Page 32 of The Meaning Of You

New Year’s Eve

Madigan

There werea ton of pluses to living in the country and not having to wear earplugs to sleep on Guy Fawkes night, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and all the other nights bordering those occasions was definitely a big one.

I’d celebrated New Year on my own, as per usual, enjoying a favourite bottle of South Otago merlot while demolishing the holiday charcuterie board Gazza had gifted me the day before. A gift which caught me off guard.

We’d never exchanged holiday presents, but Gazza had been riding a sappy high since he and Ben had started officially dating before Christmas, and I wasn’t about to complain if my New Year’s Eve dinner was the result—olives, pickled onions, pâté, salmon, Italian sausage, melon, crackers, pork rind, strawberries, and a gooey French brie that smelled disgusting and tasted divine.

I was a happy little camper, even if I’d been mortified that I hadn’t thought to get him something as well. My ample wine reserves came to the rescue with a bottle of excellent Champagne which had delighted Gazza to no end, and he’d promised to share it with his new guy on the stroke of midnight. Then he tried for the millionth time to get me to join them at some horrendous queer warehouse party in the city, the thought of which made me want to stab a fork into my eyeballs.

“There’ll be people of all ages,” he promised in that innocent way people in their twenties did when they were absolutely lying through their teeth. I’d either be totally ignored by a cohort of queer men who thought forty was stroke-and-heart attack material, or the target of guys half my age who had a thing for older men and who thought Oscar Wilde was an actor fromQueer As Folk, if they thought about him at all.

“You never know,” Gazza continued. “You might even meet someone.”

Which only sealed the deal, because hell to the no and back again on that terrifying thought. I hadn’t been to a New Year’s Eve party in years and just the thought of Gazza and his boyfriend dancing and partying hard while I had to make small talk, or worse, fend off any advances, was enough to strike fear into the deep recesses of my heart. Too many people. Too much noise. Too... everything.

I was happier on my own. And if there were times I wasn’t, well, that was my business. Because for all I’d turned down Gazza’s offer, there were a couple of moments as I sat on the deck, weighed down by a carpet of stars, and listening to the distant thrum of my neighbours’ party a few paddocks away, when I craved the feel of a warm body at my side, a hand reaching for mine, an arm around my shoulders, lips on my ear asking me to come to bed.

That sort of closeness hadn’t happened in a long, long time. Five years to be precise. The year I turned fifty, when Craig had walked away complaining of the same thing as all the others before him. It was him, not me, he’d said, because of course he did. He couldn’t live like a hermit, he’d said. I was hot but old before my time, he’d said. I’d given up, he’d said. He needed... more, he’d said.

More than me, he’d meant.

Surprise, surprise.

Had I loved him? I thought I had. We’d spent eighteen months together and he’d known the type of guy I was from the start. Could’ve saved us both a lot of time. I supposed I should be grateful he thought I was hot. Small mercies, right? But old before my time? I didn’t get it.

There was nothing wrong with being fifty-five, even if in gay years it probably ranked closer to seventy, but that was a whole other issue. I was tired of trying to meet other people’s criteria, ticking their boxes so that they might say,Madigan Church is fifty-five, but you wouldn’t know it. He’s got a great attitude. He’s doing this and this and this. It was exhausting just thinking about it. Choosing to live a quieter life didnotequate withbeingorfeelingold. All it meant was that you liked living a quieter fucking life. I was that person at twenty-five and I was still that person.

And just because I was single, why did I need to maintain a full social calendar that included a plan to run the Boston marathon, or walk every track in New Zealand, or attend every ageing rock star’s concert, or be on Grindr or Scruff or whatever the latest app was?

And so, when Craig left that day, I’d told the dating world to go get fucked. I was done with trying to make a long-term relationship work on someone else’s terms. Or at least I wasdone actively searching for it. Admittedly, I hadn’t quite planned on having no relationships at all, but there it was.

And just like that, an image of Nick Fisher popped into my mind, and I thought that maybe there were worse things than feeling sorry for myself simply because I was single on New Year’s Eve.

On that note, I sighed and cleared my leftovers into the kitchen, locked the house, and headed to bed at the eye-watering time of ten thirty. Note to self—book a few days of vacation next New Year’s Eve so I could pretend my life was interesting.

Do I hear a bah humbug?

Right mood, wrong holiday.

Like I gave a fuck.

I didn’t go to sleep straight away because it was too damn humid. Instead, I watched television long enough to see the New Year in. Well, almost, if you didn’t count the forty minutes spent snoozing, only to be woken by the sound of fireworks and “Auld Lang Syne” blasting in the background. I wished myself a Happy New Year, switched the television off, and turned the fan above the bed up to a Category 5 hurricane to try and cool the sweat from my body.

I tossed and turned for another hour, sweated a little more, then gave up and reached for my phone, smiling at the Happy New Year texts from Jonas and Charmaine and the kids. I sent a quick reply and was about to slide the phone back onto my bedside table when another name flashed on the screen.

Casper. The name I’d assigned to Nick when he’d been ghosting me before Christmas. Even though Nick had been making much more of an effort to keep in touch, I’d left his screen name as it was. It made me smile. Especially since my personal reaction to Nick hadn’t changed from the first time I’d met him.

I found the man... unsettling. Andunsettlingdidn’t sit well alongside the quiet, zen life I’d been so busy creating for myself over the last five years. Nick Fisher was anything but zen. In fact, Nick Fisher was the antithesis of zen. Irritating, opinionated, prickly, hard to read, confusing, and... grieving, I reminded myself. He was very much grieving.

Which made me an asshole for even admitting, although it needed to be said, that Nick Fisher was also hot. Because hot was also not conducive to my zen-like existence, especially since on the Madigan Church scale of hotness, Nick reached the lofty heights of—will sizzle the hair right off your balls. Never said I wasn’t above a bit of silent objectifying when it was warranted. And it was definitely warranted.

All of which made being friends with the guy... problematic.

Hewas problematic.

The man complicated my day. I thought about him. Worried about him. Checked in on him. Felt bad for him. Fantasised about him, then felt ashamed for fantasising about him. And then thought and fantasised about him all over again.

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