I think of Jenny’s face as she handed me my milkshake. Of Thrasher shoving me to the ground. Of Colin Wintergreen pushing gum into my hair. Of the million other offences, big and small, and how the whole time, Jake was there, wanting me, but letting me walk through hell alone because he was too scared to say ‘I like you’ to the loner flute player from Melbourne.
“I’ve made up my mind,” I tell him. “I won’t ever be able to get past what’s happened to me at school. I’ve been alone my whole life, and that’s not your fault, but I could really have used someone like you in my corner back then. You had the power to do something, and you didn’t. Not when it mattered. And I’ll always resent you for being too scared to help me.”
“I know,” he says, so quiet I can barely hear them. “I’m sorry.”
“It is what it is. But as much as you might see me as some advanced human being, I’m too bitter to let it go.”
A tear falls onto Jake’s cheek. “Right.”
I’m still crying as well, tears trailing onto my cheeks and down my chest. I push the jersey toward him. “At least you get this back.”
He nudges it toward me. “Keep it. You’ve gotta know I didn’t actually want it.”
A tear splashes onto my chin. This is so stupid. Jake and I barely know each other, and here we are crying like one of us is dying. It’s pathetic. But even as I think it, I know it’s not true. It’s okay for us to want each other, love each other, feel it the rest of our lives. It’s justnot going to close the distance between us.
“I’ll miss you,” I say. “I really will.”
Jake looks across the cafe, his mouth trembling. “Your eyes go a bit wider when you lie. I figured I’d tell you on our twentieth wedding anniversary or something. When you finally worked out you don’t need to lie to me.”
I bury my face in my palms.
“Baby…” Jake whispers. “I just?—”
“I know. But I can’t. So please just let me go.”
“I will. You know I will.”
My brain jolts a warning. A technical detail I’d planned to lay out when I came to this cafe.
“One last thing,” I say through my fingers. “I know it’s tacky to bring this up now, but please delete the stuff I sent you. Especially that video.”
I look up in time to see his handsome face contort. “Please… If I can’t be with you, it’s the last thing I have. It’s the only thing I’ll ever watch.”
I snort, swiping my eyes with my sleeve. “You’re gonna keep wanking to my cam-girl vid when you’re married to someone else?”
He shakes his head. “I never got married because I never met anyone who made me feel the way you do. That was the rule. As soon as I like someone as much as I liked Ada Renaldo when I was sixteen, I’ll marry them.”
I stare at him, lost for words.
“That card I gave you? The woman by the river playing the flute? I bought it ten years ago. I saw it in some arty shop I was in with my girlfriend and realised it’s the closest thing to a picture of how you looked that afternoon in the music wing. I bought it. I had to.” He huffs out a laugh. “I broke up with my girlfriend the next day, but I kept the card. Had it in my bedside drawer right until I gave it to you.”
“Jake…”
“I’m thirty-three,” he says. “If it’s not you, it’s not anyone.”
My chest is cratering in on itself, collapsing into nothingness. But I have to stay strong. I owe it to teenage Ada. The girl who knew, somewhere deep down, that she deserved better.
“Then it might not be anyone,” I say, my voice quavering like a broken note. “But you can’t keep a naked recording of me. You could get hacked, and I’ll lose any chance of joining an orchestra once this godforsaken reunion is over.”
His head jerks back. “You’re still coming to the reunion?”
“Too late to back out now.”
“What… What’ll happen when I see you?”
“Nothing. We’ll drink shitty wine, and we won’t talk, but it’ll be okay. And when it’s over, Cece will be with Will Sharpe?—”
“But he’s a fuckwit.”
