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Chapter 2

Chapter 2

F

umbling in the darkness to find the right key, I unlocked the door and let myself into Anna’s apartment. Anna and I had been best friends for over ten years. We’d met when she was studying photography at uni and would come to the café for a vanilla soy latte. I flicked on the lamp and sunk into the chocolate-coloured velvet lounge suite. Anna and I had nicknamed it “the couch of death” as the cushions were so fat and full that they swallowed you up as soon as you sat down. We picked it up for a bargain a couple of years back at a South Melbourne garage sale. With the velvet arms shiny rather than soft, Anna saw it as old and worn, whereas to me, it was well-loved. I bargained them down to a hundred dollars, and they included delivery thanks to some eye-batting from Anna.

While I was waiting for Anna to get home, I checked how many views there were on my latest Instagram post for the café—a snap of the new three-cheese and mushroom pizza Pat had just added to the menu. Already well over a hundred. Not bad for a couple of hours. I swiped out of the app and into my contacts and pressed my boyfriend Wil’s number. I’d tried calling him earlier, but he hadn’t answered. Probably with a client at a house viewing. Wil worked for his dad at their real estate agency—one of the most prominent in the area. He, too, was waiting for his dad to retire so he could take over the reins, but his dad was in his mid-sixties and had no hint of slowing down. Wil was “biding his time” as he liked to say. His dad wasn’t the easiest of people to work for and treated Wil more like an employee than a son or future owner. Wil’s phone rang and then clicked through to his message bank.

‘Hi, this is Wil Brooks of Brooks Real Estate. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you at my earliest convenience. Cheers.’

‘Hon, just wanted to say hi, but well, you’re obviously still busy. I’m at Anna’s, but I’ll be home by half nine or thereabouts. There’s leftover curry in the fridge if you haven’t eaten. All right, see you then,’ I said, then hung up, chewing at my bottom lip.

Wil and I had been dating for almost a year now and he’d asked me to move in with him a couple of months earlier. I’d been hesitant to call him “the one”, but when he asked me to move in, it felt right. But these past few months, he’d been distracted. He was harder to catch on the phone, he was late home more often than not, and frequently stared off into the distance during conversations. He’d tried to tell me it was work, but there was something that had been unsettling me. A gut instinct that wouldn’t budge no matter how much I tried to ignore it.

A key jingled in the lock and Anna burst through the door.

‘Oh, hey!’ I said, jumping up for a hello hug, but her puffy eyes and forlorn look stopped me in my tracks. I’d seen that look before. Over the past ten years I’d come to learn Anna’s track record with men was about as successful as my resistance to spaghetti carbonara.

‘What is it?’ I asked, bracing myself for the news, even though I knew from the trembling of her bottom lip what was coming—another break-up.

Anna dumped her handbag on the floor and burst into tears without uttering a word.

I’d had a feeling about Mark. Not that I’d mentioned it to Anna, but he seemed a bit cagey to me, always being the one to set the times and locations of their dates. Never taking her back to his place. Yeah, suss.

‘Here, sit down.’ I manoeuvred her to the couch and passed her a box of tissues. ‘This calls for ice-cream,’ I said, as I made a bee-line for the kitchen and returned with a tub of macadamia and white chocolate ice-cream. I plonked myself on the couch beside Anna and handed her a spoon.

‘He’s met someone else,’ Anna said after taking a huge spoonful of ice-cream and shoving it into her mouth.

‘Oh, hon, I’m sorry.’

‘But why, Dem? he was so nice! I really liked him.’

‘I know you did,’ I said, trying to think of something useful to say. From past experience, I knew it was better to let Anna have the floor and wallow in her self-pity, for a moment at least. ‘Well, I guess he didn’t technically cheat on you,’ I offered. ‘At least he was up-front.’

Anna’s face dropped. ‘You’re not helping.’

‘All I’m saying is at least he showed his true colours now rather than later.’

‘I guess. But it still doesn’t help.’ She sniffed. ‘I’m destined to end up alone and lonely.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘And not only that, my boss, Paul—remember I told you how much of a sleaze he’s been lately?—he practically propositioned me today.’

‘What?’

‘Uh-huh! Not in a way that I could prove or even accuse him of—he’s very careful—but in a way that totally spun me out. I’m thinking of quitting. I hate it anyway.’

‘Seriously?’

Anna nodded, the mouthful of ice-cream preventing her from speaking.

‘Day from hell, hey?’

‘Yup. I’m destined to be broke, alone and end up in a retirement home with not even a cat to keep me company.’ She handed the ice-cream to me and blew her nose into her tissue.

‘We’ve still got The Plan. Maybe refocus on that.’

The Plan

? Yeah, right,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Like it’s worked well so far.’

