Words in Deep Blue(18)

‘Not interested, Henry,’ she says, and walks off in the direction of the stage.

‘Is that the girl?’ Katia, the bartender, asks after I order a beer, which she lets me put on a tab because I tutored her for free in English. I started the year after Rachel left, so she knows all about us. ‘That is the girl,’ I tell her. ‘That’s Rachel, my ex-best friend.’

‘The one you secretly love.’

‘I don’t secretly love her.’

‘You don’t talk about a girl as much as you talked about Rachel if you don’t secretly love her.’

‘I love her. I’m just not in love with her,’ I say, and drink my beer fast. I order and drink another one faster because at the moment I would like nothing more than to be a bystander in my life: observing the badness but not feeling it. I order and drink, order and drink and the blur under my skin feels more than good, it feels great.

Until I turn to my left and see Amy and Greg sitting together on Laundry’s old locked-together chairs, holding hands. She seems so happy. She’s laughing and looking at him the way she looked at me that first night together in Year 12. Completely focused. Leaning close. Red hair falling loose on a long green dress.

He looks gorgeous, too, the fucker. The lights are picking up and reflecting the whiteness of his teeth and making his hair look extra shiny. I see myself in the mirror that runs along the back of the bar – my hair is doing that defeated thing and my teeth are the white of an average person. I’m in the clothes I’ve been wearing for the last couple of days – my Bukowski Love is a Dog from Hell t-shirt, and jeans.

‘No wonder she doesn’t love me,’ I say to Katia. ‘My whole body looks slept in.’

‘Shakespeare, that girl is not for you.’

‘She’s my soul mate.’

‘Then I am seriously worried for your soul,’ she says, and goes back to serving the other customers.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard that Amy isn’t right for me. Rachel never liked her. Lola didn’t either. Hiroko politely tells me it’s not her place to judge, but she makes for the door whenever Amy’s around. George isn’t so polite. She says Amy turns up at the bookshop when she’s lonely and disappears when she’s not.

It isn’t like that, though.

It’s more like she can’t stay away from me any more than I can stay away from her. I’ve always taken Amy back. I will always take her back. I might tell myself that I won’t, but when she shows up at the bookshop it feels like it’s something that’s out of my control. She’s my destiny. She’s not some total moron’s destiny.

I stumble through the crowd towards them, trying all the while to figure out what to say when I arrive. The words to get her back exist; I just have to work out the order of them.

I’ve drunk away my sense of order, though. I’ve drowned it out, so I stand in front of them with nothing. I stare and sway for a while and then I gesture towards their looped hands. ‘This is so . . . disturbing. He’s – it’s – Greg Smith.’

‘Henry,’ Amy says, and because Greg stands without letting go of her hand, she’s pulled up with him. They’re looped together when a week ago, Amy and I were looped.

‘I don’t understand. He’s a complete idiot. Look at him.’

But as I say it, I look at him. I take a good long look at Greg Smith. He’s handsome; he’s well dressed; he wouldn’t have had to borrow the last hundred dollars from his girlfriend to buy his round-the-world ticket or run a tab he’ll never pay for at the bar. No doubt he’s paid for Amy’s drink, straight up, with cash. He’s going to university. He’s studying law. He has a life plan to go with his white teeth.

I think about a lot of things, standing here. I think about how Amy probably hates kissing on the floor of the bookshop; hates that I intend to live there indefinitely with my dad and George. I have a flashback to me dressed in my second-hand suit for the formal, picking up Amy in the bookshop van. She said it didn’t matter, but maybe it did. Maybe a lot of things that I thought didn’t matter actually did. Maybe that’s why she keeps going away and coming back. She comes back because she can’t stop loving me. She leaves because I don’t have my shit together. I need to get my shit together. I need to get a better haircut and a decent life plan. I need substantial money.

‘We’re selling the bookshop,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll be able to move out when we get back from our trip.’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Greg says.

‘I am going somewhere. And Amy, I want you to come with me.’

Maybe it’s the light, but I don’t think it is. She looks unsure for second. One second of uncertainty tells me all I need to know. I can have her back if I change.

Greg pushes me then, just gently; just enough, and I fall backwards into a crowd that instinctively clears a space for me. I look up from my position on the floor at Amy, and she looks back down at me sadly. In those eyes I read something. I read that she wants me to change. If you change, her eyes are saying, I’ll come back.

I close my eyes to regain some balance and I feel hands pulling me upwards. I think it’s Amy helping, but when I open my eyes, it’s Rachel. ‘You want her back?’ she asks, and I tell her I do – I really, really do.