I tell her I love her on the fifth night.
Amanda tells me on the sixth day she’s bored with us, that there is no us.
I fly back to Sydney on the seventh day.
Not a word from her since.
That’s twenty-seven months and three days of silence (yes, I’ve kept track, which is pathetic I know) and now this text.
Suffice to say, the guy that’s never rattled was feeling . . . shaken. But not rattled. I refuse to be rattled.
I won’t lie though. When I finally replied to her text I had to type Hi eight times before I got it right.
An hour later, I sent her another one. I tried not to, but I did.
Thinking of you as well.
For the next sixty minutes I checked my phone every minute. Not a single response.
I calculated the time difference between San Diego and Sydney. Seventeen hours. It was almost seven am on Wednesday over there. I downloaded a World Clock app just in case my math skills were as dubious as my math teacher suggested they were back when I was only fifteen.
As it turns out, my math skills were holding steady.
If Amanda was in San Diego – and as I pointed out, it had been over two years since we last spoke, so really I was only guessing that’s where she was – she should at least be awake. Maybe eating breakfast somewhere.
Sixty minutes of obsessive-compulsive phone stalking later, I sent off my third text.
What’s up?
I’d like to say she replied a short time after that. Instead, twenty-four hours passed. Have you ever spent a day, a whole day, waiting on a text? The text tone on my phone is the main chorus from “Eye of the Tiger”. I know it’s corny but that song from the seventies pumps me up when I’m working out.
I grew to loathe that song in that twenty-four hour period.
Every time I heard Survivor sing that damn chorus my heart went into overdrive, my pulse smashed into my throat and my gut clenched. Every time I looked at my phone and saw the sender wasn’t Amanda Sinclair, I wanted to scream.
Go ahead, you can say it. I was rattled.
But that was nothing – the pounding heart, the choking pulse, the churning gut – nothing, compared to my body’s response when Amanda’s reply can through at two am, Friday morning.
I need you.
She didn’t answer when I called. That may have been a good thing. To be honest, I’m not sure what I was going to say to her. What she did do was call me an hour later – when I was in the shower, of course, trying to get myself sorted out under a punishing stream of cold water.
I came out to find the 1 New Voicemail message notification on my screen. Throat tight, I played the message.
“Hi Brendon,” Amanda’s voice messed with my sanity, her subtle American accent as sexy as ever. “I know . . . I mean . . .” A shaky sigh came through the phone. I don’t remember Amanda ever making such a noise before. “This is going to make no sense, and I know I’m asking a lot, but can you come to San Diego ASAP? Please? I’ll . . . I’ll explain everything when you get here.”
The message ended. I played it again. And again. And again. I rang her three times. She didn’t answer. Rather than try a fourth time, I opened my laptop and bought a one-way ticket on the first flight I found – Premium Economy. Sydney to LAX. Qantas. 6:40am. My credit card balance was not going to like me, and my bank manager was going to have some kind of conniption, but I didn’t care. I’d heard Amanda’s voice. I was essentially screwed, but in a good way. Life had presented me something, and I was taking that something. Live in the present, remember? The second I bought the ticket, all sense of being rattled and flustered vanished.
Despite the fact it was only 3:45 am on a Friday, I rang Heather Renner.
Now Heather had swooped into my life like a ADHD tornado a few years ago, starting our relationship as just a student who worked out in the uni gym before becoming an acquaintance I enjoyed talking with. We hung out occasionally before the whole Maci/Raph/Brendon situation (or as media called it The American Love Triangle), and it was during that time she morphed into one of my closest mates. Heather was Maci’s best friend while Maci was in Australia, and she somehow insinuated herself into my daily life after Maci went back to the States. I’m not complaining. Heather – who has only two speeds: on and hyper-on – is funny, infectious and almost impossible to say no to. Once upon a time she had a thing for me. Now she has a thing for her ethics professor, a fact I give her a hard time about constantly. Heather is like the sister I never had, and as such, I had no problem calling her at quarter to four in the morning.
She answered on the second ring. There wasn’t a hint of sleep-slurred confusion in her voice.
“I’ve told you before, Biceps,” she chirped, her normal exuberance somehow dialed up to fifty, “I will not go for a jog around Bondi with you.”
Heather has tried to convince me more than once she wasn’t responsible for the nickname “The Biceps” on campus. One of these days I may believe her.
Gaze fixed on my laptop screen and its ticket-purchase confirmation, I grinned. “Not even if I buy you breakfast at Triptych after?” I asked, completing the telephone conversation routine that had developed between us over the last few months.
She laughed. “Not even then. Now tell me what’s wrong. There’s no way you’d ring at this time unless there was a problem. Is it Maci? Is she okay? I was only talking to her yesterday and she sounded great. What’s happened? Is it Raph? It’s not Raph, is it? He was flying back from seeing his mum and dad when I was talking to her. Mid-flight in fact. It’s not his plane, is it? Tell me his plane hasn’t crashed and there’s no sign of the bodies. Jesus, how long will it take us to get to—”
“Heather,” I cut her off with a chuckle. See what I mean about only two speeds? “Maci and Raph are fine. At least, I assume they are. I haven’t spoken to either of them for a few weeks.”
A relieved sigh burst through the phone connection. Followed by an angry grunt. “Then why the hell did you let me think they weren’t? That’s not nice, Osmond. Not nice at—”
“Heather,” I repeated her name, firmer this time. If I’d been in her company I’d have grabbed her by the shoulders to hold her still. At times she was like a wriggling puppy. A wriggling puppy with an IQ of 128. “I need you to feed No Direction for a while.”
Silence came from the other end. I couldn’t help but lick my index finger and make an invisible stroke in the air. Chalk one up for The Biceps.
“I’m heading to the States,” I continued, “and I need you to feed my fish while I’m gone.”
Silence. Still.
I frowned. “Heather?”
“You’re not going over to try to break up Maci and Raph, are you?”
I burst out laughing.
“I take it that’s a no?” Wary confusion filled Heather’s voice.
“That’s a big no,” I answered, pushing myself up from my desk to make my way to my bedroom. I had a suitcase in the cupboard somewhere, I think. “A friend over there needs my help.”
At the word friend my chest constricted and my balls tightened. It was an odd sensation. Part nerves, part anticipation. All unfamiliar to me.
“A friend?” Curiosity had replaced Heather’s confusion. I could almost see her squirming about on the neon-pink shag-fabric swivel chair that held pride of place in her dorm room. “More details, please. If I’m going to be looking after your cherished pet, I need more than just a friend. Is this the friend you followed to the US a few years ago?”