Like a Book

by Bette Hawkins

  “Why were you intimidated?”

  “I don’t know, I guess I wanted to just launch into the next part of my life. I went to university right after school and then I was focused on getting a job and building this career. I thought that if I went away it would put me too far behind. And then of course I met Katrina, and she could never get away from work long enough for us to go.”

  “You never wanted to go, even on your own? If she couldn’t?” June asked.

  Trish shrugged. “That never really occurred to me, to be honest. And if I had thought of that I don’t think Katrina would have liked it.”

  “Why not? Not even somewhere closer for a couple of weeks, with your sister or something?”

  Since she had first heard about Katrina, June had been curious about the woman Trish had shared so much of her life with. Right now, Trish stared off into the fog, avoiding June’s eye like the question was painful. June wondered why. She gathered that Trish was struggling with the breakup, but there wasn’t a lot of information for her to go on. Trish always avoided the subject and June had never wanted to make her uncomfortable by asking too many questions.

  “Katrina was quite possessive in her way,” Trish said, as though the idea had just occurred to her.

  “How so? Was she the type of girlfriend who wanted to do everything together?”

  “Kind of, but that wouldn’t be the problem with it. The problem with the idea of me travelling would have been that I would have had experiences that she hadn’t. She’s a competitive person, very driven. Always needed to be the smartest person in the room. Do you know what I mean?”

  “That doesn’t sound very fun to be around,” June said. She couldn’t imagine being with anyone like that, especially not for years of her life.

  “I could have stood up for myself more. It was my choice to stay. You know, I think there were people that were relieved when I broke up with her. Not everyone, but some people for sure.”

  “What did Leigh think of her?”

  Trish threw her head back and laughed, the darkness disappearing. “Couldn’t stand her. I’m laughing because you should hear some of the names she’s started calling her now that she knows it’s safe to trash-talk about her. She has the mouth of a sailor.”

  June pointed a finger for emphasis. “Now see she does sound like fun.”

  “Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask you. I’m meeting Andrew and Leigh for lunch on Sunday and I wondered if you’d like to join us. You don’t have to if you’re busy, but I think you’d like them both. Or if you just want to rest I understand, I know you don’t get a lot of time off.”

  “I’d love to.”

  June took Trish’s hand for an instant and Trish squeezed it. Trish was relieved that she’d said yes, June could tell. June cut her eyes away from Trish’s smile, Trish’s vulnerability evoking such a pang of tenderness in her that it was overwhelming.

  * * *

  Trish was the first to arrive at the café, a South American place she’d chosen after coming here for a trial run by herself, the day before. The pale blue and yellow walls were covered in colorful photographs, and they served rich black coffee and cheese arepas she was sure June would love. It was busy and she was happy to see a table with four seats, quickly moving to reserve it. Trish positioned herself with her back to the wall so that she could see the door. Leigh and Andrew weren’t far behind her, each of them sporting exaggerated poker faces, their expressions as blank and smooth as she had ever seen them.

  When Trish called Leigh to say that she had invited June to lunch, Leigh made a joke about meeting her new girlfriend. Trish gave her sister a stern lecture about how she should conduct herself. There was to be no smirking, no kicking Andrew under the table, and generally no insinuations that Trish and June were anything other than friends. Trish could only imagine Leigh’s reaction if she knew about their contract, and Trish had no intention of her ever finding out.

  While Leigh rambled about how bad her week at work had been, Trish furtively looked past her to see if June had arrived. When she focused back on Leigh, her sister was looking at her knowingly. Trish chose to ignore it, and when she glanced up again she saw June scanning the room to find them. Trish threw up her hand in a wave and stood up.

  “Hey, how are you doing?” June said. After a few long beats, she pulled her gaze away from Trish for long enough to look around at the rest of the table.

  “This is my sister, and her boyfriend Andrew,” Trish said.

  June politely shook each of their hands and said hello, her voice just a little quieter than usual. Trish watched, knowing that Leigh would make up her mind about June within minutes. Leigh was kind, but she was also very quick to make judgments about people, and once she’d formed an opinion about someone it was impossible to change her mind. June slid into the empty chair next to Trish, with Andrew and Leigh sitting across from them.

  “So, June, how long have you been at the bar?” Andrew asked once they’d ordered coffee.

  “A few years now. I started working there not long after I started studying, it’s always been a good way to make money while I focus on other things.”

  “It’s a cool place. So, what part of town do you live in?” Leigh said.

  “I’m over in Carlton,” June said. “I live there with my friend, Ollie.”

  “Oh nice, Andrew grew up in Carlton,” Leigh said, pointing to him.

  “Cool. Where do you guys live now?”

  “Elwood. We wanted to be near the beach,” Andrew said.

  “I love that area. You come to The Dickens a lot though, huh? Let me guess, you must work in the city.”

  “Sure do, on Collins Street.”

  Trish poured herself and June glasses of water, happy to just listen. Leigh made eye contact with Trish, nodding slightly to signal that June had met her approval.

  “Well, you know me from the bar, so I guess you know what I do, what about you?”

  “Andrew’s a big brain, he has a doctorate in physics,” Leigh said.

