The Last Laugh

The Last Laugh

Sophia told herself to remember it. Distill it, cast it in amber to trace tomorrow. She’d want to be back here, in the prologue, the calm before the storm and her clothes still dry - there’d be tears in the morning. So she remembered. The crackle in her car speakers, the tinkle of her keys against her thigh. The sky glowering, fervour thick in the air, electric, just waiting for him to touch her before it sparked. The steering wheel smooth as it rolled through her grip, turning her onto Blackmore Street and into the speckled glow of the fairy lights woven into the pub’s balcony.

This was her favourite part. The beginning. The tryst sprawled ahead of her before she crashed into the ending. Sophia reached for her phone, turned off her location. She’d told the girls she was staying in, saving money. Bella and Fiona were inside the pub. Chloe was having Chinese with her family. 

She’d hoped he’d message. Part of her knew he would. They’d figured it out by now, it was easier this way.

Outside xx she typed. Held her breath, hit send. 

A couple stumbled outside and she slunk into her seat. Killed the headlights. But they were too caught up in each other and the rain misting to notice. Sophia gulped. What must it feel like? To sway like that in the lamplight, gripping his wrists as they awaited a ride? 

She wouldn’t know. 

The distant sky grumbled, clouds alight with pulses of white. The hairs on the back of her neck stood straight, whether static or cold or fear she wasn’t sure, but she stared down the pub’s stable-style doors and telepathically begged Linc to hurry up. She cursed as a jolt of thunder rumbled through the inky night. She wasn’t scared of storms, per se. Maybe just what they left behind. A fresh branch of lightning snickered that it was closing in. She braced for more thunder but startled as her phone vibrated in her lap. 

coming x

She tried biting down a smile but failed. A glow spread from her cheeks and melted into her chest. She knew it was temporary. Maybe that made it sweeter. She told herself to remember it, the way he swaggered down the steps, his casual, upward nod as he spotted her, that damn half-smile blurred by the raindrops trailing the windscreen. More lightning shattered the night and for a moment it aligned with his footsteps. The gleam in his eyes as he slunk into shotgun was all too electric and she knew her heart wasn’t supposed to be beating this fast but there was a turbulence to this, to him, that she couldn’t help surrendering herself to. 

“Hey.” He smiled. Didn’t lean over the console. He never did. 

“Hi.” She couldn’t look him in the eye, not yet. The street lights lit up the car too much and someone might see her tremoring hands. “Good night?”

Sophia pulled the gearstick into drive as Lincoln clicked his seatbelt, the rain hardening as they headed south. 

“Yeah, pretty good. Busy as.” 

She glanced at him. He ran a hand through damp brown hair. 

“You didn’t want to stay?” Her voice pitched higher. She knew the answer but she wanted to hear him say it. 

He laughed, their eyes locking before hers darted back to the glistening road. “Better things to do.”

She bit her lip then glanced at her phone aglow in her lap. 

Chloe. 

Going pub after all! Can pick you up omw if you wanna join xx

A lightning bolt demanded her attention to the windscreen and she swerved, the white lines back to where they should be. 

“You good?” Linc laughed. 

“Will the boys be out all night?” Sophia’s voice shook. She knew he’d get it. 

He reached over, patted her thigh. “Don’t stress. We got plenty of time.” 

If only. 

So she told herself to remember. Warm, sweaty. Tentative. His handprint tattooed, invisible ink, on her leg. She’d peel back the bandage and pat it bleary-eyed in the morning. But right now she gulped and steadied her eyes ahead. Peeled off onto McLaren Road, the bush thickening as the streetlights thinned. She knew the way now.

They hummed down the driveway to Linc’s sharehouse. His truck twinkled on the gravel and he swore at the rain as they ran shivering for the porch. He’d just washed the bloody thing. Sophia’s laugh was a melody with the jangle of his keys as he fumbled for the lock with one hand, and pressed his other into the small of her back. Now they were safe. Now it was real.

Floorboards creaked as they walked and she flinched at the overhead light. But it was okay. No one could see them here. 

She flicked a reply to Chloe.

All good thanks babe 💗 Having a quiet one with mum xx

Her stomach blackened with guilt. Then she switched her phone to do not disturb. 

Beer bottles littered the counter. Brown liquid leaked from a can across the carpet. The sink overflowed with dishes and potato chips crunched under her shoe as she followed Linc to the fridge. She cringed a little but shook it away as he met her eyes. 

“Aha, sorry. Me and the boys got carried away before we left.” He scratched the back of his neck. Then he fixed her a water.

“It’s okay.” She smiled. Their fingers brushed as she took the glass, then a step closer. Thunder growled outside and she reckoned it was right over them now. Lights flickered. His hands cupped her shoulders and he gazed down at her. She almost dropped the glass. A look she couldn’t quite place in those king tide eyes. Grey, churning, sucking her back into the swell. She quivered as he leaned in, eyes dropping to her lips, and right then she decided she was okay with drowning. Sophia slipped more and more each time she was here, so she held tighter and tighter, gripping the back of his neck as he closed the space between them. She was sure then, as a thrash of lightning totally blew the lights. He was the storm. 

