Experienced

Chapter Nineteen

It was difficult to dwell too much, in the days that followed. Work was busy, which was a relief. Ash stayed in on her usual Tim night. Tim even called, once, which was odd, and sort of stilted. Neither of them were really phone-call people. Carmen texted and made plans for Sunday: a drink just for the two of them, “my treat” (Ash had clearly filled her in). There was a message from Ruth on her phone every time she looked at it too—a hello, a check-in, a little prompt (best school-set film of all time, top-three pastries she’d ever eaten, most underrated song of the early ’00s).

It was sort of all right, then, when everyone else was awake. The problem was the time after she went to bed.

On Wednesday, when she still wasn’t asleep at two, she took four of the accidentally-not-non-drowsy antihistamines that had sat in the bathroom cupboard for years. An hour later she was still awake, with The Office filling half her screen, and the fourth page of Google search results for antihistamine overdose death? on the other.

When Ash flagged even earlier on Thursday, Bette climbed into bed and lay in the dark in her room. She willed herself to sleep, determined not to open her laptop.

It didn’t take long to accept it wasn’t happening. She unplugged her phone and brought it back to bed with her.

Bette:I can’t sleep

Bette:tell me what I should do

Ruth:What do you normally do when you can’t sleep?

Bette:normally?

Bette:I roll over

Bette:and I sleep

Bette:I love to sleep

Ruth:You’re the worst. Okay. Have you tried audiobooks? Soothing voice, quiet story, nothing too gripping, no screen glare?

Bette:never really tried

A link arrived a minute later, an audiobook gifted to her: The Remains of the Day.

Ruth:Okay, give this one a go. McNulty reading it (fit), great story even if you’ve already read it, every single sentence beautiful, but not exciting enough to keep you awake.

Bette:oh I’ve heard great things!

Bette:never read it before

Bette:thank you

Ruth:It’s nothing! Hope it helps, And fingers crossed you sleep soon!

The book, it turned out, was not nothing.

Fucking Stevens. Stevens wandering about the big old house and feeling a thousand things and doing precisely nothing about any of them. Fucking Stevens. By the time he was preparing a tea tray and Miss Kenton was talking about her engagement, playing some horrible game of marriage chicken with him, Bette could feel tears slipping down her cheeks and onto her pillow. By the time he was sitting by the bus stop she had been reduced to sobs so loud that Ash knocked on her door. She managed to say It’s not Mei, it’s this stupid book, and Ash set her mouth in a firm line, nodded with an attitude that felt both sympathetic and exasperated, and left.

It was morning, then, which wasn’t ideal. But people with much more complex jobs than hers could survive without any sleep, she reasoned. Nurses, parents, long-haul drivers. And she’d been lying down the whole time.

Bette:absolutely fuck you

Ruth:Good morning! Are you… all right?

Bette:I did not sleep

Bette:but at least Stevens is going to die alone in the horrible sad Nazi house

Ruth:Ah.

Bette:AH

Ruth:So you listened to the book. It did not send you to sleep.

Bette:I listened to the book

Bette:I listened to seven hours and five minutes of the book

Bette:I may never recover from the book

Ruth:I’m…sorry?

Bette:correct

Bette:at least I know that things could get worse

Bette:this breakup?

Bette:nothing

Bette:I’ve barely scraped the surface of human devastation

Ruth:See!? You’re welcome. Things could always be worse.

That Saturday night, Ash pulled two bottles of beer from the fridge, popped their tops off and brought them over to where Bette was sitting on the kitchen counter.

“So, Ruth texted. She and Gabe and her flatmates are going bowling tonight. They thought we might want to come?”

“Why didn’t she just ask me?” Bette said, her chest suddenly tight and anxious.

“Oh, she said that she didn’t know if you’d be in the mood but that you’re not great at saying no. Which is true, before you get all weird about it. So if you’re not up to it, I can text no from both of us. I’m great at saying no.”

“So they’re going bowling? Like, bowling bowling?” Bette asked. “I thought we’d agreed I’m not coordinated enough for sport.”

