Page 94 of The Wedding Forecast

I stand up and make an involuntary squeak. It’s been ten days since I got home and I had resigned myself to us never speaking again. My hands are shaking a little. I need to hold myself together.

Still hold up? I write back.

It does. You should watch it with me.

It’s afternoon here. I’m working.

I almost write ‘at my new job’ but I don’t want to derail our first conversation. A whole career change feels too heavy for our first messages.

Watch it tonight. Message me. We can watch it together.

I hesitate. This is what I wanted. Exactly what I wanted.

But maybe it was a good thing I hadn’t heard from him, that no contact was the best way to cleanse him from my system. I could start the new year totally fresh. New job, new me. All very wishful thinking of course, because I can still feel my desire for him, my longing to see him, coursing through my veins. It has been bubbling away as I move around the shop, finding books, helping customers, I could feel it everywhere, even in my aching feet (I am not used to standing up all day) and my tired eyes. I am craving him like I have never craved another human being. His smell has faded from his hoodie, but I am pretending it hasn’t.

Okay, I write back. It’s a date.

I immediately regret saying date, but then I get annoyed at myself for regretting it. We’ve slept together. Six times in two days. We’re ten thousand miles apart. If the word date scares him, then he needs to grow up and I need to block his number.

Talk to you then

I’m distracted for the rest of the afternoon. I almost charge someone $2,499 instead of $24.99, I forget the name of our current bestselling novel, and every time I’m in the backroom I check my phone even though I know he must be asleep and there is no reason to think he would have written anything else. (He hasn’t.)

When I get home late, I find Hayley has cooked dinner and put leftovers in the fridge for me.

‘Hayley, I love you,’ I shout, grabbing the bowl. She has, seemingly, accepted the idea of me working with her mother, but I’m acutely aware of being too entwined in her life. We live in the same house and now I work in her family’s business. It’s messy. But it’s always been messy. Our mothers decided this: they decided to intertwine their lives long ago. We can’t unknot it all now.

‘You’re welcome,’ she shouts down the stairs.

I eat it at the table, googling the time difference between Melbourne and New York. He won’t be awake yet. And is he really going to want to watch a movie as soon as he wakes up?

I shower, get into my pyjamas and pace around the house, even though my tired body is begging me to rest, but I’m too jittery to lie down. I should have gone for a walk. When I can’t wait a moment longer, I set up my laptop in the bed, and message him.

I’m in bed, about to press play.

It’s ten-thirty my time, six-thirty in the morning his time. He’s not an earlier riser. He probably won’t reply. Except he does, immediately.

Give me a second

Okay go

We both press play. Should I live-text him throughout. I pick up my phone ready, and then suddenly, he’s calling me. I stare at the phone for a moment, heart thrumming.

‘Hello?’ I say.

‘Hi,’ he says, and there it is. His voice in my ear.

‘Hi,’ I say back, and then there’s just silence, and I am grinning, and I can’t be sure, but I think he is too.

‘How are you?’

‘I’m good. How are you? It’s not too early?’

‘No, it’s perfect.’

‘It’s too early,’ I say.

‘Let’s just say I’m looking too haggard for Facetime.’