Here, Now

A Mirror, Mirror & The Missing Fanfiction

Part Ⅹ

~2021~

Sydney, Australia

"She said fuck," Gavin mumbled to himself, pacing his hotel room with his hands behind his back. Maybe he wasn't an expert on relationships, especially not with a more mature and experienced partner, but it was hardly going out on a limb to guess a woman saying the f-word and then asking why you did it wasn't a great follow up to kissing her.

Basically, it could have gone better.

It could have gone a lot better.

They hadn't spoken the whole ride here. Gavin wanted to talk, of course, but Jo'd looked so miserable every time he opened his mouth, he found himself shutting it again without saying anything.

She'd never answered his question, either – about why she was upset.

That was what he really didn't understand.

If there was no other man in her life, no boyfriend she had to feel guilty over, then what was the big deal? He'd thought she liked him, possibly even loved him, back. The way she'd stared at him when he brought those orange flowers to the gallery for her, along with countless other soft looks sprinkled throughout their time together, had seemed tender, more than friendly.

More than that, she'd spent a lot of time with him. She never once tried to blow him off, even when she looked tired after work or clearly hadn't slept well the night before. They were always laughing together, and she seemed happy in his company...

Gavin just didn't get where he'd misinterpreted her liking for him.

She couldn't, he thought, stomach plummeting and bile rising to the back of his throat, still think of him as the little boy who'd been her mother's student.

She couldn't!

Could she?

She'd seemed to see how much he'd grown up since then. Did she simply not care for him – regardless of what age he was?

What JB had shown him came back into his head, and he had to dismiss the idea of her total indifference.

In 1995 and in 1919, she'd been interested in him.

Unless...

Could she have lost that interest? While he was struggling to find her again, more in love than ever, was she getting over him?

It wasn't a thought that made him feel good. But it also wasn't one he could do at a whole lot about if it were true.

The phone beside his bed rang – a buzzing sort of ring – and Gavin stopped pacing and frowned at it, confused for a second, trying to work out who knew he was here. His parents and his sisters and Antonio, sure, but they'd call his cellphone, not the hotel room itself. And it was like seven p.m. back in Ohio – they should be having dinner.

He picked up the handset and brought it to his ear. "Hello?"

"Mr. Danes, this is the front desk."

"Oh, okay – did I leave something in the lobby?"

"No, Mr. Danes." The line went momentarily crackly. "You have a visitor, and it's hotel policy to check before giving out personal information. Can you confirm you give us permission to tell a" – throat clearing – "Miss Tiegan your room number and absolve this hotel and its members of any liability? Please bear in mind this conversation may be being recorded for the legal safety of our staff."

Gavin's heart sped up. Jo. Jo was in the lobby and wanted to come up and see him. She came back. He'd seen her drive off after letting him out of the car in front of the hotel nearly a half-hour earlier, barely looking at him.

But she'd come back.

"Yeah, yeah," he blurted, fumbling and almost dropping the phone. "I mean, yes, of course." He put the handset back down, then picked it up again, adding, "You, uh, have my permission." Only to realize, duh, he'd hung up. He was literally talking to a dial tone. "Oops." He pushed a blinking button he hoped went straight to the line at the front desk, then breathlessly repeated himself to however picked up without even waiting for them to talk first.

"Thank you, Mr. Danes. We'll send her up. Have a good day."

It couldn't have been more than a few minutes, probably less than four, but waiting for Jo's knock felt like an eternity to Gavin.

When the knock finally did come, he was already behind the door – bolt undone – and swung it open before she could even take her knuckles off again.

She'd changed from her jogging clothes into regular pants and an argyle sweatshirt, but she still looked disheveled and sweaty. One of her curls was matted flat against her cheekbone while the rest of her hair appeared to be haphazardly slicked back.

"Hi," he said, a little pathetically.

"Why?" she gasped out.

Gavin's brow furrowed, momentarily unsure what she meant. Was she asking why he was saying hi to her? Was he supposed to be saying something else?

"You... You said," she stammered. "I mean... Back at the park. You said you loved me." She swallowed hard. "Why?"

Somehow it was obvious she wasn't asking why he'd said it – she was asking the same question he'd asked her about Michael back in Wellington.

When she'd told a heartbroken, twelve-year-old Gavin she loved her fiancé, he'd asked her why.

Why do you love him?

