Knight swirled his coffee at a café a few blocks down from his house. I had my head on the table. Knight pushed my latte towards me. It was getting cold. I couldn’t bear to be at home. I couldn’t handle my parents’ smugness at my failure to launch. Knight suggested a therapeutic Greek dinner and a movie night in.
Without looking up I pouted, ‘that’s not making it up to me.’
‘I know, but I’m craving olives. Cheer up, Darl. We’re just slightly delayed. That’s all.’ I nodded with my head still on the table. He chuckled and patted my hair. ‘After all of this with your parents and stuff…the thing that ends up holding us back is a bloody stolen package.’
Later at the restaurant a rain cloud had settled above my head. I picked at my food and barely paid attention to the conversation. During dinner I received more messages from friends saying bye and wishing us luck. After the 7th message, I slammed down my fork sending vine-leaves across the room.
‘We’re leaving. Tomorrow afternoon. I don’t care about the gear. Something will come up. We’ll sleep in the bloody car if we need to. Let’s just GO. What do you reckon?’
With his cheeks full of marinated olives, Knight said, ‘Babe, if you jump, I’ll jump.’
…
By 2 o’clock the next day I was out of the house. My trunk was packed with hundreds of books, a war-time’s worth of canned food, my bulging backpack, extra pillows and blankets and a trembling mess of excitement. I waved from the car as I drove out. My sister waved back. Mum crossed her arms and shook her head. Didn’t know where Dad was.
I arrived at Knight’s place and stood at the gate. His house looked strange to me…all the doors and windows were free from their frames, the front yard led straight through the front door, down the hallway and into the backyard. There was no definitive barrier between house and garden. Interesting.
I found Knight in his room with his laptop. I was slightly disappointed as I had imagined him running out, throwing his bags into my boot shouting ‘go go GO!’
‘Hey, Babe. I just booked us in for a couple of nights in Daylesford at a heritage resort.’ Resort? What happened to roughing it? ‘I just thought we deserve something nice after everything.’
‘Wow! What a good idea. It’s like we’re on a honeymoon or something!’
Knight laughed, ‘if it were our honeymoon I would not be booking a room through Wotif.com the day of.’ I buzzed and bounced with excitement.
‘Let’s go!’
And we were off! Straight into peak hour traffic. Ugh! Let me just get out of here! We painstakingly squeezed through the constipation of Melbourne’s intestinal network. Let me through!
Finally, after 2 hours of brewing impatience, we expelled from the guts of grid-lock and entered the freeway. I whooped with joy and played beepity-beep with the car horn. The FREEWAY! The WAY to be FREE! I felt a hand squeeze my thigh. Knight and I grinned at each other as we flew down the wide, stretch of road. At last. The adventure begins.
