A Story of Now (11 page)

Robbie turns and gives her one of those looks she has grown accustomed to, as though he finds her highly amusing. “I guess it’d be kind of rude not to invite the talent.”

“Oh shut up.”

He laughs.

CHAPTER 15

She’s picking her way through the bodies scattered around the university lawn, looking for a spot to kill the next hour when she sees them.

Mia and Pete are sitting in a patch of sun strung between the spring-fattened shadows of two trees, a stack of books and a couple of coffee cups between them. Claire considers stopping to say hello, but feels awkward. She decides she should leave them be. Even from this distance, she can see how animated they are with each other. They probably don’t want a third wheel butting in on their little sunshine coffee date.

Instead, Claire walks a little further away and finds her own sun-dappled patch of grass and drops down onto it. She slips her French textbook out of her bag, slides on her sunglasses, and lies down, using her bag for a pillow. She flicks open her book and tries to read, but it’s difficult to concentrate with all the cheerful banter around her and the lulling warmth of the sun. In minutes, she drops the book to her chest and mellows out to the light breeze and the scent of freshly mowed grass.

She thinks about the possibilities posed by the coming summer. She’d love to take a trip during the break, but she can’t decide where to go. Every travel agency she passes, she stops and looks at the fares. She muses over the delicious possibilities of the destinations on offer. Europe tops her list. The two short trips with her parents when she was young left her with vague memories of beautiful, beguiling places that she wants to see again.

She’d love to wander through those cities, only at her own pace and without the constant behest of a guidebook or, worse, a guide. On those early trips, the guide was inevitably harried by Christine’s relentless interrogations. She seemed convinced that the only way to seem intelligent was to ask a litany of questions more designed to show off her own knowledge rather than learn anything new from the guide. Those childhood holidays were fleeting introductions, but they weren’t enough. Claire wants to explore places that exist outside the increasingly small world of here. And she wants to know each more intimately because those destinations offer the potential for her to be another Claire, an anonymous Claire even she doesn’t know yet.

She’s knee-deep in contemplating the lure of being someplace else and maybe somebody else, when something nudges at her boots. She’s drawn back to the university lawn and to the question of who is trying to wreck her peaceful moment of sunshine daydreaming. She shades her eyes and looks up, ready to growl.

It’s Mia. She stands over Claire, her long hair hanging around her shoulders. “Didn’t you see me waving?”

“What? No. I only see someone ruining the serenity,” Claire mutters, playing innocent, She sits up on her elbows and blinks into the sunshine. “When?”

“Just before.”

“No.” And at least it’s true. Sure, she saw them sitting there, but she didn’t see Mia wave.

“Oh, well, that’s okay then. You weren’t ignoring me, I won’t be offended.” She hooks her fingers onto the straps of her bag and swings it slightly from side to side. “So, what are you doing?”

“What does it look like, Mia?” Claire shoots her a withering look and waves her book in the air.

Mia tips her head to the side and delivers a knowing grin. “You were
not
reading. You were napping.”

“Maybe.” Claire sits up and pushes her sunglasses on top of her head. “So what?”

“So, tell me, what are you doing now you’ve caught up on your beauty sleep?”

“Meeting my group to prepare our French conversation exam.” Claire rolls her eyes as she checks her wristwatch. “Soon. I am not looking forward to it. I got put in a group with completely uptight folk. Very high maintenance and stressy.”

“At least those types get good marks.” Even as she says it, Mia screws up her nose in a way that tells Claire she knows it won’t make the experience any more tolerable.

“I guess.”

“Then what are you doing after?”

“Going to work. Because my day isn’t wonderful enough already.”

“Oh.” Mia frowns. “I’m going to visit Robbie before my next class. It’s his afternoon to babysit the exhibition. I was going to see if you wanted to come.”

“Want to. Can’t. What about tomorrow? Are you around? I’ve got a lunch thing, then a class, but I’m free after that?”

“Robbie won’t be at the gallery, but we could hang out?” Mia suggests. “I have a break between three and four.”

Claire nods. “I can meet you at three.”

“Great.” Mia smiles, her brown eyes narrowing a little. “Meet you here?”

“Here.”

