5
JOEL IS HAVING a baby.
He is having a baby with Bianca.
He is having a baby with Bianca, his girlfriend of four months. Less than four months maybe. I need to get Hayley to confirm the exact date they met. This feels very important right now. Also the due date. Joel could never parent a chaotic Scorpio child. What is he thinking?
No. Calm down.
Process it one word at a time. Baby. Joel. Baby. Joel.
Joel is going to be a father. He is happy, in love, and looking forward to fatherhood. These are facts. I need to acknowledge these facts and move on.
I can feel Luke watching me in the rear-view mirror like a worried parent. I’m sitting in the backseat, and Mac is in the front next to Luke. They’re chatting and I am dissociating.
Luke went through all this with me after the breakup. He’s a saint, but I’m sure he doesn’t have the patience for more breakup drama on his wedding weekend. I promised them I would be fine, no matter what.
Deep breath. Pull yourself together.
I give myself until we arrive at the supermarket car park to stop my racing heart, my prickling skin, my shaking hands, my unhinged thoughts. There are five stages to the grief of finding out your ex is having a baby with a new girlfriend. I instinctively know them immediately. Shock, anger, hysterical laughter, anger again, and then pure rage. I am confident I can get through them all in the next ten minutes. Then something else occurs to me.
Joel’s name! In my book! I need to email my publisher and tell them to pulp all the copies and reprint it right now without his traitorous name.
No. I need to write a new book. About him. I’ll name the character Joel, so there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind. He’ll be the most vile character anyone has ever encountered and then he’ll die the most shocking, grisly death ever seen in fiction. So much blood. So much pain .
I can feel hysterical laughter rising.
Good, I’m at stage three already.
I start making notes for this new book in my phone. I write ‘very violent’ and ‘humiliation’ and ‘look up that case when a woman chopped off penis and boiled it—something there??’
‘Anna?’ Mac has turned around and is watching me. I am scared of what my face might have looked like over the last few minutes.
‘Yes?’ I try to sound normal.
‘Hamburger okay for lunch?’
‘Oh yes, great.’ I can’t stomach even the thought of eating anything right now, let alone a meat patty.
Luke parks the car and turns to me. ‘Come on. We’ll buy truckloads of alcohol.’
As appealing as that idea is, I know I cannot take that path. For a start, the photos. I am not going to be a hungover, puffy-eyed train wreck. I will not be haunted forever by my hungover face. Secondly, I already feel like a woman on the edge. If I get drunk now, I know what will happen. At a minimum, I’ll cry in public. Likely to escalate to a scene, yelling at Joel or, worse, sobbing in Bianca’s lap, rubbing her still-flat stomach and giving her baby names suggestions. My baby name ideas. (I have imagined having a wild, adventurous girl called Stevie.) This is what Joel wants, probably. He wants me to be so revolting, such a mess, no one feels any sympathy for me at all anymore and he can walk away unscathed, the soon-to-be-father, the prize pig. Oh, no. Not a drop of alcohol will be passing my lips tonight. You fucking wish, Joel . It takes me a second to snap out of my imaginary argument with him, and get out of the car and follow Luke and Mac inside.
The supermarket is filled with babies and small children. Where did all these families come from? Even the food on the shelves is mocking me. Baby food. Frozen chicken nuggets for kids. Formula. Chocolate that a pregnant woman might crave.
After the almost manically high energy I was feeling in the car, I am crashing now. Deflating like a balloon. Because I thought I was over him. I thought I had all the armour I needed, that there was no bomb he could lob that would disarm me, I was totally ready for this weekend. But not only can Joel still hurt me, intentionally or not, he can hurt me so badly, so sharp and fresh, it’s a brand new pain.
Luke sends me off to get crackers and dips. He must tell Mac to follow and make sure I’m okay, because suddenly Mac is at my side.
We look at the dips together.
‘Hummus,’ I say. Joel hates hummus.
‘Sounds good,’ Mac says.
I grab a stack of other dips, picking randomly, and almost bump into an elderly man beside me.
‘Sorry,’ I say, stepping around him.
‘Cheer up, love,’ he says to me. ‘Smile. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.’
It can! I want to scream. It can! The man walks away, and my eye twitches, but I won’t yell at a stranger who is possibly over ninety and just trying to be pleasant. I still have a small grip on reality.
I forcefully dump the dips into the basket Mac is holding, and he grimaces.
‘What?’ I say.
‘You seem upset.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Well, I’m sorry about your arsehole ex.’
‘He’s not an arsehole.’ I don’t know why I still have the automatic urge to defend Joel.
‘He’s not?’
