Love, and Other Things to Live For Page 8

  We arrived at a club in the centre of Soho: the home of punks, gays, rebels and queens. As usual, Amber knew the guy on the door, so we bypassed the queue and made our way down the spiral staircase. The music was loud. I couldn’t hear myself think. It was exactly what I needed. As Sean and Harry went off to find the bar, I led Amber onto the dance floor.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she shouted, being pulled into the frenzy.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, almost forgetting that I was speaking to someone who could see right through me. It was a strange phenomenon that often occurred between us whereby I didn’t have to tell Amber anything. She already knew.

  ‘I get it, Jess,’ she said. ‘But stick with it because he likes you – a lot.’

  ‘I’m just not ready to go down that road yet, Amber. I’m not ready to… settle down.’

  ‘Settle down or just settle?’ she said, wincing.

  I could see Harry stood at the edge of the dance floor looking out of place and a little lost.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I shouted, nodding in his direction.

  Amber kissed me on the cheek. ‘I’m going to find Sean…’

  We parted ways and I made my way back through the tight crowd.

  ‘Sean dumped me for a bartender – here you go…’ Harry said, handing me a vodka soda.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. I watched as his face changed colour with the lights. Just one kiss, maybe that was all I needed, just one kiss to prove it was still there.

  ‘What the fuck are they playing! Is it supposed to be retro-cool?’ At that point a tall, slim woman pushed past me.

  ‘Charlie,’ she shouted. ‘Over here!’

  I loosened my grip on Harry and turned around. My eyes darted around the room, the rotating lights now blinding me. And that’s when I saw him, slowly making his way through the crowds. Charlie Rainer.

  It was as if a fireball had ripped through the sky, knocking me fifty paces. I knew the rule of fate but didn’t listen. When you’ve reached a point when you wake up and no longer think of him, when you don’t notice men who look like him in the street, when you think it’s safe to mention his name, something in the outer universe strikes back: fate will take over and right there, he’ll appear. Both together, in the exact same moment, we were written in the stars. He strode over, giving me a maximum of ten seconds to prepare myself but instead I remained glued to the spot unable to speak.

  ‘What are the chances?’ he said, almost nervously.

  ‘Hello,’ I replied, the music drowning out my heart, now beating in the back of my throat.

  ‘You look amazing,’ he said. It was at this point that he would usually put his hand on the back of my thigh and kiss me – but that wouldn’t be happening any more.

  ‘All right, mate?’ Harry said from behind me. I could feel Harry’s hand resting on my back in an act of ownership. It took everything in my power not to shrug it off, violently.

  ‘Charlie, this is Harry,’ I said. I couldn’t bear to make the introductions, never mind small talk.

  ‘Hi, Harry,’ Charlie said, looking at me.

  ‘We’re out with Sean,’ I said, ‘He’s got a new job so we’re celebrating.’

  ‘Pass on my congratulations to him. So, how are you?’ Charlie said, pulling me to one side.

  ‘I’m fine. Nothing new.’

  Harry looked at me, halfway between stunned and confused.

  ‘Sorry, I can’t hear you for the music…’ Charlie said reaching for my arm, pulling me in closer.

  ‘I said, I’m here with Harry.’

  ‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Well, like I said, you look amazing.’

  I leaned in. I thought he was going to politely kiss my cheek but instead he just lingered, halfway between my neck and my ear. I could smell him. The earth shifted.

  ‘Charlie, what are you doing!?’ the ten-foot blonde shouted, bringing us both back into the room.

  ‘We should go,’ said Charlie, motioning her on. ‘Enjoy the rest of your evening.’

  He looked back at the two of us; our reunion shot to stardust.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ I said to Harry, walking back onto the dance floor. And that’s where I danced. I danced to any song that was played for however long they played it. I danced until my feet burned, until my thighs ached, until I didn’t think of him anymore.

