Begin End Begin: A #LoveOzYa Anthology Read online

  I exhale.

  I wade through it, the giddy awkwardness of our first kiss, the clumsiness of my escape, and the blinding rage of our breakup. I sink into the seat beside her.

  I have to say something.

  ‘Hey.’ It will go down in history as one of the greatest ever icebreakers.

  Nina looks up. She’s startled, but she recovers. Her face hardens. ‘Hello, Adam.’ There are icicles hanging from her words and I’m seriously wondering whether it’s poor form to run away from two out of two encounters.

  Yes? Yes. Of course it is.

  Jake approaches the counter with two loaded plastic bags and I hope they’re mine. He calls for a Josh. Not mine. Damn.

  ‘You know,’ Nina says, ‘most people who don’t want to kiss someone just don’t kiss them. They don’t kiss them, freak out and then piss-bolt.’

  It’s hard to wrap words around these feelings. It’s not something I’m used to talking about. ‘I wanted to.’

  ‘Am I a dud kisser?’ she asks.

  ‘No, I —’

  ‘Were you about to shit yourself? Because, fair warning, no excuse less than imminent diarrhoea will help you recover from this,’ she says.

  Josh only walks off with one bag. Jake checks the ticket taped to the remaining one. ‘Gower?’ he calls.

  Nina stands.

  ‘That’s not your name.’ I don’t know why I say it out loud.

  ‘Um, yeah, it is. Surname.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Dickhead.’

  She walks over to Jake and becomes a different, warmer Nina. Their banter is light and fun. I tilt my head back against the shopfront window. This is messed up. I want her to like me, I want to go out with her, even though I know it won’t last. I’m defeated. I slide my hands into the pockets of my trackies, and there’s … I pull out a pen. I turn it over. Izzy Bella Cosmetics is printed in pink cursive down the side. It’s from Mum’s work. She must’ve slipped it in while I was in the shower.

  Nina’s leaving. I look to her seat and tear a corner off the magazine. I write my number on it and follow her out the door. She’s almost around the corner.

  ‘Nina Gower!’ I call.

  She stops and turns. ‘Just because you know it doesn’t mean you have to say it all the time.’

  I clear the rest of the distance between us and hold out the glossy corner with my number on it. ‘Adam Thomas.’

  Her brow creases.

  ‘Please?’

  She takes my number. ‘I’ll think about it.’ She turns back and swings her dinner as she walks away. She raises her free hand. ‘Notice how I’m not trying to break a world record here?’

  My phone vibrates on the table during dinner. It’s from a number I don’t recognise. The body of the text reads, Nina Gower.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ Mum says.

  I text back a string of random emoji she’ll appreciate and bite back a smile. Her response is instant: love-heart emoji, engagement-ring emoji.

  I feel the future, the ring in my hand, the hot rage.

  Sarcastic obvi, Nina adds.

  I fight against the future, push it down and hold it there. I am here, now. The hot rage festers. I reply, Hahaha, but I don’t even smile.

  I want to ask Mum about the future, but I want her to answer like she doesn’t know mine. ‘There’s this girl,’ I explain. ‘We’ve worked Sundays for ages, and yesterday, we kissed.’

  ‘Yeah, I …’ Something clicks and she understands what I’m doing. ‘Oh, really? What’s her name?’

  A bit much, but I appreciate the effort. ‘Nina. I kissed her and I saw our future, her breaking up with me.’

  Mum nods. ‘That is … surprising.’

  ‘It wasn’t just the breakup though. I felt the anger, like, I really hated her in that moment, and I think she hated me.’

  Her eyes narrow. ‘Fascinating.’

  ‘My question is, I’ve lived us breaking up, how does that not taint everything before it?’

  ‘Mm.’ Mum straightens up and she chews on her bottom lip. She’s thinking. Eventually, she settles on, ‘Think of it a lot like driving off a cliff.’

  ‘That’s not reassuring.’

  She points her fork at me. ‘You can’t see the future and be blissfully unaware, they’re mutually exclusive,’ she says. ‘Everybody has their share of cliffs, we just have the pleasure of knowing that they’re coming. We have to work extra hard to enjoy speeding towards them as best we can, teach ourselves to appreciate the wind in our hair. Life will break your heart, and if you don’t learn how to live with that, you won’t have much of a life.’

