Chapter Eleven Carys #2
I’m partway through untangling why she might care about men she doesn’t like wanting her, when she bursts into laughter.
‘I’m joking, babes. Your face was a picture. But look, I do look fit, though, don’t I?’
‘Y-yes,’ I say, feeling an old familiar discomfort at telling another woman she looks beautiful. It feels odd in my mouth, like if I loosened control on the words they might fly out and I’d say something too effusive. ‘You are going to knock them out.’
I’m not quite convinced that’s the right way to say that, but she seems pleased.
‘Good.’ She steps back and admires her tattooing work. ‘Sparks are going to fly, at least on one side.’
‘Sparks?’
‘Yeah, babe. Like, that magnetic, lightning feeling you get when you look at someone and think oh they’re a bit of me. These men are all nice and I fancy them, but I’m here for a spark.’ She cups her mouth with her hands and shouts up at the ceiling, ‘Strike me down with love, baby!’
Sparks. I’ve not felt sparks since Mikey, right at the beginning. I think.
‘What about you? Excited to see Patrick?’ she asks. I guess Bridget has been keeping up with me better than I have her.
‘Yeah,’ I say, unconvincingly. Until now, I’d not considered that Patrick might be seeing more than one woman today.
The front door to the dorms slams as Dolly walks back in, with some of the production team in tow. They call us over to get mic’d up, while Dolly goes to stand with Whit, her back slightly to me so I can see the black wire of her mic snaking around her neck.
If she’s just seeing Warren today and things don’t work out, does that mean tonight might be the last time we are together? If we both get dumped, we will both have to leave the warehouse.
My stomach hurts at the thought.
Because she’s a good friend. Because she lives far away and it’ll be hard to stay in contact. Because because because definitely not because I might—
‘Carys?’ I’m summoned from my thoughts as we are corralled to our doors, ready for our dates.
The wire snaking down my back makes me shiver. I do not look at Dolly.
Light on, cameras in the walls roll. Action.
When I walk in, the mirror barrier is still there. This feels like it could be a date just like any from the last few days – me and a plush couch, staring at my reflection, and trying not to panic.
Except I know that that divider is going to fall any moment.
I sit down neatly. If the barrier is going to suddenly crash down, I want him to see me looking my best. My most controlled.
‘Morning!’ Patrick calls cheerily, his voice coming through the speakers as usual.
‘Hi! Hi, it’s me, Carys.’
‘I know, Carys.’ I swear I can hear the smile as he says my name. ‘I’d recognise your voice anywhere. How are you doing today?’
‘I’m nervous,’ I admit, and then immediately regret it. ‘Not about seeing you. More about—’
‘Revealing ourselves, right?’
‘Yes.’ I’m thankful that he gets it. ‘I hope you like me.’
‘I adore you, Carys.’ My heart flutters in my chest. He adores me? Patrick adores me? I’m not sure a man has told me they adore me before.
‘Carys and Patrick?’ A voice sounds from the speaker, though I can’t be sure who it is. ‘The barrier is going to come down in a moment, so could you both please stand? We need to remind you that this date is strictly no touching.’
‘Oh gosh, here we go then,’ Patrick says. The same Patrick I’m about to be able to see.
I stand up slowly, trying to keep my quivering heart and soul inside my body. ‘What if we close our eyes,’ I rush out, ‘and then when the barrier is fully down, we open our eyes at the same time?’
‘Okay, I’ve closed my eyes.’
I close mine. ‘Promise?’
‘Promise. I’d make it a pinkie promise but this is a No Touching Zone.’
I giggle. ‘Hands where I can see them, Stringer.’
There’s a rumbling as the barrier comes down.
My fingers yearn to flick to shake out the nerves and redirect all that energy out through my extremities.
But I am being filmed, and Patrick is about to see me for the first time. I don’t want his first impression of me to be frantic, even if that’s how I feel inside. Even if that’s how I feel a lot of the time.
I clutch my hands together in front of me, the way I’ve been practising since I was small. It looks delicate. It looks quiet.
It feels like an age passes before the noise stops.
‘Are you ready?’ Patrick asks, and I jump slightly because this is the first time I’ve heard his voice in front of me, instead of through the speakers.
He really is right in front of me. Suddenly, he feels so much more real to me.
I can hear the rustle of his clothes as he moves, the sound of him breathing.
I think I can even smell his perfume, the washing powder he uses, his shampoo – all creating a warm, surprisingly floral smell. Clean, fresh, lovely.
Patrick is here.
I just have to open my eyes.
‘Yes,’ I say, throwing a huge smile onto my face. ‘On three? Three.’
‘Two.’
‘One.’
There he is.
The first thing I notice are his eyes. A deep soft brown, with the start of crow’s feet pinching at the corners as he smiles. Those crinkles mean he’s a man who smiles a lot. That matches up with the Patrick in my head.
His smile is open mouthed, handsome but sweet too. His fluffy brown hair is short and pushed back, and he’s taller than me, which is no surprise because I’ve always been knee-high to a gnat. He looks exactly like who you’d want looking after your sick pets.
Patrick is a beautiful man.
My God.