  “Yep, and now I work at a life insurance firm.”

  June’s fingers brushed against Trish’s thigh, and Trish paused as she was lifting her coffee mug to her lips.

  “Oh really? That’s interesting. What about you, Leigh?” June asked.

  “Physiotherapist. I work in private practice.”

  Trish discreetly slipped her hand under the table and took June’s hand, June’s thumb sliding sweetly over the back of her hand. It was the first time since they’d made their agreement that they’d been together like this off campus, and she guessed that was why June had initiated the contact.

  While they were eating their arepas, their conversations drifted into two separate streams.

  “Did you finish that memoir you were telling me about?” June asked.

  “I did. Ugh, brutal. I read it so fast because I needed it to be over. It was really well written though.”

  “Can I borrow it?”

  “You want to read brutal, huh?”

  “What can I say, you’re selling it to me.”

  Trish wondered if June was paying as little attention to what they were talking about as she was. All her focus was on their joined hands. Trish glanced across the table to make sure that the others weren’t noticing anything.

  Andrew and Leigh had their heads close together, talking quietly. Leigh nodded emphatically.

  “June, we were wondering if you might be free on Friday night?” Andrew asked.

  “We’re having a little dinner party, and we were wondering if you wanted to join us,” Leigh said.

  They must have decided that they liked June a lot. Leigh and Andrew regularly held dinner parties for which they cooked complicated meals. They spent weeks beforehand planning menus and bought expensive bouquets of flowers to decorate the house. They supplied carefully matched wines with their dishes. Trish was usually a guest, and had been going more often since she had been single. The rest of the guests were sourced from a r
otating roster of Andrew’s and Leigh’s colleagues and friends. Trish always enjoyed herself, but it was tiring at times to be surrounded by people she didn’t know very well. It would be fun to have someone at one of the parties that was her friend.

  “Thank you so much, but I’ve got plans next Friday.”

  “I thought you’d probably be working. She works in a bar, guys, free Friday nights are pretty hard to come by,” Trish said.

  “No, no,” June said. She paused, but then continued, “I’ve actually got a date.”

  Leigh threw a concerned look Trish’s way.

  “They have them all the time, maybe you’ll be able to make it to another one,” Trish said. June’s words had been like a bucket of cold water to her face. She pulled her hand away from June’s, picking up her coffee mug with both hands, then looked around for the waiter to refill their coffee, so that she wouldn’t have to see Leigh’s reaction.

  “I’d love that,” June replied, withdrawing her hand from where it had been resting, her knuckles against the back of Trish’s thigh.

  “Great,” Trish said.

  “Anyway, I should really be going. I’ve got to get to work. It was really nice to meet you both,” June said, rising.

  “It was great to meet you too! We need to catch up again soon, I mean it,” Leigh said.

  “Oh, definitely. See you later.”

  Leigh and Trish each had their coffees refilled. When Andrew left the table for a moment, Leigh leaned over to her.

  “Are you okay? You didn’t know she was dating anyone, did you, I could tell by your face.”

  “No, I didn’t know, but why should I mind? She’s just a friend. She can date as much as she likes.”

  Leigh tilted her head and gave Trish another annoyingly compassionate look. “Trish.”

  “So, who else is coming to the dinner, anyway?”

  When she walked out of the café, there was a sense of disconnection for June. With the joy of being with Trish and her family gone, the rest of her day could only be hollow. Over the past couple of weeks, she was finding it more and more difficult to part from Trish’s company. Spending time with her only made June want more of it.

  It meant a lot to be meeting the people that were important to Trish. A few nights before, when she and Ollie had been having a late-night beer after work, she’d been beaming as she told him about the lunch.

  “She wants me to meet her sister…I mean, that’s good, right?”

  Ollie took a long pull from his beer bottle, eyeballing her the whole time before he wiped his lip. “Mmmm.”

  “What?”

  “You just seem really excited about it. I don’t know, maybe too excited under the circumstances. Sorry.”

  He was right. If he knew what June had proposed to Trish, and their contract, he would flip out. It was wise to not breathe a word to him.

  “I’ve got the best solution in mind for you,” Ollie said. “It’s actually perfect timing.”

  “What’s perfect timing?” June asked.

  “Wouldn’t seeing someone else be, like, the best distraction? If you turned out to like her it would be a bonus, but at the least you’ll have a fun night out.”

  “Nah. I’m just not interested in dating right now.”

  It didn’t make sense, but June felt like she’d be cheating on Trish. They were inching toward something special.

  “You might be if you met this girl. I hear she’s very cute. Max’s friend Brie saw your picture in his profile, you know from that night he came to roller derby? Anyhow, she’s interested. She asked who you were, and I said I’d talk to you about it.”

  June picked at the label on her beer bottle. “Look, tell Max thanks, but I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

  It would be so unfair to the unsuspecting woman to use her to get over Trish, and June didn’t like playing games. It also wouldn’t work. It was impossible that she might meet a woman that she liked as much as she liked Trish. You couldn’t force a connection like the one they had.