  I’m quiet. I don’t quite know what to say.

  ‘That would be my advice to you if I had no idea what happens next, which I absolutely do not.’

  I meet Nina after school. We walk home together. I focus on the wind in my hair. Not literally, there’s not much hair and the breeze is piss-weak. I mean, I focus on the build-up. Easing back into our friendship, trading barbs and anecdotes until it feels more like it was before the kiss, and then nervously stretching past it, our fingers edging closer, our knuckles grazing, and then, me finding the courage to hold her hand in mine.

  She doesn’t look at me when she says, ‘We’re doing this.’

  ‘We are, yeah.’

  ‘If you feel the urge to bolt, make sure you let go, yeah? I’m not adequately warmed up for a sprint.’

  She works it into conversation every time I see her. She has every intention of running it into the ground.

  ‘Get it?’ she asks over Macca’s breakfast the next day. ‘Running it into the ground?’

  ‘I saw it coming, yeah.’

  Her navy-blue streak is now lime green. I ask what the deal is with the colours.

  ‘This is going to sound weird and you’re not gonna believe me, but I actually have supernatural abilities.’

  My heart skips a beat, an excited nervousness spreads across my chest and … then I realise she’s kidding. The supernatural is fiction in her world. I play it straight. ‘Oh, really?’

  ‘Totally.’ She nods. ‘Some people wear mood rings, I have mood streaks.’

  ‘And what does lime green mean?’

  She cocks her eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

  ‘So long as it doesn’t mean you hate the guy you’re eating breakfast with.’

  ‘No, it does not mean that.’ She says it like it does. ‘You are not completely insufferable.’

  ‘I don’t like you.’

  ‘I don’t like you either.’

  We smile at each other. It’s funny, how loud the present is when you force yourself to really listen. I don’t have a future for weeks. I have Nina. We waste weekends on my bed, my body pressed into the back of hers, it’s the only way we fit. We binge TV on my laptop, our fingers interlocked, and I lose myself in her. I watch her, the scar on her cheek, the freckle on her neck, the streak through her hair. It’s bright pink. I run my hand through it.

  ‘When I was a kid, I was at my aunt’s house,’ Nina says, talking over the video. ‘She had this flight of stairs from the second-storey balcony down to the yard, and I fell from the top and hit my head on a step. I got up and walked to her. She thought I was fine. She didn’t realise I had fallen from so high. I collapsed and I was in a coma for five days.’

  ‘You were in a coma?’

  ‘Yep. The doctors couldn’t do anything. They didn’t know if I’d ever wake up, and if I did, whether I’d have brain damage or not. I didn’t, but … Yeah, ever since, that patch has grown white. I was a bit depresso about it when I went back to school, so my teacher dyed it with me one lunchtime. I haven’t stopped.’

  My fingers trace a line up to the streak’s grey-white roots. I wonder how many people she’s told that story to, and how many others she’s let believe her streaks are just some colourful rebellion. She twists her body to face me, and the roots are out of reach.

  ‘Hi,’ I whisper.

  Sh
e smiles. ‘Hi.’

  We are drawn into each other and the whole pretence of watching TV is lost. There is just us, now. A frantic mess of limbs and movements. An awkward kiss, teeth click, clothes peel off and the doorbell rings.

  ‘Was that …?’ Nina asks.

  I’m off the bed and hurriedly turning my shirt right side out. ‘Mum’s probably forgotten her keys,’ I say. ‘One sec.’

  Nina has perfected the art of We Weren’t About To Do What You’re Thinking. She’s already scrolling through notifications on her phone.

  I rush down the hall. The hook Mum hangs her keys on is bare. I open the door and Sophia is standing on the porch. It’s a sledgehammer. She’s upset and Lara’s empty lead is in her hands.

  ‘Tell me she doesn’t …’ There’s a sharp intake of breath and my heart cracks. ‘Tell me she’s going to be okay.’

  I have nothing. She steps forward and collapses into me. I wrap my arms around her and hold her close.

