Years From Now

[I love music]

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As I’m going on hol Sat and then won’t have a computer for a little while so won’t be working on SBH till I get a new one, this is just a short fic I had on my mind when I was going to move house. Hope you like it, I spent all evening working on it and have to go to bed now!

Story Title: Years From Now

Type of Story: One shot

Rating: T

Main Characters: Kirsty, Kane, Miles, Ollie

Genre:

Warnings:

Spoilers:

Summary: 15 years in the future. Kirsty and Miles are married.

YEARS FROM NOW

I thought I caught the moon last night. They say you can’t. They say the moon is too far away and the moonbeams would only slip from your grasp.

Oh, but just for a moment...

*****

The perfume of roses stealing in through the open window, the clink of glasses, the murmur of voices and the music playing low. Mozart. Pleasant enough. Not Ollie’s choice nor mine, but it suits the mood and the night and Miles. Jade and Dani, pulling rank as my sisters, abandon their husbands to pull me over into a quiet corner.

“Hors d'oeuvres and vol-au-vents! Never though I’d see the day, Kirsty Sutho!” Jade teases, still using her pet name for me as always although I became first Kirsty Phillips and then Kirsty Copeland several years ago.

“And the music, Kirst. Sooo not Cool Chicks!”

Dani’s eyes dance in amusement and the three of us immediately high five each other as we shout the name except Jade, as always, yells Cool Chooks because it drove Dani mad that she always got the name wrong when we were little. Cool Chicks was the name of our all singing, all dancing, all wonderful girl band that Dani, convinced she’d have a record deal by the time she was eight, created out of the three of us when she was seven and Jade and I were five and we high-fived every time we said the name. We’re all grown up now with grown up children of our own but when we get together we’re still kids and we fall about laughing.

“This kind of thing,” Dani adds seriously. “It’s me, it’s always been me, but it’s never been you.”

“What can I say? I grew up.” I shrug as we watch Miles circulating amongst our guests, the perfect host as always. Miles has been a great husband to me and stepdad to Ollie all these years. We never struggled as Kane and I had done. We knew exactly what each night and each day would bring.

“Remember the time you and Kane threw a dinner party?” Jade giggles.

“We weren’t used to giving dinner parties...” I grin, remembering.

We hadn’t been married very long. We had no home of our own, just a room at Irene Roberts’ place, we had no money, no qualifications and no proper jobs though we were trying hard, we had nothing but ourselves and our love. Finally accepted by my family, he had wanted to impress and prove he’d left his badboy past behind.

But the starter tasted so awful we were terrified we’d poison everyone if we dished it up. The main course got burnt. No, cremated, and every single ingredient danced around the funeral pyre. The chocolate gateau, our saving grace though sunk in the middle, must have seen there was no hope, and in a moment of madness slipped off the kitchen table and dashed itself to its death on the tiled floor. And, after the chocolate gateau disaster and a hastily whispered conversation in the kitchen while Irene was greeting our guests, we emptied the emergency pot of the last of our money and Kane drove off to the Chinese restaurant he worked in at night washing dishes, and where we had become good friends with the owners, to collect a specially cooked banquet that we tried to pass of as our own.

And we might have done, we really might have done - except Lim Foo, the owner’s uncle who sometimes helped out in the family business, and who had arrived in the restaurant’s rush hour when no one had had time to tell him the secret, turned up at the door to return the wallet that my husband had carelessly left behind and Dad, being Dad and being ultra helpful, had rushed to answer the door and stare in amazement and gradually-dawning realization at the van with The Golden Dragon emblazoned on its side and at Lim Foo standing there explaining in Chinese-accented English how a very honest diner had handed it in.

“And anyway, as you know, we had a lot on our minds. I was pregnant at the time,” I nod across at Ollie, who's chatting with some friends,” with that great galah over there!”

As if sensing my gaze, Ollie happens to turn at that moment. His face lights up as he spots Jade and Dani and he hurries over to warmly hug his aunts.

“Never saw you guys arrive! What d’you think you’re doing, sneaking round like that?”

Oliver James Daniel Phillips has never had to sneak around. Kane and I hid nothing from him. He knows about his family, the grandfather and the uncle in jail, but still he’s proud of the Phillips name. It’s his father’s too, he says. Sometimes people who never knew Kane refer to him as Ollie Copeland but Ollie always puts them right. He’s not much older than Kane was when we first began dating and he looks so much like his father. The same sparkling blue eyes, the same blond hair, the same cheeky smile. And with a careless remark thrown away so randomly, he brings rushing back memories of my first romance.

I was fifteen and he was seventeen. We sat on the empty classroom floor, with cushions for our chairs, with the cold, white wall for our backrest, wrapped in the blanket of each other’s arms, watching in cosy silence as the dark skies glared in at us and the wild rain lashed the empty classroom windows.

