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I’d texted James that I was coming, that I needed to talk to Xavier about something. I asked him for his address and if it was okay for me to pop by. He sent me his address—a boutique apartment block in South Melbourne—and said Xavier will either be there or working from a cafe around the corner, near the market.

I stand in front of James’s apartment block for a full five minutes, trying to psyche myself up to walk to the door and press the buzzer. When I finally do it, my heart is racing.

There’s no answer.

I wait and buzz again. Maybe he’s staring at me through the security camera and ignoring me. God, that would be the saddest outcome of all. I drove all this way to stand in the cold and wind and press a buzzer and be ignored. I look down, scared of what he might see in my face.

I guess I need to check the cafe now. If nothing else, I can wait there and come back here again in an hour or so, when James might be home.

I pull my coat around me as it starts to rain. I’m wearing my best wool coat, which keeps me warm but isn’t built for rain. By the time I reach the cafe, my hair is damp and frizzing and my hands are freezing. I walk in, and there he is. In the corner, laptop open, typing away.

He hasn’t seen me. I could still turn and go.

His hair has grown back. If I had two versions of him before, shaggy-haired and shaved-head, now I have a third. Short-haired. Focused. A slight wrinkle of concentration between his brows. And, most notably, he’s wearing glasses. This is new.

He looks so good.

I pat my damp hair and wait in line to order a coffee because I have completely lost my nerve. It’s the glasses. He looks too new. My Xavier is gone. Now he is this handsome glasses-wearing guy in a coffee shop, looking like a character in a movie. Go home and write in ripped tracksuit pants and stained T-shirt on the couch like a real author, for god’s sake. He sickens me.

I order a latte, and the waiter asks where I’m sitting. I look around and that’s the moment Xavier looks up and sees me, and he does a full double-take and looks so startled I almost laugh. I give him a small wave and a tight-lipped smile. He waves back, no smile. I turn back to the waiter.

‘I’ll be sitting over there, with him,’ I say, and I take a deep breath and walk over.

‘Hi,’ I say, running a hand nervously through my frizzy hair.

‘Hi,’ he says, taking off his glasses. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Looking for you. James said you sometimes work here.’

‘I do.’ He closes the laptop and looks at me—too intensely.

I sit down on the chair opposite him and my leg bumps his under the table. Our first contact in so long. Deep breath. I need to keep this calm and professional.

‘I have a work question to ask you,’ I say.

His jaw clenches, and I see a flicker of something that might be hurt in his eyes.

‘A work question. Of course that’s why you’re here.’

‘It’s important.’

‘It must be if you drove all the way here to ask it.’

I wasn’t prepared for him to be cold. Or maybe I was. My heart immediately felt so tender when I saw him, it disarmed me. I need to be cold too.

‘After we haven’t spoken for two months,’ he adds.

It hasn’t been two months, not quite, but I shouldn’t point that out.

‘Yes,’ I say.

‘What is this question?’

‘Jessica Wayfarer has shingles and she’s pulled out of her session, and we were thinking you would be a good replacement.’

‘No,’ he says. He puts his glasses back on and opens his laptop.

I’m not falling for that. As if he’s just going to ignore me and work. I continue.