Bay of Fires

Bay of Fires by Poppy Gee

Book: Bay of Fires by Poppy Gee Read Free Book Online
Authors: Poppy Gee
sliding toward the door. Head aching, she braced one hand on the door’s armrest and busied herself with sipping the discolored tank water in her water bottle. It was insane how slowly he was driving.
    Words to fill the few minutes it took to drive to the boat ramp evaded Sarah. Usually the conversation after the night before came easily to her. Flirty small talk over a final beer and a cigarette as she waited in pale new light for one of the town’s three taxis, making plans she wouldn’t keep. If a man drinking in the Pineapple Hotel’s public bar wasn’t married, you could bet your last buck he either was a sugar cane laborer or a fruit picker, or worked at the Eumundi Barramundi Farm. Sarah would know. She wasn’t proud of this but didn’t care either. When you called the shots, you knew where you stood.
    Hall signaled to go around a bend in the road. He took driving seriously, sitting upright and watching the road with his hands in the ten-and-two position. Occasionally he glanced out his window but only for a second. She felt like she was a teenager being driven home from a party by her father. It was very different from being in the car with Jake, who, in the six months she had known him, hadn’t left his vehicle outside the pub once. He nearly wrote it off many times. One night they were fighting about something and the car swerved off the road and wiped out someone’s tin can letterbox. It got caught on the front bumper and clanged all the way home. In the early days things like that made them laugh.
    “Abalone Bake Park,” Hall said as they drove past the sunburned patch of grass next to the shop.
    “Mmm,” she said.
    She remembered most of the night, more than she wanted to if she was honest about it. A swollen half-moon had cast a thick white path of light across the black sea as they sat on the rocks and drank the last of the beers. Behind them the Abalone Bake wound up and people drifted away into the night. Clean salty ocean air blew away the smells of frying garlic and seafood. Waves they couldn’t see gushed and frothed on the rocks, and at some point they sat in a way that their bodies were touching.
    Meandering up the gravel road, Hall and Sarah had joked about the murder case and tried to hold each other upright. Neither had mentioned the thing they both knew was about to happen. Between sheets softened from constant washing she had straddled him, pinning his shoulders and arms and hips to the hard mattress with a forcefulness that now made her cringe. The most embarrassing bit was when she pressed her mouth on his neck, drunkenly tugging at the softness under his jaw, and he had pushed her away.
    In the morning she had woken up surprised to find herself squinting in the strange predawn light coming through the guesthouse window. Hall was awake, tapping on a laptop. Her mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage. She needed to use the bathroom. If only she were at home.
    Through the thin walls Sarah could hear someone walking around, the hollow sound of a door opening and closing. Jane Taylor would raise her penciled eyebrows in surprise if Sarah came out of the bedroom with Hall. It was out of the question to explain to Hall that this wasn’t the first time she had been an unofficial guest here. He watched as she searched for her underwear at the bottom of the bed, turning away only as she pulled her underpants on. On the floor was the unmistakable silver square of a condom wrapper, torn in half.
    In the confined space of the car Sarah tried to breathe inaudibly. She couldn’t bring herself to check if there was a mark on Hall’s neck. His hands on the steering wheel were the closest she could come to looking at him. Patches of rust-colored hair, some of it gray, grew on his knuckles, and his fingernails were longer than hers. She took another little sip of water and wished he would drive faster.
      
    Tasmanian crayfishing laws stated that each person holding a license had to be present

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