CHAPTER 6 Jake
Jake
A bloody dating plan.
It’s been ten long days since I left Amelia with her friends at that café, making plans to find her a new guy, the right guy, and I haven’t been able to get any of it out of my mind.
“Jake,” my best friend Steven nudges me in the ribs, causing me to spill the beer in my hand. “I’ve lost you again.”
I look around me, taking in the chaos of Friday night after-work drinks at this particularly popular sports bar and wish once again that I’d found an excuse to get out of being here. An excuse that my annoying best friend would accept, that is. I had tried the old “too tired,” “have to stay back at work” and “I don’t want to,” but none of them were valid enough. According to Steven, it’s his job to get me out and about in society at least once a month. The good news is that, after tonight, I can look forward to four weeks of peaceful bliss ahead of me.
“I’m right here.” I sigh and take a sip of craft beer which will hopefully take the edge off what has been a rough week.
“You’re physically standing next to me, but I can see you’re all up in here…” He knocks on my forehead with a smirk. “What’s up?”
I glance up at the giant TV screen above the bar, hoping that something on there will distract him so I can wallow in my thoughts. Alone.
Cricket. Great. I know it’s almost sacrilegious to be an Aussie bloke and not like cricket, but come on! A test match of cricket can last for five whole days, and more often than not, will end in a draw. What a complete waste of time.
“I just have a lot on my mind.”
A table away from the crowd opens up and Steven and I rush to grab it. Any table here on a Friday night is prime real estate and we know we’ve lucked out nabbing this one.
“Want to talk about it?”
I really don’t.
“There’s not much to talk about.”
He gives me that look, the one that reminds me we’ve been friends since we were five, and that he’s like a brother to me, and that he knows when I’m not OK.
“It’s nothing really,” I tell him while trying to attract the attention of the passing server. This conversation needs both alcohol and a big bowl of nachos. “I saw Amelia last week.”
Silence follows this statement. Well, as silent as a noisy Melbourne bar can be on the most hectic night of the week.
“Robby’s Amelia?”
I wince at his description, hating that those two names will forever be linked. Amelia should never have been Robby’s anything.
“Amelia, Amelia.” Childishly, I refuse to repeat him. Refusing to say their names in the same breath.
“Where? What? How?”
Steven is the only person who knows about the spark of attraction I’d had with Amelia for those brief five minutes when she was just the gorgeous stranger at a bar. I’d accidentally told him all about it after a few too many drinks, a few weeks after she and my brother started dating, and apparently, he’s going to hold it against me.
“My idiot brother left her a note, telling her he wants her back.” My hand clenches around the beer bottle I’m holding, so tight I’m surprised it doesn’t shatter.
He frowns. “Doesn’t Robby have a new girlfriend?”
“Yes.” My response is clipped as my blood boils with anger. It’s not enough that he treated Amelia so poorly when they were a couple, but now he’s going out of his way to mess with her after they’ve broken up.
“I’ll never understand how the two of you are related.” Steven shakes his head.
I nod in agreement. Robby and I are as different as night and day. Or eternal darkness and eternal light, if you want to be extreme about it. Robby was a surprise addition to our family, born almost seven years after me, well after my parents had given up hope of having another child. And as a result, he’s been pampered and spoilt every day since. A fact that turned him into a complete and total narcissistic selfish prick (my official diagnosis).
“He’s just so selfish, you know?” I grind out through my teeth. “He’s got a girlfriend. What would possess him to contact Amelia after all this time?”
After six months, three days and a handful of hours. To be exact.
“Well, he’d be an idiot to not try to win her back. Amelia is an absolute catch.” My very married, happily committed best friend’s face flushes as he says this.
And who can blame him? Amelia has that effect on men. On everyone, really. She’s the only one who doesn’t see she has this power.
“He had his chance. He needs to leave her alone.”
Steve watches me closely, for so long I feel like a fly trapped under a microscope.
“What?” I finally break down and ask. “Spit it out.”
“You just seem pretty worked up about something that has very little to do with you.” He says the words gently, like he’s coaxing me towards some sort of realisation.
“It has a lot to do with me when that stupid note causes her to come knocking on my door at two o’clock in the morning. Wearing that dress.”
He laughs, a big booming sound that has heads turning in our direction.
“Stop. It.” I grit this out, annoyed at his amusement. There’s not one single thing funny here that I can see.
“Tell me about the dress.” His sly smile has the tips of my ears pinking up and I realise too late my slip up.
“It was yellow,” I sigh, unable to stop the image of Amelia’s curves looking like they’d been poured into that dress from flashing through my mind.
“Sounds delightful,” he replies, his eyes twinkling. I need to get new friends.
This torturous conversation is interrupted—thank God—by a server finally coming to take our order. Just in time for me to have lost my appetite.
