Chapter Twenty-One #2
I drop my forehead into my hand. “Jesus, Cam.”
“Aw,” Emma coos. “You tried to make friends with Bernardo?”
Cam puffs up his chest. “I thought it was a good idea.”
Oscar shakes his head, aghast. “He tried to eat your fucking face!”
“Yes, O, I am aware the friendship did not blossom.”
There’s a pause before we all burst out laughing, my stomach hurting and tears forming in my eyes.
Wow.
This is the first time in my life where I don’t have to work hard at trying to make friends.
Cam fills every silence before it can become uncomfortable, Oscar seems to have forgotten I asked that stupid question, and Ewan has known me long enough that I don’t need to pretend around him anyway.
Even Emma has started including me in conversations when she can.
Around these people I feel more like myself than I have in years.
One friend in particular makes me the most me I think I’ve been in my whole life, and she’s the only one not sat here with us. Which is why I can’t fuck things up with her.
The conversation moves away from Bernardo and into Ewan telling everyone about this lad from our Law lecture who fell down the stairs and nearly cracked his head open, which turns into everyone confessing the most embarrassing thing they’ve done at uni so far.
Dave fell asleep in a seminar and snored so loudly no one could hear what was being said.
Cam walked into the women’s toilets and didn’t realise until a girl screamed.
Oscar sent an email to the wrong lecturer complaining about the lecturer he’d intended to email.
I’m only half listening when they start taking the piss out of Oscar, because Ruby’s laugh pulls my attention to her and I feel my body coil tight.
I physically don’t think I’ll be able to bear it if she gets a boyfriend.
She’s moved closer to our side of the pub and Tom the Tosser is whispering in her ear.
She is so fucking beautiful it hurts to look at her sometimes, like being punched square in the chest. I know that’s cringe and cliché and kind of pathetic, but it doesn’t make it any less true.
It fucking stings to see him all over her like that and there’s sweet fuck all I can do about it.
A body slides into the empty space beside me at the end of the booth. “You know she’s flirting with him, right?” The voice makes every part of me completely lock up, and my head swivels towards Bonnie. She’s wearing black jeans and a cream jumper, hair tied back, a glass of wine in one hand.
I shift away from her, my body turning to ice.
“Hi, Josh.”
“What do you want?”
“Nothing.” She sips her drink and nods towards the other side of the room. “I was just wondering why you’re sitting here letting that boy hit on your girlfriend?”
My girlfriend? The fuck is she talking about? “Have you gone off your meds by any chance?”
“No,” Bonnie shakes her head. “I remember her very clearly announcing herself as your girlfriend.”
Oh. Yeah. I can’t keep the lie up at this table, they’ll all call me out and Oscar would lose his shit. “She’s not my girlfriend,” I mutter, leaning further and further away from the bane of my fucking life but trying to make sure the others can’t hear.
Her dark brows lift. “I’m not sure I believe that.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you believe.” I hiss, keeping my voice low. “She’s not my girlfriend, alright? She can talk to who she wants.”
Bonnie reaches out and brushes my hair off my head. “You look tired, Josh.”
My mouth drops open and I shove her hand away. “Are you fucking alright?”
She pulls her hand back slowly, eyes scanning my face. “You always get that crease in your eyebrows when you’re knackered.”
“You don’t know me anymore.”
“You’re in a bad mood. Is it because she’s over there?”
“No. It’s because you’re talking to me.”
Bonnie sighs. “You’re blaming me for the wrong things, Josh.”
Rage slams into me. “I’m not doing this shit here.”
“Fine,” she snaps, roughly shoving her hair back and straightening her spine. “At least tell me if you’re going to his memorial at the end of January?”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “This has got to be some sick game.”
“You didn’t go to the last one—”
“And you did?” I demand, feeling like a poisonous snake whose head has been cut off, writhing around on the floor, hissing and bleeding out. “You still go to them?”
She nods. “Yeah. Every single one.”
I close my eyes. “I can’t do this.”
“Josh.” Her voice is horribly soft, so much like the girl I grew up with.
The one that I trusted and loved. “You have very valid reasons to hate me,” she pushes on, trying to force me into a conversation I never want to have.
“I won’t deny that. I betrayed you deeply and I know it.
But do you not think I’m the one person who can explain things you never knew about him? Tell you what he was thinking—”
I shove away from the booth so fast my knee catches the underside of the table and several drinks jump against the wood.
