Page 59 of The Wedding Forecast

The next morning I get up early, buy a whiteboard from Officeworks, along with multiple packets of Post-it notes, and I write five thousand words. I start plotting things out on the whiteboard. There are notes, and boxes, and arrows. It looks official, impressive. I take a photo, to post on social media when the book comes out, look, look at my creative process, look at how this masterpiece was created.

When I turn my phone back on that night, I have a message from an unknown number.

Hi Anna, it’s Patrick. From the wedding. I just thought I’d reach out and see if you wanted to catch up some time. x

I stare at the message. The kiss at the end! I do want to catch up. He’s interested! My fate has arrived. Thank you, universe. I will reply. Soon. Just not right now. Not today. Right now I need to keep writing. I need to keep my head in the book. The idea feels so new, so fragile still, I have to hold on to it, I have to stay in the bubble. It needs all my attention to grow.

I’m going to call my main character Stevie, I decide. I am going to give her my precious baby name, I am going to stop holding on to it as if I can conjure a future through a name. Stevie belongs to the book now. I belong to the work.

PART TWO

December

19

THE FLIGHT TIME is a little over twenty-four hours, counting the two-hour stop in LA airport. Hayley and I have come prepared. Snacks, eye masks, books, iPads full of TV shows, neck support, snuggly tracksuits and audiobooks and podcasts preloaded on our phones. I have a grand plan that I’m going to finish my book on the flight. I’m going to type the words THE END on my laptop before we land. That’s my goal. My brain will burst with creativity at 40,000 feet and I will solve the problem of my unfinished ending.

My book is overdue. Very, very overdue. I needed to have finished the novel two months ago, for a comfortable schedule to release in September next year. I have begged for more time, and then more time, promising the manuscript will be polished, that it will be brilliant, that I’ll turn the edit around in a month next year, that it’ll all work. My editor has put her faith in me and agreed. I have to submit it to her before Christmas.

Which makes this trip very ill-advised.

It’s Hayley’s fault, of course. She begged me. She has a work conference in New York, and she was meant to be going with Luke but he couldn’t get the time off work because one of his clients decided to roll out their new IT system that week so they could say it was done before the end of the year.

‘It’s New York. In December, Anna. It’ll be all Christmassy. How many times have we said we’d love to see New York at Christmas time?’ Hayley had said.

‘I can’t really afford it,’ I said, which wasn’t true. I have just been programmed by my parents to stress about spending any significant chunk of money—on anything. But I needed to embrace the moment. This is what being young(ish) and childless and beholden to no one is all about: taking impromptu trips to the other side of the world.

‘You don’t have to pay for accommodation and Luke will cover your flights with his points. It’s the cheapest trip you’ll ever take.’

‘Luke will not pay for my flights.’

‘He will! He’s abandoning me.’

‘He won’t.’

‘Let him pay half.’

‘No.’

‘I can’t go alone. Don’t make me. Please come.’ She had kneeled on the couch, begging and batting her eyes at me.

Why was I resisting? I wanted to go very badly. New York in December! With Hayley! A city I have always wanted to visit, and with my favourite person. We’d have so much fun.

And maybe I’d see Mac.

I tried to think that oh so casually.

And maybe Mac would be there. Maybe we’d see Mac. Who knows? Who cares? If I did see him, it would probably be the biggest letdown of my life. What if he had a girlfriend? It had been nine months since the wedding. Why would I even assume he’s single. What if he was rude or boring or not cute? What if he didn’t want to meet up with us? Well, so what? I’d lose the little crumb of fantasy I had been holding on to. It made my stomach hurt. I was already so nervous at the thought of seeing him that alarm bells were ringing in my head. This is dangerous. We’d had no contact since the wedding. I had stalked his social media but liked nothing, because I want him to find and follow me first. But he didn’t.

‘You need this trip,’ Hayley had said. ‘So you don’t have to think about the you-know-what.’

The you-know-what was Joel’s baby. Bianca had had a beautiful baby girl just the week before. Her name was Birdie, which I couldn’t get over. Joel was so traditional in his taste, I had imagined he would name a daughter Charlotte or Emma or Ava. A top-ten name. But Birdie. Birdie! It must have been Bianca’s choice. But he still agreed to it. This really rankled because the few times he and I had discussed baby names, he’d vetoed the suggestion of Stevie as too out there.

It was this final point, Joel’s baby, that convinced me to go. I had looked up Bianca’s social media announcement of Birdie’s birth far too many times, staring at the gorgeous picture of a tiny newborn bundled in a blanket, reading through the hundreds of excited comments. I needed a distraction. I needed to get out of the country. So here we are, halfway to New York, the plane now somewhere over the Pacific.

I never told Hayley and Luke about what happened with Mac and me at the wedding. It was nothing, really—there was nothing to tell. And I didn’t want any opinions on it. I just wanted to keep it for me. But now that feels like a mistake, because I’m going to his city, and Hayley won’t be distracted by her wedding anymore, and she’ll immediately notice if I’m being awkward around Mac.

Well, there’s nothing to be awkward about. Mac might not even be around. I have no idea what is happening in his life.