His eyes clouded. “You do, too,” he said, but I couldn’t read his tone.
Of course, I thought, catching sight of myself in the mirror. I looked very different to how I had when I’d been with him. I was about to comment a bit sheepishly to that effect, when someone else burst into the toilets and made a beeline for one of the cubicles, startling us both.
We stood there awkwardly while a whole series of crude noises emanated from the toilet, and then the guy came back out, spent maybe one second with his hands under the flow of the water at the basin, and then went straight out without drying them. Water dripped off the door handle onto the floor as the door fell shut.
Henry watched it, wincing. “Welcome to manhood.”
I laughed some more and washed my hands properly. “Whoops. I guess I’m doing it wrong,” I said, only to discover there were no hand towels and the fucking dryer didn’t work. Grimacing, I wiped my hands on my jeans. “Or not. I guess this is my first rite of passage. So how are you, anyway? How’s work?”
It was a very automatic question, because right at that moment I was so delighted about suddenly bumping into him that I’d forgotten I’d been checking my phone every day to find out about what had happened last week. His face hardened momentarily. “The usual,” he said very, very vaguely, and then moved right along to, “How’s Sarah? I remember you mentioned you were at the doctors’ with her last week,” so I didn’t even have a chance to ask him for more detail.
I was lost for a second, I’d wanted to follow up about work. “Sarah—? Yes, she’s okay. Well, she’s at another appointment now. I’m getting takeaway for us.”
He smiled. “I always wondered what it would be like to live with friends. Is it everything they say?”
That made a big grin spread across my face. “Yeah,” I said, remembering my surprise party. “It’s awesome! If I’d known it was going to be this much fun living with people, I would have moved out of Mum’s place at the beginning of uni like everyone else did.” I made a face. “Not that Mum would have let me move out, so maybe it’s better I didn’t know…” Something occurred to me and the grin fell off my face. “Oh. Oh, god. I hope she’s not still calling you, Henry. I told her not to, and I’m so sorry that—”
His pleasant smile abruptly disappeared and he put a hand up to stop me. “She’s not.” He paused. “Thanks. I couldn’t… well, thanks.”
After mentioning Mum, a silence stretched between us. He was watching me, and he kept taking these little breaths like he was going to say something, and then just exhaling. It was the perfect moment for me to ask him something; maybe find out about what was going on at work, or ask about his car at the hotel, or why he hadn’t called me back or if he was okay or tell him how much I missed him and thank him for everything he’d ever done for me… maybe it would be better to catch up over dinner, though. To have a proper conversation, sitting across from each other just like we always used to.
“Are you here with someone?” I asked him. He laughed once, humourlessly, and shook his head. My heart lifted. “Well, do you want some company for a few minutes? I’ll have to pick up Sarah pretty soon, though.”
“That would be—” he began with an uncertain smile and then stopped. He took another breath. “You know, I—” he said, and then clamped his mouth shut again. I saw the deliberation on his face, and I could almost track his answer from an automatic ‘yes’ to a very forced ‘no’ as he closed his eyes shut and then vigorously shook his head. “Min, I shouldn’t.”
My smile fell. “Why not?”
He took a moment to gather himself before he finally spoke. “I can’t get over you by having dinner with you.”
A knot formed in my stomach. “Even just as friends?”
His jaw was tight. “Yes.”
“But I thought you said that maybe after some time we could go back to—”
“—Stop. Min, I—” he began gently, and took a heavy breath. Then, he exhaled. “I constantly wonder how you are and if you’re okay. I constantly miss picking up my phone and telling you random little things like how badly I slept or how irritating the traffic is. I was at Dan Murphy’s and your favourite wine was on special, and I thought, ‘Fantastic, I can save us some money!’ and I took a step towards the crates before I remembered there’s no ‘us’ anymore. Even here, in this restaurant: I came in here before, and you know what my first thought was?” I shook my head. “’I wonder if Min remembers the time we ate here’.”
