“Look who’s here,” Vanessa says, as she pulls up to my house.
Lucy has fallen asleep in my lap, and I shift her head a little to turn and look out the window.
Zach and Alex are sitting on the porch steps, side by side. On any other night, the sight of the two of them waiting for me would warm my heart. Tonight, it makes me tired. I don’t have the energy for either of them.
“Oh god,” I say.
“Well, you can’t hide. They’ve seen us,” says Vanessa.
They are looking at us, their faces upturned at the same angle. In the shine of Vanessa’s headlights, they look so similar: that hair, those eyebrows, Zach’s face a softer, clean-shaven mirror of Alex’s.
“Is your mum home?” Vanessa asks.
“She’s out.” I suspect she’s on a date with Eric and not telling me. My mother might be on a date. Those words will never not sound weird to me.
Zach stands up and walks toward the car, leaving Alex on the porch steps. Vanessa gets out and folds her arms like a security guard.
“Wait,” she says, as Zach gets closer. She holds up a hand.
“Where’s Lucy?” he says.
“In the car. But wait. Are you here to help, or to upset her further?” Vanessa asks.
Vanessa is like a superhero. It’s the three of us against the world.
Zach shakes his head.
“I’m not going to upset anyone. I just want to see her.”
He pokes his head in the car window. Lucy nestles her head farther into my lap.
“Natalie.”
“Zachary.”
We stare at each other for a moment. I lean down and pick up the vomit bucket, and I hand it to him.
“Gross,” he says.
“Can you empty it and rinse it out with the hose so I can give it back to Vanessa?”
“What about Lucy?”
“Then we’ll get her out.”
He reaches his hand in and touches Lucy’s shoulder for a second, his face tender. Then he walks into my front yard and tips out the bucket and looks around for the hose, while Vanessa leans against the car and Alex remains sitting on the porch. It’s too dark to see Alex’s face, except for the glow of the zinc that is still all over his cheeks.
Zach comes back with the bucket and hands it to Vanessa, who throws it into the passenger seat of her car. She really is very relaxed about mess.
Zach sticks his head back into the backseat. “Now what?” he asks. He seems to have accepted that Vanessa and I are in charge of the situation.
“Now we get her inside,” I say.
Lucy is awake, or sort of awake. I saw her eyes flutter open and then shut again, and I can feel some tension in her body, but she’s pretending to still be asleep as Zach, Vanessa, and I maneuver her out of the car.
“We have to carry her,” I say. Vanessa and I line up to take a leg each, but Zach scoops Lucy up in his arms in one quick movement.
“You’re okay,” Zach whispers to her, kissing her forehead, and it feels so intimate that I look away. Zach carries her toward my front door.
Alex stands up, looking alarmed. “Is she okay?” he asks.
“She’s fine,” I say.
“Why are you carrying her?” Alex says to Zach.
“She’s tired. And drunk. And a little bit sick.” I keep answering the questions even though Alex is asking Zach.
I unlock the front door, and Zach goes in first with Lucy, followed by Vanessa. Alex hesitates at the door, glancing at me, waiting until I give him a small nod, then walks through. He’s still holding his water pistol.
Zach has put Lucy down on my bed, and we all stand around her. She looks like a little drunk angel curled on her side, and I think she has properly fallen asleep, because she is making small snoring noises. I pull my blanket over her, feeling very motherly.
Zach walks into the lounge room, and Vanessa and Alex follow him, and suddenly I’m hosting a very awkward gathering.
“Would you like something to drink?” I say. I’m mostly speaking to Vanessa, since I’m still possibly fighting with both Alex and Zach, but no one answers me anyway. I go into the kitchen and they all follow.
“I have, um, water?” I say, staring into our fridge, which has three cartons of expired milk and nothing else, because Mum keeps forgetting that Dad was the one who drank all the milk and we don’t need as much anymore. I can feel all three of them behind me, silently judging the contents of our fridge, so I shut it and usher them back into the lounge room.
“What about tea? I’ll make everyone a cup of tea,” I say, because I need to fill the silence and also have something to do. Probably I should kick them all out. I don’t even know how Alex and Zach got here, or what they’re planning to do now.
I know how Zach drinks his tea, and Vanessa requests a green tea. Alex says nothing. I have no idea of his tea preference, and I don’t want to ask him, because I don’t want Vanessa and Zach to know that I don’t know. (It feels important somehow, this basic fact about each other—of course we weren’t going to work out if we didn’t even know how to make each other a cup of tea.)
So I just bring Alex a cup of white tea in a mug. He says thanks, and sips it, and I suspect he does not like tea at all, but I appreciate he’s also hiding how little we know about each other from the others.
Then I rummage in the cupboards until I find Mum’s emergency chocolate, and I snap the block into little squares. Zach grabs piece after piece. He doesn’t even like fruit and nut chocolate. He’s stress-eating.
“What happened?” I ask him.
“Lucy and I went out to a friend’s house—”
“Which friend?”
“Braydon.”
