It is a brave thing to walk away from the phone when you know someone’s favourite number

I think about calling a friend whose favourite number I won’t ever forget –  but I don’t.

If I called him now, I wouldn’t waste a second asking stupid questions like, Is it snowing in Melbourne? What did you do today? I would tell him how much I like looking at his face and ask if he still remembers my favourite number.

When my childhood best friend told me her favourite number was three, I didn’t say mine was seven; I said me too. Three is the most beautiful and lucky number.

I once told this man that the average spontaneous hug lasts about three seconds, and he said it didn’t matter because ours don’t. He was right.

It doesn’t take much for me to think about him – I take an orange out into my backyard and tear its skin with my teeth, I peel it back and let the juice fall from my mouth, and my heart swells with a want to tell him about the sticky orange and my sun-kissed legs. I want to ask about his Nan and the lady at Coles with a big fat crush on him, where in the world he would take the perfect sandwich, and if the nicest way to make a bed is still the way I showed him.

Each him-stained-thing comes to me slowly, and then all at once. Like two helpless fools, who believed love could outstretch any number that got in between them if they just held on long enough — at least more than three seconds.

It is a brave thing to walk away from the phone when you know someone’s favourite number, or any other small, essential facts — like tiny prayers.  My life is full of someone else’s tiny prayers; cold, sloppy oats, the 14th, the polar bear and a barnyard mouse.

Years later, in a different city, in a larger body, in what might be a happier life, someone will ask me if it snows in Melbourne.

And I’ll remember his favourite number was four.