Henry… “It was the first thing I thought about when I walked through the door,” I said quietly. “You ordered chicken parma. I had the salad. It was after your promotion and you had this enormous smile on your face the whole time, you made all the waiters smile. They even gave you the bottle of wine for free.”
“I couldn’t help it, I was on top of the world that night,” he said, smiling at the memory, “I had everything. It was one of those moments where you look at your future and it’s so bright and so perfect, and you feel so lucky for having it in front of you that there’s nothing you can do except celebrate with everyone around you.” The nostalgic smile faded and he closed his eyes.
Seeing him standing here, hunched in the dim light of the men’s, the contrast was stark.
“You do have a bright future, Henry,” I told him, feeling my own eyes swimming as I tried to comfort him. “It’s going to be everything you’ve ever dreamed of.”
His face crumpled. “I wish I could see it right now, Min.” He looked up at me and saw I was on the brink of tears, and he folded. He took a step towards me—clearly intending to hug me—and then stopped himself, half-turned with his hands in his hair and crammed his eyes shut. When he looked up at me again, there was so much defeat. “I can’t do this. Please, I—I have such bad judgement when it comes to you. It’s going to get me in so much trouble. Please,” he begged me, “please, I can’t do this. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Excuse me.”
He brushed past me out of the toilets, and the door creaked shut with a gentle thud that echoed off the tiles. I could hear his quick footsteps retreat down the hallway outside.
I stood there alone, staring at my own shocked reflection in the mirror until I couldn’t hear him anymore.
It was only someone else bursting into the toilets that made me realise I couldn’t just stand there forever, and I retraced Henry’s steps out, walking past the front counter of the restaurant. My eyes automatically searched for him, and I spotted him sitting along the far wall, staring blankly at his menu. As I was watching him, I saw him pretend to pat his mouth with the napkin, but instead surreptitiously use it to dab his eyes. He knew I was here, I was sure of it. But he didn’t look up.
It was that dismissal—that final, painful dismissal—that made me realise this might actually be it. That despite everything that Henry and I had been to each other, despite the fact we’d dried each other’s tears and shared each other’s joy for four long years, this might truly be the end of our story.
As I walked out of the restaurant—away from the first person who’d ever made me feel special and lovable and valued—I tried to force myself to accept that. I didn’t even realise that I’d left the takeaway on the counter back there until I was two blocks away. I didn’t bother turning around to pick it up.
Well, that was it, wasn’t it? That was it for Henry and I. There was no escaping July 19 now: I was going to have to tell Mum that we’d broken up. She was going to come back to live in Australia in order to sort me out and get me married, and I was either going to have to go back to living as a woman or face the consequences of telling her the truth.
And as much as that meant I basically had a month of freedom left, all I could think about was Henry eating there at that restaurant all alone, my empty chair across from him. I was lucky that it was dark because there were tears on my cheeks—I quickly wiped them on my jacket sleeve at every set of lights—and I arrived back at the clinic before Sarah was out.
There was a big pharmacy besid
e it, and I went inside hell-bent on satisfying a kind of petulant desire to buy every fucking painkiller they had in stock and just shove them in my mouth pill by pill and go on one long bender—fuck the universe, seriously—but when the assistant asked me if I needed any help, I managed to just give her a tight smile and shake my head.
I went to wait in the car instead, getting my mobile out and staring at it. I wanted to text him. I wanted to text Bree, too, but Sarah was due any minute and if I told Bree I didn’t feel great and then left her hanging, I’d make her really upset, especially since she knew what I was capable of when I was feeling like this. Instead, I just sat there and watched the lock screen of my phone fade to black.
It was nearly 8:30pm when Sarah finally came out of the clinic. She climbed into the passenger seat, silent. She looked haunted.
At least I didn’t have to think about Henry anymore. “How was it?” I asked her quietly.
