Page 1 of Change My Mind
One
ADDIE
“Ineed you.”
If there was one thing I had learned from a lifetime of knowing Rebecca Harris, it was that she never admitted when she needed something. She was more of an ‘I will fix this problem by myself’ kind of girl. So, her calling me for help was already a big deal. For her to do it with a complete disregard for the time difference between the two of us was an even bigger deal.
It was three a.m. my time.
I paused before responding. Partly from confusion, and partly because I needed to get my brain to think in English, given that I spent ninety-five per cent of my time these days speaking French. Becky waited for me. By this point, she was used to the pause. They had become a mainstay of every phone call I had with people that I didn’t share a surname with—and therefore the same first language with—in the twelve years I had lived in Montreal.
I fell onto my sofa, the brown leather squeakingunderneath my bare legs as I tucked them underneath me. “I don’t know how much help I can really be from Canada, Becky. Can’t you call Clo?”
“I can assure you, I’ve called the right Henry sister. Unless Clara has become a qualified English professor in the last twenty-four hours without me realising?” Becky replied, her words almost eating into one another with how quickly she was talking. She was in peak panic mode.
“Okay, fine. You’ve got the right sister. But what do you need so urgently that you’ve called in the middle of the night?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. My evening was starting to catch up with me now that I was back in the comfort of my own flat.
“It’s not the…Oh shit. I am so sorry. You probably thought something awful had happened.”
Surprisingly, I hadn’t. The Henry family had a protocol for any and all emergencies. A call from Becky was far down on the list. It wasonthe list, but not high up enough for me to jolt into a panic at the fact that she had called me at three in the morning.
“You’re fine, Bex. I wasn’t sleeping. I only got in about five minutes ago.”
“Oh, wild Thursday night?” Becky sounded less panicked and more intrigued now, which I supposed was a good thing. Except that I wasn’t in the mood for a debrief of my night. I wanted a shower and my bed.
“Not really. You remember Johannes?”
“Your current bed fellow?” she replied immediately.
That was one way to refer to Johannes. I mean, there weren’t a lot of instances where we actually made it to a bed. Johannes was very keen on highlighting that he could hold my six-foot-two frame up against a wall. Or a door. Anything vertical. It was fun at first. In fact, it was still fun. My issue with Johannes had nothing to do with his refusal to have sex horizontally.
“Soon to beex-bed fellow,” I said as I shifted to lie down on the sofa.
“What could he have possibly done to get the boot?”
“The same thing they always do, Becky. They insist on trying to make things more complicated than they need to be.”
A pause.
“You mean they catch feelings?” She sounded sad on Johannes’s behalf.
My sigh was accompanied by an eye roll that no one saw, but I hoped she could sense it all the way in London. “It’s theone thingthey’re not supposed to do.”
“It’s the one thingyoudon’t do. You can’t be mad at them for daring to feel romantically about you. It’s a pretty normal response from people who are regularly engaging in physical intimacy with one another.”
“You sound like Rachel. And I’m not mad at him for catching feelings. A little bit disappointed, sure, but it is what it is. I’m just confused how he managed it. I am always confused as to how they manage it. I’m not remotely forthcoming with anything that they could use to get to know me better. We don’t go on anything that could be considered a date. Not even tenuously. It’s literally just sex. What are they falling for?”
“The potential of you?” Becky said simply.
“It’s sounding very ‘I can fix her, no really, I can’.”
“Maybe you could give one of them a chance one day.” I could see the shrug of her shoulders. Could practically feel it jogging the phone up against her ear. This wasn’t the first time we’d had this conversation. I’d had it with every one of my sisters for years. Although Rachel didn’t tell me to give it a go all that much because she didn’t think that was fair, considering the state of her dating life. Or lack thereof.
It never mattered. I stayed firm with my one rule inlife. Don’t fall in love. It was that simple. I had no interest in romantic love. I wasn’t built for that one.
Becky continued, “I know I just said that, and this is now going to sound very contradictory, but the one you give a chance can’t be Johannes. Or, I mean, it could be. But I somehow doubt it would be a good idea for you to give a relationship a try for the first time and then immediately turn it into a long-distance relationship.”
I frowned.
