by
Casey Logue
Looking up that man they met last night, R and G sigh into their flat whites.
‘Sickening, isn’t it.’ R grumbling, almost so much that G has to think about what she’s said. ‘What is?’
‘When people are really good at not just one thing.’
G, a serial average-at-best-er, understands completely. This man, however, has a Wikipedia page which tells them he’s got two PhDs, is a prolific photographer, has a pretty killer smile, and has lived in at least four different countries. R and G live in the town they were born in and R’s mum still makes her a packed lunch for work on a regular basis. R is thirty this year.
It’s a classic tale, really. When G was in primary school, she won all the prizes, got offered to move up a year, and had a reading age her mother still had memorised for triumphant retellings of the same story. The only difficulty was that G had a sickness, one that she’d bet maybe 30–40% of people shared with her. The age old ‘dad doesn’t pay enough attention’ sickness, that soon led to her teenage years just literally being about boys.
Reminded of her disappointing little past, G shudders. Asks R what she’s up to for the week. ‘Oh not much. My viva is this week. Then I have a hen party in Italy at the weekend.’ R doubles down on the word ‘Italy’, apparently ratty at the inconvenience caused by the invitation. G listens, nods, and says something critical about people who expect you to spend loads of money on their getting married. G has been to two hen parties. The first was when she was fourteen: her dad was marrying the Worst Woman G had ever met and had a dance party in some function room with a little plastic table of blue WKDs, and the second was definitely a pity invite from her long-lost auntie. Maybe a slight pang of jealousy/envy (G doesn’t get the difference between them). R has finally come to the end of her PhD after five long years, about to start as a writer in residence at some beautiful castle/manor hybrid down the road. Definitely a pang, telling herself yes it is only slight.
G, holding onto that innate but completely unwarranted superiority complex, announces to R her cyclical dramatic intention to maybe move away, to another country (she doesn’t mind which). R, a usually reliable source of positively reinforcing G’s actual delusions, pauses. Oh fuck, thought G, as she realised she wouldn’t be able to, this time, show this version of herself to someone.
‘G -’ R says and takes her hand — ‘we both know you’re not going to do that. Be honest with me slash you!’
‘Yeah okay’ G can feel some blood in her cheeks now — ‘I just hate the whole road not travelled thing.’
R sighs at her a little and smiles, segueing with her ultimate loveliness into a conversation about Robert Frost and G’s favourite poem, ‘The Second Coming’ (no, she can never remember the poet’s name).
After their third flat white, G and R walk down the wintry sunlit street. There are cobblestones, shops still there from their childhood, and quite a few rude elderly people. Things are good, thinks G, slowly pushing back against the other road.
