Earthquake Baby

‘Just like always, huh?’ His chest muffled her whisper as he slowly rocked her.

Before she could stop it, her mental proximity to the past had her back in his apartment ten years ago, being rocked and comforted. Smelling him, feeling him. Wanting him.

She felt the beginnings of an awareness, similar to the one that had possessed her back then. The one that had led to her kissing him and touching him and tearing his clothes off.

Laura broke away, putting some distance between them.

‘That poor woman, that was awful.’ She shuddered. ‘Really awful.’

‘It was what I was worried about before we went in.’

‘What? That she would attack me?’

‘No. That emotionally you were a little too raw still. I mean, you were speechless in there. That’s not normal, I hope?’

‘Of course not,’ she dismissed gruffly. The thought that he seemed to know her state of mind better than she did was unsettling.

‘So why this time?’

‘I’ve never had anyone eyeball me and intimate that it was my fault before. It threw me…that’s all.’

‘She didn’t mean it, you know. She wasn’t attacking you personally,’ he said.

‘I know that,’ she said, exasperated that he felt the need to explain something so obvious.

They sat in uncomfortable silence for a few moments.

‘Laura. Laura?’ He placed a hand against her cheek and turned her face so she was looking at him. ‘Please, come to the service with me.’

Laura began to protest but he hushed her with a finger against her mouth. ‘Hear me out, OK?’ He rubbed his finger against her bottom lip and she would have given him anything in that moment.

‘Forget about all the reasons you should.’ He pressed his finger against her lips to still her murmured protest. ‘OK, all the reasons I think you should. How about just doing it for me? For us. Sure, I think you need this but I can’t deny that mostly my reasons for wanting you to go are personal. Think of it as completing the journey that we started ten years ago. Coming full circle. If you don’t think you need closure from what happened then, OK. But maybe we need closure, Laura. I don’t feel like there was ever any ending to us. You know? I think this is the perfect opportunity for us to put our relationship in perspective. Lay some ghosts.’

Laura was stunned by the words. Despite the distraction of his thumb stroking her lips, she managed to absorb most of them. It was true, their relationship had been left up in the air. More so than Jack realised.

‘But…there’s work. I can’t just leave.’

‘I’m sure Marie can spare you.’

Laura pulled away from the eroticism of his caress and the seduction of his soft voice, sitting as far from him as her chair would allow. She just couldn’t leave them when they were already short-staffed. ‘No, she can’t. I’m rostered on for the next two days. Marie needs all hands on deck.’

Marie entered the staffroom. ‘Did I hear my name?’ She looked from one to the other. ‘How are you doing, Laura?’

‘Fine,’ said Laura.

‘You don’t look so good,’ Marie observed.

‘I’ve been trying to convince her to take time off work. I think she should go to the memorial service on Monday, Marie.’

‘What service? What do you mean?’

‘To the Newvalley Earthquake Memorial Service.’