would have said they were closer than ever and everything was going so well, and that would have been true. Boring, but true. But he had begun keeping secrets from her. He had been going behind her back. He had done things that made her realise he didn't know her at all. She realised that was the thing that had hurt the most, the lying and the not knowing her part. If he knew her, he would know what he did was unacceptable, he would have known it and not done it. So either he didn't know her at all or he did it anyway, because he didn't care. Neither of them were good options.

"Hey you," he whispered, tapping her forehead. "What's going on in here? I can hear the gears grinding."

She stared at his face, cheeks still pink from the sun after their trip to the airstrip, his golden brown eyes crinkling at the corners with amusement. Her heart sank into some kind of unreachable abyss inside her.