by Bryce Taylor
"I'm not going to jump you," she says, just as I take a mouthful of noodles.
I choke.
"My tattoos," I mumble.
"What's that?" she says.
I cough. Take a sip of water.
Jo doesn't drink. Of course. So, we are doing this alcohol-free. Hurrah.
"My tattoos," I explain, more clearly.
She laughs. "Bless you Meg, but I think I've been confronted with worse things," she says. A pause. "Anyway, I like your tattoos."
Not all of them.
The naked pinup girl on my bicep for instance.
"I have a confession to make," she says into the silence.
Jo with a confession, how is that even possible? She notes every sin and defect as they occur. I look up, her grey eyes locked with my blue ones.
"I google you every so often," she says contritely.
Oh. My. God.
A sickening thud as my heart drops.
Please don't let that mean she has seen the photos of me in that magazine article in my boxer shorts and bra.
A thing that seemed like a great idea when I was trying to drum up funding for my company. You know, girls in tech plus tattoos plus no clothes. I did get an awful lot of offers.
And some funding.
Cas was understandably pissed for a whole month after.
Please let it be the articles where I wear my glasses and all my clothes and say intelligent shit about data and technology.
She grins. "I've seen all your tattoos," she says. Not an iota of shame.
Shit.
I smile despite the situation. She hasn't actually seen all of them.
"So, you might as well," she says. She is smirking at me.
Yeah, right.
I take it off. I'm not covered in tatts. There are only twelve on my entire body, although I suspect in this situation size does count for something. She can only see the five that are on my arms.
She is eyeing me up and down. If she were gay it would be an invitation. Wildly inappropriate since she isn't.
"I thought your muscles were photo shopped," she says with interest.
And my face is aflame again.
"You really do blush very easily," she says.
Apparently, I do. Just for her.
"It's cute," she says, "do girls like that?"
Is she flirting with me?
No.
Of course not.
"Yeah, they do," I tell her grinning. Pause. "Is it working?"
She kicks me with her foot. "I don't know, " she says, "but it sure is fun."
Nice. Thanks, Jo.
We finish dinner.
Talk till the sun comes up. Her ankle resting against mine.
About everything and nothing.
Mostly nothing. We have nothing in common now, even less than before and somehow we have more to talk about. I don't even know how that is possible.
I do glean that she doesn't have any children.
I'd thank god but it seems a little sacrilegious right now.
I neglect to mention Cassie all night long.
She hugs me quickly as I leave and I manage to not hold her for too long. Hope fervently that she will stick around for a while.
I go back to work for a shower and some muesli. She goes back to bed. I think she will spend the next few days catching up on sleep.
I'm aware of how bad this could look. A woman in my corporate apartment. Me staying the whole night. Coming out in the same clothes. Too late to do anything about it now. Let the dice fall where they may.
At midday, she texts me.
Jo: What do you want for dinner?
Me: Anything, I'm easy
Jo: I was asking about dinner?
Me: Ha bloody ha. So funny
Jo: I thought so
Me: Do I get some options?
Jo: Not anymore
Jo: You'll get whatever I give you
Is she flirting? I don't even know.
Me: What time do you want me?
I'm flirting anyway.
Jo: I'm free and easy
No shit. Me too.
Me: Five?
I've never actually left work this early before.
Jo: Don't you have a job?
Me: I'm the boss
Jo: Ok - see you then.
I'm at her door, one minute past five.
She is waiting in the doorway again. I wonder how long she would have waited. I'm never late. Not for her anyway. But still.
Stonewashed jeans, possibly from the nineties, back in fashion. It's a guarantee that she does not know this fact. White tank. Barefoot. Hair loose, tucked behind her ears.
She looks amazing.
She has an unexpectedly great body. I don't think I've ever seen so much of her. She had a penchant for bulky shirts and sweaters when I used to her know her. Poorly fitting clothes in general. Slender arms with just enough definition.
She hugs me briefly. Pulls back. "Is that ok?" she asks, looking worried.
Yeah, it's ok. You can hug me anytime.
"Was it good for you?" I ask her, grinning evilly.
She punches me gently on the arm. "Your sense of humour is way worse than it was when you were a teenager," she says. "Come in, dinner is almost ready."
She cooked? Dinner at five o'clock?
It never occurred to me that this kitchen would ever get used.
She has made pasta.
It is delicious.
We sit at the same ends of the couch, facing each other, legs crossed. I try not to stare at her bare arms. The occasional glimpses of cleavage. Her legs.
She catches me up on her day.
Today she has done her washing. Bought some groceries. Bought clothes second-hand in the slightly dodgy end of town a few blocks away. Started applying for jobs.
"Oh, where?" I ask.
"Doctors without Borders, UNICEF, a few other places," she says and shrugs.
At least she isn't doing the religious aid organisations even if she hasn't quite graduated to for-profit companies. I know someone at Doctors without Borders. Someone who I've been meaning to catch up with.