Jo hadn't really had an answer, so she'd gotten defensive. It turned out Gavin was right, though – the reason you loved someone mattered, it wasn't enough just that you did. She'd come back here because no matter what did or didn't happen between them, she felt she needed to know how grownup Gavin would answer that question regarding her.

Why do you love me?

Gavin surprised himself with his answer, the way it came out almost without thought. "Because I've been waiting for you practically my whole life, Jo."

It wasn't a terrible answer, but... "That's why?" She blinked rapidly, shaking her head. "You wouldn't want me if you didn't have to wait?"

And, if they really wanted to get technical, she was the one who'd waited her whole life, not Gavin. He was only twenty, not even old enough to buy grog back in the United States, not quite yet, with his real birthday still more than a month away, his supposed autumn birthday even further off, and for most of their time apart he hadn't even remembered she existed.

He'd had the luxury of amnesia, a gift never afforded to her.

"That's not what I meant," Gavin said. True, it could be tough to separate cause from effect... Did he wait for her because he wanted her, or did he want her because he waited for her? He didn't blame her for not being crazy about his answer, even though it was dead-honest. But he wouldn't have waited for just any pretty girl he had a crush on in childhood. It was more than a crush. There was something between them: a connection. He knew it was – at least partly – that connection he loved her for. "You felt it, too, didn't you?" There was a hint of pleading coming into his voice. "When I walked into your parents' house in Wellington and you came down the stairs and saw me...? You felt it, right?"

Jo had felt guilt, for being grown up and seeing him return after all that time as a child, and shock, and maybe a little – okay, a lot – of fear... Fear was inevitable – she'd seen a ghost. But she wasn't certain she'd felt whatever it was Gavin was talking about.

She wasn't sure it was something she could admit to, if she had.

There was more than just guilt, shock, and fear, though – of course there was. None of those feelings would have led her to strive to be his friend the way she had – nor to help him out with her parents. Primarily, what she remembered, was feelings of being enormous, oversized and out of place.

"What are you talking about?" Her voice lowered to a whisper and was laced with an almost parental sympathy he hated. "Gavin, you were twelve. You had a crush on me, that's all."

Faced with her gentle but firm denial, Gavin thought maybe Jo hadn't felt what he had that day after all. Or she suppressed it, if she did. Rightly. He'd been a child and she was engaged to somebody else. What else could a decent woman do, in her position, besides suppress it? Even now, it wasn't fair, really, to ask her to admit to any feelings from then.

But in the lost timeline JB showed him...

"What about before then?"

Jo's eyes widened. "Whaddya mean, before? That day was the first time you met me, wasn't it?" It wasn't a question so much as a challenge.

"Was it?" He raised his eyebrows.

She glanced at his hand – at his ring. "You remember, don't you? 1919? The mirror?" She blew out her cheeks and put a hand to her forehead. "God! Were you ever going to say anything?"

"Were you?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. Maybe I wasn't. It doesn't matter anymore." Didn't it? "But I think we have a lot to talk about."

Gavin held the door open wider for her to pass. "C'mon in."

Jo was amazed to learn Gavin – Alexei Romanov – was only one of thirty-six (thirty-eight, if you counted the kitchen boy and Maria Romanov) missing children from history to grow up in the twenty-first century.

They sat on his bed, cross-legged like school kids (one of Jo's cramped up and she moved to let it dangle off the side after a bit), while Gavin told her everything about the vanishing plane, Gary and Hodge, and JB.

When it became clear the conversation would require several hours, he paused his story and used the phone to have room service bring them up a bottle of wine. Jo made a face at him as he hung up the phone.

"Don't look at me like that – I'm old enough," he laughed.

"You're twenty." She folded her arms across her chest. No one in Liston, Ohio would sell him wine yet, and she knew he knew it.

"Twenty-one," he insisted. Because if he wasn't twenty-one now, it meant he was eleven when he knew Jo in New Zealand, and he couldn't stand for her to think of that, still desperate for her to see him as an adult. "Besides, the drinking age in Australia is eighteen."

Uncrossing her arms, Jo rolled her eyes and reached for one of the wineglasses. Gavin cocked his head at her.

She pursed her lips. "Well, hey, it's not questionable for me – I'm definitely old enough. They don't even ask my age at bars these days." He poured some in her glass. "Thank you, mate." She took a sip. "Ah. Lovely. Now you were telling me about JB... That's his actual name, is it? What's it stand for?"

