Chapter 19
The pathetic thing is that, despite all of it, I do still want to see Felix. Isn’t that sad? And yet I am what I am, so when he messages asking if I want to come over to his flat, I agree to it.
Pathetic that this is what it takes to rouse me from my misery hibernation.
I haven’t actually left the flat since I got back from Laurie’s via Felix’s.
It’s Thursday now so what’s that? Nearly four days of full hermit-ing.
Nothing but pyjamas, and certainly no make-up because I’m barely leaving my room.
I don’t feel proud to say that this includes lectures, and I am not usually one to skip school.
Just as bad, I haven’t been able to motivate myself to look at the problems that have been sent in for my next column.
Grudgingly, I open the unread email in the problem page email account.
Dear M-E,
I feel like in general I’m pretty smart, but my boyfriend leaves me feeling kind of confused.
We’ve been together since sixth form (where we were the only two out gay guys in our year) and now we’re at different unis.
He’s in Leeds and I’m here. Since we’ve been doing long distance, I feel like things have changed between us.
We fight a lot more than we ever did, which is not good obviously, but when we fight he’ll bring things up, supposed bad things I did in the past, and I have no idea what he’s talking about.
I’ve racked my brain and I just have no memory of these situations, or, if I do, they’re not at all how I remember them.
And when I bring up things I know he did, he completely denies them and tells me I’m making them up to create conflict between us.
Is it a question of perspective or is he lying to me?
Long distance has been really hard because I miss him, but also because he hates knowing I’m going out with friends, going to parties, clubs and all that.
But it’s not like he’s staying home when he’s in Leeds!
I love him and I want to be with him, but I’m finding the whole thing kind of a lot.
Love,
Gay-zed and Confused
My chest fills with compassion for this sweet person who’s putting their trust in me, and thoughts start swirling in my head of how to answer, but the idea of sitting down at my laptop and typing out a response makes me feel a bit sick.
I can’t imagine having the confidence to dispense advice about anything right now.
The magazine will have to make do without my pearls of wisdom this issue. I can’t find them.
But if Felix wants to see me then who am I to say no, right?
‘Well, don’t you look cute!’ Aleesha trills from the kitchen as I attempt to make a sneaky exit to Felix’s. Busted. ‘It’s nice to see you looking more like you.’
‘Thank you!’ I say over my shoulder, putting my hand on the doorknob to signal my exit right that very second. But it doesn’t work.
‘Where are you off to?’ she asks me over her shoulder, stirring something delicious-smelling on the stovetop. It would probably be nice to stay in tonight, be looked after by Aleesha and Morgan, but I’m not going to do that, am I?
I contemplate lying about where I’m headed, but Aleesha is too perceptive. Her face falls. ‘Not Felix,’ she says, the disappointment in her voice palpable.
I sigh, because I know I’m being pathetic and I can’t hide it from her. ‘Yes, Felix,’ I mumble.
She doesn’t say anything, just nods.
‘I’ll see you later. I can’t imagine I’ll be staying at Felix’s.’
‘He doesn’t deserve a Mary-Elizabeth sleepover,’ she says resolutely. ‘Love you.’
‘Love you too,’ I call back.
* * *
Maybe it’s that the temperature has taken a dive recently but I feel a chill when I approach the gate, like he could be there again, kissing another girl on the doorstep right in front of me.
But of course he’s not. I wonder if I’ll think about that every time I come here. I wonder if I’ll come here again.
I knock on the door and wait an almost interminable length of time before it swings open.
‘Come in.’ He holds his arms out to hug me.
I let him, breathing in the luxurious, expensive scent of him.
‘Oscar and Mitchell are out,’ he says, gesturing for me to sit on the sofa (does he only invite me over when his flatmates are out?).
He flops down next to me, and I’m about to tell him about my weird, horrible experience and how silly I felt for coming here, but he speaks first. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about you crossing paths with Dana – that was not my intention at all.
But what happened to you? What do you mean, your night went weird?
’ he says, swiftly moving the attention from him to me.
I suddenly feel hot and panicked under this spotlight, because I realise I haven’t actually thought through whether to tell him that I stayed with Laurie.
I kept it from my flatmates for some reason, but with Felix I actually have a good reason to conceal it.
On the one hand, I don’t want to be . . .
somehow tainted by association with this person that Felix clearly can’t stand, but on the other I want him to understand that just because he wasn’t there for me when I needed someone looking out for me, it doesn’t mean no one was there for me.
My life (despite my best efforts) does not revolve around him.
‘I kind of blacked out at the end of the night,’ I begin, since that is the beginning.
‘Blacked out like . . . drank too much?’ He grimaces.
‘No, I definitely didn’t,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m pretty sure my drink got spiked.’
‘Wow,’ Felix says with a frown. ‘What happened?’
‘I have no idea, all I know is I kind of lost control of, like, everything, all of a sudden, right at the end of the night.’
‘Were you not keeping an eye on your drink?’
‘I mean, yeah, but so many people were coming up to talk to me in the DJ booth while I was also trying to keep the music going that I guess my attention was a bit divided,’ I say, because it’s true, but as I say it I can see it all through someone else’s eyes, that me not being 100 per cent vigilant 100 per cent of the time means that the blame fundamentally lies with me.
‘But it’s not like I did anything that .
. . I don’t know, that I shouldn’t have done? ’
‘No, no, of course not,’ he says, placating me. ‘But, babe, there are posters all over the union about not leaving your drink unattended. We literally ran an article about it last month. I just don’t get why you’d do it?’