“I’m not entirely sure we’d call bowling a sport,” Ash replied, thoughtfully, as she took a sip from her bottle. “But I think it probably doesn’t matter if you’re crap at it.”

“Oh great,” Bette said. “Another punishing humiliation on the cards for me.”

Because that was the whole point, really, wasn’t it? She was heartbroken, yes. She kept thinking about the lost future with Mei, about the fact that she would never kiss her again, would never sit across the sofa from her and hear about the plan for the latest sculpture. Would never again walk into a restaurant proud that of everyone in the world Mei could be at dinner with, she had chosen to be with Bette. But all of it was amplified by the mortification, by the humiliation. The shame of having shouted so loudly about being so in love, and to have been proved incorrect. Of having been found inadequate. Far too easy to let go of and move on from. Inconsequential.

“So that’s a yes?” Ash said, her voice sounding very far away. “We can get an Uber and get drunk on cheap beer and both agree to be bad at it?”

Everything in Bette was screaming no: she wanted a Saturday night in bed, wanted to catch up on the sleep she’d missed. But Ash looked so excited about it, like the idea had so much promise. And Ruth was right. She was terrible at saying no.

“Really, really bad at it, Ash. Promise?”

Two hours later, what was entirely apparent was that Ash was either an exceptional liar or an incredibly lucky amateur bowler. The bowling alley had a vaguely ridiculous Saturday night energy: remixed ’70s classics and disco lights, but also endless teenagers pouring bottles of what was probably vodka into their cinema-size cups of coke.

“It’s like riding a bike, isn’t it?” Ash said, her grin after her third consecutive strike stretching out past pleased and into smug. “I haven’t done this since I was a kid, but it’s pure muscle memory!”

“The master!” Jody said, falling in a mock bow. The quiff Bette remembered from their birthday was slightly softer, swoopier, and they were wearing jeans and a white tank top that looked unreasonably good with bowling shoes. “You’re wiping the floor with us.”

It was kind, Bette thought, to include everyone in this summation of where things stood. There were some very decent totals on the board, none of which were hers. She picked up an orange ball with a ten carved into it, lined it up and rolled it firmly and devastatingly straight into the gutter. The indignity was only amplified by having to repeat it before they could move onto Ruth’s turn. She knocked down a single pin with her second throw, which felt somehow worse than none. Like she couldn’t even commit to truly failing.

“I thought this might be a fun distraction,” Ruth said as Bette sat back down across from her. “I didn’t think you’d be so awful at it.” There was a supportive energy somewhere in her tone, but mostly Ruth was laughing at her. Gabe was sitting alongside Ruth, an arm flung easily along the back of the plastic booth, his face all warm sympathy. Bette fought the impulse to tell him where precisely he could shove it.

He had been making such a clear effort, and Bette felt bad. She was tired, in a weird mood. Having to put on a face for Gabe, for someone she didn’t know that well, who kept focusing attention in her direction, felt beyond her.

“At least you’re not that guy,” Gabe said as Ruth stood to take her turn. He gestured over her shoulder, toward a tall, broad guy who’d thrown the ball so hard that it had bounced across two of the lanes, taking out a cluster of pins that were definitely not his.

“At least he’s hit some pins down,” Bette said with a shrug, turning back toward him.

“Oh, come on,” he said. “You’ve done all right!”

She looked at him, brow furrowed, trying to figure him out.

“Okay, you haven’t. I’ve never seen anyone bowl a worse game. You know, if you can keep your total below twenty by the end, that’s probably some sort of lanes record. They’ll hang a picture of you.”

Bette couldn’t help it. She laughed.

“So, are you a natural, or a stealth expert?” she asked.

Gabe shrugged, his plump lips pursing and holding back a smile. “Stealth expert, I’m afraid. I bowled a lot as a kid. Couldn’t believe my luck when Ruth told me the plan. Hadn’t prepared myself for competing with Ash’s skills”—he saluted Ash, and she grinned back over her plastic beer cup—“but hopefully I’ve done all right. I wanted to be able to show off a bit.”

