Between Us

by Mhairi McFarlane

Perhaps that was the magic of any holiday: it lifted you out of the familiar and gave you a brief aerial view of your life in progress. It made you confront your world’s smallness in a vastness of opportunity.

Joe’s self-image, if not much of his career, was based on his skill at a barbed observation and sparkling one-liners. Whisper it: Matt could do those too. He just didn’t make a deal of it. He casually chucked away for free what Joe cherished as his currency. Joe sensed competition, but worse than that, competition from someone who wasn’t bothering to compete with him.

At some point, Roisin accepted get past this week and things will calm down a bit was a coping mechanism lie of adulthood.

“Can I borrow the denim romper to meet J.J.?” Joe said. “Yes, sure. I will Febreze the gusset,” Anita said, winking a flicky liquid-eyelinered eye, set in a sweep of copper dust. Her face looked like it was sculpted from precious metals, Roisin thought. Dev roared. Anita sparkled. They were a good combination. Roisin realized she missed being a good combination.

“You know, looking at that photo of us from way back when,” Meredith said, “reminded me of what a superstar you are. I’ve never met anyone who’s such a natural leader, always the center of things, but who has so little ego to go with it. Dev was our manager, but you were too, in an unofficial, HR way.” “Wow,” Roisin said, blushing. “Really?” “Uh-huh. We all thought Joe had won the lottery the first time we spied you holding hands.” “Blimey, Mer, where did all that come from?! But thank you.” “I get the feeling you’re not hearing things like that enough,” Meredith said, with a penetrating look.

Roisin lit the taper candles on the long mahogany table in the grand dining room, surveyed the huge window with its view onto the lake beyond, and sighed. You could serve Joe’s old broke writer’s dinner of “Prison Ramen” in here (ramen noodles plus chips) and it’d seem like a feast.

“I’m sending that deli the mother of all customer complaint emails!” she stormed. “They will gaze into my abyss!” “When you’re sober, though, yes?” Meredith said. “I don’t want you going domestic terrorist on the only place I can get burrata.”

Without needing to communicate their next thoughts, they looked at each other in concern, and over at Gina, who was saloon-in-a-western sploshing more wine into her glass, while making a sly face Roisin could only classify as “Fleabag.”

There being no correct and appropriate moment to raise any problem was one of the ways the game felt rigged. Pick an otherwise pressured time? She was thoughtlessly adding to it. During a nice evening out? Ruining it. Try to raise it on a quiet day? Ambush.

Things said between two people newly sleeping together were not to be held up for daylight inspection. If you were perceptive enough about human nature to write about it, you were perceptive enough to know what was off-limits.

Ah, wait, the money, she thought. Joe wasn’t particularly materialistic or macho about it, but nevertheless, that was the quiet part out loud—no one really thinks a not-rich person will split up with someone who is. By forty, he’d have a fortune, and Roisin was opting out. That he currently felt un-dumpable actually made quite a lot of sense.

“You know what, when I dried out, I didn’t realize just how much I was gonna love never having hangovers,” Dev said. “The days I spent feeling like I’d been attacked with the pointy end of a polonium umbrella.” “I’m not too clever myself; I might take my bacon sandwich to go,” Meredith said, nodding toward Dev’s spatula.

Roisin had come to a conclusion on that too. Joe’s distaste for Matt as a conceited attention seeker was to cover for the fact he actually hated that attention sought Matt.

“Needless to say, I traced the source to Jagger Riley in Year Eight. His aunt works at the hospital. Yet I couldn’t prove anything. I must say I will be relieved when the last of their ludicrously monikered dynasty make their way through our system. I hope to retire before the next wave arrives.” “Ohhhh . . . is that why Madonna Riley was a Madonna?” Roisin said. “I didn’t know if it was pop or Catholicism.” “Mmm-hmm. I hear tell of an exhilaratingly revolting Miley Riley on her way toward us, in primary.” Roisin laughed. “However, this is no reason to skip your pap smear,” Wendy added.

“Oh my God,” Lorraine said, whisking the mask off her head in a microsecond as she sized her guest up. “Who ordered young Harrison Ford?” “Harrison Ford if you ordered him from Wish,” Matt said, not missing a beat.

“She’s kept you well hidden,” her mum said, her face suddenly aglow, as welcoming as an open sunflower. Good-looking men prepared to banter with her were her absolute favorite.

What’s that saying, Meet one asshole, you met an asshole; meet them all day, you’re the asshole? Last weekend taught me that when catastrophe follows you everywhere, you are the catastrophe.”

“All right. Thank you. My mum will flirt with you relentlessly. Please bear it with good humor, but absolutely DO NOT succumb and sleep with her. I don’t want my stepdad coming this much out of left field.” “Roisin!” Matt exclaimed, in an un-Matt-like way, genuinely shocked. “What on EARTH? How much of an Uncle Disgusting do you seriously think I am?”

“Get out!” Lorraine cried, at the sight of Roisin and Matt in the doorway on Saturday afternoon. “Wobbly start,” Matt said.

(Meredith’s reply had been pure wisdom. I think you half wanted to find out he’d been unfaithful so the decision was made for you. This way you’ll know you were in control of your choice.)

“I always assumed you liked that.” “What?” “That he’s a Mean Boy.” He looked at her with an awkward expression. The uncertain, apologetic face someone pulls when they know a conversation has strayed beyond the limits that your conversations usually keep, and can’t predict the reaction. Roisin didn’t know what to say. Even allowing for the fact Matt was pissed at Joe, he said it so simply, so starkly. As if it wasn’t subjective. It was the conversational equivalent of accidentally seeing yourself in the front-facing phone camera. Joe was mean—and Roisin liked it? She supposed she had. She thought he was clever. What did it say about Roisin, that she had chosen mean? How did you explain having fallen in love with someone who wasn’t nice?

“An imperfect attempt to help is better than a self-protective nothing. I know that. Your family pushed you away because they know that. They hate themselves for it, and you remind them of it. Deep down, you know that. Or you will, one day.”

She’d known this day was coming now for a long time, but it was no less weird. Like the shock of a death after a protracted illness. It was slow, but fast at the end. Like Ernest Hemingway said of going bankrupt, in two ways: gradually, then suddenly.

“He’s got that nice kelly-green jacket! He’s NOT GAY? Oh my God. Rosie, keep Imogen away from him. And Grace! She’s had a jawline rejuvenation, and her audacity is at an all-time high.”

“Have you ever had a serious girlfriend? I’ve only known you being an . . . er, roving bachelor.” “Translation: Have I always been this emotionally frigid dogboy?”

Everything was a slight if you were determined to find one.

Such close contact was a strange mixture of fireworks and security. That was it—that’s what Roisin had noticed during the hand-holding. It was completely natural, and yet wildly exotic at the same time. Exhilaratingly new and already familiar. He was a safe place, full of danger.

“I helped Roisin because she’s my friend. I didn’t care about the effect on you, because you’re not my friend. Simple, really.”

“Now. That’s sorted. Can we please try to pass the Bechdel test here?” Meredith said.

“I’m going to stress test my dad’s thing about how you never regret bravery, to its absolute limit.”

“It would’ve helped if you weren’t beautiful, but of course you bloody are.” “Hah. I think years in front of a classroom has aged me,” Roisin said. “But thank you.” Roisin felt a swell of genuine, heart-lifting female solidarity at pooling their resources like this.

“I’ve come from York. Had a drink with your ex, Beatrice,” she said to Joe. In a moment Roisin mentally filed away for many future replays, he looked like he was going to drop the pizzas.

Roisin needed to stop punishing the people available to be punished, who might’ve made mistakes, but sincerely loved her back.