New Year’s Eve
NEW YEAR’S EVE
Now
Shirin had planned to spend in London, as she always did. There was usually a house party she could go to with Hana and Millie. Though when she arrived at her dad’s house on Christmas Eve and mentioned that she would be returning to London on the twenty-seventh, he was aghast. He said lately she only visited once a year, and when she replied that they were not even Christian, he said that that had never stopped her from asking for Christmas presents when she was younger.
His words evoked memories of her taking her parents to Asda, picking out what she thought to be traditional Christmas food—even though she didn’t like it—because she wanted to be like her friends, to have those picturesque Christmas spreads. The reality was badly seasoned, undercooked vegetables, rice that her mum insisted they needed on the table, and a chicken she hated the sight of (this was before she turned vegetarian).
They would sit at the table and she would try and lighten the mood, but her mum and dad would never bite. Instead, they would argue. Every day they argued. She remembers her mum making fun of her dad one Christmas, and him being so embarrassed he pushed the tree over in a fit of rage, threw the mince pies Shirin had bought on the floor, stood on them in his slippers, and said, “We aren’t fucking English, so can we stop pretending?” He left the house and didn’t come back until very late. Her mum said he was probably with one of his whores, if he could still get one, “the bastard.” Shirin was eleven so didn’t fully comprehend how dysfunctional this behavior was. It is convenient that, in older age, her dad has forgotten all this.
So in addition to spending a long, uncomfortable Christmas Day with her dad, Karen, and her children, Shirin stayed in Hull for the limbo period between Christmas and too. This time was spent in her old bedroom on her laptop, bingeing on different TV shows, regressing to her teenage years. She thought she’d be able to see Phoebe more, but as she is actually English, her diary is packed with plans to see various family members.
It is Phoebe’s house that she is at now. The plan is to pregame before going to the nightclub they frequented in their youth to celebrate . She assumes they are doing this ironically, though this has not been verbally acknowledged.
What she doesn’t expect is Kian to be the one to open the front door. She pretends to clear her throat, to cover her intake of breath. “Hey,” she says.
“Hi,” he says. He, too, is surprised to see her standing there. She is wearing wide-leg trousers with a corset top intended to make her waist look small, with her cleavage almost showing, which feels more suggestive than if it were fully visible. She sees his gaze on her chest. Kian notices her noticing him noticing her and he quickly looks away.
“You look nice,” he says in a husky voice, and promptly clears his throat.
She laughs even though nothing he has said is particularly funny. “Thanks, you look nice yourself.” He is wearing a thick cream T-shirt and his hair is longer now, to his ears, his locks curly and glossy.
“I didn’t think you’d be here,” he says.
Her eyes widen in mock annoyance, though her heart is thudding painfully in her chest. “Oh, I see how it is.”
He laughs as she enters the house. “No, I didn’t mean that, I just didn’t know. I’m surprised is all.”
Up this close she can smell his aftershave, and it brings her back to when he was at hers, when she cried into his chest and he held her.
He doesn’t move away from her in the narrow hallway, and they are now inches from each other for a moment or so, then he steps aside to let her in. She can hear the chatter coming from the living room and she thinks she would rather stay here, pretending that she is just hanging out with Kian, that this is something they do. He places his hand on her cheek. For a split second she looks surprised before standing very still, letting it lie there.
“You’re so cold,” he says, like this is the most normal thing to say and do. She cannot think of words, so says nothing. He clears his throat and removes his hand. “How was your trip to Iran?”
“It was good,” she says. “The restoration I definitely needed before spending Christmas with my dad, Karen, and her children.”
“Ouch!”
“How was yours?” she asks.
“Good, I guess. I mean, I’m very keen to go back to London now.” He laughs. “Anyway, come on in. Everyone’s in the living room.”
She nods, following his lead out of Phoebe’s hallway and to their friends.
“Why is Kian here?” she asks Phoebe in the small kitchen.