  The streets outside were littered with flyers and polystyrene boxes as I paced the edge of the pavement, trying to keep warm waiting for Amber to find her coat. Soho in the early hours was a beautiful mess, filled with people buying guilt-free kebabs, drunkenly texting exes, staggering sideways to find their friends.

  ‘I don’t get why she checks it in,’ Sean said.

  ‘She always does,’ I replied. ‘She’s scared it’ll get nicked.’

  ‘Well, if I’m honest I’d rather it did than go through this faff. This is ridiculous. I’m going to find her,’ he shouted, adamantly. ‘I’ve got a bartender waiting with a hot tub in Shoreditch.’

  I reached my arms around Harry who was warm in the cold wind as my phone vibrated in my pocket.

  ‘Is that you or me?’ he asked, checking his pockets.

  ‘Me,’ I replied. ‘It’s probably Amber…’

  I opened my phone to see the name ‘Charlie’ light up on the home screen. I hadn’t seen that name in months and it ripped through my stomach like a firework.

  ‘Back in a minute,’ I said to Harry, walking towards the edge of the pavement.

  I reached the side of the road and turned the phone over, my hand trembling in anticipation. I opened a message which read:

  I’m sorry.

  ‘About bloody time!’ Harry shouted to the others climbing up the stairs of the club.

  ‘This is vintage,’ Amber shouted to him. ‘If someone steals it, I’ll absolutely die.’

  ‘I’ve never known anybody to absolutely die before,’ Harry said, smiling. ‘The man fell thirteen storeys and absolutely died. She was run over by a lorry and absolutely died...’

  Amber came trotting over to me, wrapping the large camel coat around her.

  ‘Cab time,’ she said. ‘Who’s with who?’

  ‘I’m with Jess,’ Harry said, still feeling he had to state the obvious. But this time I stopped him.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got a splitting headache,’ I lied. ‘Could we just see each other tomorrow instead?’

  ‘Yeah of course,’ he said, his nonchalant charm making the situation less volatile. I wondered if he knew. If he could smell the regret on me like a stale perfume. I kissed him lightly on the cheek and left.

  The back of the taxi felt comforting. I looked over at Amber who was staring out of the window as I sat there deep in my own pool of thought. I didn’t know what I was doing or why I was doing it, but in spite of all of this, I’d still chosen to drive away.

  I sat at the kitchen table and opened my phone: two words. How can two words possibly mean so much? How can two words emotionally pin you against the wall? I turned my phone over as Amber walked into the kitchen.

  ‘How’s your head?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine,’ I paused. ‘It wasn’t about my head.’

  ‘I know,’ she said as I sat and watched her put the kettle on. ‘Fancy some toast?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, if it makes you feel any better, me and Sean were dancing erotically and I caught sight of someone I know from work… soooo, that should be round the office by Monday.’

  I laughed limply. ‘I bumped into Charlie when I was with Harry in the club. He was with his new girlfriend.’

  ‘Wowsers… girlfriend?’ She looked over as she slid the bread into the toaster.

  ‘Well, whatever she was, looking at me like I should be jealous.’

  ‘And were you?’

  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘I bet that put the wind up him. How did he look?’

  ‘He looked different. Sad. Sort of.’

  ‘It’s not your problem, Jess.’


  ‘I know, but as soon as I saw him I… I don’t know…’

  There was a pained look written on her face. ‘Do you want to be with Harry?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, confidently.

  ‘Do you want to be with Charlie?’

  ‘No,’ I hesitated. ‘I don’t think so.’ I rested my forehead on the kitchen table. ‘You know, I lied to Harry tonight. I actually lied to him.’

  Inside I felt ashamed – but not sorry.

  ‘I think I know what the problem is,’ Amber said, bluntly. ‘For the first time in years you feel safe. And he doesn’t make you work for it like Charlie did. Does he text back?’

  ‘Always.’

  ‘Does he text you goodnight?’

  ‘Most nights.’

  ‘Well, there’s the issue. It’s not that there’s anything wrong, you’re just bored, that’s all.’ She began taking her make-up off with a face wipe, offering one for me to do the same.

