Damn it, Mara. Too much.
But Ash looks at me thoughtfully. “I think I thought that once,” he says at last. “But without grounding yourselffirst, it’s fragile.” He stands and drops his bowl into the sink and slides his empty beer bottle into the glass recycling bin. I’m surprised by his response.
“Sorry, that was a bit deep for a first date,” I say, trying to make a joke of it.
He spins round and folds his arms, grinning. “Well, especially since you’re talking about another dude.”
I attempt to grin back. “The dinner was so kind,” I say. Despite the nerves about sharing my space, I feel grateful that Ash has made such an effort. Like someone loosened the first eyelet on a corset, I breathe a little easier.
“Ah, had to earn some brownie points, first night and all,” he replies, stretching and creaking his neck from side to side. His hands brush the ceiling as he reaches up, a giant in this tiny flat. “Well, see you in the morning?” And then he’s off down the hallway, and I’m finally alone.
5
I finish the goulash,saving the tough meat for the neighbor’s cat, and I pull my phone out of my bag and check tomorrow’s star sign. I’ve done it since I was thirteen, and my day never feels complete without a quick glance.
You need a clear plan to bust out of this routine and unleash that wild and carefree you. It’s time to test the limits of who you can truly be. Do not listen to the voices who try to minimize you. You’re on a journey that will enrich your life and your belief in yourself. Change is ahead, and you know what to do next.
Change.
I glance at the broken hinge on the front door. At the dicky wheel on my suitcase. The roll of my gut protruding over the buckle of my jeans.
Fix many things.
It has to bemethat needs fixing. Mara. This flat. My job. My car. My social circle, or lack thereof. My interests. If Joe is going to come in August—and he is,I just know it—everything will need to change.
It’s time to test the limits of who you can truly be.
Maybe it’s time? Time to try again? I take a very deep breath and feel a tingle in my stomach. I am reminded of that feeling when I left home at eighteen, my small-town life behind me, heading off to film school with dreams as big as the world felt. I was going to do big things. Besomeone. Leaving home was a chance to meetmy people, to meet myperson. Finally be me without the limits my parents constantly put on me.
It’s been hard to go back and face them with the brutal truth that it didn’t work. That I came to nothing. That I left film school with a broken dream and a broken heart, and I have never recovered.
My mood sinks as I think about that broken heart. How cruel that it happened all at once.
His name was Noah. I met him during freshers’ week and I fell hard. He was everything I’d imagined my first proper boyfriend would be. He read Bukowski and played guitar, and to my raging jealousy, his parents worked in film already. He talked about art and how to be a better feminist ally and was the first person I had met who had seen as many movies as I had—even if he liked some of the indulgent crap from navel gazers like Vincent Gallo, whereas I loved feel-good director John Hughes and sardonic Greta Gerwig. Regardless, I was his match, and he was mine. It was like we were made for each other.
“You’re so fucking upbeat,” he’d say to me, sucking back on his rolled-up cigarette. “You’re like an art house Elle Woods.”
And I’d laugh and we’d fight and banter and cook cheap student meals and drink cider.
I’d thought Noah wasthe one. Or at least, I hoped so hard that he was that I didn’t see the reality ofwhohe was.
I’d always gotten better grades than him. He used to call me a nerdy swat. I idolized him as the super-creative one. His scripts and his ideas were always soout thereand I was always in awe, if a little confused by them. We often worked together, but on the final project our differences were starting to grate. Noah wanted to write one thing—a dark, broody (he called it gritty) short film, where very little happened, in my humble opinion. “A study in grief,” he’d declared it, handing me the outline, which was scene after scene of grim man-thoughts inside a filthy basement apartment. I thought it was a bit indulgent. He told me that I was missing the whole point.
My idea was not going to win any awards either; it was a quirky tale of love and serendipity between a lonely taxi driver and his eccentric passenger. Initially, Noah had liked it, trying to find a way to merge the two until we had a messy outline that was neither idea and certainly not good.
With us at a desperate impasse, I went to see our professor to get some advice on what to do. But when I pushed through the heavy doors and stepped into the hall, I was surprised to see Noah walking into his office just ahead of me. He left the door just very slightly open behind him, and I couldn’t help hearing everything as I waited on the little plastic seats outside our professor’s office.
“How’s your mum?” the professor said. It started to irritate me that they were connected through the industry.
“She’s finally sold the studio,” Noah replied.
“Good for her. What can I do for you, mate?” he said.
“I need a new partner.”
“I see,” said the professor coolly. “Has something happened with Mara? You two seemed to work well together.”
“Yeah, she’s cool,” he says. And then I heard Noah sigh. “I don’t want this to be a big deal, but we’re kind of... not working out. I’m going to break up with her, and I feel like she’s really suffocating me creatively. So, I wondered if there was a way we could be separated?” Noah’s voice trailed off as I felt the sucker punch to my gut.Break up with me? I was suffocating him creatively?
