Signs of Love Read online

  “No way!” Steph’s voice left no room for argument. “I’m in my happy place.” She nestled further into the deck chair and leaned her head up into the sun.

  Jess had already laid her towel on the dock to ensure no one would push her in. She stretched out her long tanned legs in the sun, and Ailsa tried not to look down at her own legs which were a pale white.

  Stepping back towards Taliah who was also watching the spectacle from a chair in the shade, Ailsa raked her fingers through her light brown hair, pulling it up off her back. Ailsa was not one to bother lying around in the sun. Her skin never tanned. If she lay in the sun she knew the pale skin on her legs would simply burn pink and ache. She could never stand the boredom of it anyway.

  “Not tempted?” Ailsa asked, and Taliah laughed and shook her head. “My family are from Trinidad. I only swim in the Caribbean.”

  Taliah recrossed her dark legs and eyed Ailsa. “You’ve got that look though.”

  “What look?”

  “Like you’re thinking about it…”

  “I love the water,” Ailsa admitted. “It can make you feel…”

  “Like you’re freezing to death?”

  “Alive.”

  Taliah shook her head. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  Behind them Ailsa could hear the sound of a car engine. “That’s Seb,” Steph called out. Ailsa watched as Steph lifted her hand overhead to wave and tried to turn around, but James immediately increased his efforts to pull her towards the edge of the dock and Steph locked herself back down in the deck chair.

  “Come on. Come on…” a few of the guys had joined James in his teasing, two of them trying to drag Steph to her feet. Screams of laughter pierced the air.

  Ailsa looked past them to the water. It was dark blue beyond the dock, almost black. She imagined the silken cold of it on her skin like a promise. With the heat of the sun on her shoulders and arms, Ailsa ran on tiptoe past the others and without a thought, launched herself off the end of the dock and into the air.

  The icy water hit her like a punch, and she shouted out as her head broke the surface. But it was a shout of laughter. And life. It was the edge she was always looking for and rarely found. The thing that reminded her she really was still alive.

  She saw the others standing on the dock cheering, and she felt a part of things again. “Come on!” She called. “It’s not that bad.” And so a few of the guys susceptible to such goading jumped in after her.

  Aaron was one of them. Swimming up to her, she could see him trying to keep his teeth from chattering. She knew what his problem was — he was in his skin feeling the cold, whereas she knew how to sink down deep into the heat at her core.

  She had grown up with this kind of cold water. Lochs in Scotland were never warm, and most summers she had climbed the hill with all the other kids to the swimming hole which was pure and clear and always freezing cold.

  “How can you stand it?” Aaron treaded water next to her.

  “I’m used to it.” Her voice sounded breathless. Why did people always need to talk about everything? Wasn’t the pureness enough? Wasn’t the piercing burning cold enough? Wasn’t the dark depths of the lake and the open empty space above them enough?

  Ailsa dropped beneath the water leaving Aaron behind and stroked out towards the center of the lake. She didn’t intend to go very far, just far enough so the others wouldn’t follow. Then, laying on her back, Ailsa spread her arms out like a star, feeling the sun thawing her skin where it surfaced from the water. The sky above was clear blue, and Ailsa imagined she was floating there, between the blue and the black.

  When she felt her own teeth chatter, she knew it was time to go back. It had only been a matter of minutes, but the others had already pulled themselves up the ladder and were huddling in towels on the dock.

  She saw the guy that must be Steph’s friend Seb carrying something towards the third cabin. A few others moved among the trees, collecting stuff from the trucks and unloading it to the third cabin. For a split second she noticed one guy standing a bit apart among the trees. He looked like his arms were full, but he had stopped, and it seemed to Ailsa as if he were looking straight at her despite the distance. But then water dripped into her eyes, and when she blinked he had blended into the moving bodies as several guys joined the efforts to unload the truck.

