Waiting For Ships

5 - Billie

I lay on Joe's sofa and listened to the unfamiliar sounds of his house as they played out around me. The pipes groaned. The wind shook the glass in the windowpanes. Leaves pattering against the roof. An owl hooted. Cara and Scott, who had returned from the study saying it 'gave him the creeps,' slept a few metres away, the former snoring on every breath, the latter dreaming softly. I was glad Scott had missed the performance at the piano. He wouldn't have understood. Would have mocked the moment. Cheapened it somehow. I liked that it was precious. Not even Cara had seen. It was ours.

I wanted it to stay that way.

I tried to sleep but my mind was alive. I ran over the events of the party again, wondering how Joe's indifferent invitation had led to the terrifying, inexplicable fire now in my stomach. I couldn't sleep for wanting him. He couldn't leave the room without looking at me in pain.

I tried to logic the feelings away. This is what he does. How many other girls have sat in this house and felt this fire? He told me he'd only been with two people, but there were many more he'd enchanted. I'd heard the stories. I'd seen more than one girl with red eyes in the corridor, their friend's arm around their shoulders as they talked in low voices. 'Joe...'. Sometimes they said it, sometimes they didn't. But I always knew.

I also knew how close he'd been to Ingrid, and how quickly he'd discarded her. I wanted to be wary. To run away before the fire turned inwards and swallowed me up. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't forget the way he looked at me.

Even if we went our separate ways, I'd always remember it. The darkness, the streetlight, the dock. Him close to me. His eyes on mine. His lips...

I rolled over, trying to get comfortable on my make-shift sofa/bed. The smell of old fabric hit me as I moved, but it wasn't unpleasant. It smelt like a home. Like years of memories. I squinted my eyes to make out shapes in the darkness. A turntable sat on the dresser, bookshelves lining the walls, the baby grand piano in the corner of the room. If I ignored the flat screen TV, I could imagine myself in a different time. I could feel it. See it. A simpler existence where I spent my days walking in the sprawling beauty outside and my evenings beside this huge fireplace, reading a book, my feet curled up in Joe's lap. I wanted it. Me, him, and nothing else.

You don't even know this boy...

And yet, somehow, I did.

I thought about all of my previous 'attempts'. All the times I'd looked for happiness in someone else. I tried to find the connection I'd seen in films and read about in books. The relationship I'd heard in the lyrics of a thousand songs. I realised somewhere along the way that it was always the same. The same story repeated, maybe since the day the first poet marked the first piece of paper with ink. I'd started to believe it wasn't real. Maybe it was just a fantasy, designed to make life easier. But that night with Joe, I felt what might have been the start of it.

I was too afraid to let myself believe it, but hope was brushing me with its fingers, warning me it would soon take hold.

I wanted to float in the feeling. To stay in it as long as possible. Bottle it up and box it behind glass and label it with a plaque so that future generations could look at it and understand what I'd found that night.

Dramatic, Cara would say.

But I knew I couldn't protect it forever. As soon as other people knew about it, it would become real. Maybe it wouldn't survive observation. Maybe it wouldn't survive when night turned to day. Would he still want me the same way in the morning, when the harsh light swept the magic away and we were left bare-faced and open?