Avalon

The next morning, standing at his hospital-grade-white kitchen bench, I told Finn it wasn’t working. That I needed to step away.

He barely heard me, already on a tangent about how long Michelle had been seeing her new boyfriend, and if she had been cheating while she was with him.

I repeated myself.

He heard it this time.

We were kind to each other in the way people are, when they both know life’s already hard enough.

No yelling, no slammed doors.

Just two adults standing in a kitchen that still smelled like coffee, surrounded by the debris of broken family life.

He nodded, quiet for a long time, eyes fixed on his hands gripping the counter, then said,

“We’ll still be friends, yeah?”
he asked.

I said yes. I meant it.

We hugged once as I was walking out.

Not long.

Now I know it was the last time, not at all long enough.


I felt the weight of him pressed against my side— solid, safe — and knew I’d miss it.


But I was chasing something that I thought I needed more.

NEIGHBOURS

I kept my promise to Finn, and we stayed friends.

Whenever he was away, or working another long stretch of night shifts, he’d ask me to check on his chickens — collect the eggs, give Ned some company, make sure the place still felt tended to.

The air in his yard always smelled of warm soil and gum trees. Even in such early spring, that deep green scent of things growing thanks to Finn’s steady care.

Nathaniel loved it there. He’d climb into the coop like a tiny farmer, catching a hen or two for a cuddle while I scattered the kitchen scraps I’d brought from home. He’d beam with pride carrying the eggs back to me, fragile and perfect in his little hands. The pancakes we made the next morning were fluffier than anything you can do with store bought eggs, and I loved the simple, grounding goodness of it all.

It was a small thing — having a neighbour. But when you’re raising kids alone, holding a whole world together by yourself, that kind of steady presence is the difference between panic and peace.

When Nathaniel’s dirt bike got a flat, Finn came round with a spare tube and showed him how to change it, patient and unhurried. I stood back, watching them both, that easy rhythm between man and boy working in the shed.

Of course it wasn’t all I’d hoped for, but this was something, and I felt grateful for it. Not because someone was taking care of me — but because I wasn’t entirely alone.

The days found a rhythm and there was peace in it — or maybe just the absence of constant confusion and heartbreak, which felt close enough. Mornings were gentle. I’d stand at the kitchen window while the kettle boiled, watching the first light through the trees, Jackson barking, the kids running out to join him chasing birds through the yard.

AN ANGEL ON THE BEACH

The next time I heard from Finn, late afternoon, a message came through.

Short.

Uneven.

The kind of honesty that slips out when someone is breaking open.

The house feels too big. Don’t want to be alone.

I grabbed my bag without thinking.

Pick me up. I’ll sit with you.

Finn's headlights cut a pale path through the dark, the radio low.

We talked softly, the way you do when the night feels fragile.

Ned panted in the back seat, tail thumping gently, steady as a heartbeat.

Finn talked about his marriage again. A little bitter, a little angry, but mostly, just weary. The long erosion of someone who had been diminished slowly, over years.

I tried to lift us toward lighter things.

The kids.

His fishing trip.

The ridiculous things our dogs had done that week.

At one point he said, almost to himself,

“I didn’t even want to call him Ned, but my ex insisted.

I would’ve called him Ace.”

I smiled.

That sounded more like him. Big and strong. Solid.

When we reached the sand, Ned leapt from the car and bounded across the beach, enthusiastic and joyful. It cracked something open in both of us, we laughed.

Finn set up a little way down the shoreline, rod in hand, line cast into the surf.

The sky was painted in pink, purple and gold, one of those sunsets that makes me want to reach for my watercolours. Like a gift from God, the ultimate artist.

I walked barefoot along the shore. A seagull glided low across the water, its clean arc loosening something in my chest, then my shoulders, then my jaw.

We didn’t talk much.
He wasn’t crying.
He wasn’t breaking.
He was just… quiet.

I settled beside Ned and watched the tide breathe itself in and out.

Salt and the smoke from Finn's cigarette in the air.

“Can you shine the light on my lure?”

“Like this?”

“Yeah. That’s good.”

Everything was still.

The ocean moved like breath.

The world felt held.

And I thought that maybe I’d done something small but good. That sitting beside someone in silence could keep the dark away.

He smiled once, faint and faraway.


I remember thinking he looked calm.


That he was OK.

When he dropped me back home, I felt light.


Like I’d been someone’s guardian angel for the night.


We didn’t hug.

Didn’t touch.

Didn’t need to.

Just two people sitting with the sea.

One trying to live through the night,
and the other believing she’d helped him do it.

LOGISTICS

With Dion, at night the spa hissed around us, his forever steaming off my skin.

By morning it was something else entirely.

The weight of real life was too much for him. Laughter he could do. Art, effortlessly. But the small, relentless logistics of living — bills, groceries, the school run, the broken fence, the overdue notice on the bench — that's where he came undone. He'd drift somewhere between avoidance and self-pity while I carried it, the way I always had, the way I was starting to suspect I always would.

One night I sent the text that cracked the veneer.

"I need someone who can meet me halfway."

His reply came hours later.

I wasn't enough.

I put the phone down and stood in the kitchen for a long time, listening to the house.

Just friends, then. Again.

I knew what that meant.

I just wasn't ready to stop hoping it didn't.