  Ailsa shook her head, feeling the weight of her long hair shifting in the water. A bit regretfully, she began to swim back, feeling the cold seeping its icy fingers deeper into her chest now. Her hair streamed out behind her like swirling ribbons, and it felt as if the lake were trying to drag her backwards, as if it were calling for her not to leave.

  Pulling herself up the ladder and back into the sunshine, Ailsa had wrapped herself in a towel and walked back up to the cabin. Aaron tried to catch up with her. “That was impressive. It looked like you were actually enjoying that.”

  “I was.” Ailsa smiled. He was a nice guy. Like so many she had met on her travels. A nice guy she would never get to know and who would never know her. “I’m going to change,” she nodded to the screen door ahead. She knew once she was inside her cabin Aaron wouldn’t follow.

  “Yeah okay, see you in a bit.”

  Ailsa nodded and hurried up the dirt path. The breeze covered her pale skin in goosebumps, and the droplets that slid from her wet hair felt like ice as they ran down her back. She’d dry off and warm up in the sun with the others. Try to be a bit friendlier. It wasn’t that she didn’t enjoy their company. Steph and James and all their friends were great. They had the joy of people who had been on holiday long enough to forget about work. And Ailsa knew if she just eased up a little, if she stifled that part of her that felt panicked and trapped with the same people who might ask her questions about herself and her past, who might want to get to know her, she would have a great couple of weeks with them.

  She had expected the cabin to be empty. Everyone was on the dock bathing in the strong warmth of the sunshine, but when Ailsa pushed open the screen door, he was standing at the kitchen counter.

  Zach.

  He had looked the way her oak tree had looked back home. Tall and strong and older than its years. He was certainly older than Steph and her friends. His brown hair was short at the back of his tanned neck and his shoulders cut a horizontal line under his teeshirt.

  “Oh, hi…” She pulled up short, her own momentum pushing her the rest of the way through the door. It banged shut behind her and Ailsa felt herself flinch.

  He had glanced over his shoulder when he heard the screen door open, but when he saw Ailsa, Zach had stopped. He rested his hands on the kitchen counter in front of him and looked at her for a moment as if startled by something he saw. It was the way she often felt herself on a hike through the forest when she suddenly came across a deer. Awed. Curious. All at once.

  “That looked cold.”

  A smile spread across his face, but there was something about the way he looked at her, something in his brown eyes that searched her face.

  “It was.” Ailsa nodded, her skin tingling with the way he was looking at her.

  He didn’t say anything else. He just held her with that look for what seemed like a long moment. Then he turned back to the kitchen counter and picked up the knife he had laid down next to the cutting board. Ailsa noticed the pile of salad he was chopping.

  “Sorry to raid your kitchen,” he said over his shoulder to Ailsa who was still standing in the doorway. “Your cabin has the only knives.”

  “That’s okay…” She felt like an idiot standing in her bare knees, her hair dripping onto the floor. “I’m just gonna…” She gestured to the door that led to the bunk room and without waiting for him to reply, hurried across the bare floorboards, leaving wet footprints as she walked.

  Ailsa shut the door softly behind her. It was her breath she noticed then, laboring in her chest and drumming in her ears and taking away everything that was around her until all she could think about was that r
ushing drumming sound, the way it felt like someone pounding on a locked door inside her.

  Ailsa waited for a long time after she heard the screen door slam shut behind him before she came out of the room. Her legs still felt cold inside her jeans, and the crown of her head grew colder as she stepped back out into the breeze, but her arms and chest were beginning to warm up considerably.

  Ailsa looked down at her hands again. Her fingernails were still edged with blue and her palms were white. The crisscrossing lines on her hands stood out like deep crevasses that made no more sense than they ever did.

  When did I start looking at my hands like this? Ailsa wondered, even though she knew the answer. Her hands had stopped being hands that day four years ago. They had become something more. A map she couldn’t read. A cypher that led so deep inside no one could give her the key.

  Ailsa looked back up towards the trees and lake and sky of Alaska and pushed the thought from her mind.