His eyes moved to Ruth, lining up her second shot. She bent over, and Bette looked away.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Bette said. “She’s pretty impressive.”

“Intimidatingly so,” he agreed, clapping Ruth’s entirely respectable seven pins and high-fiving her as she returned to the booth.

“You talking about me?”

“Heather, actually,” Bette lied. “Mortifying to assume we were talking about you.”

Ruth rolled her eyes and Heather snorted, splitting the jug of increasingly warm lager between their plastic cups. Unlike the rest of them, all in assorted jeans and dungarees and T-shirts, Heather had clearly taken the bowling lane as an opportunity to dress up. Her pleated skirt flirted with being too short whenever she leaned down to roll the ball down the lane. Her socks were pulled up over her knees. It was an outfit Bette would have been jealous of when she was seven. It was an outfit she was pretty jealous of now. Heather looked long and sexy and irreverent as she flung the ball in the general direction of the pins, turning back to the group before it connected, missing the moment when eight pins took a fall. There was a cool insouciance about it that floored Bette.

But then, when Heather’s second ball missed the pins entirely, she didn’t watch that either. Bette couldn’t imagine being so cool about…anything, actually.

Maybe, if she’d been a bit cooler about Mei, she wouldn’t have lost her. Maybe she could have just refused the whole thing from the start; laughed at Mei in bed that morning and kissed her instead and told her no. Maybe she wouldn’t be single all over again, wouldn’t have people looking at her with pity while she bowled a terrible game. Maybe she wouldn’t have given Mei an opportunity to leave her for someone else. To realize just how much she didn’t need Bette.

“Bette,” she heard, distantly. She blinked a few times, her vision blurred, and Ash’s concerned face came into focus near hers. She was crouched in front of her, and Bette was aware that she had almost certainly been there for a while. That, from the way Ruth was looking at her from over Ash’s shoulder, from the way that everyone else was avoiding eye contact, Ash had probably been trying to get her attention for a while. Bette reached up to touch her cheeks. They were wet. Fantastic. Truly, just what the evening called for.

“Sorry—I—” she started.

“It’s okay,” Ash said. “It’s hard watching me be so good at this, I know.”

It eased things, and they all laughed. Bette took a breath.

“Do you…want help?” Ruth asked, clearly already cringing at her offer. “Bowling-wise? If it would keep you from tears?”

“Sure,” Bette said, as she stood and found the orange ball. “I probably can’t get any worse.”

Ruth followed her, pulling her jeans up to settle high on her waist. An emerald-green shirt billowed over them, a bra in the same shade revealing itself every time the shirt slipped from her shoulder. Bette couldn’t stop looking at it.

“To be clear,” Ruth said as they approached the lane. “I have no advice to offer. I mean, any advice beyond: try and roll it straight, or straight-ish, so that it doesn’t go in the gutter. If it goes straight, it will maybe knock some pins down.”

“Great,” Bette said, the word damp with sarcasm as she walked toward the line and brought the ball up to her chest. “Don’t know how I’ve been doing this without you.”

There was a horrible moment just before she let go of the ball when she realized something had gone terribly wrong. Instead of leaving her hand, instead of rolling straight into the gutter, the weight of the ball pulled her arm forward and her knees hit the ground, her fingers trapped in its tiny, ridiculous little holes. She was on the ground, in the lane. There was a moment of shocked silence, and then Bette could feel her shoulders start to shake.

“Laughing or crying?” Ruth said from behind her, her voice on the edge of full hysterics. “Are we laughing or crying?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Bette said, as tears of…something ran down her cheeks.

“Yeah, okay, that makes sense,” Ruth said, and then crouched down beside her and pulled her into a hug. Ash and Heather and Jody and Gabe joined them, collapsing on top in a sort of scrum, as if Bette had done something impressive rather than utterly mortifying.

“God, this is a size four,” Jody said, laughing so much that their breaths had turned to hiccups. “It’s for a child, Bette.” They pulled the ball from Bette’s hand and Bette could tell, once it was loose, that it was much smaller than the ball she’d been using for the rest of the evening. It was impossible not to see it now, how small it looked alongside the others.