Cam stops mid-sentence, Oscar turns towards me and Ewan’s expression changes as soon as he sees who is next to me.
The whole pub is too loud and suddenly I can smell hay that isn’t fucking there, hear the snap of rope, feel the weight of his cold and lifeless body.
“Josh?” Ewan’s voice is laced with concern.
I’m too much of a coward to even glance his way. “I need air.” I shoulder through the crowd towards the door, past people laughing with their mouths wide open, and by the time I get outside I’m dragging breath in so hard it hurts.
I think I’m going to be sick.
James would have fucking hated all these memorials they keep throwing him, the ones they insist I arrive at because it maintains our family image.
James hated being the centre of attention unless he’d chosen it himself.
He’d have taken the piss out of the photographs Mum chooses, complained that half of them were hideous and asked why nobody had picked the one from Spain where he thought his abs were decent.
He would have stood at the back making inappropriate comments until I laughed during somebody’s speech and Dad got furious with both of us.
Except he won’t.
Because it’s his memorial.
And my brother will always be dead.
My lungs refuse to fill at the right speed. I brace both hands against the metal railing bordering the pavement and tip my head towards the ground, trying to concentrate on the wet concrete beneath my trainers rather than James, Bonnie, Dad, Mum, Bonnie’s mum, that fucking barn, any of it.
I don’t want to go to another memorial.
I don’t want to stand beside my parents while people tell me how brilliant my brother was.
I know he was brilliant. I knew which cereal he ate first out of those variety packs because we used to fight over the Coco Pops.
I knew he hated sleeping with socks on and always left them trapped inside the bottom of the duvet.
I knew he couldn’t whisper to save his fucking life, cheated at Monopoly and used my razor even though he had his own.
I knew him alive. I don’t need another room full of people telling me about him dead.
The pub door opens behind me, and footsteps cross the paving stones. “Josh?”
I shut my eyes.
No, no, no.
I don’t want her to see me like this.
Ruby comes closer, but she doesn’t touch me. “Hey.”
“I’m fine,” I bark, trying to wrangle in every emotion and every impossible feeling.
“I don’t remember asking.”
I release the railing and straighten, rubbing my hands together before turning towards her.
She’s got her coat on, zipped halfway up, and the wind is blowing strands of hair across her face.
She pushes them behind her ear and studies me with enough concern that I already know I’m not going to be able to convince her there’s nothing wrong.
“I heard a crazy rumour today,” Ruby offers.
Am I entering psychosis? “What?”
“Apparently there’s a girl on my course who had sex with someone in the toilets down the hall. Only they didn’t have a condom, so they used a crisp packet.”
I can’t be hearing right. “Did you just say a crisp packet?”
“Yep. Cheese and onion if you want to be specific.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“You must be.”
“Everyone is talking about it. You could ask the people on my course. Some of them are inside.”
She means Tom the Tosser. “I’m not going back inside to talk to Tom.”
“Why not?” She shrugs. “Tom is nice enough.”
Jealousy engulfs every inch of me, and I have to shove it all back down before I scream things I can’t take back. “I’m sure he is.”
Ruby sighs, hazel eyes watching me calmly. “What’s wrong, Josh?”
I turn away from her and rest my forearms against the railing, staring across the road at the dark row of buildings opposite.
She comes to stand beside me, facing the buildings too, her shoulder almost touching mine. “You can tell me anything, you know that, right?”
I bow my head, an odd sense of shame taking place as the frustration slowly drains away. “What would I say?”
She shrugs. “Why don’t you tell me what you think about a crisp packet being used as a condom?”
“I think it’s not possible.”
“You’re probably right.” Without warning, she reaches out and entwines her fingers with mine, a sharp jolt running straight through me. She gives my hand a quick, reassuring squeeze. “I’m not sure if you know this, but you can trust me. Like, if you want to talk I’m here.”
I let myself picture what trusting her would mean.
It would mean telling her things I avoid saying out loud.
Letting her see me on the days where I’m angry for no reason, where I disappear, where I don’t answer anyone, where James is in my head so much I can barely think around him.
She likes me now because I can keep most of that out of sight, and I have no idea what happens when I can’t.
She rests her head against my shoulder and nearly finishes me off with the smell of whatever flowery shampoo she uses.
I want this girl in ways I don’t know what to do with.