  Chapter 4

  The growing cold pulled them towards the fire circle. Although light still spread across the sky, they all began gathering to watch Seb coax the fire to life.

  Ailsa took a seat on the ground, leaning back against the log she had helped James and Luke roll over. She could feel her gaze subtlety searching for him. She hadn’t seen Zach again for the rest of the afternoon. Then half-an-hour ago she had seen him emerge from the woods and step through the door of his cabin. Just the sight of him stirred something inside her that she didn’t know what to do with.

  Shifting against the log, Ailsa tried to focus on Seb who knelt beside the fire pit, feeding the rising flames with small branches, blowing deep into the heart of the fire, helping it to spread. There was something Ailsa loved about fires. Something about the magic of this thing that lived and breathed but was not alive in the same way as the other creatures of the world. Something about the way fire grabbed hold of your mind and captured your imagination in its embrace. Something about the way it allowed people to fall silent in its presence and look within themselves at the fires dancing in their own mind.

  “This seat taken?” Aaron stood above her, gesturing to the empty ground next to her. Damn it. Ailsa blinked at her own reaction. Had she been hoping for someone else? What the hell was she thinking?

  She shook her head, and Aaron plopped down next to her and threw one arm casually over the log in her direction. Be nice Ailsa! Smile at least. People are going to think you’re a bloody arsehole! Ailsa smiled carefully. Aaron was a nice guy, and if she could just keep him talking about himself it would be okay. She genuinely loved hearing the stories people told about their lives — about who they were and why they were and what they dreamed of being. If nothing else, it got her out of her own head.

  The problem was conversations made her nervous. Any moment the attention could turn to her. What do you do? Where do you live? Even the simplest questions all led straight back to the past. And then what would she say?

  Ailsa wished she could lie. She wished she was a great storyteller. She could make up any number of tales about what her life was like back home. But she knew she wouldn’t. She would just be quiet and awkward like she always was. Because whenever someone came unknowingly close to asking why she didn’t have a career or a permanent home, her mind froze. No lie ever seemed big enough or strong enough to cover up the truth. So she was left with awkward silence or a vague brush off that people didn’t understand and often held against her.

  Aaron stretched his legs out towards the fire. His jeans had a tear across one knee that was so carefully frayed it had obviously been made for fashion reasons. She shouldn’t care, but for some reason it grated against her with its insincerity. Ailsa could feel Aaron looking at her, and she glanced back and tried again to smile.

  “So, do you like living in Portland?” She asked, guiding the conversation immediately towards him. Aaron took the bait. He was only too happy to tell her all about his life back home in Portland, how he had met James and Talliah at work, how long he had known Steph.

  Ailsa tried to listen as the conversations rolled in around her. She was lucky to have found such a great group of people to finish off her travels this time. They weren’t always this easy or this relaxed. Some people came with a lot of rules. Conversations about things everyone should do, opinions everyone should agree with.

  Leaning towards the fire, Ailsa brought the cold beer bottle to her lips, considering the easy way they all talked about their lives, as if nothing bad had ever happened. It reminded her of the way she used to talk and the way things used to be.

  Then she felt her skin tingle, and she knew he was nearby. When she looked up, she saw Zach step over the log next to Seb on the opposite side of the fire circle. He had changed into a long-sleeve grey shirt which he had pushed up his forearms. Damn, even his forearms were sexy as hell. His light brown hair was still damp from his shower, and Ailsa felt heat pool in her core as she watched the easy way his body moved.

  Zach handed Seb a beer and then sat down himself, leaning both elbows back against the log. Just before he brought his own beer bottle to his mouth, Zach glanced over and caught her eye. Immediately Ailsa felt her face flush. He had caught her watching him. Ailsa shifted to rid herself of her nervous energy and noticed Aaron was still talking to her. What had he been saying? Ailsa smiled politely and then tipped her beer up and took a long cold drink so that she wouldn’t look back to see whether Zach was still watching her.

