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My stomach sinks. I already know. I know what the Lucas from high school would’ve done. He would’ve taken any opportunity to show me up. To prove how inferior I was to him.
I stop wondering and call. It rings, and rings, and rings, but he doesn’t pick up. I call again, and again, and again, and again. When I consistently go straight to voicemail, I realise he must have turned his phone off.
So, I call Cleo. Straight to voicemail. I call several times — surely, she’ll pick up if she thinks it’s an emergency. And it is an emergency. She’s alone in a room with Lucas.
My girlfriend’s in Lucas’s bedroom.
If I was in Lucas’s bedroom…well, all he’d have to do is look at me and my knees would go weak.
*
I barely get any sleep that night. I toss and turn as I clutch my pillow and wonder what’s happening in Lucas’s bedroom. I check my phone at 2 AM, hoping I’ve received a message from Cleo reassuring me that everything was fine, but my lock screen is blank.
In the morning, I sit on the couch with the TV on to distract me. When I hear a creak down the hallway, I snap my head up, hoping it’s Jemima. If we leave soon, we can get to Melbourne soon, and then I can…
I’m not sure what I’ll do, but at least I’ll find answers that’ll resolve the nervous energy buzzing through my body.
But it’s not Jemima. It’s Mum.
“Oh, Charlie. I’m surprised to see you up. I have a job for you,” she says.
“A job?” Hopefully, it’s not mowing the lawn or another chore. Then again, that might distract me from the dread weighing me down.
“Natalie messaged me.”
Lucas’s mum, which makes me think of Lucas, which makes me think of Lucas’s room, and Cleo in that room, on his bed —
I think of Lucas, with his bright eyes, part stormy, part sapphire. I think of his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, his broad shoulders and his height, tall enough and strong enough to pick me up and break me.
Mum’s still talking. “— have enough room in the car, would it be possible to take some things with you back to Melbourne?”
I blink. “Huh?”
Mum’s smile is exasperated. “Natalie has asked whether it’s possible for you to take some of Lucas’s things with you.”
“Oh. Yeah, whatever.”
“Fantastic. I’ll let her know.” Mum pulls out her phone from her dressing gown pocket and types a response, using a single pointer finger which means she takes a full minute to write a sentence.
“She says you can go over any time today.” Mum lowers her phone. “You could go now, if you wanted.”
“Right now?” I ask.
“Why not? This is a good opportunity to get some fresh country air before you return to the big smog.”
I check the time on my phone. Yesterday, Jemima wasn’t out of bed until ten, so I have hours to kill. I might as well.
I take Mum’s car to Lucas’s home, and when I knock on the front door, Natalie lets me in with a huge smile and a barrage of questions, saying that it’s been so long since I’ve been over. She asks me if I’m eating enough and whether I’m used to university yet and how I’m finding Melbourne. As we talk, she leads me to Lucas’s room, explaining that she’s left a box of his things on his desk.
Just as she opens the door, though, she brings her hand to her face, the gesture a more elegant version of a facepalm. “Oh, I almost forgot the winter jackets! I won’t be a moment, I’ll just grab them from the garage. We can’t have him freezing during the winter.”
She disappears through the door, leaving me in the room alone. It’s changed a lot. I haven’t been in Lucas’s room since the walls were covered in posters of soccer players and drawings of fictional pirates like Jack Sparrow and Monkey D Luffy. He used to have a pirate ship themed bedspread when we were kids, and it was during a sleepover, when we were hidden under the covers, using a small torch to tell ghost stories, that he wrapped his arms around me and told me I was his favourite person in the world. I still think about that moment a lot.
Now, all of the pirate stuff is gone. His bedsheets are black, like those at the Melbourne apartment. The black covers that Cleo was sitting on —
I squeeze my eyes close. Don’t think about that.
On his tallboy is a terrarium, the green moss inside thriving. Stuck on the wall in front of his desk are motivational quotes, which make me smile. I wonder if his jock friends thought they were dorky. Well, most of the quotes are from professional athletes, so probably not. There’s also a calendar from last year, still stuck on November, exam dates written in bold black letters.