Gavin smiled. "Janitor boy."

"What? You're having me on."

"No, I promise I'm not. But it's not his real name anyway – just what we call him. Katherine Skidmore coined it. He was posing as a janitor the first time she and Jonah saw him."

"Mmm, that I believe."

"It sounds cooler than Alonzo, at least."

"His real name's Alonzo?" she laughed.

"Depends what you mean by real," Gavin admitted. "He's only Alonzo the way I'm Gavin, technically. He started out as Tate Einstein." Like I was Alexei Romanov. "Albert's son."

"But he wasn't one of the kids on the plane with you – one of the babies adopted out in 2000?"

Gavin shook his head. "Just the time agent."

"Oh boy," muttered Jo, and downed the last few sips of her wine in one gulp, tilting her head back. That made thirty-nine. Almost as many displaced people from history as years she'd lived. All this was making magic mirrors seem positively simplistic by comparison.

Gavin continued his story, up to the part where he was in the time cave, and Jo reached for the bottle to refill her glass.

He held his own, shook it, and coughed pointedly.

She hesitated, then shrugged it off. "Oh, what the hell – stuff it." She might be nineteen years older than him, but she wasn't his mother.

Taking a sip from his refilled wineglass, Gavin sighed and braced himself to tell her about freeing Gary and, more importantly, what Gary had promised him to make him do it.

Jo's eyes glistened with unshed tears. She wasn't angry with him for putting the others in danger, or for planning to erase her past with Michael, as – even now – he'd been a little afraid she might be; she pitied him.

He'd been thirteen and confused and hurt, suffering feelings of rejection she hadn't been in a position to do anything about.

Still, she grimaced and inched slightly away from him when he explained about the Elucidator code and why he'd left all those messages. What he'd done was wrong, much worse than releasing Gary in the first place, but she was hardly in a position to judge. She hadn't been there for him when he'd needed her. If she'd been able to answer the phone that night, maybe he wouldn't have taken his sister and those other kids back to 1918, thinking they were headed to the future. If she'd been honest with herself and ended her engagement sooner, before the disastrous rehearsal dinner, she might not have been busy that night. Then Gavin and the others wouldn't have been thrust back in time to a basement in Russia and a firing squad...

Reaching across, she put her hand over his. "I can't believe you did all that because of me."

"I think going back did more for me in the end than going forward ever could have." If nothing else, it was the reason he had Leonid and Maria in his modern-day life. "It was like..." He trailed off, distracted.

She'd drawn back her hand; it was in her lap now, instead of resting atop his.

"Well, as if..."

"Go on," she encouraged.

"As if time itself wanted me to fix things, to improve. Gary and Hodge thought it was all for them, to fix their mess. I thought I did it for you but really did it for me. Time had its own ideas."

They reached the part of Gavin's story in which JB took him aside after Jonah left the hospital room with Hadley. This was the part that ultimately affected Jo the most. It was incredible to find out people like Virginia Dare and Edward The Fifth were not only alive on the other side of the world but her Nicholas had had most of them as classmates; but it was the lost timeline, the one with the mirror, that was most relevant to what she remembered.

So it was a little distressing when she realised Gavin didn't actually remember it at all. He only knew what JB had shown him. Those memories might have the power to touch him still, to mean something, but they weren't his, not anymore. They were hers. Just hers. Well, okay, hers and Tama's.

He saw it on her face: the disappointment. "I'm still him, Jo," Gavin whispered, closing the gap between them to put an arm around her shoulders. "Everything that made him the person you met in 1919" – everything except his time spent travelling the world with Sir Ivor – "is in here." He inclined his head in her direction – the side of his temple just grazing her hairline as he did so – and put his free hand to his heart. "After I joined my tracer in 1918, it all came back. It's like your tracer ring and mine – they were one and the same, just in two separate places, waiting to be rejoined." Like us.

Jo wasn't so sure. He looked like Nicholas – those were Nick's eyes, Nick's mouth curving into the hint of a hopeful smile... It was even Nick's voice if you ignored the American accent. But he'd had so many experiences as Gavin Danes he'd never had as Nicholas. Her Nicholas hadn't been in that basement room when his family was shot. Her Nicholas hadn't been raised in the twenty-first century by Mr. and Mrs. Danes of Liston, Ohio. Experience changed a person. She would know. After all, could she honestly say the fourteen-year-old Jo Tiegan Gavin had watched his alternate self romance in 1919 via JB's projections was anywhere still inside of her? Maybe she could have, when she was Gavin's age, much as she'd wanted to deny it and keep up the pretence she was over him, for herself if for nobody else. But now? When she'd left twenty behind her what felt like whole lifetimes ago? Those days were eleven years away in the past already when she'd met the twelve-year-old Gavin in Wellington. Let alone her teenage years.

