It Sounded Better in My Head

by Nina Kenwood

  I couldn’t concentrate on the show because all I could think about was the fact that our hands were touching. What did this mean? I was never sure of what my feelings for Zach were, exactly. Whenever my parents questioned me, I would become defensive and point out how ridiculous it was that I couldn’t just be friends with a guy without everyone assuming there was something going on. It was predictable and, frankly, offensive, and it was bad enough that TV shows and movies never let guys and girls just be friends, but worse that everyone had to make the assumptions in real life too. And, even worse, no one made any assumptions about Lucy and me, which is so backward and heteronormative.

  Outside of my standard rant, though, I wasn’t exactly sure whether I believed what I was saying. I mean, I believed in principle, but whether it actually applied to me was another question. Zach was the guy in my life, so I was never sure whether I was projecting feelings onto him, or really feeling them. He was cute, in a gawky way. Sometimes I found him attractive and sometimes I absolutely didn’t. I had occasionally had a sexual dream about him, but I had also had sexual dreams about a middle-aged, not-especially-attractive teacher before, so I couldn’t trust whatever my subconscious thought it was doing there.

  Zach was funny, and kind, and he made me feel safe. I still wasn’t comfortable around him when my skin broke out, and I had never let him see or even know about the terrible acne scars on my back, or how bad my skin was before I met him, but, otherwise, I was always relaxed with him. The best way to describe my feelings for Zach was a deep, familial love accompanied by a fluctuating semi-romantic crush that could come and go in an instant. I couldn’t picture myself actually kissing him, but I had such limited kissing experience, I couldn’t trust that instinct either.

  There were people who I was very clearly, definitely, instantly attracted to: the boy who caught my train and had cheekbones I couldn’t look away from; the fill-in PE teacher we’d had once who had the most breathtakingly athletic body I had ever seen up close; the lead-guitar player in a Battle of the Bands night I was forced to attend, who held himself in the sexiest way I’ve ever seen; the guy who worked in my local library who had gloriously long eyelashes. And there were many people I was definitely not attracted to. And then there’s this whole section of people who fall somewhere in the middle. People who you don’t even notice until they say something unexpected and then you realise they are smart and funny, or people who look bad in a school uniform but then you see them in a coat and scarf and everything changes. That’s where Zach exists, in this in-between place.

  Zach also felt achievable for me. I knew he liked me as a person. I knew I could make him laugh, that we had similar interests, that we could pass an entire day together and not be bored or sick of one another. That we never ran out of things to say, and that he challenged me to do better at things, more than anyone else did. If anyone was going to fall in love with me…well, Zach was the only possibility, really. It came down to basic maths. I don’t spend enough time with any other boy for love to be possible. The chances of me meeting and falling in love with someone else were minuscule. I simply didn’t have a social existence that allowed for that, and I didn’t want one, let alone know how to get one.

  I mostly imagined Zach and me getting together later in life. In our twenties. Maybe our thirties. I wasn’t in love with Zach now, but I was confident I could be one day. He was the potential future love of my life.

  If my life was a TV show, then my character and Zach’s character would eventually get together in season three or four, after many episodes of banter, pining and meaningful looks, and the audience would love it. Everyone would ship us.

  So we lay there with our fingers touching, and my heart pounding, and we watched the rest of the episode and half of the next one before either of us moved. My arm was aching and uncomfortable, but I wasn’t going to move it because the next move either needed to be something more (actively holding hands) or something less (moving my hand away entirely). I didn’t want to be the instigator of either of these actions. I wanted to leave my hand right there and see what happened. I was holding the door open for Zach to walk through it.

  Zach didn’t walk through it.

  He got up to get a glass of water, and when he came back, he didn’t put his hands under the pillow again, and I didn’t either.

  That was it. For thirty-seven minutes our hands had touched, and we lay in silence thinking about what to do next, and we chose nothing.

