44
THE DAYS SLIDE by at a speed I can’t quite fathom. Mac and I go out for dinner, we go to my favourite coffee shop, we see a movie and get cake on Lygon Street, we go for a run around the tan and we go to a footy game with Hayley and Luke, because Luke and Mac are long-time Cats supporters. We spend a lot of time in bed. Mac listens to me record a bunch of podcast interviews for my book. He comes with me to sign copies in bookshops around Melbourne. I introduce him as my friend Mac, and in one shop, the bookseller squints at him.
‘Do I know you from somewhere?’
‘Possibly. He lives overseas,’ I say, signing my stack at the counter.
‘Wait, you’re that actor! From that show!’ She’s seen Arcadia Rising , and we end up staying twenty minutes after I finish signing, and the bookseller takes pictures with him, so they can post their celebrity sighting on the shop Instagram. Mac looks highly embarrassed and uncomfortable, which makes me laugh.
‘Shouldn’t they be taking photos of you signing your book?’ he whispers to me.
‘As long as you’re holding my book in your picture, I don’t care,’ I whisper back.
Bobbi is going to be mad I haven’t utilised his celebrity power for our shop’s social media.
‘I love walking around with a star,’ I tease him afterwards.
‘She couldn’t even remember the name of my show! You’re the famous one in this town.’ He kisses me.
‘Oh, yeah, I get swarmed by fans all the time.’
We spend a lot of time with Hayley and Luke. It’s a bit like back when Joel and I hung out with Luke and Hayley, but different. This dynamic is different. Luke and Mac are almost like brothers. There’s a physical energy between them, as if they might wrestle or playfight, that Luke and Joel never had. Joel would never wrestle anyone.
Mac is loose and open. Or, he seems to be. He’s so open with Luke, that I feel like I am seeing a side of him that I’ve never seen before. And of Luke. They become more excitable versions of themselves in each other’s presence, and it’s like looking at the ghosts of their ten-year-old selves.
I only have to work one shift during the time Mac is here, because I had already arranged some time off to do book promo. While I’m working, he visits his family.
That night, we lie curled up in bed.
‘You seem much more relaxed, being back here, this time,’ I say.
‘I am.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Well last year at the wedding was ripping the band-aid off.’
‘And it’s less painful now?’
‘It’s still home with no mum, which hurts. And doesn’t feel right. When I’m in the US, I can pretend. You know. She’s still there, she just hasn’t called me in a while. She’s busy. I’m busy. I can avoid thinking about it. I’m very good at that. Six years on, and I’m still pretending. But when I’m here, around my family, in the house I grew up in, all the places she was and isn’t anymore, there’s no pretending. Last time, I didn’t—’ He stops.
‘You didn’t what?’
‘I had planned to go and visit her grave, but I didn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I mean, I don’t really believe in that. Once someone dies, I don’t think any of them is left, I don’t think their grave holds any special significance. They’re gone. Visiting a grave doesn’t change that. It’s just dirt. And I hold her in my head, in my heart, in my memories, you know. I keep her with me. And that is true. All of that is true. To an extent. But also, I wanted to go back there, once, to see if that was actually how I felt.’
‘Will you go this time?’
‘I did go. Today. With my sister.’
‘And how was it?’
‘I still don’t think Mum’s spirit was there, or anything. But—’ He looks away and then back to me. ‘It was nice to go there, to honour her, and to have a place, a physical place, to grieve. I sat down in front of the gravestone and I talked to her, and I cried a bit.’
I squeeze his hand, and he keeps talking.
‘The thought of coming back, to Melbourne, used to make me feel sick to my stomach. I couldn’t handle it. Being in this city, let alone going to her grave. But I don’t feel like that anymore.’
‘I’m so glad.’
‘And part of it…Part of it is time. Time passes, that helps. Part of it is therapy. But the biggest part of it, I think, is you.’
I look up at him.
‘I was so desperate to come and see you. I wanted to see you so much, it made all the reasons not to come feel smaller.’
‘Oh, Mac,’ I say.
We hug, and I burrow my head into his neck.
‘Come with me. Come back with me to New York,’ he says.
All the times I dreamed of him asking me to come and live with him, and now the moment is here.
‘I can’t,’ I say.
‘I know you think we don’t want the same things—’
‘We don’t.’
‘And you think I don’t want kids.’
‘You don’t.’
‘It’s not that simple. It’s not that I don’t want those things. I just, I could never picture it, you know? I had never met anyone that I could imagine building that kind of life with, having kids with. But that’s not true anymore, because I can see it all with you. I can see being with you forever. I can see having kids with you one day. And that scared me, at first, but it doesn’t anymore.’