  I want to say something perfect. I should have something comforting ready to go, I mean, I knew this was coming. All I have is, ‘Soph …’ It’s useless.

  She sniffs, and after a few false starts, she struggles through an explanation. Lara wandered the neighbourhood in the early hours of the morning, and a car hit her in the low light.

  ‘I’ve been with her at the vet. I tried texting, but you didn’t answer.’ Sophia pulls away. ‘Do you know?’

  I can’t lie to her. I hesitate and her face twists anew.

  ‘Really?’

  I remember Anne-Marie and how spectacularly I had failed. I don’t want to do that to someone else. Especially not Sophia. I treat it as my do-over. I lead her inside and offer her some water. She declines. That was my attempt to stall. I had hoped that by the time I’d filled the glass, I’d have an inkling of what to do. I can’t tell her it’s going to be all right. I mean, it is. There’ll be a new kitten, and Sophia will love her every bit as much as Lara, but …

  Nina emerges from the bedroom, hands in her jeans pockets.

  ‘Oh. Hi.’ Sophia wipes her eyes and tries to make herself seem presentable. ‘Nina, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Sophia sniffs. ‘Sophia.’

  ‘Hi.’ Nina smiles faintly. ‘Is everything okay?’

  ‘Not really, but yeah.’

  ‘Did you want something to eat? I have chocolate in my bag.’

  Sophia sniffs again. ‘What kind?’ She stops Nina halfway through the brand name with, ‘Yes!’ Nina disappears and Sophia whispers, ‘She seems nice.’

  ‘She is.’

  ‘And I like her hair.’ She punches my arm softly. ‘That’s for making her divorce you.’

  When Nina comes out again, it’s with a block of chocolate and her backpack. There’s this awkward dance, where she says she really ought to go home and study, because she doesn’t want to intrude. I don’t want her to leave, but I also don’t want Sophia to have to grieve with an audience. We go around in circles, but Nina cuts it short. Nina doesn’t dance.

  ‘I’ll just hang in your room until you’re ready?’

  Sophia promises to be gone in ten, max.

  ‘No, seriously, eat all the chocolate.’

  ‘I will.’ Sophia’s wide-eyed and Nina believes her.

  She brushes past my legs on her way out.

  ‘This is the worst,’ Sophia says. ‘Thing is, I know if I call Ma, she’ll try to reassure me, tell me Lara’s doing fine. She’ll say the vet’s optimistic and whatever, but it won’t give me hope. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s like it has, and I just want to cry and cry and … I have no idea how you do it.’

  ‘I’m trying to ignore it.’

  She thinks. ‘I don’t know if I can do that. If I only have a limited time with her, I want to be right there. I can’t pretend it isn’t coming. And it is, isn’t it?’ She looks to me for confirmation. I nod slightly. She keeps composed and stands. ‘I have to go.’

  We hug, and in an instant, she’s out the door with a block of chocolate. I wait. Sophia’s visit was a wrecking ball, and I need to rebuild myself. I recover, brick by brick, and start to retreat back to my bedroom. Nina’s surprised Sophia’s left so soon. I climb back on the bed beside her. She asks for details and I give them. We lie silently and I try to lose myself in her again. I can’t though. I know my life is laid out in notes beneath us, and I can’t pretend it isn’t coming.

  There is just us, now and then.

  I push the bed against the wall and lay the notes bare. Mum must sense I urgently want to talk because she flutters around the house, busying herself with odd tasks, avoiding my bedroom like the plague just to mess with me. When she eventually passes my doorway, it’s on her way to brush her teeth, dry her hair, and given how long it takes her, re-tile half the bathroom. I’ve sprouted an island-castaway beard by the time she comes in. She sees the yellow sticky notes.

  ‘Oh, we’ve stopped trying to hide these, have we?’ she asks.

  I sigh. ‘Why am I not surprised?’

  ‘I vacuum your room. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve sucked them up by accident, stopped the Hoover, fished them out without spilling dust everywhere and slapped them back down without you realising.’

  I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.

  Mum looks over the notes and then at me. ‘How are things?’

  ‘I did what you said —’

  ‘You did half of what I said.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘Sorry. Got ahead of myself. Go on.’

