I’m sorry but I would still like my book back
Heather Holdaway
1934
Hey, how are you doing?
Hope you’re keeping well in these unprecedented times. I know we both said we’d like to be casual friends, but I feel we kinda left this at some weird point?
Anyway, do you still have that book I lent you?
So if not, no sweat, but if so—what are you up to this week, and should I just pop round to pick it up, and should I bring anything?
Some bud, or like some beer or like a casual home-cooked dinner for two with an orange wine from the last Californian shipment we ever got and that cologne you said made you
***
Hey, it’s been a while—did you ever finish that book?
So I’m unsure if you still want to be friends, but when the bad news came out, you were the first person I thought of, and do you still
***
Hey, how are you?
Do you still have that book?
I forgot to ask you the other night (for the record, I think it’s totally chill and nice for two adults to have a fun, in a way thoroughly proved as chill and fun, by us, at an earli
***
Hi, bit out of the blue but do you still have my book?
You know the one—it was dusk and we were drinking on the deck, counting the planes flying in at Lyall Bay. You were saying the planes were getting less and less since the border closed, and I was like nah, it’s probably about as even as before, cause the airforce planes have started coming in.
And then there was a meditative, but also, like wary silence in which we both took a sip, then changed the subject to our favourite road trips before everything kind of kicked off.
Then we remembered our most recent trip up North, after everything kicked off, and there was another, slightly less meditative silence in which I’m pretty sure we both could hear the low click of the car door as I opened it on the highway, the soft suck of melted tar on Nike soles as I turned from the roadblock baring the central plateau: the stacked pines still bleeding resin and partially obscuring the giant carrot standing sentinel over the Ohakune, Where Adventure Begins sign by the road.
Anyway, this silence went on stretching between us on the deck, and just kept being filled with more things from that trip, it felt. Like Ms. Lutz; P.E teacher of my teenage dreams, still looking remarkably fit 20 years on, milling round with the others from Ohakune, pretending she wasn’t leaning on a shotgun as she flicked me a two-fingered wave from across the roadblock, nodding at whatever my dad was saying next to her.
The unbearable shrug of his shoulders at me, and my anger at myself later, that I mimicked it then, reflecting his sad, useless smile and soft shrug back at him when I wanted to ascend a pulpit and beat my breast and wail like a small child left behind at the supermarket etc. etc., the warmth of the road soaking into the balls of my feet as I turned back to the car, driving back past streams of cars waiting to head inland, the white clench of your jaw in the passenger seat next to me, your furious eyes that had witnessed the whole thing, the questions you didn’t need to ask because it was so thick between us in that car-ride back it was pretty much sky-writing. COWARD? floated up from the backseat in the rearview mirror whenever I checked we weren’t being followed, YOU’RE JUST GOING TO…GO ALONG WITH ALL THIS? steamed out from your right ear, DEFEATED? oozed out of your tear ducts.
Anyway, like that’s how it felt you know?
On the deck we both took another sip of beer, watching that nightmare of a car trip silently expand between us. Then I was like, umm okay, yeah ha ha. So tell me about your favourite book this week?
And then another airforce plane roared overhead, which we studiously ignored, and you shouted back something which I only pretended to hear, and I tried to shout my interest with both my voice and eyes because boy, that plane was loud. And then it was past, and I was left yelling the ra part of O’Hara. How we laughed.
Anyway, you had laid your hand on my leg at some point, and I remember being shocked at its heat, and the weight of its resignation. Oh well, it said, oh well so here I am at the end of it all, then, and here you are too.
And then there was a swarm of drones which made us stop laughing pretty quick, flying low and looking for people out of their homes. Anyway we ignored the swarm even more studiously, and you asked me over the whine what I liked to read that week, the answer which was lost to the irritating, head-filling whir. But when you said tell me more, in a normal voice after they zipped off, I was like, wow she really wants more, and then I realised I really wanted to tell you more and yeah. That’s how the book came up, haha I didn’t mean to like give give you my
***
Hey, how are you doing?
I feel like we kinda left this at some weird stage—do you still want to be friends, because I sure do and there’s nothing I’d like more than just a chill casual friendly friendship with absolutely no
***
Hey, how are you?
Do you still have that book floating round? (Floating, geddit? Because of the Floods?)
If not, no sweat (and let me know if you’ve moved on from being friends so I can unfollow you without if-ing myself to death. Also, I can just grab that book from you whenever, it’s chill). Also happy Matariki.