Phoebe is mixing various liquors in a large jug to create her “special cocktail.” Shirin watches as she haphazardly throws in unmeasured amounts of vodka, gin, cranberry juice, and lemonade. She is concentrating on her creation and does not look up at Shirin when she speaks.
“Um, sorry, I was going to text you about it, but things got a bit manic here. He’s mates with George’s friend Connor who’s round, so he came along.”
Shirin leans against the counter. The house is stuffy and smells like wet dog, though it is well decorated. She wishes Phoebe would turn round and take the situation seriously. It’s obvious, though, that she is distracted, that this is granular compared to her own concerns. Then Shirin has a thought and is not sure how to ask, or whether she should be asking. “How are things anyway, with George?” she asks in a hushed tone.
Phoebe puts a bottle of Tesco’s own vodka down, sighs, her shoulders slumping, and looks Shirin in the eye for the first time that night.
“How’s the baby-making going, you mean?”
Shirin does not say anything, though grimaces, which says it all.
“I don’t know if it’ll happen for me,” Phoebe continues. “Trust me not to be able to.”
“It’s meant to take a while,” Shirin soothes. “They just always make it sound easy when you’re a teenager, but it’s normal for it to take time. You’ve only been trying a few months—”
Phoebe waves her hands in the air. “It’s fine. I’m having a night off being good. I’ve been eating so healthy. I even lost a stone because I read being overweight makes it harder.”
Shirin raises an eyebrow. “Phoebe, you’ve never been overweight.”
“According to my BMI—”
“Which is a load of shit, remember?”
Shirin puts her hand on her friend’s arm and massages it because she doesn’t know what else to say, because this problem is so adult and she still, pathetically, doesn’t feel adult enough to handle it. Her present concern is that the man she likes is unexpectedly in the next room, whereas her friend is having fertility issues. She is not sure how their lives split off in such disparate directions. How different they are now. The things that bother Shirin on a daily basis—the way she is treated at work, and how it’s not like she once dreamt—feel alien and minuscule when she is not in London. And while she wanted this distance when she was in Iran, back in England she wants her concerns to be recognized as real. She cannot imagine speaking to Phoebe about racism or representation or any of the things she and Mariam would effortlessly rant about in the canteen. It is like there are two completely different worlds and versions of herself—and it is only now that she can see that this is damaging to her sense of self. Because how can Shirin ever be, and accept, herself if she does not present the real her to the people she’s closest to?
In the end, ten people come to pre-drinks before they go to the club. A mixture of boys and girls Shirin vaguely knows from school but who she did not stay in contact with, including Carmen, who is there with her fiancé, a henchman who works in IT. For the first half hour she watches as Kian, George, and another man chat animatedly at the dining table, a little way away from where she is sitting on the sofa. At certain points, though, she can see Kian glancing over at her, from the corner of her eye, and each time she finds herself holding her breath, not knowing what to do with her body. She is suddenly conscious that she has hands and that there is really no natural place for them to go when she is sitting down listening to people speak. She rearranges them multiple times in a minute, from clasping them together, to twirling the hairband around her wrist, to laying them limply on her thighs. No position feels right. It is only when she cannot take this awkwardness anymore that she tells Phoebe she’s going into the kitchen for another drink and stays there on her phone, frantically texting Hana, who likely does not care about the situation.
When Shirin asked Hana what she was doing for she was cagey and said she might have plans with people Shirin has not met before. They have names like Valentia and Hamilton. Hana said she met them on a night out in Chelsea, and that one of their dads is a multimillionaire, that she visited their house and it was so big she didn’t have a phone signal in certain areas. She said all this like it was a good thing, a clear glint in her eye over FaceTime. Fairly quickly she mentioned, too, that one of them had connections in fashion, which would help her get a foot in the door. It’s hard for Hana, so Shirin understands her need to build this connection. But it still stings that she will be spending with them, people she barely knows, instead of with her best friend.
