30
I’M ON A ten-minute break in the backroom, sitting among piles of unopened boxes of books that need to be opened, received, shelved and sold. I’m scrolling on my phone and snacking on a handful of almonds, contemplating typing up a little review on the typewriter because I find it so fun to use—when a message appears on my screen.
I’m watching Jerry Maguire.
It’s from Mac.
I stand up and make an involuntary squeak. It’s been ten days since I got home and I had resigned myself to us never speaking again. My hands are shaking a little. I need to hold myself together.
Still hold up? I write back.
It does. You should watch it with me.
It’s afternoon here. I’m working.
I almost write ‘at my new job’ but I don’t want to derail our first conversation. A whole career change feels too heavy for our first messages.
Watch it tonight. Message me. We can watch it together.
I hesitate. This is what I wanted. Exactly what I wanted.
But maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t heard from him, that no contact was the best way to cleanse him from my system. I could start the new year totally fresh. New job, new me. All very wishful thinking of course, because I can still feel my desire for him, my longing to see him, coursing through my veins. It has been bubbling away as I move around the shop, finding books, helping customers, I could feel it everywhere, even in my aching feet (I am not used to standing up all day) and my tired eyes. I am craving him like I have never craved another human being. His smell has faded from his hoodie, but I am pretending it hasn’t.
Okay , I write back. It’s a date .
I immediately regret saying date, but then I get annoyed at myself for regretting it. We’ve slept together. Six times in two days. We’re ten thousand miles apart. If the word date scares him, then he needs to grow up and I need to block his number.
Talk to you then
I’m distracted for the rest of the afternoon. I almost charge someone $2,499 instead of $24.99, I forget the name of our current bestselling novel, and every time I’m in the backroom I check my phone even though I know he must be asleep and there is no reason to think he would have written anything else. (He hasn’t.)
When I get home late, I find Hayley has cooked dinner and put leftovers in the fridge for me.
‘Hayley, I love you,’ I shout, grabbing the bowl. She has, seemingly, accepted the idea of me working with her mother, but I’m acutely aware of being too entwined in her life. We live in the same house and now I work in her family’s business. It’s messy. But it’s always been messy. Our mothers decided this: they decided to intertwine their lives long ago. We can’t unknot it all now.
‘You’re welcome,’ she shouts down the stairs.
I eat it at the table, googling the time difference between Melbourne and New York. He won’t be awake yet. And is he really going to want to watch a movie as soon as he wakes up?
I shower, get into my pyjamas and pace around the house, even though my tired body is begging me to rest, but I’m too jittery to lie down. I should have gone for a walk. When I can’t wait a moment longer, I set up my laptop in the bed, and message him.
I’m in bed, about to press play.
It’s ten-thirty my time, six-thirty in the morning his time. He’s not an earlier riser. He probably won’t reply. Except he does, immediately.
Give me a second
Okay go
We both press play. Should I live-text him throughout. I pick up my phone ready, and then suddenly, he’s calling me. I stare at the phone for a moment, heart thrumming.
‘Hello?’ I say.
‘Hi,’ he says, and there it is. His voice in my ear.
‘Hi,’ I say back, and then there’s just silence, and I am grinning, and I can’t be sure, but I think he is too.
‘How are you?’
‘I’m good. How are you? It’s not too early?’
‘No, it’s perfect.’
‘It’s too early,’ I say.
‘Let’s just say I’m looking too haggard for Facetime.’
‘Me too.’ My hair is still damp, my face is make-up free and I’m wearing my oldest pyjamas.
‘Besides, your eyes need to be on the screen, watching the movie,’ he says.
‘Your face would be too much of a distraction, that’s true.’ It’s actually his voice that is most distracting.
‘I would never risk you comparing me with a young Tom Cruise.’
‘Very dangerous indeed.’
‘You sound tired.’
‘Well, I just started a new job.’
‘You what ? Wait, wait, wait. Pause the movie.’
And so we stop the movie and I update him on my new life as a bookseller.
‘I sent the email quitting my job the night we saw the show.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I was freaking out. I didn’t tell anyone.’
‘You made the right decision,’ he says.
‘You think so?’
‘Anything is worth being free of Marco Polo.’
‘But I’ve taken a pay cut. How will I ever own a house, or make enough money to live? It’s not responsible.’
I sound like my mother. And yet. She’s right, in a lot of ways. I’ve looked at my new part-time wage, and my budget, and things aren’t pretty.
‘You work two jobs, bookseller and writer. You’re doing enough.’
‘I guess.’
‘You don’t have to go through life always trying to make the absolute most amount of money possible. What you want to do with your time matters too.’