“I wish I could give you heaps more than this, Kirst,” he says, suddenly wistful, his chin on my shoulder, his arms tight around my waist. “I wish I could take you to posh places. Posh places, posh food, posh people...”

“What would I do with posh places?” I turn to him, laughing. “I hate posh places and posh people!”

“Yeh. You’re right,” he says, grinning at me and giving an exaggerated sigh. “You’d probably just make fun of all the snooty waiters and get us thrown out and, Jeez, I’d be sooo embarrassed...”

“Cheek!” I make to slap him, but he moves away faster than light and my hand hits the floor instead.

“Owww!” I roll on to my stomach, clutching my wrist, wincing in pain.

“Sorry, babe.” He hurries back, his face full of concern, and drops down beside me. And, just when he’s near enough, I tug at his ankle with both uninjured hands so that we both fell, laughing, kissing, into a breathless heap.

“Maybe not posh places then,” He says at last. “Too much hassle. Something easier. How about I get you the moon instead?”

“The moon will do just fine.” I giggle.

“Deal.” He agrees, kissing me again. “I’ll climb the sky and throw it right on down to you.”

We didn’t mean for it to happen but somehow we both fell asleep. I knew there was going to be - and there was - hell to pay later. My parents would discover my bedroom empty, the window open and the curtains blowing in the wind and come storming down to the school where they knew Kane had slept before. But he had three jobs, trying desperately hard to save for our future, and nowhere to live and my family and most of Summer Bay despised him. And when finally his eyes closed I didn’t have the heart to wake him and closed my eyes and rested my head for a little while against his heaving chest...

And when I wake with a start the rain has stopped and a big round moon looks in through the slats of the blinds.

“Kane! Kane, wake up!” I shake him desperately. “It’s night already!”

He stirs groggily, rubbing the honey dew of sleep from his eyes.

“Kane, It’s night!” I hiss. “I can see the moon,” I whisper urgently into his ear.

His mouth curve into his trademark cheeky grin and in a moment that lasts forever and always will his eyes lock into mine and into my heart and soul as he whispers back, “‘Course you can, babe. I threw it down specially for you to catch.”

It’s just as Ollie is chatting with his aunties, as he, Jade and Dani laugh and gently tease each other, comfortable in each other’s company, that he arrives. Behind him through the French windows the moon is brighter and bigger than I ever remember before. Save once.

Small knots of people unravel to look towards this man, so out of place in his white uniform among evening dresses and evening suits, his blond hair tousled, his face browned with the kisses of the sun, small knots of people breaking like waves as silver moonlight threads again dreams they’ve lost.

His ship docked only tonight and he’s hurried straight here, the proud father, to our son’s leaving-for-Uni party - at least, his our son’s leaving-for-Uni party for the adults, later Ollie will be out with his mates and the girls clubbing in the city.

He removes his gold-edged captain’s hat and looks uncertainly around. And then we see each other. We’re walking on plush carpet, we’re walking on the sunshine of our smiles as we walk toward each other.

“Hey, babe. How ya doin’?” Unlike me, he never married again. Instead, he lives his dream, sailing on oceans as blue as his eyes.

“I’m fine.” My clipped voice and rounded vowels sound strange beside his rough accent. “How are you?”

“Yeh. I’m good.”

His mouth curves into his trademark cheeky grin and in a moment that lasts forever and always will his eyes lock into mine and into my heart and soul.

But Miles has appeared by my side, his arm slides protectively around my waist.

“Kane. Good to see you again, mate. Glad you could make it.” He says politely, as they stiffly shake hands. His face is round now with too much good food and good wine, his hair thinning, his stomach no longer washboard flat. We’re going to put ourselves on a new exercise regime starting next week but everything went on hold tonight for Ollie’s party. We follow the trappings of middle class. Posh people, posh food, posh places.

“Dad!” Ollie almost bowls Kane over with the enthusiastic hug. “Hey, Mum, great spread!” He adds, kissing my cheek though he has to stoop to do so. “Good thing Nanny Irene can cook and you can’t!”

“Cheek!” I laugh, and make to slap his arm, but, like his Dad before him, he’s way too fast.

“Dance?” Miles proffers his arm and I take it.

Miles is safe. He always will be. Nothing to ever rock the boat, nothing to ever ruffle the sails, we know exactly what each night and each day will bring.

No storm to paint the sky a thousand hues, no tempest-tossed waves to capture my heart, no thundering sea to steal my soul.

And as I turn for a moment to my first love I notice how sparkling blue his eyes are still.

*****

I thought I caught the moon last night. They say you can’t. They say the moon is too far away and the moonbeams would only slip from your grasp. Oh, but just for a moment...

You see, once, a long time ago, when roses smelled sweeter and magic perfumed the air, when tall walls didn’t wall me and sleepy suburbia didn’t smother me, when dreams couldn’t be bought and sold and the world was mine, once when my heart was wild and my spirit was free, I did.

END

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