45
MAC HAS TO leave early the next day for his flight, and it’s my first day as manager at the new bookshop so I can’t drive him to the airport. Our goodbye is rushed and haphazard and not romantic or special in any sense.
It feels like the world should be tilting on its axis, or something should be different, but nothing is. Until I see you again, I think as I watch him go. I don’t have time to cry into my pillow, and I refuse to start my first day in the new shop with red-rimmed eyes. My chest feels heavy, like my heart has turned to stone and grown fifteen sizes and I’m stuck dragging it around, but the rest of me is going to be energetic and positive, damn it.
The new shop is roughly the same size as the original, painted the same blue on the outside, with slightly darker wood shelving on the inside, and the trademark blue velvet chair. Bobbi and I spent hours the day before my launch shelving all the stock, and everything is perfectly clean and organised and just right, in a way it might never be again. I’ve brought my own shop cardigan to keep here, a long grey knit which is frumpy and ugly because I feel like that’s an important tradition to uphold, and we bought another typewriter to continue the typed recommendation cards. This one is orange, and when I run my hands over the keys, I get a little thrill. All the words I can write on it, all the books I can recommend.
There’s still a lot to do. I need to hire a part-timer, order some more signage, get a bin and a better broom, figure out a system for storing the boxes, and that’s just off the top of my head.
My first customer walks in right after I open, a young cheerful woman in her twenties with a nose ring and pink hair, and she asks me to recommend a great love story, which feels rather symbolic.
‘Happy or sad ending?’ I ask her.
‘Happy please,’ she says.
I’m stocking more romance than Bobbi does in the other shop, so I have an array of options for her. She buys three books, promising to come back and tell me what she thinks.
Bobbi and Mum arrive at lunchtime.
‘Go out and get a sandwich, sweetheart,’ Bobbi says. ‘When you get back, I’m going to film you giving a tour.’ Bobbi has insisted that it’s time for me to appear on our social media.
When I get back with sandwich in hand, I find Mum in the front window, dismantling the careful display I had created.
‘Mum! What are you doing!’ I half-shriek.
‘I noticed an important book was missing from the display,’ she says, innocently holding up a stack of copies of my book. ‘Bobbi okayed it,’ she adds, looking at my face.
I shake my head. I don’t have the energy to tussle with my mother today.
Bobbi is at the counter, and her face looks a little odd.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh nothing. Just thinking.’
‘I’m just going to eat this in the backroom and then I’ll be out, okay?’
‘Take your time.’
I walk into the backroom, mentally running through a list of the books I still need to order, and yelp.
For a moment, I think I’m imagining things.
But I’m not.
Mac is sitting there.
Mac is sitting there .
He’s at my desk, reading a book, and he looks startled when I come in.
He stands up.
‘Hey.’
‘What are you doing here? Was your flight delayed?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘Then what?’
‘I didn’t get on it.’
‘Oh.’ I put my sandwich down. ‘Why not?’
‘Well. I didn’t want to.’ He stands up, letting the book close without marking his place.
We look at each other.
‘What does that mean?’ I ask.
‘Look. I’ve been thinking about it, and—I’m moving back. I’m going to move back home.’
‘Home where?’
‘Here. Melbourne.’
‘No, you’re not. You live in New York. You have your new show. It’s your big breakout role.’
‘Do you know how many big breaks I’ve had? Or almost big breaks? I’m always one role, one audition, away from the next big thing. But I don’t want to grind away and survive for another ten years, twenty years, and wake up alone.’
‘So you’re quitting?’
‘No. They make TV and theatre and films here in Australia, you know.’
‘But it’s not the same.’
‘No, it’s not. But I have spent a decade of my life in another country, chasing a dream, and now I want to come home and chase a different one.’
‘But you hate being here, without your mum.’
‘Not anymore.’
‘She told you not to come back for anything.’
‘She never said don’t come back for love. I think she’d consider that a good enough reason.’
‘What if it’s a huge letdown, being back here?’
‘I was thinking, Luke and I could get paddleboards. I could help my sister and babysit my niece and nephew. Spend time with my family again. You and I can be together. Properly together. These are all things I couldn’t have when I was living there.’
‘Those things are a lot smaller though, than fame and fortune.’
‘Who says I won’t have fame and fortune here?’
‘No one comes back to Australia to be famous.’
‘I’m coming back to be happy , Anna.’
I look at him, look into his eyes. I step towards him, put my arms around him, slide them under his T-shirt at the back, so I can touch his skin.
‘I just want you to be sure,’ I say. ‘Before I let myself believe this is happening.’
‘If you don’t want it, tell me. It’s okay. I know it’s a lot. If you’re not feeling what I’m feeling, tell me.’
‘I want it.’
‘But?’
‘But relationships don’t work when one person gives up everything for the other one.’
‘It doesn’t feel like I’m giving up everything though. It doesn’t feel like I’m giving up anything. It feels like I’m getting something. I’m getting everything.’
‘Me too,’ I whisper.
He kisses me then, quickly, planting kisses all over my face, and I kiss him back, laughing, giddy with possibility, with hope, with dreams.