CADENCE
If you cut me open, you’ll see me bleed red earth.
Not gush out in thick rivulets, but in dust whirls, small tornados carrying my body and spirit into the wind, scattering me over this beautiful, burnt, vast, dry, copper red land.
I may be first generation Australian, a child of immigrants, but the day I was born, the first breath of air I inhaled carried with it tens of thousands of years of Australian history and tied me forever in with the people and the land, so that my story would start and end here.
And it’s why I brought Sebastian here, of all the places in the world, it’s here I wanted us to come, to be the place where we would get to know each other.
Amongst the harsh heat of the desert sun, and the crisp cold breeze of night.
With the echoes of the spirits of the Aboriginal people around to witness the promises our bodies and hearts made to each other, and bind us together with their blessings.
***
“Cadence! LOOK!” Sebastian parks the Jeep on the side of an abandoned paddock and quickly jumps out, pointing his phone camera out into the horizon.
“What?” I call after him.
“It’s a kangaroo!! With a little joey!” He squeals, and I can’t help but laugh at his childlike excitement.
“Er, yeah, we have a few of those around,” I tease him, secretly committing the squeal to memory.
I lean on the hood of the car, watching him run a few steps and then stop, trying to get close to the mama kangaroo and her baby. After posing for a few photos, she gets sick of him and bounces off lazily, in no rush to get away from the human.
He jogs back to me, his face split open into a giant grin, waving his camera. “Got her! Oh, that was so cool.”
“Yeah, I guess you don’t see too many roos jumping down the Champs-Élysée.”
“Pfft, even if they did, Parisians would just scoff and say they’d seen it all before.”
“Maybe on their dinner plates!”
“Quoi? You don’t EAT kangaroos here, do you?” He looks like I’ve just suggested we eat a human baby.
I shrug, “Sure, not a lot but yeah, you can get kangaroo meat at any grocery store.”
He turns to me, absolutely horrified. “You are savages! Cute little kangaroos hopping around, you catch them and then EAT them?”
“What are you so horrified about, you eat foie gras!”
“That’s goose, geese aren’t cute! They don’t carry their adorable baby geese in a front bag.”
“Front bag?” I’m confused. Sometimes I forget that English isn’t his first language until he comes up with something golden like this.
“You know, the hole in their furry tummy.”
“You mean ‘pouch’?” I spit out.
“Whatever, savage.”
“Which reminds me, you owe me breakfast...and dinner! You didn’t feed me last night after all that show and dance about Cadence’s wish is your command.”
“You fell asleep, honey.” He shrugs and doesn’t look at all apologetic.
“But then I woke up.”
“Did you ever!” He grins and winks at me, and my legs instantly feel a little wobbly.
“Come on, I know of a great place you can make it up to me,” I tell him, to distract me from thoughts that would have me forgetting about breakfast and dinner altogether.
“Oh no, I’m going to need some sustenance,” he groans.
“Not that, you perv! Food!” I squawk at him and he laughs until a camera bag thwacks him on the head.
***
“It’s definitely alien.” Sebastian says after a few minutes of rare quiet.
“It’s not alien.”
“Then where did it come from?”
“The sky.”
“Yeah, an alien dropped it.” He insists.
“An alien. Picked up Uluru...and then accidentally dropped it.” I have to repeat it just to make sure I’ve heard him correctly.
“Sure, a giant alien. With slippery hands.”
I have to put my glass down, to keep from spilling it as I hold my stomach with my other hand as I bend over in laughter.
“What? Do YOU have a better explanation?” He asks, looking hurt.
“There are thousands of years of better explanations than that.”
“Well, I guess we’ll never know.”
“I think we know it’s not a giant alien with crappy finger grip that created Uluru.”
“It’s not my fault you have so little faith.” He sniffs, and turns back to observing the stunning horizon.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
We’re sitting on our balcony looking out as the sun sets over the giant red rock, that under the angle of light looks like it’s sprouted a halo, illuminating it against the darkening sky.
We can hear the sound of our neighbors enjoying their own meal and experiencing the unique experience of the sun setting over Uluru.
I shove an olive-oil-soaked piece of break into my mouth; part of the array of food we’d picked up at the store, our makeshift gourmet dinner picnic.
“Hmmm, so good.” I say and dip another piece and hold it out to Sebastian.
He opens his mouth and as I push the bread into his mouth, he clamps his lips down, trapping my fingers and then slowly licks the oil dripping off them.
“Hmm, you’re right, delicious,” he winks at me. My nipples harden instantly and I wonder if there’ll ever be a time my body’s not going to react to him from the smallest things.
He watches me eat for a moment, and I let him, somehow feeling so comfortable in his presence that I don’t really care that he sees me spitting out olive pits and sucking on lamb chop bones.
“When’s the first time you came here?” He asks, picking up his fork and stabbing a cherry tomato dancing around his plate.
“It’s a long story.”
