41. Morgan
Chapter 41
Morgan
W hen it rained, it motherfucking poured, and it had been raining since the gala – both literally and figuratively. Some of the rainfall I experienced over the following week included:
Getting a tentative move-out date. Sure, I’d known this was coming for a while now, and I’d done very little to prepare for it. Shockingly, that didn’t make it any easier.
The dye Phil had used for my tunic/surcoat thing hadn’t worked as planned, turning it bright Barbie pink. There wasn’t time to make a new one, so I was mentally adjusting to being a knight in girlypop armour.
Since I was officially promoted, I now had to start work on the Festive Fundraiser happening in December. And because Aaron had known he was leaving, he’d done exactly zero prep, so I was starting from scratch.
I was so busy with work and freelance jobs that I hadn’t drawn anything for myself in weeks, maybe longer, and as much as I wanted to, it just made me think of Jack now.
And, oh yeah, I was single again. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Not to mention the fact that I had to see Jack, who was now my ex - boyfriend, at our Monday night games sessions, where I apparently was incapable of making eye contact with him.
I’d got so overwhelmed with all the above that I’d tried to ring Cara, who, like the last several times I’d tried to ring her, didn’t even acknowledge my attempt. I hadn’t bothered to send a follow-up text this time.
But to top it all off, the cherry on the shit sandwich that was my life at present, I got a text from Lauren; I was already on edge, and the message nearly brought me to my knees in the middle of the office.
I just got the notification that Pablo’s getting moved to Leeds. The move won’t happen for another two weeks, but I wanted to let you know. Sorry xx
“Fuck,” I said, slightly louder than I’d meant to, and Chloe looked up from her desk in concern.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Pablo,” I said. “He’s getting moved in two weeks. To Leeds.” Not that the location mattered – Chloe knew as well as I did that after this move there would be maybe one more, and if they still couldn’t find a home for him…
As I followed the thought to its obvious conclusion, the reality we all knew about working here but hated more than anything, I felt my breathing start to go shallow. I sat down in the closest seat and put my head between my legs. The guilt hit me like a freight train: could I have done more? Had I been so caught up in my own drama that this little dog, who trusted me and loved me, was going to suffer?
And all I wanted to do was talk to Jack. For him to wrap me in his arms, and kiss the top of my head, and tell me everything would be okay. But of course I’d managed to fuck that up, too, and remembering that made the heat pooling on my face ten times worse.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Chloe said, and I felt a firm hand on my back. The weight of her touch brought me back into the room, and as I lifted my head and felt warm wet streaks form on my cheeks, I realised I was crying. She pulled me to my feet and supported me by the arm as she led me to the bathroom; we only got a few stares on the way, and I was beyond caring.
“It’s all my fault,” I said as Chloe locked the door behind us, the tears coming hot and fast. “I’ve known he needed a home for months . I’ve known I needed to move for months . I talk such a big game about finally doing things, finally taking initiative in my own life, but here we are four months later, and I’m still sitting here letting things happen around me!”
“That is not fair,” she said. “You’ve had a lot going on.”
“No more than most people,” I said, wiping at my cheeks, but they were filling up as quickly as I could clear them. “I just can’t handle it. It’s too much.”
I felt myself getting worked up and tried to rein it in at first, swallowing my gasps and pinching my eyes shut hard, willing myself to stop making such a scene. But when it was clear it was all going to come out one way or another, I shut the lid on the toilet and sat down on it, burying my face in my hands, collapsing into tears.
I cried for Pablo. Of course I did. His fuzzy little face was front and centre in my mind, and I mourned all the ways I’d failed him; all the times I’d been with him and could have stayed just two minutes longer.
I also cried for Jack, and the desperation in his eyes when he’d asked me to choose him. Not to leave him. I didn’t want to; walking out of that room had been maybe the hardest thing I’d ever done.
But every time I felt him tugging on me, the part of me that had been tethered to others my whole life yanked back. I didn’t want to wake up in a year, or five years, and be just as stuck as he was. No matter how much he said he didn’t want that either, how could I trust him not to do that when he couldn’t even see that he’d done it to himself?
And then I cried for me, because I was just so fucking tired. As much as I loved working for the charity, and making it so that as few animals as possible met Pablo’s fate, I didn’t love what I was doing.
But doing what I wanted to do meant leaving this place. And leaving my friends, like the one who was squatting in front of me in the bathroom, gathering toilet roll for me to use to dry my tears.
I looked up at Chloe as the waterworks ebbed. “I’m sorry,” I said, accepting the toilet tissue she held out to me, using it to wipe at my face. Black flecks from my mascara came away on the paper. “I haven’t actually had my breakdown yet.”
“It was only a matter of time,” she said. “I was worried you’d been doing this alone at home every night. I’m just glad I could be here.”
