It Sounded Better in My Head - Nina Kenwood Page 0,86

takes my shaking hands in his, folds them up, presses my fingers to his lips.

‘Do you know why I was afraid to kiss you at Benny’s party?’ he says.

‘No.’

‘And why I’ve been kind of freaking out ever since?’

‘I didn’t know you were freaking out.’

‘Because I’m this guy who’s not at uni, who doesn’t even have a job anymore, who has no idea what he’s doing. And you, you’re so smart—you just got into one of the best universities in the country—and you’re funny, you’re gorgeous, you’re beautiful. I don’t give a shit about those scars. I knew everyone would tell you that I wasn’t right for you, and what they would really mean is, you can do better. I thought they would say, “Gee, it’s a shame she couldn’t be with someone more like Zach.”’

He’s talking so fast, I can hardly catch all his words. I want to tell him, go back and say it all again, slowly, really slowly, then let me go away for an hour to process everything.

I also want to hug him and tell him a thousand nice things to make him feel better about himself. It’s shocking to me, the thought that I could do that, that I might do that one day, that he might need me to do that. I’m so used to being the broken one.

‘Okay. So now what?’ I say.

‘Now, I’m your boyfriend,’ he says, smiling a little.

‘I guess you are,’ I say, leaning forward and kissing him.

Probably everything will be terrible and we’ll never last, but right now, right this second, it feels like it could be something wonderful.

34

A New Plan

‘That’s not going to fit,’ Zach says.

‘That’s not going to fit,’ Dad yells.

‘It’ll fit,’ Mum and Alex yell back in unison.

Lucy and I are watching the four of them grappling with a very old sagging-in-the-middle couch we bought online and haggled the owner into delivering for free.

Lucy and I are moving out together.

The thought of Mum and me sharing an apartment, while she may or may not be dating, while she may or may not be having sex, possibly with Eric, was too much for me. The same goes for Dad. The plan of me living at home only worked with them together, I realised. It only worked in our house, with everything as it was before. Now they’re out there forging new lives for themselves, and I have to try to as well.

Mum and Dad are helping me with rent, but I need to find a part-time job. If I can’t earn enough money to cover my expenses, then I’ll have no choice but to move in with one of them. I have two interviews at cafes lined up for next week. My dream is to transition from waitress to retail worker to bookseller over the next three years, while I study. That’s my plan. My new plan.

I still can’t really think about university, even though it’s looming right around the corner. Picturing myself walking into a lecture theatre, on my own, for my first lecture, is so scary it makes my palms sweaty. But no one has ever died from sitting alone in a room full of people. That’s what I keep telling myself.

Lucy has deferred uni for a year. She is going to work full-time and take the year to figure out what she wants, and hopefully save up enough money to go backpacking around South America for a month. Maybe with Zach. Maybe not.

Lucy and I are renting a rundown house that has an ancient oven that possibly hasn’t been cleaned in a decade, a back door that lets in the slightest draught, a bathroom with a sink and mirror that’s far too small for anyone with needs beyond brushing their teeth, and a permanent dank smell in the laundry area. We have another roommate, a girl our age called Samira who described herself over email as quiet and mature, wanting to focus on her studies, but greeted us with a scream when we first met her. She runs an Instagram account featuring her girlfriend’s pug dog, and she owns what appears to be more than fifty pairs of shoes. I already mostly love her.

Zach leaves in a week, and he and Lucy still don’t know what they’re going to do. Possibly try long distance, but they might break up, or take a break, or something between the two that they’ve both tried to explain to me and I can’t make sense of. (‘We’ll still be together emotionally,’ Lucy keeps saying, and I keep nodding.)

Alex is very excited that I’ve moved out.

‘How many nights a week should I come over?’ he asked as soon as we found a place. He’s been my boyfriend for five weeks and two days, and I think things are going pretty well. He got a new job last week, which has made him so much happier, even though the chef in his new kitchen also yells a lot, but Alex says it’s a different kind of yelling, the funny kind, the tolerable kind.

I am still getting used to the idea that we’re together. Sometimes, I’ll just think of him, of us being together, and I’ll want to shout with happiness. Other times, it feels like my life would be so much easier if I didn’t have to be vulnerable in this new way.

Alex can be annoyingly slow to respond to text messages, he wears his shoes indoors constantly, and we have opposite taste in music, but the other night he leaned over to me and said, look at this, with a big goofy grin on his face, and held up his phone with a picture of someone’s pet rabbit wearing a bowtie and top hat at their wedding, and I looked at him and thought, I might love this guy.

Now everything is unpacked in our house and we’ve officially moved in, but Mum and Dad are reluctant to leave.

‘I don’t think the couch fits right,’ Mum says.

‘It does,’ I say.

‘It’s better where it was before,’ she says.

‘Then we’ll move it back. Later. Tonight. After Samira has seen everything.’

‘Are you sure you have enough food?’

‘Are you kidding? You’ve given me a week’s worth of meals to freeze. The freezer doesn’t even have that much space.’

I steer them both to the front door and out towards their respective cars.

‘Well, this is it, kiddo,’ Dad says.

Mum has tears in her eyes.

‘I don’t think I did a great job of teaching you how to cook,’ she says. This is true, she has taught me nothing about cooking, mostly because she herself knows very little.

‘Mum, I’m going out with an apprentice chef.’

‘Yes, but you need to know how to make stuff for yourself.’

‘That’s what the internet is for.’

‘I didn’t think you’d be moving out so soon,’ she says.

‘Well, you guys shouldn’t have broken up.’

That was a test, to see how sensitive they are to a pending-divorce-themed joke, and they both look upset, and I feel bad. But not that bad, because I’m still not over it, the ten-month lie and the destruction of our family. It’s like a little hard ball inside me, that I can ignore, that I can live with, but it’s still always there.

‘I’m kidding,’ I say. ‘This is good. This is a big step. One that we didn’t think was going to happen until I was at least thirty.’

‘You can still come home.’

‘I plan to.’

‘I mean, if it doesn’t work out.’

‘Yes, I know. I’ll have no other choice.’

‘Call us both every night,’ Dad says.

‘That’s excessive.’

‘Just for the first two weeks.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘And visit both of us every weekend.’

‘I will,’ I say. (I absolutely will not.)

This is it. There’s nothing else left to say. I open my arms, and we hug, all three of us, for a long time.

Then I turn and go inside, where Zach, Lucy and Alex are waiting for me. Where the beginning of a whole new life is waiting for me.