Cole hit the brakes too hard, so he and Clementine jolted against their seatbelts. The car came to a stop at a slight angle, not quite parallel to his best friend’s Tesla.
‘Are you all right?’ Cole asked anxiously.
Clementine brushed her blonde hair out of her eyes. ‘Are you?’
He forced a laugh. ‘Yeah, sorry. Just excited.’
She squeezed his thigh. ‘It’s okay. Me too.’
Cole was a careful driver. He’d aced his driving test on the first go and never once received an infringement notice. But with his old high school friends watching, he was self-conscious. And the leather bag on the back seat was distracting him. The contents of the side pocket were like a magnet, messing with his internal compass.
Even in an almost-empty car park, Cole couldn’t bring himself to leave the car crooked. He reversed slowly, giving the Tesla a wide berth.
It was ridiculous, in Cole’s opinion, for Dom to have bought an electric car when there were no charging stations in Warrigal. But Dom was like that. He’d drop thousands of dollars on something just to show that he could.
Cole looked out the window. Dom was wrapped in an expensive-looking sports jacket. Felicity had her arm around him. She’d straightened her curly hair, and wore a T-shirt and cut-off jeans despite the cold. Isla looked elegant as always, even though she was dressed like a nun, almost every centimetre of her flawless brown skin covered. Oscar was gaunt and hunched, his grey eyes flicking left and right. He’d changed his hair, too: it was short at the back and the sides, like Cole’s. Cole suspected the similarity was deliberate.
‘You think this will be the last time we’re all together?’ Clementine asked suddenly.
He glanced over. ‘Why?’
‘Because …’ She trailed off, like she didn’t want to jinx anything.
He got it now. ‘Could be,’ he said, and smiled. ‘We’ll be a bit busy next year.’
Clementine smiled too, absently rubbing her abdomen. After several rounds of IVF, she’d gained a little weight in her breasts and belly, like she was carrying already. But Cole wasn’t holding his breath—they’d been disappointed so many times.
He found it hard to picture her pregnant. In high school she’d been thin and pale, and even when she started building muscle for her career as a fitness model, she still felt small. After their wedding, he carried her into the honeymoon suite without breaking a sweat. When they made love he always held back, afraid of hurting her. Even her wispy blonde hair broke easily.
Sometimes he worried this was why they couldn’t conceive. ‘Your swimmers aren’t quite strong enough,’ the fertility specialist had said. But maybe Cole’s sperm weren’t weak—they were reluctant. They could sense he thought of his wife as fragile and were waiting for a sturdier vessel.
He got out of the car and opened the door for Clementine. ‘Howdy,’ he said to the others, as though he’d been transformed into a cowboy.
Clementine squealed and hugged Isla like they hadn’t seen each other in years, even though they’d had brunch together twice that week. Clementine hugged Felicity too, then Oscar, then Dom, who also got a peck on the cheek.
Clementine was the lynchpin of the group—the one who organised activities in the group chat. River swims on sunny days, hikes when it was cold, board games when it rained. Once they had a baby, Cole realised, they wouldn’t just leave the group: they’d shatter it.
He didn’t hug or kiss anybody; he just fist-bumped Oscar and Dom. He was pleased to see them, but it wasn’t manly to say so.
‘This place is exactly the same,’ Clementine said, looking around with wonder.
‘I was just saying that!’ Dom exclaimed.
‘Remember that time we cling-wrapped Mr Heinrich’s car?’ Clementine peered through the fence at the school. ‘It was stuck here for hours before he could get the doors open.’
‘I remember that!’ Isla said, guffawing.
So did Cole. It hadn’t seemed very funny at the time—kind of mean, actually. But fifteen years later, he found himself laughing along, not because it was clever but because it was a shared memory. The past was like that, tragedy becoming comedy. Sometimes he heard a song from his youth on the radio, and even though he’d hated it back then, he’d sing along. The act of remembering gave him joy.
‘What took you guys so long?’ Isla lowered her aviators and raised a thick eyebrow at Clementine.
Felicity made an O with her thumb and forefinger, then jabbed her other forefinger into the hole. Dom, Isla and Oscar laughed, and Cole felt himself start to blush. He avoided Isla’s gaze. Funny, he thought, how taking thirty-somethings back to their old school makes them act like teenagers.
Clementine’s hands flew to her mouth. She gave them all a mock-scandalised look.
