Chapter 37
Amy
London
Amy sat on the edge of her bed in the house share, staring at the wall without really seeing it.
The room felt foreign around her... Naomi had done her best to make it welcoming but Amy's boxes that she'd come back with that day were stacked in the corner, her life still in transition.
The afternoon light was just beginning to fade, casting shadows across the floor, and she knew that she needed to go and meet up with Luisa, but she couldn't bring herself to move, not quite yet.
Luckily, all the messages she'd been receiving from them showed that they were having a great time and getting along like a house on fire.
Amy was pleased, not just for Luisa but also because she needed some space, just a little, to process her day.
She still wasn't quite sure how she'd answer if anyone asked her how the day had been. Weird? No, more nuanced than that. Unsettling? Maybe.
She'd arrived at the flat determined to be efficient... in and out with her belongings, don’t drag it out, don’t let the memories crowd in.
That worked, right up until James turned up.
He wasn’t supposed to be there, that had been their agreement, and her initial reaction was irritation. But then she’d looked at him, and she couldn’t stay irritated for long.
He’d looked different somehow. Not physically, still the burly rugby player, but fragile with it. It was the way he held himself, he looked tentative, lacking his usual confidence.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said, pre-empting her. “I just… I couldn’t let you take everything without saying goodbye properly.”
She remembered afterwards how his voice had caught on the word ‘goodbye’, how he'd looked at her with such naked longing that she'd had to glance away.
They'd been together for years. She had loved him, she still felt a great deal of affection for him.
Not in the way she loved Luisa, not with that all-consuming fire that she realising now had never been there with him, but with a steady warmth that had been real, whatever else it wasn't. As much friends as lovers towards the end, but she cared for him still.
"Let me help you with those," he'd said, reaching for a box. She didn’t know whether it was deliberate on his part or not, but their hands had brushed and…
She’d felt nothing. No spark, no desire.
Yet he’d looked at her, and she knew that he had. It broke her heart.
"James," she'd said quietly, "we need to keep this simple."
"Is it?" he'd asked. "Simple?"
“No. But it has to be.”
He’d busied himself by making them tea and once she was packed up they’d talked… nothing practical, all small talk, about friends, about work. Weirdly normal save that for half the topics they probably should have discussed they both steered well clear.
And then she’d left.
He helped her with the boxes, helped load them in the taxi, and that was that.
So... weird. Unsettling. That just about did it.
Amy took a deep breath. She needed a few more minutes, she told herself, just a few more to process it.
She’d hurt someone she cared about. And yes, he’d hurt her with his own fidelities.
But two wrongs didn’t make a right, and maybe that was it…
setting aside her sexuality, maybe the two of them could never have lasted.
On-again-off-again back before they lived together, both unfaithful when to the outside world they looked destined for marriage. Maybe they were destined to not last.
Standing up Amy started the shower running in her ensuite. Above all else she wanted to wash, to draw a line under her day and move on with her life.
And then what she really needed was a drink. Preferably many.
***
An hour later she found Luisa and the other two at a cocktail bar on Clapham High Street, five minutes’ walk from her new place. She may have had her worries about going back to being in a house share, but great pubs and bars practically on her doorstep were decent compensation.
When Amy got to the bar what she saw made her heart sing.
Luisa was deep into some anecdote at their table, and Amy's two best friends were in fits of laughter, clearly genuinely enjoying their time with Luisa.
She couldn't have hoped for a better introduction between three of the people in her life that she cared about the most.
And then, as she walked over, Luisa turned her way and the grin when they made eye contact made her heart skip a beat, a grin that Amy returned with interest. Neither had eyes for anyone else.
Luisa stood, slightly unsteady on her feet after what Naomi had told her over texts had been a good few hours in various pubs and bars already, and gave Amy a long hug, and Amy, to her embarrassment, found herself welling up and sobbing into Luisa's shoulder.
Luisa could tell, and simply held Amy tight while she gathered herself.
"Are you ok?" Luisa asked after a couple of minutes.
Amy wiped her eyes, the worst of it having passed. "It's done, that's all I can say really. A weird day." She paused and laughed. "You're a good hugger."
"You want to talk about it?"
"No, thank you but it's ok."
"I'm here for you, just know that. If you do need to talk."
Amy smiled back, unsure quite what the emotion inside her was... she felt a little bit of everything really. But she wasn’t going to let it impact on Luisa in any way whatsoever.
Naomi and Lara were sympathetic too, but as she sat down Amy moved the subject on. "I don't know about anyone else, but I really, really, REALLY need a drink after that day." She looked around. "Is it table service?"
"No, bar," replied Lara.
"I'll go," said Luisa. "It's definitely my turn."
Soon the four of them were into the swing of it fully, drink following drink following drink.
When Naomi and Lara started to spill the beans on some of Amy's misadventures from when she was younger, when the talk got to tales of Halloween zombie hockey players and her strange knack for somehow always contriving to lose the drinking games where the forfeit was to kiss another woman, Amy felt her embarrassment rising but also felt so happy to have Luisa there, to have Luisa finding out more about Amy's past from people who knew her better than she knew herself.