It's Not You It's Me

by Allison Rushby

  ‘That when you lost all the weight?’ Jas asks, handing me another piece of bread and pâté.

  I take it and nod.

  He pauses. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t know. When I saw you on the plane.’

  I stop eating. ‘Know? That I’d had cancer? Why should you know? I don’t have a sign on my back or anything, do I? “Beware of the cancerous girl.”’

  ‘Don’t joke about it like that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Jas doesn’t say anything, but I know what he’s on about it. I’ve recently discovered cancer’s some kind of sacred thing in our society. It’s taboo. You’re not supposed to talk about it, let alone joke about it. ‘I’m no different from how I was before, you know.’

  He looks at me. ‘You are.’

  I pause and think about this for a moment or two before I reply. ‘I guess from my point of view things have changed— I mean, sometimes the way I do things or approach things is different from before. But I’m still me. I feel the same. I still laugh at the same things. I still like the same things. I really don’t see things all that differently than I used to, but still, in some ways, I do. It’s hard to explain. Maybe it’s easier for other people to see.’

  ‘Maybe. I see it. So you finished the chemo and then had the, er, other one. What’s it called again?’

  ‘Radiation therapy. It was a breeze. Way easier than I’d thought—though I wasn’t so happy about the tatts.’

  Jas’s eyes almost pop out of their sockets. ‘Tatts? As in tattoos?’

  ‘Yep. I had to get little tatts so they’d know where to zap me each time.’

  ‘You still have them?’

  I smile, thinking about how I freaked out when they told me I’d be getting a tattoo, and an ugly green-black one, like cats get when they’re neutered at the pound, at that—nothing at all like a girly little bluebird or miniature heart. ‘No, they’ve faded.’

  ‘And that was it? The hard part was all over?’

  I laugh. ‘No way. The hardest part came after the treatment. The waiting.’

  ‘Waiting for what?’ Jas leans forward, resting his arms on the table.

  ‘Waiting to be told whether I was in remission or not.’

  ‘But you were. You are…right?’ Jas butts in.

  ‘Yes. Calm down. They told me in November that I was officially in remission.’

  ‘So you could get on with your life. That was, what, nearly a year ago?’

  ‘Almost.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you start sculpting again?’

  I pause for a moment as I still don’t know the answer to this question. ‘I just…couldn’t. I’d try, but I couldn’t get started. It was kind of like the thing with the food. I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t able to concentrate for five minutes at a time, either. I’d been so busy up until then, focused on getting through the treatment, but when I was done with that I felt like I had nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? You had your life back!’

  I point a finger at him. ‘That was exactly the problem. Exactly that. Everyone kept telling me that I had my life back and I must be over the moon, but I didn’t feel like that. That was just how everyone else felt about me having cancer. Not me. You see, after I was declared in remission everyone just expected me to get on with my life. But what I, and they, didn’t understand was that my life wasn’t the same any more.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, the thing was, the cancer had gone, but in some ways it was still there. I still felt like me, but it was as if everything I saw around me was different. Like I had someone else’s glasses on.’

  Jas seems puzzled.

  ‘I just didn’t know how to get going again. To start over. I think it’s only on this trip that I’ve realised why—I was trying to make myself go back to doing something I’d already half given up on. I think I’ve spent my whole life running away from what I really want to do.’

  ‘The sandstone? Like your mum?’

  ‘Yep. Stupid, hey?’

  Jas shakes his head. ‘No. Not stupid at all.’

  The waiter brings our dumplings and we tuck in.

  ‘And now what?’ Jas says, mouth full.

  I take a deep breath. ‘Finish Sisters, I guess. I’ll have to learn, though. Maybe in Italy.’

  ‘What a drag.’

  I smile. ‘You could say that. And then there’s uni. I want to finish uni.’

  ‘You always wanted to finish uni.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘This time I might try passing.’

  There’s silence for a second or two before Jas nods. ‘Good. I approve.’

  ‘Is that so?’ I laugh.

