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‘Xavier,’ I say.

‘What?’ he says, looking concerned when he sees my face.

‘What is this?’ I ask. ‘What are we doing?’

‘What do you want it to be?’ he replies, smiling.

And my heart sinks, because that joking tone tells me everything I need to know.

‘I don’t know,’ I say, carefully.

‘We could make it an addition to the syllabus maybe,’ he says, the joking tone continuing.

The panic and fear that was sitting right under the surface bubbles up, fast.

‘I think we’ve made a mistake,’ I say and I lean over to my pile of clothes, and put on my bra and underwear.

‘What do you mean?’ Xavier sits up on an elbow, looking confused.

‘I mean…’ I grab the nearest warm-looking hoodie, which I realise too late is his but put on anyway. I turn to look at him. ‘I think what is happening between us might be a mistake. The sex.’

‘The sex? That sex was not a mistake,’ he says.

‘I’m serious.’

‘Why? Because you work for my mother? We don’t have to tell her. We don’t have to tell anyone. This doesn’t have to be a big deal.’

And there it is, the words I have been dreading. We don’t have to tell anyone. Not a big deal. I’m a secret again. I’m right back where I was with Caleb.

‘I’ve done a secret thing before and it didn’t work out so well for me.’ My voice wobbles a little.

‘No. I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, it can be whatever you want it to be.’

He keeps saying this, like it’s some gift. But what I’m hearing is it can be something or it can be nothing, and it’s all the same to him. He doesn’t realise how invested I am, how much of my heart I have already given to him.

‘What does that mean?’ I say. I get out of the bed and look around the room for a pair of pants, mostly because I can’t sit still right now.

‘It means, you’re in charge. You decide what we are.’

Oh good, so I can handle all the work of figuring this mess out.

‘No. No. You’re not getting it. I don’t want that,’ I say. ‘Look at me, I’m freaking out and pacing and you’re just sitting there, and you clearly haven’t thought about us beyond, like, the hooking-up part. That’s why this is a mistake.’ My voice is rising and I am off the deep end but I don’t care because that’s the point. I can’t do this. I can’t give him some three-week low-pressure sex romp. I can’t keep myself small and contained and likeable and not too into him and sexy-but-unattached. I can’t let myself be so open with him in the bedroom and then get dumped again. I know that much about myself at least.

‘Okay. Just. Slow down for a second. Take a breath,’ he says.

‘Don’t be patronising,’ I say. He might just manage to kill all the feelings I have for him in a single conversation if he keeps this up. Take a breath. How dare he.

‘I’m not!’ he says. ‘I need you to slow down because I don’t understand how we got here. I don’t understand what’s happening. One second we’re lying in bed, happy, and now we’re fighting?’

He doesn’t understand. He’s just an innocent, bewildered man who has stumbled into a difficult conversation with an emotional woman. I can feel my rage building.

I give him a look and I walk into the lounge room. He pulls on boxers and trackpants and follows me.

There’s a version of my life where this works. We have a lovely, casual, secret hook-up until the festival, a purely physical thing, and I get to have my cake (literal and metaphorical) and eat it too. I get to experience the best sex of my life with the hottest man I’ll ever be with and excel at my job and lie to my boss and lie to my work friends without concern, and then in a few months’ time, he walks away and we’re both happy and satisfied and no one is hurt. And that version probably works really well for Xavier. It’s perfect for him. He’ll go back to Lana, back to Melbourne, refreshed and writing again. All fixed! How lovely for him.

I start cleaning the kitchen, because I need something to do. I briefly consider pushing my beautiful birthday cake onto the floor—for the sheer drama of it, the meanness of it—but I can’t bring myself to destroy something so magnificent.

‘Charlotte, I like you,’ Xavier says, standing in the doorway and watching me. ‘I like you so much.’