Chapter Thirteen She’s Lost Control
Chapter Thirteen: She’s Lost Control
Aisling could hardly get the key into the lock for the tears in her eyes and the shaking of her hand. She did manage it though, through sheer stubborn determination, and shoved the flat door open with a satisfying bang against the wall.
She didn’t even bother to close the door.
Just barged in, a whirlwind of coats and skirts, and began ransacking the place.
Could evidence of his mistresses be found in the credenza?
No? How about the little drawers of the coffee table?
She found hand lotion and a few porno rags which, while disgusting, weren’t exactly the evidence she was looking for.
She sniffled and rubbed roughly at her eyes, trying not to think of what that would do to her mascara, and searched on.
If he was going to behave like an oik, she was going to act like an oik’s girlfriend and go straight up mental on him.
She kicked his hideous guitar, the one that was more gaffer tape than wood, and it hit the floor with a resounding, discordant thrum.
It made her feel marginally better before she moved her attack to the bedroom.
This -- this -- this bastard had jerked her around for five years.
He’d made her bloody miserable and she’d put up with it all, come back to him time and time again, and for what?
How did he repay her? By shagging some tart and blaming it all on Aisling.
Well, she’d had enough. She was damn sick and tired of being Julian’s whipping dog.
He thought he could get away with anything because he was fit and in some band.
She was going to show him that didn’t mean fuck all.
She was going to find the proof that he’d shagged someone else and then she’d rub his bloody nose in it.
She tore open the drawer of his nightstand only to find more lubricant, porn, and tissues.
All right, it wasn’t like she hadn’t known that men wanked, but this was getting ridiculous.
She got down on her stockinged knees and peered under the bed.
Some recklessly abandoned pants (Julian’s, unless he was shagging girls who wore Y-fronts), dust-bunnies, football boots, and what would otherwise be quite a scandalous collection of Kate Bush records in a mouldering cardboard box.
Shouldering off the defeat, Aisling flung open the wardrobe.
Her eyes were assaulted by a discordant array of what could loosely be termed “clothes” and what would more accurately be described as “regalia.” She quickly shuttered the wardrobe doors to save herself from being blinded.
If there were girls’ clothes in there, they would be indistinguishable from the frocks that Julian, unfortunately, already owned.
Defeat biting at her heels, Aisling still refused to give in and took her search to the bathroom even as her better judgement warred with her. Under the sink, nothing. Mirror cabinet, nothing. The mirror shut and she was abruptly confronted by her own reflection.
Her permed curls were lank against her forehead, her white cheeks streaked with black, and, behind all these, a face she no longer recognized.
The green eyes were wild and unfocused, the shapely lips pale and chapped.
The face she’d studied as a teen, the face she’d spent hours tracing for signs of spots or over-large pores, the face she’d applied makeup to every morning for the past seven years, was nowhere to be found.
She didn’t recognize this incensed harpy, this creature so overcome with jealousy as to break in and tear apart her boyfriend’s home.
She’d dreamed of being a famous fashion designer once.
Julian had been two years above her but he’d changed majors from graphic design to fashion design and thus ended up in the same fashion theory class as Aisling, who’d been in her first year.
His hair had been red then, a dark, unnatural crimson colour that drew the eye.
He would spend lessons bent over his spiral notebook, doodling away mad designs.
She’d asked to see them once, after the lesson, when she’d worked up enough courage to speak to him.
He’d shown her and she’d been baffled, frightened, and intrigued all at once.
Demons sucking the life out of David Bowie, monkeys dressed as schoolgirls, jaguars with guns for teeth.
It was deranged, but entirely unique. And good. If she’d only been half as talented…
They became fast friends. He was full of endless ideas and jokes and she was utterly fascinated.
She could have listened to him for hours, and she did.
Much like Newton’s first law, if uninterrupted he could go on forever.
His thoughts would spiral ever farther afield until they only loosely resembled human ideas.
They were more like an extraterrestrial language, or acid trip reasoning, but he didn’t touch any drugs outside of the occasional pot and student-typical alcohol consumption.
She’d fallen so hopelessly in love with him that, in hindsight, she had been a complete fool.
It had been, if she was being perfectly honest with herself, pathetic.
She’d followed him everywhere with puppy dog enthusiasm and round, awestruck eyes.
Most of the others at uni found him to be too odd of a duck and shunned him -- and, by extension, her.
She lost most of the friends she’d made in her short time at Saint Martins, unable to reconcile her friend group with the man whose side she refused to leave.
For his part, he seemed utterly unaware of her devotion and only mildly aware of her presence.
That isn’t to say he ignored her, but she did think that he would have been just as happy chatting away to her as he would have been the local kebab vendor or the brass Tiffany-style lamp in the library.
He seemed less interested in her low-cut tops and daringly short skirts than he did in her sparkly bangles and brightly coloured jumpers.
He’d once asked her where she’d bought her pink cowboy boots and the very next day he arrived at class wearing the same pair, only a few sizes larger.
If it hadn’t been for the lewd drawings of preposterously breasted women she’d espied in his notebook, she would’ve begun to suspect him uninterested in the female species as a whole.
She would have been more content had he in fact been gay because soon her warm adoration soured to a bitter, one-sided obsession that left her feeling insecure and unworthy.
After a full year of yearning, she began to distance herself from Julian.
It was starting to hurt too much. She realised that Julian was like a sunbeam: it was beautiful and warm when you were in its path, but it was substanceless and fleeting, shining its light on the grass and birds and worms without discrimination or feeling.
Outside of the lessons they shared, she ceased seeking him out.
It was an experiment at first, to see if he would notice she was gone.
Then it was out of resentment when he failed to come looking for her or even mention her sudden absence when they did see each other in class.
The next term, she waited for him to choose his classes first and then chose the ones he wouldn’t be in.
It was painful at first, but then the colour slowly started to come back into her life.
University seemed full of possibilities again.
She made new friends and picked back up some of the old ones.
She went out dancing with the girls and was chatted up by a handsome lad, so she gave him her phone number and he rang her, like a proper man would.
They began dating and fucking and Aisling could bring him out with her friends and they wouldn’t give her distressed side-eyes or confused scowls.
She felt appreciated and well-liked and began to feel really quite happy. Until Julian showed back up.
Or, rather, showed up for the first time.
He’d never been bothered to come looking for her before.
She returned home to her student flat to find Julian sat on the steps of the building, looking small and pitiful.
He was quite drunk. Despite all the time she’d been away from him, seeing him again snatched the breath from her lungs and wrung out her heart like a flannel.
She was just as in love with him as she had been a year ago, and it didn’t hurt any less.
Like a fool, she’d invited him in and put the kettle on.
He’d blubbered about how he’d missed her and couldn’t understand why she’d left.
He thought he must’ve done something wrong.
When she’d started pulling away, he thought it must’ve been because she was finally fed up with him, and with good reason, he had nothing to offer.
He was stupid and ugly and poor and she was beautiful and lovely and elegant.
He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t even know what he was doing there.
He’d then buried his face in his arms and gone very quiet.