Also do you remember when it was Matariki last year and we snuck out (like, how crazy were we?) to walk up Matairangi with some very small fireworks, and seeing your face lit up kinda ghostly green from the gunpowder in the dusk with the harbour and the hulking outline of Mt Kaukau behind you, and the city with pools of orange here and there from the remaining streetlights under you, I was suddenly happy for that roadblock, grateful even for Ms. Lutz leaning on her gun, because it meant at least we were here tog
***
Hey, how’s that book going?
You must’ve read it cover to cover by now! I want to get that back at some point haha.
Have you seen the news?
A whole half of the city now underwater? Wild. Wanna, uh, come over and watch it together?
If not, no sweat (I’m aware the phrase “if-ing myself” to “death” might be misleading in that it does not sound like a chill cool friendly friendship thing, but rather a thing subject to a lot of thought with surprisingly high stakes but
***
Hey, how are you?
I want to watch bad news with you (if you still want to be friends?)
If not, no sweat (but um also. Friendships are exactly the relationships worth if-ing myself to death over: who else would I if myself to death over if not my friends? Why aren’t we raised to invest in platonic relationships the same way we are romantic? So it’s actually just like a cool, low key, friendly
***
Hey, when’s a good time for me to grab my book back?
Also, not sure where we landed on the whole friends thing, but I saw bad news the other day and wanted to watch it with you, if you still want to be pals?
If not, no sweat. I still have the ring I got off your Mum, so maybe we could like, arrange a swap or something.
(Okay, so I understand the above is maybe willfully ignorant: I would worry myself to death over my friends or love them to death, but yes, fine. I don’t “if myself” to “death” over them because in our relationships there is no if-ing, there is no fear of heartbreak, in that there is no disastrous hike up Te Ahumairangi on our allowed-out day during lock-down, where you introduced me, sweating in velcro sneakers and cheap disposable rain poncho, as your special friend—with not a touch of irony—to your friend, maybe the final friend left here by then, who had dungarees and the lean arms of a rock climber, and a single earring, and who kept touching your lower back whenever you laughed at what he was saying, which seemed to happen a
***
Hey! I want to watch bad news with you, let’s be friends! The most casual of friends! Come over! The news can only get worse! I’m drinking a really nice red, actually an honest to God nice red with like the little stickers of silver medals it earned in the New World Best Wine Awards 2026. My new number is 022 2141312 but look—why didn’t you text me?
Like, after the cell tower was re-erected and the network re-established in the North Island?
Like, right after they shut the highway?
Like, was it confusion around whose court was / (is?) the ball really in?
Exactly whose court?
Was the ball?
What if you were waiting for me to—what if you thought it’s in mine this whole time and that’s why you didn’t tex
***
Yo, wha
***
Sup, so funny story
I was sitting at home working away in my ergonomic chair and thought of you, then felt like suddenly and very inappropriately turned-on and just wanted to ask, do you ever think about us?
Still?
Like, dude it sucks. I can’t figure out if we just had like 11/10 lovemaking or everything before you had been like solid 5.5/10 and that was like the norm with you?
If the latter—good job, you’re nailing it (definitely not nailing me ha h
***
Hello frie
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Hi! How’s it going?
Do you still wanna be friends?
How cool and chill if yes. I wanna watch bad news with you to see your reactions, and feel the small puffs of air you scoff through your nose when you find something funny, and maybe when it becomes bad bad news you’ll hide your face in my ribcage, and together we’ll beat our fists on the floor and say, no more no more no more please when we see the water begin to creep under the door, and the water will stop and recede back to the Pacific and the Tasman and back up to the clouds, and we will recede back to the roadblock.
And this time I will not shrug my shoulders at my father, this time you will see me wrench the gun from Ms. Lutz, and this time we will get through to my father’s house on the dry side, where we would not now be drowning slowly and where, while watching TV, my father would say, gesturing at somewhere far away from us, so far we would not even be able to imagine what it is to see your friends and familiar concrete streets and abandoned dogs be swallowed by the water, hands and streetlights and hopeful black noses thrust in the air for a Search and Rescue team that’s decamped to the South Island, my father would say, gesturing at all this with the generosity and largess bequeathed by distance, “Poor buggers.”
Heather Holdaway is a grad of the IIML Masters Programme at Te Herenga Waka–Victoria University of Wellington. Her work has previously appeared in Turbine, The Spinoff, and Landfall, and was recently shortlisted in the Frank Sargeson Short Story Competition 2025. She is currently based in Ōtepoti, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her work is fiction.