Secret 3: The Heart-Eyed Emoji

I love you, and you have no clue.

Story Soundtrack: 'We Should Be Together Now' by Powderfinger

Sita sat on her phone, typing a shopping list. Dylan’s legs were draped across her as he watched the television, but the suddenly bent up in feverish excitement, as something decidedly sporty happened on the screen.

“Did you see that wicket?!”

“Wow, yes!”

Sita had not seen the wicket. But Dylan had made a bid for connection, as Gottman called it, and when one’s partner makes a said bid, one must respond in kind, or the marriage will fail. At least that’s what an infographic on social media had said.

She watched Dylan’s soft face, all alive with belonging as he celebrated his team. A splendidly innocent masculinity. Cricket; salt and vinegar chip; a lovely job as a sales rep for kindergarten software. Kindergarten software. The kind of software and app that lets parents see how many poos their kid has done in a day. Dylan was passionate about communicating developmental data from childcare to family, for the betterment of parents, children and business. He polished his shoes every Wednesday and gave blood monthly. He was an ideal husband, if there were such a thing.

“Whacha want for dinner babe?”

“Steak?”

“Yesss.”

Sita added steak to the shopping list. A notification dinged softly above her notes app, from the pink and yellow pokie machine of Instagram.

Angus: 😍

Now it was Sita’s turn to jerk her body in shock, her phone dropping straight out of her hands.

“What – was it a ball?!”

“No… I just deleted shopping list. By accident.”

Dylan laughed and rubbed her arm playfully. He picked her phone up off the floor, and her stomach flipped.

“So on edge! The game does this, I’m telling you!”

Angus. Sita clicked onto his profile. He was the kind of person that never showed pictures of himself, except those reshared shots his wife posted of their various fits at weddings and family gatherings. Sita found it to be a kind of false humility – a suggestion he was above revealing his likeness to the plebs of the internet. But he lurked. She knew this because she lurked too. He lurked, and every now and then he liked. He had never sent an emoji before.

She went to the message. Three dots, typing…

Sita quickly locked her phone, face suddenly hot. This was not okay. She paused. Looked to the cricket. She ran a hand through her hair, scratching the eczema at the back of her neck absent-mindedly. There was nothing wrong with an emoji. It was just an emoji, in response to a picture she had put up of her last painting, before it was framed.

Remember how he had implored you to paint, how he had stayed back late to help you wrap the canvas –

No. No Angus. Just an emoji. The sports-cam spun onto the sweaty crowd, a man and a woman with their arms around one another.

Remember the smell of him, the only time you ever touched, at the back of the crowd, hands entwined, Powderfinger playing on the speakers  –

Sita stood up quickly.

“I’m going grocery shopping.”

“Nah just order online, you’ll miss the innings.”

“I think I need the drive.”

Sita drove slowly, the Odyssey Number Five album turned up loud. The only way was through: he must be exorcised.

What are you looking for this time around
Might need something to bring you to ground
Everything turning me inside and out
What are you looking for this time around

It's coming in and over
It's waiting at your shoulder
You can see we should be together now

Sita breathed in through her pelvis and out through clenched teeth. The images swirled in her mind, the candle in the window burning so bright for him that she felt it might set the house on fire. Just an emoji.

It began when she was seventeen. She had started dating a guy called Sean. Sean invited her to a party at his best friend’s house. His best friend, named Angus.

It was immediate and severe. If Sean was a cheap imitation of a man, Angus was the first edition original. It wasn’t that Angus held more charm or wit or beauty, it just… was. She knew him, like she would not know anybody else.

They had met with open faces, her own veiling devastation: why is my boyfriend introducing me to my soulmate? They spoke all night, discussed how much they loved Powderfinger. He will be my friend, she had decided. I will settle with getting to be near to him. It will be enough. But it wasn’t enough.

She looked for him in every room. She refused to go to any social gathering he wasn’t attending. She sought his advice, and he sought hers. They sat beside one another at dinners, danced too close in clubs. He bought a piece from her first exhibition. The frisson was never discussed. Angus started sleeping with another of Sean’s friends, and the four of them spent every weekend together. Sita’s face felt it might crack from holding a smile in place.

At the time, Sita couldn’t imagine a boy having feelings for his mate’s girlfriend. It wasn’t even just a violation of bro code – it just seemed somewhat impossible that the same kind of perverted infatuation would exist in someone that sensible. He’d never consider it. She, on the other hand, considered it at length. The fantasy ate into her dreams, into her sexual relationship with Sean, into every outfit she chose. The possibility of Angus invigorated and sharpened her, while he remained oblivious to her misplaced love.

Sean and Sita broke up eventually, and Angus seemed genuinely sad.

“You were so good together. I hope you work it out.” Sita had wanted to slap him.

Then, a few years later, at the back of the crowd… Powderfinger playing in the background… Their bodies had touched, all bile and longing, but they never even looked one another in the eyes. It was a question they couldn’t answer - or perhaps something inside of her had chosen not to answer it. He had looked at her hand inside of his before he left that night – a blazing conflict running up and down his veins as he opened his mouth to say nothing.

“Get home safe,” she had offered instead.

So he did.

A few months later he met Amelia. According to Instagram, they had now been together fifteen years, and recently had their first child – named ‘Sean’. Sita had been in love with the idea of him for over twenty years. She pressed repeat on the song, adamant to make herself hate it.

Sita was walking through Coles when her phone finally dinged with the Pokie win again.

Angus: ‘Look!’

He had attached a photo. It was of Amelia and baby Sean, standing next to the painting he had bought from her so many years earlier. They had hung it inside of their house.

Sita paused in the cool mist of the deli aisle. Taking a moment, she picked up her bloodied heart from the collection of steaks on display, before slamming it into the empty trolley.

Dylan. This one is for Dylan.