Search History by Amy Taylor

Author:Amy Taylor [Amy Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

THE FIRST WEEKS OF OCTOBER flew by while I tried and failed to dress appropriately for the weather, finding myself either sweltering under too many layers or suddenly thrust, exposed, into arctic wind. Everyone on the tram in the mornings was appropriately dressed and I began to grow suspicious that they all knew something I didn’t, seeing as the weather forecasts were almost always wrong.

The sun revealed and concealed itself as if it were a game. On one Sunday morning I hung my sheets out on the line in the hopes of capitalising on its sudden arrival, only for it to immediately slip behind a dark grey cloud, leaving my soggy sheets stranded, whipped and flung around by the wind and rain for days afterwards.

I struggled to stay on top of my laundry in general now that Evan and I had begun to split our time between our two apartments, each of us packing a bag and moving back and forth like children of divorce. Our messages had long ago changed from long-winded, carefully edited paragraphs, through which we got to know each other, to memes and simple, practical updates like:

Be there in 10 or Red or white?

What would you do? we continued to ask each other in honour of the time he told me he hated music and I’d told him I’d still sleep with him.

It was the perfect inside joke. What atrocities of character, opinion or taste could we pretend wouldn’t affect our attraction to each other; what barriers of incompatibility would we commit to scaling?

What if I told you I don’t believe in the wage gap. What would you do? Evan might ask.

I’d ask if you want to stay at mine or yours this weekend, I might respond.

It had unlimited iterations and could always be made relevant, and it had room for surprising creative freedom; all the while it reminded us that we were unreservedly into each other.

The calm sailing of our relationship was in part owed to my diligent steering, which tracked a course away from the topic of Emily. Though on occasion, as we watched a sad movie on my couch, or were forced to endure a sad song at the supermarket, I watched Evan’s face subtly transform; his eyebrows knitting together and his jaw muscles showing themselves. I stole glances at him, as these facial reflexes came and went ephemerally, like ripples in a pond. I took them to be glimpses of his suppressed pain and I felt helpless in their audience.

Lauren and I began meeting for coffee and wandering around various parks and gardens. She shared with me the tribulations of her dating life, which made my relationship with Evan feel like a warm jumper, shielding me from the harsh cold outside. At times, when our conversations reached the topic of Evan, I wondered if I should ask Lauren about Emily, but I never did. Evan was one of her closest friends and she’d only known me for a couple of weeks, so it would be presumptuous to assume she would keep my inquiries in confidence.

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