“Awesome. I’ll see you then.” She taps her foot against Claire’s boot one more time and turns on her heel.

“See you.” Claire watches Mia stroll away. She is so long and lanky, but there is a kind of casual grace to the way she moves, weaving her way among the other students scattered across the lawn. Claire feels enlivened by the fact she seems to be making a new friend. Of course, Mia seems so warm and indiscriminately sociable it’s kind of difficult to tell if her geniality is by default or if she really is making friends. Either way, Claire is relieved to know that someone is acting as if she genuinely wants her company. Their random hangout last week was surprisingly fun, so she is looking forward to tomorrow. And, as an added bonus, it’s something to look forward to after her dreaded lunch tomorrow.

For some stupid reason, Claire agreed to meet Michelle for lunch. To talk. Clearly sick of Claire avoiding her calls, Michelle showed up at the bar last night, a jarring and discomfiting visit that told Claire she was not going to get away with this…thing that wasn’t quite a fight with her friend. Not without a conversation about it at least.

Claire had been busy, but she spotted Michelle within a second of her arrival. She was way too neat and tidy and clean not to stand out.

“Hey,” Michelle squeaked timidly. She rested her fingers on the edge of the bar and smiled nervously at Claire. “Cool place,” she said.

“No, it’s not.”

When Michelle’s expression fell, Claire instantly felt bad. There was no reason to torture her.

“What are you doing here?” Claire asked with a not-quite smile meant to soften the question.

“I came to see you.” Michelle tucked her hair behind her ear. “You weren’t answering my messages.”

Claire shrugged and pressed her lips together, partly because she didn’t know what to say, but also because she knew it was bad form. During the past month, Michelle hadn’t given up. And having listened to those messages, Claire is fully aware that Michelle, who is ridiculously kind-hearted, is incredibly sorry about what happened. In fact, that’s probably the reason she said nothing about hanging out with the new girlfriend in the first place. As much as it upset Claire, she knows Michelle doesn’t deserve to feel this bad. But Claire left it alone for so long that she has no idea how to deal with it now. When she doesn’t know how to deal with an issue, she simply doesn’t. Avoiding is what she does best.

“Do you think we could, you know, meet? And talk?” Michelle asked, her face hopeful as she clutched the edge of the bar.

And Claire found herself saying yes—if for no other reason than to end the awkward exchange and get Michelle out of the bar. Besides, she couldn’t have handled the expression on Michelle’s face if she’d said no.

Claire stuffs her unread textbook back inside her bag and sighs. At least now she has something to look forward to.

CHAPTER 16

At three o’clock, Claire finds Mia exactly where she said she’d be, under the tree on the west side of the lawn. She’s sprawled on her stomach, arms draped over her bag, holding a paperback in front of her face.

Claire sits down on the grass next to her.

“What? No homework? No textbooks? Might that be actual leisure reading?”

Mia looks up, smiles, and pulls off her glasses. “I
should
be studying,” she says with a sigh. “But sometimes you just have to rest your brain, you know?”

“I rest my brain with trashy TV, not—” Claire reaches over and pushes the book toward Mia’s face so she can get a look at the cover. She lets the book go, grimacing. “Early twentieth-century literature.”

Mia raises an eyebrow. “How do you know that?”

“Because I’m a genius.” Claire opens her water bottle and takes a nonchalant sip.

“It does seem that way.” Mia dog-ears the page and closes the book.

“We might have studied it last year. Pretty depressing
first
feminist novel.” Claire hangs air quotes around “first.” “Lady marries dude. Lady falls in love with another dude. Lady feels too guilty to be with other dude. Lady kills herself. Totally depressing.”

Mia sighs and tosses the book on the grass in front of her. “Way to spoil it, Claire.”

Claire slaps a hand to her mouth and giggles. “Oops, sorry!”

Mia shakes her head and laughs.

“You know,” Claire tells her apologetically. “It’s short. You would have found that out in, like, thirty pages. Besides, you deserve to be spoiled. You dog-ear the pages. That’s, like, book vandalism.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mia grumbles. But she’s smiling so Claire is ninety-nine percent certain she’s not actually mad. “How was your day? Ruin anyone else’s yet?”

