Lisa Owens - Not Working

“Good morning! Seemed you had fun last night.”

“I did,” I say, struggling for specifics, beyond the where and the who (noisy bar, girlfriends). “Sorry I was home later than I said.”

“You certainly made waiting up worth my while,” Luke says, grinning.

“Shit.” I throw my arm across my eyes. “I’m really sorry.”

“I hope you’re not,” says Luke. “I was on fire . ‘Best ever’: that’s a direct quote. You do remember the excellent sex, don’t you?”

I can’t tell whether he is having me on and look at the bin for a condom wrapper. The bin isn’t in the corner where it should be, but by the bed — no wrapper and, mercifully, no vomit.

“I’m not falling for that,” I say.

“Which part? Best ever, or that it happened at all?”

I nod at the bin. “Where’s the condom wrapper, then?”

He freezes. “Claire, are you kidding me? You said you were ready to stop using protection — in fact, you insisted that we didn’t! Please tell me you weren’t so drunk you can’t remember making that quite-major life decision.”

Everything is tingling and not in a good way. “Yeah, no, of course I was kidding . That was a joke . Of course I remember.” But now he’s openly laughing, so I whomp him with my pillow. “You’re such a dick! Don’t do that!”

“Sorry, sorry, that was mean,” he admits.

“Ugh. I must have been in a complete state.”

He laughs. “Are you going to tell me the great epiphany now?”

“The great epiphany…Is this another joke?”

“You said you’d understood something fundamental about life, but when I asked you to tell me what it was, you wouldn’t.”

“ ‘Couldn’t’ might be more accurate,” I say. Now that he’s mentioned it, this does sound awfully familiar. I do recall a state of vivid revelation, a sense that the fabric of the world had burst open and exposed some essential truth about human existence. That, I do remember.

“What a tragedy,” I say bravely, “to have come so close to the meaning of life and yet have nothing to show for it.”

“We are indeed much the poorer,” agrees Luke, nuzzling my shoulder.

I wish I liked myself a bit more, and wine more than a bit less.

Dismounting the exercise bike post-class, heaving and dizzy, I vow to myself it’s the last one I’ll take. All this energy into going nowhere is starting to take its toll.

I get an email from Sarah at work: Can you meet tonight?

Everything OK??? I ask, but she only confirms the time and place, and for the rest of the afternoon I speculate about what could possibly be wrong: Paddy’s moving out; he’s seeing someone else; she’s pregnant; one of her parents is gravely ill…

She’s already at the bar when I get there, sipping Prosecco. She slides a glass across to me as I sit down, and I strike pregnant from my mental list.

“How are you?” she asks.

“How are you ? Are we celebrating? Have you got a new job?”

She holds up her left hand, where a diamond ring now sits.

I smile, shaking my head. “What?”

“What do you think?”

“You’re engaged?”

“I’m engaged!”

“To Paddy?”

“Of course!”

“Oh my God!”

“I know!”

“Oh my God!”

“Yeah!”

“Oh my God.” I say it more quietly this time, glass at my lips. Her forehead wrinkles a little. “And, of course, congratulations!” We both look at the ring, the way it glitters when she moves.

“What do you think?” She bites her lip.

I take her hand. “It’s beautiful.”

She smiles. “About the whole thing. I thought you might be a bit…unenthused.”

“What? No! I love Paddy!” I say with maybe too much zeal.

“I know that, ” says Sarah. “I was worried you’d think less of me or something. Because you’re anti-marriage.”

“I’m not anti-marriage. Why do people think that?”

“Not anti. But you can take it or leave it.”

“I mean, it’s fast, ” I say.

She looks confused. “We’ve been living together a couple of months already, and going out for nearly a year.”

“Seven months,” I correct her. “It’s not that long.”

“My parents got engaged after two weeks. Seven months isn’t fast. Okay, it’s not seven years, but I don’t want to wait seven years before I get married.” She chips at a drip of wax on the table, eyes locked on the task. I wonder if she’s referring to the fact Luke and I have been together for seven years.

“I don’t know.” I take a long sip of Prosecco. “It’s just happened a bit sooner than I expected, that’s all. I think it’s great — if it’s what you want.”

“It is!” She looks like she might cry. “You’re the first person I’ve told. Not even my mum knows yet.”

I seize her arm. “I’m so happy for you, Sarah, really and truly — I’m sorry, I needed a moment to catch up. Just because I wasn’t mentally prepared for this doesn’t mean you aren’t. Please tell me everything: how did he propose?”

She blots her nose elegantly with the back of her ring hand as she relays the details. The diamond goes berserk in the candlelight. “…Then he came out with this incredible, emotional speech — about me and how he’s finally found his soul mate…Honestly, I can’t do it justice, but we were both in floods of tears by the end of it.”

“That sounds amazing,” I murmur, and I am amazed, not only that he’s capable of such moving rhetoric, but also that he’s comfortable pouring out so much feeling, unbridled. I feel a newfound admiration for him.

“And yeah, I was a bit surprised when he asked, but it feels…It does — it just feels right.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t say this”—I knock back the rest of my Prosecco, and flag down the waitress for another round—“or maybe I should wait until we’ve had a few more drinks, but what the hell.”

“Go on…”

“Early on, I had a few reservations about Paddy.” To be fair to my acting ability, this does seem like news to Sarah. “In the beginning.”

“Why? What’s wrong with him?”

“This is my point: I don’t even remember!” I try to silence the voice in my head, reeling them off without any difficulty: monosyllabic, sullen, boring… “You’re my best friend: any guy you ended up with was going to have a hard time impressing me. But the moment I saw how important he was to you, I was there: on board, one hundred percent. So what I’m getting at is, if Paddy ever needs anything — and I mean anything— a kidney?” I segue into a gruff mobster voice, pointing a thumb to my chest. “You send him over to Mama. Ya hear me?”

“I hear you,” says Sarah, looking relieved. “Thank you, that honestly means a lot.”

God, I hope Paddy looks after his kidneys.

It’s Saturday, Luke’s working, and I’m home alone trying to advance my career plans. I’ve designed a new color-coded spreadsheet delineating companies to target, application deadlines and training programs that might be of interest. My formatting skills, though, are not up to scratch and I’ve spent much of the morning resizing columns and truncating text to fit inside boxes that simply won’t expand, for all the troubleshooting solutions I’ve tried.

I scroll through my phone and realize I haven’t been in touch with my parents for a while. Calling them feels a bit much, too involved, given I haven’t spoken aloud yet today, so I fire off a text instead.