“I hate Braydon,” I say. Braydon is one of those people who says just to play devil’s advocate when he really means just to be an asshole.
“I know.”
“Why would you take her to Braydon’s when she’s feeling vulnerable?” I ask. Vanessa raises her eyebrows, and Alex continues to make a show of drinking his tea.
“In hindsight, it was a mistake,” Zach says, grabbing another piece of chocolate.
“And what happened?” I ask.
“She got really drunk and we had a fight.”
“She told you about the … the thing?” I say, not wanting to expose Lucy’s secret in front of Alex and Vanessa.
“Yes.”
“Were you mad?”
“No! Sort of. I don’t know.” He rubs a hand over his face.
“Why was your phone dead?” I feel irrationally angry about this.
“Because I lost my charger.”
“How do you lose a charger?”
“Why are you acting like I’m the bad guy?” Zach says.
“Because you are!”
“Right. Everything is my fault.”
“Not everything. But some things. Most things, actually.”
“That’s not fair.”
I can see Vanessa and Alex exchanging uncomfortable this-is-awkward looks, but I don’t care.
“Why were you fighting?” I ask.
“Because.”
“Because why?”
Zach doesn’t answer.
“Because Zach has something else to tell you,” Alex says.
“What do you mean?”
Zach glares at Alex, and then he turns to me. “What I haven’t told you yet is that as well as getting into science at Melbourne, I got an offer from interstate. Medicine at the University of Adelaide.”
“Oh my god. Oh my god. You got into medicine? Zach! This is huge.”
“I know. I think I’m going to take it.”
“Of course you should take it.”
“But I’ll have to move to Adelaide.”
“I didn’t even know you had applied to Adelaide.” I feel like crying, suddenly. We were all supposed to go to uni together, I want to scream. What about The Plan? First my parents, then Lucy, now Zach. I want a ban on all secrets going forward. Everyone has to sign a contract stating they’ll clear every decision with me for the rest of their lives, and I don’t even care if that makes me sound like a dictator, because it’s a small price to pay to be in control of everyone and everything.
“I told you I applied all over the country. But I didn’t think I would get in anywhere,” Zach says.
“But you did.” I am so happy for him, and so furious at him.
“But I did.”
“I think I should leave,” Vanessa says suddenly.
“Me too,” Alex says, but he looks at me as he says it, with a question in his eyes.
“You should,” I say, because I’m still mad at him. Or, I still want him to think I am mad at him.
“Do you want a lift home?” Vanessa says to Alex, and then she looks at me, uncertain, regretful, and mouths, Is that okay?
I nod.
Alex hesitates and looks at me again. He came here and sat on my veranda and waited for me. He must have something to say to me. If he leaves, in this moment, it feels like it will be the end of us.
“Are you sure you want me to go?” he says. I have the urge to get a tissue and wipe all the zinc off his face.
No, I am not sure. I want you to stay. Here. In my bed. I want you to do that nice thing where you stroke my arm again, and I want you to apologize first.
“Yes,” I say, because if there is one thing I know for certain about myself, it is my unfailing ability to ruin my own happiness.
I walk them both to the door. I feel like I should hug Vanessa, even though I’m not a hugger, because we’ve been through a lot tonight, but if I hug her, I might have to hug Alex as well.
I will cry if I hug him.
“Thank you,” I say to Vanessa.
“That’s okay,” she says.
We smile at each other, and I kind of half pat her shoulder, which is weird, but she seems to accept it as a gesture of thanks.
She walks out to her car and gets in, and leaves Alex and me alone together on the doorstep.
“What did you come here for?” I ask him. We’re standing close to one another.
“To check that you got home okay,” he says, looking at his feet and then up at me. I meet his eyes for a second before looking away.
“Well, I did,” I say.
He starts to say something else, but stops, and turns like he’s going to walk away. Then he turns back.
“I told my parents today. About losing my job,” he says quietly.
“How did they take it?” I say.
“They were okay. Sort of. On the surface supportive, but underneath I think they’re panicking. Zach is going to be a doctor, and their firstborn is a failure and all that.”
“You’re not a failure,” I say. I really do want to hug him, but I don’t. I lean a little toward him, but he’s not looking at me, and I think he might be fighting back tears.
He fiddles with the water pistol for a second, and takes a deep breath. “’Bye,” he says, and starts to walk away, and maybe he wants me to yell, Wait, after him, but I don’t, because being the person who yells wait is vulnerable and desperate in a way I can’t afford to be, ever, even if it ruins everything.
It hurts more than I thought it would, watching him walk toward Vanessa’s car. Probably they’re going to have a big deep and meaningful conversation now, and all their old feelings will resurface, and it will all be my own fault, and I can’t even think about that.
Alex gets in the passenger side without hesitating, and that hurts too, because even though I refuse to run after him, I thought maybe he would run back to me and make a big romantic declaration. I want him to roll down the window and shout, I’m in love with you. (No, I don’t, a public I-love-you at high volume would be mortifying.)
Instead, there’s nothing, and I have no idea what to do.