Suddenly Expecting. Paula Roe

wishing for it. He’d kissed her before, an I-love-you-you’re-my-best-friend kiss on the cheek or the forehead. And they’d hugged more frequently than she could count. But tellingly, he’d never kissed her on the lips. Until That Night.

      For the next twenty minutes they kept playing cards as the rain and howling wind picked up, the updates morphing into location reports and interviews of people in organized shelters and those who chose to stay in their homes and see the storm through.

      * * *

      Half an hour later, it hit.

      Card game now forgotten, they sat in tense silence, hip to knee on the couch, glued to the radio. The wind screamed past the house, ripping through the trees and banging the shutters in their frames. From inside their refuge, they could hear the rush of air, the snap and crack of trees bending and breaking under the raw elements, debris being thrown around. The house remained firm but the wind and slashing rain was a constant, picking up in waves then petering out until the minutes stretched like hours.

      The radio spat out crucial information as the cyclone careened across the coast, and as time crawled into an hour, then two, and the cyclone finally passed through Cairns and headed south before dying down a few miles out to sea, details began to trickle in. Details of devastating damage, heart-wrenchingly revealed via the mainland survivors.

      “We’re gonna have to start over. We’ve lost everything.”

      “We have family, friends, community. We’ll survive this.”

      “I don’t know whether we can rebuild. We weren’t insured.”

      “Well, you just pick up and move on, don’t you? You just get it done.”

      “Please, help us. Our house...everything. It’s gone. We need help.”

      Kat’s breath caught, the sob forming low in her throat as she listened to that last one, a woman and her family who’d been right in the storm’s path. It ripped at her like claws, and she unashamedly let silent tears well as the extent of the damage was slowly and thoroughly detailed over the course of an hour.

      When Marco’s hand went to her knee, patting reassuringly, she jumped, eyes flying to his.

      The look on his face undid her, a mix of sorrow and understanding that reflected everything she’d tried to keep inside. She watched him swallow, her gaze following his thumb as he leaned in to gently wipe away her tears.

      “Don’t cry,” he said softly, knuckles and thumb resting firmly on her cheekbone. “It’s okay.”

      Her breath jagged. “But all those people...”

      “They’ll rebuild. You know that. No fatalities have been reported, so that’s one good thing. It’ll be okay. We’re safe.”