Page 16

16

“ I cooked the fish,” Sean said as soon as Jack appeared on the other side of the kitchen bench. He’d heard his door open and wanted to speak as soon as he saw him, to say something, anything, to make it all normal again. Or as normal as it could be.

Jack’s eyes looked red, but he smiled cautiously, murmured that fish sounded good.

“Good,” Sean exhaled and looked away. Had Jack been crying? He didn’t know why he was asking himself that—of course he had, that’s what someone’s eyes looked like when they’d been crying.

“Need any help?” Jack asked, voice still careful, still friendly.

“Nah,” Sean waved the knife he was using to chop the cos lettuce Jack liked at the couch. “Pick somethin’ for us to watch.”

Jack huffed a laugh and it sounded real for a second.

“What?” Sean asked and tried not to sound offended but failed.

“Nothing,” Jack replied, “just, we always end up watching what you wanna watch ‘cos if we watch what I like, you complain the whole time.”

Even without his memory loss, this was probably true. But Jack looked like he’d been bloody crying, so Sean replied calmly, “I promise we can watch what you want and I won’t complain.” He focused on the salad, checked his roasting sweet potatoes.

“I don’t mind,” Jack said as he sank down on the couch and sounded like he meant it. Of course he did, he was an easy-going guy, Sean had realised that much, had always known it in a way he’d never wanted to think about.

“I like your take on things,” Jack went on and then got busy scrolling through the menu on the TV like he hadn’t meant to say that. Everything felt fragile again and Sean didn’t know how to fix it, so he focused on cooking, the music for the show he’d been getting into filling the room.

Sean was walking on eggshells after that. He didn’t want to make Jack bloody cry. He was pretty sure Jack had been crying in the hospital—he’d had red rimmed eyes, the bloodshot look of someone seriously sleep-deprived and crying a lot. He hadn’t liked it or understood it then and he didn’t want to bloody well see it again now. Luckily, they had training, games, more people coming round than those first six months, and Sean was healed enough to take Lola out each morning.

The first day he’d got up and intercepted Jack with a, “Hey, I can do it if you want?” Lola had seen the lead change hands and gone ballistic, racing up and down the hallway, jumping up on Sean before bounding away to the door and racing back.

Sean had laughed. “Man, I can’t believe she’s your dog,” he’d said to Jack. It was a joke, but Jack had shaken his head ruefully, muttered, “Yeah, what’re you gonna do? She’s always liked you best,” and gone back into his room, that door closing softly again. He’d been doing that since Sean’s comment about Jorge—retreating more, being quiet. He wasn’t moody, Jack didn’t have the personality for that; no, he was something else. Sean was jogging along Port Beach, Lola keeping pace beside him off her lead, a few people shaking their heads in his periphery at him having a dog off-lead and on a non-dog beach, but fuck them, Lola was so good, she could go anywhere, and as his feet slapped in the sand, kicked up the wash of the ocean, the word hit him: Jack was sad.

He stuttered a step, regained his footing and accelerated beyond the tentative jog he was meant to be doing in an effort to outrun how that made him feel. He hadn’t meant to fucking hurt Jack. He was just mad at him for flirting with another guy. Or letting another guy flirt with him, which made no sense, but whatever. He was just fucking mad.

His leg protested and he slowed down. Lola eased to a trot beside him, her tongue hanging out as she panted, the sun shining on her glossy black coat. Jack bathed her every week with a tea tree shampoo, her body wriggling as he lathered her up until she was a black head poking out of a white ball of bubbling soap. Jack bought her expensive dog food and marked her worming tablets and vet check-ups on the calendar. Jack gave his niece the same detailed expectations for her when they went away for games, explaining what Lola would expect and at what time as if this kid wasn’t there every other weekend doing the same thing. He wasn’t patronising about it, he said it like he just wanted to make sure Lola’s routine wasn’t interrupted, that she didn’t go without anything.

Sean turned and headed for home. Lola pushed back on the sand and spun, a magnet to his movements; she ran slightly ahead, looking back every now and then to make sure he was still coming.

“Hey,” he said, catching his breath when he came outside with Lola when they got back. She greeted Jack like a long-lost friend and he returned the gesture, hands sinking into her glossy coat as she panted up at him.

“Hey,” Jack replied, his eyes flicking up to check in; they still held for the briefest moment like they had in the beginning, searching, always searching to see if Sean had maybe fallen and hit his head in the dunes and knocked his scrambled memories back into place. Sean continued to do him the courtesy of shaking his head minutely to communicate, ‘no, still the same fucker you left in the locker room two years ago.’

“Can’t believe how much more fucked people have gotten about not sticking to the dog beach,” he said, lingering rather than getting straight in the shower, trying to find a foothold in their groove again. As awkward as that had been, it’d been better than this.

“Did someone say something?” Jack asked and Sean wasn’t sure if the anger in his voice was for him or Lola, but probably Lola, so he shook his head quickly.

“Nah, course not, no one’s gonna say something to an Aboriginal, come on,” he scoffed. It was true. Not on Port Beach at least. Don’t get him wrong, people were racist cunts all over the place, but they did it in specific places where they’d have a measure of protection—in a crowd, on the piss, online—certainly not on a beach in a gentrified neighbourhood. People were too scared to make eye contact, never mind get stuck into him.

Jack frowned up at him, hand still patting Lola. “Everyone around here knows who you are. You’ve been running that beach with her since she was a puppy,” he said slowly, “and the new people were probably doing double takes at the great Sean Hiller.” He smiled, tentative but proud and it made Sean shift his feet, look down.

“I reckon it was about her bein’ on the beach.”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe, but they can get fucked.”

Sean laughed and Jack smiled and it was a bridge. A small bridge with lots of slats missing and rickety joints and frayed rope, but it was a bridge you could cross if you were super careful.

“‘M gonna shower,” he said before he could accidentally torch the bridge.

“Take your time, we got an hour,” Jack called after him and Sean lifted his hand in acknowledgement, ripped off his shirt, but didn’t look back.