Page 2 of The Cocky for Cody (Mulligan’s Mill)

The reason for our trip to Australia was simple—Cody wanted to introduce me to his island home.

Or at least the home he lived in some of the time.

Ever since we fell head over heels in love, we had decided to call Mulligan’s Mill home for most of the year, with Cody packing his bags every now and then to cover a story on the Northern Lights in Lapland or a tango bar in Buenos Aires or an overnight train ride on the Orient Express.

But it only seemed fair that between Mulligan’s Mill and his travels around the globe that we also make time for what he called “a little island time” at his beach shack on Magnetic Island.

Of course, I had happily agreed to all that before making the sleepless, soul-sapping, delirium-inducing trek halfway across the planet, something I wasn’t quite prepared for.

Maggie—the person, not the island—had offered to drive us to the airport in Eau Claire, a journey one might describe as do-or-die in and of itself.

But that was simply the beginning of our odyssey.

From Eau Claire we caught a flight to Chicago, from Chicago we flew to LA, from LA we crossed the Pacific to Brisbane, from Brisbane we caught another flight to Townsville, and from there we caught a ferry to Magnetic Island.

The entire journey, door to door, took more than forty-two hours, although time and reality often seemed to lose all meaning throughout the trip…

like during the eternal wait at the gate at O’Hare…

and again at the awful Mexican bar and grill at LAX…

and sometime after the fourth gin and tonic when our flight to Brisbane seemed to cross over into the Twilight Zone.

“How do you do that as often as you do?” I mumbled in a half-conscious state, fanning myself to battle the North Queensland heat, as the cab from the ferry drove us over the mountain in the middle of the island to the relaxing sandy shores on the other side, or so I was promised.

“Do what?” Cody asked, gently squeezing my hand to keep me conscious, like a doctor squeezing the hand of a patient about to slip into a coma.

“How do you fly from one country to another all the time? All that waiting and queuing and endless hours in the air with the mind-numbing drone of the plane’s engines in your ears, hour after hour.”

He hitched one shoulder casually. “I try to switch off. Relax. I do a little reading. Sometimes I’ll write. Sometimes I just sit back and enjoy the flight, just like the captain suggests. It’s about making the most of the journey, not just the destination.”

I squinted at him, partly because of the blinding daylight outside the cab and partly from sheer exhaustion. “How is it nothing ever seems to faze you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, don’t give me that innocent, happy-go-lucky smile of yours.

You know what I mean. There you are, all sunshine and sparkles like a unicorn who just arrived from over the rainbow, and here I am trying to figure out whether I caught the zombie virus from one of the other passengers or if I got it from that day-old chicken burrito I ate at LAX. ”

Cody wrapped an arm around me. “Brooks, you don’t have the zombie virus.”

“How do you know?”

“Would I do this if I thought you did?”

He pressed his lips to mine before the cab veered around a bend and the shimmering blue of the Coral Sea came into view, stretching from a lush green bush-covered bay all the way to the far horizon.

I blinked back the light and weariness, feeling a second—or more accurately, twenty-second—wind coming on. “Is that the place you call home?”

“Nearly,” Cody smiled. “We’ll be there in a few minutes, then I’ll fix you some of that zombie antidote in my fridge, more commonly known as… a mango daiquiri.”

I sighed, content at last. “Now that sounds like my kind of cure.”

The heat was intense, the thrum of the insects deafening, but the sea sparkled like champagne and the sand was softer than melted butter.

“Oh… wow!” was the best my extensive vocabulary could muster up at the view from Cody’s front porch.

“You like it?”

“Like it?” I set my suitcase down on the porch after dragging it the short distance along a bush track to his shack on the beach.

I breathed in the fresh salt air and looked out to sea, and for a moment I thought I saw a sea turtle come up for air before disappearing once more.

“Cody, this is a goddamn postcard. You didn’t tell me you lived in the most perfect place on earth. ”

“Don’t get too excited. You haven’t experienced all there is to experience yet.”

“Are you kidding me? If this is a taste of what’s to come, then I can’t wait to experience it all.

” I turned to him, feeling rejuvenated, recharged, ready for anything.

As he jiggled a key in the lock of the front door, I laid my hand on his and stole a kiss.

“Whatever adventure you have in store for me, whatever our next chapter holds, I think I’m ready for it.

I’m ready to experience everything your island home has to offer. ”

Unexpectedly, he grimaced somewhat knowingly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying. You never lie. You’re too easygoing to lie. What’s the matter?”

