Chapter Six Losing Her
Chapter Six
Losing Her
Things . . . settle.
They always do. That’s just the way life is. Bad or good, time tends to flatten out the peaks and troughs, the mountains and the valleys – even if the valleys you do have to wade through are still full of liquid poop.
. . . I never claimed to be good with words. I’m an events co-ordinator, not a writer.
A good six or seven weeks go by, and my life enters a rhythm that I can just about cope with.
I continue to sleep very badly, and the nightmares don’t go away, but it reaches the stage where I just become used to it . . . and carry on regardless. ‘My Humps’ still lingers, but there are entire days when I don’t find myself humming it. The earworm has become slightly less active.
Thanks to the social media fallout from the disastrous gender-reveal party, I still have had no more new clients come in for my work.
And I don’t feel like anything I’m doing for my few existing clients is particularly good.
Zenith Games are pleased with the events programme I present to them .
. . but they are not delighted with it. I’m giving them their money’s worth, but that’s about all.
Nothing else. There’s none of my usual extra flourishes that keep the client coming back time and time again.
They’ll pay me what I’m owed for this project – but do I think they’ll be employing me again in the future? I very much doubt it.
Everyone can tell I’m flat. And flat doesn’t promote business well. Unless you’re a company that makes irons.
So, my work very definitely continues to suffer, in one way or another.
And Mr Fixit hasn’t been able to fix anything when it comes to Annie, either.
The space in the bed has only got wider.
We haven’t had sex in over a month. I just don’t feel like it.
I cite tiredness and stress from work as the causes – and that is more or less the truth.
My job has always fired me up in more ways than one, but the lacklustre way I’m going at it these days has robbed me of my drive in the bedroom as much as in the boardroom.
I’m staying over at hers less, just to avoid putting myself in the situation where sex might be on the cards.
It also means she doesn’t have to cope with me starting awake at 3 a.m. quite so much.
I’m deathly afraid that all of this is going to drive her away from me. Our relationship is just not long term enough to survive my continued lack of oomph. Sooner or later, Annie is going to want to get away from me. I know that for a fact.
But I keep telling her things will get better, as much to convince myself as her.
Eventually, it will.
It has to.
That’s how things work, isn’t it?
The troughs flatten out. They always do. And the trough I’m in at the moment will go away sooner or later. I just have to ride it out. And keep wading through the poop, in the meantime. I will get my mojo back sooner or later.
Meanwhile, life goes on . . .
And on this particular night, that means attending Annie’s latest stand-up gig.
I have to confess, I’m more than a bit nervous as I take my seat for the show. Not least because she’s trying out new material tonight, and I’m a little apprehensive about what it might contain.
After all, comedians do draw from real life, don’t they?
Oh dear . . .
She really did want me to come along tonight, though. Was quite insistent about it, actually. So here I am.
This is only the third time I’ve been to see one of her gigs, and I want it to go well for her.
It usually does (there was that one incident with Captain Vomit she told me about, but that’s not the kind of thing that happens on the regular, thankfully).
She’s a professional, after all. She knows what’s she’s doing.
Even if someone is upchucking their dinner in the third row.
I can’t imagine having to deal with something like that. I’m not good with surprises. Or vomit. There is nothing I can do to prevent somebody like Captain Vomit turning up again. Nothing I can do if some other unknown quantity comes along to screw with her routine.
I don’t know how I’d cope.
I probably wouldn’t . . .
And I’m also nervous tonight because I’ll be hanging out with Annie after the show, and I’m not sure how that’s going to go. It might depend on what I’m about to hear in this new routine, I guess.
Annie has been more than a little . . . distant, of late. I can’t say I blame her.
It’s not bad enough that I think she’s about to end the relationship just yet, but it certainly is enough for me to absolutely understand that things are not 100 per cent fine between me and her.
Largely this is, of course, my fault. I say Annie is the one who’s been distant, but it’s really me who’s doing all the drifting away.
I’m tired. I’m anxious. I’m twitchy. I’m sad.