“I don’t have anywhere to be and you’ve sexed me out for a while, so, spill.” He presses, already used to my evasive tactics.
I take a sip of wine and sit back, looking out at the scenery. “When I was ten, my grandmother died after a pretty long illness. After the funeral, we were in the car, and suddenly, my Dad spins the car around and he says, ‘where do you want to go? Anywhere in the world’.”
I take a bite of some bread and chew it for a few seconds.
“Just like me?” Sebastian asks.
“Just like you, except that, I don’t think he quite meant it. We didn’t have luggage or passports or anything. Anyway, as we’re driving into the airport there are those signs advertising places, and I saw a picture of Uluru. So we walk up to the sales desk and they ask, how can I help you, and I say ‘Uluru!’ And five hours later, here we were. Well, not here here, we weren’t millionaires... but yes, here near Uluru.”
“That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, it was an amazing trip.” I nod and smile, even now remembering stepping off the plane and feeling so glamorous and world travelled. Having that power to just pick a place in the world, it made me feel a like a princess. And Sebastian had recreated that for me. A moment he didn’t even know was one of the best of my life.
“Sounds like it.”
“He was an amazing dad.”
“Was?”
I take another sip of wine, savoring it in my mouth for a moment before I speak again. “Yeah, he, er, he died when I was fourteen years old.”
“Oh, Cadence.” Sebastian sighs, sensing the loss it was for me at such a young age.
“He was the one who taught me to play piano. It took me a long, long time to find another teacher after he died.”
“He’s be so fucking proud if he could see you now.”
“What about yours?” I turn the questioning back to me.
“He’d be proud of you too if he knew you.” Sebastian winks and grins, and I almost let him get away with it, the way his mouth curls into that irresistible cheekiness. But I don’t.
“Hey, I shared...”
“I don’t have any romantic lovey stories to tell you about my dad. He’s a rough, tough guy.”
“He’s not proud of what you’ve achieved with the band?”
He pops a chip into his mouth and crunches for a moment, thinking the question over. “I guess not. You know, I think it might have to do with his pride. Growing up, we didn’t have fuck all, sometimes not even a roof over our heads, and he could not stand me not just leaving school and going off making money as a laborer or something. When I got the scholarship to Guildhall Music in London, he couldn’t use the tuition as an excuse to make me leave, and we pretty much stopped talking for years.”
The thought of having such a relationship with your father is so foreign to me, and I wonder how that must affect him now.
“Do you talk now?”
“Not really, some, I guess. I go home to visit my mom. And he always brings out these fucking scrapbooks with clipping of the band and making comments about how we dress and the songs we pick for our performance, and how we could always do better. Like he knows. Nitpicking over interviews and everything!”
I smile at him, listening to him rant. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“What?”
I lean over the table between us and he meets me halfway, pressing a gentle kiss to my lips.
“Sometimes you have to read between the lines.”
A blank look spreads across Sebastian’s face and I can’t help but feel a thrill as I get to embed a whole new series of expressions of his into my Sebastian Face Bank.
“You say he has scrapbooks of clippings of your shows and interviews...” I say, nudging him towards his own revelation.
“Yeah, tens of them, we’re in the paper? You name it, he’s found it and cut it out. To point out everything that’s fucking wrong I’ve done.”
“Sebastian, sometimes people express love...and pride in different ways. But I don’t see a father who couldn’t give a fuck about his kid cutting out hundreds of clippings, do you?”
He goes quiet and I pour us each another glass of wine.
The expression on his face changes again, and I wish I could peer inside his mind and hear his thought. The sky mimics his face and changes from burnt orange and almost neon pink to the various shades of dark before slipping into night.
Eventually, he gets up and holds out his hand to me.
“Come with me.”
I slide my fingers against his palm without hesitation. “Where are we going?”
He tugs on my hand and pulls me to me feet, spinning me around, burying his face against my neck. I shiver as he breathes, and the air wafts against the sweat on my skin.
“Into the bedroom. I need to be inside you.” He growls, dragging his tongue against the curve of my neck, pulling gently on the sleeve of my shirt to expose more skin.
My nipples harden instantly and he slides a finger down to play with the straining tip.
“Why?” I rasp, wanting to hear him voice his desire for me.
“Because you’re so brilliant, I need to be a part of you.”
Despite the heat of his words, I can’t help but feel my heart warm because of the sentiment. His finger on my nipples distracts me from any thoughts not related to what he’s doing, however, and my head falls back, my chest arching, my body using its movements to beg for more.
He spins me around again, so I’m facing him, and he drops to his knees in front of me. Pulling my skirt up to my hips, he buries his face against the cotton of my panties, the heat from his breath already drawing the moisture from my sex.
I run my fingers through his hair and rock my hips against his face.
“And what about me? Where am I going?” I ask him, knowing I’m already on my way.
“To heaven and back, baby.” He promises, as his fingers push my underwear to the side and he slips his tongue against the pulsing, aching bud between my legs.
And I did.
Again and again and again.