Hana texts her back with a picture of a glass of champagne in her manicured hand, raised in front of a window. It looks like a hotel room and she is about to type her reply when she notices something very significant in the window behind the glass of champagne.
Shirin: Is that the Eiffel Tower?? You’re in Paris?
Hana: It’s MAD. I’ll tell you about it when I’m back xxx
Shirin hears the kitchen door swing open, the quick whoosh breaking her from her reverie. Her head whips up and it is Kian. He makes his way toward her, his face earnest until it breaks into a small smile.
“You hiding in here?” he says.
“No,” she replies quickly, before realizing he was joking. “I was just getting a drink.” She indicates her short glass with the clear liquid inside. There are bits of mint floating in it and she is not entirely sure what this cocktail is, but she can smell the gin from a distance.
He goes over to the countertop where she is standing and leans over to pour himself a drink too. He takes a sip and purses his lips afterward. “Well, that’s strong.” She takes a sip, too, and pulls the same face.
“Wow,” she says. She can feel her insides getting ever so slightly warm and there is a sudden lightness within her. She has been so tightly wound, and it is only now she is a tad loosened that she realizes it. She takes another long sip. “I thought you’d be in London.”
He straightens his back and looks down at her, into her eyes, as he speaks. He seems to have no problem maintaining eye contact, but she needs to look away every so often as she finds his gaze too intense, even though she doubts that is his intention.
“Yeah, that was the plan, but Connor mentioned a night out to Welly and it felt too nostalgic to say no, to be honest.”
In the recesses of her mind Shirin remembers Connor from school. He was an anomaly back then; he floated between various groups, teetering between popular and middling, though he was never unkind to the less popular kids. Because he was inoffensive, she has no particular opinion of him.
“He’s here?”
Kian nods and says he’s wearing the striped top, and Shirin is surprised by how much some people have changed in the past ten years, so much so that they are unrecognizable. Despite this, though, she doesn’t think she and Kian have changed all that much. Phoebe certainly has; her hair color has changed from mousy blond at school to an auburn that some would mistake for natural. Back then, too, she was very thin, and now she has filled out in a way that is healthier, seemingly less restrictive than in her younger years.
“How long are you here for then?” Shirin asks.
“Until the second. I had actually planned to message you tomorrow,” he says, his voice the sound of complete ease.
She runs her finger over the edge of her glass. Not in a particularly sexy way, but because she has noticed the rim is stained red from her lipstick, and she needs a distraction from what Kian has just said. When she looks up, she sees he is chewing the bottom of his lip, resting his hip against the countertop, arms folded. The tops of his arms strain against his T-shirt, making the fabric ride up, and she notices that he has a tattoo running up his arm. She can only see part of it because it’s cut off by his top. It is vertical, rather than horizontal, and looks like it’s words written in Farsi, the ink delicate and subtle against his tanned skin.
“You were?” she says. “You’d planned to message me?”
He smiles, a little embarrassed now. “Yeah. I wanted to see if you’d be up for meeting in London. I definitely didn’t think you’d be spending here.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “You never did before.” He continues, “I mean… I’m glad you are here.” He steps closer to her, and there is about a foot between them.
“You are?”
He nods and they edge closer to each other.
“Did Salma go home, too, for ?” Shirin doesn’t particularly want to know but is testing something.
“Her family lives in London, so she stayed there.”
“Right. Cool,” she says.
“We broke up, by the way.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. It just didn’t make sense to start something new now.”
She nods, looks up to his lips, then to his eyes, and they are even closer now. It is so at odds with their conversation, and so unlike Shirin. She is not sure what he means, but either way she is not taking it in. All she knows is that Kian is single—the reasons why are irrelevant. Even if he was unavailable, she thinks the normal rules wouldn’t apply, not with Kian. It is dangerous. She can feel his breath on her face. His fresh citrus aftershave. She feels this longing within her to lean even closer into it. She thinks they are for sure going to kiss—of course they are—when Phoebe calls from the other room that the taxis are here and for everyone to down their drinks.