Page 77 of One Night With You

I notice the time in the top corner of my screen.

‘Is it preview o’clock?’ Jackson asks, when he realises I’m suddenly distracted. ‘Do you have to go now?’

‘The time is now,’ I say, putting on a silly voice. ‘Gah! Oh my gosh, I’m so nervous. Thank God I’ve had editing to distract me.’

‘Lol,’ says Jackson. ‘That sounds like heartbreak justifying itself.’

‘Your point?’

He waves a hand. ‘None,’ he says. ‘I have nothing further to add.’

I roll my eyes at him. ‘Wish us luck?’ I request.

‘You don’t need it.’ He winks. ‘And also: surely I must be able to see a cut soon? Please?’

‘Not until it’s perfect,’ I insist. ‘Bear with.’

‘Will do.’ He smiles. ‘I love you, Ruby. I’m proud of you.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I’m proud of me too. I think.’

I fill Harry in on the break-up, minus the miscarriage story. I’ve kept quiet these past few days because it’s all been about finishing the first draft of the project, but I tell him now that Nic is having a baby and I don’t want kids in my life that way, and so we’ve decided to hit pause.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he says as we wait outside the screening room. ‘I know the leap of faith was a big thing for you.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Butc’est la vie, et cetera.’

‘There’s more than one way to have a romantic life,’ he offers.

‘Says the man happily coupled up,’ I retort.

He shrugs, faking being coy. ‘I know. There’s nothing worse than seeing somebody happy when you’re …’ He trails off.

‘It’s okay,’ I tell him. ‘You can say it.’

Harry asked Beau to be his boyfriend when we got back from Paris, probably right at the moment I realised Nic couldn’t be mine.

‘The good news is you can finally meet him,’ Harry offers. ‘I’m not hiding him away like a dirty little secret anymore. Not after what happened to JP.’

‘Could be a hashtag to get trending,’ I quip. ‘Hashtag JP-made-me-do-it.’

‘That’s actually a pretty good idea,’ Harry concedes. ‘Let’s add it for the list for after. I think we should seriously cut one-minute bits of the interviews up for the Instagram account too. Little shareable pearls of wisdom.’

‘That’s smart,’ I say, nodding. ‘Agree.’ And then I feel the recurring gurgle in my stomach that’s been making an appearance all morning. I’ve not been able to tell whether it’s my bruised heart or the impending big reveal. Probably it’s both.

‘Are you nervous?’ I ask, nodding towards the room where we’ll have our first audience outside of anyone involved with the thing. ‘My stomach is very much telling me that I am.’

We know what we’ve got needs work, to an extent. We’ve done our best, but we can’t really move forward until fresh eyes have seen it, and that’s the whole point of sharing it with our peers. We’re too involved, now. JP has wanted a little bit of space from it all, which is understandable, so hehasn’t seen it, nor have he and William contributed any further thoughts to it. We’ve kept a respectable distance since we came home, letting William know via text that JP is in our hearts, and that we’d like to see him soon. William said he’s okay, just quiet. And we haven’t said on social media that Amelie has died, because it gives away a key point of the doc. That’s why it will be good to get the minute-long snippets up there – we can share parts of the story without giving more away about its conclusion. At least until we’ve tightened the whole thing up, anyway.

Our fellow grad students mill around as we wait to be called in. We’re third on the list of six. I know everyone will be feeling the same, although I doubt everyone had Janet, the course leader, emailing them to say they show great promise and are an asset to the department, to be fair. It feels like the bar for Harry and me is a tiny bit higher than it is for everyone else.

‘Look,’ Harry says calmly. ‘This is all designed to make us better, right? Everyone feels the same, because everyone wants to knock it out of the park first go-around, but you know as well as I do that that isn’t part of the process. The process is being uncertain and unsure and patching stuff together and being embarrassed of it until a fresh pair of eyes connects dots we haven’t. And not for nothing – don’t forget that for as talented as you and I are, so is everyone else in that room. We’ll probably end up saying thank you. You know. Once we get over our feelings being hurt.’

‘You’re so much more gracious than I am.’ I sigh and check my phone.

Some gossip to cheer you up:I think Candice is sleeping with our new French roommate,Jackson has texted.Maybe that’s why she hasn’t messaged. More details to follow …

He doesn’t understand why she’s still blanking me, either. Apparently, she’s been out a lot, sleeping in late, and there’s been a lot of popped bottles and twerking in clubs on her stories, which is fine, except for the fact that she’s never really been a clubber before. Maybe the pub, or at a push a noisy bar with a tiny dance floor – but the clubbing is new. And we had one rule in Maple Avenue: don’t shit where you eat. If Candice is sleeping with another housemate, Jackson won’t be happy. I hope for everyone’s sake he’s mistaken. He’s saying it lightly, but it will cause trouble.

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