Melt. Lisa Walker

rolled my eyes. Mum would want to know when I was coming home. I had no intention of moving back to Nimbin, but I planned to visit once I’d sorted out some accommodation in Sydney.

      I wanted to see you, Marley, if nothing else.

      I pressed ‘call’ as I waited at the baggage carousel.

      ‘Summer?’ Her voice was high-pitched. ‘You need to come home. Marley’s in hospital. A tree fall.’

      I swayed on my feet, my fingers tingling.

      In the press of people jostling for their luggage, a hand gripped my arm. It was Adrian.

      His touch was comforting. More than that, it held me up. ‘Is he, going to be alright?’ I croaked into the phone.

      ‘We don’t know. You’d better come home.’

      It was Adrian who sat me down, retrieved my bag, bought me a cup of sweet tea, booked me on the next available flight to Ballina and sat with me while I waited, not talking, for my flight to depart. His capable aura dispelled my panic – I would have been a gibbering wreck without him. He pressed his card into my hand as I stood to board the flight. ‘Get in touch? When you’re back in Sydney?’

      I stuffed it in my pocket, not expecting to ever see him again. My mind was on you.

      But six weeks later in Nimbin, when the rain was turning our garden to a quagmire and I still didn’t know what I was doing with my life, I found his card. As I turned it in my hands, I remembered the Cone of Certainty – how the light shone through the window as he said it. And, being the hippie chick I was, it seemed like destiny. I gave him a call.

      Adrian was so sweet those first few weeks. He used his contacts to help me find a flat. We went to the movies, out to dinner, and took long walks around the harbour. He was courtly, always the gentleman. He walked on the traffic side of the footpath, took my arm to help me over puddles. I’d never been treated like that before. In Nimbin you knew a guy liked you if he passed you the joint first.

      And he was so competent. If he said he’d be there at ten, he’d be there at ten precisely, like a Japanese train. He said he’d find me a flat and a job and, voila, he did. I’d never met anyone like him. It was clear if I stayed in Adrian’s wake, doors would open.

      On the third week we were dating, he introduced me to his favourite hobby – running. We ran somewhere in the bush near his apartment. Adrian ran around me in circles as I huffed and puffed. He might have noticed I wasn’t all that into it as the running wasn’t repeated.

      Instead, he took me to art-house movies. I hadn’t encountered these before – we only had the multiplex in Lismore – but I soon got the idea. Good movies have one or more of the following features: they are shot in black and white; feature grimy, desolate housing estates; have no dialogue; or have long shots of empty corridors. In addition, they are often made by directors with multi-barrelled surnames.

      After the movie, we would discuss the meaning of the seven-minute segment where two characters walked silently through the desert. And if I happened to think the movie might have been improved by a dash of witty dialogue or a smidgen of romance, I kept this opinion to myself.

      Despite all these lovely excursions, Adrian never touched me. No-one could call him a quick worker – by week four he’d progressed to a kiss on the cheek. I do wonder if anything would have happened at all if I hadn’t taken matters into my own hands.

      Over the weeks Adrian courted me, he taught me a lot about project management. His way of doing things might have been alien to me, but it was effective. It got results. It minimised uncertainty. And to me that now seemed like a very good thing indeed.

      I needed a fresh start. Mum kept asking me to come home, but there was no way I was going back to Nimbin. If I stayed there it wouldn’t be long before I’d be back with the old gang, back in the old habits. I’d gone overseas to get away from all that. Although sometimes it felt like I’d taken it with me.

      I’d tried blowing with the wind and, frankly, it sucked. Predictability, I’d decided, was the zeitgeist. And where was I going to find it if not with Adrian? After four weeks I was determined to move our relationship on to, ahem, the next level. To be honest, I was baffled: it had never taken more than four days in any of my previous relationships.

      Even with Jack the dope dealer, Marley! (And you know how slow he was.)

      Adrian was a mystery. And there is something sexy about a mystery. He was always so cool, so in control. And – this hadn’t been immediately obvious to me – he was very attractive. Charismatic. Adrian exuded the magnetism of someone who knows what he wants. Women responded to him – waitresses lingered, shop assistants blushed. I must have been the only woman in the world who hadn’t wanted to lay herself at his feet at first sighting.

      I decided to put my new-found knowledge of project management to work. The Project Seduce Adrian (PSA) scheme revolved around the incredible attractiveness of my assets. I don’t mean the usual; Adrian had been seemingly oblivious to those. No, after browsing a few issues of Project Manager Online magazine, I knew what he couldn’t resist. I downloaded an advance copy of the latest project management software on my home computer and outlined my master plan. It had two critical events:

       persuading Adrian to come back to my apartment for software viewing

       distracting him from software to softer wear.

      The first of these was a piece of cake; Adrian was excited about the software, but as it turned out, moving him on from that was tricky.

      I’d installed him in front of the computer with a glass of wine and leaned over his shoulder to demonstrate the finer features of the program. ‘Look, instant Gantt charts. Automatic re-scheduling.’ I was pretty up with the lingo by then.

      He was oblivious to my low-cut top, purchased especially for the occasion. ‘Thanks for showing me this, Summer. It’s fantastic.’ His face glowed. ‘I didn’t know it was out yet.’

      I wandered off into the bedroom and re-appeared in my brand new silky nightie. ‘Thought I’d slip into something more comfortable,’ I murmured.

      ‘Good idea.’ He didn’t look up from the screen where he was creating complicated bar charts.

      In the end I was driven to desperation. I turned off the computer screen.

      Adrian focused on me finally. ‘Sorry. You’re ready for bed. I should go.’

      Was he being deliberately obtuse? Perhaps, but I hadn’t come this far to let him escape. What would Alexis from Dynasty do, I asked myself? Cue – sultry music. I leaned over and took his hand. ‘The night is young, Adrian.’ It was sappy but it did the trick. Originality can be over-rated.

      His eyes flickered up and down my nightie and a flush spread up his neck like a rising tide. In retrospect, I think he’d been waiting for me to make the first move.

      I know you’re never going to read this, Marley, so I’ll be frank.

      Making love with Adrian was like building a bridge with a high-­performing team of engineers. Weight capacity, wetlands, pile driving, terrain – he had it all covered. We pooled our human resources, achieved the critical events at exactly the right time. Exactly the same time. It was … impressive.

      Adrian says productivity is one part inspiration, nine parts perspiration. Well, the Canadian from Lukla might have been inspired, but Adrian perspired. No-one could have faulted his attention to detail.

      Afterwards, we lay on our backs panting. ‘How did that go for you?’ I said. Adrian says evaluation is the key to improved per­formance. It was clear to me already that we were a team who would go on to larger and more complex projects so it was important to fine tune. This wasn’t a cubby house we were building here, it was a condominium.

      Adrian picked up his phone from the bedside table where he’d left it and checked for messages, then he turned back to me. ‘Summer, that was amazing. We were