I breathe, trying to take this in.
‘But do you really want it? Or are you just saying it, for me?’ I ask.
‘I want it, Anna. So much.’
‘And what is it like, when you imagine us together, having a life together, having a family together?’
‘It’s the best thing in the world.’
I close my eyes, and then open them, and he’s looking at me.
‘Come with me,’ he says. ‘I’ll book you a ticket for next month. Next week. For my flight in two days.’
It’s so tempting. I could jam clothes and books into suitcases, just pack my life up and leave everyone and everything behind.
‘A part of me really wants to. I do. But I can’t.’
‘Why not?’ he says.
‘I love you. I want to be with you so badly, you have no idea. You’re it for me. But I have a life here. I’ve made a commitment to Bobbi, to manage the new shop. I start in a few days. And I’m really excited about it. If I throw it all away now to follow you to New York, and then wherever you go next, well, I’ve done that, with Joel, where I put my needs last. I let his career, and the way he wanted to live, come first. I can’t do that again. And I know you have the big, exciting career, and I have a small life, and I should be willing to give it up, but I’m not. Not right now.’
It surprises me, how sure I feel when I say this. I love Mac, I will choose him over anyone, but I can’t sacrifice everything else to be with him. It won’t make me happy.
‘I understand,’ he says quietly.
‘You said once you’re not enough for me, but you are enough, you are so enough that having this, being together for just one or two weeks a year, that would be enough for me. I’ve tried a life without you in it and I would choose this, one happy week a year, over nothing,’ I say. ‘And we can work towards it. We can be long-distance until we find a way to be together.’
We lie in silence for a long time. Now I know he wants it, a life with me, that he has the same dreams, the pain of separation feels more bearable.
‘What if I stayed?’ he whispers into the dark.
My eyes flick open.
‘Don’t. Don’t say that if you don’t mean it,’ I whisper back. It’s too much, too painful, to have that said and then taken away. Him moving here has never been on the table. I haven’t even dared consider it. I don’t know if I dare consider it now. In my head, to stay or go was a choice I had to make, not him. He doesn’t say anything more and we drift to sleep.
The next morning, I wake up to see Mac reading my book. He’s almost finished.
He turns to me, smiling.
‘You gave him my line,’ he says.
‘What line?’ I say, pretending innocence.
‘You know what line.’ He puts his hand on my cheek, and kisses my forehead, then the bridge of my nose, then my shoulder. ‘I love the way your skin tastes,’ he murmurs.
‘It was a good line,’ I say, moving closer to him.
‘I’m proud it has been immortalised in print. But I can’t handle the suspense. Please tell me they get together in the end.’ He pushes my singlet up and runs his fingertips across my skin, and then his lips, and I close my eyes.
‘You have to keep reading.’
‘Tell me,’ he says, lifting his head away right when he knows I want him to keep going. ‘Tell me they get together.’
‘Fine, fine, they get together,’ I say, folding easily, because I don’t care, I would trade anything for him to keep going. The sex has got better over the past four days, which feels impossible somehow, because the thrill of the sex in New York felt like something that couldn’t be topped. The sex we’ve been having here is slower, lingering, playful, and so deeply pleasurable I can hardly bear it sometimes. He only needs to touch me for a moment, and I can feel it: my body springing to life, ready.
But it’s bittersweet, because all I want is more, more, more, and it’s all about to be taken from me.
Afterwards, his phone rings, and he answers, and I know immediately from his voice and the way he sits up straight that it’s his agent. With good news. I get up and go to the bathroom to give him privacy, but also, to prepare myself. I walk back in after a few minutes and he looks at me.
‘So,’ he says.
‘So?’ I’m bracing.
‘I got the part. In that small-town witch drama.’
‘Oh, wow. Congrats.’ Despite my bathroom preparation, my voice isn’t really hitting the right tone.
‘You don’t sound happy.’
‘I am happy. I’m just processing. Let me say that again. Oh, wow! Congrats! Mac, that’s great.’ I hug him.
‘It starts filming next year, in North Carolina.’
‘That sounds cool.’
‘Yeah. I guess I’ll be in North Carolina for a while.’ His eyes are watching me, his body tense. He thinks I’m going to ask him not to go.
‘I guess you will.’ I nuzzle his shoulder, and hug him until he relaxes.
And there it is. The whispered idea of him staying was just that, a whisper, a single note drifting away on the breeze. Ideas are easy, but reality is this. We have separate lives. Right people, wrong time. We will love each other in the best ways we can, while each following our own dreams. It’s messy, it’s painful, but that’s what we have.
And I can be happy with that.