She shivered as he broke from her, startled.

“No one will see us now,” he chuckled, rubbing her head. 

She pushed him away in jest. “This was your plan all along, hey?”

“Yeah, yeah. You got me.”

The tin roof roared with rain and Lincoln swiped on his phone torch. Then he took her hand and he kissed her again, laughing into her lips as he led her down the hall. 

***

Sophia’s cheek rose and fell with his chest as she laid atop him, his skin sweet with sweat. His heartbeat warmed her face, a steady tempo, unlike hers rattling against his belly. He tousled her waves and she cast that in amber, too. She should’ve told him to stop - bleach blonde strands in his bed were a dead giveaway - but instead she told herself to remember the softness of his hands, his husky chuckle as his fingers caught in a knot and she rolled her eyes that it was all his fault. Was this what it felt like in the eye of a cyclone? That blissful reprieve from the turmoil, this cocoon of just the two of them? 

No one else knew what it felt like. Not even Chloe. How could he possibly have felt this with Chloe? It galvanised it, somehow, the way it all culminated in knowing glances and grazed hands and relieved sighs when they finally kissed - how could it ever feel like this with anyone else?

She knew the guilt would jolt her awake in the morning. Chloe had loved him first, after all. But surely it counted for something that Sophia loved him more. 

She knew the cold would settle in tomorrow. The debris would hollow her chest, filling the silence until his next lonely midnight. But right now they were laughing, and he laced their fingers as she rolled off him and into his navy sheets. Maybe she could have the last laugh, after all. Even if Chloe didn’t hear it. Maybe they could stay like this forever and Sophia wouldn’t have to tell herself to remember. 

The rain drummed the roof as they laid there, breathing slowed now. Moonlight beamed onto illicit hands still locked, like some kind of futile prayer for their clandestine love affair. A kookaburra laughed by the window, louder than the wind through the gums and the thunder still rolling. Sophia’s spine shivered. He traced her arm with his free hand.

“Where do you think birds go in a storm?” she whispered. The question slipped before she could stop herself. She was always doing this. Last time she rambled about health insurance. 

He adjusted his neck, looking down at her as she lay in the crook of his arm and chest.

“I’ve never thought about it.”

“But where would you go? Everywhere is outside.”

He drew a breath as if pondering it. “I’d find you. You’d take me in.” He squeezed her hand and thank god they were both staring at the ceiling or he’d have seen her scrunch her nose and smile. She remembered it. 

“Oh would I?” she quipped.

“You couldn’t help yourself.” The kookaburra laughed again and lightning flashed through the window. She curled into his body and he kissed the top of her head. She remembered it. 

“Do you know why kookaburras laugh?” he murmured into her hair. She shook her head against his chest. “I googled it last week.”

“Ha. Go on then, Attenborough.”

“They’re signalling their territory.”

She craned her neck to look at him. “Really?”

“Yep. They’re like, hey mate, this here’s mine.”

“Like you laughing in your Hilux.”

“Shut up.” 

Thunder cracked again and, as if sensing her tense, he tightened his hold on her. 

“Do you think the power will be out all night?” she whispered.

“Probably.” Linc yawned. “You know what this town’s like.” There was a lull to his voice and her stomach dropped. Sleep was closing in, cornering them into the inevitable fast forward to morning, and the sickening clench in her lungs when she awoke to his bare back. He traced her arm slower now. She scrambled, clawed at anything to freeze him in the present before he melted merely into memory. She wanted to kiss him, but she couldn’t. They only kissed before. Not after. 

But wasn’t this all wrong anyways? She wasn’t supposed to be here at all, so what did it matter? There were no rules. She’d made sure of that. Chloe’s tearstained face flashed in her mind but she shook it away. She’d be wading through rubble tomorrow regardless, might as well make the bruising worth it. So she did it unthinking, unrueing, looked up, placed her lips sweetly on his. That woke him up. If not another thunderclap rattling the window. It was howling out there now but all she heard was the laugh in his throat as he said what was that for?

She shrugged. 

“You’re cute,” he murmured, pulling her back atop him. 

“You think?”

He nodded, his eyes alight in the moon-sliver through the blinds. His hands warmed her back and she wished he’d trace his name down her spine. She hated herself but she couldn’t help smiling. Laughing, even, at the absurdity of it all. She was here. Not Chloe, bottled in her oblivion at home, mulling over the same old memories of Linc while he etched new ones into Sophia’s skin. She didn’t want to hurt Chloe. That was the whole point, of the hushed conversations across car consoles, of the kisses rain-checked for midnight kitchens. The guilt rising like bile in her throat every dawn she fled from here. But wasn’t Sophia allowed to want something for herself? Even if this was all it was? 

“You okay?” Linc said. He tucked a wave behind her ear and she leaned into his palm, gripped his wrist with two hands. 

