by J. P. Pomare
I glanced at the barista and mouthed, ‘Sorry.’ But for what? Sorry for crying? Sorry for being angry? It was Thom’s fault. Boys are so skilled at drawing apologies when they’re the ones who owe them.
‘It’s okay. We’re going to be okay,’ he said.
But I didn’t feel okay. Something had shifted between us and I wasn’t sure it would right itself again. I didn’t kiss him when he walked me home.
Up in my room, I took out my phone and went to the recently dialled list. I knew which number was his; he had called his own phone from mine to find it at 2.39 am on the night of the party, the night I had fallen asleep in his arms and woken in Willow’s bed.
•
I was out in the yard lying beneath the eucalyptus. A magpie cawed from up on the eaves of the house. I pointed at it, making a gun with my fingers. ‘Pow.’ The bird continued undeterred. The sun warmed my ankles where the shade didn’t quite reach. I peered past my phone up at the branches cutting pieces from the sky.
There was something about communicating in the digital realm that didn’t feel real, I thought as I scrolled through my messages. It was like there was another world where my messages existed but they were sent by someone else. In that space, I was someone who was always happy and uninhibited.
Kate, do you think it’s a good idea that you message me?
I don’t think there is anything wrong with two people sending text messages.
It could reflect badly on us both.
I think it’s okay. No one has to know. I like it. I like you.
I took a photo of my face, angled in such a way that you could see my collarbone and the skin on my chest. I looked pretty in the photo, lips slightly pursed, dark hair fanned out on the grass, eyes narrowed a little against the light. I held my breath and hit send.
•
I hadn’t seen Willow since the night a week ago when she had tried to reconcile our friendship, but I said yes when she invited me over. And if it was someone else in her house I really wanted to see, well, she didn’t need to know. I deliberately wore my sheer black top that Thom hated – he said it was ‘attention seeking’ – and my tightest black jeans. I knew I was overdressed for the casual shopping trip we had planned, but I wanted to look nice for him.
Willow was up in her room getting dressed so it was her mum who let me in. I went into the lounge to wait. Sitting on the couch, I was conscious of my heartbeat, the fluttering in my stomach. There was no sign of Willow’s dad, though I had seen his car parked in the driveway. After a while, I walked through his study as if on my way to the bathroom. Does he know I’m in his house?
Footsteps. I turned to see him coming into the room. ‘Hello, Kate.’ His voice rolled over me, honeyed and warm.
‘Hello,’ I said, my voice barely audible. I dragged a finger over his desk. He stood close by. I turned to him, my heart thumping in my chest. I wet my lips.
He glanced back towards the hall once. When he spoke it was so soft, I found myself stepping closer to hear him. ‘I’ve been thinking about you.’ So frank, so direct. None of the irony I had come to expect from Thom. A blush scorched my cheeks.
‘I know the feeling.’
I stepped so close that he would have to touch me to get past.
‘You have the most beautiful hair,’ he said. ‘Did you ever think about cutting it?’
‘I like it long.’
‘I think you could pull off a bob.’
I could hear the footsteps on the stairs.
‘That’s probably Willow,’ he said without urgency. ‘It would be best if she didn’t find you in my study.’ Did he realise I could barely breathe? Would it be the end of the world if Willow found us? I walked away, deliberately pausing at the door and looking back. His eyes travelled my body. Good.
That night I got a message. You looked stunning today, Kate.
THIRTY-FOUR
WE ARRANGED TO meet for coffee. If we were caught, it could be explained away. We might have both been at the same café, coincidentally, and bumped into each other.
He was there before me, one ankle on the opposite knee, looking down at an open newspaper. I scrunched my hair with my fingers, caught a look at myself in the reflection of the window, then entered. The café was busy.
‘Kate, hello,’ he said, rising. He kissed my cheek, and suddenly I realised this was real. No one’s parents had greeted me like that before, like a peer. ‘Grab a seat.’
