21Now or Never Now || Metric
ROXANNE
“It’s justlike the good old days!” Monroe sings out as we clink our glasses together where we sit side by side on her living room couch—the couch that is going to be my bed for the next four weeks while I wait for the person who’s subleasing my apartment to move out.
“Yeah, the good old days: when I was sixteen and homeless and sleeping in someone’s living room in Montreal seemed like the coolest thing in the world. It’s a little depressing to end up in the same situation at twenty-four.”
And yet here I am: just a girl with a few suitcases and no job or real home, yet still possessed of a burning conviction that she’s made the right choice and ended up where she needs to be. That’s how I felt the first time I walked into Monroe’s apartment all those years ago. I was scared shitless, of course, but the fear I felt in Montreal was always a good kind of fear. It’s that fear you have when you know everything is going to turn out okay; you’re just not sure what the path to get there will look like.
I never felt that way in Toronto. I tried my hardest to make it work, to give myself a chance, but it was like squeezing inside a box that was completely the wrong size and shape. That fills you with a different kind of fear. That’s the panic of claustrophobia, of knowing you’re backing yourself into a corner with no chance of getting out. There was no point in staying just to try to prove I could when I knew it wasn’t where I really needed to be.
I thought that Montreal was all about Cole. I thought the memories I had here and the person I became on these streets were so wrapped up in him that there was nomein them, only anus, but I see now that’s not true. I found my own strength. I forged my own path. He was there to help me along the way, but he didn’t take my steps for me.
This is my home. This is where I belong. It took leaving it to really figure that out. I realized I was only using the Toronto job as a crutch, as a shove off a diving board I was too scared to jump from. I always knew Cole and I had to find ourselves on our own, but I never had the strength to stay away from him.
So I hurt him so badly he stayed away from me.
The sight of his face when he found out I was moving flashes across my mind, and I literally wince at the memory.
“You okay?” Monroe asks.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, before taking a long pull from whatever weird cordial she has us drinking today. “Thanks again for letting me stay. You don’t know how much it means. I just couldn’t be there any—”
“Hush.” She holds up a finger. “I know you’d do the same for me, so while we wait for your subleaser’s tenure to be up, we’ll have ourselves a grand old time being roommates again, and you’ll stop thanking me for the favour every five seconds. Youarewelcome to do my dishes for the next four weeks, though.”
“Deal,” I reply with a laugh.
“So Whitestone didn’t blacklist you in the coffee community, did they?” she asks me.
I shake my head. “They were actually really understanding, given the circumstances. I told them my personal situation wasn’t going to allow me to stay in Toronto. Obviously, they were really disappointed and probably kind of pissed, but I don’t think they’re going to send a shit storm after me here.”
“That’s good, because I may have heard of a job for you.”
“Oh?”
I might not be looking for another shot at climbing the corporate ladder, but I also know I can’t go back to Café Alexandre. I want a challenge. I want something that will force me to grow and give me a chance to create. Maybe I’m asking for too much, but I didn’t come back here just to repeat myself.
I’m done with that. I’m breaking the cycle, and I’m taking a stand. I’ve gone from phone sessions to in-person therapy here in Montreal, and I’ve never felt steadier on my feet. I need a job that’s going to propel me forwards instead of holding me back.
“Mhmm,” Monroe continues. “I have a friend who manages one of those microbrewery bars, down in Griffintown. The company has two locations in Montreal, and they’re looking to open a third, as well as getting into the whole coffee thing. I don’t know what the actual job title is or if it’s permanent, but you’d be some kind of project manager to get the whole thing off the ground.”
“That sounds amazing.Mon dieu,Monroe, how do you always have the answers to everybody’s problems?”
She shrugs and takes a pull from her drink. “A good bartender always has the answers to everybody’s problems.”
I clink my glass with hers. “Cheers to that.”
Monroe is off for the night, and neither of us really feels like going out, so we end up watching way too many episodes of something stupid on Netflix. It really does feel like the old days again. I realize I'm half-expecting Cole to walk through the door with take-out and join us on the couch.
Monroe must be thinking along the same lines because she turns to me during a quiet part of the show and murmurs, "They got back from Australia the other day."
There's a hesitancy in her voice. We've talked about the Cole Situation's effect on me, but we've always skirted around the fact that he and Monroe are still in touch. I know she's always been important to him, and I assumed they'd be talking a lot with me gone, but it felt wrong to ask about him. I ache to know what he's feeling, but I know I gave up that right.
Still, the opportunity is here now, and I can't help taking it.
"Have you seen him?" I ask, in the same hushed tone. "How...How is he?"
"I haven't seen him since a few weeks before he left," she admits, "but I called him the morning after they got back. He didn't give me much to go off; you know what he’s like on the phone."
