Page 57 of Dauntless
“Hi!”Eddie called, flapping the tea towel.“Shit, hi.I’m Eddie, and you must be Amy, and I was trying to make some scones as like a welcome home thing, and I accidentally made fire instead.”He grimaced apologetically in my direction.“It was a very small fire, and it’s out now.Promise.”
I walked into the smoky kitchen.The cremated scones were in a baking dish that had been hastily dumped in the sink.I checked the oven was definitely off and that nothing was still burning.
Eddie bustled around behind me, poking at the scones.“Oh, they’re not salvageable at all, are they?”
“There’s biscuits in the pantry,” I told him.I moved through to Amy’s bedroom and dumped her pack on the floor.When I got back to the kitchen, Eddie was rummaging in the pantry, and Amy was sitting at the table, her gaze taking in all the changes—some small, and some large—that had taken place in her absence.
The largest, no question, was Eddie.After his first trip to the island he had, unaccountably, kept coming back.And then, one day, I’d asked him to stay.And Eddie hadn’t, not at that time, because he still had his thesis to finish, and a whole life back in Sydney, but he was here now at last.He could still talk under wet concrete, and he was still grumpy as shit in the mornings before he got his coffee, but it turned out those were things I could live with.And it turned out Eddie could live with me as well, and the way I snored, and left crumbs in the butter.We balanced each other out in the ways that counted.And, more than that, I was stupidly in love with the guy, and vice versa.
“So Joe tells me you’re running the museum now,” Amy said.“Any new exhibits scandalising the locals?”
“Not yet,” Eddie said.“But once my thesis is published, there’s going to be a whole room dedicated toJosiah Nesmith:The Man, The Myth, The Monster.”
I helped myself to a biscuit.“I told you, if you call him a monster, someone will kill you for real.Come up with another m-word.”
“Mur-der-er,” Eddie sounded out, eyes round with delight.
“Not that m-word either.”
Eddie flashed a grin at Amy.“I’ll probably call itThe Man, The Myth, The Mutiny.That way I can still have a display of Henry Jessup’s diary entries, but it won’t be quite so—what was it you called it, Joe?Confronting?”
“I said blatantly antagonistic.”
“Yeah,” Eddie said.“That way it won’t be quite so blatantly antagonistic to the islanders.That’s the plan, anyway.”
“And our plans are usually flawless,” I said wryly.“Right?”
“Right!”Eddie exclaimed.“What could possibly go wrong?”
* * *
The opening of theJosiah Nesmith: The Man, The Myth, The Mutinyexhibit was held two months later on a Saturday night.Eddie’s professor from the university came, and so did some people from the state tourism board, and even a couple of journalists from the Sydney papers.There were canapés and champagne, and for a while, things seemed quite cosmopolitan.Then the champagne ran out and was replaced with the islanders’ moonshine, and things took a more raucous—and festive—turn.
Sarah Hooper’s rum was definitely involved.
Somehow Eddie and I escaped the crowd and found ourselves in front of Josiah Nesmith’s statue down on the waterfront.
“Cheers,” Eddie told it, and raised his cup.“You murdered my great-great-great-grandfather because he told you to stop being a rapist, but I’m totally screwing your great-great-great-grandson, so it sort of evens out in the end, doesn’t it?”He hummed.“Really makes you think.”
I slung an arm around his shoulders.
“Makes you think,” Eddie repeated, swaying slightly on his feet.“Balance, and yin and yang, and… whatnot.”
“Sure,” I said, because I was too drunk to argue.
“It’s nice,” Eddie said.“The universe has balance.That’s nice.”He leered at me and tried to smoosh our faces together but only succeeded in smearing his mouth along my jaw.“You’re nice too, Red Joe Nesmith.”
“So are you,” I said, hooking my fingers into his belt loops to keep him from staggering backwards.
“Oh god,” Eddie groaned, dropping his forehead onto my shoulder.“We have to walk up that fucking hill now, don’t we?Will you carry me, Joe?”
“No.”
Eddie sighed loudly.“My sexy silent fantasy lighthouse keeper guy would carry me!”
“You should ask him then.”
“No,” Eddie muttered and groaned again.“I like you more.Come on, let’s go.”