He bit his bottom lip, his face now overcome with uncertainty. “Nothing’s the matter. It’s just that… you might want to brace yourself before I open this door.”

Suddenly his uncertainty became my uncertainty. “Oh my God, please don’t tell me there’s a cane toad waiting for us inside.”

He laughed uneasily. “A cane toad? No, they’re easy to handle. You just shoo them out of the way.”

My heart sank and my fears rose even more. “Oh Jesus, don’t tell me you have death adders hiding under the rugs! Oh God, I thought they hid in the sand, not underneath the furniture!”

“Haha!” Cody didn’t actually laugh, he just said “haha” with more anxiety than I’d ever heard in his usually carefree tone. “Actually, they’re not a problem either. To be honest, you can always sweep a snake out of your house with a broom.”

“Firstly, let’s be clear that I won’t be sweeping any snakes out of the house. I’ll be up on your shoulders screaming like a banshee. Secondly… if there are no toads or snakes inside your house, what the hell am I bracing myself for?”

Cody sucked in a breath. “What can I say… it’s complicated.”

A sickening feeling overcame me. “Now you’re really making me nervous. You’re not keeping any secrets from me, are you? You’re not going to open this door to reveal some jealous, horrible boyfriend I don’t know about… are you?”

“Boyfriend? Not exactly. Horrible and jealous?” He bit his bottom lip, then answered the question by pushing the door open.

Before I even had a chance to step inside, a frying pan came flying out the door at me.

Cody yanked me out of the way just in time as the pan clanged across the porch and slid into the sand.

It was followed by a barrage of abuse like nothing I’d ever heard before.

A shrill voice screeching, “Where the fuck have you been, you scummy, cheating, lying bastard? Squark! Once again you fuck off without so much as a goodbye kiss and off you go, gallivanting around the world while I’m left here to pick up the pieces of my broken heart.

Squark! And who’s this you’ve brought back with you?

Some filthy stinking slut you picked up on your travels?

If that rancid whore thinks he’s setting foot in my house, tell him he’s dreamin’!

Now fuck off, the both of you! Squark! ”

As a butcher’s knife came flying out the door, I jumped back and stared in wide-eyed terror at Cody. “Who the fuck is that?”

“It’s okay, he’ll calm down in a minute. Or ten.”

“If he doesn’t kill us first! Should we call the police?”

Cody shook his head. “No point. Besides, the cop shop’s only open nine till noon, Mondays and Wednesdays.”

“You mean the police on the island only work part time?”

“On the contrary, all the islanders have Bazza’s number in their phone in case of emergency. He works twenty-four seven when he has to.”

“Bazza? Who’s Bazza?”

“The police sergeant on Maggie. But seriously, there’s no point bugging him. This isn’t exactly a police matter.”

A cast iron pot banged and bounced its way out the door. “Are you sure? Because this is feeling very much like a police matter to me. Who’s in there, anyway? An ex-boyfriend? Some jilted lover you need to tell me about?”

“I’m not a lover, I’m a fighter!” screeched the voice from inside. “ Squark! Take one step closer and I’ll gut you like a goanna!”

Cody gave another fake, feeble laugh. “Haha. He’s just joking… kinda.”

“Who is he?”

“I guess you could say he’s my flatmate. He’s not here all the time, he comes and goes. I was hoping when we got here he’d be gone. Sorry, I probably should have told you about him.”

“You think so?” Warily I peered inside the shack.

It was a single space—like a loft—with a high ceiling, sparse furniture, and worn floorboards strewn with kitchen utensils and random cookware.

There was an overturned lamp in one corner, a bookcase emptied of books, and from where I stood I could see every cupboard in the kitchen had been opened.

And yet, strangely enough, there was no sign of Cody’s flatmate anywhere.

“Jesus, either your flatmate’s a complete slob or he’s ransacked your house. ”

“It’s a bit of both,” Cody admitted. “Don’t worry. This is just his way of telling me he’s missed me. It’s his love language.”

“Smashing up your place is his love language? What does he do to people he hates? Actually don’t answer that. I’m not sure I want to know.” I glanced inside again. “Where is he anyway? I can’t see him any—”

Suddenly a hardcover copy of Moby Dick almost hit me in the face. Somehow I managed to dodge it just in time, catching sight of a flash of white feathers flapping through the rafters in the ceiling.

I turned to Cody. “Wait a minute. Is your flatmate by any chance… a bird?”