THIRTY-SIX
The ice cream is melting on my stomach. A sticky ring of melted salted caramel is slowly seeping through the bottom of the cardboard container and into my shirt, but I can’t bring myself to care.
Mostly because the shirt is stained anyway, but also because I think I’ve finally crossed into a plane of existence where physical discomfort is just background noise.
I’m sprawled on my couch in a pair of decade-old pyjama pants with a waistband that gave up on me three years ago, watching Below Deck reruns as if it’s my full-time job. Captain Sandy is ripping a deckhand a new one, blowing up because they forgot to secure a tender line.
It’s the exact right kind of drama I need – loud, overblown and mercifully not mine.
I’m vaguely aware of the sound of my phone buzzing on the armrest beside me. Once. Twice.
I don’t move. The third buzz is longer. A call.
I don’t want to talk to anyone. Especially not Abbey.
Which of course means it is Abbey.
I stare at the screen for a second too long. Then I pick up, because apparently I’m polite even at rock bottom.
‘Hey,’ I say, voice thick, flat – the kind of tone that sounds like it’s coming from beneath the floorboards.
There’s a pause.
‘You sound like shit,’ Abbey says, not unkindly.
‘I feel shit,’ I say, shifting slightly so the ice cream doesn’t slide off my stomach. ‘Or at least, I’m trying to match my emotional state to my voice. Seamless branding. Work would be thrilled.’
I can hear her breathing on the other end of the line. The quiet that means she’s deciding how hard she can push me before I hang up.
‘Deep down I knew how this would end,’ I add, softly. ‘I just didn’t think it would hurt this much.’
Abbey sighs. ‘Jamie—’
‘I mean, it’s kind of poetic, right?’ The words are spilling out faster than my dignity. ‘Girl meets boy. Girl panics. Girl bolts. Boy ends up happy with his ex. Girl ends up on the couch covered in dairy and disappointment. End scene.’
‘Okay—’
‘And maybe this is fate,’ I say. ‘Maybe I was always meant to end up like Mum. Bitter. Alone. With a freezer full of ready meals and a cupboard of unopened merlot for guests who never come.’
There’s a long pause on her end.
‘Jamie?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Shut the fuck up.’
I blink. ‘Sorry?’
‘Shut. Up.’ Abbey’s voice is calm but cutting, it’s the sound of a guillotine wrapped in a throw pillow. ‘Seriously. Pull your head in.’
‘Well, that’s a bit aggressive.’
‘What’s aggressive is you lying on the couch pretending you don’t have a choice in any of this.’
My mouth opens. Then closes. Then opens again.
Abbey doesn’t wait. ‘You do this every time. You find some unsuspecting guy, mould yourself into something shiny enough to be wanted, and then get upset when you get tired of lying.’
‘I didn’t mould myself—’
‘Yes, you did. You always do.’ She exhales. ‘I’m not saying Luke didn’t matter. I’m saying maybe it’s time you focused on yourself for a change.’
I stare at the ceiling hoping it might offer a rebuttal.
‘You want the truth?’ Abbey says. ‘It’s time to stop chasing men.
Stop performing. Stop pretending you’re okay with being whatever someone else needs.’
‘And do what, exactly?’ I huff. ‘Sit here, eat my feelings and join a pottery class in some sad suburb?’
‘If that’s what it takes,’ she says, without missing a beat, ‘yes.’
I fall quiet. Captain Sandy is now telling a stew that leadership is earned, not given.
‘I don’t even know what I want,’ I admit. ‘I don’t know what I like. In the words of Marie Kondo – nothing sparks joy.’
Abbey doesn’t laugh. She usually would. That’s how I know I really am at rock bottom.
‘You’ve played so many different versions of yourself,’ she says, voice quieter now. ‘Surely one of them left a clue.’
I shake my head, even though she can’t see me. ‘What if none of them were me?’
There’s a beat of silence.
‘Then you find her,’ Abbey says.
It fills me with dread.
‘Finish your ice cream,’ she says. ‘Get some sleep. Tomorrow, you start Project Jamie.’
‘Project Jamie?’ I repeat.
She hums. ‘It’s got a nice ring to it. Sexy. Mysterious. High chances of emotionally imploding if left unsupervised.’
I smile, faint and shaky. ‘Thanks, Abs.’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ she says. ‘This is the part where the montage music usually kicks in. Just don’t skip the hard scenes.’
We hang up. I set the phone down gently beside me.
Onscreen, Captain Sandy is still shaking her head, muttering something about needing a stronger team.
I look at her. At the chaos unfolding behind her. At the half-eaten tub of ice cream and the dim blue light of my living room.
I whisper, ‘What the fuck do I even like?’
No answer.
But maybe that’s the point.
Maybe tomorrow, I start finding out.
Here’s what no one tells you about starting over: there’s no montage music.
No upbeat serenade from Natasha Bedingfield singing ‘Unwritten’ to carry you through the awkward bits.
