but I’d feel a lot better if we could just keep it as vague information circling in our minds rather than spelling it out.
‘How many is not many?’
‘A very, very small amount.’
‘How small?’
‘A statistically insignificant number.’
‘Natalie.’
‘None.’
‘Okay.’ He rubs his palms on his jeans. I think he’s sweating too.
‘Is that a problem?’ I ask.
‘Of course not,’ he says, but he looks worried.
‘Your face says otherwise.’
‘My face is normal.’
‘It’s not.’
‘It is.’
‘You look like someone who just got told bad news.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not someone who has any romantic fantasies about their first time.’
‘Clearly. You’ve already told me how bad you think it’s going to be.’
‘Not bad. I never said bad. Just not good.’
‘Right. You brought me over here to get the not good sex out of the way.’
‘So we can get to the good sex. You’re leaving that part out.’
Alex lies back on the bed and covers his face with his hands. His T-shirt rides up, exposing his stomach a little. I resist the urge to lie my palm against his skin, to press my face against it.
‘You’re killing me,’ he says.
‘Forget everything I’ve said today. Let’s start over.’
‘I can’t. It’s all burned into my brain.’
‘Well, unburn it.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Would it help if I said something sexy?’ I don’t know why I suggest this, because I’ve legitimately never said anything sexy in my life, but I need to turn things around somehow.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘It would make us both feel awkward I think.’
‘Let’s try it. It might reset the mood.’
‘I really don’t think—’
‘You look great in that T-shirt.’
He sits up a little, dropping his hands from his face.
‘You know what, I didn’t hate that.’
‘See? Now you try.’
‘Your hair looks really good today.’
‘That was a nice compliment, but it wasn’t sexy.’
‘Okay, you look great in that top.’
‘You’re just repeating me.’
‘Yes, but you look great for a different reason,’ he says, and his cheeks are a little bit pink. (I’m wearing my best-fitting bra with the Boob Top, so I know immediately what he means.)
‘We’re not bad at this,’ I say.
He slides over and kisses me, and it feels good to have his body covering mine again.
After a while I pause. ‘We’re not going to have sex today,’ I say.
‘I know,’ he says.
‘You don’t care that I keep changing my mind?’ I say.
‘No,’ he says.
28
Not the Result We Were Hoping For
This is it, the life-changing moment, the what-will-I-be-for-the-rest-of-my-life reveal. Or, more accurately, the what-will-I-be-doing-for-the-next-three-years reveal.
I have read the articles and heard from the career counsellors that no one has a career for life anymore, and we’ll all change jobs two hundred times and end up working in tech industries that don’t exist yet, and then robots will replace those jobs, and we’ll end up floating heads in glass cases buying things through our AI companions as the seas rise up to slowly consume us (Zach and I started co-writing a sci-fi novel based on this premise a year ago—it was going to be the first in a nine-book series, until we argued for a week over what to name the main character and then got distracted and forgot about it), and none of this really matters, except this moment right here, this am-I-getting-into-university-and-if-I-am-what-university-will-it-be-and-what-course-will-I-be-studying moment. This feels like it does matter, it really, really matters.
University offers are announced online at 2pm. It’s 1.57pm. I have spent the past hour and forty-three minutes freaking out: deep breathing, pacing, chewing five pieces of gum at once until my jaw aches, blocking social media on my phone so I don’t have to see reactions from other people, regretting the blocking and trying to delete the social-media blocking app. An irrational feeling of dread settled on me this morning, that maybe I actually misread my score last year, that maybe it was all a mistake, that maybe it’s not good enough and I won’t be offered anything, anywhere.
At least this is an improvement on how I behaved before the ATAR results were announced, when I got up at 6am and sat in my wardrobe for an hour, refusing to speak to Mum and Dad.
The clock ticks over. I log in, and the page loads very, very slowly. And then there it is. The course I wanted, Bachelor of Arts, at the university I wanted, the University of Melbourne.
There. I did it.
Everything as expected. My choice has been made.
It feels…anticlimactic.
I thought I would be filled with relief, and happiness, and I am, sort of. A slice of my future is now hard and concrete. But still, for the hours and hours