Everyone walked back to the huts. Everyone except Amy, who hung back.
Gus was strolling with Sonny and Rosie and almost halfway to the hill before he noticed Amy wasn’t with them.
He paused and looked round. She was standing in the middle of the path. He jogged back. ‘What are you doing? What’s wrong?’
Amy frowned, deep lines across her forehead. ‘I think I’m jealous of the hipster girlfriend.’
‘Sorry?’ Gus laughed.
‘I’m jealous of the hipster girlfriend,’ Amy said again. ‘I think about her and I hate her. I hate her charity shop dresses and ugly flat shoes.’
Gus was looking at her, perplexed.
Amy scuffed the floor with her flip-flop. ‘I don’t want you to go out with her. I don’t want you to hold her hand.’
‘Amy, she doesn’t exist.’
‘I know, but she will. And all I can see is me with my beefcake sitting across the table from you and your annoying girl with her blunt cut fringe and being jealous.’
‘You really know what she looks like, don’t you?’
‘Yes. And I don’t want her to exist. I don’t want her to have you.’ She looked up. ‘Believe me, I don’t want to want to have you either but that’s the situation I’m finding myself in.’ She put her hand on her chest. ‘I do not want to want you, Gus.’
‘This is very flattering, Amy.’
Amy narrowed her eyes. ‘I know you don’t want to be tied in an awful relationship for the sake of the baby, but what if it wasn’t awful? I mean, wouldn’t that be good for the baby if we could be more than friends? So what if we did split up all acrimonious? Isn’t that what happens with lots of couples with kids anyway?’
Gus didn’t say anything, just watched her a bit bewildered.
‘Well?’ she ordered.
‘I guess so.’
‘There you go,’ she said.
‘There I go, what?’
‘Well there you go, your argument is ruined.’
‘Right.’ Gus inhaled, crossing his arms over his chest.
‘So?’ Amy said, staring straight at him.
‘So what?’ Gus frowned. ‘I don’t know. I’m slightly afraid of you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I think in your ideal world I’d drop down on one knee now and propose.’
‘No you wouldn’t.’ She shook her head. Then she paused, caught out.
Gus laughed.
Amy suddenly felt really exposed. She blew her hair up out of her face, kicked the sand at her feet, realising she’d kind of expected them to be kissing by now. She put her hands up to her cheeks. ‘You don’t fancy me, do you?’
Gus didn’t say anything, just looked down at the dusty path.
Amy screwed her eyes tight and leant back against one of the fat palm trees. ‘God, I’m such an idiot.’ She opened one eye. ‘I shouldn’t have said it.’ She opened both eyes and slumped against the jagged palm trunk. ‘I just—’ she sighed. ‘I did want you to kiss me the other night. I really did. It wasn’t because I was scared of being alone. I’ve been alone for two years now. I know how to be alone. I’m quite good at it.’
She bit her lip, reached and pulled at one of the overhanging palm fronds. ‘And I know I said just now that I didn’t want to like you, which wasn’t very nice, but that’s because if I’d said what I thought it was just all too embarrassing. If I’m honest, I literally can’t stop thinking about you. I like you more than I thought I would ever like you. Things I couldn’t bear about you I now find attractive. I like that you like Rosie. That you looked out for Sonny. When you make Stella laugh, I get this rush of pride. It’s ridiculous. And I don’t even care if the baby inherits your nose because now I just think it will inherit your kindness and your humour. Your stupid logic and your laughter.’
She pushed herself off the palm tree trunk. ‘And it’s all wasted now anyway because you don’t even fancy me, which I think I knew anyway.’ She started to walk away. ‘You’ve got your stupid hipster girlfriend to go home to.’
Gus walked next to her, hands in his pockets.
Up ahead the giant eucalyptus swayed in the wind. The clouds darkened over the moon. The highest flames of the bonfire were just visible on the horizon.
Gus said, ‘I do fancy you.’
Amy looked across at him. ‘You do?’ She frowned. ‘Why didn’t you say so?’
He shrugged. ‘I wanted you to work a bit harder.’
‘Oh my God, you arsehole. You made me say all that stuff.’
‘Too bloody right.’
She thwacked him on the stomach.
He laughed, doubled over. ‘We all like a bit of romance, Amy. Me as much as the next person.’
‘What about me?’ she said. ‘I like a bit of romance, too.’
‘You’ll get romance, don’t you worry.’
‘Fat chance. You’ll be all: “Now, Amy, no happy ever after for you.”’
‘You’re going to have to stop doing that voice for me because I don’t sound like that at all.’
She laughed, ‘You do.’
‘I do not.’
He reached forward and caught her arm. She stopped. He pulled her back towards him. ‘Amy,’ he said, ‘I’m never going to promise you happy ever after because it doesn’t exist, it’s unpromisable. All I can offer you is what we have right now.’
Amy felt his hand on her arm, was close enough to smell him, to look up at the whites of his eyes in the dark. She could see the moonlight dancing off the eucalyptus, the flicker of the fire, the glow on the wild waves through the trees, and she didn’t know what else would be worth asking for. So she nodded, tentative at first and then a proper real nod and a huge wide smile. ‘That’s good enough for me,’ she said. ‘I’ll take your right now.’
Gus grinned.
He put his hands on either side of her face, tilted her head ever so slightly and, when he was just about to kiss her, she jumped up on tiptoes so her giggling lips met his first.