Page 54 of People Skills

‘It’s good,’ I say, but he’s not listening.

‘Is Xavier an official work assignment? Do you have a Trello board on him? KPIs?’ James says.

‘Fuck off,’ Xavier says to him, which thankfully saves me from responding. (I did actually consider setting up a Trello board at one point.)

‘You shouldn’t have let Lana kick you out,’ James says. ‘Never concede property.’

‘She didn’t kick me out. I left,’ Xavier says. ‘And it was a rental.’

‘You left to live in this town with our mother?’ he says. ‘Under the guidance of her PA.’ He pauses and looks at me. ‘No offence, Charlotte. But you have to admit this is a sad situation for Xav.’ I open and then close my mouth. I have to be professional around James. I can see Xavier is irritated. But James isn’t finished.

‘Did you read Lana’s essay today?’ he asks.

‘I don’t subscribe to her newsletter anymore,’ Xavier says. I suspect that is a lie.

‘Well you made quite the appearance in it. She’s not over you.’

I have kept track of mentions of Xavier in Lana’s newsletter over the past few months. After ‘Heartbreak’, there was ‘Saying Goodbye’, which covered the pain of when Xavier came and took Rex, and also covered her symbolically cleaning out her wardrobe and saying goodbye to some favourite pieces of clothing and a bit about her dead grandmother, then nothing about him for a while, then ‘Dreams’, where she detailed a range of recent dreams she’d had and what a dream therapist said they were about, including one she had where ‘she dreamed she finally said everything she had bottled up inside to X’s face, and he said everything he’d been holding inside to me, and we kissed passionately, and then rode a rollercoaster’ and the dream therapist apparently said this was about her unresolved issues with her father, which, my god, I hope for her sake it isn’t. Then nothing for long enough that I thought maybe she was over Xavier, but today’s newsletter, called ‘His Body’, was a detailed list of everything she misses about the body of her unnamed ex, and I started reading it and thought, no, this is private business and not for me, and as Xavier’s friend and nothing more I owe it to him not to read it, and then I went ahead and read it several times.

‘James,’ Xavier says now. ‘Why don’t you go over to Mum’s and I’ll meet you there.’

‘Mum’s gone out somewhere,’ James says.

I bite back the urge to say ‘where?’ because it always shocks me when Hillary is somewhere without my knowledge.

‘Go and wait for her then.’

‘How’s the car?’ James says, ignoring his suggestion.

‘It’s good.’

‘I need it back at some point.’

‘You let me know when, and I’ll take it back to sit in Dad’s garage untouched for another three years.’

‘Well, I definitely need the surfboard back.’

‘The surfboard is mine!’

‘Then where’s my surfboard?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘So, what’s the plan?’ James says, finally sitting down on the couch.

I should leave the room but there are plenty of ways for James and Xavier to leave if they want a private conversation, and I refuse to concede property to this man.

‘The plan for what?’ Xavier says.

‘The rest of your life. Or the rest of the year. Or even the rest of the month.’

‘There is no plan.’

‘Well, heads-up, Dad thinks you should go back to uni.’

‘That’s definitely not the plan.’

‘So there is a plan.’