  But Jas doesn’t join in. He puts down his fork, looking serious.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Er…’ he says, pushing the last dumpling around his plate. ‘The sterility thing—like you said before. How do you feel about that? That you mightn’t be able to have kids?’

  ‘I’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I mean, what was the alternative? Not having the treatment? You can’t have kids if you’re dead, can you?’

  He looks up and laughs then. Really laughs.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I say indignantly.

  ‘You sound exactly like your mother.’ He bites into his dumpling with gusto, looking altogether too pleased with himself.

  Well, I think, I can wipe that expression off his face. ‘Now,’ I say, lifting my glass to him, ‘your turn to spill the beans.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Over our schnitzel, then a shared piece of apfelstrudel and two coffees, Jas tells me the whole story.

  The whole story from the start—from when he went to Sydney. How the Spawn deal he was offered out of nowhere was too good to pass up. How he knew that even though it wasn’t what he really wanted to do it would give him a foot in the door of the music world—a name—something he needed to get where he really wanted to be, which was full-time songwriting. It was the opportunity of a lifetime.

  But even though Spawn was hugely successful two years down the track, it wasn’t enough for Jas. The in-fighting was hard enough to deal with twenty-four hours a day without hating what he was doing in the first place as well. He said that he knew he sounded ungrateful, talking about it like that, but having three-quarters of the world hate him and want him dead while the other quarter worshipped the ground he walked on was confusing—especially seeing as he himself belonged in the larger group. In the end it was too much, becoming someone he hated day after day, someone he couldn’t bear being.

  And then there was the thing with Zed.

  Zamiel had been getting death threats all along, but when one person in particular started to send letters on a regular basis after the stabbing, Jas decided it was time to up security—Zamiel just wasn’t worth dying for. From then on he stopped going to places his bodyguard didn’t want him to go. It took extra time to do things like check places out from top to bottom. Zed wasn’t happy. Spawn weren’t able to meet the commitments he wanted them to while the security was so high. The guys in the band got in on the act, thinking Jas was being over the top about the whole thing. Then suddenly the letters stopped. Security was relaxed. As the threats became fewer and fewer, Jas even started going out on his own.

  ‘But they were still coming, the threats? Zed was just hiding them from you?’ I say, shocked.

  Jas nods. ‘Coming thick and fast, apparently.’

  ‘While you were going out on your own? And Zed knew that?’

  He shakes his head as if he still doesn’t quite believe it himself. ‘Yeah, he knew all right. The guy—the one sending the threats—he knew my real name. He knew where I stayed in every city. He knew everything.’

  ‘How did you find out? That he was still sending the letters, I mean?’

  ‘I overheard Zed last week. On the phone. Boasting how he’d pulled it all off. The idiot. It’s always how they get caught, isn’t it? Guys like him. Can’t help but tell someone h
ow smart they are.’

  ‘And that’s when you left?’ I ask, pushing my coffee cup away, silently vowing that I’ll never eat again. Or not until breakfast, anyway.

  Jas nods. ‘Sounds like I ran away, or something, but it wasn’t a planned thing at all. In the end it wasn’t really about the death threats. I was just sitting in my hotel room, wondering if this was what I was going to do with the rest of my life, when something made me get up and pack a bag and just…go.’ Jas eats the last morsel of apfelstrudel, drinks the last drop of his coffee and then leans back in his chair, his hands behind his head. ‘It was a completely shitty thing to do to the guys, but it was going to end sooner or later anyway. The fighting was getting worse. Wouldn’t have lasted more than another six months at the most.’

  ‘Can they sue you? Did you break a contract or something?’

  Jas nods. ‘I broke my contract. But after what Zed’s done, I don’t think they’ll be suing. Don’t think they have a leg to stand on. Anyway, that’s it. I’m done. Back to the old Jas.’

  ‘And now what? What are you going to do job-wise?’

  He smiles. ‘Think I might take a leaf out of your book and do something just for me.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Not write for other people, for a start. Write for me. And see where it goes, I guess. If people like it, great. If they don’t, they can bugger off.’