I ordered a latte. He already had a black coffee half drunk in front of him; how long had he been waiting? I reached for the sunglasses sitting beside his keys.
‘Are these yours?’ I said, pushing them on. I had to hold them to my face to keep them from falling off. ‘How do I look?’
He smiled. ‘Sophisticated.’ He closed the paper and folded it on the table. ‘Are we eating?’
I shrugged. ‘I’m not so hungry.’
‘Let’s get something small,’ he said.
When my coffee came, I loaded it up with sugar and quickly stirred it through while he spoke to the waiter. He ordered a slice of carrot cake.
‘So, how’s school going?’
‘School? It’s okay. It’s just . . . school – kind of boring.’
‘And what about next year, what are you planning to do?’
‘I want to study architecture at uni.’
His dark eyebrows rose. ‘Architecture. My brother is an architect. I could put you in contact if you wanted. You know, to find out what it’s like. Hard work, but I’m sure it’s a rewarding career.’ Dad had never really spoken to me about my dreams and ambitions, and the offer, to meet his brother, a real architect, was not one Willow would ever have made.
‘That would be great. Thank you.’
‘Don’t mention it. And if you’re looking for work while you’re at uni, I’m sure I could talk him into taking you on, even if it’s just answering phones. It would be good experience and you’d see how an architect’s practice worked.’ The carrot cake came out with two small forks. He took one, trimmed off the tip of the cake and ate it.
‘That would be cool, if you could introduce me.’ I sipped my coffee. It still wasn’t sweet enough but if I added any more sugar I would look like a child.
He leant forwards, and a curl of dark hair fell down his forehead. ‘So, what’s happening with the Thom situation, Kate?’
I took his fork and sliced off a small piece of the cake, bringing it to my mouth. ‘Thom?’
He smiled. ‘You were having some issues.’
‘Right. Well, we still are, I suppose.’
He took another slice of cake from the same fork. ‘So where are you going to go with it?’
‘I’m thinking about ending things.’ As I said it, I knew it was true. I was still angry with Thom. That night at his house had been so special but something had changed. I needed a break at the very least although I couldn’t imagine things ever going back to how they were.
He lowered his head a little closer to mine. ‘Well, you need to make sure you’re doing what’s best for you. It sounds like you’ve got a great future ahead. If that future doesn’t include Thom, it might be worth acting on it sooner rather than later.’
‘It’s been a year now. It feels like a long time, you know? It’s hard to walk away.’
He rested one hand on the table. I didn’t care who saw us there. I reached out and ran my forefinger up and down his.
‘What would you do,’ I said, ‘if you were me?’
‘That’s a loaded question.’
I waited, letting the silence urge him to continue speaking.
‘You seem earnest about this so I’ll answer in kind. Say you meet someone when you’re young and you believe you’re in love,’ he begins. ‘You seem perfect for each other. Perhaps you are but as you grow older you find yourself making concessions. You give up on dreams and plans you always wanted, you lose friends and start to realise you weren’t as happy as you once were. You begin to have some doubts that the pe
rson you fell in love with is the same person you’re married to but you’re too afraid of change, or afraid of –’ he waves his hand ‘– let’s call it the unknown.’ I think of how I used to feel about Thom, those words in my journal. I compare that feeling to now.
He glances once to the door as someone enters, then back to me. ‘You start a family and even as the doubts grow, even as you begin to feel something a lot like regret, it’s not just about the two of you anymore. Every decision you make affects more than just the two of you. Years go by and you grow more and more distant but you think soon you’ll have the courage to make a tough decision and all the while you are getting older and older and you begin to resent each other. You get no joy or love out of the relationship but you are obliged to stick it out.
‘Then you promise yourself when your daughter turns eighteen, when she is an adult, you will do what you should have done years ago because regret doesn’t fade away, it only gets bigger and bigger. Do you understand what I’m saying?’
‘I do,’ I said. Willow would be turning eighteen in the next few months. And just like that I knew what I needed to do. I smiled and pressed my fingers between his.
