38
PATRICK IS PICKING me up from the bookshop for our first date. I wore an oversize white shirt today, because I thought it made me look arty and interesting and a little bit sexy when unbuttoned the right amount, but, of course, I spilled coffee on it within seconds of arriving. Despite my best efforts at the tiny sink, I wasn’t able to remove the stain so my options were to wear a stained shirt or put on Bobbi’s ugly shop cardigan. I took off my shirt and wore the cardigan over a singlet top for most of the day, but now, at the end of the day when I’m standing outside, checking the window display I just rearranged, I catch sight of myself in the cardigan in the window reflection, and I look so frumpy that I almost gasp. The cardigan is pilling and looks like it could be my grandmother’s dressing gown. The stained shirt is the only option.
Someone touches my shoulder as I turn my attention back to the window display (I keep changing my mind on whether the new Elizabeth Strout or Claire Keegan should be given pride of place) and I really do gasp then, turning around. It’s Patrick.
‘Hey, sorry to scare you,’ he says.
‘Hey!’ I say brightly. ‘I’m not wearing this,’ I add quickly.
‘You look cute,’ he says. He sounds sincere. How can I ever trust his taste now.
‘It’s the shop cardigan.’
‘I don’t know what that means,’ he says. He sounds apologetic. He’s always so earnestly sweet . I smile and invite him in while I get my things.
I dump the shop cardigan back on its hook. I have a third option: just completely freeze in my singlet even though I’m a firm believer in dressing appropriately for the weather.
Patrick sits in the chair in the corner and watches me fuss around and shut down the computers.
‘You can browse if you like,’ I say. ‘I’ll just be a minute.’
‘I’m okay,’ he says.
I am acutely aware of his eyes on me.
‘So where are we going exactly?’ I say.
He was evasive when I asked him earlier, which gives off serial-killer vibes, but Hayley and my mother can both track my phone, and I promised them I wouldn’t go anywhere I didn’t have other people in my eyeline.
‘It’s a surprise,’ he says.
‘A first-date surprise is a bold move,’ I say, smiling.
‘I know,’ he says, looking worried. ‘My mother suggested it and I’ve been rethinking the whole thing ever since.’
Now I laugh.
‘It’ll be fine,’ I say.
‘You’ll be really cold,’ he says, looking at me with concern.
‘We’ll be indoors, right?’
‘No,’ he says, sounding genuinely anguished.
It’s winter. A mild winter night but, still, it’s cold. An outdoor surprise date in Melbourne winter—this is certainly a big swing.
‘Okay. Let me get the ugly cardigan. And let it be known, it’s your fault you have to look at me looking like this for the whole night.’
‘You look nice,’ he says when I return in the cardigan. ‘Honestly. Very nice.’
We bump into each other as we reach the door, and he looks embarrassed and steps back.
‘Sorry. You first,’ he says.
‘Thank you.’
His nerves are making me feel less nervous somehow.
We walk to his car and I look at him, then cross my arms.
‘Okay, if you want me to get in, you need to tell me where we’re going. It’s against my self-preservation rules otherwise.’
‘Oh. Sorry. You’re right,’ he says. ‘We’re going to the Botanical Gardens. They have a light show. They call it a light-scape, with all these lights set up through the gardens and you can sit on the hill and have a picnic. I bought tickets. You haven’t been already, have you?’ He pulls out the tickets to show me, as if I need proof, and I want to hug him, because he looks so anxiously hopeful.
‘No, I haven’t been. And that sounds lovely,’ I say. ‘Let’s go.’ Patrick has packed a picnic basket, and he has a picnic blanket, and a spare puffer jacket for me to wear, and another blanket as well. We walk along the trail in the gardens, and admire the beautiful lights, and it is lovely but a little bit awkward because Patrick has insisted on carrying everything. He has a rug slung over each shoulder and the basket in his arms, and one of the rugs keeps slipping off onto the ground.
‘Please let me carry something,’ I say, as he stops to adjust the basket, grunting a little. I’m wearing the spare puffer jacket. It’s huge on me and I’m cosy and warm, and, as a bonus, the ugly cardigan is hidden from view.
‘Absolutely not,’ he says. ‘You are allowed to admire the lights and that’s it.’
‘I’ll just carry this blanket. It’s light. What is it for anyway?’
‘In case you get cold, I wanted to have a spare blanket to put over your shoulders.’
‘Well, that’s very thoughtful.’
We set up the picnic on a grassy rise where other couples and families are sitting, and we have a view of the night sky. The sound of flying foxes chattering in the trees around us is a little disconcerting, but I am determined to appreciate the effort and romance of this date. This is how a first date should be. He bought tickets, he packed dinner, he brought me a spare coat and a spare blanket. The mums will practically faint when I tell them.
Patrick pulls out an assortment of containers, with pasta salad and cheese and crusty bread and fruit and a quiche and a bottle of wine. He has plates and cutlery and little cups for the wine. No wonder he was struggling with the basket, he was basically carrying half a kitchen.
‘I can’t believe this,’ I keep saying.