  I nod. ‘I know what you mean.’ But then I pause. ‘The thing is, you looked so comfortable up on stage the other night. Like you belonged. Are you sure you’re going to be able to give all that away so easily?’

  ‘It’s not that I want to give it away. I love performing. It’s just that next time I want it to be as me. Doing what I want to do.’

  This makes sense. ‘Well, I approve too,’ I say with a nod, and Jas laughs.

  We sit in silence for a while, I think both realising that although we’ve covered completely different territory since our last parting we’re in the same place now, in all kinds of ways.

  Basically, at the crossroads.

  We look at each other for a moment or two.

  I know it’s time, then. Time to talk about the one thing we haven’t talked about.

  Us.

  Jas is the one who says it first. ‘Let’s go back upstairs and talk.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  He motions to the waiter, asking for the bill, and the waiter brings it over, already prepared.

  I take it from him. ‘I’m getting this one.’ I give Jas a steely glare. ‘I insist.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ He looks too tired and overfed to put up much of a fight anyway.

  I give the waiter my credit card and prepare to sign my life savings away. After I do, we head back up to our room silently.

  When we’re inside, Jas goes over and takes a seat at the little table—and, to my horror, puts his feet up on the other chair. He’s taken off his shoes, but still…And he must see the look on my face, because he laughs. ‘It’s OK. Don’t think it’s thirteenth-century or anything. Probably from the late IKEA dynasty.’

  I don’t think so, but can’t be bothered to argue. Instead, I pace around the room, inspecting something here, touching something there, not being able to keep still in my highly caffeinated, anticipatory state.

  ‘So how do you think you’ll get started? With the songwriting thing, I mean.’ I say to Jas after a while.

  Jas stretches and yawns. ‘Already started, really.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Been songwriting the whole time I’ve been doing the Spawn thing. Selling the odd thing here and there.’

  I stop fidgeting and turn to look at him. ‘Anything I’d know?’

  He names four or five songs and I’m blown away. They’ve all been really big hits in the last year or so. Especially the last one, which has been a gigantic success for one of the boy bands.

  ‘No way! You wrote that?’ I say, going and perching near the window, only a few metres away from Jas. ‘That makes me feel a whole lot better.’

  ‘Better? Why?’

  ‘I had it stuck in my head for about a month. It almost sent me insane.’ Remembering it, I can’t help but start humming a few bars of the song.

  Jas joins in and starts singing the words, picking up his feet and moving them in the air—the accompanying boy band dance moves, I realise, and laugh. As he keeps on going I look at him and remember how things used to be. How things have been again during the past few days. I always feel so good around Jas. With his last note, I clap. Well, at least I know why I was so addicted to the song now. It was the boat shed all over again. How could I not have known he’d written it?

  He takes a mock bow when I finish my round of applause. ‘Hideous, isn’t it?’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s one of the better ones. That’s why I liked it. It’s not all that “girl, I really love you, you’re the only one for me, I’d die for you” load of crap. That stuff doesn’t work when it’s belting out of a seventeen-year-old, does it? Not for me, anyway. I just don’t buy it.’

  ‘That’s what I think too,’ Jas says, sitting up a bit.

  ‘Maybe you should try something along the lines of “girl, I really love you, or at least I’ll tell you I do to get you into bed, because I’m seventeen and completely oversexed”. It’d be closer to the truth.’

  Jas smiles. ‘Probably a whole lot closer. Something tells me I wouldn’t be selling many songs like that, though. Guess I can come out of the closet about it all now, hey?’

  ‘Oh, God.’ I look away, the reference making me remember how wrong I’ve been about him. I feel my face turning red again.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ I say, a bit too fast.

  ‘Yes, you did. You said, “Oh, God”. I heard you.’

  I examine the wall, tracing the grains in one of the beams with one finger. My cheeks are burning. I hate being a blusher.

  There’s a very long silence.

  When I check back, Jas is staring straight at me. And, try as I might, I can’t look away. Because I know that this is it. The thing he didn’t get to say before.

