1. Mid shot, from the waist up. Rising out of the warm summer ocean, beads of water trailing like wet fingertips over his naked muscled torso. When Jen showed me the picture of Scott he’d asked her to take of him, I literally fell over. Right foot over left—head over heels. This is the effect Scott has on unsuspecting females. (Jen laughed her head off.)
2. From across a crowded room ...
Okay okay okay.
From across a crowded bar clogged with sticky tables and sweaty red-faced students and past a burly first year who’s just slurred, “Man, I feel heaps better after that spew.” Congratulations, Realism. You win.
Jen catches me staring at him, rolls her eyes and disappears into the crowd. Five minutes later she returns, dragging Scott behind her. “Scott,” she says, “this is my flatmate Alice.” He says Hi. I say Uh yeah hi ummm nice to muh bluh glubbloblimasnarf oh fuck.
3. From up close. His eyes are blue. No—really. They are blue. I can’t think when he’s looking at me with those eyes of his. (“Seriously?” my lab partner Dane says. “Did you just say ‘looking at me with his eyes’? Are you fucking kidding me? What the hell else is he supposed to look at you with—his butthole?” Dane is American, and vulgar, and incapable of understanding a love like mine.)
4. Through Facebook. Scott needs to tighten up his privacy settings. (Jen, looking over my shoulder at the laptop screen: “He, er, takes a lot of photos of himself, doesn’t he? I hadn’t realised.” All the better to see him with, Jen. All the better to see him with.)
5. Through text messages. It’s much easier for me to be coherent—in fact, to be witty and delightful—when Scott and I aren’t actually face-to-face. So texting is ideal. It’s just like having a real conversation, but without any chance of his gorgeous face distracting me or his gorgeous mouth saying things I don’t expect (things like “Hi, how are you, had a good day?”). But, despite all that, I still like to imagine the moment when he sees my texts. What he looks like. His texts tend to arrive at half past ten, or noon, or around three, which (I have worked out) means he’s taking a break from work at the bank. So I imagine him slouched in a spindly-looking chair beside a spindly-looking kitchen table in the break room, iPhone in his right hand, ignoring his workmates who are filling chipped mugs at the coffee pot and grumbling in a vaguely racist manner about that Pakistani gentleman who didn’t understand why his credit card wouldn’t work. I imagine that he ignores them all, so that he can talk to me.
6. In one of my fantasies. Every night, I lie in bed and rifle through my mental filing cabinet of Scott-centred fantasies, deciding which one I’m in the mood for tonight. Scott and I meet again at a ten year reunion? Nope: I want something that has a chance of happening now, not in ten years. An old flame of Scott’s arrives back in town pregnant and I counsel Scott on how to deal with her and he’s so grateful that later we ... No. Tonight I don’t have the energy for that much suspension of disbelief. He and his girlfriend ask me to be the third in a threesome and in the middle of things he realises that I’m the one he really wants to be with? Not in the mood for an imaginary porno. Contrived out-of-town trip where we end up having to share a bed? His father dies and I have to comfort him? I get a makeover?
No. No. No.
In the end, I settle for something that I think feels real. It’s night. Scott and I are in his crappy red hatchback. We’ve been to see the latest Christian Bale movie and he’s dropping me off home. He parks outside my flat. “Thanks,” I say. “I had a really great time.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.” He gazes into my eyes. He smiles. The light from the street lamp makes his face glow.
“Scott?”
“Yes, Alice?” (Close up on his eyes. Those blue eyes.)
My cheeks heat up. “I—um—I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this—”
Scott reaches over and brushes my sleek black hair away from my face. “Alice,” he says, his voice low, “you don’t have to say anything. Anything at all.” He cups my face in his big warm hand. The music swells. He leans in.
7. Over coffee.
“So,” Scott says. He fiddles with his espresso cup. “What’d you wanna talk to me about?”
“Sorry?”
“Well, I was surprised to get a text from you about grabbing a coffee today. I mean, it’s fine, I got nothing better to do, but I figured you had a reason to wanna talk to me.”
I am paralysed. A stroke victim with her mouth open. God I hope I’m not drooling. “I—um—I’m sorry, I—”
He stares at me blankly. He has no idea how I want to finish my sentence.
“—just thought it would be nice to hang.” See? I got there in the end. “You know. Because”—I mimic his nonchalance—“I didn’t have anything else to do either. So. You know. Coffee.”
He laughs. Is he laughing at me? “Okay,” he says. He sips his espresso, like a real connoisseur. Damn he looks good when he does that. It’s only later that I realise I only felt truly comfortable around him when he looked away from me, or when he obscured his face with his hands or his coffee cup. As if I could love him better if I didn’t have to look at him, sitting right there in front of me.
8. Through the eyes of friends.
Jen: So in this fantasy, you’re in his car and you’re about to tell him how you feel, but in the end you don’t have to say anything? He just knows, somehow, that you’re all in love with him and stuff? ... Okay. Sure.
