Page 4 of Love, Just In

Now, Zac’s standing a metre away from me, yet it feels like twelve thousand.

Trying to relax the atmosphere, I bring my nose close to the dog’s and scrunch my face, imitating its expression. This earns another chuckle from Zac—OK,still the biggest fan of my impersonations—and when I straighten back up, a sort of dull ache eclipses my abdomen as I think of the last time I saw Zac in person. When his eyes were red-rimmed, his cheeks hollow, and he wouldn’t even look at me. Kind of like he’s only half looking at me now.

‘How was the ride up?’ he asks stiffly, setting Trouble back down and lifting my suitcase. The scuffed bag vibrates over the platform’s grid of plastic bumps as we head towards the stairs leading to the pedestrian overpass.

‘Long. Didn’t have anyone there with me to play “Would You Rather”.’

I cast Zac a sideways smirk, searching for evidence that he remembers playing endless rounds of ‘Would You Rather’ during our multiple train rides between Sydney and Bathurst when we both went to uni there. His lightning-fast smile comes off as more polite than genuine and sends a flash of worry through me. Is Zac only here, picking me up, because we used to be so close that it’s the expected thing to do? That would make sense; he’s the most courteous person I’ve ever met. The dull ache spreads further through my stomach.

As Zac gets a little ahead of me on the concrete steps, I steal a moment to size up my oldest friend. His unruly hair has been cropped razor-short at the back, but he’s left it long on top in a twist of dark-chocolate curls. I should tell him never to change barbers. The haircut isn’t only super cool, it’s perfect for him. But he looks sodifferent from the man I last saw almost two years ago, and my heart sinks at the realisation that it’s probably more than his looks that have changed.

From the top of the station footbridge, Hamilton’s strip of redbrick houses is joined by a pub and a couple of shops, and it looks alarmingly small and desolate—like a lonely outer suburb of Sydney. When we reach the street at the base of the staircase, Zac halts behind a gleaming black Subaru Forester and flips open the boot, sliding my suitcase inside.

OK, this is officially the longest Zac and I have been in each other’s company without being such motormouths that we compete for airtime. My mum used to have to set a timer when Zac would call after dinner each night because neither of us ever wanted to hang up.

I snort a little laugh to fill the silence. ‘Are you sure there’s room in the car for me with that thing?’ I nod at the miniature dog lounging in the back seat while Zac opens my car door. ‘He’s literally three seats across.’

‘Trouble is ashe,’ he replies with mock offence, and our gazes catch as I brush past him. His tight smile draws out his dimples, and I mentally cling to this nanosecond of warmth from him. Those dimples drove the girls in high school batty after they decided that the cutest guy in our year wasn’t actually Damien Di Fiore but Zachary Jameson, who just took a little longer to grow into his features. But to me he was always daggy, class-clown Zac, with limbs too long for his body anduncontrollable curly hair that sprouted from his head like the fronds of a palm tree.

Zac slides into the driver’s seat and taps on the GPS. ‘The Quest Apartments, right?’

‘Yup. It’s just around the corner from my new work, apparently.’

My gaze skims over the length of his body as he pulls out of the parking space. OK, that’s one tidbit about Zac’s secret life up here revealed: he’s been working out.Not so daggy now.

The GPS calculates it’ll be a four-minute drive to the serviced apartments that the news channel has put me in for two weeks. Wow, I wouldn’t make it to the end of my street in Sydney in four minutes during rush hour.

Zac lightly drums his fingers on the steering wheel like he’s as low-grade nervous as I am. ‘Sorry I was a bit late,’ he says. ‘I was on a work call about a new role that’s come up.’

‘Oh, really? That sounds exciting.’ I brave a direct look at his profile. ‘Got some details to share?’ Now that I’m nearing thirty and feeling five years behind where I should be, career pathways have become an urgent theme in my life.

He runs a hand up the back of his neck. ‘Well, it’s a more specialised position—I guess you could say more senior—and one of my supervisors thinks I’d be good for it.’

‘Hell yeah, you would.’ I smile. For as long as I’ve known Zac, he’s been universally adored by hisemployers—even the sour-faced dude who ran the butcher shop where he had his first job was obsessed with keeping him on staff.

Zac clears his throat. ‘The new role is to become a critical care paramedic, so I’d be covering a wider area and going out in the helicopter a lot … doing more complex procedures and dealing mostly with the high-trauma jobs and life-threatening stuff.’

The smile drops off my face.Are you serious, Zac?

Instead of asking that, though, I shoot for something simpler. ‘Are you going to apply?’

He lets out a deep sigh. ‘I don’t know. I finished the training last month, and it all went fine. But I only just started doing the hands-on stuff again after nearly two years on the desk. Am I really ready to work only the tough cases?’

His fingers tighten around the steering wheel and his question hangs unanswered. The fact is, Zac deserves a medal just for staying on as a paramedic after everything he went through, without being asked to handle only the high-trauma jobs as well.

He makes a right turn and I’m still searching for words that won’t form. I don’t really feel like the person who should be giving Zac life advice right now—not five minutes after I’ve arrived in his brave new world that I know nothing about. If the roles were reversed, and he tried to tell me what to do, I’d probably make a joke about marking him absent from my life for the past two years and dial the discomfort between us up a notch.Remembering that Zac has mostly ignored me for all that time burns my throat, and I turn to the window, focusing on what will be my new home for the next half-year. The city’s a bit industrial-looking, but it’s greener than the inner city of Sydney, and there are plenty of funky cafés and eateries wedged between vibrant murals and street art. I’m now getting more ‘cool, edgy Melbourne’ than ‘outer Sydney suburb’ vibes. My eyes trail after a two-storey op shop with colourful clothing racks in the front window that I make a note to come back to.

The car rolls to a stop at a set of traffic lights, and Zac glances at me. ‘Tell me more about your new job at NRN News. It’s pretty cool they’re giving you a car.’

‘Yeah, they don’t normally do that, but I negotiated it into my contract because they want me to drive to Sydney regularly to cover shifts there as well.’

A trace of a line forms on his brow. ‘They want you to drive to Sydney a lot?’

‘Yeah, I’m still technically part of the Sydney news team. I mean, seriously, just hire me full-time down there already—why move me up here?’ I throw my hands up in the air.

He nods. ‘I actually know someone who works there. At NRN.’

‘Really? Who?’

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