  Lucy came back from her trip changed. She had met someone. A friend of the family, who she hadn’t seen in years. She was staying next door to him in Perth. Her parents were busy and distracted, and Lucy and this boy—Travis—spent all their time together. Travis taught Lucy how to surf, and he had three dogs, called Alvin, Theodore and Simon, and he rode everywhere on his bike. And his skin tasted salty, and he was a good kisser, and Travis and Lucy had sex.

  Travis and Lucy had sex.

  I have never felt as panicked as I did when Lucy told me this. Here I was, grappling with the hand-touching incident, and she had met a whole new person and his three cute dogs, and had kissed this person, and learned to surf, and then had sex with this person. She had sex. She didn’t even think to call me and discuss it before she did it. She’d just done it.

  We were almost equals when she left, and now she was so far ahead of me.

  ‘Oh, my god.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Was it…? What was it like?’

  ‘Some parts were a bit boring, other parts were quite good.’ She made it sound like the latest Marvel movie or something.

  Which parts were good? I wanted to scream. Tell me which parts, tell me what to do. Stop, stop, stop, and wait for me to catch up.

  ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘I know.’

  I was ashamed of how unhappy I felt (a recurring theme, as it turns out, when it comes to Lucy’s love-life). But I could feel Lucy slipping away from me. First it was sex with a surfer, then it would be wild parties, and dating terrible boys with cool haircuts, and then we would drift apart and finish high school and she’d become a high-powered lawyer, and I would do who knows what (even in imaginary scenarios I have no direction) and we’d never talk again. Lucy was my safe place, my favourite person, and she was smashing that safety to bits. I wanted to physically grip her arm.

  ‘You look weird,’ Lucy had said to me.

  ‘I feel weird.’ I had become used to letting Lucy see me and know me, so it was hard to hide myself from her.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I feel like…’ I wasn’t sure how to put it. ‘I feel like you are so far ahead of me in life.’

  ‘Well, one of us had to have sex first.’

  ‘And there was never any doubt it would be you,’ I said, probably with a touch too much self-pity.

  ‘Are you kidding? Have you met my parents?’

  ‘How come they trusted Travis?’

  ‘They didn’t, by the end, but it was too late then.’

  We lay together on my bed and I calmed down a little. Lucy chattered on, and things started to feel more normal again. She wasn’t a different person. She just had a great story to tell. Everything would be okay.

  Everything would stay the same.

  It didn’t though.

  Zach took the news about Lucy and Travis better than I did. He seemed unaffected and cheerful about it at first. I thought that was nice. It was refreshing, because I was worried Zach would be jealous if Lucy or I got a boyfriend (and I am sure we would have been jealous if he got a girlfriend). Hell, I was jealous of Lucy and Travis. But it was also somewhere around this time that I noticed the vibe between Lucy and Zach change. Maybe the Travis story was a jolt to Zach, and he was scared of losing his chance with Lucy. Maybe it made him look at her in a different way. Maybe he was thinking about the almost-something that might have happened between him and me, and he realised Lu
cy was who he wanted. Or maybe they just fell in love, as simple as that. Or maybe I have no idea what happened, and I never will, because they have their own secrets.

  The first thing I noticed was in the early weeks of year twelve. Lucy and I were stressed. To be fair, everyone was freaking out. Our school was pretty intense. But Lucy was especially stressed. Her parents wanted her to do well. They wanted her to set the example for her younger sister. They wanted her to be top of her class in at least two subjects. They wanted her to be better than as many people as possible.

  ‘I have to do well,’ she said one afternoon when we were all studying together.

  ‘I know. Me too,’ I said, chewing my pen and not really paying much attention.

  ‘Your parents don’t care,’ she said.

  Now I looked up. This wasn’t true and she knew it. ‘My parents do care, actually. They show it in different ways. And anyway, I care.’

  ‘I know, I know. I know it’s bad for everyone.’ She bent over, pretending to look for something in her schoolbag but, really, she seemed to be just trying to breathe.

  ‘I keep thinking about everything I need to do this year, and I feel sick,’ she said, still bent over.

  I looked over her head at Zach.

  ‘Luce?’ he said, and put a hand on her arm, and bent over to try to see her face.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’ll be okay. We’ll make sure it’s okay.’