I laugh. I don’t mean to, but it comes out in a rush, and I clap my hands over my lips to stifle it.
But then he does the same. And we’re giggling together, watching each other through this tiny partition, suddenly very real.
‘Hi, Carys.’
He watches me as I watch him. I wonder if this is how fish in an aquarium feel.
I manage to stammer out, ‘Hi.’
‘This is really weird, isn’t it?’ He laughs awkwardly, and I join in, enjoying the blended sound of our laughter. He laughs from deep in his chest, down in the diaphragm, a laugh from his soul. ‘I can’t believe it. You’re right there,’ he gasps.
‘You’ve been right there all along,’ I echo.
I could fall in love with him. I know it. I can feel flutters in my stomach, in my chest, like butterfly kisses.
And yet there’s a voice in my head that whispers should I be feeling more, doing more, saying more?
The butterflies aren’t sparks, after all.
Sparks mean electricity, passion, wanting.
Should I be trying to tear down this barrier to get to him, or is that unrealistic?
What are the other women doing? If I knew what everyone else was doing, maybe I’d know how I’m supposed to act here. Am I doing attraction wrong?
I’m not sure, but I’m enjoying the stillness of watching each other.
And then I remember that we are being filmed.
I school my face into a huge smile, just in case I wasn’t smiling enough while I was looking at him.
God, I hope I was smiling? Resting bitch face was a term coined for autistic women when they’ve just got a neutral face.
But the last thing I want is a ton of people watching my expressions, posting online about how cold I’m being with him.
I spring to life, clapping my hands together. I laugh with the kind of childlike glee I know people think is cute, but of which I feel so little right now. ‘Welcome to my tiny room,’ I say, gesturing around at my half of our joined space.
He does the same, and we giggle.
God, he’s a nice man. And I’m glad to see him. I am. I am.
Our conversation speeds by in a blur of excitement, picking up from where we left off. He tells me about his family because I asked, and I try to listen, but the whole time a few questions ping around my head.
Shouldn’t I be thinking about kissing him?
Am I doing this right?
Do I look excited enough?
I wish I was the sort of person who could be present in a life-changing moment without worrying if I’m experiencing it correctly.
I know I like him. That’s not in doubt.
I wish I wasn’t so worked up, so unsettled.
I adjust how I stand but that doesn’t seem to fix how I’m feeling either, and I laugh at what seems like the right time in the middle of his story about being trapped on a farm by an errant border collie who kept herding him into a corner – but did I? Did I miss the moment?
I’m missing this whole moment by living so inside my own head.
I know that my sisters Ang and Del would tell me to go easy on myself, but they don’t have to live in a brain like mine. They don’t have to monitor themselves.
It’s just weird that there’s one person I haven’t felt like this around, or at least, not to this extent. When we talk in our bedroom, I wear the mask lighter. The script quietens enough for me to hear her.
Is that why Dolly appears in my mind, even when I’m looking right at the man I’m dating? Or why what I feel when I’m around her feels closer to how I feel about Patrick than any of the other women?
I’m not sure I can ignore all the mounting evidence, and the things I’ve hidden for so long. Or the suspicion that I’m not so much barking up the wrong tree as ignoring half of the forest.
But just because I might like Dolly, that doesn’t mean I can’t also like Patrick, right? I am sure I like him. I am.
Does Dolly like me?
It’s a question I’ve tried really hard not to look at, to push away into the corner of my mind, because she’s my roommate.
But then, sometimes, I think she looks at me in the way I want her to look at me.
That deep, soft look you give someone when you feel more for them than just I don’t mind sharing space with you.
Is it wrong to hope that she does? Maybe it’s just like what Bridget said this morning, about how she likes the idea of being wanted. Being wanted does sound nice.
But it feels like more than that, this hoping.
God, it’s bad enough that I think about her that way, but to assume she could like me back just seems…
I don’t know. As if I’m imagining she’s some kind of predator?
No, actually, it’s not that bad but… oh, it’s all so tangled up and I just wish I could know if I was imagining all this or lying to myself.
Because it feels like lying but I can’t tell in what direction. Am I lying to her in the friendly way I act? Am I lying to myself about the ways I feel about her or Patrick?
Masking feels so much like lying sometimes; maybe I’m just manipulating everyone around me all the time into thinking I’m a nice person they might want to fall in love with.
Is this what Lina was talking about? Compulsory hetero-sexuality?
‘Would you like that, Carys?’ Patrick says, jolting me out of myself.
Fuck, I really did not hear him this time. ‘Sorry,’ I say breathlessly. ‘I um… got distracted by your eyes.’
Not entirely a lie. Eye contact is extremely distracting.
He blushes at the compliment. ‘I asked if you’d like to have another date with me?’
‘Oh!’ I cry. ‘Yes! Obviously!’
It’s only when I leave that I realise what I’ve committed to: a date where we could touch.
Am I ready for that? I could tell him I like to go slow, that I need time, but what if he reads that as lack of interest, or that I’m weird? If I want to be with Patrick, I have to give it my all. Give him my all (or as much as is permitted on a streaming television show).
I just wish I could stop thinking about Dolly, down the hallway, looking at Warren, wishing she was looking at me.