My breath catches around all those fine bones.
To take on such a role . . .
But isn’t that the sort of suffering I deserve? An apt punishment. One I should bear.
Attempt to fix the unfixable. And maybe, finally, save some moemoea.
A girl hops before Moana, asking to use the wharepaku. “Well, you can’t act holding it in.” Moana catches me escaping the room and raises her voice. “You should never hold it in.”
The door shuts. I find my phone and grip it tight. I’m still holding it when the kids have finished, and when they’ve left,and when—through a gap in the curtains—I glimpse Holly’s mum and a flash of red-painted nails opening the passenger door for Holly to jump in.
I’m still holding my phone when I’m the last one left in the failing improv studio.
I look at the screen. The words are waiting. The words are already there.
Why can’t a lie be worth fifty more improv sessions?
My fingers tighten. Shift.
The screen darkens.
A whooshing sigh.
Yet, an insistent pulsing:don’t ruin any more dreams.
I grit my teeth and the screen lights up again. And then. I tap and send.
Can I still be your man?
Grandpa is out at daycare. Grandpa’s house only has Trent in it.
Come around now,his response said.
Unless you decide to run again.
I grit my teeth on that as I climb the stairs to a narrow path above the street.Unless you decide to run again.It feels mocking, like he half expects menotto turn up. Like he’s goading me into proving he’s wrong. He is wrong! I’m a professional. I can act. I don’t have to like a role to play it.
Unless you decide to run again.
In the middle of the overgrown path, I stop with a small stomp that squashes a prickly weed.I’min a position to judge here, not him. In fact... I turn back. I won’t rise to his goading. Ishouldn’tbe here. I really,reallyshouldn’t. If there wereheavens, they’d strike me down right now. That I could eventhinkabout actually doing this...
Unless you decide to run again.
I halt on the last step, hand gripping the peeling white railing. He expected it and I’m doing it, and that... feels like a deeper failure. Like heknows. Running is muscle memory by now, the only thing I’ve been good at when my past mistakes claw too close, and he’s seen through me. I don’t let anyone see through me.
I square my shoulders and return to the path. Houses are peppered on this hill with few fences and messy overgrown bushes. And, there. That should be Grandpa’s. This cottage looks lived in. Very lived in. Loved, a lot. Too much, perhaps. It has a gate, and its groaning as it shuts behind me sounds wounded. Ominous.
There’s movement behind a bush and I inch around it?—
Feathers. Flapping. Squawking. Absolute, unhinged chaos.
It’s a blur of movement and—wham—a chicken is in my face.
Not the welcome I was expecting. Neither is Trent’s deadpan, “Catch it.”
Beyond the flapping that has descended to the crotch of my shorts, through raining feathers, Trent catches his breath. Gardening-gloved hands press against solid thighs. Sweat dribbles down a sunburned cheek. Sunglasses are nudged back into place while blood runs down a grazed knee. He looks like he’s been at war with this chicken, and he’s not on the winning side.
I don’t know what makes him think I stand a chance.
