Jack Brighton

Two weeks later

 

 

Life in the last two weeks had been interesting and life-changing, that was for sure. Lawson hadn’t gone back to Melbourne. Given the Tillman Copper was granted new species status, much to his boss Asterly’s disgust, Lawson was the lead lepidopterist in charge of the find.

When his boss had tried to derail Lawson’s role, Lawson had simply contacted the head of the University department, and the chairman of the Butterfly Association and told them both exactly how it was going to go.

He would be staying in Tasmania to establish a research and protection study on the Tillman Copper. He would be lead lepidopterist, and he would have their full cooperation. No questions, no arguments.

So that was that.

I couldn’t have been happier. Because it meant he was staying in Tasmania.

I asked him to move in with me. I’d told him I was falling in love with him, and he’d kissed and hugged me in return, telling me he felt the same. The butterflies he felt when he saw me had morphed into love, he’d said. The most remarkable metamorphosis. His words made my heart sing.

But he’d decided that it was too soon for us to move in together. I understood his reasoning―we’d only known each other for three weeks, after all―but I was a little disappointed.

When I’d seen him that time sitting on my lounge room floor in his PJs with Rosemary asleep at his side, I wanted it on a permanent basis. And when I’d thought he might die in the bushfires, my priorities, and my heart, had never been clearer. But he’d said not yet, and I respected his decision.

He’d found a place to rent in Launceston and was having his things ferried over. And in the meantime, he would stay with me until it all arrived, which it did a week later. The week he was at my house was incredible, even he agreed. We talked, we laughed, we cooked, and the sex was amazing. But he didn’t want to rush things and ruin what could be something incredible. He did plant that Bursaria shrub near the rosemary by the northern side of my house, though, which in a Lawson-Gale way was almost a promise that he’d be around long-term. If butterflies would take a year or two to roost there or even ten years, it gave me hope that he’d be there to see it.

But Launceston was where his work was, so it made sense for him to live there. I told myself it was a helluva lot closer than Melbourne, and the forty-five-minute drive wasn’t too bad. We’d only spent a few nights apart in the second week, and while it allowed me to concentrate on my work, I did miss him.

But he’d invited me, and Rosemary of course, to stay for the weekend, and when I arrived on Friday night, he welcomed me with one hell of an amazing kiss. “How was work?”

“Busy. We’ve got damage control and regeneration plans to implement,” I said, kissing him again. The week after the bushfire, I’d taken him back to the place he’d found the Tillman Copper. The whole area was a razed, blackened landscape. Nothing was left, and it was a sobering reminder of how close he’d come to being killed. “Will be flat out for the next twelve months. How about you?”

He gave me an eye-crinkling smile. “Great. There’s something I want to show you tomorrow.”

“Don’t want to show me tonight?”

He shook his head, and taking my hand, he led me to his bedroom. “Nope. There’s something else I want to do tonight.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“You.”

* * *

After he’d cooked me breakfast, we got dressed and he took me back to Warner Tillman’s house. I’d been here a few times, but Lawson had been here every day. He walked around the side of the house with a familiar ease when Warner called out to us. “In here, boys.”

Lawson went straight inside, with a skip in his step. He was so excited, and seeing him lead his own team and push for the ecological betterment of a species was a spectacular thing to witness. “Anything yet?”

“Any minute now.”

I looked between them. “Any minute what now?”

Lawson pulled me over to a glass case where inside was a net with a cocoon attached to it. “What you’re looking at is the chrysalis of the Tillman Copper. We’re about to witness what no other person in the world has seen. The very first Tillman Copper to emerge, imago.”

“Emargo-what?”

“Imago. It’s the final and fully developed adult stage. When a caterpillar emerges as a butterfly.”

I smiled at him. It was kind of like him. I was finally getting to see him in his element, doing what he was born to do. He’d spent years as a caterpillar, with his head down, working hard and going unnoticed. But now… now he had wings, and the world could see he was truly a magnificent man. I kept that analogy to myself, though. For now.

Then, as if right on cue, the chrysalis moved and started to split. A small copper coloured butterfly entered the world, imago.

It was incredible.

I looked at Lawson then, at his face, at the look of wonder and amazement in his eyes, and what he saw in the butterfly, I saw in him.

Lawson Gale, imago.

 

 

~   the end