She opened her mouth, but the sound didn’t come out straight away. “It’s actually a nice place, it’s really open, all modern furniture and all that. The ladies are all really nice and friendly.” She took a moment. “When I—when I went to have the ultrasound they do to make sure you’re not too far along for the abortion pill, they pull a curtain across so you can’t see the screen and get upset. But I felt like I needed to look this thing in the face, you know? If I’m going to terminate it, I should at least see what I’m doing. And they did a print out for Rob so he can deal better with it, as well, so that was something…”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate it,” I told her, hoping it was what she wanted to hear.
She closed her eyes for a second; I wasn’t sure what that meant. “The doctor took me into another room to answer a series of questions, so I just basically said what I knew they wanted to hear from me, and then she popped out this little white pill into my hand.” Her throat tightened. “And I was sitting there, looking down at this pill and all I could think about was how sick I feel and how fucked I’d be without it, and I was going, ‘Sarah, swallow the damn pill, what the hell is wrong with you’ and I—” Her eyes glazed. “—and I couldn’t lift my hand to my mouth. I couldn’t do it. I put the little pill back on the desk in front of her. She looked up at me and asked me if I was sure.” She took a ragged breath. “And I’m like, ‘of course I’m not sure, what the hell am I doing?’.” As the colour drained from my face, she turned to look at me. “So, yeah, that’s that. My life’s over. I guess I’m having a baby.”
ELEVEN
Neither Sarah nor I had much to say on the way back. My brain kept circling back around to the likelihood of Henry completely leaving my life and, as a result, my mother making the rest of it total hell. It was lucky Sarah didn’t need my input on anything, because I was basically a write-off for the entire trip.
While we drove, she unfolded the ultrasound printout that the nurse had given her and spent a great deal of time just quietly considering it. After we had parked in her driveway, she held it at me. “Want to see?”
I leant over. It was very grainy and featured a small crescent-shaped blob.
Sarah took it back, frowning at the blob. “I think that part’s the baby…”
No one else was home when we got inside. While she was changing into her pyjamas, I decided I was going to have a shot at lighting the forgotten potbelly stove in the corner of her living room on the off-chance that doing so would create a habitable environment for humans.
It was harder than it looked, and when Sarah wandered back out in her flannel pyjamas and flopped on the couch, the pressure of her watching me made me snap a match. “If Rob was here, he could do it…” she told me, and then sighed and flopped her head back against the armrest. “It’s better that he’s not.”
I sat back on my haunches. “It is?”
“He’s going to want to celebrate, isn’t he? I’m just not feeling it right now.” She groaned and ran a hand over her face. “God, and not just Rob, either. How the hell am I going to tell everyone else? I’ll be like, ‘Hey guys, I’m pregnant’ while looking like I’ve been read a death sentence and everyone’s going to know it’s an accident, and they’re going to pat me, and apologise to me, and feel sorry for me and just…”
“You don’t have to tell everyone straight away, Sarah.”
She exhaled. “I probably won’t. I mean, there’s no way I can tell work yet anyway. No way. The project assignment period for Quarter One is coming up, and if Frost finds out I’m pregnant, I’ll be stuck on investment projects and reporting for literally the rest of my working life.”
“Investment projects are usually pretty cruisey, though,” I pointed out. “At least it wouldn’t be as stressful as a project where you need to produce new material.”
She looked disgusted. “Investment projects are boring as hell, Min, what planet are you on? No way. There’s just no way. I’d rather be under a lot of pressure than falling asleep at my desk. The bonuses are crap on those boring projects, too.” She looked determined. “I just won’t tell anyone there that I’m pregnant until I absolutely can’t hide it anymore.”
As someone who’d previously tried and failed to keep a secret at Frost, I felt very uneasy about her plan. I left it, though. “And the other guys? Gemma and Liz and all that?”
Sarah made a face. “I’ll tell them soon, I just—I need time.” She let her head fall back on the armrest of the couch and looked up towards the ceiling. After a few seconds of silence, she said, “Shit,” and exhaled heavily, turning her head towards me. “I’m making a big mistake, aren’t I? I should have just swallowed that stupid pill.”