  “I don’t think you need to worry if you don’t want a relationship right now. From what I hear she’s laid-back, a bit of a free spirit, like you. I don’t think she’s going to get all upset if you don’t want it to go anywhere. You could just have some fun, see if you hit it off.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Great, I’ll text Max and say you’re in.”

  “You know that’s not what I said!”

  Ollie stared at her with an eyebrow cocked, his finger poised over the screen of his phone.

  Maybe agreeing to it made sense. She’d always trusted Ollie’s advice. If he was wrong, it would prove to her what she already suspected; that nobody could compare. At least then she’d know.

  June threw up her hands. “Okay, okay. You can tell him I’ll meet her. But that’s it, one dinner.”

  Messages flew back and forth until her own phone pinged with a message notification. Brie asked if she wanted to go out this weekend, but because June was working she could postpone the date until the following Friday. Now it had been days, and June had not even engaged in some light Internet stalking to find out what she was getting herself into.

  Following the lunch with Trish she rectified that, going on to Max’s page to find photos of Brie. Brie was blond, and grinning in all the selfies on her page. Though her pose was the same in every picture, her clothes were always wildly different, and she often wore sunglasses or hats. In most of the shots she was flanked by similarly dressed friends, in groups of five or six.

  June noted that Brie looked at least a couple of years younger. That might be a problem, because June had decided that she liked the fact that Trish was older than her. It was the sense that Trish had life experience, and June loved the subtle changes that age had brought to her face. Of course, she had no idea what Trish looked like when she was younger, but it was hard to imagine that she hadn’t improved with age.

  By the time Friday night rolled around, June had talked herself in and out of cancelling the date a thousand times. The most vulnerable moments were after coffee dates with Trish, when she would decide that she couldn’t possibly be compatible with anyone else in the way that she was with Trish. They had so much fun just talking and hanging out, to the point where she couldn’t remember life as being anything other than boring before they met.

  Trish never asked her anything about going on the date, and June didn’t want to raise the subject herself. Though she had not intended to tell Trish about it in the first place, part of her had hoped that Trish would react. It would be nice to know that Trish had any feelings at all about it, but it seemed that she didn’t care enough to bring it up.

  In the end, the date went ahead by default. It reached the point where it would be too rude for June to change her mind yet again.

  June met Brie outside of a Korean restaurant in Fitzroy, a trendy suburb just north of the city center. June knew from the messages they’d exchanged that Brie lived nearby in Collingwood.

  “Hey there,” Brie said, shaking her hand and smiling. She wore high-waisted jeans and a leopard print coat. She tossed her hair, then pinned June with a look.

  “Hi. Nice to meet you. Should we get a table?” June asked.

  “Sure thing,” Brie said, moving to walk inside. As she turned, June saw her profile, and it struck her that there were physical similarities to Trish. Brie was fair-haired, too, and her figure was not that different. With her heart sinking, June knew that it was going to be even harder now to not compare the two of them.

  A hostess showed them to their table. The restaurant was sparsely outfitted and would have seemed cold, if not for the candles placed on the tables. Brie picked up the menu and scanned it while June spoke.

  “So, how long have you known Max?” June asked.

  “A while. We met through friends. It’s so nice to see him with a nice boy like Ollie.”

  “Ollie’s great. They’re both great,” June said.

  “They sure are. S
o, should we order some stuff to share?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I’ll take care of it, I have a knack for ordering the perfect amount,” Brie said, making a circle of her index finger and thumb.

  When she was ordering, Brie confidently listed dishes, occasionally stopping to ask about ingredients. The hostess left, and Brie leaned toward June, staring at her.

  “So, what do you do for a living?” June said, shifting in her chair.

  “I’m a graphic designer. I’m freelancing right now,” Brie said.

  “That’s really cool.”

  “And you?”

  “I write, teach a class at Holt. And I work at a bar in the city.”

  “Which bar?” She leaned further across the table, and June unconsciously leaned back.

  “The Dickens.”

  “Cool,” Brie said disinterestedly.

  Their drinks arrived, and June quickly reached for her glass of wine. “So, tell me about being a graphic designer? That sounds really interesting.”

  “Oh okay, we can talk shop,” Brie said, rolling her eyes.

  “We don’t have to if you don’t…”

  “No, it’s just you know how it is when you have a cool job, and everyone wants to talk about it? Although you’re right I guess, it is pretty interesting.”

  “Right,” June said. Their food arrived. The portion sizes were so small she was going to leave hungry. She might grab a slice of pizza on the way home.

  June listened while Brie talked about her work and then about her ex-girlfriend, politely making encouraging noises when there were pauses in the conversation.

  “…And I’m just not that type of a person, like I told her I’m an artist, I need a certain amount of freedom to be able to express myself, no matter what situation I’m in. You know what I mean? You must, if you’re a writer.”

  “Sure,” June said, breaking away from eye contact. The rest of the meal crawled by, with June giving up on trying to have a two-way conversation. Brie’s favorite subject was herself. When they were done, Brie offered to cover the check, but June insisted on paying her share.

  They stood at the front of the restaurant, June shoving her hands in her pockets and looking anywhere but at Brie.