We talk. I introduce her to Netflix, Spotify, Instagram, SnapChat and PayPal. It is surreal that she has never used any of these things. She tells me quite seriously that she has used eBay once and that she has a Yahoo email address. She asks about Facebook. I do laugh then.
We debate. Existentialism. Kierkegaard versus Nietzsche.
I should have brushed up. I could hardly keep up with her before. Now that I haven't thought about anything deeper than my own reflection for years I am dull as a blade left out in the weather. She cuts all my arguments to pieces and leaves them on the floor in tatters.
My eyelids start to droop after a few hours. Apparently, I can't go for more than a day without sleep anymore.
"You could stay here," she says when I wander off on yet another tangent.
I freeze, my eyes wide. There is gay-friendly. Then there is very gay-friendly.
"I'll stay on the couch," she clarifies.
Oh.
Of course.
I am far, far too disappointed.
"No, I'm good, I should get going," I tell her.
"You aren't good," she grins.
Her flirting, not flirting is killing me.
I glare at her.
"You love me," she says smiling, a statement.
Oh, god.
I do love her.
My face is a fury of red.
Her eyes are widening.
"I've gotta go," I mumble. Grab my jacket. Bolt. Out the door.
She catches me at the lift. I'm pressing the button over and over again knowing that it is already too late.
"Where are you going?" she asks, hurt writ across her face.
I'm looking at her and the pain in my chest is scaring me. That I love her and I can't have her. Can't never, ever have her.
I'm trembling. Adrenaline and fear a heady combination.
&nbs
p; "Home," I choke out.
"What's going on, Meg?" she asks.
"Nothing," I lie.
"Meg." Warningly.
"Nothing." Flatly. I want to say something to push her away. Like; 'one of us has to work tomorrow'. I want to hold her close. Tell her I'm in love with her.
The lift arrives.
I leave.
She doesn't text me.
Eventually I text her.
Me: I'm sorry.
Jo: You must be tired.
Me: I have no excuse
Jo: I forgive you
Of course she does.
Chapter 3 – Goodbye
I call my friend Pamela at Doctors Without Borders. I can't explain Jo's situation or anything that she has told me in confidence. I can pass on what is freely available on the internet about her three degrees and her masters. I can tell her about how intelligent and driven Jo is, how much she truly believes in all this charitable stuff. Pamela agrees to take a look. Talk to a few people.
Jo gets the job. Not anything to do with me. Not really. I get her the interview. The rest is all her.
We see each other only twice in the next three days.
Not in her apartment.
Standing at the coffee cart out the front of my work.
In her lobby. Her eyes sliding past mine, unreadable. I'm not good with people, but I know I should ask what is wrong. Trouble is I don't want to her to say that it is me, that I've made her uncomfortable, I don't want her to ask me more questions that I will answer with lies.
Jo looks radiant. Sleep and freedom doing her a world of good.
I am fraught. Wrung out. Sleepless.
We text. Well, mostly I text her.
Five short days after I first saw her in the cafe she is moving out.
She meets me in the lobby.
She is going back to Syria.
In the middle of a fucking war.
I want to call Pamela and have some strings pulled. But Jo looks so happy. Sparkling with the joy of being useful.
I could think of a few ways she could be useful here.
She says she will be back in a few months. It is administrative work not operational. She is just going to be using her prior experience and language skills to help organise supplies and accommodation. To cut through local bureaucracy. She will be back in the Sydney office soon.
I know I will be sick with worry the entire time.
I am already sick with worry after all.
She is too open and trusting for work like this.
She returns my money. All of it. My phone. She has got a new phone herself. A smartphone. I smile despite myself.
She doesn't do material gifts but she does give me an envelope. Inside a handwritten transcription of Wordsworth, 'I wandered lonely as a cloud'. I know it well. Off by heart. It is one of my favourites.
When I read the line 'A poet could not but be gay,' in her neat writing I wonder if she is fucking with me.
She hugs me goodbye, in a clinical, stiffly saying farewell to a relative you've only met once kind of a way. I wish she hadn't. It makes me feel cold.
I don't drop her off at the airport. She uses Uber. I could laugh but I feel like crying.
Cassie comes home from the conference and dumps me. She has been seeing someone else for the last year. Who knew? I guess I should have if I'd thought about it. I only have myself to blame. I'm relieved since I was finally planning to do it. Tomorrow or if not the next day.
I move out. To the corporate apartment. I sit on Jo's end of the couch and eat my takeaway. When I go home that is. Mostly I work like crazy. Then when my mind is too exhausted to work anymore I work my body at the gym.
Jo and I email haphazardly. At least she emails me occasionally between the vital life-saving work she is doing. Short emails with tiny snippets of her life that I read and reread and treasure. I email her immediately back with lengthy heartfelt replies full of nothingness. I have those emails pre-drafted full of musings and odds and ends that I have collected whilst thinking of her.
I do worry myself sick over her. Wake in the night with damp palms and a racing heart from nightmares that are already slipping away.
A few months turn into six.
