Read Online Away From Everywhere by Chad Pelley - Free Book Online Page A

insisted on the window seat, and Owen remembered looking over her shoulder and noticing how slowly the clouds drifted past the window, like the plane was barely moving, like time was grinding to a halt. He looked up from his novel from time to time to watch her watching the clouds. When a mass of green appeared in a bigger mass of endless blue, her eyes widened. “Is that it,Owen? Is that Newfoundland?”
    She poked her finger at the window. When she took it away, her fingerprint was there: a series of perfect, un-smudged, concentric circles. There was something infinite about it, something so exclusively Hannah.
    â€œIs it? Is that Newfoundland?” She nodded this time, instead of poking at the glass.
    He leaned over her and felt her warmth, her body beneath him, and shrugged his shoulders. He was smiling. As always when she spoke, he was inexplicably smiling. This effortless effect on him was what he now missed the most: the soul-filling warmth of being next to her.
    It was only natural that a woman like Hannah would love St. John’s. Everything about the town was so charming to her, especially the people, and the fact that cars yielded to pedestrians, and that young men held doors. It was the bright colours of the rowhouses that struck her the most, and how vivid and alive the town was, despite the grey, fog-shrouded skies. They made her fill her camera on her first night there.
    â€œWhy are the colours so vibrant? Why are the houses attached? It’s like God spilled a bag of gumdrops all over this city and they all melted together!”
    It wasn’t a question so much as a statement.
    On their first day there,Owen took her to the old battered cannon shelters beneath the Fort Amherst lighthouse. The fog siren frightened her into his arms every time it blared. They could be together like that in public now, and it strengthened their love. More than they had expected it to. There was a loner minke whale. She tried ten times to photograph the whale, but came up short every time and ended up with ten pictures of water and nothing more.
    â€œHere, you try!” She handed him the camera and stood behind him to watch the screen as he lined up the photo. He caught the whale on the first try. Nothing glorious or worth framing, but enough to satisfy her. Enough to show the kids when she got home. She had one hand on his shoulder, the other tucked into his coat pocket on the opposite side. She nodded when he showed her. “Try one more.”
    But the whale never resurfaced.
    He turned to hand her the camera. Saw her sun-reddened cheeks, and the smile on her face looked so right, so impossibly perfect. One second of her time, every word she spoke, the feel of her skin on his, how the curve of her body fit into his. It was all too perfect, so perfect that he couldn’t hate himself for loving her. When he wrapped his arms around her that day, he sank into a better world: she was a porthole to something more. But as he looked at her standing there, her hands tucked into the pockets of her hip flannel skirt, her body arced into the direction of the wind – he knew he could never have her. Not like he wanted to. He could never make a wife and mother of her. Their love would have to be secondary to her marriage; it would have to be ephemeral, “wrong.” He wanted his own children, a wife, a life. Things she could never grant him.
    â€œAre you okay?”She slung her arms around him and rocked him sideways, dancing slowly to the sound of the waves and seagulls. She combed his thin hair back into place with her hand.
    â€œI don’t feel guilty anymore, Hannah. And I love you.”
    They said nothing for a while. They were in love but no one had used those three words yet. So he made light of the situation, but meant every word. “I love this water bottle, just because you’ve touched it and sipped from it. I love the air in our hotel room, because maybe you’ve breathed it