“Lane Nine. Please do not sit in the lane, Lane Nine,” an exhausted voice said over the tannoy.

“Yeah, I think we’re done,” Ruth said, pushing herself to her feet and reaching down for Bette’s hand. “Kebabs?”

They waved goodbye to Gabe outside the bowling alley, Jody wolf-whistling as he pulled Ruth aside and kissed her. He hugged them all in turn, and Bette really wanted to like him. There was absolutely no reason for her not to.

As they walked toward the kebab shop, Bette looked round at everyone: Heather and Jody arm in arm up ahead, Ash’s fingers threaded through her own, Ruth (whose heels she kept treading on) half a step in front of them. It was nice, just the five of them. She pulled Ash forward, and they fell into step with Ruth.

“Was it my fault he left?” Bette asked. “Gabe, I mean. I’m really sorry for crying. And I know I don’t have much chat tonight. I should have made more of an effort.”

“Oh! No, no. He’s on deadline, nothing to do with you. He just wanted to spend some time with everyone, even if only for a couple of hours. And I’m trying to be better at inviting him into different bits of my life.”

“Ooh, yeah, crucial step,” Ash said, nodding sagely.

“Think I wanted to keep it all separate for a while? It was easy to have him at Jody’s birthday, when there were so many people. But it feels like a bigger deal to have him in a smaller group. And look, there’s just no doubt they were all going to love him. And that—you know? It might make things more—I don’t know. Serious.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Ash agreed.

“He’s a good guy though,” Ruth said. “Really good. I like him. He fits right in.”

“He seems great,” Bette said, wanting to be generous. “Really great. I can see why you like him.”

“Yeah, he’s—he’s exactly the right sort of person for me,” Ruth said, her tone odd in a way Bette couldn’t place.

The lighting in the kebab shop could only reasonably be described as glaring. After the disco lights of the bowling alley, it was stark. Everyone’s sweaty, patchy faces made Bette anxious about her own. Bowling might not be a sport, but dancing around under disco lights and throwing heavy balls around was exercise of a sort. Surely. But the end-of-the-night makeup—the flaking, the smudging, the damp sweat—suited everyone else. They looked, honestly, like they’d had fun. So perhaps it was suiting her too. Maybe she looked gorgeous, like everyone else did.

They claimed the middle table in the kebab shop, pulled up an extra chair and ordered falafel stuffed into flatbread with vinegar-soaked cabbage and shredded carrot with extra chili and garlic sauce. And as Bette was looking around the table, marveling over the beauty of everyone with their smudged makeup, Ruth returned with two baskets of bread and two bowls of chips. Bette groaned in appreciation and realized, as she did, quite how tipsy she was.

“Fuck, yes,” Jody said, splitting open a piece of bread and filling it with chips that left salt on their fingers. “The dream. Do you have—” They looked up at Ruth and reached for a tub of what looked like garlic sauce.

“Okay, brief review?” Heather said, once they had all followed Jody’s lead and Ruth had pulled a second pot of the garlic sauce from her pocket.

“You know I love this place. The bread’s soft, plenty of vinegar, chili sauce is hot, falafel crisp,” Ruth began.

Heather shook her head. “No, no, no. Your boyfriend’s review.”

Bette wasn’t sure when she’d missed Gabe’s upgrade from “guy I’m taking it slow with” to “boyfriend,” but Ruth didn’t deny the label.

“Hey! We don’t need to do—” Ruth started.

“Oh, we absolutely do,” Jody agreed. “I missed him at my party, and he’s been a proper little ghost the past month.”

“He’s not a ghost! Just because he’s not constantly around doesn’t imply ghost. We’re taking it slow. Plus, unlike you lot, his flatmates aren’t entirely lacking in boundaries. So—”

“So you’ve been staying at his,” Heather shrugged. “Fine, you can be all squirrely about him, but we’ve met him properly now, and we have some opinions.”

“Ugh, fine,” Ruth said.