  Long into the eternal Alaskan evening they all sat, leaning into logs that formed a square around the fire pit, singing and talking and letting the night crickets sing back too. James brought out his guitar and strummed away, playing songs they all knew and singing in his light-hearted open voice. Then the guitar was passed around to a few others who brought out a song or two. Seb led everyone in an enthusiastic round of Jonny Cash’s Ring of Fire, and James had teased him about his age.

  “Getting old’s not so bad,” Seb had grinned back, a fire in his eyes. “Eventually you figure out the difference between your brain and your dick, get a grip on what you actually want to do with your life, get an inkling about the beautiful complexity of women…” he winked at Steph and got rewarded with a few raucous laughs from around the fire.

  Ailsa couldn’t help but smile herself. She liked Seb. There was a solidity to him that she didn’t see in James or Luke or Aaron. They were young and still seemed to be flailing about. Even James’s behaviour with Steph was sometimes awkward and forced. But Ailsa could tell Seb and Zach were different. There was the same steady confidence in both friends. As if they knew who they were and felt comfortable in their own skin. Ailsa looked over at Zach across the flickering light of the fire and wished she felt like that. Grounded. Comfortable. Happy.

  She glanced down again at her hands, running her index finger along the spidery lines that were meant to tell a person’s destiny. Her destiny. If only she could read them.

  When she looked up, Ailsa allowed herself to be pulled back into the buzzing energy of several simultaneous conversations. She had sat around so many fires like this one on her travels. Circles of people she knew for a moment and knew she would never see again after this time had passed. There is a strange relationship you make in such circles. Sometimes the darkness and the fire and the lack of ties makes people more honest. Sometimes it makes them able to speak from the heart. But more often for Ailsa these circles brought feelings of solitude that she could not shake. As the night wore on, the feeling of separateness crept up on her, and although she sat as part of the circle she did not feel part of it at all.

  “Do you play?”

  Aaron had held the guitar out towards her.

  “No,” Ailsa shook her head, although she could feel her fingers dancing beneath her skin.

  “She’s got a violin in the cabin,” Steph commented from the other side of Aaron where she sat nestled next to James.

  Ailsa smiled at the word. Fiddle was the word she used. It was more friendly. More like
a thing you could make friends with.

  “So you play then!” Aaron pressed. He had been trying to start a longer conversation with Ailsa all evening, and as usual, Ailsa had brushed his questions away with vague stuttering replies.

  “Go on, it’s under the bed,” Steph encouraged. “I could get it for you…”

  “I’ll go…” Ailsa stood up. She didn’t want anyone banging her fiddle around. Even if it was in its case. Although the thought of playing in front of everyone made her stomach churn with unwanted nerves, there was also the thrill that always came with the promise of a tune. She hadn’t played in days. Not since they’d arrived in Alaska. And her fingers were itching with music. Plus, if I’m playing I’m not talking and maybe the conversation with Aaron will move on… She headed through the dusky light towards the cabin.

  When she returned a few minutes later and brought the small wooden fiddle out of its case, the firelight caught it, and it was as if she could feel the vibrations of the strings before she touched them. The fire popped as Seb slid on another log, and Ailsa took a deep breath. She knew that they were all watching her. She knew that Zach was watching her. From around the side of the circle, she could feel his eyes holding her, but what he might be thinking she could not guess.

  She took another deep breath. “So, this is a song called Swallowtail Jig. In Scotland, the swallows swoop and dive at speed. So…” She could hear her voice shaking a bit. She was always nervous at the start. Before she started playing. Before the music swept her away.

  The song was quick and her fingers ran and her bow raced and her foot tapped the rhythm. And though she was halfway across the world, for the length of that song she was back home in Scotland in a time before it had all gone wrong, watching the swallows dart back and forth through the evening sky. There was a great round of clapping when she finished, and calls for another. And so without thinking she began to play.