Pictures of You

Chapter 45

45

Drew

Why I torture myself with Bree’s Instagram post about her Trevi Fountain bestie reunion is beyond me. I don’t follow Evie anymore. Not since I bungled that high school apology, she doubled down on her attachment to Oliver, and we fell out. And now I’ve scrolled through Bree’s carousel of images of the two of them reuniting in Italy more times than is remotely healthy.

A memory returns of Evie on that dance floor in Year Twelve. She’d eventually looked up and seen me in the doorway to the ballroom. She’d tried to break away from Oliver to talk to me, but he’d grabbed her arm and pulled her back. I saw him shake his head and watched her listen intently to his pointed advice, and then the music changed and he pulled her into a slow dance from which her attention never reemerged, and I couldn’t watch. So I left.

Evie had come over to my house the next day, but I was at the hospital with Mum. She called me, but I let it go through to voicemail. I couldn’t have Mum overhearing my explanation and feeling even worse than she already did. I wanted to explain later. Wanted to tell Evie everything and lean on her through it, but how could I do that without sharing Mum’s secret? My loyalty had to be to Mum. Every time I tried to set things right, the excuses in my head sounded either too flimsy or too outrageous. Sorry, something came up at home. Sorry, your boyfriend’s father got my mum pregnant, and when I found out, she lost her mind and wound up in the psych ward.

In the end, by the time I worked out exactly what to say, it was too awkward to say anything. I backed away and hurt her until she stopped chasing me for answers. I’d already let her down once. She was better off without this complication in her life.

Even seeing Evie in a photo now triggers memories of that first night in the hospital. They’d shifted Mum from acute care to a ward upstairs. I’d thought, Fine, we can cope with this—a few days and she’ll be out. But no. Once the psych team got involved and questions were asked about her panic attack, a litany of issues spilled from her secret.

“It was the whirlwind romance of my life,” she admitted to me, sitting in the garden at the hospital one afternoon. “He adored me. He was obsessed with me, really. Fancy private dinners at his house. Weekends in secluded hotels. Gifts.”

Part of me was glad to hear it wasn’t just a one-night thing. He did actually have feelings for her. “But what went wrong, Mum?”

“I started making mistakes. I’d get held up at work and be late meeting him. He wouldn’t believe my excuses … He was the specialist, so I had to fit around his schedule, but my job as a trainee nurse was demanding and I didn’t have the flexibility I needed to adjust to his timing. And then he started to suspect things about other doctors I worked with. He didn’t trust me. He’d have my schedule changed to avoid shifts with certain people …”

“And you didn’t think it was time to get out of that relationship?” I asked her.

“I tried to leave,” she said, pain seared across her face. “And that led to an awful argument, and then … well, in the end I was pregnant.”

The way that hit me in the heart.

“You were never not wanted, my darling. But it was terrifying to think of telling him. When I did, the fallout was bad. He demanded a DNA test. And even when he had proof you were his, he said he couldn’t be with me anymore. By that stage he’d met Oliver’s mum. She was everything he expected. Good family. Established. Someone he didn’t have to hide away on secret weekend breaks—because I was never good enough for him, Drew. My background didn’t fit his future.”

The heartbreak in her voice was raw. It might as well have happened a week ago, not twenty years in the past.

“He drew up a contract saying he would pay for your education if I walked away. I took what I could. I knew I’d never be able to provide much for you myself. I was young and stranded. I had no one advising me, and I signed something saying I would never disclose his identity. Because, of course, by then, Oliver’s mum was pregnant too …”

I was furious.

She could see it. “Drew! You can’t tell anyone about this. Especially Evie.”

The terror in her eyes broke me.

It was all too messy. Besides, I had more pride than to try to convince Evie to cram me into her increasingly happy existence. Our feelings were never going to align, in a way that was always going to be worse for me, so I pulled the pin on the whole friendship. A sudden explosion seemed easier than her gradually peeling off the Band-Aid.

Bree and I stayed friends, though. And following her gap year online hasn’t been an issue until now, because they ended up having separate trips. But opening the app while I couldn’t sleep tonight and being hit in the face with their reunion in Rome slammed me backward. So much happiness on Evie’s face. And the caption: Surprise of the year with @Evie_Clicks #Trevifountain #boyfriendgoals #tears #bffsforever.

And now the light of my phone has disturbed Esther, who rolls over beside me in her bed that we’re sharing in the shoebox of a flat she rents, her long leg draped across mine while I try to stay still and not wake her.

Esther and I met at work about a month ago in the café beside the photography studio in Manly, where I’m hoping to hold my first solo exhibition. She’s an artist too. A couple of years older than me, at twenty-one, and ridiculously cool in that “couldn’t care less what people think” way that oozes confidence. Tall and fit, with dyed black hair to match her black tank tops and black jeans and boots. In fact, she is the embodiment of the girlfriends Evie admitted dreaming up for me, except probably even better, and I can’t believe she’s concocted a “colleagues with benefits” arrangement: Nothing serious, Drew, don’t get attached .

Given the way my heart is pounding, not by the sight of Esther’s bare leg stretched across me but by the unexpected appearance of Evie’s face on my phone screen, there’s very little chance of that. And then my gut churns remembering Esther and me in this bed last night, and where my mind wandered when it shouldn’t have.

My deciding to stay in Australia during my gap year to work and create and exhibit my photos was less about my career, I regret to admit, and more about putting a whole hemisphere between me and the girl who broke my heart. And got away. Plus every other lovestruck cliché that could possibly be applied here.

“You mean you weren’t even together?” Esther quizzed me, not long after we first started working the same shifts and I mentioned Evie one too many times. “And you’re still hung up on her a year later?”

I’d opened my mouth to argue, but she said, “It’s a high school thing, Drew. Move on.” Then she backed me up against boxes of coffee filters and bags of beans in the storeroom and kissed me in a way that convinced me we weren’t in high school any longer.

When she’d finished with me and we were adjusting our clothes and righting the collateral damage on the shelves, she kissed me once more and whispered, “Evie who?” in my ear, before swanning out of the storeroom like she owned it, the entire world, and me. But her methodology was flawed. Being with her only made me crave Evie more, because it turns out there’s more to a friendship than mind-blowing trysts among the café inventory.

What if I never get past this?