It’s just you, your own stubborn brain, and the low-level anxiety of trying to do anything for yourself for the first time in forever.
I start small.
A new café a week. That’s the rule. No repeats. No chain coffee shops. Only weird cafés with terrazzo counters and baristas who run vintage bookstores on the side.
The first one smells of toasted banana bread and jazz hands. I sit at a window seat, sipping a too-expensive oat flat white, pretending not to eavesdrop on a couple arguing about whether they’re ‘on the same page about intimacy’. They’re not.
But it’s kind of comforting, in a weird way, watching other people fall apart without having to participate.
Turns out, you can romanticise your life. You just have to get really, really good at being alone in public. So, I become a professional loiterer.
I wander museums as if I’m on an artist’s retreat. I stand in front of abstract sculptures and nod thoughtfully, as if I understand what the melting blob with a hole in it is trying to say about the disintegration of societal norms.
I let time pass differently now. Slower. Gentler. No more Tinder dates. No more Friday nights at Brookie’s. Just me, myself and the consequences of my own actions.
One Sunday, I find myself in a bookstore.
I start in the self-help section. Obviously. Because if anyone knows how to fix me, it’s a ghostwritten book with a beige cover and a title that says How to Be Your Own Lighthouse.
I stare at a row of them: Atomic Habits, The Power of Now, Becoming
Her. After two minutes, I want to punch myself in the face and cry into a glass of lukewarm pinot gris.
So, I move on. Past biography, past romance – absolutely not – and on to crime and thrillers.
There might be something deeply satisfying about reading about people solving other people’s messes when you can’t solve your own.
I run my fingers along the spines, waiting for a title to jump out at me.
That’s when my phone pings.
A Tinder match. I chew my lip. Stare at the screen.
It’s some guy named Fletcher. Or maybe Max. His profile says he enjoys road trips and golf and that he’s fluent in sarcasm, which should be enough of a red flag on its own.
I hover over the notification, thumb twitching. And then I delete the app. Done and done.
Just a tiny, quiet decision to not seek validation from a stranger with abs and a lifted Hilux.
I slide my phone into my pocket, grab a thriller with a dark cover and a twist I won’t see coming, and take it to the counter. The woman ringing me up smiles. ‘You’ve got great taste.’
I smile back, because today, I’m trying that on for size.
I don’t do my laundry that day.
Instead, I curl up on the couch in a hoodie I should’ve washed last week and read the entire book in one day. I eat peanut butter from the jar and skip lunch in favour of a poke bowl I order at 5 p.m., a true crime docuseries playing in the background.
I’m mid-bite, teetering on the edge of my seat because the killer offered to take a lie detector test, when the front door bangs open.
I scream.
Then someone else screams.
Then the lights snap on, and I see Issy standing in the doorway, holding her keys like a weapon and looking as shocked as I feel.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ I exhale, heart pounding. ‘You scared the shit out of me.’
I swallow the rest of the swear words because Gemma and Billie come tearing in behind her, their dress-up skirts glittering and their faces flushed with youth.
‘AUNTY J!’ Billie yells, flinging herself into my arms.
‘Hi, tiny humans,’ I mumble. ‘What’s going on?’
I look up at Issy and freeze.
Her face is blotchy. Her mascara’s smudged.
We’ve been here before. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.
I turn to the girls, plastering on my most cheerful voice. ‘Guess what? I’m putting on Moana and making popcorn.’
They cheer. It’s the kind of sound that could fool someone into thinking everything is okay.
The girls get settled on the couch, and I walk into the kitchen. Issy follows, slow and stiff. I start the microwave and wait until it’s loud enough to muffle everything else. Then I turn to her and pull her into a hug. She crumples against me like a stack of cards.
I breathe, barely. ‘What happened?’
Issy wipes her eyes. ‘He got angry. Said something about me spending too much. Then he kicked us out. Just for the night. Said we needed a reminder that nothing’s permanent.’
I go still. Rage coils low in my stomach.
‘I’ll kill him,’ I say. And I mean it. I would snap the neck of any man who dares to make my sister feel like trash.
‘He’s a good man,’ she says quickly. ‘Work’s just been …’
‘Stop making excuses for him,’ I snap. ‘Leave him.’
She looks at me as if I’m a child.
‘It’s not that easy, J.’
I want to shake her. Scream at her. Pack her bags, take the girls and drive them somewhere safe.
But I don’t. I just say, ‘You can stay as long as you need.’
She nods. She doesn’t cry again, just sits down at the kitchen table while I pour popcorn into a bowl and wipe away my own tears with the back of my hand.
We settle in for the night. Moana plays on the screen. The girls sing along. Issy drifts into silence.
And I sit there in the middle of it all, watching them – my fractured, hurting little family – and think: This is what matters.
Just this.
The decision to stay when it’s hard.
The decision to keep going.