Page 111 of The Wedding Forecast

‘It’s a bit too small to hold the event, but we’ll probably hire a space and Bobbi will bring stock and sell copies. Last time I had it in a big event room at the local library. It’s nice, upstairs it has a deck.’

‘That sounds fun.’

‘My first book launch I was so nervous, I basically had an out-of-body experience and barely remember it. This time, I’m hoping to be calmer.’

Organising a book launch involves the sickening task of writing out a list of all of my friends, family and loose acquaintances, and then inviting them to cross town in peak-hour traffic to listen to me blather and then buy a book they probably don’t want. And this will be the second time I’ve asked. It’s twice as hard to get a crowd of well-wishers for your second book. I will need to ask a hundred people in the hope twenty will come. I will need to sell my soul and invite almost everyone I have ever worked with, old friends who I haven’t seen in years, people who chose Joel in the breakup, possibly even Joel himself. The thought of it gives me hives. But if I don’t do it, that feels even sadder. I need an occasion to mark the book’s entry into the world, to say, ‘Look at all the work I did’.

‘I wish I could be there,’ Mac says.

‘Me too,’ I say. ‘I’ll send you lots of photos.’

And there it is, the little thorn always in our side. The never-seeing-each-other problem. We’re not part of each other’s lives. He can’t come to my book launch, or see the bookshop where I work, or join a weekly dinner Hayley and I have with the mums, or go for a walk early on a Sunday morning for coffee. I can’t go to his play opening, or his birthday drinks, or his friend’s gallery opening. We have no plans for when we will see each other. We don’t intersect: we are two parallel lines running beside each other never touching. And that might work if we already had an established relationship, a friendship even, but when you’re at the beginning of whatever we’re at the beginning of, it’s harder. What are we doing? Why are we bothering? I don’t know, but, also, I do know, and Hayley knows. It’s the reason I haven’t called Patrick. All my dating time, all my energy for meeting someone and getting to know them, all my best stories and bits of banter, all my romantic intentions are currently entirely focused on Mac.

‘Were there lots of women there tonight?’ I ask, because I can sense his guard is down.

‘At the bar? Yes.’

‘These women…’

‘Yes?’

‘Did you…’

Now I’m nervous. We talk about everything but we don’t about this. For all I know, he’s sleeping with a different woman every night, and kicking her out in time for our calls. Or maybe they’re sitting there, throughout our calls, listening in, bored or amused or horrified. Maybe they are rolling their eyes and giving him the ‘hurry up’ signal.

‘Did I what?’ he says, his voice quiet. He sounds almost sleepy.

‘Did you hook up with any of them? Did you want to?’

There’s a long silence.

‘I don’t know your definition of hook up, but I kissed someone, at the bar.’

‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Oh. What’s her name?’ I don’t know why I ask this. I need to say something, so he thinks I’m unbothered. Because I am unbothered. Totally, completely, can-barely-breathe my-chest-is-hurting unbothered.

‘Rebecca.’

‘Rebecca,’ I repeat.

I hate that it’s a name I like.

‘I think. It was definitely an R name.’

‘Wow, you’re a romantic.’

‘I just met her.’

‘Are you going to see her again?’ My unbothered questions are sounding a little terse.

‘Maybe. We have mutual friends.’

‘That’s cool.’

There’s a silence that feels undeniably tense.

‘Anna,’ Mac says.

‘Yes.’