Page 9 of Love, Just In

I flop back onto the mattress, fixing my gaze on the paint-chipped ceiling. ‘Newcastle is … small. Quiet. And hot.’

‘It’s hot here, too,’ she says, like Sydney’s on the other side of the planet. ‘And nothing sounds better to me than quiet.’

‘I actually haven’t seen any of the city yet,’ I admit. ‘And it’s notthatquiet now that I think of it. I can hear every car on Hunter Street right now outside the window.’

‘Well, the good thing is you haveplentyof time left to get to know the place.’

She’s teasing me. When I was offered the transfer to this bureau to cover another reporter’s six-month sabbatical, I leaned so hard into Christina for advice that I’m surprised she’s still standing. I complained to her that six months was too long to be off the radar of Oliver Novak—the CEO of Channel One News in Sydney; that this job was too far away from my life, my apartment, my favourite cafés and op shops.

That coming to Newcastle meant facing Zac and the painful possibility that his abandonment of me two years ago is going to be permanent.

But Christina convinced me this was the right move. Up here, I’d be a bigger fish in a smaller pond with fewer reporters ready to scratch my eyes out to get ahead of me. She glossed over the fact that the regional posting is a kind of punishment for my epic screw-up during a live news cross in Sydney a few months ago. I still can’t think about it without wanting to punch myself in the eye. And while I didn’t strictlyhaveto take the Newcastle position, I feared it was that or being let go.

‘So, I’m actually calling with some news,’ Christina dangles, her voice rising.

I sit up. ‘Oh my god, what? CNN called begging to poach you, didn’t they? No, wait … CNBC. BBC. Just tell me it’s not Fox. And I’m totally coming to visit you in New York.’

‘You’re totally coming to visit me at the hospital. In about half a year’s time.’

The thought slams into my head like a freight train.Christina has cancer. And she knows she’s only got five months left.

‘I’m pregnant!’ she squeals.

After a split second to process, I scream into the phone before bursting into tears of relief and delight. Christina and her divine husband, Pete, have been trying to get pregnant for the past eight years, and even though we’ve only been friends for two of those, I know this means more to her than anything.

Her voice clogs with sniffles. ‘It’s been so hard not to tell you, especially when I knew you were leaving me.But after everything, we just wanted to hit that first trimester milestone, you know?’

‘I’msohappy for you.’ I brush my cheeks with my knuckles. ‘And Pete.’

A few puffs sound like she’s pulling tissues from a box. ‘Now, I’ve also had time to think about this, Josie. After waiting so long—and fingers crossed everything stays well—I’m going to want at least a year off to spend with my baby. I don’t even care at this point if Oliver fires me over it. Either way, Sydney is going to need a new newsreader. And that should be you, darling. Youhaveto go for this.’

The stark hotel room collapses around me into a dizzying spin.

‘All you need to do is shine in this Newcastle role,’ Christina continues. ‘Push for the big stories, save the best bits for your showreel, and most importantly, get on that anchor desk up there. Be the person they go to when their presenters are off sick or unavailable.’

I can hardly catch my breath. ‘But there are so many reporters in Sydney who’d want to fill in for you. People with way more experience.’ Names are slapping me in the face already—those of seasoned reporters whohaven’tfallen apart on live television.

‘Josie, this lack of confidence is what’s going to hold you back.’ Christina’s tone is gentle but firm, like I’m the piece of news she’s delivering. ‘You know how good you are.Iknow how good you are. And I’ve been in this game a long time. Oliver Novak doesn’t want the personwho’s been there the longest; he wants the person who’ll be the best at the job—full stop.’

‘He wants someone who can handle themselves on air,’ I counter.

She tuts. ‘It’s time to put that behind you. I’m telling you—you can do this. Viewers love you; they always have. That means more than anything. And when I tell Oliver I’m planning to take a year off, I’m going to be personally pushing for you.’

My heart swells in my chest. Only someone as kind and supportive as Christina would advocate for a younger, cheaper stand-in who could possibly swallow her job forever. But she’s told me on numerous occasions that I remind her of herself when she was my age, and given how brutal network news can be, she wishes she’d had someone looking out for her back then. She also knows that if I were lucky enough to become her temporary replacement, I wouldnevertry to steal that position from her permanently, and I wouldn’t need to. Channel One News has bulletins running all day. I could use the on-air experience to spring into a different timeslot once she returned to work.

Oh my god, is she right?Could I actually win this job? After that, all I would need would be to fall in love with an incredible man, get married on the beach in Hawaii, and be pregnant. All my ambitions achieved before I’m thirty—tick, tick, tick.

My phone pings against my ear. I jump up to peerthrough the window, my heart skipping a beat when I spot Zac’s Subaru idling outside.

I remind Christina how much I adore her, how utterly thrilled I am for her news, and how much I miss her already, before hanging up and grabbing my bag.

If yesterday was hot, today is a firepit, and Zac spends most of the short drive to his place apologising for it like he’s a celestial being who oversees the weather.

Before we head out to my housemate interviews, he’s offered to make me lunch, which is not an invitation a sane person would turn down. Zac is universally acknowledged as akick-asscook. He once made a French degustation dinner for ten of us from uni that was so jaw-droppingly good, we all begged him to switch from paramedicine to culinary school. But he’s always maintained that if cooking became his job, he’d lose interest in it, and my stomach couldn’t take that.

Two years ago, a lunch invite from Zac would be as normal as breathing, but when I saw his text this morning, my first thought was:He feels bad for ditching my catch-up offer to go on a date yesterday.It wouldn’t be the first time Zac’s guilty conscience drove him to do something sweet to make up for a decision he feels bad about.

We pull up outside a small but pretty house in Hamilton, the light-grey siding and white trim unlocking a memory of the rustic little home he’d rented withTara in Sydney’s inner west after the three of us graduated from uni. Tara had loved everything about the place except for its mustard-coloured walls, so Zac and I painted the entire interior pale blue one weekend while she was away visiting her parents. Tara was so chuffed that she took us both to one of the fanciest restaurants in the city for dinner, ordering three courses each and several bottles of champagne. When the bill arrived and we figured out that the dinner cost more than a house painter would have done, we laughed our drunk asses off and caught a whole bunch of side-eyes from posh patrons at the surrounding tables.

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