Page 47 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Never in her life, even when she was at school, has Josie known so many days to be the same.

Sure, she used to wear a uniform and take the same bus each day; her teachers were the same, the kids were the same.

But there was variety in what she learnt – or didn’t learn, as often turned out to be the case – and she felt she was moving toward something, which was leaving school and going out into the world.

Then she got to be out in the world, with a job and a car and a boy who liked her.

Spending all this time in a hospital bed, thinking – there’s nothing else to do but think – she sees how the job, the car and the boy led her to be on that road to Woy Woy, driving too fast around that bend.

Still, she wouldn’t have traded them for anything.

They were freedom for her. And now she has none.

Now every day is frustration and pain and what feels like no progress even though the doctor said her body is healing, taking its time, as it needs to because they’re big bones in the legs and the pelvis and they need time to be strong again.

She cherishes visitors when they come, breaking up the boredom. Trudy, once a week, keeping her up with salon gossip. Evie less frequently but no less welcome.

Her mother isn’t spending as much time here, and Josie wonders if Trudy said something to her, because Josie mentioned she felt watched and it wasn’t helping. Erin and Trudy have been talking – which she only knows because Trudy tells her.

‘Had a chat to your mum,’ she said on her last visit, although she didn’t say much about the contents of the chat other than, ‘Just checking in.’

Josie sighs as she looks out the window. Even the view is the same every day. At least the weather changes.

She hears a light knock on her open door and turns her head. And there’s Brett. Or is it? Maybe it’s a mirage. She’s been imagining him coming to visit her so often she could be hallucinating him.

‘Hi,’ he says tentatively, taking a step inside the door.

‘Hi,’ she says back, but it sounds so quiet to her that maybe he didn’t hear it.

She tries to push herself up but it’s hard with the casts and she feels so clunky and ugly and awkward, and if she’d known he was coming she’d have tied back her hair or something, made herself presentable, he has never seen her like this and he won’t like her any more, she just knows it.

Except he’s smiling at her in a way that makes her feel light inside, and now she can see he’s holding flowers, and it’s so nice, seeing him here, that she starts to cry and she wishes she wouldn’t but she can’t help it. The relief of seeing him. The joy of seeing him.

‘Hi,’ she says again, this time louder, and he steps toward her and now his arms are around her, and she can hug him back because her arms still work.

He’s kissing her temple and now her lips and she holds on to him, not wanting to let go because maybe he’ll disappear.

‘I’ve been so worried about you,’ he says into her hair.

She can smell the salt and sun on him and it’s so familiar and so lovely that she cries even more.

‘I thought you didn’t want to see me,’ she says into his shoulder.

When he pulls back he puts his hands around her face and stares into her eyes. ‘I always want to see you,’ he says.

She has always wanted someone to look at her the way he is looking at her now.

There aren’t words she can put to the feeling.

It’s just a feeling . It’s a knowing. The sense that he is right for her and she is right for him, even though if she had to fill out a questionnaire that asked each of them what their interests and hobbies were – the sort of thing you find in the magazines – they probably wouldn’t be a match.

Whoever is a good match on paper, though?

Her parents’ friends have sons who her mother thought would be perfect for Josie but when she met these young men she felt nothing other than irritation in most cases.

You know it when you see it. Trudy said that to her once when she was talking about her husband. Telling Josie how she and Laurie didn’t really work on paper either – he liked dogs, she liked cats, among other things – but they wanted each other, and they kept wanting each other.

‘How did you keep knowing?’ Josie asked. ‘All those years.’

‘Some days you have to make a decision to keep knowing,’ Trudy said.

‘No one’s perfect each day – no one’s the same each day.

It helps to remember the feeling you normally have around them, remember that it’s the real feeling, not whatever’s going on that’s annoying you.

Of course, if you start to have more bad days than good, that’s when you should call it quits.

’ She’d smiled wistfully. ‘Thankfully Laurie and I never reached that point.’

Josie wished she could have met Laurie, and seen what he and Trudy were like together. Maybe they’d be better role models than her parents, with her father always doing what her mother says and her mother changing her mind a lot.

One of the things she really likes about Brett is that he’s consistent. He shows up when he says he’ll show up, and if he tells her something he doesn’t change his mind.

He has shown up for her here, too, when she’s looking her worst and she can’t even get out of bed to hug him properly.

‘How did you know where I was?’ she asks him as he strokes her hair, which is so comforting she wants to curl up and close her eyes and ask him to do it forever.

‘Your mum told me.’

‘My mum!’

This is so confusing it almost feels like a betrayal – why wouldn’t Erin say she’d spoken to Brett? Why would she speak to him in the first place?

‘Trudy called her,’ he says. ‘I was going to the salon to ask about you, and –’

‘You were?’ She smiles. All this time, he’s been thinking about her. She was so wrong to believe otherwise.

He grins. ‘Yeah. Trudy kept me up to date.’

‘Not much to report,’ Josie says, snorting.

Brett shrugs. ‘I wanted to know. And one day she said she’d called your mum and told her how worried I was. Then she said to give your mum a call. So I did.’

It’s hard to imagine how the conversation went, and Josie wishes she could have heard it – but all that matters is he’s here, with her, and without her mother chaperoning.

If only it hadn’t taken a car accident to get them here. If only her parents had trusted her in the first place. If, if, if …

Her whole world has seemed composed of if lately. If only Brett were here. That was one of them. Now he is. It’s almost too much.

She presses her head into his chest, trying not to cry.

‘Hey,’ he says, rubbing her back. ‘Hey, what’s up?’

‘I can’t believe you’re here.’ Wrapping her arms as far around him as she can, she tries to stop the tears so they don’t go on his shirt, but they flow anyway.

‘I’m not leaving you,’ he says, hugging her tighter than he ever has before. ‘I’m going to help you. With your rehab.’

‘You can’t do that,’ she says, straightening up. She doesn’t want him to see her trying to walk properly again, all the incompetence and mess it will entail. How will he want her after that?

‘I can,’ he says, and he kisses her nose, laughing. ‘And I will. Come here.’

As he hugs her again she lets herself go into it. Lets him hold her, feels the strength of his arms and his back and his spirit and his determination.

‘This is just our start, Josie girl,’ he says. ‘And I’m not missing it.’

She stays cradled against him until she starts to fall asleep, and is barely aware as he lies her down on the bed and pulls the sheet up, then sits beside her and holds her hand.