Um, yeah. He mentioned you guys had coffee. That was it, pretty much.
Okay, so he talked about his rugby team. What did you talk to him about?
What do you mean, you didn’t really say anything? What, you just stared at his beautiful face the whole time?
Seriously? Oh, Alice.
Dane: He’s a prick.
9. Through the eyes of girls he’s known. “Known”.
They all agreed that he was hot. Hot in a movie star way, one of them said. In a way that doesn’t seem quite real. When that was pointed out, most of the rest of them agreed with that description. Some of those who agreed also rolled their eyes.
One of them said, “Why are you asking about Scott?” Something about the way I said, offhandedly, “Uh, no reason,” made her say, “Oh. Don’t waste your time with him. Okay?” Weirdly, the others said similar things. They all agreed that he was hot, and fun, and hot, but that was it. There was nothing else there. Some of them even bristled when his name was mentioned. “Scott’s a dick,” a few said flatly. Some, though, were fair. He could be different now, these ones said. He could have grown up. Sure.
Most of them were blonde and blue-eyed, and all of them were thin. And tall. I had to look up to look them in the eyes. And when I stared at myself in my bathroom mirror afterwards, it was like I could still see them—slender white-girl ghosts—watching as I tried to straighten my dark “ethnic” hair.
10. In the things he carries. His phone, for instance. I notice, at another of our nothing-better-to-do coffee dates (dates!), that the lock screen on his new iPhone is a picture of himself. Every time he checks his phone as we’re talking, his lock screen photo with his own beautiful eyes flashes up.
And his wallet. I not so subtly peek at it when he pays for his espresso, and he hands it over with a resigned sigh, as if he’s used to girls being insatiably curious about him. It’s black leather. Classy. God, even his driver’s licence photo is hot. How is that even possible? A lot of coffee cards—mostly Starbucks and Allpress. An ANZ Eftpos card. Student ID. A library card. A student all-year pass to the Chinese Garden.
A dog-eared picture of a dark-haired girl.
After I mentally pull out the railroad spike of jealousy this picture impales in my gut, I realise what this means.
So he does like brunettes. I might actually have a shot.
11. Through Dane.
“So how was your coffee date with Prince Charming?” Dane asks as I enter the lab. He says ‘charming’ like it’s a dirty word.
“Actually, he just dropped me off, right now. Isn’t that nice?”
“Oh yeah? That is nice. Lemme guess—he had an errand to run and the lab was on his way?”
“He had to stop in at the pharmacy next door.”
Dane snorts.
“Shut up! It was nice of him to offer!”
“Ooooh, this one time. Big fuckin’ deal.”
That’s it, I think as I hang my coat up. “Okay, seriously. What is your problem with Scott?”
Dane puts down his pipette, reverses his electric wheelchair back from the lab bench and manoeuvres it around to face me. I notice his lab coat strains a little over his gut now. He needs to lose some weight. “You’re so sure he’s Mr Perfect,” he says.
“He is perfect—”
“Then why don’t you just go for it?” he snaps. “What’s stopping you? He’s good-looking, you’re beautiful—” (I’m what?) “—you’re a fucking match made in heaven. So just ask him the fuck out already. Jesus.”
His wheelchair buzzes as he turns back to the bench.
“So you’re saying, go for it?” I ask.
He picks up his pipette. “Somebody has to,” he mutters.
(“That Dane guy you keep talking about,” Jen had once said. “Is there a little something ... going on? Maybe? Between you two?” I laughed and shook my head. “No no no,” I said. “I could never see him that way.”)
12. Through a car window.
Dane’s right, I think as I run down the corridor. I need to tell Scott how I feel. I need to tell him I’m in love with him. With everything about him. With his kindness and generosity and sweetness. Who cares what those other girls said! He’s different with me. Isn’t he? I mean, today he bought my coffee for me. He laughed at my jokes! We’d be so good together, he and I. We’re just drawn to each other. I’m like a moth and he’s my candle flame.
I barrel out of the building, straight into a rainstorm. But I don’t care that in minutes I’m drenched, and the wind has picked up a slicing edge, and the temperature has plummeted since I was last outside (and geez, looking for your lover in the rain really doesn’t look this uncomfortable in the movies). I don’t care! I’m going to tell Scott how I feel! Yes I am!
There! That’s his crappy red hatchback! Still in the pharmacy carpark. He’s sitting in the front seat.
He’s crying.
Through greying light, and frigid rain that lashes against his car window, I watch him cry. His shoulders shake and his mouth pulls down in a deformed grimace. Then he covers his face with his hands. Raindrops like filaments of ice slide down my neck.
When he uncovers his face, he is calmer. With his palms he wipes his wet eyes, then his snotty running nose, for a moment wiping his nostrils up into a pig snout. Then he puts his snot-smeared hands on the steering wheel. He stares, swollen-eyed, through the windshield.
I turn my back on him. Cold. I had no idea he could look so ugly.