‘Well he is, to me, but not, like, in general. He’s probably going to make some big scientific breakthrough that will save lives one day.’
‘Being an arsehole to you still counts.’
‘You just don’t like him because he stole Luke from you,’ I say.
‘It’s true. There’s a saying. Never trust your best friend’s other best friend.’
‘That’s not a saying.’
‘It is now. I just coined it.’
‘Well, I appreciate your support,’ I say, throwing crackers and chips into the basket.
‘For what it’s worth, you’re not on your own. Being here is hard for me too,’ he says.
‘Why is that?’
He looks like he regrets saying anything.
‘Oh, you know. I’m not a wedding guy.’
‘Right.’ I don’t know what that means but I’m not sure I have the capacity to dig into someone else’s issues right now. I really need all my mental space for feeling sorry for myself.
We meet Luke at the checkout, and we all carry the bags back to the car. Luke falls into step beside me.
‘You don’t have to do this, you know.’
‘Which part?’
‘Staying in the house.’
‘I know.’
‘We could get you a hotel. Or you could stay with the mums?’
Hayley and I refer to our mothers collectively as ‘the mums’, a habit Luke has picked up.
‘I’m not staying with the mums. And let’s not tell them about anything .’
‘Right. Okay. Good idea.’
Luke looks nervous at this. The mums can crack him instantly. My mother can practically smell secrets, and Bobbi will immediately see something up on Luke’s face. Jean is an emergency-department doctor who can break someone with a mere look. Dad is safe, he’s the last to know in any situation. But I am relying on them all being distracted by the wedding.
We drive back and while Luke and Mac are chatting, I hype myself up. This is Hayley’s wedding. You’ve had your dramatic moment—now you just need to hold it together.
We pull into the driveway, and my eyes meet Luke’s in the rear-vision mirror.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asks.
‘I’m good. I just needed to deal with the shock of it. I’ve done that now. Good for them. Honestly. Good for them!’ I say.
I catch a very subtle quick look between Luke and Mac. I know that look. It’s the same kind of look I sometimes saw between Hayley and Luke in the dark months after my breakup, when I was ranting to them about one thing or another.
What I hadn’t quite prepared myself for in the immediate aftermath of the breakup was the loneliness. I joined a Facebook group for lease breaks, and temporarily moved into a studio apartment near my work that was tiny. (‘Cosy!’ Hayley had assured me as she inspected it, ‘and you can get some cool artwork, and plants, and we’ll make it super cute.’) But then I was in the apartment, with barely any furniture, and no desire to make it cute and girly and aesthetic. I had no desire for anything. Not for sex, or going out, or watching TV or reading or finding new hobbies or getting really active on social media or joining the dating apps. I started going to bed right after work, and staying there all weekend. I’m a bed person , I thought. I just love being in bed . I just love being in bed in my tiny, cold, empty little apartment .
Then I thought, oh wait, I’m probably just depressed .
I wasn’t going to do better than Joel, and the thought hit me like a freight train. He hadn’t ever cheated. He barely ever even raised his voice when we argued. He was the most together person I knew. He voluntarily put extra money into his super. And he was handsome. And so intelligent. He sometimes massaged my feet while we watched TV shows he hated. He took my orgasms very seriously. Sometimes too seriously, but that was better than the opposite. What had I done? In my darkest moment, I had stood looking in the mirror—days of not showering, greasy hair in a squashed bun, food stains on my top, no bra, a stress outbreak of pimples on my chin, puffy-eyed from staying up until 2 am watching the third season of a show I hadn’t watched the first two seasons of—and I thought, I’ll never do better than him. I’ll never be loved again .
I needed to learn the stock market, build my savings, do my own tax, check my super, figure out my health insurance, get better at all the bedroom stuff that Joel let me coast by on, get fit, find new hobbies, spend more time at the hairdresser, at the waxer, buy more make-up, buy more clothes, figure out winged eyeliner, take great photos for my online profile where I look happy, interesting and popular. It was all going to be so much work—dating, going out, meeting people —and so expensive. I did not have the energy for any of it. And for what ? To be in a relationship with a boring guy in finance with no personality beyond talking about how great AI will be in a few years or something equally awful, who was not even a pinch on Joel, not even the slightest bit like him.
Knowing that I was depressed didn’t really help. Maybe I should see a doctor, a therapist, a psychiatrist, a life coach, a holistic nutritionist wellness advisor—they all sound extremely useful. But the thought of making an appointment, explaining everything and digging into it all felt like too much effort. Dad said, ‘Sweetheart, it’s heartbreak. The only way over it is through.’
