32. Katy
Chapter thirty-two
Katy
W hen I knock on Ruth’s door a little after ten in the morning, I find myself laughing out loud as the sound of her horribly off-key voice moves closer to the other side of the wood. She’s still singing when the door swings open, shaking her hips with big, exaggerated movements and a wide grin as she turns to lead me through her open-plan living space.
As usual, the soundtrack is Taylor Swift. Today, it’s one of her older albums coming from the record player on a small podium table in the corner. I recognise it, and I hum along as Ruth pours two cups of coffee from a steaming cafetière. I dig around in her fridge, handing over the carton of milk and stealing a grape from a bowl, popping it into my mouth and biting down on it.
Ruth’s space feels as much like home to me as my own house, and my gut twists with guilt. I want nothing more than to share this feeling, this elation that I have about being with Jay, with my best friend. But she expressly forbade me from getting involved with her brother, and this, I suppose, is the price I pay for ignoring her warning.
“I want to have a party for Jay,” Ruth says as we get comfortable at the breakfast bar with our coffee. Ruth has her laptop and several notebooks spread out in front of her, as well as a selection of pens and highlighters. I reach for her water jug and pour myself a glass.
“He’ll hate it. You know he would. Roo, please don’t do it.”
“How do you know? It’ll be fun, god knows the miserable prick needs some fun in his life.” Ruth waves a hand at me and then picks up a pen to start scribbling on the page in front of her. How do I tell her that I know Jay won’t want a birthday party because I know him—not just platonically, but emotionally, too—biblically, even.
A party is the absolute last thing he’d want, I’m as certain of that as I am of my own name. Jay is working so hard on himself. He’s seeing a therapist. He’s even been to some of the support group sessions I tried out. Those are things I don’t think Ruth knows about, so I don’t say anything. But crowded spaces are still challenging for him, and being the centre of attention has never been his favourite position. I don’t say any of this. I close my hand over hers and still her scribbles.
“Because we’re friends, Roo,” I say instead. Friends . Friends who play tonsil tennis. Friends who share showers. Friends who get each other naked. He’s the friend who titty-fucked me this morning in the shower before making me come so hard, my ears were still ringing ten minutes later. I don’t say any of that, either. “You know that. And you know crowded rooms aren’t his thing. Neither is having a fuss made of him.”
“It’s the big four-oh, Katy!” Ruth whines. “We have to do something !”
I bring my glass to my lips and sip water through a straw. Ruth takes a gulp of coffee and pushes her yellow-tinged blue-light glasses up on her nose before pouting dramatically.
“He’s never made a fuss for his birthday,” Ruth says quietly. “Ever. And he’s been gone for so long. I just want to do something for him. I want him to see how many people love him. Even if he is a grumpy bastard.”
I snort, choking slightly on a mouthful of water. He certainly is that.
“Grumpy is one word for it,” I agree.
“Arsehole is another.” Ruth takes one last mouthful of coffee before sliding her empty cup across the breakfast bar towards the sink on the other side. I duck my face into my water glass to hide my smirk. “Okay, so if we’re not having a surprise party, what are we gonna do? We have to do something .”
“You could make your Fancy Nugs,” I suggest with a hopeful smile. My mouth waters at the thought. It’s been weeks— months , even—since I’ve had Roo’s famous chicken nuggets, and barely a day goes by when I don’t crave another taste. “He seemed to like those. If you want to do something, just have him over for dinner. I’d come, if you want. I’m sure Amie and Lo would come. Cam too, if he’s home.”
Ruth considers for a moment. “I bet Mum and Dad would come, too. Maybe Jay could invite a couple of friends from work. Assuming he’s made any. Grumpy Gus and all.”
I bite back a laugh. “That sounds good. Enough people to celebrate. Not enough to be uncomfortable. And if you make Ruthy’s famous Fancy Nugs, I bet everyone will be up for it. In fact, I know they will.”