"It's too late," she said mournfully, looking into Gavin's eyes. You came and found me too late. "They rejoined too late." Then, "Even if you are still him, I'm not her – not anymore."

"Yes, you are." He could see Jo not only staring out from the eyes of the beautiful woman he had his arm around, but in her whole face. The character and quirks... They were all Jo Tiegan's. She was exactly as he remembered, everything he'd spent their time apart hoping she was.

She sighed. "Gavin, listen – you don't want me, you only think you do; I'm tired and used up."

Her mum and dad both thought she was still young enough to get married someday, to find someone, since some people did settle down later in life than others, but – honestly – after Michael she'd pretty much known she was done with pursuing men romantically. She had her career and was thinking of maybe adopting a rescue dog at some point – she'd always liked dogs – but a handsome man showing up and sweeping her off her feet wasn't something she'd been mentally preparing for since passing her late thirties.

Especially not this man.

Not the man who'd been Nicholas.

Gavin couldn't understand it. How could such a beautiful woman, a woman who was everything he'd ever wanted, think of herself as 'used up'? There seemed to be a complete disconnect between the person sitting next to him, the person he was touching, and the one she was talking about.

If she had another guy in her life, he'd have had to assume she was trying to let him down easy. Only she'd told him there wasn't a boyfriend. "What makes you say it's too late?"

Jo bit her lip. If he couldn't see it – if his perpetual crush blinded him to the truth – she didn't know how to make him see it. God. Maybe he really did love her. Maybe she really did still love him. She couldn't decide whether that would make it better or worse.

Gently, she shrugged off his arm and stood up, walking slowly towards the window and pulling back the blinds overlooking the hotel parking lot. The sky above it was dark.

"Jo?" He was still on the bed.

"I should probably get home. It's late."

Raindrops started to splatter against the window. Jo'd been about to follow up what she just said with the gesture of reaching for her purse and keys, but the rain made her hesitate. It was dark and possibly going to be stormy.

On top of which, she'd had at least three glasses of wine, maybe more – admittedly, spaced out over several hours – and, while she wasn't drunk, she wasn't sure she was entirely fit to drive back to her unit.

"Ugh – damn."

"Please stay," Gavin said, slowly standing up. "I won't bother you, Jo, if that's what you're worried about. You can have the bed to yourself." He'd find somewhere else in the room to sleep.

Jo's face softened as she turned to look at him again. "I know you wouldn't." Gavin was sweet; she knew he didn't mean any harm. Even that kiss back at Blackwattle Bay hadn't been remotely forceful or predatory, just unexpected. He'd clearly thought she'd like him kissing her. She did like him kissing her. "I wish–" She broke off. She wished it was as easy for her to accept his romantic attention as it was for him to offer it. "I wish I'd stopped after two. Wine goes straight to my head at my age." That wasn't what she'd been about to say, and she thought even he could tell. "I'll probably sleep like the dead. You know, wine in the evening, after such an early start in the day – can't remember the last time I had a kip..."

Gavin didn't say anything.

She gestured at the bathroom with her thumb over her shoulder. "I, um, need the toilet."

"Okay." He paused then scratched back of his neck awkwardly. "If you need to borrow anything to sleep in, some of my stuff might fit you."

"I sincerely hope it doesn't," blurted Jo. She knew she'd put on a couple of pounds after hitting the big 4-0, but if she was the same clothing size as a man, she might as well just jump into Sydney Harbour.

Gavin laughed. "No – I didn't mean... I have big T-shirts and those drawstring pyjama pants that... I mean, they're one size fits all. I think."

"Oh." She sucked in her lips, on the verge of laughing herself. "Thanks, but I think I'm just gonna wash my face and call it a night. I can sleep in my trouser and jumper; they're comfortable enough."