‘Sorry, I was just making sure I put everything in,’ Cole said, a bit defensively. He thought again of the bag, its side pocket.
‘I’ll bet,’ Felicity said.
He blushed even harder. ‘I meant I was packing.’
‘You sure are.’ She glanced at his crotch.
He dared not say anything else in case she twisted his words again.
She held up her palms. ‘Hey, you’re adults. You’re allowed to have sex.’
‘We weren’t having—’ Cole decided to change the subject. ‘Are you sure the electric car will make it up the mountain?’
‘I would have brought the Jag,’ Dom said. ‘But my wife had other ideas.’
Felicity rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a scratch.’
‘It’s a dent.’
‘I had right of way. That bollard should have been watching where it was going.’
Oscar laughed, too loudly.
Clementine was stretching, as usual. ‘You’ll all fit in our Tarago,’ she said, hands under her toes. ‘But will your cars be safe here over the weekend?’
As Dom explained about the Tesla’s fancy security system, Cole jogged ahead and unlocked the minibus. He quickly moved the leather bag to the storage compartment under the back row of seats. When everyone else came over, he piled their backpacks and suitcases on top of it.
‘Wish our car had this much room,’ Isla said as she climbed in. ‘You’d be amazed how much stuff you need to travel with a kid.’
Cole winced. That was why they’d chosen the Tarago. They’d joked about having quintuplets, filling every seat. They didn’t make jokes like that anymore.
Cole had bought the car just before profits from the gym started to slip. At first it had only been a couple of quitters, not worth worrying Clementine over. Then a few more members left, and no one showed up to replace them. Two of the treadmills broke and needed repairs. The dip became a dive.
He tried to focus on preparing for the baby. After eight months without success, Clementine wanted to try IVF. Cole said, ‘Great idea.’ If she wanted it, he would make it happen, a policy that had served him well throughout their marriage.
They researched the process, learning words like ‘zygote’ and ‘oocyte’. After some tests, they discovered he was the problem, not her. This meant they needed ICSI, the manual injection of sperm into the egg, which was more complicated than conventional IVF. They ended up at a private clinic. Cole hadn’t thought much about what all this would cost until the credit card statement arrived, and suddenly the shortfall of gym memberships seemed more significant.
But still he didn’t tell Clementine. The specialist had said stress might be a factor in whether or not the pregnancy took hold. Cole told himself he could handle it.
The first round of treatment failed: no embryos. He hid his disappointment—Clementine was the one who’d taken the medication and endured the headaches, the blurred vision, the fatigue. Despite this, she wanted to try again. He said, ‘Great idea.’
When the second round failed, she wanted to try a third. He agreed again. Even with the Medicare rebates, he felt like he was sinking into quicksand.
The doctor suggested they use donor sperm, which was even more expensive. Clementine misread Cole’s reluctance, and tried to convince him that he would still be the father in every way that mattered. He didn’t know how to tell her that he was only worried about the cost.
The third round resulted in an embryo that implanted in the uterus. They were overjoyed. Cole bought a pram and a cot. But eight weeks later, Clementine started cramping. There were spots of blood in her underwear, and soon their specialist confirmed the miscarriage. Their baby had vanished. Cole held Clementine while she wept, trying to keep it together for her sake, wondering what their child would have been like.
The following day, they were scheduled to attend a party at Dom and Felicity’s place. With heartbreaking optimism, Clementine said they should still go. ‘Who knows how many more parties we’ll have before we need a babysitter?’
So Cole found himself on Dom’s leather couch, watching as everyone else cooed over Oscar and Isla’s kid. He couldn’t bear it—he asked Dom to show him the sound system in the new Tesla. Dom eagerly led him out to the driveway and climbed into the driver’s seat. Cole got in the passenger side as Dom switched on the music. The car automatically connected to his phone and started playing a song he’d presumably been halfway through. The singer was wailing, ‘Baby, baby, baby …’
Cole burst into tears.
He found himself telling Dom everything. How emasculating it was to be running a failing business and to have subpar sperm. How much he hated the little room at the clinic, where he’d had to grimly jerk off into a sample jar, surrounded by ancient, vanilla porn magazines. How painful it was to see Clementine suffer through all the drugs and side effects and mood swings—and have nothing to show for it. How badly he wanted to be a father.
