Graduates in Wonderland (24 page)

Sam told me that if I start doing any of these things, he's not going to recognize me. I left him in Sydney after the weekend. Saying good-­bye with so little time together was hard, but I know he'll be visiting me in two weeks. He's currently working at a magazine in Sydney that is struggling, so he's considering making the move to Melbourne if things don't change. I'm really hoping this happens soon.

So after a weekend in Sydney, I'm back in Melbourne alone, drinking a coffee outside. My classes have weekly local news quizzes, and I don't recognize a single politician's name, so I'm cramming. (Australians resent how little everyone else knows about their country, so I'm trying to prove them wrong, although failure seems inevitable.) You're welcome to join me at this café, but good luck finding me in the sea of other black jeans and newspapers.

Let me know what happens with Olivier. I'm here if you need me. I mean, I'm in Melbourne, which is basically the bottom of the earth. If you look at a globe, I'm about half an inch away from falling off the planet. But I'm still here.

Love,

Jess

JULY 22

Rachel to Jess

Please send me that sad album you had on repeat when Sam left. Send it immediately. Before you even finish reading this. You are not at the bottom of the earth. I am. And also, Olivier and I broke up.

I can't even. I can't even write this.

It's over.

I had Olivier. And now it's over.

I lost him.

I don't know what I did. Or I can think of a million things that I did.

Jess. We dated for three days. A
friend
of mine dated me for three days and then decided that he didn't want to anymore.

I'm not sure my self-­esteem will ever recover from this one.

It hurts too much to write about it. But I will. I have to tell you. I've just called you four times, but it's 6 
A.M.
in Melbourne.

Tonight, he came over. He wouldn't take off his coat. He wouldn't accept a glass of wine.

We sat down across from each other at my kitchen table.

“I want to talk,” he said.

“Oh, thank God,” I said, scared about what he was going to say but also hopeful that maybe we could figure out why things were so strange. If we'd both been so freaked out about the intensity of this—­three consecutive days together—­maybe we could find a way to act more natural. “I'm so glad you said that.”

“You are?” He was visibly startled.

“Yes! But you go first.”

“No, you go first.”

I was growing suspicious. “No...
you
go first.”

“Rachel,” he said, “I only like you as a friend. I don't want us to date anymore.”

I swallowed hard. I felt like I'd been hit in the chest. What was the deciding factor? My cold—­the snoring—­the prolonged kissing—­my sleeping over—­our awkward morning? WHAT HAD HAPPENED?

I started jabbering. Just going off in random phrases about how intense it had been, and I'd felt it too, but maybe we could just slow down and maybe that would work and maybe it was the intensity and maybe—­

“Rachel,” he said, “I don't think we should date.”

It felt wrong to throw him out suddenly, so he stayed for another half hour. This is why we are both perfect and terrible for each other. I'm too timid to throw out someone who's dumped me, and he's so polite that he'll pretend that he didn't just dump me. Suddenly, it was like we were both pretending we were just chatting. I have no idea what we talked about, only that it was not about us. I cannot name one thing we discussed. I just wanted him to go, but I knew that the second he left, he would be gone from me forever.

And finally he walked out the door.

As soon as he did, I couldn't stop crying. And I can't stop trying to find the reason why it didn't work. Sasha said she was so excited that we were finally together because she'd never seen him flirt with anyone like he did with me.

He liked me for six months, I know he did. I know he supposedly doesn't have crushes on people, but he
did
on me. I know it from the way he looked at me and the way he always found a way to brush against me and the way he always found a way for us to be alone.

The core question of what happened is something I will never know.

Was I not good enough to wait out the awkwardness for? I was going to do it for him! I feel like he didn't fight for me.

What now? What do I do now? I got what I wanted and then I lost it. I don't know what to do now. Please help me. In fact, I'm dialing you again right now.

Ugh, it was the Chinese lady on your phone telling me that you “are power off.” Jess! Turn the power on!

Oh, shit. You have a new cell phone now in Australia.

You call me.

Love,

Rach

JULY 23

Jess to Rachel

Okay. I know that I just hung up with you, but still. I am shocked, even rethinking it now. And I
know
that it is not about you. Sasha warned you about Olivier, didn't she? “He never seems to like girls. He's never had a relationship.” There's something off about him if she said that. Maybe he doesn't like real women, only ideal women he puts on pedestals. Or maybe he doesn't like women at all.

I think you should avoid him at all costs. This is going to take some time to get over. Remember, wallowing is perfectly respectable. Some may say admirable. Shows you are in touch with your feelings.

You want someone who is going to stick around and give you half a chance. Olivier is not this. At least you didn't waste years on him. It's better to know the truth about someone sooner, rather than later.

But honestly. Three days? I want to punch him in the face. I want to take a fish and slap it across his face, while yelling, “
NON! NO MAS TOUCHE PAS!
”

You are going to be okay. I promise.

If you visit me here, I'll take you to the farthest place from Paris: St. Kilda. It's the closest thing to a beach in Melbourne—­a strip of sand on a bay. The streets are lined with fish-­and-­chip shops, cyclists, and bakeries. We'll lie in the sun, and I'll make sure your pale skin is completely covered in SPF 50 sunblock. I'll find a strapping Australian guy named Jono to rub it in for you. He'll say your name like this:
Rye-­chull
.

Love,

Jess

JULY 26

Rachel to Jess

I wish I'd gotten on a flight to Melbourne instead of what really happened.

I gave in. I had to see him.

Up until yesterday's debacle, I was still operating under the assumption that I was a character in an epic romance who had made a mistake. I could think of a million comparisons where, if people had talked things over honestly, so much heartbreak could have been avoided.