In the bathroom, she splashed water on her face and – roughly patting it dry with one of the hand towels on the rack – glanced in the mirror. The light was on a dim setting and softened her reflection a little. She thought she looked a bit younger. Nothing like she did at fourteen, or even thirty-one, but the gentle transformation was enough to make her wonder if she hadn't been too harsh on herself – she wasn't headed for a care home quite yet. Gavin could conceivably think her pretty – even desirable – and not be off his head.

Used up might have been an exaggeration – if an unwitting one – on her part.

Back in the room, Gavin was taking advantage of her absence to change his shirt, and didn't hear her come out before he'd gotten a fresh one out of the drawer into which he'd unceremoniously dumped roughly half the contents of his suitcase when he first checked in. As Alexei, he'd been neat as a pin. It was expected of him. Growing up in the 2000s, he'd been as messy as any other boy of his generation. Since he'd gotten Alexei's memories back, he seemed always to be stuck somewhere between messy and neat. Half his things were neatly folded in the suitcase, the rest jammed haphazardly into the drawer.

Jo was staring at him, backlit from the bathroom light she hadn't remembered to turn off, and at first Gavin thought it was his physique that impressed her, the fact he was momentarily shirtless, and his cheeks went pink with pleasure. Then he realised her eyes were focused on his stomach. It was the scars – the four bullet-wounds he still had – she was looking at. They weren't so vivid now, just four little puckered white lines that might have been anything. A scar from an appendix removal would have been more impressive.

But after their conversation today, Jo knew them immediately for what they were. Her face scrunched in sympathy. "Are those...?"

Gavin nodded. "Bolshevik gunshot wounds."

Jo approached him and, without really thinking about it, touched two of her fingers to the highest up of the marks on his stomach. She looked like she might cry.

"Do they look that bad?" he teased her. "I thought they weren't even noticeable anymore."

"No, they don't, I–" Her fingers trailed down slowly to another scar, its nearest twin. "I don't get why you kept these. When you were at that hospital in the future, you–"

"I needed something to help me remember."

"But wouldn't it be better to forget?" she asked softly. "Wouldn't it hurt less?"

Gavin sighed. "Losing my past is worse than pain, Jo." His blue eyes watched her fingers trailing towards the vicinity of the third scar as if hypnotized by the action of her touching him. "I don't want to forget anything about my life ever again. I've already lost too much."

Jo considered telling him if she forgot her life tomorrow, she wouldn't mind. A string of bad relationships, a broken engagement. But she would mind, really. She also had a job she loved. And wonderful parents. And a brother who wasn't always the worst – sometimes Royce was the best, not that she'd admit it to his face. And friends, like Mia Handon and Tama Williams, even if she didn't see them as often as she'd like. And then there were her memories – of Louisa Iredale and her brother Titus... And... Nick. Especially Nick. Those were all special people worth holding onto, outweighing any bad or embarrassing relationships in her life, any lack of fulfilment. If she'd been through what Gavin had – if some creep from the future had decided she was significant enough to kidnap and de-age, wiping her memory clean – and was given the choice between a physical reminder of her stolen past and just acting like it never happened, to blot out the bad parts, she might have chosen the same as him.

Her hand had come – mostly unconsciously, while she was lost in thought – to be flat and nearer his chest than his belly now. She swallowed, thought, now she was thinking of her hand again, of jerking away, didn't, and let her eyes flicker up to meet his instead.

"We both have."

His face bent forward and inched nearer hers, but it was Jo who kissed him this time. And it was Jo who rose onto her toes and who hooked an arm behind his neck, elbow bent, drawing him close and keeping him there. Gavin's lips were the first to part, though her tongue proved quicker than his.

The sweet electricity between them as teenagers was still there. Stronger, even.

Jo's breath quickened.

As he moved from kissing her on the mouth to her jawline and then her neck, Gavin's hand slipped under her jumper and the shirt beneath, sliding upwards, his unsure fingers pausing when they reached the underwire of her bra. Tentatively, with a light wriggle, he poked his index and middle fingers under it and stroked the skin there as if he were touching the feathers of a baby bird.

Jo forced a giggle – she could be ticklish under some circumstances – into a sigh. "Gavin?" she murmured, somehow knowing he was blushing without seeing his face.

"Hmm?"

"Have you ever actually been with a woman before?" She had an idea he was somewhat innocent still.

Her guess wasn't far off. He'd gone a little further than just kissing with Katherine Skidmore's cheerleader friend that one time under the bleachers, but not much.

"I'm sorry."

"What?"

"I promised not to bother you."