“You’re a genius!” Ruth cries, flinging her arms around me and leaning across the space between our bar stools. When she breaks the hug, she taps her laptop keyboard a few times. Business as usual. “Okay, we can do it on the day before his birthday, or we can do it the day after but I’d have to kick everyone out early because I have to fly to Austin the day after that.”
“The day before sounds fine. When is it?”
“Two weeks. His birthday is April twenty-eighth.”
Wheels begin to turn in my head. Jay and I haven’t talked much about birthdays. Mine is in December, so it happened shortly before Jay and I met, but somehow, I hadn’t realised his was so soon. I make a mental note to go shopping for a birthday present before turning back to Ruth. She’s already changed the subject, her brilliant mind working a thousand miles a minute, and when Paloma shows up a few minutes later with a new vintage camera and three rolls of film, Jay’s birthday is all but forgotten as she has us pose for an impromptu photoshoot against the glittering backdrop of the Thames outside Ruth’s enormous picture windows.
We exhaust all three rolls of film before we spread out on Ruth’s large, sectional sofa, each with a plate on our laps. Ruth made us a British childhood classic for lunch: fish finger sandwiches, complete with a side of salt and vinegar crisps. Ruth and Paloma both opted for tartare sauce, but I chose sweet chilli sauce for a little spicy tang.
“Oh, K!” Paloma sets her plate aside and pops to her feet. “I almost forgot. Here are your pics!” She pulls her bag across the sofa and retrieves a small flash card from an inside pocket.
“Ooh, what pics?” Ruth leans forward.
“Oh, Katy did a raunchy photoshoot.” Paloma grins with her tongue between her teeth, winking saucily. It’s half true: it was a boudoir shoot, and I was fairly scantily clad in some pretty lingerie. We did the shoot at her studio about a month ago, before Jay and I became a couple, and I agreed to it because Paloma had some new set dressings and wanted to try some new poses and techniques. As a bonus, it meant I got to spend an evening with one of my favourite people and a bottle of wine.
“Ooh, you little minx,” Ruth giggles. “Who’s the lucky man?”
A piece of crisp goes down the wrong hole as I swallow, and I cough, reaching for my water and almost spilling the remains of my lunch on the floor in the process. It takes me a minute to recover my composure.
“It’s Albert, downstairs,” I say. Albert is in his eighties, and lives on the second floor of Ruth’s small tower block. He leaves every morning at eight to walk to the nearby newsagents for his newspaper, and once a week, he also buys a bottle of red wine and a crossword book. He’s been here longer than Ruth has, and he knows every resident—and all of their regular guests—by name.
A laugh bursts from Ruth’s lips, one pulled right from her chest, and before long, the three of us have tears running down our faces as we slump on the sofa, howling with laughter. It feels good to laugh with my best friends. Keeping things from them sucks, and this kind of levity is exactly what I’ve been needing.
“Come on then,” Ruth says, collecting our plates once we’ve pulled ourselves together. “Let’s have a look at the pictures.”
I don’t mind sharing them. Ruth, Paloma and I—and Amie, too—have shared everything with each other for years; decades, even. We tidy up after lunch and sit back down with cups of coffee, and lemonade for Paloma, and Ruth slides the card into the reader on her laptop.
“Fuck me, K, your tits look fantastic .” Ruth clicks on the first picture and my image fills the screen: I’m looking straight into the camera, wearing a filmy, sheer white shirt open over my lace underwear.
“Thanks, love.” And you know what? I believe her. I do look good. Sure, my belly is a little softer than I’d like it to be, and my hips are wider than my friends’—I’ve always been the curvy one, while they’re all svelte and skinny—but I look fucking good.
“Doesn’t she look great?” Paloma sits forward, feet tucked up under herself on the sofa. “She’s so good in front of the camera.”
“I’m an awkward turtle,” I protest.
“No you’re not!” Paloma answers with a squeak. “The camera loves you, baby.”