‘I know. I know! And it’s not like I was working in finance before or anything. I was never making a lot of money. I just have this panic in my chest, sometimes, that I’m slipping further and further behind and I’ll never catch up—to who, I don’t even know.’ Maybe it’s Joel I am still comparing myself to. He’s ahead of me in every way in life. Or Hayley and Luke, with their lovely house and expensive L-shaped couch. Why is everyone else an adult, and I am a floundering child? I never used to feel like this when I was twenty-five and working in government with a long-term partner. I used to feel too old for my age back then. That feels like a joke now.
‘When we were in New York, every time we went into a bookshop, you always looked so happy. That means something,’ Mac says.
‘It means I like buying books.’
‘You like being around books.’
‘That’s true.’ I take a deep breath. ‘Let’s put the movie back on.’
‘Okay, you have to pay attention to this part to understand the movie.’
‘Oh, you’re one of those movie guys. A shusher.’
‘I simply ask that you give a moment of your time to Renée and Tom.’
‘Fine, fine. Just don’t say, “There’s a good bit coming up” or anything.’
‘There is actually a good bit coming up.’
‘Shush.’
We alternate between talking and watching the movie.
‘So do you agree that Jerry Maguire is Tom Cruise’s best role?’ Mac says at the end.
‘Well sure, because it gives so much to him,’ I say.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The script gives everything to his character. We hardly find out anything about how Dorothy’s first husband dies. The father of her child! She has the real trauma. And it’s given a few offhand lines. Dorothy is just there to help Jerry become a functioning human.’
‘It’s true. And yet—’
‘Look, I liked the strap on the dress breaking. I would watch that scene again. And did I tear up at “you had me at hello”? Yes, I did. I’m only human.’
‘You loved it.’
‘Love is too strong a word.’
‘It got to you a bit, though, didn’t it?’ he says. ‘It burrowed into your heart a little.’
‘It got to me a bit,’ I agree, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like we’re talking about the movie.
There’s a beat of silence.
‘So, are you going to give me a reading list in return for making you watch the movie?’ he says.
‘I could.’
‘Or should I just keep rereading your book?’
‘You didn’t really read it three times, did you?’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, it was funny and great. And. I don’t know.’
‘What?’
‘It made me feel connected to you, I guess.’
‘And is that a good thing?’
‘Yes. Or does that sound creepy?’
‘No, not creepy.’
I think of myself scrolling through his IMDb, illegally downloading the show I couldn’t find on any streaming platform to watch the one episode he appeared in, reading through old forum discussions on his Arcadia Rising character’s scenes. I’m not going to tell him any of that.
‘You could have just messaged me back then, after the wedding, you know,’ I say. ‘To feel connected.’
‘Well, I prefer my method. Pining from afar through literature,’ he says.
‘Pining ?’ I say.
‘No, not pining. That’s too pathetic. Another word. I need a thesaurus.’
‘I like pathetic. Pathetic is hot.’
‘Okay well, maybe pining.’
‘Are you embarrassed to have been pining over me?’ I say.
‘Yes, if you didn’t think of me at all,’ he says.
‘I thought of you.’
It’s dangerous to talk in the dark like this. My eyes closed, my head on the pillow, my body relaxed, his voice in my ear but almost like a dream. I could say anything. I’m not ready to say anything.
‘What did you think about?’ he asks.
‘I thought about what you said to me.’
‘What did I say?’
‘Let me show you what I was going to do before.’
‘Oh, I say that line to every girl.’
‘Do you?’ I sit up a little. God, he probably does.
‘No.’ He laughs.
‘Is it a line from a movie?’
‘No!’
‘Well, I fell for it. I had to go all the way to New York to find out.’
‘Was it worth it?’
‘Yeah. Yeah it was.’
‘Mmmmm.’
There’s a long delicious pause, and I think, oh, it’s going to take that turn. We’re going to be phone-sex buddies. And I want it but I don’t. Because I’ve had that part of him, but I want the other parts, I want the emotional parts. I want to dig into his brain, the way I wanted to dig through his apartment. Give me all of it, I’m greedy, I want the whole thing.
‘Hey,’ he says, softly.
‘Yeah.’
‘I miss you.’
‘I miss you too.’ I pause. ‘Why did you break the rule? The no-talking rule?’
‘I’m not good with rules.’
‘I am.’
‘I almost called you the day after you left but I thought, give it a few days, see if you still miss her as much then.’
‘And?’
‘And I was going crazy not talking to you. But you hadn’t called me, so I thought, wait it out. She’s going to call you, eventually. She’ll definitely send a Merry Christmas message. Be cool man.’
‘I told you, I’m good at rules.’
‘Well, I waited as long as I possibly could.’
‘And you gave up on looking cool.’
‘I gave that up the minute I wore that Christmas jumper.’
‘Well, I think we should revisit this no-talking rule,’ I say.
‘So do I.’
‘What about we just scrap it entirely?’
‘I’d like that,’ he says. ‘Because I’m going to call you again tomorrow.’