Chapter Five Sadie
Chapter Five Sadie
I avoided Jonah over the Christmas break.
It was a childish thing to do, but I’d rather be childish than have to go through a conversation when he ran his hand awkwardly through his hair then did the verbal equivalent of getting down on his knees and begging me for whatever crumbs of labour I could provide him – or, God forbid, told me he was also moving to Hobart so he could help his sister, and giving up academia together.
It was strange, given how much time and energy I’d devoted to trying to defeat him over the years, but I didn’t want my victory to be my last memory of him.
We’d got to a place you could almost call nice, that night we’d sat across from each other and agreed not to fight anymore.
A place with a sense of resolution to it.
It wasn’t a eucatastrophic ending – far from it – but it had had a satisfying sense of closure about it.
Fifteen years of conflict, tied up at last with a bow.
If that was our ending, I could deal with it.
It might be anti-climactic, but it was mature.
So in the interest of being adult, I childishly dove out of any room there was even a hint of him entering – which meant I basically declared the kitchen Jonah’s territory and never went in there, because he always seemed to be standing in front of the stove cooking something or other – and focused on getting things organised instead.
I might have several weeks before I had to move, but there were still things I needed to do.
Talk to my various bosses and let them know I would not be available for casual teaching anymore.
Start bringing home books from the tiny corners of office space I’d managed to carve out for myself.
Familiarise myself with Hobart on Google Maps, work out where would be best to live.
Although I might not have the luxury of being picky.
Blithely, I’d assumed that a small city like Hobart would be infinitely cheaper to rent in than the notoriously expensive Sydney, but when I started browsing through real estate websites, my eyes almost fell out of my head.
I’d had every intention of living alone once I moved – that seemed like what you did when you had an adult job with an adult income – but if I was going to do that, I’d be spending a truly massive chunk of said adult income on rent.
I was going to have to find myself another share house.
I tipped my head back and groaned.
When I inhaled again, the delicious smell of whatever it was that Jonah was cooking in the kitchen filled my nostrils, a pointed reminder that the chances of me finding a place as good at the one I’d shared with him for the past eight years were negligible at best.
I rubbed the heel of my hand over the developing anxious tightness in my chest.
It was early January, which surely had to be a shit time for rental listings.
Maybe more would go up in the next few weeks.
Perhaps I should focus on the actual moving, rather than precisely where I would be moving to.
I googled moving companies – and once again, my eyes almost fell out of my head.
They cover moving costs in my contract, right?
I texted Chess.
Otherwise I might need to sell a kidney.
She was at work, so her response didn’t come for a few hours, during which I’d dug more into potential rental listings and worked myself up from mild anxiety into proper panic.
Yep, moving costs covered up to $3K, plus accom for the first two weeks.
That should be plenty, but if it’s not – I’ve got you.
I tried to focus on the good news – the money for removalists, the fact I had more time than I thought to find a place – rather than the fact that, despite my firm policy around not taking money from Chess no matter how much she tried to force it into my hands, I was sorely fucking tempted.
I took a deep breath.
No.
I was an adult.
I was going to work this out on my own – how was the delicious smell of Jonah’s cooking still lingering?
My phone vibrated again.
Nearly finished going through your contract.
There’s a few clauses I’d like to see if we can get some wiggle room on, but it mostly seems fine.
Only thing that jumped out at me as slightly unusual was partner hire, but that’s not relevant in your case.
I blinked.
And we’re DEFINITELY having a conversation about salary negotiation.
I know you’ve told me a thousand times that universities don’t work like that, but there is ALWAYS room to negotiate.
Ok.
Thanks Chessie!
Love you xx
You can repay me in romance books , she sent back, then presumably marked a six-minute block as ‘pro bono’ on her calendar and moved on.
I, however, did not.
I went into my email, dug out my contract, and hit ctrl-F.
Partner h , I typed.
I read through the relevant section.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
I read it like someone had put hardcore French theory in front of me and told me I had to explain it to undergraduates.
Then I opened a new tab on my web browser.
Did some googling.
Fell down some Reddit rabbit holes.
‘No,’ I murmured.
‘That won’t work.
’
I shut my laptop decisively.
No.
I’d thought – for a moment – but no.
Only 1 in 4 university workers have secure jobs , the sticker on the lid said.
Only one in four, and I – Sadie Shaw, a girl who came from nothing and nowhere – got the job.
Not the Shakespeare bro.
Not Dr Jonah fucking Fisher, scion of a scholarly dynasty.