Heather and Jody looked at each other. Bette looked at Ruth, watching the tension radiating from her as she waited with raised eyebrows. Ash looked at her kebab.

“We loooove him,” Heather and Jody said together, looking at Ruth with wide grins.

“Oh god,” Ruth said, and Ash laughed.

“We loooooove him,” Heather emphasized. “He’s great. Up for a laugh, good sport, confident but has the stuff to back it up, clearly adores you. Tick, tick, tick.”

Bette thought back to him wanting to impress Ruth, to how he’d spent the evening always seemingly aware of her even when in conversation with someone else. Thought of him with a hand on Ruth’s thigh.

“He really does,” Bette said, and Ruth looked over, her eyes wide and surprised. Hopeful.

“Yeah?” she said, as though hearing it from Bette somehow confirmed it.

“Oh, absolutely,” Ash agreed. “Couldn’t take his eyes off you.”

“Plus that mouth,” Jody said. “That’s a mouth you could really—”

“Okay, okay, let’s leave the review there,” Ruth said, eyes closed and head shaking, as if hoping to wipe the last ten seconds from her mind.

“Ugh fine. But this isn’t over,” Jody said, and they all munched in silence for a moment, Ruth’s cheeks and chest pink.

“So, Bette. I’ve been gagging to ask. How are you?” Heather had redirected her attention, and Bette saw Ruth breathe a sigh of relief.

She had been anticipating it, ready for the sympathy, for the kindness that she thought might tip her over the edge into tears again. But instead Heather was simply hungry for drama, was ready to bring opinions. It made Bette want to be honest, even in the company of people she’d only met once before. She didn’t have to perform misery here, or feign nonchalance either, if it wasn’t what she was feeling. And so:

“Honestly, and it’s nothing to do with tonight. This has been great. But yeah, pretty miserable.”

No one reached out to take her hand or pat her on the shoulder, just nodded at the truth of what she had said. Bette loved them.

“It just hits me at weird moments,” she said.

“Ruth hasn’t said anything, except that you maybe needed a bit of a cheer-up crew,” Jody said, biting into their kebab and smearing sauce on their chin. “Which isn’t a nudge for information. Just didn’t want you to think we’ve all been gossiping about you at home.”

“Oh,” Bette said in surprise. “I just assumed. But then, I’m a terrible gossip. I would have been telling the story if the situation was reversed.”

“It’s true,” Ash interjected, mouth full of cabbage.

“Oh, I think we all are. Normally,” Ruth said. “But it just didn’t—it wasn’t my story to tell.”

“My girlfriend,” Bette started, and then corrected herself. “My ex-girlfriend has a new girlfriend.” She looked to Jody, the only one she hadn’t clarified the situation with. “We were on a break, but—”

“Oh no, sorry. We obviously know that bit, about the shagging around,” Jody interrupted. “Like, Ruth’s not a gossip, but we have definitely discussed the odyssey. Your odyssey. A bit—well, a lot.”

Ruth’s head dropped dramatically into her hands as Heather and Ash laughed.

“Okay, well, that’s fair enough,” Bette conceded. “So the update is that she has met someone else. And didn’t tell me about it. And in three weeks I have to go to our friends’ wedding and they’re going to be there together. And I could just not go, I guess. But I made a big show of being fine about it to one of the brides. And also, I don’t want her to win.”

“Sounds like you need a girlfriend for this wedding,” Heather said, head cocked to the side and voice thoughtful.

“Or she could just go on her own and be charming and brilliant and it will be fine,” Ruth said, firmly.

“No, I’m with Heather,” Ash said. “Fuck, Bette, you need to win here. And showing up with some gorgeous woman on your arm is the way to do it. It’s bullshit and privileges couples and you shouldn’t ever need someone. But…maybe here you do.”

“Sure, well, I’ll just get over Mei and quickly fall in love. You know, with one of the many lesbians in Bristol who are angling for a shot at an emotionally fucked-up complete mess of a woman.”

“Exactly,” Jody said. “That’s a great plan.”