“So, she turns up in the yellow dress. Robby isn’t home. Then what happens?” Steven is leaning in, his attention locked on me. This may be the most entertainment he’s had all week. All month, perhaps? I’m assuming married life contains very little of this sort of excitement.
“Then, nothing,” I lie, repressing the memory of Amelia on my couch, Amelia wearing my sweatshirt, Amelia in my arms. “We talked for a bit and then I drove her home. She was spitting mad at Robby, though.” This brings a smile to my face. At least I know she hasn’t stayed under his spell this whole time.
“And that’s it?”
He’s disappointed.
“Well…”
He perks up.
“Well?”
“I saw her again. At that café, the one I told you about?”
“The one you saw when you ‘accidentally’ happened upon her Instagram page?” He makes a big show of putting quotation marks around the word accidentally and I only just refrain from throwing a corn chip from our piping hot bowl that had just been delivered.
“It was an accident,” I clarify. “It’s not like I went looking for her information. Robby had his phone open, and a notification had me glancing in its direction.”
He gives me a look and I refuse to buckle. We both know what I’m saying is a complete lie, but I’m sticking to it. The alternative makes me seem like a pervy stalker, and that’s not a role I want to be cast in.
“So, you ‘bump’ into her at the café you ‘accidentally’ found out about.” Quotation marks galore. “And then what?”
More scenes from that morning flash across my mind. Amelia looking gorgeous in her black leather pants and fire-engine red tank top, her caramel hair piled on top of her head in a careless bun. Amelia and her friends discussing how they plan on finding her a boyfriend, a decent one this time. Amelia agreeing to their ridiculous plan.
“She and her friends were talking a lot about Amelia’s dating history,” I start.
“You were listening to their conversation?” Steven’s eyes continue to sparkle in delight, enjoyment written all over his face.
“I was at the table next to them. I couldn’t not hear what they were saying.” I defend myself with vigour, once again to avoid the label of stalker. This time with eavesdropper added to it.
“Did Robby’s name come up?”
It’s my turn to give him a look. “Of course it did. Right under the category of who not to date.”
“So? Then what?” I watch as he heaps a corn chip with guacamole, sour cream and salsa, only just fitting the concoction into his mouth.
“Her friends decided she needs to break her pattern of dating ‘losers’.” My turn to use quotation marks.
Steven gives me a look that says ‘duh’ while chewing his food, motioning with his hands to continue.
“And they made a plan for her to date men with proper jobs.” Even as I say the words, my stomach clenches. It’s not that I don’t want Amelia to find a good guy…OK, it is exactly that I don’t want Amelia to find a good guy. Or any guy. Just until I’m over this little inconvenient crush, that is.
“Well, that’s perfect,” my friend gushes, spitting the remnants of his corn chip crumbs on the table between us. “You have a proper job.”
I blanch at the suggestion that I’d ever be in the mix. That I’d ever have a chance with someone as amazing as Amelia.
“That ship has sailed. I’m not an option for her.” I look to the left as I say this. A big fat lie from my end. But obviously not from hers.
He takes a chug of beer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before answering.
“Why not?”
I tick the well-rehearsed reasons off my fingers as I list them for him. “She’s my brother’s ex-girlfriend. She’s seven years younger than me. She’s gorgeous and feisty and clearly attracted to a different sort of man.”
“Pfft,” he snorts. “That’s a whole heap of nonsense.”
“And,” I continue, ignoring his interruption, “and she chose Robby.”
This hits home with Steven, stopping the next words out of his mouth. It’s the ultimate stumbling block. When we’d met that night at the bar, when I’d felt sparks literally flying between us, she wasn’t dating Robby. She didn’t even know him; their date was the definition of blind. At that moment, if she’d felt even a tenth of the connection with me that I’d been feeling with her, she could have chosen to spend that evening with me. Or, at least, given me the same chance she’d given Robby. But she didn’t. In fact, she dated my brother for six months, so clearly that initial attraction between us was all in my head.
“People change,” Steven says finally, gearing up to rally again. “We don’t know why she made that decision that night. But she may have regretted it ever since.”
It’s a thought that’s tickled my mind over the last year whenever I allow myself to think about her. But it’s all redundant in the end. She picked Robby and now she’ll always be my brother’s ex-girlfriend. Forever off-limits.
“Enough talking about this,” I plead with him to drop it. “Let’s focus on you and Clare and all this baby talk I’m hearing about.”
My friend’s face pales at this, like literally loses every ounce of colour and I let out a chuckle. Not so much fun with the shoe on the other foot, is it?
“She’s got the baby fever,” he tells me in a hushed voice. It’s like if he says it out loud, it makes it real. “Lots of talk about ovulation and fertility windows.”