  The tenderness in his voice, the tenderness in his hand on her arm. I noticed it. I’m not sure what I thought, exactly, but I remember noticing how he was with her that day.

  A week or so later, we were all on the train together, and a bunch of guys from Fullers College got on, in their distinctive green and yellow uniforms. They were the guys that used to scream at me about my acne. I hated them, but, even more, I hated that I was scared of them. I looked away.

  The train was busy, but not packed. We were near the doors, and they got on yelling and laughing, and they walked past us, deliberately ramming into Lucy’s bag and almost knocking her over.

  ‘What the hell,’ she said, stumbling backwards and grabbing the pole.

  The boys laughed.

  ‘Hey,’ Zach said.

  ‘What?’ One of the boys turned to him.

  ‘Watch what you’re doing. You almost knocked her over.’

  The guy rolled his eyes. He was summing Zach up—taking in how much more muscular he was than Zach, and how many more friends he had around him, how much the situation was to his advantage. And yet Zach’s eyes were flat and unafraid. He looked calm and serious. He wasn’t trying to start a fight, but there was something forceful in his voice.

  ‘All right, mate. Whatever. Tell your girlfriend I’m sorry.’

  The guy turned away, said something to his friends, and they all laughed.

  ‘I’m standing right here,’ Lucy said, looking cross, putting her hand on her hip.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘He said, tell your girlfriend I’m sorry, as if I wasn’t standing right here, listening to him.’ This outraged Lucy a lot more than the original bump did.

  But I had seen the way Zach’s face changed when the guy called Lucy his girlfriend, and then again when Lucy repeated it. There was something flickering there.

  I became sure that he was falling in love with her. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it; a little bit sick, a little bit fascinated. I thought it was an unrequited love, at first. Lucy didn’t give much away.

  Then one afternoon, I felt a shift. They were laughing, and I saw Lucy gently pushing Zach’s arm and he was staring at her with soft eyes, and I knew it was coming—something was going to happen between them. And the minute something did happen, things would change between the three of us forever, and I wasn’t in a hurry for that to happen. Still, I imagined Zach would come to me and tell me about his feelings for Lucy and ask for my advice. I imagined Lucy would confess to me first too, and I would guide them both towards each other.

  I imagined I would be part of things.

  Instead, everything happened when I wasn’t looking. I was busy with assignments one weekend, and I didn’t see Lucy or Zach, and then the next weekend I went with Mum to see my grandmother who lived two hours’ drive away. On the way home, I asked Mum to drop me at Zach’s house so I could 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 while everyone else is off having mind-blowing sex. I’ll be on my deathbed still thinking about the one time a guy was kind of nice to me.

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ I say, mostly because I feel obliged to make a show of leaving them alone so they can kiss at midnight.

  ‘The fireworks are about to start,’ Lucy says.

  ‘I’ll be back.’

  ‘Don’t be a martyr. We are counting down together. All three of us. No arguments,’ Zach says.

  ‘Fine.’

  I stand up, and we all look at the sky together. I’m torn between feeling like a charity case and feeling like I have the best two friends in the world. The crowd counts down from ten, everyone cheers at zero, and the fireworks begin.

  ‘Wooooooo,’ Zach yells, running to the water, leaping goofily until he’s waist deep and then diving under fully clothed.

  ‘Come in,’ he yells.

  Swimming in the dark seems like a sure-fire way to get eaten by sharks, but this might be my one opportunity to go swimming in clothes without feeling ridiculous. I figure there are enough people out there that if a shark came past, the odds are reasonably good I wouldn’t be the one chomped.

  Lucy runs into the water, and I follow her. It’s colder than I am ready for, and I edge my way in, until I reach Zach and Lucy.

  ‘Let’s all say three things we like about each other to start the new year,’ Lucy says, as we stand shoulder-deep in the water. She suggests stuff like this all the time. She says a group therapist her family once went to made them play ‘feel-good games’, as he called them, and now Lucy is kind of addicted. Sometimes Zach and I play along, and sometimes we don’t.