"Oh, that." Jo kissed him again, worried she would have to suppress another laugh if she didn't and risk letting him imagine she was making fun of him. "It's not a bother." She had initiated this after all, touching him. "It unhooks in the front, by the way."

"What?"

"Sorry, I just... I'm not... It's just... I can tell you're trying to work that out." Jo put her own hand on his under the jumper and guided the two fingers still feeling the impression on her skin left by the underwire in the right direction. "There you go."

He moaned.

Jo let her hand drop back down and reached to unfasten the button on his denim trousers.

"Jo?"

"Yeah?"

"Should we be on the bed?" She already knew he was inexperienced, so it couldn't hurt to ask.

"We can finish there," she told him, lifting her arms up for him pull her jumper off over her head. "It's okay to start like this."

Jo woke in the middle of the night, unsure where she was. She was in bed, absolutely naked, with a man's bare arms around her waist holding her against him. Far from uncomfortable, she still strained temporarily against logic telling her this didn't seem a likely scenario. Twisting her neck, she angled for a better look at her bedfellow and squinted, taking in the shape of Gavin Danes sound asleep.

"Oh," she mumbled to herself, studying him in the dark for moment. "Oh."

It came back, of course, in a rush, as though she'd just done a somersault and was recovering from all that blood rushing to her head like mad.

Herself and Gavin, kissing and touching, making their way – gradually – to the bed. His bare legs after she helped him off with his trousers. The little finger on his right hand hooking her undies and pulling them down. A tangle of warmth and sweat and clutching and clinging.

And afterwards... His head resting on her bare breasts... Her stroking his purple hair with her splayed fingers... His contented, even breathing like he was asleep although he hadn't been yet...

If Gavin Danes had been a cat, he would have purred.

It made sense to her, now – him sleeping so soundly. She'd probably worn him out, poor guy. Not that he hadn't very obviously enjoyed himself...

So that had all been real, then?

She hadn't dreamed it?

Sinking down again and snuggling back into his arms, Jo blew out her cheeks. Oh boy. Why had she let herself get in so deep?

This one was going to hurt.

Because she wasn't foolish enough to let herself believe she could keep Gavin – believe they'd stay together.

Was she?

No, he'd have go back to Ohio, sooner or later. His real life was there, not with her. Nicholas had had no one. Gavin had parents and sisters and friends. She shouldn't have slept with him. She should have stuck with her intention of just being friends.

The sex was good, though.

Really, really good.

For all that he was a novice, Gavin was also, hands down, the most enthusiastic – and gentle (a combination much more difficult to find than you'd think) – lover Jo'd ever had.

If she were a bit – just a little bit – younger maybe...

Maybe she could have thought about starting all over again, taking a chance with him.

Or at least asking him to stay.

But look what happened the last time she offered for him to stay with her.

Jo was too old to cope with the pain of his rejection a second time. She might have forced herself to move on, but – the truth was – she'd barely recovered twenty-six years on.

Twenty-six years from now, she'd be coming up on seventy.

She gave a shudder at the thought and felt Gavin tighten his grasp protectively in his sleep. That brought a smile to Jo's face in spite of everything – it was rather endearing.

"Hey," she whispered, without knowing if he could hear her. "It's okay." She kissed the inside of his arm. "I'm alright."

There followed, despite her reservations, a handful of the happiest days Jo had ever known.

Gavin, too.

After waking in Gavin's hotel room the morning after the first time they were intimate, Jo stumbled around and retrieved her scattered clothes – while Gavin, still undressed himself, slouched in the bathroom doorway and watched – and arrived rather dishevelled at the museum about an hour later. She went through the day in a daze with a dreamy expression more than a few people in this workplace commented on without getting any acknowledgement, let alone explanation, until shortly after lunch when she put in notice for the several days annual leave she'd saved up.

It seemed odd to everybody involved Jo Tiegan would want a chunk of time off so soon after an opening, much less without any apparent plans to go anywhere on holiday. Who'd want to stay home for several days – as she apparently intended – doing nothing, when they'd just got off lockdown?

But she got what she asked for, of course. Jo wasn't technically an employee, being one of their top artists. Her notice for annual leave was really just a formality.

She wasn't going home. Not to her unit to sit around watching television or scrolling on her phone. Or to the studio she let part-time to work on new sketches and statues. She just let everyone think that, because the fact she intended to spend the rest of her time uninterrupted with her lover at his hotel, for as long as she could until he had to go back to Ohio, was none of their business.