The Plan was something Anna and I had devised after a terribly hideous double date a couple of years ago. Over a bottle of champers, we’d sat cross-legged on our lounge room floor and devised a five-year plan to get our lives on track. Anna had been in her job as an architectural photographer for a few years and was bored, and I was working in the café dreaming of one day taking it over. Although a little vague and devised mostly as a joke, we’d vowed—loosely—that it would change our lives. I was sure I still had the battered exercise book scrawled with messy, drunken handwriting somewhere in my room at Mum’s.

— Demi & Anna’s FiveYear Plan —

  1. Get our careers on track – Demi, take over café. Anna, run her own photography business. Maybe. Or something else.

  2. Travel – Demi’s dream destination: Italy, Anna’s – anywhere involving an Airbus 380.

  3. Buy a couch and ditch the camping chairs

  4. Find a man worthy of our gorgeous selves.Demi: Dark-haired, good sense of humour, must love food.Anna: Intelligent, must want to travel the globe and not think monogamy is an outdated practice.

  5. Live our best lives!

As I said, it was vague, but it was always something that we reminded each other of when either of us was having a down moment. And number one on the list, was continually on my mind. Front and centre.

‘It’s all right for you, Dem,’ Anna said. ‘Your plan is pretty much all signed, sealed and delivered.’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ I replied, staring into the almost empty ice-cream tub as if it held all the answers to both our problems.

‘Of course it is. Your dad’s due to retire any day, you have Wil, you live in a gorgeous apartment. Before you know it, you’ll be honeymooning in Italy and gloating on how your café and real estate empires are taking over the world.’

I dug my spoon forcefully in and out of the ice-cream and we both went quiet before Anna spoke again.

‘You know I’m only joking, right? You totally deserve all of that. And more,’ she said, softly.

I shook my head. ‘It’s fine. I know you’re kidding. But it’s not that,’ I said, my eyes still focused on the ice-cream which was now turning to soft serve thanks to my digging effort.

‘What is it then?’

‘It’s nothing’ I sighed. ‘But it’s everything at the same time. Dad’s being increasingly difficult. I don’t reckon he’s ever going to retire. Mum is continually on my back about my ticking biological clock, Josie’s doing my head in with wedding plans, and Wil . . . well, I don’t even know what is going on with Wil.’

‘What do you mean?’ Anna said, shifting her legs under her.

I paused, contemplating the thoughts that had been playing on my mind recently causing me sleepless nights and distracted days. I lowered my eyes. ‘I think he might be having an affair.’

‘What? No! Not Wil. He wouldn’t do that to you.’

‘I know! But he’s been so stressed and distracted lately. Something’s definitely up. I don’t know what else to think.’

‘Have you asked him?’

My mind flitted back to the conversation I’d had with him last week. I’d made him a cup of tea while he was buttering our toast for breakfast.

‘Are you cheating on me?’ I’d said, sliding the tea across the bench.

He’d laughed. ‘What?’

‘I mean are you having an affair? Is there another woman?’

At that point he’d dropped the knife and it had clattered onto the marble benchtop. ‘What? Why would you think that?’

‘Because you’re never home. You’re working late all the time. And even when you are home, it’s like your mind is elsewhere. We haven’t had sex in two weeks,’ I’d blurted.

With that, Wil had put his arms around me. ‘I’m sorry, Dem. Things have been catching up with me. Dad’s continually on my back, I’ve had sales fall through that were almost done and dusted, and we’re short staffed at the office with Terry leaving. I know it’s no excuse. I’m just tired and stressed. Things will settle down soon. I’ve got things in the works.’

I’d left it at that, but I still had a nagging feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right.

I explained it all to Anna, who reassured me that I was, indeed, being silly. ‘Wil is number four on the list. He’s the one. You’ve both just got a lot on your mind at the moment, that’s all.’

‘You’re probably right,’ I shrugged, putting a spoonful of now mostly runny ice-cream into my mouth.

‘Look,’ Anna said, sinking back into the couch. ‘I know you are going to be fine, Demi Moretti. You’re always fine. You and Wil will get past this slump, and before you know it, your dad will announce his retirement and give the café to you.’

‘He’s not giving it to me—I’ll pay him out the others’ shares.’

Anna rolled her eyes at my technicality. ‘My point is, you’re so close. Stop overthinking things.’

Anna was right. I did tend to overthink things. What can I say? It was a talent of mine. ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘How did this turn into

you

cheering

me

up?’

‘It’s what we do.’ She shrugged, picking up the remote for the TV. ‘Now, enough of all of this. I’m done with Mark. Done with men, actually. Well, for now at least. So, let’s forget all about everything and watch some Netflix. Something to cheer us up.

Gilmore Girls

?’

I nodded as Anna found one of our favourite episodes, but as I tried to focus on Lorelai and Rory, my mind wandered off. I wanted Anna to be right. I wanted things to sort themselves out soon. The problem was, everything seemed so close, but at the same time, it all seemed so far away.

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