I finally raise the money to buy out Cassie's share of the business. I have dinner with Cassie and her new partner. Not that new I guess. They look good together. I wish she'd told me sooner, I feel as if I were the one who was the home wrecker for the last year of our relationship. They are off to London, starting afresh. I'm genuinely happy for them.
It makes me realise how much me being checked out of our relationship must have hurt Cassie and how much of a jerk I was. I think whilst I'm eating dinner, 'someday I'll apologise'.
Then I think, 'Jo would apologise'.
"I'm sorry," I tell them both, staring at my empty plate. I look up at Cas. "You deserved better than me." It doesn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Cassie hugs me. Says she forgives me.
I wonder if Jo would, in my position, remind Cassie that she was the one who was cheating on me for an entire year. I don't know, but I guess being humble won't kill me.
I raise more funding for the business, enough that I can pay myself again. Enough that I can expand, a few more staff, a stack more clients.
Donate a bunch of money to charity. Doctors without Borders included. After all they are doing a lot of good work in Syria.
Buy a house. A cute terrace on the other side of town to where Cassie and I had lived. I'm finally sick of the tiny apartment now that I don't spend all seven days a week at work.
Jo is ten months gone and I'm preparing to move into the new house at last.
I don't have any stuff anymore. Just boxes of clothes and shoes.
A friend who does interior design fits out my house. Art, appliances, cutlery, rugs, furniture, bed linen, towels, everything. It looks stunning. A little impersonal but I'm sure that will wear off. Or wear in. Or not.
It looks the part at least.
I plan a housewarming party for the weekend. Reluctantly. Under duress. My friends think I'm still hurting over Cassie. Why I won't go out. Why I'm not on Tinder or whatever app is hottest now.
I'm brushing up on social theory. Philosophy. History. Poetry. Taking classes in French. I've joined a photography club. I'm trying to be less shallow.
Just in case when Jo comes home she might want to have coffee with me sometimes.
I'm free.
The day before the party I get a text.
Jo: Hey
Me: Hi?
Me: Are you back home?
Jo: Yesterday
Yesterday. How the hell did I not know?
Me: How are you going?
Good one. That's what you say to the love of your life who just got back from a war zone.
Jo: Good
Jo: I hear you are having a party?
WTF?
Jo: Pamela told me
Fuck.
Me: Do you want to come?
Please say no. My friends are not Christian friendly.
Jo: Love to. What time?
Me: Anytime from mid-afternoon is good
Jo: Look forward to it
Fuck.
Chapter 4 – Party
It is well into the evening and the party is pumping. My enormous terrace house is feeling positively tiny with all the people jammed into it.
There is every flavour of LGBTQI going on. A very small amount of straight. There is nudity and drug use. Drunkenness, crass words and even crasser behaviour. Outrageous dancing.
A drag show in my lounge.
I am freaking the fuck out.
One hundred percent sober. No drugs. Not even caffeine.
Panic that Jo will turn up.
Anxiety that Jo won't turn up.
I run into Pamela on the stairs.
"What the fuck." This is my greeting as she barrels me into a hug. I still haven't forgiven her for Jo going to Syria, let alone for her inviting her to my
party.
"What?" she says, not quite hearing me over the pounding bass line. I pull her into the linen cupboard. Switch the light on.
"Why the fuck did you invite Jo?" I ask, glaring. "This is not her scene. She is going to lose it when she gets here."
Pamela's face goes through several emotions before settling on pure amusement.
"Holy shit, dude," she says smirking at me, "you sure have a surprise in store for you. I can't believe we are having this conversation in a closet. You like her."
This last with emphasis.
I am blushing. For the first time in ten months.
She raises an eyebrow and before I can deny, deny, deny, she starts talking again.
"Jo has been here for over an hour," she says grinning, finding this ever so funny, "she's in the kitchen."
Shit.
I bolt.
She is in the kitchen.
With a drag queen, a butch girl in leather and a bear. It sounds like a terrible bar joke.
I stand there for a moment as they debate the meaning of Dali's Persistence of Memory. Jo, of course, is on the side Einstein's relativity. I feel like an intruder. They are having a grand old time. She looks happy and relaxed, leaning up against the counter.
The only person who is freaking out is me.
She is. Oh. Oh, she is everything.
I have missed her so much more than I realised.
I stride across the kitchen and she looks up just as I wrap my arms around her. For a moment she isn't hugging me back. Then she is. Everything is ok. There are tears pricking at my eyes and a burr in my throat.
I'm not letting her go, but she is letting go of me.
My arms drop when it would be weird to hold on any longer.
Her odd-company has moved away. To give us space.
"You look great," I tell her, meeting her eyes and feeling that instant renewal of long friendship. She does look great. Lean and tanned. Hair pulled back. A dressy tank top. Jeans that fit. Happy. Radiant. "Nice outfit."
She laughs briefly. "Pamela." A pause. "You don't look so bad," she says, glancing at my clothes. The compliment falling from her mouth sincerely but tentatively.
I should hope not. Her coming has necessitated an emergency shopping excursion. Her noticing, possibly for the first time ever has made the effort worthwhile.