‘Too much?’ he says. ‘I have a tendency to go overboard.’
‘Not at all,’ I say. ‘It’s fun to have someone go overboard on you.’ And it is, I realise. He did all this planning and organising and preparing for me .
I notice he’s not eating the cheese, or the pasta salad, and I offer both to him.
‘No thanks, I’m dairy free and gluten free.’
‘Why didn’t you use gluten-free pasta?’
‘It’s not as nice. I wanted you to enjoy it.’ That is incredibly sweet and leaves me feeling immense pressure to eat it all. Luckily, it’s delicious.
After we’ve finished eating, we lie back on the rug and look at the stars.
‘I’m sorry about the fruit bats,’ he says, as another one screeches overhead.
‘They’re cute,’ I say.
This is a lie, I find fruit bats almost as terrifying as magpies—I keep imagining one is about to fall on me, its wing touching my face, but I’m not going to complain. ‘They add to the atmosphere,’ I say.
We chat, and he peppers me with questions. Where did I grow up? What did I study? What are my parents like? Where have I travelled? What is my favourite food?
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Too many questions?’
‘I like questions.’
‘When I get nervous, I just keep asking questions. And now I’m just saying whatever thought is in my mind,’ he says, smiling but looking slightly appalled at himself.
I laugh.
‘My turn to ask questions,’ I say. ‘I’ll start with the most annoying. Where do you see yourself in five years?’
‘Married with kids,’ he says immediately. Then he looks anxious again. ‘Sorry. Did that scare you?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘Wait. How many kids?’
‘Between two and four.’
‘Now I’m scared. Four kids in the next five years?’
‘No, that’s a ten-year plan. A very loose one. I’m an only child, and I always dreamed of a big family.’
‘I’m an only child too,’ I say.
We smile at each other.
‘Why did you give me a second chance? After I never replied to you?’ I ask.
‘Everyone deserves a second chance,’ he says. ‘And I’m more of a slow burn. It can take’—he pauses, calculating—‘fifteen months to realise how dateable I am.’
I laugh, and he looks at me with a serious face.
‘I do have one more question,’ he says.
‘What’s that?’
‘Can I kiss you?’
‘You can,’ I say.
It’s awkward at first—it’s always awkward when someone asks, the hesitation after you say yes, the wait for him to lean in, the self-awareness of preparing my lips to be kissed, of closing my eyes at the right moment—but after a moment, I’m into it. He’s a pretty good kisser. And, I realise, I haven’t thought about his dexterous fingers once tonight. Not even when he carefully cut up the cheese.
He drives me home, and in the car outside my house, he asks to kiss me again.
‘You don’t need to keep asking,’ I say, after I draw back from the kiss.
‘I like to ask the first three times,’ he says.
‘Okay, let’s get that third ask out of the way,’ I say, pulling him towards me and kissing him again.
It’s nice. It’s all so nice. Not everything needs to feel like it did with Mac. This feeling—of being safe, of enjoying his company, of slow-building attraction—can be wonderful too.
Later that night, I take the photo of Mac and me out of my bedside drawer. I have to get rid of it, I decide. Because Patrick’s fingers might no longer be a problem, but the picture is. It’s weighing me down, it’s holding me back. I want Patrick, the bookshop, my life here, and I can’t if I’m holding on to this fantasy.
Because I miss Mac. I miss his voice, I miss his words popping up on my phone, I miss talking about movies, I miss us telling each other stories, I miss imagining what I’m going to say to him throughout the day before we get to talk. I miss all of it. But the missing-him pain is like the pain you feel when you go back to weights at the gym after a long hiatus. Every muscle hurts because it’s been torn apart but it’s also rebuilding, it’s getting stronger. And I can only keep getting stronger if I get the photograph out of my life.
I take out a piece of paper, a nice piece of paper from my fancy stationery box (a box of stationery items I have bought because they are beautiful and then never used), and I write a note: Dear Mac, someone gave me this photo of us and it makes me think of you. I still think about you all of the time. Because it was wonderful. I hope you are well. And happy. Love, Anna .
That is an unhinged letter if I have ever seen one. I fold the letter around the picture. I will probably throw both of them away tomorrow, in the light of day.
But I decide to send it, because if I want to pursue anything with Patrick, I need to get rid of this picture. Let it burn a hole in Mac’s life. Let him throw it out or put it in a box somewhere. Let it be his burden. I have to let go of him, all of him.
I get up early and I go to the post office before work and buy a special envelope for sending photos, with cardboard backing, and I send the photo and letter to Mac’s address, before I have second thoughts.
I immediately regret it, of course. How embarrassing, sending that. It’s all so dramatic. I’m not a teenager. I could have just thrown it away, or given it to Hayley to put in a box for me to find in twenty years. Or burned it in a ceremony with Bobbi. We could integrate it into the new shop opening: come and burn pictures of your ex-boyfriend and we’ll give you a new literary man to love.
But it’s done now and I do feel better. I feel lighter. I found Patrick in the end and I should have just saved myself a whole lot of time and heartache and kissed him at the wedding instead. The mums will be so happy.