pick up a book.
I didn’t message him to say I was coming by, and I let myself in the back door. I knew I was doing this to see if Lucy was there, to see how she and Zach were interacting without me. I was imagining flirting, maybe catching them snuggled together watching a movie.
‘Hello?’ I called out, knowing that if they were in the den, then they probably wouldn’t be able to hear me.
I walked to the den and gave the door a small push. At first I thought it was empty, but then I saw Lucy and Zach on the couch, kissing passionately, completely entwined in each other.
‘Oh,’ I said, and jumped back. They didn’t hear me. I shut the door, turned too quickly in my hurry to get out of there and tripped over a pair of shoes in the hallway. My knees hit the floorboards really hard, and I sat on the floor for a minute, looking down, deep breathing, feeling shocked, feeling stupid for coming here with the intention of catching them, because I wasn’t prepared to see that.
I limped home slowly and, to my shame, I started to cry about halfway there. I pretended to myself I was crying because my knees hurt and I was cold and tired. But I knew I was crying because Zach and Lucy hadn’t needed me at all to get together, and even though I had known they were going to get together, I hadn’t expected them to be that together. I was picturing lingering looks, and they were well on their way to who knows what. Well, I did know what. Lucy had had sex before, so why wait now? I could hear a nasty tone in my own mind. I was slut-shaming my best friend in the privacy of my thoughts. I was a gross, horrible person. A sad, single, unlovable, horrible, repulsive person.
I limped and cried the rest of the way home, and then I had to sneak into my own house and hide in the shower until my face looked less red and tearful.
My left knee had a gigantic bruise on it.
‘Oh, my god. How did that happen?’ Lucy asked me at school the next day.
‘I fell over.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Yeah. It hurt.’
9
Auld Lang Syne
Zach, Lucy and I are sitting on a sand dune and sharing a bottle of pink champagne. I take a small sip and hand it to Lucy, who swigs a couple of times before handing it to Zach, who drinks and then makes a face. He doesn’t like pink champagne. Neither do I. We got it for Lucy, because drinking pink champagne all together on the beach on New Year’s Eve is something she wanted to do, and we like to make her happy, especially at the moment. She still occasionally gets that faraway look in her eye, the look that says she isn’t as happy as she seems to be.
‘We did it,’ Zach says, holding the bottle of champagne up to the starry sky.
‘To finishing school,’ I say.
‘To our future,’ Zach says.
‘To staying friends forever,’ Lucy says.
‘To all going to the same uni,’ I say. We all want to go to Melbourne, mostly because we were told that was the university to aim for. I will do arts, then maybe honours and a PhD (I am the kind of person who will just keep automatically doing the next study option until there are none left). Lucy will do commerce, then post-grad law, and Zach will do science then medicine, and we’ll be together as a co-dependent unit for six years or longer and I won’t even have to try to make a single new friend until I’m at least twenty-five.
‘To getting everything we want,’ Zach says, which feels like a bit much, but he’s never had any reason to think that’s not possible, to be honest.
I lie back in the sand, close my eyes and listen to the sound of the waves.
‘What is Alex doing tonight?’ Lucy says, startling me because I was just wondering the same thing.
‘Working, remember,’ Zach says.
‘And then what?’ I ask.
‘Then he’ll probably go out and sleep with a bunch of girls.’
‘A bunch of girls?’ My voice almost squeaks.
‘Okay, maybe just one girl. Or no girls. I have no idea.’
My mind is still stuck back on the ‘sleep with a bunch of girls’ part. I feel ridiculous for thinking a kiss on the cheek meant anything. It’s like the hands-touching moment with Zach. I fixate on tiny nothings