“I know you’re all clean, but come and join us for a minute,” I said. I got him to lie down on top of us, and then gave them both the biggest hug that I could manage. “Thank you both for a special experience here”, I said. “This is way outside my normal self, but I’ll remember it forever”. They murmured similar things back, and we lay against each other until Adam got a bit too heavy for us. Lucy and I got up and had our (individual) showers, and then we packed up to meet the others for breakfast.
We didn’t swap group notes, but the other three looked content too, and the body language was comfortable all around.
For our last real Kakadu activity, we went to Nourlangie Rock, another amazing set of outcrops with more outstanding rock art. It was very hot, so we didn’t stay too long, but I made a mental note to go back in the cool season: there was clearly a lot more to see. We did stop at the Park Information Centre on the way out, and I chatted to some of the rangers about some of the plants I’d seen and the photos that I’d taken of them, carefully skipping over a certain photo taken inside a crocodile hotel last night. I was running out of superlatives for this place, and I was starting to wonder if it was something I could think about when I was through my degree — I didn’t really have a career plan, but I’d pictured myself heading off to Africa to look at evolving plains ecosystems or something, and perhaps I should be looking a little closer to home. Darwin was still over 3000 km (1860 miles) and a five-hour flight from Melbourne so it wasn’t that close, but it certainly had everything exotic I could have wished for.
We headed back to Darwin, with Adam, Lucy and I swapping around the driving since we were all a bit tired from last night. Lucy had prepared a Northern Territory song playlist, and she managed to get it working on the ancient car stereo. Soon, we had Yothu Yindi, Warumpi Band, and King Stingray thumping out, before we moved onto old Midnight Oil and Paul Kelly songs. The time flew, and we made it back to Darwin in our party bus by late afternoon.
We got the fans cranked up, unpacked, and Nadia and I quickly decided that we were having some leftover Beef Rendang for dinner, with fresh salads on the side. We roped in some helpers, and pretty soon we were swooning to our food again on the back veranda.
Part Three — Luke makes his move
We sat around making quiet conversation after dinner. I noticed Luke looking a bit thoughtful, and he got up and idly took some darts from the dart-board on the back wall, before standing back and practicing his throws. The throws weren’t very good, often just hitting the edges of the board, and I was starting to fear for the walls and floor, but he managed to avoid embarrassing himself completely and got a few on target.
After a bit of this (just long enough to start to get annoying), he stopped and said, “What are we going to do about sleeping arrangements now?”
“Draw straws?” Nadia suggested. “I think though, that whatever we do, we should do for several nights, because there isn’t going to be too much action tonight, at least for me.” The rest of us chuckled.
“You know, you girls decided everything the other night,” said Luke. “How about you let the guys decide this one?”
“What do you suggest?” said Adam. He looked at the darts in Luke’s hand. “Should we play darts for them?”
“Yeah, if you want,” Luke said, with a little challenging stare.
I guffawed. “You’re going to play darts and hand us off as prizes?”
Tim spoke up, unexpectedly. “Why not? It’s as fair as what we’ve done any other night. And we’re not as good at social intrigue as you three are.” Perhaps, after watching Luke’s throwing, Tim also fancied his chances.
“This should be fun,” Lucy said, and we agreed on terms. The three guys would shoot three darts each in turns, and the first to 500 would win the match and the first right to choose. The second player at that point would win the next choice, and the third would get the last choice. It was the most sexist, primitive throwback to misogynistic Australian culture that I could think of, but they had a fair point that we had also been treating them as objects, and it would at least give us a game to watch as they took their revenge.
“We should lay side bets,” said Nadia. “Tell you what — if Tim wins, I’ll give you the blow by blow from last night.”
“I’ll do the same if Adam wins,” said Lucy. I groaned inwardly. Lucy had been sucked in and our secrets would be spilled – Adam was clearly going to win. I decided to have some fun, even though it was pointless. Still, what came out of my mouth surprised even me.
“If Luke wins, I’m stripping here on the deck in front of everybody and then going skinny dipping in the pool, and I expect you to join me,” I said.
“Deal”, they agreed.
We cleaned up dinner all together, and then us girls set up ourselves to watch.
Tim went first, and landed two of his three darts on the board, scoring a very reasonable 30 points.
Adam was next, and landed all three of his, as expected. Even better, one was a bullseye, and his total score was 70 points. It looked like this would be a short game.
When Luke took his turn, I wanted to close my eyes in embarrassment for him. But in fact, each of his throws hit the board, and, amazingly, one of them was a rare treble 20, scoring 60 in itself, with a total score of 90. “That was lucky!” Luke exclaimed, and handed the darts over to Tim again.
Lucky? Hmmm. I started to run through recent events, and I began to smell a rat. It was Luke who had drawn our attention to the dart board with his annoying, inept throwing, Luke who had raised the problem of room selection, and Luke, who, through misdirection, had put the idea of a darts game in Adam’s head. And now he’d just had a ‘lucky throw’ that put him well into the lead.
Luke, you cunning bastard. I poured myself another glass of wine and settled down to watch.
Sure enough, the pattern continued. Tim sometimes did better than Adam, and Luke sometimes didn’t get the top score, but he was soon comfortably ahead, only missing throws sometimes. We started barracking for Tim and Adam to try and even things up, but to no avail. Within 30 minutes, the game was decided, with Adam coming in a clear second behind Luke.
Luke turned to us, face flushed, and looked at me. “Ciara.” I smiled, and saluted him with my wine glass.
“Nadia,” said Adam.
“Lucy,” breathed Tim, and she blew him a kiss. So that was finally sorted out for now.
I stood up, and began removing my clothing, joined a moment later by the other two girls. “There were some side bets, boys, and I won. We now invite you to join us in the pool.” With that, I took off my top and bra, slid my knickers down to the deck, picked up my wine glass again and regally walked past the stunned darts players and down the stairs, wobbling my bare arse a little for extra effect.
They all followed.
We spent a couple of happy hours splashing in the pool in the dark and talking. We were all a bit too tired for sexual shenanigans in the pool, but it felt like all our boundaries were down. I spent a while chatting with Nadia, who incidentally had quite lovely and impressively perky brown boobs, putting the lie to her earlier comment. She didn’t give me the detail from the previous night, but she did give me to understand that she was more than happy with the bedroom skills of all three men over the past week, and (more interesting) that she thought that Luke and I could also be a good long-term pairing — she liked his intelligence and she thought he would go far in his career and life skills. Interesting.