‘Sorry.’
‘No, don’t be sorry. It came out wrong. What I meant to say was, I think we should sleep together. It’s something I want to do, with you. We know each other so well, it just makes a lot of sense to me.’
‘Oh.’
The silence stung like rejection until I could no longer bear it.
‘I mean, if you want to as well. It’s just an idea, something I was thinking . . .’
Fran looked at me with those eyes and I wished he wouldn’t because I knew exactly what was coming.
‘I don’t think that’s a good enough reason,’ he said, haltingly.
‘Oh.’
‘Knowing someone well doesn’t feel like enough of a reason to have sex, is what I meant. I think you should really like them, too, in that way. I had imagined my first time being with a proper girlfriend and we would –’
‘No, I get it. It’s fine. Forget I said it. Pretend you have amnesia, like Drew Barrymore on that boat with Adam Sandler the other night.’
I started to sing the Beach Boys song and while it did not make things better, it ended the conversation at least. We kept watching the movie, pretending I had not said anything. Or at least, that is what I thought we were doing.
‘Were you joking before?’ he asked, when the credits rolled.
‘Yeah, of course,’ I replied, reflexively. Sometimes people really needed to think you were joking. I was trying to save face, to give the answer I thought he wanted.
‘Well, I don’t think that’s the kind of thing you should joke about with people,’ he said. ‘It’s confusing.’
‘What kinds of things should I joke about, then?’
Whatever frisson I had felt between us, I channelled into annoyance. Shame was a renewable energy source, and I had enough to light a city. I wanted to bring him down a little, not out of vengeance for rejecting me so thoroughly, as it may have appeared, but as a way of levelling the emotional playing field. Hierarchy held more discomfort than any bodily experience ever could.
‘Politics, animals, the weird ways people act . . .’
‘Right. And is that an exhaustive list?’
‘No. Look, Nora, this is going badly. I was confused by what you were saying, that’s all. I thought you were saying you – I couldn’t tell if you were being serious.’
‘When am I ever not being serious?’
‘But you just said you were joking,’ he replied.
He looked frustrated, and I hated myself for being the cause of that. I only wanted to give him what he wanted, or, more honestly, I only wanted him to want me.
‘I was . . .’ I said, tailing off as I retreated back into my thoughts.
I watched Fran trying to get back on steady ground, and felt equal parts triumphant and contrite. If he did not want me, then he could have a taste of the discomfort his rejection brought me. The sourness had risen. I could not see that perhaps he had been trying to communicate something else, only that I had put myself out there, and been rejected. Below that, I was devastated for having destroyed things again.
16
As expected, all hell breaks loose when Luke realises the work he put into his elaborate window display was for naught. I am lying in my bed, but I can hear him bellow and rage around the room above. Stomp, stomp, stomp. It prickles my skin the way a warm breeze might. He is big man, hear him roar. Someone with a softer voice, Mum I think, or Olivia, is doing their best to pacify him. I am tempted to march upstairs and poke and prod a little more, but I also cannot be bothered. I have achieved my desired outcome and there is no point in expending further precious energy. My head fills with thoughts of his behaviour throughout our lives, trying to tether him from then to now. I picture him as a little dictator who always had a better story to tell after someone shared the details of their day, a bigger achievement to overshadow any minor accolades, a louder voice to proclaim exactly how things really needed to be done. Perhaps this is how he has always been, and I am only realising it now. Once I start thinking about this pattern, I cannot seem to stop. And I am not interested in the memories that contradict the narrative, like how he taught me to ride my bike, or spent weeks explaining how time travel might work, because I really needed to understand it to enjoy some cartoon I can’t even remember. No, I am going in on the bad stuff. All or nothing, all the time. Awareness of this has allowed me to figure out ways to redirect this laser focus, but for now I am happy to let it burn. The failing can belong to someone else for a change.
‘Nora, sweetheart.’ Dad knocks at my window, hedge trimmers in hand.
‘Hey, what’s up,’ I reply, standing to open my door.
‘Do you know what’s going on upstairs?’ he enquires.
‘I do.’
