Pictures of You

Chapter 52

52

Evie

Oliver has booked a table for two in the window of a prizewinning restaurant overlooking the Opera House. After the stress of today’s graduation, I’d rather stay in and order pizza, but instead I change into the sleek black dress and heels that he placed on our bed for me to wear. My feet hurt before we’ve even made it across the pavement from the cab.

It’s really a gorgeous setting. Enormous picture windows offer an unobstructed view across the harbor, and I watch as the Manly ferry pushes out, imagining the lives of the people onboard, wishing I was any one of them.

“Champagne?” Oliver asks. It’s not really a question. Of course we’re celebrating. Not just my graduation but his, and our big plans for the next chapter: the position he’s nabbed in a commercial law firm, my PhD. And I suppose our personal plans.

As a waiter pops the cork on a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, piano tinkling in the background, I try to peruse the menu, distracted by the sparkling diamond on my finger. Who knew something so beautiful could weigh so heavily?

“What are you thinking?” Oliver asks. Does he mean about the menu choices, or my life?

“I’m really not sure …” I begin. Not sure about any of it.

“We’ll have the seared foie gras to begin,” he tells the waiter, before I have the chance to contemplate it any further, “followed by the wagyuˉ beef for my fiancée, rare. I’ll have the lobster, and bring us sides of truffle mash and greens.”

“I’m not sure!” I exclaim quickly, every bit of his sentence unappealing. I’m really not.

The waiter, who had been rearranging the cutlery on the table, pauses.

Oliver’s back arches across from me, brows furrowed over his steel-blue eyes. “Is there something else you’d prefer?” He looks apologetically at the waiter and adds, “I’m sorry. She’s incredibly indecisive.”

I shake my head. “The beef is perfect, thank you. But I’d like it medium, please.”

And that’s it. That one correction is enough to tip him over.

“How do you think it looks that I don’t know how my wife-to-be likes her steak cooked?” he hisses after the waiter has gone.

“But you do know.”

“It’s better rare, Evie. It’s meat in its purest form.”

Do any of my preferences matter? For steak, or for movies, or for holidays? Even this engagement ring is nothing like what I’d select myself, but of course I wasn’t consulted on that, either.

He catches me twisting the ring. “Oh, poor you, having to wear a two-carat diamond. God! I give you everything !”

“And I’m grateful, Oliver, but this isn’t what matters to me!”

He’s raging now. “What does, though? You’re impossible to please!”

Phosphorescence springs to mind. Beaches. Sunrises. Con-versations. Photography.

“Do you expect me to believe you only ran into Drew today?”

Here it comes: the accusation that has been brewing for hours.

“I haven’t seen him since Year Twelve,” I say as calmly as I can.

The practiced, steady gaze can’t hide the way his hands are shaking, heat traveling up his neck, barely containing the boiling rage. “He was never good for you, Evie. Don’t let him back in now.”

Drew was good for me, though. And apart from the formal, which, yes, was hugely disappointing, he didn’t let me down once.

I pick up the champagne flute and take three large mouthfuls in quick succession, the bubbly warmth sliding down my throat.

“Go steady,” Oliver chastises me, glancing at the diners at neighboring tables. I take another sip. Oliver’s bad mood has ruined the night I’ve been working toward for years. Nothing about this celebration is about me. Instead, I’m being led into a conversation we don’t need to have, about another nonexistent situation with a man.

“Oliver, if it’s not Drew, it’s my peers at uni. Or my tutor.”

“What?” He frowns at me, as if I’m talking nonsense.

“There hasn’t been a single platonic, casual, or professional acquaintance I’ve had in the last three years that hasn’t gotten your hackles up.”

Whether it’s having seen Drew so suddenly, after all this time, or whether I’m just tired, I know for certain now that I can’t keep this up. This being on edge all the time. All this explaining .

“I need a break,” I tell him, twisting the ring off my finger as I say the words. So much freedom and lightness and hope from that one tiny action.

He stares at me, shock crashing across his features. “A break?”

I know it’s not just a break I’m asking for, it’s a breakup. And it’s years overdue.

I place the ring on the white tablecloth between us and push it toward him. An action so calm. So precise. So unambiguously final, my heart lightens and bolts with relief.

“What are you doing, Evie? You don’t mean this.”

I do mean it, though. I can’t be with someone who won’t trust me. I reach for my bag, and he grabs my wrist under the table.

“Don’t go!” he says, his voice low, but laced with urgency. “We can work this out. I’m sorry. It’s just … Drew triggers me. Always has.”

“Because of a Year Seven science test?”

His nostrils flare. “You know it’s not just that.”

I sigh. He’s not getting it. “Let. Me. Go.”

His eyes are urgent now, the same eyes that were so cutting just moments ago. He searches my face, looking for hope. Or perhaps looking for a weak spot, through which he can stampede, as usual, and bring me back into line. “Tell me how to fix this,” he begs.

A memory pops up of one of our earliest kisses in his bedroom in Lane Cove. The way he trapped me with his leg until I told him I loved him. I knew then that the words were premature, but he forced me. The way he pressured me, saying he could wait, but was unrelenting until I finally slept with him. The way he’s tried to control every decision I make since my friendship with Drew ended, and the way I’ve lost track of which thoughts are mine and which are his, while he orchestrates everything , drowning the melody of my own life with the searing crescendo of his …

I’ve let this relationship drag itself incrementally toward this crisis, where the damage is so deep it’s ingrained in our everyday existence. More evidence flashes before my eyes. The elation of Oliver’s surprise at the Trevi Fountain, followed by his unexpected coolness the next day, when he thought I seemed happier with Bree than I had been the whole trip with him.

“You’d always arrive early to pick me up from lectures,” I remind him.

“You hate it when people are late!” he counters.

“You’d sneak in through the back door of the lecture theatre, to check where I was sitting. Or who I was sitting with.” My skin crawls at the recollection. The way everyone’s face would turn to check out the overprotective boyfriend. “You were antisocial with the few friends I managed to make at uni, all of whom ended up being transient because you’d always find ways to push me away from them, or create events to clash with our plans.” It was rarely anything obnoxious. Just being overly quiet, to the point where I was forever making excuses about his “headaches” or all the “stress” he’s under. It was easier for us just to drop out of the social scene altogether, which perked him up to no end, because he had me all to himself. Subtle bad behavior that I always excused.

As I shake his hand off my wrist and watch his frenzied attempt to cling to the dregs of this fairy tale, I realize it snowballed so fast in the beginning, it completely absorbed me. By the time the cracks started to appear, I was stuck. Imprisoned in the kind of airbrushed relationship everyone else thought they wanted, every wrinkle ironed out, every blemish smoothed until no part of this glossy picture resembled real life anymore. I was always scrambling to rebalance it. Forever adjusting the light. And when I inevitably failed, it felt like me who was wrong, or confused or crazy—while all along it was him. He was the artist. And now I’ve caught him here, with the camera in his hand, blaming his tools.

“I’m done,” I say, resolution rising through the exhaustion in my voice as I pick up my bag, sweep my coat off the back of my seat, and leave the diamond on the table. “Truly, Oliver. We are through.”