There was a long moment of silence when I finished, ending on a slide summarising everything I was proposing. Dad, Jerry, and Luke’s eyes all darted back and forth as they leaned forward, taking it all in. But Jack just smiled dopily up at me, throwing me a double thumbs-up. He was so unserious sometimes. I ignored him, knowing this was a time I couldn’t afford to be unserious with him.
“I’ll think about it,” Dad said. “But no matter what I decide, you’ve done good work, Amy. You should be really proud.”
He led the others back out towards the workshop, and Jack leapt up from the sofa to pull me into a hug. “You did so well,” he said, squeezing me tight. “Dad’s right. You should be proud.”
“I am,” I said, and I meant it. I’d worked really hard on the presentation, but I’d also bought into all of this myself. I was actively excited about bringing it all to life– even the apprenticeship, where I knew I’d have to deal with annoying teenagers who thought they were far cooler than they were.
But as soon as I admitted how proud I was, that sense of accomplishment was quickly followed by the realisation that I couldn’t celebrate it with the one person I wanted to.
“Thanks,” I said, but as soon as the word was out of my mouth, I felt my lip begin to tremble. I bit down on it, willing it to stop, but my eyes began to sting.
“Hey, hey,” Jack said, pulling me in again. “It’s okay.”
“I just wish I could ring him, you know? See how he is.”
“Yeah, well, you and me both,” Jack muttered, and I pulled back.
“What do you mean?” I asked, then frowned. “You know I don’t need you to ignore him for me, right?”
“I know,” he said. “I’ve tried to reach out. We all have. But he’s not responding. Mum even tried the landline, but Ethel didn’t answer.”
“She’s probably in a wheelchair all the time now,” I said, remembering what I’d read about sacral fractures. The fact that she’d been walking at all was no small miracle.
I hated how quickly my heart ached for Phil. How immediately my empathy kicked in, after he’d shown no hesitation to hit me where it hurt. Had he done it to try to protect himself and Ethel? Yeah, probably. But it didn’t make it okay that he’d treated me like I was disposable. Like the nearly three months we’d shared had meant nothing to him. Like the two decades before that had meant nothing, either.
Still, I knew exactly what he was doing, and if I could have teleported over to him before thinking through the consequences to my own well-being, I probably would have. He was isolating himself, and it was only a matter of time before he buckled under the weight of everything he insisted on carrying. Even he couldn’t compartmentalise himself out of that one; trying to do so would just make it happen faster.
It made me especially angry because he hadn’t just excised me from his own life. He’d excised me from Ethel’s, too. And I missed her. I missed the way she would pat my hand every time she saw me. The way she always knew just that little bit more than she was letting on. And I wasn’t the only one– I was sure Mum was foaming at the mouth wanting to help out. It was who she was; I supposed I came by it honestly. And how dare he not let us do that? How dare he be so selfish that he would keep people who loved Ethel away from her in the name of looking after her?
“Don’t do that,” Jack said, and I snapped back into the lounge. “Don’t spiral.”
“Easier said than done,” I muttered.
I was just opening my mouth to suggest maybe we could do a drive-by, force a little wellness check, when the front door opened again and Dad walked back in, alone this time.
“Jackie, give me a minute with your sister, will ya?”
* * *
I pulledup outside Fatima and Morgan’s house the following night, parking behind Jack’s new car on the street just as he left through the front door. They looked so similar, except one looked a little worse for wear. The same could be said for Jack and me, I supposed; I had the dark circles under my eyes that would let the girls know immediately just how badly I’d been Going Through It. But I didn’t have it in me to care.
Dad’s full buy-in for my plan couldn’t have come at a better time. He’d signed off on everything I’d proposed, including the apprenticeship programme, and he’d officially invited me on board full-time. It had given me the excuse to throw myself immediately into starting the ball rolling with the software solutions, which was good since I didn’t have D&D to distract me; Fatima had taken the week off for her first non-teaching day of the term. I’d thrown myself into work on Friday, too, only paying enough attention to know that Phil’s car never appeared in the driveway for film night at Jack’s.
But now I had girls’ night, which, true to their word, they’d invited me along to when they’d rescheduled after the rewilding expedition. I could picture them whispering amongstthemselvesinside, speculating whether I’d be okay or not. But being pitied by my friends was better than losing them in the breakup, so I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. And at least it would take my mind off what should have been the last date night before the ball.
The other three were already getting snuggled up on the big sofa when I walked in, and when I went to sit in the armchair off to the side, Chloe yelled at me to come join them, so I squished in between her and Fatima instead. We watched a bunch of YouTube videos Chloe had queued up until dinner came, only one of which was about the queer inclusive sex scenes inBaldur’s Gate 3, which I knew showed serious restraint on her part.
Apparently takeaway sushi and cheap wine was a sacred girls’ night tradition, so once Morgan had brought in far too many bags for the four of us– “It’s fine,” she said, “I’ll happily eat this for days”– we all sat on the floor around the coffee table to eat. This included Pablo, who begged constantly but wasn’t quite brave enough to jump up and take any.
“It’s perfect heartbreak food,” Chloe said, before putting a gigantic piece of a tempura-fried salmon roll in her mouth. When she saw me staring in disgust, she shrugged.
“Uhh? Assowayooeeingahan,” she said around the food, which I was pretty sure was supposed to translate to “What? That’s how they do it in Japan.”
“I’m pretty sure that doesn’t apply when the piece of sushi has the same circumference as a tin of beans,” Fatima said, popping a tiny piece of cucumber maki into her own mouth. She was vegetarian, so she had her own mini platter. “You’ve got to be dainty.”
“Uckgheingainny,” Chloe said. “Fuck being dainty,” I was pretty sure. We all laughed.
“Anyway,” Fatima said, “I thought we weren’t acknowledging the heartbreak? Is that not the case? Because I’ve got something to say.”
