‘Humour me. I’m an only child,’ I say.
‘Never feeling alone.’
‘And what’s the worst thing?’ I’m getting good at these questions now.
‘Never feeling alone.’
‘Ha.’
‘It’s like…sometimes they take up so much space in my life I’m afraid I’ll never have room for all the other people I want to fit in. And I worry about them. Zach’s okay, he’s so smart, and he’s got you and Lucy, but I think Anthony gets bullied a bit, and Glenn thinks he’s invincible and he’s going to grow up and be a bit too wild.’ He stops, and seems surprised at himself for saying so much.
I’ve never heard him talk like this. And I’ve never looked at him up this close before. His eyes go all crinkly when he smiles. He has messy eyebrows, like Zach used to have before Lucy started plucking them.
‘My parents broke up,’ I say.
I have no idea why I just blurted this out.
‘I know. I heard Zach and Lucy talking about it. I’m sorry. I always thought your parents seemed like a nice couple.’
‘You’ve met my parents?’
‘No. But Mum talks about you, and them, so much that I feel like I have.’
‘It’s not like a bad break-up, with yelling and fighting over money or anything like that. It’s all very relaxed,’ I say.
‘That’s good.’
‘I mean, I’m eighteen, so there’s not a child anyone needs to have a custody battle over or anything.’
‘That makes things easier, I guess.’
‘And I feel completely and totally fine about it all.’
‘Sounds ideal.’
‘Yes. It is ideal. They’ll have a perfect divorce.’ I plan to laugh in a mature and ironic way, but what comes out is a kind of hiccupped sob. I put my hand to my mouth, more out of shock than anything, and tears start burning my eyes. The thing is, I’m not a crier. Never a public crier. Not even when a guy on a train said ‘You’ve got something on your face’ very loudly to me, and everyone around us looked at me and when I touched my face, thinking it was a smear of peanut butter, he said, ‘Oh, it’s a pimple, it looked like something else for a minute,’ and I had spent thirty-seven minutes and missed my usual train that morning getting my foundation to a point where I thought my skin looked pretty good for a change.
I’m not about to start public crying now, at this party.
‘Hey,’ Alex puts his hand on my arm. He looks a bit scared. Probably he’s worried he’s going to be stuck looking after his little brother’s pathetic, blubbering friend all night.
Now I truly am crying. I put my hands over my face to catch the tears that are slipping out of my eyes.
‘I’m fine,’ I say, trying desperately to sound it.
What is happening? I didn’t even cry when they told me. It must be the word divorce. I haven’t said that word out loud until this moment, even though I’ve been thinking it since they told me. I know it’s coming.
I keep my head in my hands. I should go to the bathroom and hide but I can’t face the idea of being caught in there again.
Alex keeps his hand on my arm and leans in. He whispers, ‘You probably don’t know this yet, but you’re not supposed to cry at parties.’
I give a small laugh.
‘I’m not crying.’ I wipe my cheeks and take deep breaths. Get it together. My nose gets red and swollen when I cry, and it runs like a tap. My eyes go bloodshot. I get an instant headache. Crying is not therapeutic for me.
‘Oh, I know you’re not crying. I was telling you just in case.’
His hand is still on my arm. I don’t want him to take it away. Focusing on that thought helps me to stop crying, because it’s a brand new, of-this-very-moment feeling.
I’ve known Alex for years and never felt a flicker of attraction. Or at least I don’t think I have. He has chest hair (I’ve seen him in a towel walking from the bathroom to his bedroom). He is obsessed with soccer. He has a heavy five-o’clock shadow and sometimes a scruffy beard. He’s a year older than me. He’s not tall. He likes partying. I’ve never seen him read or hold a book. He is nothing like Zach. These are things I would have previously said were problematic for me.
I look at the wall until I’ve pulled myself together and I’ve not only stopped crying but the urge to cry has completely disappeared, and then I lift my face. Alex takes his hand off my arm, and it almost seems worth crying again to see if he’ll put it back.
‘Do I have mascara running down my face?’ I ask him. As much as I hate to tell anyone to look directly at my face, I urgently need to know how bad things are.
‘No.’
‘You didn’t even look properly.’
He leans close to my face. ‘No mascara running.’
We hold eye contact for a long time (okay, a second or two, which is ages for me) and I feel embarrassed and ridiculously vulnerable because of my probably red post-crying nose and my bumpy skin, but I don’t want to look away.
‘So what other party wisdom do you have?’ I ask.
‘Well, every party has a guy that gets really drunk before everyone else and embarrasses himself. And a couple who get into an awkward, public argument. And an opinionated know-it-all who never shuts up and gets on everyone’s nerves.’
‘So who are all those people tonight?’
‘The drunk guy who embarrasses himself is’—Alex pauses and looks outside the kitchen window for a minute—‘Benny… In the red T-shirt.’
The guy he’s pointing to is balancing a plastic bucket on his head, yelling ‘Now fill it with water’ with a look of total delight on his face. So that’s Benny. Benny and I are almost definitely not going to fall in love.
‘Yes, that seems right,’ I say.
‘And the couple who argue?’ Alex scans the backyard and shakes his head. ‘They must be in the lounge room. You’ll know them when you see them. Annika has red hair, and Jes is wearing skinny black jeans, and they’re both very loud.’
‘Oh yeah, I think I saw them before, arguing about returning a Christmas present one of them bought the other.’
‘That’s where the argument will start, but it will spiral into the fact they both cheated on each other earlier this year, on the same night.’
‘Oh, wow.’
‘With the same person,’ Alex says.
‘That sounds complicated.’
‘And the opinionated guy—that one is easy.’
‘Let me guess.’ I look out the kitchen window into the backyard.
‘Him,’ I say, pointing to a guy with a beer in one hand who is wildly gesturing with the other. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says ‘Anarchy’.
‘Bingo. He loves conspiracy theories, arguing about politics and telling people why the music they like is crap.’
‘He sounds charming,’ I say. I turn away from the window and we smile at each other, and Alex looks like he’s going to say something when Owen yells at us from outside.
‘Hey, Alex and Natalie!’
We look away from each other, and I jump down from the bench. My legs feel a little shaky.