She'd decided she wasn't going to look at a calendar even once prior to the day of Gavin's flight home. She would pretend this situation of theirs was outside of time and just stay with him and imagine it would just go on indefinitely.

At work, it would be impossible not to know what day it was. At the hotel, so long as she didn't ask anyone at the front desk or look it up on her phone, she wouldn't have to know. Wouldn't have the countdown to Gavin Dane's departure in the back of her mind, ticking red, like a time bomb about to go off and leave her devastated.

Before making her way back to the hotel that evening, she made two stops. One at her unit, to stuff clean clothes and undies and toiletries into a duffle, and another to a chemist shop.

There, she bought a box of condoms. Of course she hadn't had any at her unit. It'd been too long since she'd had a boyfriend, or any serious prospects, for her to bother.

It wasn't that she necessarily thought she and Gavin were going to have sex again, not as a completely settled thing, but – as she was planning to spend a lot of time with him – there was, as there hadn't been before, precedent, the very real chance they might. They hadn't used protection last night and although she believed the chances of her getting pregnant were slim to none, even if there was further sexual contact between them and they didn't use anything, Jo still guessed it was better to be safe than sorry. After all, her mum had believed she was incapable of getting pregnant when she conceived Royce. Things happened.

Queuing at the chemist, trying to be as discreet as possible with the box under her arm, Jo cringed when she noticed one of the cleaners from the Museum of Contemporary Art a few people down from herself. And to think she'd gone out of her way to pull into the lot of a chemist shop she didn't usually buy things from specifically to avoid seeing anybody she knew! She felt like a teenager being caught buying cigarettes by a schoolteacher. Maybe it was dumb, but – fumbling with the box of condoms – she reached over a nearby spinning rack and took down a dark pair of sunnies with a gold-coloured frame. Hastily, she shoved them onto her face.

Pretty pathetic.

Not much of a disguise...

Voice low, she told the woman ringing up her items she wanted to wear them out of the store, still aware of the cleaner mere feet away.

The woman was a bit deaf, unfortunately, or else she really wanted to mess with her, and so she had to repeat herself several times only to be told she'd need to take the sunnies off for them to be scanned.

"What?" Jo protested, crestfallen. "Haven't you got that little thingy..." She gestured with her free hand. "You know, it's handheld...? You pick it up and squeeze it, kinda like a gas-pump, and it rings uh–"

"No, we haven't," the woman deadpanned.

Shoulders dropping, mouth a grim line, Jo slid the sunnies off her face. "Never mind, then. I don't want them."

"Righto. So, you want just the condoms?"

Did Jo imagine it or was the woman's voice suddenly several decibels louder? And was there judgement in her voice? How'd she know Jo wasn't married or something? Well, she didn't have a wedding ring – there was that... Either way, she really felt like a red-handed teenager under scrutiny now.

"Oh my God. D'you have to say it like that?"

"Like WHAT? Say WHAT? CONDOMS?"

Christ – the woman might as well have bleated PRICE CHECK ON CONDOMS! into the intercom. Jo decided she was never, never coming back here again. Not even if she got pneumonia and needed cough medicine – she'd suffocate and die first.

Keeping her head down, she fished out her wallet. "Pfft. Never mind." From the corner of her eye, she noticed the cleaner wasn't looking in her direction – yet. She handed the woman several crumpled dollars and all but lunged over the counter to snap up her purchase so she could run out. "Keep the change."

Behind her the tinny voice of the cleaner: "Josephine Tiegan, is that you?"

"Damn," muttered Jo, the glass door and parking lot beyond glowing just in sight like the promised land. "So close."

She knew when she got back to work – back to monitoring her section and seeing to it no one tried to sneak any more ghastly emus into what was meant to be her display – practically everybody would be gossiping about how one of their most prominent artists had taken several days off and then been seen purchasing condoms at the chemist... All wondering, no doubt: did she have a new guy in her life? Like it was any of their fucking business.

But luckily that wasn't a problem she had to deal with until after Gavin left Sydney.

And if she was pretending his leaving the country – leaving her – wasn't going to happen, then...

Well, she could pretend plenty of other uncomfortable things in the future weren't on the horizon, either, couldn't she?

For a while, it could just be them, her and Gavin Danes, happy and oblivious to reality.

And, for a while, it was.