I didn’t have an answer for her. I didn’t have much at all for her, actually, which was terrible because I wanted to comfort her. I tried to be useful instead. “You want something to eat?”
“No,” she said firmly, but when I got up and returned from the kitchen with a bowl full of dry cereal, she accepted it from me and gave me a suspicious look. “How did you know that’s all I’ll be able to stomach?”
I gave her a half-smile. “It’s all I can eat when I’m stressed out. Cereal, and maybe plain rice.”
I went to go sit down on the other couch, but she grabbed a handful of my hoodie and pulled me down onto hers. I nearly spilt my cereal everywhere. “Oh, no you don’t, Toyboy,” she said, looking directly at my own bowl. “You gave yourself dried cereal, too. And you’re not pregnant.”
“Maybe I’m eating plain food in solidarity with you,” I suggested as she put her legs up across my thighs and leant back on the armrest. She gave me the longest, most sceptical stare, and I made a face. “Or maybe I ran into Henry while you were in the clinic.”
“Aha! I knew it was something, you’ve been really quiet, more so than usual,” she told me, and had a mouthful of cereal, saying through it, “So are we talking, like, ‘run into’ as in you totally went all Bree on him and camped outside Frost hoping he’d leave at some point because—”
“—No,” I told her. “As in, I accidentally bumped into him in the men’s toilets of a restaurant.” She watched me raptly, and then when I didn’t continue straight away, made a hand gesture encouraging me to. I sank back into the spine of the couch and told her what happened.
She reached out and warmly squeezed my arm afterwards. “Sometimes you can’t stay friends with your exes, Min.”
I exhaled. “He seemed really happy to see me, though. At first, anyway.”
She shrugged. “He’s probably still a bit in love with you. Hence the ‘I can’t trust myself’. You’ll just have to leave him alone and see what happens long term.”
I pressed my lips together. I didn’t like the sound of ‘long term’. “But Mum wants him to propose to me by his birthday. And I was hoping we’d kind of be talking enough by then for me to ask him what I should do because he’s really good with her, or to even get his help to make her believe that everything’s fine with us…”
She did not look impressed. “…and then you realised
that asking him to pretend he’s still with you while he’s mourning your relationship is really messed up and totally selfish?”
I grimaced. “Ouch!” I gave her a hard look and she shrugged. She was right, though. I sighed again. “I know,” I said quietly. “I just kind of hoped…”
“Tell her.”
I shook my head firmly. “Not yet. I have to wait for the right time to—”
“—spoilers, Toyboy: the time is never right to tell your super Christian mum that you’re trans and into the ladies. Come on, she lives in Korea. You live in Australia. With all this distance between you, now is as good a time as any, right? She can cool off before she has to see you.”
God, I could just imagine Mum’s reaction to that. “She would literally have me committed if I told her I’m trans, Sarah. I meant telling her that Henry and I broke up. He actually said it himself: she will totally bombard us both when she finds out.” I exhaled. “He feels like crap already right now, and I don’t want to give Mum an excuse to fly down here so I have to pretend to be a good daughter again. I get that I’ll have to tell her about Henry and me. Just not yet.”
She squinted at me. “Well, okay,” she said slowly. “But I’m watching you, Mister.” She settled back down on the arm of the couch and had another mouthful of cereal.
I had one, too. “You’re a hypocrite,” I pointed out after I swallowed. “You don’t want to tell about yourself for as long as possible, but you’re telling me I need to come out to Mum straight away.”
“Maybe,” Sarah told me, her eyes twinkling. “But I’m also pregnant and you’re living in my house, so you’d better be careful what names you call me.”
A silence stretched between as we finished our dry cereal and put aside out bowls so we could relax and enjoy the five inches of house that was actually warm. “Do you want to sleep here?” I asked her eventually. “It’s probably more comfortable for you. I can go and get your doona.”
Flesh & Blood Page 15