I grimace. Too much information.
“But there’s also a lot of fun to be had along the way,” I remind him.
He grins at this and then steers the conversation away from baby-making and dating plans, towards something more manly. Like sports. And beer. And I dive in with him, ready to forget all about Amelia and her mission to find ‘the one’. Determined to not give any of it another thought.
*****
I’m not giving Amelia another thought.
It’s several hours later and I’m sitting on my couch, my head woozy from the beers I’d consumed. Thinking only about Amelia.
“Craft beers. Taste better but have a higher alcohol content.” I say this to myself out loud, as a reminder for next time (at least four weeks from now) as I scroll through the Netflix homepage, struggling to find something to watch amongst the millions of shows on offer.
“Ooh, a new season of Alone. Sounds fitting for my current life situation.”
I stop muttering to myself and press play. It’s a new season, set in the wilds of Patagonia and I lean back, sinking into the comfortable depths of my couch, ready to lose myself in the struggles of the men and women attempting to survive for as long as possible to win half a million dollars. This sort of show is right up my alley.
“Shelter,” I tell the young woman on my screen who is currently wasting way too much time looking for the best spot to set up her tent. “You’re going to need a better shelter than that.”
I watch, annoyed as she continues to ignore my advice and my attention wanes. Drifting to where I’d vowed it shouldn’t go.
Maybe I could just message her? See how she’s doing?
I have played this battle out in my mind more times than I can count in the weeks and months since she’d become my brother’s ex-girlfriend, but I’d never given in. Until now.
JAKE: How’s the dating plan coming along?
I press send and then lob my phone face down onto the rug in front of me. Like that’s going to somehow stop whatever it is I’d just put into motion.
“I blame the beer.” I pick up my phone and oh-so-casually look at my notifications. Nothing.
OK, that’s that. Back to the wilderness engulfing the contestants competing in Alone.
*****
“Don’t eat the berries!” It’s been twenty-three minutes and fourteen seconds since I’d sent the errant, ill-advised text to Amelia. And in that time, one contestant had tapped out, another had fallen into the icy lake near her tent and now this woman is about to eat a berry. Origin unknown. Oh, and also, there’s been no response from Amelia.
“Told you,” I tell the screen, where the berry lady is now throwing up violently. “Basic survival 101, never, ever eat something that may kill you.”
I’m mulling over this sage advice when my phone lets out a PING, scaring me half to death. It’s so quiet in my house with only the lonely contestants on my screen to keep me company, that the sound of an incoming message, the hope of which I’d let go of ever hearing, has me jumping. A manly jump, that is, barely a centimetre off the couch.
AMELIA: I’ve got a date tomorrow.
AMELIA: With an accountant.
This news makes me wish I’d never sent the text message in the first place. And also, how does she know the message is from me? I’ve never, ever texted her before.
AMELIA: I didn’t know you had my number.
Huh. She’s clearly grappling with the same realisation as me. We’d both had each other’s numbers but had never had a reason to use them before.
JAKE: I’m sure Robby shared it with me at some point…
This is an outright lie. Because I’d specifically asked him for it in the days after they’d broken up. Under the guise of needing it ‘just in case’. It had been a weak excuse at the time, one that Robby hadn’t cared enough to question.
AMELIA: Same.
(Interesting. Here Robby was, giving our numbers out willy-nilly, presumably not thinking we’d ever really use them).
JAKE: So, are you looking forward to your date with the accountant?
(Do I really want to know the answer to this question? Why am I torturing myself like this?)
AMELIA: No!
(Ahh, that’s why. For that answer. And yet, she’s still going out with him, and it still may turn into something).
JAKE: Then why not cancel?
I hold my breath as three dots appear and disappear for several minutes. And then there’s nothing. I’d overstepped my boundaries and offended her.
(Well done, Jake).
JAKE: Sorry, if that last message was too nosey.
(There, that should fix it).
More dots, then nothing. Then more dots.
AMELIA: You’re fine. I didn’t respond because I didn’t have an answer. I want to cancel, but I also want to see this through. You know? Break the bad habit and all that?
I can hear the confusion ringing through these three simple sentences and instantly feel like a heel. Just because I don’t want her to find someone doesn’t mean she doesn’t deserve to. Someone as incredible as she is.
JAKE: You should do it. What have you got to lose?
AMELIA: You’re right.
AMELIA: What have I got to lose…
I end the conversation there, unable to summon the energy to be her cheerleader in this endeavour. Turning off the TV, leaving my new friends to survive the rest of the night in the wild alone, I make my way to bed.
AMELIA: Goodnight Jake. I’m happy you texted.
I read this message just before I give in to sleep, a smile stretching across my face. She may never be mine, but for tonight she’s happy I reached out. And that’s going to have to be enough. For now.