•
Thom’s mum let me in. I had turned up unannounced, and Thom was in the shower. I had come straight from the café, energised after the conversation with Willow’s dad. I went to his room to wait. His laptop was open on his desk. I thought it would be nice to have some of the photos he took of our trips to the beach, and days in the park. Would he send them to me if I ended things? Or would I have to take them? Maybe I could choose a few of my favourites and put them on my phone.
I sat down in front of his laptop. There were a couple of movies on his home screen. I found a folder titled Photography. I clicked it and began to scan through hundreds of photos. I recognised the settings. Some were from the tennis courts, others from the beach. In a few I wore a pair of sunglasses I had since lost, buried in sand at Brighton beach, two black dinner plates that covered half my face. I kept scrolling all the way through. Towards the end of the list, I found another file. School stuff. Curious, I clicked it. The photos were of me.
In one image my dark brown ponytail hung over one shoulder and I wore a sedated sort of smile, all gums and closed eyes. I loved that feeling, his words spurring me on as he took photos. The thrill of knowing someone desired me. Above my own narcissism I felt liberated; Thom’s lens was the antidote to those venomous words Willow had spat. For just the fraction of time it took for the shutter to click, that lens salved the pain of the bullying, the torment of being different, all the lingering stares. The feeling inside now was the inverse of that excitement.
I continued to scroll. There was a series of shots taken at a dam, the place where a man had once deliberately swerved his car off the road and into the water. He’d had his three sons in the back. The man swam to safety while the car sank. What constituted good photography was a mystery to me, but it was clear Thom had an eye for it. I scrolled further until I heard the hum of the shower stop.
I saw a photo of myself. One I had never seen. I was asleep on Thom’s bed, one arm thrown across my face as if to keep the light out. My small breasts were bare, peach-coloured nipples floating atop pale skin. I ran my gaze down my own body, then clicked on the next image. The camera zoomed in between my legs. I felt my face flush. I clicked again. Then I found the video file. My finger hovered over the icon but I could hear him coming up the hall; I didn’t have time to watch it. I sat with a hot new feeling bubbling inside me. Why did he keep it? I remembered the video, but it was never supposed to be permanent. It was an experience, a memory, something that should have disappeared in the cold morning light. Can you delete it? I had asked when we woke. I already have. So why was it still there?
I closed the lid of the laptop and moved away from the desk to sit on his bed.
He entered the room, a towel around his waist.
‘Kate,’ he said. ‘This is a surprise.’
‘A surprise. Yes.’ The anger was bubbling inside.
‘What?’ he said, watching my face. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’ I clenched my jaw.
‘Oh wow, are you still that pissed at me about the party? I said sorry. What more do you want?’
He glanced over at his laptop, then sat at the desk and opened the lid. ‘Were you snooping?’ He turned to look at me.
‘Why did you take those?’
‘I’m a photographer. I don’t know. I thought it would be nice.’
‘You never asked my permission.’
He made a horrible little sound with his nose, not quite a laugh, rather a sharp exhale. ‘What’s wrong with keeping a reminder of how beautiful you are? Most girls would be flattered. I just want to be able to look at you when you’re not with me.’
‘That’s not the point, Thom.’ I was trying so hard to keep my voice even, to keep the feelings inside. I needed him to delete them all before I broke it off. ‘The video, that was a private, intimate moment. You said you deleted it.’ I needed to keep breathing. It wasn’t the time to let my simmering anger boil over. ‘Why would you say that if it wasn’t true?’
‘Well, I deleted it off the camera but I had already downloaded everything from the memory stick.’
‘So it was a lie.’
‘You said “Can you delete it off the camera”.’
‘That’s because I didn’t realise you had uploaded it onto your computer already. You never had my consent –’
‘Consent? Shall we watch the video? Do you want to check that you were consen –’
‘Let me finish. You never had my consent to keep it. I trusted you. It doesn’t matter how you spin it, you can’t deny that you knew I wanted it deleted, that I didn’t want you to keep it and still you saved it.’
