Shirley by Ronnie Scott

Author:Ronnie Scott [Scott, Ronnie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760144791
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

So maybe I didn’t know David all that well. Or maybe I knew him too well. But I think that’s just something exes say because it sounds perceptive and stoic, when really it’s providing them some brittle comfort; of course it’s possible to know too much, to see things you can’t unsee, but how could we know our exes ‘too well’ when we barely know ourselves? I think most of us, having come through this pandemic – that is, if we are even through it – have spent enough unchosen time with ourselves to be closely attuned to this fact.

I don’t know exactly why I did what I did after David went home with the cat. I know I don’t have to apologise for it. There’s nothing to apologise for.

I’d been single for over a month, and that is considered a window when one typically wants to fuck the next-available. Who were my options? Rohiya and Jo did register to me as sexual beings, but so mutually directed in that aspect – their sexuality – as to clearly want nothing to do with me. And while it was possible to have work crushes of annoyance and antagonism, you would have had to dip very far into my unconscious before you found such a feeling for Bradley, present – I believe this wholly – though it must have been.

I am now past the feeling that, on that day, compelled me to walk down the stairs to the parking court. It isn’t the kind of feeling that can last – it’s built from stray affinities that are only temporarily charged and vital. And because I thought Alex was awful – this was part of the appeal – I could not seriously think of him as someone who was suitable or desirable for anybody. He was the kind of person I would see in five years and think, how could I have liked that person? Before that, though, it’s a cakewalk; it’s sleepwalking, really. And it gathered like pressure: my ex-boyfriend was a drag, Frankie was out of town visiting her parents, and there was somebody just under me who seemed to delight at flirtation. Someone whose hand, one night, while dancing, had reached out and touched me.

He answered the door as soon as I knocked.

‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Frankie’s in Sydney.’

‘I know Frankie’s in Sydney,’ I said. ‘I want to go for a drink.’

He examined me, and his soft lips hardened to a curl. He was in denim shorts and a baggy blue singlet, brighter than is considered masculine, and I had and dismissed the idea that he might be taking advantage of his boss being interstate to try on some of her clothes.

‘It’s nice and hot,’ I said. ‘Do you want to come with me?’

‘Why are you being so nice to me? Is it because you saw me with my kid?’ He didn’t try to drop this in naturally; he said it with a sly twist; it was obvious I hadn’t known he was a parent.

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