And I don’t want her to see any of that. That’s not the way Charlie King is meant to be, especially with his girlfriend.
Hence why I’m now sleeping at her place less. Hence why I’m making excuses not to see her.
And she knows this. She knows what’s going on. That’s probably why she was pretty adamant I come to the gig tonight.
She is most definitely not happy with the way things are between us at the moment.
I know this. I’m not stupid.
And I have to do something about it. I have to prove to her that things will be okay. That everything will be as totally fine as I keep promising her it will be.
Even if I have no answers to what’s troubling me, I have to make sure the questions don’t end my relationship with a person I am most definitely head over heels in love with. And have been for quite a while now.
I have to do something. I have to make an effort.
. . . after I’ve sat here and listened to her latest routine, that is.
The lights go down on the stage here at The Palisade as Annie walks out to the applause of the audience. She’s the second to last performer this evening, so she’ll get a good half an hour of time to show everyone just how funny she can be.
I settle back into my seat, hoping Captain Vomit isn’t sat two rows behind me.
‘Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the show,’ she says with a smile. ‘My name is Annie, and I’m absolutely knackered . . . I’ve been fighting off a bad case of hay fever all week, you see, so if I sound a bit bunged up, that’s just some extra realism I’m adding to tonight’s entertainment.’
No word of a lie. I keep having to duck when it looks like she’s going to sneeze.
‘I thought it’d bring some authenticity to the routine,’ she continues. ‘You’re absolutely welcome. Though, for those of you in the front row, I’d think about putting your coats on. When I sneeze it’s like the big bang, only without so much majesty of a newborn universe, and a lot more snot.’
First big laugh of the evening. That’s lovely to hear.
‘Do you ever find that there’s something about being sick that brings out the absolute worst in people?’ she says to the audience, obeying the first rule of stand-up: connect with the crowd as fast as possible.
‘I mean, the minute I feel even slightly ill, I turn into the biggest diva imaginable. I lie there like Elizabeth I on her deathbed, with my hand to my forehead.’ Annie affects the ridiculous pose she was working on three weeks ago, while Location, Location, Location was on its advert break.
‘Fetch me the physician! I am not long for this world without his dreadful ministrations! And meanwhile, my boyfriend will be standing there, completely unfazed, just watching me with a dumbfounded expression on his face. It’s a slight head cold, baby, he says. You’ll survive.’
That’s not really true, unfortunately. Stand-ups may base their material on real life some of the time . . . but it’s less than people think.
‘Sadly, unlike Elizabeth I, I am not in a position of power to have his head chopped off,’ Annie tells her new friends, who are enjoying the routine as much as she’d hoped.
‘Which is probably just as well. He’d just shrug it off and tell me he’s totally fine.
Because he’s a man, and that’s what men do. ’
Aaah . . . well, that’s interesting, isn’t it?
Gulp.
‘And I don’t know what’s worse, to be honest – actually being ill, or how fast everyone around you loses patience with you for it.
If I’m sick for more than forty-eight hours, my friends are like .
. . Really, you’re Still sick? Have you tried .
. . just . . . not being sick? You know . . . for our sakes? Please?’
That is very true. Her friends seem to be an eclectic bunch, and some of them have – shall we say – a healthy amount of self-interest.
‘They start suggesting that I should manifest my way back to good health – as if it’s my fault I’ve somehow invited a virus to squat in my immune system without paying rent.
Maybe if you just visualised yourself being healthier?
they say, with a well-meaning expression on their face that would certainly result in some head chopping if I was Elizabeth I. ’
Heh. That’ll be a reference to Mitzy. Mitzy thinks she can visualise anything in this world, and have it come to her. This is possibly true, given that her husband is the CEO of a bank.
‘Okay, then!’ says Annie, affecting that look of barely contained comedy anger she does so well.
‘Just let me visualise a world where my nose has stopped running like Usain Bolt on amphetamines, and where you’ve been turned into some sort of chocolate pudding.
Because right now, chocolate pudding is of far more use to me! ’
The audience agree. Of course they do. Chocolate pudding is always better.