  ‘You know what?’ Jas says, getting up from his chair. ‘I’m tired of pretending about us. Tired of skirting around everything.’ He blurts the words out.

  I’d been about to say something—a nice little conversation-filler, perhaps. But this stops me in my tracks. It stops Jas too. He seems surprised he’s said what he’s said.

  ‘What do you, um, mean?’ I say quietly.

  He gets a bit more animated then, and starts walking around the room, stopping here and there to look at me. ‘Let me ask you something,’ he says. ‘If we’re getting everything out in the open.’

  Are we? I don’t like the sound of this much. ‘Ask me what?’

  ‘When we met up. On the plane. When you asked me about piglet-face. There was something going on, wasn’t there? Did you think…?’ He stops moving now, ‘Did you think I was bi or something? Did you really believe that media stuff?’

  Shit. Am I that transparent? But then I think about what he’s just asked me. He asked me if I thought he was bi. I perk up at that. ‘No,’ I say truthfully. After all, I thought he was gay, didn’t I? Score one, Charlie!

  He reads my expression. ‘How about gay, then?’

  Double shit.

  ‘Ah!’ He points at me and comes closer. ‘I knew it. I knew it! I thought you were joking on the plane, about piglet-face, but you weren’t, were you? And when you got me to repeat all that stuff before, it kinda clicked. You thought I was gay! How could you think that, Charlie?’ He starts laughing.

  I get defensive then. I unfreeze. ‘Well, hello?’ I stop holding onto the beam next to me and become more agitated, trying to get him to see my point. I think then that if someone were to see us we’d look like a couple of Mexican jumping beans, the way we’re carrying on. ‘How was I supposed to know you weren’t gay? I mean, the pieces all fit together that way. One
minute you’re pushing me off you in the apartment, and the next minute I’m hearing ten different reports in the media that you’re gay and seeing some guy’s tongue shoved down your throat. What am I supposed to think?’

  Jas just looks at me.

  ‘Well?’ I try again.

  ‘Well, what?’

  I don’t know, I think, throwing my hands up in the air. ‘Well, and how about all those other things you said?’

  ‘Like what? I never said anything. Certainly never said I’m gay. Because I’m not!’ Jas is flinging his arms around now too, trying to make his point.

  ‘Like the thing with the gingerbread heart. You said that all the men would beat you up, or something, but then you said all the homophobes would as well.’

  ‘What? I meant they’d think I was gay. Wearing a gingerbread heart and all.’

  What? ‘Because all gay men wear gingerbread hearts, do they?’

  I get the same look back. ‘Yes. With blue ribbons. It’s a sign they’re available. Some of them even ice on their phone numbers. Are you insane? It was a throwaway line, that’s all. Now, what else? What else did you think I said?’

  I pause for a moment and think back.

  ‘OK. At funky karaoke the other night. The thing about Sharon. You said something about her not getting it. That she was thick.’

  His forehead wrinkles in concentration as he thinks back. ‘At funky karaoke? That? Just meant I was never going to be interested in her. And why are we calling it funky karaoke now?’

  I huff. ‘I don’t know!’ Another instance springs to mind then—one that Jas has already brought up. ‘OK, and on the plane I distinctly remember you saying, “I do have some taste, you know. I wouldn’t go out with a guy like him.” Those were your exact words.’

  Jas pauses. ‘Ah. I guess that one’s a little bit ambiguous.’

  ‘Is it ever!’

  ‘But, still, Charlie…’

  ‘Don’t say it!’ As if I don’t feel like an idiot enough already, now he’s going to point it out to me. I take a deep breath, trying to stop feeling so tense. I feel as if I’ve been gripping onto something for dear life for hours. With my fingernails. I try to get a hold of myself while Jas waits for me. One more breath. ‘Right. Let’s just get this straight, then, shall we? Get it sorted. I didn’t think I could ask, but now it seems I can, so I will. You’re not gay? You’re not bi? You’ve never been gay? You’ve never been bi? You never will be gay? You never will be bi?’ I tick the choices off on my fingers as I go.