“Yeah,” she half-smiled. Told herself to remember his brows furrowed in the moonlight. She leaned down. Kissed him again. He kissed her back and she was right, there were no rules here. Eyes closed, he pulled her closer and the kookaburra laughed and the rain poured and they smiled into each other’s lips until lightning flared and thunder splintered the room. The house shook. Sophia yelped in fright and broke from him and their breathing fell out of sync. He reached out, touched her cheek. But the moment’d fractured. She imagined a bruise spilling across her back beneath his hands, branching out at jarred angles and spidering up to meet another blotched on her neck. 

“Soph?” Linc gazed up at her and she placed it then. That look. Hunger. “You good?”

She nodded fast. Her gut swirled, off kilter, but it wasn’t guilt this time. He leaned up to kiss her again but she shook her head. 

“Sorry I-” Her hands trembled. “I don’t know, I just-”

“It’s okay, we don’t have to.”

“No, I want to.” Her voice cracked. She inhaled but then there was a hum in the hall and the heater kicked in. Light peeked under his bedroom door. 

“It’s back,” he smiled. Sophia sat on his tummy, blinking. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I just wish this was-” she hiccupped a moment, rolled off him and onto her back. “I wish it was easier.”

He sat up on his elbows. He wasn’t going to sleep, for sure now. She’d said too much. She’d been so careful all these months. If he didn’t know she loved him, he couldn’t not love her back. But the deluge outside had stirred something in her, tumultuous, muddied the pit in her chest that told her these sacred nights were enough. That she was enough, for this. For him, in this capacity at least.

“What do you mean?” He grabbed her hands, squeezed them. She remembered it.

“It’s just hard.” 

“What? This?” He kissed her knuckles as if to prove otherwise. She remembered it. 

She shouldn’t have said anything. Should’ve left it as it was. But she’d let the rain in now and he laid there drowning in it, wide eyed. Lightning ruptured the dark again and thunder pierced her chest, cracking her open.

“It’s so hard. How is it so hard, when it’s not even supposed to be real?”

He rubbed the back of her hand. She remembered it. 

“You know we can’t.”

“I know, I know, I just-it’s not fair.” 

“On you, or Chloe?” A look she hadn’t seen before glazed his eyes, just for a moment. Sophia’s spine stiffened. She gulped. She knew. 

“You still have feelings for her.” Her voice cracked.

Linc sighed. “It’s not that simple, Soph.”

“You do, don’t you?” 

He reached for her hand again but she dropped it. “I messed up with her, okay? But it doesn’t mean I don’t like hanging out with you.”

“As what? A consolation prize?” 

“No, come on, Soph. You know me better than that.” 

She shook her head. Held her fists to her chest as if to shield it. 

“We both knew where this was going,” he whispered. He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair.

“I know, I know,” she was whimpering now, blinking hard, defeated. Did she even have the right to cry? “But I-”

Drunken laughter cut her off. Stammered down the hall, louder as the front door slammed open and shut. Soph and Linc bolted upright. Pulled the sheets to their chests, turned to each other, mouths agape and eyes wide.

“You said we were safe!” she hissed.

“I thought we were!”

Sophia leapt from the bed, ducked for her clothes and shimmied into her jeans, yanked on her hoodie. Stuffed her underwear in her pocket. 

“Don’t leave like this,” he sighed again. Even after she’d cascaded like that, the air lovelorn, brooding with uncertainty and all they’d left unsaid, he still reached her hand. It felt real. It always did in the moment. Caught in his crosswinds, goosebumps prickling, hair knotted as she ran headfirst into the stormfront. But as she remembered his fingers locked with hers, one last blissful, forbidden lightning strike, she relinquished to the truth rushing down on her. This was all it ever was, all it’d ever be. Fleeting, roaring for a moment, glimmering in the night like the rain on the window she prised open before it evaporated with the light of day. Sophia paused, one leg out the sill. Turned to face Lincoln shaking his head from the mattress. He didn’t bother standing.

She shrugged, half-smiling, crying now. “We both knew where this was going.”

“Soph-” 

The window snapped shut behind her.

Then Sophia was at one with the trees, the moonlight, the unrelenting downpour. Her shoes filled with water as she ran, lungs screaming, for her car. Dodged the porch light. Made it undetected. Once again, she’d never been here. Head in her palms, she sat at the wheel, his hand on her thigh glowing where she’d inked it just hours earlier. Her whole body rocked, ached with the finality of it all as the sobs heaved, flooded out of her. Grief swelled in her chest and stuck her hair to her cheeks and she raged with the storm, white hot across the deep purple sky, and, finally, as though it was always meant to amount to this, this nothing, she knew. That boy inside, now sound asleep, or dreaming of Chloe, or laughing with his mates amongst the litter in the lounge, wasn’t enough to be a storm. He didn’t feel like this. 

It was her. Always had been. 

She was temporary, tempestuous. Fractured and pleading and demanding to be heard before she had to slink back into the horizon. But louder than the rain yet to ease, and the gale yet to splutter into a breeze, was the kookaburra, enduring. Still laughing.