messages on my phone. More than about twenty times a day. I swear it.
At four o’clock in the afternoon, I made sure I was somewhere else or extremely busy in my house, where I wouldn’t be watching to see if he walked by. The first day I locked myself in the art room and worked on a novel cover where a poor woman was losing her dress while being ravished by a handsome pirate on the deck of a ship. I try not to think about some of the stories inside these novels. I read two of them in curiosity, and now I’m scared off heterosexuality for life. Weeping folds and pulsing portals are just not my thing.
The following afternoon, my avoid-Harley routine involved me digging a hole in the very back of my yard, where I wouldn’t be able to hear the doorbell if it rang. I had a lot more solutions to that four o’clock problem.
Running out of flour and needing it at 3:55 p.m. Funny that.
A doctor’s appointment for Mum that I changed from morning to the afternoon because it worked better with my schedule.
Taking Mum for a swim at the local pool, even if it meant sharing the pool with dozens of kids who were out of school by that time.
Visiting Lisa. Visiting Aunty Ellie. Visiting Dad at the cemetery.
Yes. I was the master of excuses. For a while, there was nothing from Harley. Then he started messaging and calling me. Some of his messages became panicked—he thought I’d died from another calamity or something. So I messaged back. I’m fine. Just busy. Talk to you soon.
Perhaps I was being stupid. And perhaps I was being immature. But I’d never had to tell a guy to stop contacting me before. Every guy I’d ever dated had either broken up with me in some painful way—text message, phone call, or over a nice dinner—or just not bothered to call me back. The one exception was Rory—but calling your intended victim from behind bars is a little hard, even when the intended victim called himself your clueless boyfriend.
I’ve forgiven Rory. For not calling me, I mean. I haven’t ever forgiven him for the four other men he dined on like they were takeaway from the local fast food joint.
So I assumed that if I just didn’t talk to Harley for a bit, he would either get the message or forget about me.
He didn’t.
I began leaving my phone turned off so it wouldn’t ring all the time to remind me of the guy I nearly killed. Then I hid my phone from myself so I wouldn’t turn it back on just to read his messages—again. It turns out I’m not good at the “hide” part of hide-and-seek.
In the end, Lisa rang me.
“What are you doing avoiding Harley?”
“Huh? What? How did you know?” I was aghast. How had my sister suddenly gotten involved in my love life?
“He rang me, you dipstick. I gave him my number after you were bitten by that snake. He rang me to see if you were okay, because you weren’t answering your texts. Then he rang me to ask if I’d heard anything. Now he’s ringing me because he wants to talk about you. We’ve just spent an hour on the phone chatting. He had me telling him stories about your childhood.”
Oh, God Almighty. If there really is a God in heaven, and if he has any love for me at all, he will strike me dead at this very moment to save me the embarrassment of my sister and my boyfriend-who-doesn’t-know-he-is-an-ex chatting about my childhood.
FOR AN HOUR.
“Lisa, please tell me you didn’t say anything embarrassing?”
“Like what?” she said.
“Like the time I got stuck in the cubbyhouse window.” I held my breath in hope.
“Told him.”
“The tomato up my nose incident?”
“Told him.”
“The fingers I superglued together?”
“Told him.”
I was nearly crying. I wondered if I could swallow all the pills in my mother’s collection and what would they do to me. Would I die quickly and painlessly? Or would I blow up like a balloon and have my legs amputated instead?
“The time I played a sheep in the school play?”
Lisa laughed. “I told him
At four o’clock in the afternoon, I made sure I was somewhere else or extremely busy in my house, where I wouldn’t be watching to see if he walked by. The first day I locked myself in the art room and worked on a novel cover where a poor woman was losing her dress while being ravished by a handsome pirate on the deck of a ship. I try not to think about some of the stories inside these novels. I read two of them in curiosity, and now I’m scared off heterosexuality for life. Weeping folds and pulsing portals are just not my thing.
The following afternoon, my avoid-Harley routine involved me digging a hole in the very back of my yard, where I wouldn’t be able to hear the doorbell if it rang. I had a lot more solutions to that four o’clock problem.
Running out of flour and needing it at 3:55 p.m. Funny that.
A doctor’s appointment for Mum that I changed from morning to the afternoon because it worked better with my schedule.
Taking Mum for a swim at the local pool, even if it meant sharing the pool with dozens of kids who were out of school by that time.
Visiting Lisa. Visiting Aunty Ellie. Visiting Dad at the cemetery.
Yes. I was the master of excuses. For a while, there was nothing from Harley. Then he started messaging and calling me. Some of his messages became panicked—he thought I’d died from another calamity or something. So I messaged back. I’m fine. Just busy. Talk to you soon.
Perhaps I was being stupid. And perhaps I was being immature. But I’d never had to tell a guy to stop contacting me before. Every guy I’d ever dated had either broken up with me in some painful way—text message, phone call, or over a nice dinner—or just not bothered to call me back. The one exception was Rory—but calling your intended victim from behind bars is a little hard, even when the intended victim called himself your clueless boyfriend.
I’ve forgiven Rory. For not calling me, I mean. I haven’t ever forgiven him for the four other men he dined on like they were takeaway from the local fast food joint.
So I assumed that if I just didn’t talk to Harley for a bit, he would either get the message or forget about me.
He didn’t.
I began leaving my phone turned off so it wouldn’t ring all the time to remind me of the guy I nearly killed. Then I hid my phone from myself so I wouldn’t turn it back on just to read his messages—again. It turns out I’m not good at the “hide” part of hide-and-seek.
In the end, Lisa rang me.
“What are you doing avoiding Harley?”
“Huh? What? How did you know?” I was aghast. How had my sister suddenly gotten involved in my love life?
“He rang me, you dipstick. I gave him my number after you were bitten by that snake. He rang me to see if you were okay, because you weren’t answering your texts. Then he rang me to ask if I’d heard anything. Now he’s ringing me because he wants to talk about you. We’ve just spent an hour on the phone chatting. He had me telling him stories about your childhood.”
Oh, God Almighty. If there really is a God in heaven, and if he has any love for me at all, he will strike me dead at this very moment to save me the embarrassment of my sister and my boyfriend-who-doesn’t-know-he-is-an-ex chatting about my childhood.
FOR AN HOUR.
“Lisa, please tell me you didn’t say anything embarrassing?”
“Like what?” she said.
“Like the time I got stuck in the cubbyhouse window.” I held my breath in hope.
“Told him.”
“The tomato up my nose incident?”
“Told him.”
“The fingers I superglued together?”
“Told him.”
I was nearly crying. I wondered if I could swallow all the pills in my mother’s collection and what would they do to me. Would I die quickly and painlessly? Or would I blow up like a balloon and have my legs amputated instead?
“The time I played a sheep in the school play?”
Lisa laughed. “I told him
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