  ‘So why did I leave him tonight?’ I said, wiping my eyes, ignoring the sting.

  ‘Because there’s no drama kicking off so you have to compensate for it. Just do something to shake things up a bit.’

  ‘With Harry?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know, relationships aren’t my forte, Jess. Can’t you both go away for a few days?’

  ‘I’m not sure it’ll help.’

  ‘Just don’t throw it all away for nothing. Because that’s all you get from men like Charlie. Literally: nothing.’

  Later that night, I climbed into bed and lay there in the cold sheets, staring up at the dark, blank ceiling, my exhausted body fighting desperately to sleep. The full moon was still out in force and the events of the night were flashing through my mind. Fate may have brought us back together again, but our destiny is determined by our own actions. And this time, I was going to do nothing at all.

  Half an hour later my phone pinged in the darkness. I pulled it towards me as my eyes adjusted to the light. It was Charlie:

  Are you awake?

  I typed out ‘yes’ but deleted it as soon as it had been written. After all, I was clueless, I wasn’t some sort of sadomasochist and I wasn’t going to willingly put myself through that again either.

  A second ping:

  I miss you.

  I looked down at the phone and hesitated for a moment. This would be the crucial moment, the point where I would have to fight or flight. I put it on silent mode and rolled back over in bed. Perhaps it was the alcohol or the dancing, but in that moment, I just didn’t have the strength to go through it all again. Suddenly, a loud, harsh buzzing blasted from my phone, sending a piercingly loud vibration out into the quiet night. I quickly answered it so as not to wake Amber.

  ‘Charlie, it’s 4 a.m.,’ I whispered. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You,’ he said, calmly.

  The sound I heard coming from his mouth, I’d heard a million times before. There was a longing for me, and despite my denials, it was mutual.

  ‘Where’s your girlfriend?’ I snapped, hoping a rebuttal, spat out, might knock me to my senses.

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend, Jess.’ I could hear him breathing. Guttural.

  ‘Don’t, Charlie,’ I said. I wanted to hang up the phone but I felt pinned to the bed. I could hear him, right in my ear. I could picture his face. I wanted him.

  ‘Remember when I would get home from work and you’d be there. Christ, I couldn’t keep my hands off you…’

  ‘What am I doing now?’ I said, unable to stop myself.

  ‘You’re sitting on top of me,’ he replied, breathing heavily.

  As I heard his moans I reached down and touched myself. I wanted him. I needed him – only him.

  ‘I love you,’ he cried as he came. ‘I fucking love you, Jess.’

  I lay there motionless, I couldn’t breathe. I walked over to the window and pulled up the heavy sash, letting the cold night air hit my face. Everything was silent… halfway between despair and ecstasy. In just one night, a force had taken over the shattered pieces of my life that I had somehow re-aligned. Whatever it was – fate, the stars, coincidence – it rendered me powerless. It had a cosmic hold over everything. And I just couldn’t let him go.

  Chapter Eight – There Once Was a Girl Who Swallowed a Lie, Perhaps She’ll Die

  ‘Forgiveness’: a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment toward a person who has harmed you.

  There was once a girl whom I sat next to during art hour in school, the one time of day when we could pack away our work and paint, draw or build whatever we wanted to as long as it was our own, as long as it was unique to us. On this particular afternoon I had decided to build a kite. I tied purple and turquoise ribbon to its tail and drew a bright yellow sun with orange rays in the corner. At the end of the hour the teacher would ask us to place them all on the mat in front of us. As the teacher held my kite high in the air, said girl threw up her arm and claimed it as her own. There was a loud sound of applause followed by a sticker from the teacher. I didn’t say anything but just sat there, silent in my rage. I did confront her, once the crowds had dispersed but by then it was too late. I forgave her, but I was invariably unsure of whose fault it actually was, hers for claiming my work as her own or mine for not highlighting the injustice. And here we still were, decades later: Charlie had lied to me, but I had let him. That’s the funny thing about forgiveness, it’s a concept I still struggled to distinguish from my own admission. Was it his fault for lying, or my fault for staying silent?