“Probably. And if not, I’ve still got time.” Claire lies on her back in the grass. “It was okay. I had lunch with a friend, which was weird.”

“Lunch is weird? What do you usually do when you hang out with your friends?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Claire flicks a blade of grass at her.

Mia brushes it off her arm. Claire stares across the lawn and thinks about her lunch with Michelle. She chews her lip and wonders if she and Michelle will see much of each other from now on.

Lunch was as awkward as she thought it would be. But at least by the end, they’d come to some sort of peace. Weirdly, the worst part was trying to fill in the silence after they sort of kind of talked it out. Particularly considering they were avoiding all Brendan-related territory. It was exhausting. But it’s been exhausting for ages, having to work so hard to seek out common ground all the time. Claire could not wait to leave that horribly clunky, silence-punctuated meal. Walking away felt like freedom after a jail sentence.

“Are you going to tell me why your lunch was weird?” Mia asks. “Or should I just sit here and watch you pout?”

Claire thinks about Michelle and about Kerry and Kate. “Girls are weird, you know, Mia? In fact, girls are stupid.”

“I’m a girl, in case you hadn’t noticed. On behalf of the rest of us, I’d like to say thank you so very much.”

“You’re nothing like these girls. In a good way.”

“And do you want to be more specific about why girls are weird? Or are we working in sweeping generalisations today?”

Claire smiles. She debates brushing it off, changing the subject, but when she looks over and sees Mia looking at her, seemingly receptive and ready to listen, she tells her about the lunch. And, of course, why the lunch happened. Then, the story of Claire and Michelle becomes the story of Claire and Brendan. How could it not? And the next thing Claire knows, she has told the whole stupid, sorry little tale while Mia lies there on the grass and listens. She doesn’t say a word until Claire’s done.

“How did you know?” Mia asks when Claire finally finishes.

“I don’t know how I knew, exactly.” It feels incredibly weird to talk about this. She hasn’t confided in anyone in any real way—a little with Cam, maybe, when it first happened. Even before she knew Michelle is hanging out with the new girlfriend, she couldn’t bring herself to discuss it with her. It was too close, and thus, too raw. Besides, she couldn’t risk letting Michelle know just how bad she felt because Michelle would tell Jack, and Jack would tell Brendan. Claire’s pride wouldn’t allow it.

“I just felt like that connection between us wasn’t as strong. At first, I thought it was the not being able to see each other. I had to stay in Melbourne more and more for stuff on the weekends. He started making all these new friends. And then when I did go and see him, I could feel it, like…like an absence, you know? I don’t know. I could just tell his attention was elsewhere, if you know what I mean.”

Mia nods. “What did you do?”

“Well,” Claire says wearily. “I avoided dealing with it. Because apparently that’s what I do best. Then, after about a month or two of quietly freaking out, wondering if maybe he’d met someone, but too gutless to ask, I thought I could…I don’t know…just go and spend some real time him and remind him why we were so good. So I drove up there one weekend to stay. I changed my shifts, got out of a family dinner, and ignored a French test. But when I got there it was like he barely registered my presence.” She bites her lip. “It was too late.”

“He cheated?”

“No, he never cheated. He wouldn’t do that.” She gently plucks at a single blade of grass and tries to ease it up out of the ground without breaking it. “But it didn’t matter. He didn’t cheat, but he was already completely into this girl. He just didn’t have the balls to tell me. Until finally I asked outright.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.” Claire rolls over onto her stomach so Mia can’t see her face, because she can feel the vague choke of impending tears in her throat. And crying would be completely humiliating right now. “That’s right, oh.” She blinks hard. This is why she doesn’t talk about it. The hurt and the embarrassment come back. In this case, there’s also possible double humiliation of crying in front of a potential new friend who doesn’t need to know how pathetic she actually feels about all this.

But Mia doesn’t say anything. Nothing at all. She just rolls over onto her stomach too and nudges Claire’s foot with her own, a small but reassuring gesture of sympathy.

“The worst part is,” Claire continues, “I was almost angrier at Michelle about this than I was at him. I am over it…well, maybe I’m not completely. But I am over being angry and upset. It’s over and I don’t have the energy for anger and sadness. But her…” She frowns. “I thought she was my friend.”