8
I WALK INTO the bathroom, hands shaking, heart racing, and there’s Bianca. She’s leaning over the sink and splashing water onto her face with a total disregard for what it’s doing to her make-up.
‘Oh, sorry,’ I say.
She doesn’t look up, but just keeps splashing.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask.
She lifts her head a little, with what looks like great effort. Her eyeliner is smudged and there’s a water droplet on the end of her nose.
‘Yes, I’m fine.’ She does not look fine.
‘You look like you’re about to faint.’
‘I do feel a little bit faint,’ she says, with a small laugh, the kind of laugh you give when nothing is funny but you don’t know what else to do.
‘Here,’ I say, taking her arm and steering her to the door. ‘Let’s sit in the hallway for a minute.’
She doesn’t object, and we sit together on the carpet near the toilets. I look around for Joel, but he’s nowhere in sight. I guess he went back into the main room. Bianca puts her head in between her knees.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yes.’
‘Should I get Joel?’
‘No, I just need a minute.’
‘Do you think you’re going to be sick?’ I ask, because I really draw the line at being responsible for that clean-up.
‘No, I took something that has helped with the nausea. I just feel so, so…’
‘Awful?’ I say.
‘Awful,’ she says, burying her head in her hands. ‘It comes on in waves. Just hits me.’
‘Can I get you some water?’
‘No. Just sitting here is making me feel better,’ she says.
‘That’s good,’ I say.
‘I didn’t imagine it like this, you know?’
I make a noncommittal noise. I’m not even sure she has properly registered who she’s speaking to.
‘I imagined I would be one of those women who just thrived in pregnancy. My mum and my sister loved being pregnant. Like, loved it a stupid amount. Glowed, swanned around like they were on a cloud, felt beautiful. But I have been nauseous and vomiting and had the worst headaches of my life. And vertigo. And total exhaustion. And I’m so emotional. And I am only seven weeks! What if it’s like this the whole time? It’s torture.’
I don’t know what to say. I put a hand on her back and pat it in a way I hope conveys sympathy.
‘I’m so thirsty and you know what makes me feel sicker than anything? Water. Water! How does that make sense? Like, biologically. Why would you make pregnant women feel repulsed at the sight of water.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, truthfully. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It doesn’t,’ she says, on the verge of tears.
I’m usually quite good with other people’s emotions, but in this moment, with this person, after my fight with Joel, I am barely holding it together myself. I have no words of wisdom for Bianca. I don’t know anything about pregnancy, for a start.
‘I’m sorry you’re going through this,’ I say, and I realise I mean it.
‘I just feel like I’m failing at pregnancy,’ she says, wiping her eyes. ‘It shouldn’t be this hard. Everyone else can cope with it.’ Then she looks at me, and I can see the realisation hitting, exactly who I am and what she is saying. ‘Anna, I’m so sorry. You don’t need to look after me.’
‘It’s okay,’ I say.
Someone clears their throat above us, and I look up to see Mac.
‘Are you okay?’ he says, and I’m not sure which one of us he’s speaking to.
‘Not really,’ Bianca says. ‘I mean, yes, just feeling shit.’
Mac squats down. ‘My sister said pregnancy was the worst nine months of her life.’
Bianca looks up at him. ‘Really?’ she says. She sounds so hopeful.
Mac nods. ‘Yes, it was bad. She was really sick. Then she had terrible heartburn. And she got a condition that made her unbearably itchy. And something else with her back.’
‘Oh, the poor thing,’ Bianca said.
‘She said the first year of my nephew’s life was a breeze compared to pregnancy,’ he went on.
‘Oh, see, that’s what I’m hoping. If the pregnancy is really, really bad, then you get rewarded with an easy baby.’ Bianca is looking up at Mac like he’s an oracle, a god, Santa presenting her a well-behaved child and a happy life.
‘I don’t know much about kids, so I could be wrong, but I don’t think my nephew was an easy baby, and he’s definitely a total terror now he’s a toddler. It’s more that pregnancy just sucked so much and looking after him is a lot more fun,’ Mac says. ‘I don’t think this is supposed to be the fun part.’
‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That helps.’
She continues gazing at Mac like he’s a hero. I’m the one on the ground with her, patting her damn back. Mac holds out a hand, and she takes it, letting him help her up.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, looking down at me. ‘I’m not normally like this.’
‘You’re fine,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to apologise.’
‘I do,’ she says quietly.
I shake my head and swallow hard. ‘You don’t.’ My voice is harsher than I mean it to be. But the alternative is slopping my emotions everywhere.
She straightens her dress. ‘Well, I’m going to head back to the table.’
I can see her steeling herself. She has dessert to get through. There are a lot of glasses of water on the table. Her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend’s parents are in the room. She’s trying to make a good impression. It will be at least an hour before she can just lie down and close her eyes. It comforts me to know this dinner isn’t easy for her either.
‘See you out there,’ I say.
She leaves us in the hallway, me still on the floor. Mac looks down at me, and I make no move to get up. Maybe I’ll stay down here all night.
‘Are you okay?’ he says.
‘Yes.’
No .
I just need a moment to get there, to get it all back under control. My therapist (a term I am using very generously, as I only saw her for five sessions) would say, now is the right time to go for a long walk. Now is the time to be kind to yourself. Now is the time to do the breathing she showed me—breathe in like you’re smelling a flower, breathe out like you’re blowing out a candle.
A while ago, I watched a video of a woman who broke up with her long-time partner in her mid-thirties and she said she was so confident that she was going to find someone else and fall in love, have a family, all that jazz, that it never even occurred to her it wouldn’t happen. But it didn’t. She was happy, in her fifties, and she’d travelled and had a great and interesting life, but the undercurrent of it stuck with me. This thing you think will happen, this certainty you have for the life you’re going to lead, the person you want to be, the way you think your life will go, it might not happen. You might not get it . Whatever it is, I’m not sure anymore.
‘Come on, they’re serving dessert,’ Mac says. He holds out his hand.
‘Is it chocolate?’ I say. I really need chocolate.
‘Yes. Chocolate mousse.’
‘Okay.’ I’ll get up for chocolate mousse.
I put my hand in his, and he pulls me to my feet, and once I am standing, he keeps hold of my hand. Or maybe I keep hold of his. It’s a friendly gesture. Except touching his hand is giving me an unexpected thrill.
Mac is looking at me, and it feels like he can really see me.
I swallow hard, and I’m about to turn away when he suddenly, gently, pulls me towards him, and hugs me.
He’s a good hugger. I’ll give him that.
It’s a pity hug, I know, and yet it feels so good. I don’t even hug him back at first, I just kind of lean my whole body against him and let my head rest on his shoulder. I tuck my face into the crook of his neck, and he smells so good. I’m scared he’s going to notice me inhaling him. After a few more seconds, I move hands up and around his neck and hug him back kind of desperately, which is humiliating in more ways than I can even begin to count, but I don’t care—I’m drowning, and I need someone to drag me up, metaphorically and physically. I barely know this man, and I don’t care.
I am acutely aware that we have been hugging for a long time, but I don’t want to let him go. I think I’m just trying to scoop up a scrap of affection, from him, from anyone, before I go out there and sit down and see Joel’s face again, before I see Bianca, before I see my parents, before I have to try to flirt with Patrick.
A little morsel of kindness. A little hit of joy. An escape. A handsome man has his arms wrapped around me and I don’t want this sensation to end.
I finally get a grip on myself and pull back a little and he does too, but our hands are still on each other, and now we’re in the even more intimate stance of standing with our faces very close together looking at each other.
Then without thinking, without really understanding what I am doing, I lean in and kiss him.