  I exhale. ‘You told me to focus on the wind in my hair. I did. I knew something bad would happen to Sophia’s cat, but it was completely off my radar, because I was so wrapped up in the now with Nina. I wasn’t prepared. Sophia came over today, she wanted to know if everything was going to be okay and …’

  ‘You were useless.’

  ‘I was useless.’

  ‘What did I tell you?’

  ‘Focus on the wind in my hair.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You can’t see the future and be blissfully unaware.’

  Damn. She did say that.

  ‘People with two good eyes don’t keep one closed for the hell of it. If they did, they’d see, but they’d lose depth perception. It’s the same for us. We have three eyes; they’re meant to be open, or else we wouldn’t perceive the world as well as we can. You only knew you were useless because you knew Sophia would need you, and you didn’t take advantage of that knowledge. Someone who wasn’t like you, he wouldn’t think he was useless. He would tell himself he was just doing the best he could. But you know you didn’t do the best you could.’

  ‘But if I don’t ignore the future, then how do I build something with Nina without dreading how it ends?’

  ‘The dread fades. Trust me, you’ll come to appreciate the warning. If I went into marrying your father with rose-coloured glasses, I would have been shattered when he turned out to be a baboon. I saw what was coming and tapered my expectations.’

  ‘That’s bleak.’

  Mum shrugs. ‘As much as you might want to, you can’t live like everybody else. Your life is your own. Let them be slaves to the moment. They can’t see the forest for the trees. Sure, they don’t have to contend with spoilers, but you … you live with purpose. The shocks don’t rattle you when they’re spread thin. You anticipate them and have time to prepare for them, and the joys … the joys last long enough for you to really savour them.’

  ‘I haven’t seen any joy with Nina.’

  ‘See more, then,’ she snaps. ‘The first time your father and I have dinner, he walks me to my car. He doesn’t kiss me, but he does hold my hand. Our fingers interlock and whoosh, I see the moment I kick him out. I can’t get into the car fast enough. I’m adamant I won’t see him again. I will avoid that future. Meanwhile, he’s standing by the car, oblivious to all this. He thinks it’s been a pretty good night. In his defence, it has been. He smiles at me.
I catch it in the rear-view mirror and … Fuck, I really love that smile. All things considered, I shouldn’t. I know he’s going to disappoint me. But that’s ten, fifteen years away. That’s a long time for things to sour.

  ‘I need proof it isn’t all crap, but my control over my power is limited to knowing I see more when I skip a meal. My mother told me our minds stitch related memories together. All her memories with your grandfather, they were linked. When she wanted to know if his health would improve, she would conjure a recent memory. She would live it like we live our futures, sit on the edge of his hospital bed, feel the mattress sag beneath her, smell the disinfected air, and she would take control. She would ask him, point-blank, if he was dying. He would say, “No,” and she would get a preview of their future. She kept asking whenever he took a turn, until one day, he said, “Yes,” and there was no future.’

  Mum pauses for a long, slow breath. ‘I had tried that, remembering and then asking, never worked for me. She said that everyone’s different. I had to discover my own way in my own time. Bugger that. I’m sitting in that car, and I want to discover it now. I grip the wheel, look at your father and see the patchwork of our recent past, the candlelight, the dinner, the wine. And I realise, if they’re connected, I must just be able to go the other way. I stop travelling backwards and instead, go forwards, past the walk to the car, to ten, fifteen seconds ahead. I see him tapping on my window, asking if everything’s all right. It’s working. I push on — ten, fifteen days ahead. I see us sitting on the beach at night, he’s in a suit, I’m in a dress, and we’re laughing so hard our sides hurt. I try weeks, months. If I know it’s not going to work, why do I still give us a go? Sitting at the wheel, I see you. And everything else suddenly doesn’t matter. I sit back and smile. Your father taps on my window and asks if everything’s all right. And it is. I have you to look forward to.’

  I feel the story in waves. First, as a rare look into my parents’ early, less messy life together. That wave recedes, and the second one hits with more ferocity: This is my solution. I have to spoil my life with Nina to keep me from spoiling my life with Nina.