  I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of orange juice as Amber emerged on her way to a yoga class.

  ‘Can I come?’ I said, handing her a glass.

  ‘To yoga?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I was trying to pass it off as nonchalance but really it was a faded attempt to cleanse myself from the night before.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, putting on her Lycra hoodie.

  I smiled at her without speaking.

  ‘You’re being weird,’ she said, filling her water bottle at the tap. ‘Look, you’ve got ten minutes until we have to leave. I’m not waiting.’

  Half an hour later I lay on a mat borrowed from Amber, my eyes closed, focusing on my breathing. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t started this sooner: a moment suspended in relaxation away from the world and most importantly away from the thoughts inside my head.

  ‘I can hear you breathing,’ Amber muttered from the mat next to me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. I tried to lie back down again but by this time I was all fidgety. ‘Amber?’ I continued.

  ‘Shhh, you’re not supposed to be talking,’ she replied without even opening her eyes.

  ‘Amber, what do you think about forgiveness?’

  ‘Has all the deep breathing gone to your head or something?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, if you’re talking about Charlie then no, it’s not a good idea.’

  I lay there with my eyes closed too; trying to get back into the yoga zone and the positive energy, but all I could think about was the night before and the sound of his heavy breathing down a very much consensual, two-way phone call. I tried to focus on the rising and sinking of my chest, the feeling of weightlessness, the prickly feeling of the yoga mat against my sweaty back – and the sheer speed at which I was unremittingly being dragged back into the past.

  ‘So I’ll see you later tonight,’ I said, on our way out of the gym.

  ‘Actually, I’m going for dinner with someone,’ Amber said.

  ‘Well, I’ll see you later on then…’ I shouted after her as she buried her head into her phone. She looked back briefly, giving me a slight wave as she crossed the busy street. I wasn’t the only one being weird that morning.

  As I got home that dreary Sunday morning, I made my way into my bedroom and pulled open the curtains. A pile of dirty laundry lay strewn on the white wicker chair in the corner of the room as I scooped up what
I could and carried it to the kitchen, wrestling it into the washing machine. I closed the door and briefly rested my head against the cold glass. I had come to the conclusion after the pre-dawn phone call with Charlie that getting involved with yet another man was not at all what I needed. What I wanted was pretty clear to everyone but me. I needed to be on my own. But first, I needed to talk to Harry. Unlike Charlie, he had emotionally put himself on the line and the least I could do was be honest with him. He was owed a conversation.

  *

  If there’s one thing to make you feel proud of your friends in London, then it’s their first step onto the property ladder. A homeowner is somewhat of a rarity in the city, akin to the snow leopard or white rhino. We know they exist, but we rarely meet them. In a sea of renters they emerge after years of saving and demonstrate to the rest of us how life could be… if only we didn’t shop, or use electricity, or eat on a regular basis.

  I had arranged to meet Sean to view a flat he was considering buying, having been told by the current owners that if he arrived that day they would show him exclusively before start of business Monday morning. His new job would provide him with an income that would allow him to evolve from a house-share and for the first time, branch out to a place of his own. It was a monumental moment and one that I was dying to witness.

  ‘Wow,’ I said looking out through the bare bedroom window. ‘You’re going to have to put some curtains up. Half of London can see you!’

  Sean arched an eyebrow, a look I’d seen a few times.

  ‘Or not…’ I said, my voice fading. I walked across the uncovered floors to the concrete fireplace and ran my hand across the smooth surface. ‘I’m ending it with Harry,’ I said.

  ‘What? Why?’ Sean said, surprised. ‘I was only with you last night. When did you decide all of this?’

  ‘It’s just not right,’ I said. ‘Amber thinks I’m an idiot…’

  ‘Amber thinks everyone’s an idiot. You know yourself what you want, Jess. Life’s too short: me of all people should know.’