I imagined Joel was thriving, and here I was, falling apart. I had thought I wanted a baby, and now I was alone and the desire for a baby had also left me.
Hayley said maybe I should get a dog. ‘To sit alone in the apartment while I am at work?’ I said. ‘Well, you need something . Let’s go to Ikea!’
We went to Ikea but it didn’t solve anything and I felt hot and sweaty and irritated at all the slow-walking families. I bought a Christmas tree, because Hayley thought it would brighten my apartment. She and Luke helped me decorate it, but I hadn’t bought enough decorations and instead of cheerful and cosy, it looked sad and half-hearted. Luke said, ‘Come and live with us in our spare room.’ Which is what I’d wanted the whole time, I realised, and Hayley had looked at him and kissed his cheek.
I went to live with them, and then my book was released in February, and everything starting to feel brighter, and better. I felt more like myself again.
I slipped into the role of third wheel very easily. Like I was born for it. Luke had to adjust though, because it became apparent Hayley and I were often a twosome he wasn’t part of. We would have Friday-night cheese platters and yoga on Saturday mornings and Sunday afternoon selfcare and Monday night icecream. And suddenly I could feel the wedding looming like a big full stop on the very happy, very co-dependent life I had created for myself. Because I was sure that Luke, at least, expected me to move out once they were married.
I broached it with Hayley one day.
‘I can’t keep living here once you’re married,’ I said.
‘Why not?’ she said. She was baking chocolate muffins and eating the chocolate buttons as she went. She tossed me one and I caught it in one hand. Hayley didn’t like cooking much but she was an incredible baker. We were about the same level of messiness, which was perfect. Hayley said we were much more compatible as housemates than she was with Luke, which was true, but I felt the danger in embracing this. I could not stay. This was temporary. I couldn’t get too comfortable.
‘Because it’s the right time to move out. So you can be newlyweds,’ I said.
‘We’ve been together for eight years.’
‘I know.’
‘You’re not moving out.’
‘The mums think I should.’
‘They do not.’
‘They do.’
‘They’re wrong.’
‘Are they though? I need to stand on my own feet.’
‘What does that even mean? Living with friends is better than living in some dumpy studio apartment with black mould and an oven that doesn’t turn on. We’re in a housing crisis.’
‘I’m cramping your style.’
‘You totally are not. Is she, Luke?’
‘What?’ he yelled from the bathroom.
‘Is Anna cramping our style? Is she invading our privacy?’
‘I’m on the toilet,’ he yelled back.
‘Just answer!’
‘When I come out.’
‘Luke! Just answer now or Anna will be offended!’
‘I won’t!’ I yelled.
‘Yes, my privacy is intact,’ he yelled.
‘See?’ Hayley had smiled at me.
I rolled my eyes at her.
‘I annoy you,’ I said.
‘Never.’
Hayley is actually hard to annoy. She has a very high tolerance for others’ behaviour but she expects the same in return. She has a lot of needs: for attention, sympathy, a playmate, a workout buddy, a TV-show buddy, someone to bake for, someone to clean up her baking mess, someone to yell at in the two days before her period arrives, to go on long walks with. I could see it was actually making Luke’s life easier to share those duties with me. But I still worried. Because there was the Joel factor, as we called it. They were still friends with him too.
I turned thirty not long after Joel and I broke up, which made everything worse of course. You are thirty now, you need to move on , I sternly told myself on the morning of my birthday. Thirty-year-olds don’t dwell. They don’t obsess. Then I got an email from Joel that said Hey Anna, Just wanted to say happy thirtieth. Hope it’s a good one. Joel x.
Hope it’s a good one? What the hell was that? One kiss x? An email , rather than a text? Was it giving friendship, or was it some kind of power play? Maybe he was still in love with me and he rewrote the email a hundred times, trying to hide his feelings. Or maybe it was guilt. Joel and I were still together when he turned thirty, and I spent three hundred and fifty dollars on a fancy watch for him. He really should return it to me.
I had put all these expectations on being thirty. On what I would have achieved, on how I was going to celebrate, on what was going to lie ahead. Of how I would feel (different, mature, wise, like a computer getting an upgrade, my internal voice rebooting, a movie going from a hapless teenager voiceover to smooth adult tones). But I felt the same. No, I had regressed because I didn’t really know this version of myself, untangled from Joel. My thirties were supposed to be Joel and me buying an apartment, getting a dog, and having a baby.
Not lying in Hayley and Luke’s spare room trying to record a ‘funny’ voice memo for my Hinge profile.
Not sitting in the backseat of a car trying not to cry as I contemplated how cute Joel’s baby was going to be.