Ruth scrolls through the rest of the pictures—in total, Paloma put nearly three hundred of them on the memory card. When we took them, I didn’t know what I’d do with them, other than maybe look at them if I needed a bit of a confidence boost. Even when I feel awkward, Paloma always makes me look great. But now, I’m thinking about a certain someone’s birthday, and making a mental note to check out printing and framing services.
Later that evening, I slide a bowl of dressed salad across the kitchen table towards Jay as he sighs and stuffs his phone back into his pocket.
“Ruth wants me to have a birthday party,” he says. His tone holds a hint of annoyance and far more sadness than I ever want to hear from him.
“She wants to celebrate another year of you, because she loves you.” I plop a spoonful of salad onto my plate. Between the tang of the salad dressing, the richness of the pasta sauce, and the sweet, pungent smell of the garlic and caramelised onion flatbread between us, my mouth is watering and my stomach is growling.
“She wants me to invite some friends.”
“So, invite some friends.”
“I don’t have any friends, Katy.”
“What am I, chopped liver?”
“You’re not my friend,” he says, picking up a slice of the flatbread. “You’re my lady.”
I smile indulgently as my heart cracks in two, growing to twice its size in my chest. I’ve never liked the sound of anything more.
“So, why don’t you invite some of the guys from work? Just yesterday, you were telling me how you spent the entire evening laughing with them.”
“Maybe,” he hums. “It just—I don’t know. It feels wrong to have another birthday when Caleb will never have another one. Is that dumb?”
The thought had never occurred to me, but now that Jay has brought it up, it prickles at my skin like needles, burning my eyes and constricting my throat. This will be his first birthday since leaving the army. The first birthday without his best friend. I glance up at the ceiling, at the fluorescent strip light I never use, which is but a quiet shadow in the ambient glow of my preferred string lights hung from corner to corner. I reach across the table to place a hand on his forearm, and his dark eyes lift to meet mine, unfathomable sadness etched in every feature.
“It’s not dumb at all,” I say quietly. “But maybe you can celebrate your birthday for him, too. Celebrate the life he lived and the good he did.”
Jay’s throat works as he swallows hard, visibly trying to hold back his emotions. I want to tell him that it’s okay to be sad, to feel whatever he’s feeling right now. But I’ve told him that already, and I don’t think it’ll help. So I hum quietly, squeezing my fingers lightly on his arm until he takes a deep breath.
“He loved birthdays, you know? Not his own, he hated his own birthday. But he loved everyone else’s. He loved treating people like royalty for that one day.”
“I love that,” I say with a watery smile. “He’d probably chauffeur you to Ruth’s and hold the door open for you, I bet.”
“Yeah, he would.” Jay’s chuckle is quiet, but it’s warm, and it’s soothing the ache in my chest. His lips curve into a tentative smile. “I miss him.”
“I know,” I whisper. “I’m sorry, love.”
His left hand comes to cover mine on his right arm, and he holds it there for a long moment, taking deep, careful breaths. I can’t even imagine the pain. The thought of losing my best friend—any of them—makes me nauseous, even more so with this secret I find myself keeping. But to go through that, and the physical trauma of Jay’s injury, and then losing his job as a result of it all, too? I feel all of his emotions, but the pain is unimaginable.
“He’d want you to be happy, love,” I say quietly. “Remember him well. Celebrate him. Keep his memory with you.”
A tear slips down my cheek as Jay lifts my hand to his lips, pressing a tender kiss to my knuckles.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“Always,” I respond in kind. He shifts some pasta around his plate, digging for a piece of sauce-drenched sausage. I shove a forkful of food into my own mouth. It’s considerably cooler than before the mood shifted, but the tension slowly drains from Jay’s face as his rubs his thumb across my knuckles, and I eat my dinner one-handed, content to just listen to the sound of forks tapping plates, and Jay’s careful, quiet breaths.