Page 6 of Love, Just In

I snort-laugh to hide the bitter truth that comment draws to my mind.

Zac exhales, tapping the steering wheel. ‘Well, I guess that’s—’

The wail of a siren cuts between us as an ambulance rounds the corner, then rushes past Zac’s window. A few hundred metres up the street, it veers onto the footpath and comes to a screeching halt.

‘Shit, what happened?’ I say, stretching my neck, but a line-up of cars is already building, and it’s hard to see from this far back.

Zac swallows hard. ‘Dunno.’

I glance at him. ‘Do you think we should go check it out?’

Bywe, I meanhim, because he’s a paramedic, but he’s off-shift and there are clearly first responders on the scene already.

‘I’m sure they’ve got it handled,’ he mumbles. ‘You’re not going to call the news channel about this, are you?’ He shoots me a teasing look, but I don’t miss the slight shake in his voice or the way his face has paled.

‘If this is considered TV-worthy news around here, then I’m worried about keeping my job.’

‘If it bleeds, it leads, right?’

He stares back at the activity up ahead, and my mind whirls between wanting to defend my job as a journalist and asking Zac how the hell he can still be around ambulances after what he lived through nearly two years ago. But then he clicks open his door and I follow him out onto the street.

He jerks his chin at the Quest Apartments. ‘Should we go in?’

We?I stare at him for a moment.Is that it—are we back to him lazing around my space, flipping through TV channels while I have a shower or check my emails, like we used to? Just like that?

‘Although, I’ve actually got to head off soon,’ he adds with a glance at his watch.

OK, not like that, then.

‘Sure,’ I reply, a little too brightly to hide my let-down feeling, before barging over to the car to retrieve my suitcase like a mafia bomb is about to detonate in there. ‘They probably don’t allow dogs inside, anyway.’ I peekat Trouble through the back window to make sure she’s OK in this heat.

Zac steps behind me and reaches past my arm to take hold of the bag that I can easily manage myself.

‘I’ve got it, thanks,’ I say. I attempt to untangle my forearm from his inner bicep, which ends in me bashing my forehead into his chest wall when I turn around. ‘Shit, sorry.’ I back away, gripping my suitcase with both hands.

‘So, tomorrow then?’ he asks.

‘Yes, sounds good, thank you.’God, I sound like a stranger who’s just been offered an appointment that suits my schedule. Is that what’s happening here?

Zac mirrors my cautious smile before turning towards his car.

I lurch forward with one last-ditch effort to break the ice. After all, I’m just as responsible for salvaging what’s left of this friendship as he is. ‘Want to go and grab a bite or something?’ I offer. ‘Sushi? Bubble tea? Vodka shots?’

He must know I’m not serious about the vodka. The last time we went shot-for-shot on the clear stuff in a live music bar in Bathurst, the escapade ended with Zac holding my hair back while I puked into the gutter on the walk home to our miniscule apartment.

But there’s an ‘I’ve missed you’ gift sitting inside my suitcase … conversations to be had … questions to be answered … intolerable discomfort to be eased—all so the rock growing inside my stomach can shrink and go away.

Zac rakes a hand through his curls, his brow pinching. ‘Thatdoessound good, except for maybe the vodka shots because, you know, old man now’—he points at himself—‘but I’m actually meeting up with someone this afternoon.’

The look on his face answers the question immediately. The ‘someone’ is a girl.

‘Oh, cool, no worries.’

My smile isn’t entirely forced. It doesn’t matter to me that he’s got a date. Zac and I are more-than-old friends who’ve been each other’s sounding boards after countless hook-ups with other people. I even hosted his Great Gatsby–themed engagement party after his then-girlfriend Tara proposed to him in Peru. He and I are strictly platonic and always have been.

I’ve just never known him to be the person who would arrange to pick me up in a new city after not seeing each other for two years and plan a date for the same afternoon. I not only know nothing about his new life up here, but I’ve seriously dropped on his priority list, which sends a sharp blade into my chest.

‘We’ll catch up tomorrow, if you like,’ he says, looking right at me like he’s making a life-changing promise.

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