When I walk back to the lounge room, Zach isn’t there. I look in at my bedroom and see him curled up beside Lucy. His eyes are open, and we stare at each other for a few seconds.
“You should have told us you were applying interstate,” I whisper, so as not to wake Lucy, who is definitely snoring now and looks so firmly asleep she probably wouldn’t wake up if I blared a horn in her ear.
“I did tell you,” Zach says, at almost normal volume.
Lucy doesn’t stir.
“But you implied that you had no chance, that you didn’t have the right marks. You never made it seem like something that would ever actually happen.”
“Well, that’s what I thought. Anyway, you should have told me about Alex,” he says.
“Not the same.”
“How is it not the same?”
“The Alex thing just happened. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t even have time to tell you.”
“And I didn’t think I would get into medicine anywhere. I didn’t want to think about it because I knew if I got in, I probably wouldn’t go because it would be too hard to leave Lucy. And you. And my family.”
“But you are leaving,” I say, and I sit down on the end of the bed.
“Yes. I think so. I am.”
“So it’s not that hard, after all.” I can’t resist the urge to be mean.
“That’s not fair.” He closes his eyes.
I sigh. “You’re right. I take it back.” I crawl up the bed and squeeze next to him, staring at the ceiling.
“I’m proud of you,” I say eventually.
“Thank you.”
“Leaving is brave.”
“It’s scary.”
“But exciting.”
“It feels like I’m choosing a career over my relationship and friendships and family. I don’t even know if I want to be a doctor enough to give up all the things I have here.”
“We’re not going anywhere.”
“It won’t be the same. Especially for me and Lucy. What are we going to do, be in a long-distance relationship for six years?”
“Well, it’s only an hour-and-a-half flight, you could see each other every month, maybe even more than that, and on holidays…” It’s my job to show Zach how this can work, even though in my heart of hearts I’m not sure it can.
“And we just keep doing that for years on end?” he says.
“Maybe Lucy could transfer to a uni in Adelaide.”
“I don’t want her to have to do that. I don’t want to hold her back from her life here. We can’t live in limbo for years.”
“Well…” I don’t know any more options. “It might not work out, then.” I feel sick, like I am betraying both of them by saying it out loud.
“I don’t want to break up with her. Ever,” he says.
“But you want to be a doctor.”
“Yeah.”
“And you’ve accepted the offer, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’ve made your decision.”
“I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do.”
“It is,” I say.
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s what you want.”
He looks at me, and I elbow him gently. “We’ll survive without you,” I say.
“How could you possibly survive without me?”
“We’ll carry a cardboard cutout of your face around with us.”
“And get tattoos of my name.”
“Of course.”
He sighs and puts both hands over his face. I think for a second he’s crying, but then he takes them away and looks at me, and he’s dry-eyed.
“I thought Lucy and I would move in together in a couple of years. Like, when we were twenty. And then I thought we’d run off and get married when we were, like, twenty-two or twentythree, and everyone would think we were reckless for getting married so young, but we’d be happy, and we’d travel the world, and have all these adventures together.”
“I kind of thought that would happen too. Except in my version, I’m part of your wedding, and your roommate, and I’m having adventures with you both.”
“Oh yeah, you’re there in my version of this. You’re our witness when we get married, and we need you to live in our spare bedroom to help pay the rent.”
In Zach’s mind, I’m in the supporting role of the movie of his life, which makes sense from his point of view, but it only occurs to me in this moment that I’ve also cast myself in the role. I’m not even the lead of my own movie.
“You and Lucy might still get married one day. We might still all travel together and live together.”
“Maybe,” he says, and suddenly I feel very sure that it won’t happen like that, that Zach and Lucy’s story is ending, not beginning, and that the movie of our lives is going to be about something else entirely.
We lie in silence for a little while, listening to Lucy’s snuffling snores.
“I’m sorry,” I say, breaking the silence. “I should have told you about Alex as soon as it happened. But I didn’t know what was going on. I still don’t, really.”
“What’s going on is he likes you.”
“I don’t know why.”
“Don’t fish for compliments.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re always at our house, so it was bound to happen.”
“Oh god, that’s it, isn’t it? I was there and it was convenient.”
“I meant, he was bound to notice how smart, funny, and interesting you are. Yes, interesting. You need to stop secondguessing people and thinking the worst.”
“I don’t think the worst.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Well, so do you. The whole fuss you made over Alex and me getting together was based on you thinking the worst.”
“That’s true. But I don’t think the worst of you. Or Lucy.”