‘Grow up, Kate. It was a special time and I wanted a way to remember it, okay? I’ll delete it, don’t worry.’
‘What about the photos? I was asleep, Thom. Do you know how creepy that is?’
‘Creepy?’ Again he makes that ugly sniffing sound. ‘You wanted me to take them.’
‘I was asleep, Thom!’
‘I asked you and you said yes.’
‘You’re lying. You’re full of shit. You took nude photos of me when I was drunk and asleep. You kept a sex tape of us after you’d told me you had deleted it.’ The words made me angrier and angrier, as if by speaking about it I was reminded of how disgusting he really was. How little respect he had for me.
‘You were drunk, you can’t remember. This never would have happened if you hadn’t snooped through my stuff.’
The anger was cresting into rage. My voice did not rise but fell, cold and fierce. The words came from deep inside me. ‘Don’t you dare blame me.’
‘What if I went through your shit?’ he said, snatching my phone from where I’d left it on the desk. ‘Huh? How would you feel?’
I leapt off the bed and tried to snatch it from him. He held me off him with his forearm and opened my messages. His face changed abruptly and he shoved me back onto the bed.
‘What is this?’ he demanded.
I tried to sit up but he pushed me again, hard. I fell back. I wanted to cry. Then I did and he began to cry as well.
‘Who is it?’ His face contorted.
‘No one.’
‘Tell me,’ he said. Every tremor in his voice went through me as sharp as shrapnel. ‘Who is it? Who is this old bastard messaging you, sending you photos?’ His voice dropped. ‘Did you fuck him?’
‘Don’t make this about him. You ruined this relationship.’
‘I’ll kill him. I’ll fucking kill him.’
‘Delete the video, Thom. Delete it right now.’
He shook his head. ‘Get out.’ His voice rose, high-pitched with pain. ‘Get the fuck out!’ He stood up and his towel began to slip. Absurdly he clutched at it, as if shy of being naked in front of me.
‘Get the fuck out now, Kate.’ His eyes, his nose ran
. A vein stood out in his shoulder. ‘I fucking hate you!’
I climbed up again and strode towards the laptop. Thom’s sadness was a distraction. He’d betrayed my trust first. He kept the video.
Thom shoved me hard again. He was so much stronger than me and this only made the rage grow.
‘Don’t you touch me,’ I said, straining, baring my teeth. ‘Don’t you dare touch me.’
‘You’re disgusting, Kate. I always knew you were a slut.’
My scars, my naked body, were on his computer. ‘Delete it!’ The rage took over. I rushed forwards and shoved him, scratched at his face. He pushed me back. I could hear footsteps up the hall. Thom’s mum.
I got to my feet, my vision blurring. I rushed at him again.
•
I don’t know if I hit my head or what happened, but the next thing I knew I was outside, hammering on the front door of Thom’s house with my fists, blood on my fingertips, blood streaming from my nose. Suddenly aware of my surroundings, I stopped, stepped back from the door and tried to collect myself, to steady my breathing. I looked around. My phone was on the lawn, as if it had been tossed outside. A neighbour was peering out the window of the house across the road and the builders working next door were watching me. I had blacked out. Was this an after-effect of the concussion? Had that bottle broken something inside my brain?
I sobbed all the way home, tears streaming down my face. It felt as if nothing would be okay ever again.
I didn’t hear from him for several days after that. I had called and messaged him on Facebook. It was clear our relationship was over, but it was important to me that he knew why I was angry. I needed him to understand that what he had done was also a betrayal and he needed to delete everything.
Dad knew something was going on but he didn’t ask any questions. He let me mourn the death of my first proper relationship in my own way. In silence and darkness in my room, binge-watching TV shows. I typed a message to Willow’s dad.
I broke it off.
Oh, Kate. It’s not easy, it never is.
I just wish I could jump forward in time to when I feel better.