Me.
It had been a nice thought, but if it was that easy, everyone would be doing it.
I rolled my desk chair over to my bookshelf so I could distract myself by finding some new romance reading for Chess.
Once I moved into whatever Hobart share house I ended up in, she was going to have to give up her love of physical books and get herself an e-reader.
I was going to be spending so much money on rent that there wouldn’t be a single cent left over to pay for posting print books regularly from Tasmania.
I picked up The Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas for a second, but then swiftly discarded it.
Chess usually liked historicals – she could suspend her disbelief better – but given her hatred of both fake dating and problematic paperwork, there was no way I could give her a book which was a—
I stopped.
For a long moment, I sat there in front of my bookshelf, hand still resting on the cover of the Kleypas book, the last faint scent of Jonah’s cooking in my nostrils, in the thrall of a truly cursed idea.
I opened up my laptop again.
All my tabs were still there, as was the PDF of my contract, the partner h of partner hire highlighted in blue.
I wasn’t seriously considering this.
No.
I was not seriously considering this.
Chess would kill me, then laugh hysterically at me, then lock me in her spare bedroom for between fourteen and twenty-eight business days until I came to my senses.
Plus, I didn’t even like the man!
One civil night versus fifteen years of arguments didn’t exactly even the scale.
I slammed my laptop shut again.
No.
But there were those union stickers, sitting there, taunting me, full of whole new subtexts now I finally had a permanent job.
Casual academics are always the first casualties (you class traitor).
And then there was that desperation in his voice, that note I’d never heard before, when he’d been talking to his sister about how he might give up on academia so he could move to Hobart to help her.
I bit my lip hard, worrying it between my teeth until I could taste blood.
It had been hot, that day we interviewed.
Way hotter than it should have been.
Walking from the campus gate to the lecture theatre had been like walking through a fan-forced oven.
Somehow, though, Jonah’s fingers had been even hotter, shaking against my scalp as he gently pushed that stray bobby pin back into my hair.
He’d been so nervous.
If he hadn’t been – if the stakes hadn’t been so astronomically high for him – would we even be in this situation now?
Would he be the one panicking over the cost of renting in Hobart, or – or…
?
I closed my eyes and repeated Chess’s words to myself.
We’re not letting in impostor syndrome.
We’re not letting in survivor’s guilt.
‘I deserve this,’ I whispered to myself.
But I wasn’t the only one who did.
I picked up my laptop.
‘Come in!’ Jonah called, when I knocked on his door.
He looked shocked to see me, but he modulated it down to surprise quickly.
‘Hi,’ he said, tucking his hands into his armpits.
He was wearing navy pyjama pants and a grey T-shirt that had been through the wash so many times it was halfway to transparent, the faint shadow of his chest hair just visible beneath it.
‘Happy new year, Shaw. I’ve been meaning, um, I’ve been meaning to congratulate you.
I’m sorry it’s taken so long.
I don’t want you to think I’m a bad sport, it’s just—’
‘Shut up,’ I said, forcing my eyes back up to his face.
‘Oh. Okay.’
The fact that he did what I said without even the slightest protest almost broke me.
This was not the Jonah Fisher I knew.
This was not Tweed Jonah, the Jonah who would argue every little point, fight every little fight, who might unroll a scroll at any moment containing a hundred-thousand-word manifesto entitled Why You Are Wrong About Everything, complete with another thirty thousand words in footnotes.
This wasn’t even Cardigan Jonah, sitting across from me in the dark of the kitchen, vulnerabilities on full display.
This was some other, third Jonah.
Broken Jonah.
Defeated Jonah.
Armourless Jonah.
I almost turned on my heel and ran out of the room.
This was a terrible idea.
This was an idea so bad it would probably send me straight to the hitherto-unexplored tenth circle of hell, the one Virgil had decided against showing Dante on the grounds that seeing all the heretics and fraudsters and traitors and whatnot was quite enough for one day and there was no need to go to the worst circle of all.
Jonah was looking at me.
I bit my lip again.
It had been nice, that night before the job was listed.
It had felt right, in a way that things had not felt right in a long time.
When I’d put my hand on his and said Truce?
and he’d turned his palm to face mine and said Truce, and somehow, out of nowhere, we’d been sitting there at the kitchen table, holding hands…
That had felt like a step forward.
A real step – an adult step – when I had been stuck in the same place for so long.
‘This is going to sound insane,’ I said, ‘but I was wondering if you’d like to marry me.
’