We turn the footy off and flick on the Playstation. Ricky Ponting Cricket. We’d spend hours playing it when we first lived together here. Jeb says it feels like a lifetime ago. To me it is like yesterday. Stoned and giggly, the empty bottles of wine lined up on top of the mantelpiece like trophies, the electric heater crackling like it was about to short-circuit, the dampness all about us. We didn’t care. Life was easy.
Then Jeb got a girlfriend. I drove him to their second date. He slugged back three of four quick beers as he wriggled about in the passenger seat. He said he had a good feeling going on. Within weeks he’d fallen like a giant, fluttery-eyed bug. He started staying over there on weekends. Then – despite her unit being on the other side of the city – the odd weeknight.
Soon he was hardly home at all, and distant when he was. He even admitted, when fully sauced, to being in love with her. A go-getter, she was, a hot-bodied fitness fanatic. Anything, he said, felt possible.
In a blink I was helping him move his stuff. It didn’t take long; she already had everything. He left his old TV – the one that had no remote and whose power button was broken so we just left it on all the time – and microwave. We ferried over his bed and stereo in my wagon; his clothing fitted into a backpack and a couple of shopping bags. She smiled without her eyes as she wrapped an arm around Jeb’s neck. I shook his hand. No eye contact there, either.
I walked out. The winter sunlight broke a thinly, sickly yellow as I got into the car. I went back to the house and sat on the tattered old couch, a half-beer in my hands for an eternity. Then I walked around the corner to the pub.
I got a new flatmate: a friend of a friend. He wasn’t a bad bloke, but the silences between us were heavy. Things went on. The train in the morning. Work. The train home. The supermarket. Cooking dinner. Food-encrusted plates. Wednesday night pub. Thursday night Footy Show. Friday and its possibilities.
I started seeing a girl. She was plain but vibrant. It was good, but I knew she was just filling a purpose at the right time. She didn’t see it that way and left the front door banging behind her one Sunday morning. I went back to bed and enjoyed the space.
Jeb hardly called. My attempts to contact him were left mostly unanswered. I sat in the lounge room and watched TV and sipped beer on weeknights and weekends. Went into work every other day. I paid bills, put a little bit of money away. I was just living.
One day I got a call from Jeb saying he was engaged. We met up at a city pub that night. She didn’t show. Work function, Jeb said. We sat at the bar, drinking steadily. He told me they were having a dinner party of couples to celebrate. You don’t mind do you, he asked. Of course not, I said, taking a deep drink and staring straight ahead. He got distracted by his phone. Pulled on his coat. Boot camp in the morning, he said.
I stayed, had a few more beers. A scotch. OK, two.
Not so far down the track, it was over. Jeb says he was surprised when she made the call. Says he would have hung on. That’s why she called it, he said, because I never would’ve. He booked two weeks in a cheap hotel near her unit. I went around with a slab and we sat on the beds and talked through the night. I told him to move back in. He sat there with his head bowed for a long time. Eventually, 10 beers in, he flashed his old grin.
So here we are. Playing computer games, drinking beers and just spitting out what comes into our heads. He’s coming out of his shell a bit now. Says he realises it’s for the best. But, he says, he wants to go back to school. No more backward steps. I procure a three-skinner from the small box on top of the fridge. Plenty of time for that, I say.
He smiles, the rush of the booze in his cheeks. I suppose you’re right, he says.
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