“Maybe not, but you did yell at me.”
“I’m sorry for that. I was completely overreacting.” Zach turns on his side to look at me as he says this. His expression changes to what I think of as his serious listening face. “So you and Alex had a fight.”
“Yes. A bad one.”
“He wouldn’t tell me much, but I got the gist.”
“You two are talking now?”
“I apologized to him.”
“Wow. This is a big day for you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you say sorry to him before.”
“Well, I’m not normally wrong.”
“Zachary Russo: the Boy Who Is Never Wrong.”
“I’m obnoxious. I know. Lucy told me that many times after the movie.”
“Why were you being so obnoxious about this, though?”
“I don’t know. I just felt really angry. Like Alex was stealing you from me. No, stealing is the wrong word. That’s gross. I don’t own you. God, I’m saying this all wrong. I just … I don’t trust him to be the kind of guy that’s right for you.”
“What kind of guy is that?”
“Someone who gets your jokes, and knows you hate really loud music, and that you want every text message to have an emoji in it. Someone who will recommend great books, and listen to your fan theories, and bring you cups of tea when you’re stressed out.”
Everything he just listed is the stuff he and Lucy do for me. “What I want in a guy is … well, I don’t quite know yet, I’m still figuring it out, which is the point. You can’t know who is right or wrong for me if I don’t know.”
I don’t know how to put into words what it is I like about Alex. Part of it is something that feels too shameful to say: that Alex makes me feel special, wanted, desired, seen for the first time in my life. Which is problematic, because I’m supposed to love and accept myself without the help of anyone else. I know that, I have absorbed that message via every possible channel. Alex can’t be the hero who saves me from my low self-esteem. It goes against every feminist narrative I’ve ever read, every lesson I learned at my progressive all-girls school, every positive, healthy, empowering message I’ve ever seen someone share on Instagram. A woman saves herself. Be the hero of your own story. Be Katniss, not Bella. Even though I always related to Bella’s angst more than Katniss’s trauma.
But when people say you’ve got to love yourself first, they never explain how, exactly, you get past people screaming, “Gross bitch,” how you get past feeling like your best days are only your best days because you’re managing to hide the bad bits, how you feel desirable if no one has ever desired you.
It’s something I haven’t managed to figure out on my own, and Alex makes me feel like I’m a little bit closer.
Also, he has great hair.
“Look, I’m sorry. I suck,” Zach says.
“I accept your apology,” I say. I stopped being mad at him at least fifteen minutes ago.
“I think I was jealous, in a weird way,” Zach says. “You’re supposed to be my friend, not his, and all that.”
“Well, I’m sorry too. For not caring enough about your feelings.”
“Arguing with you is one of my favorite things, but fighting with you is one of the very worst,” he says.
“Let’s argue forever and never fight again,” I say, and we smile at each other. He turns back to look at the ceiling.
We lie there and listen to Lucy snoring.
“You should tell Alex,” Zach says after a while.
“Tell him what?”
“Whatever it is you are feeling. Whatever it is you want from him.”
“I don’t know what I feel or what I want.”
“Yes, you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Natalie, you know exactly what you want, all the time, but you hide it under all these layers of bullshit, and you make it impossible for anyone else to figure out.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You’re doing it right now.”
“No, I’m not.” Okay, yes, I am, but he’s making something very complicated sound very simple, and I resent that.
“Just go to Alex and be honest with him.”
“I’ll try.”
“Don’t try, just do.”
“Okay, I’ll do.”
“Also…” Zach says.
“What?”
“Also, I just wanted to say that I’m scared about leaving, I’m really scared.”
“Don’t be scared. You’re going to do so great, wherever you are. You have a very likable face.”
“That’s what you’ve always said.”
“It’s true. Plus, you’ll have us, no matter what.”
“I know.”
I close my eyes and start drifting into sleep. In this moment, I can believe the three of us will be friends forever, even though Zach is going away and I don’t know if he and Lucy will stay together, and if they don’t stay together, then I don’t know if the friendship can survive their breakup, and it feels like we’re on the precipice of so much change that it seems impossible we’ll all hold ourselves together as we are now.
Lucy, suddenly, sits up, groaning. “I feel awful,” she says, squinting at us groggily.
“Shhhh. Lie back down,” Zach says.
“Where am I?” she asks.
“In Natalie’s bed. You’re with us,” Zach says.
“Both of us,” I say.
“Good, good,” Lucy says, lying down again, closing her eyes, and falling straight back to sleep.