All of these thoughts, by the way, came to me after several days of stewing in confusion and frustration while eating frozen pizza in my apartment, and it felt eerily familiar to my nursery in Brooklyn. Did I come all this way just to be exactly the same? I can change this. I'm going to change this.

At the very least, I have to try. I was desperate to see Olivier again, desperate to undo what had been done. So I made Olivier get a drink with me.

He arrived at a crowded bar, and nodded at me. We did the cheek kisses. He wore an expression like I was about to open a jack-­in-­the-­box in his face and he just didn't know when.

I felt like he thought I was a crazy rejected girl. But the thing you have to remember is that even though I
like
him, I still didn't want what we had a few days ago. I thought if we discussed it, I could get what I actually wanted—­falling in love slowly. Learning about each other romantically without the pressure of immediate coupledom. Surprises.

Maybe it's not possible with friends, but I still wanted that and thought that maybe, if we tried, we could get it back.

We sat down. We made small talk. Finally he said, “It's late, Rach. What is it?”

Normally we talk in English or French, but I was definitely taking the upper hand on this one. English it was.

“I just don't understand what happened.”

“Well...I think we'd be better as friends,” he said tentatively.

“But you didn't think we were just friends when you kissed me,” I said.

“I hadn't thought it through?” he said.

But this made me madder than almost anything else he could have said, because it was a blatant lie. “So...you didn't feel anything toward me before then?”

“No more than with anyone else.”

“Olivier. We flirted for, like, months.”

He shrugged. “We flirt with everyone.”

I felt stung and like he was trying to make it seem like everything was in my head.

“I just don't think we should waste this! I was scared too! Neither one of us was being ourselves! Why do we just have to throw everything away?” I asked.

“Because I either really like someone, or I don't care,” he said. “And well, with you...”

I couldn't believe I was hearing this. Why do you kiss someone you don't care about? Why do you seek them out in the middle of the day to kiss them? Why do you ask to see them three days in a row? I tried to figure out what to say next.

“So the door is closed, then,” I said.

“For now, yes.”

“For now? So in the future, the door might be open?”

He squinted at me, confused.

I repeated: “For the
future
, it's
open
? Or it's
closed
? Is it
closed
?”

“No...not necessarily.”

“So for the future, it's open?”

“I guess...but the door in the future is open for anyone. Like it would be open for you and Jacques or you and Marc.”

“But they both have girlfriends.”

“Exactly.”

“
Exactly?
Exactly
what
?”

This is the point where I leaned across the table and screamed, “WHICH IS IT, OLIVIER? IS THE DOOR OPEN OR IS IT CLOSED? IS IT OPEN OR IS IT CLOSED? WHICH IS IT?!?!?!”

And I saw the look of horror on his face, and all of a sudden, I saw myself in his eyes.

I muttered an apology and left immediately. I did not care about the bill. I just had to get out of there.

Because that was the moment when I realized that we were not in an epic romance. Right now, we're nothing. But at least I tried. At least I know now.

Tell me what it's like where you are. I just realized that I can't picture your life in Australia at all. I'm so used to imagining you perched at a desk inside your high-­rise apartment building in Beijiing. Distract me. Tell me what real love looks like, so I can be sure that it didn't just walk away from me.

Love,

Kray Kray

P.S. “
No mas touche pas
” is mostly Spanish, with some badly conjugated French thrown in. It's okay, though. The sentiment still stands.

JULY 27

Jess to Rachel

Dear Kray Kray,

The only thing that walked away from you was a juvenile French guy with commitment issues. And I actually don't think your yelling was so bad. Everyone goes crazy on guys at some point. I remember Astrid once broke up with a guy because he refused to bring her ice cream one evening. And a friend of mine from home always pretended to be at some awesome party whenever she answered the phone from a guy. She'd blast Jay Z alone and yell into the phone, “Hello? Oh, sorry, I can't hear you! It's so crazy in here!”

Olivier just doesn't get it. You don't want someone who is indifferent to you. Don't waste any more of your life on him. It's better that it ends now than drags out for months—­now you can move on and start to get over him. Don't see him again anytime soon.

Even though I'm finally in a relationship that's stable, it's definitely not perfect. Right now with Sam, we only see each other every weekend, when he flies here or I fly up to Sydney. I thought everything would be so much easier when I moved to Australia, but not being able to spend every night together is hard.

I dread Sunday mornings, which is when he leaves. Today, as I watched him get dressed to go, I felt a heaviness just like in Beijing, when I thought that I would lose him forever. Even though we now live in the same country and we're committed to each other, there are still so many days and nights alone. I hope it won't be like this forever.

But one of the best things about being in Australia is that instead of living in a high-­rise building, I get to live in a real house. I'm renting the front bedroom of a two-­story house with wooden floors and a small courtyard in the back. When I walk home from the nearest train station, I walk down leafy residential streets that are so quiet.

I moved in with an Irish guy, a Venezuelan guy, and an Australian girl. The Irish housemate, Dylan, has red hair and very pale skin and is growing potatoes in our backyard. This pleases me. He's cranky because he fell asleep with his curtains open, and when he woke up this morning, he had a sunburn across his forehead.

I'm bonding with the Irishman and the Venezuelan merely because none of us gets the Australian sense of humor at all, especially when we're watching local TV. We stare blankly at it while the laugh track plays in the background. Emily, the Australian girl, has to explain nearly every joke. I am suddenly part of an immigrant family that doesn't know what's going on.

I think most of the people in Melbourne are like this, though, because it's packed with so many different nationalities: Chinese, Malaysian, Indian, and Vietnamese, and large Italian and Greek populations. I finally have access to really great curries and authentic pizza for the first time in years. (In China, Pizza Hut offers a thin-­crust pie with mayonnaise, fried shrimp, and mini–hot dogs. I'm glad this is not an option in Australia.)