Three hours later, Maya and Jon are back at the bar, dimly lit with twinkling fairy lights, only this time they’re sitting on stools facing the shell mural behind the bottles. The sea laps gently beyond the open-sided restaurant behind them, and Aphex Twin piano notes plink plonk through the stereo. Maya’s not sure if it’s the music pulling at her heart strings or the tequila – they are pissed after their third of the evening. They stayed on after Miss Congeniality, to listen to Moon’s lecture and to drink their broth – double helpings in Maya’s case. Jon suggested they go for a chat and Maya couldn’t help herself, so when Mabel, a young Kiwi worker with purple and grey hair in two buns on the top of her head, flashed them a bottle of Cazador from under the counter, Maya thought it might be what she needed to brace herself for battle.
‘Is this a test from Moon?’ she asked, before turning to Jon. ‘Does Moon always do this? Am I being tested?! Are you his spy?’
Maya already felt a bit drunk and giddy and couldn’t work out if it was the delirium or something in the broth.
Jon shrugged.
‘I’ll cheat if you cheat,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye that roused an anger and a sadness in Maya. So she sat up on her stool, nodded to Mabel, and met him at his challenge.
Three shots later and she’s got the giggles, as they reminisce about their university days.
‘No, but do you remember that night in the Bombay Express when Dave Mitchell went CRAZY because you ate a bit of his naan?’ laughs Jon.
Maya throws her head back and cracks up. She’d forgotten all about the twenty-year-old man having a temper tantrum because someone took a tiny bit of food from his plate. Maya grew up with a family for whom everything was a free-for-all at the dinner table. Everyone dug in and shared. She soon learned not everyone came from a Flowers type of family, where you had to be robust and you had to accept that someone might just steal a bit of food from your plate. And Dave Mitchell lost his temper.
‘Oh yeah! He said he didn’t like sharing because of the whole germ-spreading thing, so in my defence you picked up the rest of his naan and licked it.’
‘Funny. As. Fuck,’ says Jon proudly.
‘’Cause that helped!’ Maya laughs, then stops when she has a thought. ‘Oh, hang on, what if he had OCD or something? Shit, actually were we really mean?’
‘No, he was just tight-fisted. Should have learned to share, the elf-skinned bull’s pizzle.’
Huh?
Jon laughs about how funny he is and his glacial eyes gleam in the fairy lights reflected on the shells and the shards of the glass in the mural. Then it hits her. Maya finally realises where that colour comes from. Jon’s eyes are the same colour as the water around the Thai coast. She’d never realised it until now. How funny to bump into him then, here of all places.
They giggle at the memory of Dave Mitchell losing his shit in the curry house and pause, looking at each other in the dimly lit bar, only to be interrupted by the screen lighting up from a notification on Jon’s phone. Maya jumps, like a rabbit caught in headlights. Jon scrambles for his phone, as Maya sees the backlit wallpaper, a photo of a baby.
Shit.
Jon reads out a news update.
‘Police investigating Manon Junot disappearance say they have reason to believe she was suffering paranoid schizophrenia in the run-up to her going missing.’
Maya’s eyes widen.
‘Not really news. Not worth a push notification anyway,’ says Jon, turning his phone face down on the bar.
‘You have a baby?’ Maya asks coolly.
‘No, not mine. It’s Charlie’s boy. My nephew.’
‘Charlie’s a dad?! I can’t imagine!’
‘Yes, he’s still a twat, he’s just a twat with a kid. Not sure how he had such a cute baby. His partner is pretty hot though. All comes from her.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Geronimo.’
‘Geronimo?’
‘Yeah, he is just awesome. So funny. Makes me proper clucky.’
‘Clucky?’
Maya’s heart starts to race. She really shouldn’t have downed three tequilas on an empty stomach.
‘Yeah,’ Jon nods, regretfully, looking into Maya’s hazel eyes.
The shell mural on the wall behind the bar starts to mutate and the room around them begins to spin. The emptiness in her core and the racing of her heart makes Maya feel somewhat bilious.
He wants a baby.
Her eyes narrow, her moves become lumbering, and she leans into Jon, their foreheads almost touching.
‘Why did you do it?’ she whispers.
Jon leans away slightly, taken aback by the sudden change of topic; surprised by a blunt and candid side of Maya he doesn’t remember.
‘Why did I do what?’
Jon shifts on his bar stool.
‘You know.’
He shrugs his shoulders, then leans back in. Their temples almost touch now.
‘I suppose it’s because I wasn’t good enough for you. I felt inadequate.’
Maya inhales sharply.
‘So why didn’t you just break up with me? Why didn’t you just end it? Say you weren’t feeling it.’ Maya goes to twist the ring on her right hand but remembers she took it off earlier – it was getting a bit loose and she didn’t want to lose it. ‘Why did you piss our money up the wall? My money? I had to move back to Hazelworth. Shelve my dream of buying a home for another, I dunno, five years…’
Jon puts his hand to his other temple, to create a shield from the bar, make a bubble for he and Maya, and he looks remorseful. ‘I genuinely don’t know what to say.’
‘There’s nothing you can say really, it’s done. I just never understood why you did it so callously. Taking your things little by little. Sending me that text. I was so good to you.’
‘You were.’
‘It was a total dick move.’
‘It was.’
Mabel comes back to top up their tequilas with a wink and some added green juice, so their glasses look like wheatgrass shots. She gives Jon a knowing smile and walks off to flirt with another customer.
‘Looks like it worked out for you though, you and…’
‘James.’
‘Yeah, that’s right, James.’
‘It did.’
Maya thinks of running behind her father, looking at the criss-cross lines of the back of his pineapple neck. Of her brothers helping her move into her new flat. Of the day she first saw Train Man walk up the platform to get the 8.21 a.m., and how she fell in love at first sight. She smiles with heavy lids but just can’t help herself from picking the scab.
‘But why? Why did you do it? Why did you cheat? If you felt so inadequate – you could have just told me.’
‘Because it was easier to break up with you if you hated me. I was so in love with you, Maya. Talia meant nothing to me, we didn’t last ten minutes, but I just knew I wasn’t good enough for you. I wasn’t enough for your amazing imagination, for your brilliant, crazy family. For your career dreams. I was just an actor bum. I didn’t know I was going to make it big then. I thought I’d do you a favour and set you free, and I knew I had to make you hate me or you would never get over me.’
‘I did hate you.’
Jon looks sad. And uncomfortable. He looks very uncomfortable in their bubble, but he’s trying.
‘I’m just so fucking sorry, Maya.’