I offered a feeble laugh, but the truth was that I’d reverted to numbing myself in every way possible at home. I’d been bingeing shit YouTube videos and reality TV. I hadn’t read a book or drawn anything since the gala. I’d been in complete burnout, and I’d been doing it alone. By choice, too; I’d had plans with Chloe twice since then, and I’d cancelled both times. We were supposed to be getting sushi after work now, actually, to make up for it.
“About tonight…” I started, but she shook her head vehemently.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I’m not letting you cancel on me for the third time. This girls’ night is happening, whether you want it or not.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, but part of me was grateful that I wouldn’t have to spend another night wallowing alone, and that part won out. I smiled.
“Okay, fine,” I said, “as long as I’m aloud to be sad.”
“Perfect,” she said. “I can invite Fatima, too. It can be Sad Girl Autumn.”
* * *
And that was how I ended up sandwiched between Fatima and Chloe on my sofa several hours later, a smorgasbord of sushi and wine spread out on the coffee table, Legally Blonde queued up on the TV. It felt like the perfect option to fuel our current hatred of men.
The weather outside matched our moods, too; not only was it still raining, but it had started thundering as well just as Fatima had arrived. The delivery driver with the sushi had looked positively terrified, so we’d tipped him a bit extra to make up for the fact that he’d brought us our food on what was basically a moving lightning rod.
We were just getting to the iconic “What, like it’s hard?” moment when the power cut out. We all froze for a moment, hoping it would just be a flicker, but when it didn’t immediately come back on, we simultaneously checked our phones.
“I’m at twenty percent,” I said.
“I’m at twelve,” Chloe said.
“Ugh, you’re both so unprepared,” Fatima sighed, turning on her torch. “I’m on fifty, and I’ve got my portable charger in my bag.”
“Sorry we’re not all preppers,” Chloe scoffed as I got up to find the actual torch in the kitchen.
“I’m not a prepper,” Fatima said, slipping fully into teacher mode. “I’m a responsible adult.”
I found the torch, but it seemed to be dead. So I rifled around in the junk drawer for batteries, not finding any.
“Here,” Fatima said, “use the batteries from this.” I turned around to see her extending the TV remote towards me. “We don’t need it if we can’t use the TV, right?”
Once Fatima and I were both equipped with torches, we started trying to fix the lighting situation. The fireplace was operational, but I’d never learned to use it, always having left that to Cara, and there wasn’t any fuel for it anyway. So instead we started gathering candles from around the house. I had a shocking number of them for someone who didn’t actually like burning candles, which I told Fatima when she gave me her fire hazard lecture after seeing how many there were on the bookshelves.
There were so many in the end that, when we lined them all up on the hearth and lit them, it was almost as bright as the lamps had been.
“What now?” Chloe asked.
“I don’t know,” Fatima said. “Seance?”
Chloe laughed. “You joke, but you know I’d be well up for that.”
“And I decidedly would not,” I said.
“I’m just sad we won’t get to finish the film,” Fatima said, slumping back down on the sofa. “We hadn’t even made it to the best part.”
“The part where Ali Larter shouts ‘liposuction’ in the prison?” Chloe asked, sitting next to her.
I scoffed as I brought another bottle of wine out. “Um, I’m pretty sure she means ‘Don’t stomp your little last season Prada shoes at me, honey’,” I said, putting on my best Enrique impression, waving my finger around and everything.
“Oh my god,” Fatima said, clapping, “that was brilliant! Do another.”
I set the bottle down on the coffee table and thumbed through my mental repository of Legally Blonde quotes. “Um, let’s see, how about…” I cleared my throat and pitched my voice up to a register worthy of Elle Woods, donning what was probably quite an offensive American accent. “‘Isn’t it the first cardinal rule of perm maintenance that you’re forbidden to wet your hair for the first twenty-four hours at the risk of deactivating the ammonium thioglycalate?’”
Fatima squealed in delight, but Chloe just sat up and donned a nervous expression.
“‘Y-yes?’” she asked, giving me the next line. I stood in front of the fireplace and postured towards the window seat as if speaking to an imaginary jury.
“‘And wouldn’t someone who’s had, say, thirty perms before in their life be well aware of this rule?’”
Chloe continued her impression of a panicked Chutney, and Fatima sat back with her glass of wine, watching us as if she were watching the film for the first time. And by the time Chloe yelled “‘I thought it was you walking through the door!’” Fatima was sideways on the couch in a fit of giggles.
Within a few minutes, we’d re-enacted most of what we could remember of the film, and right as Chloe finished rattling off the where-are-they-now updates from the end, the lights flickered back on.
“What do you say?” I asked, swapping the head torch batteries back into the TV remote. “Watch the rest of the film for real?”
“Hell no,” Fatima said, snuggling up next to Chloe. I sat on the other side of her, and she grabbed my hand, lacing my fingers with hers. “That was definitely my preferred rendition.”