Page 111 of Evil Hearts

Nine

“ I f the world was perfect, and everything is as it should be, I’d be on my honeymoon right now, with my new husband. We’d been together for almost ten years, since university, but never had the money to get married and buy a house, so we were waiting, and waiting…and I took a job teaching at remote high schools, because it paid better and came with a cheap rental house to live in, while Hunter stayed in Perth in his parents’ house, doing IT support and playing games when he wasn’t working. I’d come down and stay at my parents’ house during the school holidays, and we’d video call and sometimes game online together to start with, but I kept getting sent to smaller and smaller towns, and the internet was so shit the lag made it impossible to play, so I can’t remember the last time I played computer games, or at least with Hunter. Maybe that’s the problem. If I’d stayed in Perth, maybe we’d still be together, and he never would’ve found someone else. Or maybe he always had other girls and I just didn’t know…”

The thought of it twisted up her insides like snakes cagefighting to the death. If she’d done things differently, would she still be with Hunter? Or would they have broken up sooner, and she’d already be on her way to the better future she couldn’t see right now? Not knowing was the worst.

“You’d think it was the cheating that first made me wonder if I was making a mistake, but it wasn’t. It was the honeymoon. This honeymoon, the cruise I’m on now. Or I’m supposed to be on now.” The ship would come back for her. It had to. They couldn’t just leave her here. “We agreed to take our honeymoon on a cruise ship because it was the best of both worlds. Civilisation on the boat, with beds and bathrooms and technology and a bit of luxury, and then activities and day trips when the boat docked, so we could have a bit of adventure, too. That’s why I picked this cruise. I mean, lots of people just go to the ones that visit New Zealand, or Bali and Singapore, and that’s fine. There’s even volcanoes on Bali, but they’re super active and still erupting, and definitely not safe to visit. Not to mention New Zealand…earthquakes and eruptions every other week. Whereas this one…unless you’re working on the British military base or for NASA, the only way to visit this island is if you’re on a cruise ship. And the volcano hasn’t erupted in centuries, so it’s about as safe as you can get.

“So I showed it to Hunter and he agreed and I booked it. Sure, it cost a bit more than the Bali or New Zealand cruises, but I figured it was worth it. And now I’m here and I’ve walked around the mountain and it’s everything I was hoping it would be, but…it was supposed to be both of us. Together.”

Oriana sucked in a breath. It shouldn’t hurt so much, but it did. “I came down to Perth, three weeks before the wedding, when the school term finished, and the first thing Hunter said was that he wasn’t going on the honeymoon, because the cruise ship internet wasn’t fast enough. I thought he was joking, but then he said he’d been picked for some game’s beta testing team, and he couldn’t play the full version on the cruise ship because their internet speeds weren’t good enough, so he’d have to stay home. But he was happy for me to go, if I wanted, because he’d only be gaming anyway, and it wasn’t like I’d been selected as a beta tester.”

She swallowed. “I should have known then. I mean, who sends their wife alone on their honeymoon? But it’s his favourite game, and he’s been excited about this new release forever, so the chance to play it early and help the team debug it is totally his thing, so I figured I had enough to deal with, what with dress fittings and flowers and makeup and stuff, so I just left it. Until I popped over to his place to pick up my brother’s suit, because he was going to be one of the groomsmen and all the suits were delivered to Hunter’s place, and my brother’s only got a motorbike and you can’t really carry a suit bag while riding one of those, so…yeah. I arrived and his mum let me in, and said Hunter was upstairs in his room, gaming. So I walked right in, and he didn’t even hear me come in. He had his headphones on, and he’s staring at the screen where this naked girl was on her knees and he had his pants open and he was just…” Oriana gritted her teeth. “He was jerking off to whatever she was saying and doing on the screen. Stuff we’d never done, because he said it just wasn’t the same if we weren’t together. And there he was, having cybersex with some stranger, when we were weeks away from getting married.”

She swallowed. “I told him we were through, that the wedding was off. We managed to get a fair amount of money back from the wedding stuff, but it was too late to get a refund on the honeymoon. And I thought that seeing as I’d already paid for it and wouldn’t be getting the money back, and it wasn’t like Hunter would have gone anyway, that I should still go. So I did, but when I boarded the ship, everyone’s congratulating me on my marriage, and we got upgraded to the honeymoon suite, and I just couldn’t bring myself to tell everyone about Hunter’s betrayal, and how what should be the happiest time of my life is just me, here, alone. I mean, for ten years, since I met Hunter, we had this plan. We’d both work to save up the money for a house and a wedding, and then I’d take time off to have a family, then go back to work teaching when they were at school, so we could have all the school holidays off together. It was perfect, and I could see it so clearly I could taste it, making their morning Milo before driving the kids to school, then teaching my own class in the city, and picking them up after. Saturday morning sports, taking my turn bringing the orange slices for everyone…”

She hadn’t been able to eat an orange since. And she couldn’t even look at the Milo tin at home. Luckily, the cruise ship had a different brand of hot chocolate.

“But now it’s gone. Shattered, like a mirror into a million pieces. Doesn’t that mean seven years of bad luck? As if it’s not bad enough having my life shattered already. I’ve been telling everyone on the ship that my husband has really bad seasickness, which is why no one’s seen him. I mean, even if Hunter had come along, he still would have stayed in the cabin, playing games, if the internet was good enough, but at least he’d have been there. I wouldn’t have been alone.”

Once she’d started, Oriana just couldn’t stop. “People always say when one door closes, another one opens, right? But what they don’t say is how hard it is to shut that door behind you and move forward, and what do you do if the next door just won’t open yet? And what you’re leaving behind hurts so damn much, and what you thought the future held, that you could see clearly, is the door that’s closed, and you can’t see what’s next, and you need to. I need to…” She couldn’t stop the tears, either. Volcano god or not, Swaran definitely wouldn’t want to ravish her now, even if he ever did. No holiday romance for her.

“Perhaps the reason why these doors hurt so much is because you are quoting Don Quixote, a miserable tragedy of a book if ever there was one. Right after he says it, the fool of a knight picks up a barber’s bowl and runs about, wearing it as a helmet as he prepares to go into battle.”

She stared at Swaran. “Seriously? That’s where it comes from? I’ve never read that book, but everyone always says…” Oriana swallowed. “So is that what I’m doing wrong? Instead of worrying about planning my whole future, I should do something silly? Sillier than going on a honeymoon solo, of course, because that’s already pretty crazy.”

“Perhaps. But if you mean to forge a new future as a new woman, it is a future for a woman who is not Hunter’s wife. So you must do things that Hunter’s wife would not do, even if they might seem silly to you, or to others. Like hunting for a dead pirate’s treasure.”

She stared at Swaran. He was so right. What would Hunter’s wife do? Or what would she do if she was Hunter’s wife?

“I don’t really like teaching, but I did it because Hunter said it was better than working in mining and geology, which is what I’d originally planned to do. We couldn’t have kids if I was never home, he said, so I should take a job that could work around school hours.” Without Hunter, and without the prospect of having kids in the near future, she could go back to using her geology degree. Actually apply to research volcanoes like this one. Or even go to Antarctica. The possibilities were endless. “I could do anything.”

So she threw her arms around Swaran’s neck and kissed him.