‘Another round of treatment will be ten thousand dollars once you add up all the out-of-pocket costs,’ he said. ‘That’s on top of the twenty we already took out of the mortgage. We’ve nearly maxed out what we can borrow—we’ll be paying this off for years. Which I can live with, if we have a kid, but what if we don’t? What if it’s just the two of us and a debt that reminds us of that, for the rest of our lives? What if the gym goes under and we have no way of paying it all back? Clem has no idea how bad it is, and I can’t figure out how to tell her.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Dom nodded sympathetically. ‘Ten thousand dollars, you said?’
Cole stiffened in his seat. ‘Are you offering to loan—?’
‘Loan?!’ Dom said indignantly. ‘I’m not loaning you anything.’ Cole felt horribly ashamed, but before he could apologise, Dom added, ‘I’ll just give you the money. Text me your account details, and it’ll be done by close of business.’
Dom said this even though it was a Saturday night. He was like that.
Stunned, Cole said, ‘I can’t let you pay for this.’
‘Sure you can! You’d do the same for me, if our positions were reversed.’ Dom gestured around at the car, as if to indicate what his position was.
‘But—’
‘I’m not great at emotional support. But financial support? That I can do.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Come on, mate, we’ve been friends forever. You were best man at my wedding, for God’s sake. Let me help. It’ll be just between us.’
Cole’s voice faltered. ‘I’ll pay you back when—’
‘Nonsense. Then you’re no better off than you were before. I won’t let you.’
‘Dom, I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Well, I think Dominic is a great name for a baby boy,’ Dom said cheerfully. ‘Dominica is nice, too.’
Cole dried his tears, and they went back into the house. He felt vaguely shell-shocked. As soon as he and Clementine got home, his phone dinged. Ten thousand dollars had appeared, like magic. He wanted to tell her how incredibly generous their friend was, but he couldn’t—not without revealing how bad their financial situation had been.
Hiding bad news from his wife hadn’t felt disloyal; for some reason, hiding good news did. Clementine seemed to sense that something was bothering him, but he told her he was just tired.
The fourth round of treatment didn’t produce any embryos. The specialist was mystified. As Cole and Clementine held each other on the roof of their house, overlooking the sparse lights of the town, Clementine blew her nose into a tissue and sobbed, ‘Can we even afford this?’
It was the first time she’d asked. Cole said, ‘We’ll make it work.’ Taking the credit for Dom’s money, and hating himself for it.
‘Maybe we could have a break?’ Clementine’s voice wobbled. ‘Go back to trying the old-fashioned way?’
‘Of course,’ Cole said, knowing it wouldn’t work.
Over the next month, they had sex constantly. It was exhausting. Each time, they couldn’t stop until Cole reached orgasm, or there would be no point. But the pressure made it difficult to lose himself. His usual fantasies didn’t help. His thoughts kept straying to Dom.
The money had been a gift, not a loan, but Cole nevertheless felt indebted. More so, actually—if the money had been a loan, he could eventually have paid it back, and they would have been square. But because it was a gift, Cole felt like he would always owe it. Over the next few months he found himself indulging Dom’s every whim, as though that would get him out from under the debt. But he remembered what his friend had said: I won’t let you.
At yet another party, Dom interrupted the demonstration of his new wall-mounted speakers to say, ‘Cole, can you grab me a beer?’
Cole said, ‘Sure.’ He got up off his chair, went to the fridge and brought back a can of BentSpoke IPA.
It wasn’t until Clementine gave both of them a strange look that Cole realised how odd that was. Dom had been closer to the fridge; he could have got the drink himself. Instead he’d asked Cole, as though sending a dog to fetch a pair of slippers.
Paradoxically, Cole began to resent his old friend for giving him something he could never return.
Then, out of the blue, Oscar turned up at the gym with an idea. It sounded insane, at first. But the more Cole thought about it, the more he realised it might solve all his problems. He couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Now, he climbed into the driver’s seat of the Tarago and started the engine. Dom sat next to him. Seatbelts clacked all around. Soon they were cruising out of the parking lot, leaving the high school behind.
‘Woo!’ Clementine yelled.
‘Party time,’ Felicity agreed.
From the front passenger seat, Dom said, ‘Cole, can you put the radio on?’ even though he could reach.
‘Sure.’ Cole hit the button. ‘Affirmation’ by Savage Garden buzzed through the speakers. The singer crooned over the pulsing beat.
‘What is this?’ Felicity asked.
Isla took off the baseball cap and shook out her beautiful black hair. ‘God, you’re young.’
Cole had hated this song when it came out. Now he turned it way up and sang along.