I couldn’t concentrate on the show because all I could think about was the fact that our hands were touching. What did this mean? I was never sure of what my feelings for Zach were, exactly. Whenever my parents questioned me, I would become defensive and point out how ridiculous it was that I couldn’t just be friends with a guy without everyone assuming there was something going on. It was predictable and, frankly, offensive, and it was bad enough that TV shows and movies never let guys and girls just be friends, but worse that everyone had to make the assumptions in real life too. And, even worse, no one made any assumptions about Lucy and me, which is so backward and heteronormative.
Outside of my standard rant, though, I wasn’t exactly sure whether I believed what I was saying. I mean, I believed in principle, but whether it actually applied to me was another question. Zach was the guy in my life, so I was never sure whether I was projecting feelings onto him, or really feeling them. He was cute, in a gawky way. Sometimes I found him attractive and sometimes I absolutely didn’t. I had occasionally had a sexual dream about him, but I had also had sexual dreams about a middle-aged, not-especially-attractive teacher before, so I couldn’t trust whatever my subconscious thought it was doing there.
Zach was funny, and kind, and he made me feel safe. I still wasn’t comfortable around him when my skin broke out, and I had never let him see or even know about the terrible acne scars on my back, or how bad my skin was before I met him, but, otherwise, I was always relaxed with him. The best way to describe my feelings for Zach was a deep, familial love accompanied by a fluctuating semi-romantic crush that could come and go in an instant. I couldn’t picture myself actually kissing him, but I had such limited kissing experience, I couldn’t trust that instinct either.
There were people who I was very clearly, definitely, instantly attracted to: the boy who caught my train and had cheekbones I couldn’t look away from; the fill-in PE teacher we’d had once who had the most breathtakingly athletic body I had ever seen up close; the lead-guitar player in a Battle of the Bands night I was forced to attend, who held himself in the sexiest way I’ve ever seen; the guy who worked in my local library who had gloriously long eyelashes. And there were many people I was definitely not attracted to. And then there’s this whole section of people who fall somewhere in the middle. People who you don’t even notice until they say something unexpected and then you realise they are smart and funny, or people who look bad in a school uniform but then you see them in a coat and scarf and everything changes. That’s where Zach exists, in this in-between place.
Zach also felt achievable for me. I knew he liked me as a person. I knew I could make him laugh, that we had similar interests, that we could pass an entire day together and not be bored or sick of one another. That we never ran out of things to say, and that he challenged me to do better at things, more than anyone else did. If anyone was going to fall in love with me…well, Zach was the only possibility, really. It came down to basic maths. I don’t spend enough time with any other boy for love to be possible. The chances of me meeting and falling in love with someone else were minuscule. I simply didn’t have a social existence that allowed for that, and I didn’t want one, let alone know how to get one.
I mostly imagined Zach and me getting together later in life. In our twenties. Maybe our thirties. I wasn’t in love with Zach now, but I was confident I could be one day. He was the potential future love of my life.
If my life was a TV show, then my character and Zach’s character would eventually get together in season three or four, after many episodes of banter, pining and meaningful looks, and the audience would love it. Everyone would ship us.
So we lay there with our fingers touching, and my heart pounding, and we watched the rest of the episode and half of the next one before either of us moved. My arm was aching and uncomfortable, but I wasn’t going to move it because the next move either needed to be something more (actively holding hands) or something less (moving my hand away entirely). I didn’t want to be the instigator of either of these actions. I wanted to leave my hand right there and see what happened. I was holding the door open for Zach to walk through it.
Zach didn’t walk through it.
He got up to get a glass of water, and when he came back, he didn’t put his hands under the pillow again, and I didn’t either.
That was it. For thirty-seven minutes our hands had touched, and we lay in silence thinking about what to do next, and we chose nothing.
Lucy came back from her trip changed. She had met someone. A friend of the family, who she hadn’t seen in years. She was staying next door to him in Perth. Her parents were busy and distracted, and Lucy and this boy—Travis—spent all their time together. Travis taught Lucy how to surf, and he had three dogs, called Alvin, Theodore and Simon, and he rode everywhere on his bike. And his skin tasted salty, and he was a good kisser, and Travis and Lucy had sex.
Travis and Lucy had sex.
I have never felt as panicked as I did when Lucy told me this. Here I was, grappling with the hand-touching incident, and she had met a whole new person and his three cute dogs, and had kissed this person, and learned to surf, and then had sex with this person. She had sex. She didn’t even think to call me and discuss it before she did it. She’d just done it.
We were almost equals when she left, and now she was so far ahead of me.
‘Oh, my god.’
‘I know.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I know.’
‘Was it…? What was it like?’
‘Some parts were a bit boring, other parts were quite good.’ She made it sound like the latest Marvel movie or something.
Which parts were good? I wanted to scream. Tell me which parts, tell me what to do. Stop, stop, stop, and wait for me to catch up.
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I know.’
I was ashamed of how unhappy I felt (a recurring theme, as it turns out, when it comes to Lucy’s love-life). But I could feel Lucy slipping away from me. First it was sex with a surfer, then it would be wild parties, and dating terrible boys with cool haircuts, and then we would drift apart and finish high school and she’d become a high-powered lawyer, and I would do who knows what (even in imaginary scenarios I have no direction) and we’d never talk again. Lucy was my safe place, my favourite person, and she was smashing that safety to bits. I wanted to physically grip her arm.
‘You look weird,’ Lucy had said to me.
‘I feel weird.’ I had become used to letting Lucy see me and know me, so it was hard to hide myself from her.
‘Why?’
‘Well, I feel like…’ I wasn’t sure how to put it. ‘I feel like you are so far ahead of me in life.’
‘Well, one of us had to have sex first.’
‘And there was never any doubt it would be you,’ I said, probably with a touch too much self-pity.
‘Are you kidding? Have you met my parents?’
‘How come they trusted Travis?’
‘They didn’t, by the end, but it was too late then.’
We lay together on my bed and I calmed down a little. Lucy chattered on, and things started to feel more normal again. She wasn’t a different person. She just had a great story to tell. Everything would be okay.