‘But I didn’t,’ I say firmly, feeling a lump forming in my throat.
‘That’s the thing, I never left my drink alone, but like I said, loads of people came up to the booth to talk to me so it could have been anyone, and I just have no idea.
’ The thought keeps hitting me that I don’t know.
That gaping hole again. That blackness. That blank space.
That void. It’s too big to think about, like a real black hole in space.
Where do memories go? How can I have done things that I don’t remember?
How can there be a whole period of time that exists to other people, with me in it, but doesn’t exist to me?
It keeps running through my head, and every time I think about it too much I feel like I’m on the edge of a tall building and looking down.
Instant vertigo. I take a deep breath. ‘I didn’t do anything wrong. ’
He exhales loudly. ‘I’m not saying you did anything wrong; I’m just surprised you would put yourself in that position, you know? You’re too smart, right?’
‘Clearly not.’
‘So . . . then what happened?’
Maybe if he had responded better to the drink-spiking situation then I could have brought myself to tell him about Laurie taking care of me, but he didn’t, and I don’t want to be in the firing line of any more lectures from him.
Not about leaving my drink unattended, not about what a bad guy Laurie is.
So I skip it, and turn the spotlight back on him.
‘A friend took me back to their place in Camden so I wasn’t on my own, and then the next morning I thought I’d come see you since you’d missed the night because you were, you know, working so hard on this Quad situation and . . .’ I throw my hands up in defeat.
Felix exhales heavily. ‘Look, I didn’t mean for that to happen. At all. But it’s not like we’re exclusive, is it?’ He looks at me, eyebrows raised, as if he wants to properly check I understand this, which, on this one occasion, I do.
‘No, we’re not,’ I say a little grudgingly.
‘But that doesn’t mean I wanted to hurt you by kissing someone else right in front of you. I wouldn’t do that.’
I nod.
‘So if you come by to surprise me, and you cross paths with someone else, that’s sort of . . . out of my control, isn’t it?’
I nod again. Because he’s right. But that doesn’t make it feel any easier.
‘I don’t want us to have to stop seeing each other, because I like you a lot, but . . . I need to feel like I have my freedom. That’s the most important thing to me,’ he says, looking at me earnestly through those pretty, light-blue eyes. ‘Does that make sense?’
‘I understand,’ I tell him.
‘Good,’ he says, squeezing my leg. ‘I knew I could count on you.’
I smile at him. Maybe we don’t need to stop seeing each other?
Maybe I can just . . . deal with it, the way he wants me to?
Felix’s hand is still on my leg. And now it’s moving up my leg.
Oh. Oh? I was so deep in my feelings that I hadn’t even considered the idea of having sex with him again tonight.
And I don’t really think I want to. But .
. . if I did, it wouldn’t be so bad, would it?
Sex with him has always been good, always been fun, so maybe I should just go with it even if I wasn’t expecting it.
He kisses me, and I kiss him back, and we only make out for a few seconds before he pushes me backwards onto the sofa and starts removing my tights and unbuttoning his jeans, and pulling a condom out of his pocket and putting it on, and it’s all happening quite fast this time, and then he’s inside me, which should be fine and normal but right now I don’t like it and I don’t want him to be doing it but I find that I can’t actually say anything so I just try to look at him like no no no please stop but even though he’s looking in my eyes it’s like he’s not reading them, not picking up my silent message and really who can blame him because if I really wanted him to stop I would be saying so, wouldn’t I?
Finally, he rolls off me and pulls his jeans back on. ‘That was fun,’ he says, flicking his sweep of blond hair out of his eyes.
I didn’t stop him. But he didn’t ask. But I didn’t stop him.
But he didn’t ask. But I didn’t stop him.
But he didn’t ask. Or maybe he didn’t need to ask.
Maybe I should just be up for it. Up for anything.
Say yes, enjoy the adventure. That sounds like me.
So who can blame him for not expecting me to object?
But I can’t deny it didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel like the other times.
No intoxicating pull, no balloon-light feelings of joy.
‘Yeah . . . I think . . . I think I’m going to go now,’ I say, with the distinct feeling that I’m on autopilot, like I’m just gliding over the surface of everything that’s happening around me, like I can’t quite touch reality.
He walks me to the door. ‘It was good to see you. I’m glad we cleared the air,’ he says, holding my gaze, and I can’t help but wonder . . . did he really think I would like it? Or did he want to show me who’s boss?
‘Mmm-hmm,’ I say, nodding quickly, wanting to get out of there, wanting to get back to my flat. Why do I ever leave my flat?
‘I’ll see you soon, yeah?’ He smiles at me, and it’s like nothing’s happened at all. Maybe nothing did happen? Maybe I imagined it?
But as I walk down the manicured garden path, I can still feel the creeping dread, that stomach-drop of no no no I don’t want this.
People warned me and I didn’t fucking listen.
Classic me. Classic stupid me, just thinking I can dance my way through life and nothing that bad will ever happen to me and ‘don’t worry, I can handle it’, but it turns out I can’t handle it at all.
I’m an idiot. I’m a complete idiot for thinking that if I just kept it casual then Felix couldn’t hurt me.
Turns out expecting anything from him at all was way too much for him.
I kept saying I didn’t want him to be my boyfriend, it’s not like I want to marry him, blah blah blah.
Well, it turns out that even not being a total dick is beyond the realms of possibility for him. What an idiot I am.