Chapter 2 #3
What, Nora says, as she watches Bren lift the cap off a beer. Robin, feet from him, with his hand on someone’s shoulder, laughing his great Robin laugh, his shirt black and gold like the song that’s playing.
What’s up with you, Shay asks.
More friends, then, in front of them, eating pizza, asking to see her ring.
Wow, Nora, it even looks like you, then Robin is there with a slice in his hand just for her.
Saying he saw she was pizza-less, and that was just wrong.
Arm around her waist, kiss on her temple.
Marry her already, someone says, and he guffaws, says shall we?
Robin, Nora says.
Yeah?
There’s –
But then his brother is tugging him onto the makeshift dance floor and Robin is calling back to her, come dance, Nora, and she says she’ll just – points at her pizza – the introduction dried in her throat.
Bren is talking to some of her art school friends, now.
Back turned, his neck bronzed with sun, trailed in a black twine necklace like the one she gave him for his birthday, years ago. Surely not the same one.
Who’s the guy, Shay asks her, handing her a glass of wine. Nora takes a mouthful, swallows, says who?
The one you’re pretending not to look at?
More wine, to hide the red in her cheeks.
No one, she says, when she lowers her glass. Just my old neighbour, Bren.
Shay’s own lips are stained red with wine, her teeth mauve, like her hair.
The one who travels, and does nothing?
It’s not nothing, Nora says. He works in outdoor centres and stuff.
You didn’t say he was coming!
I didn’t know.
Hair brushed behind her ear. The rest of her pizza eaten, steadying, the warm dough, salt of the soft melted cheese. So why don’t you go say hi, Shay says, and Nora nods, says she should. She will.
Doesn’t move.
Shay frowns, puts down her wine glass. Says come on, and grabs her elbow.
No, Nora says, Shay, I don’t – but instead of dragging her towards Bren, Shay steers her out of the room, past friends talking in the hall, past the bathroom where there is a short queue of people waiting; out through the kitchen into the bricked backyard.
Two people smoking by the gate. The stars are out, the night fresh. Feels cool on Nora’s too-warm skin.
Talk to me, Shay says.
There’s nothing to talk about, Nora says, tweaking a flower that’s flopped into her face.
I know you better than you think, Shay says, and I can tell you have something going on in that quiet heart of yours.
How can a heart be quiet?
See! You’re deflecting! And you look like you’re going to cry and you can’t do that at your own engagement party, Nora. It’s too tragic.
The moon shines above them, half concealed by the rooftop. Steady drip of prior rain from the clogged gutters as Nora folds her arms, music carrying through the closed back door. Chelsea Dagger, rowdy, hollering.
I just didn’t expect to see him, Nora says. Bren, I mean.
And that matters because …?
Nora exhales, her breath silver on the air. It doesn’t, she says. You’re right. It’s been a while, that’s all. I’m just … thrown.
Shay regards her.
Does he hold a candle for you, she says, and if Nora was still drinking her wine she’d spit it out, droplets spraying, ludicrous, laughable. Instead, glad of the darkness in the yard as her cheeks glow afresh, she says no! No. He was – is – my best friend. Aside from you.
Good save.
Our mothers are close, Nora says. We’re still. You know.
Shay waits.
In touch, Nora says, with a shrug. She can see people drifting into the kitchen through the glass of the back door, looking for more crisps or wine.
I should, she says, nodding inside. But you’re right, Shay. We’re friends. It’s a nice, normal thing that he’s here. I should go and talk to him.
She is still looking at the back door, at the square of gold light through the glass. At the people she knows. The people she expected to see.
No candles here, she says, and Shay nods. Says cool.
Back inside, they get caught talking to more friends, but eventually she’s in the lounge again, only to see Bren in the corner with one of Robin’s cousins.
Her arm on his. Him, saying something into her ear.
And so instead of going to talk, Nora goes to Robin, who is waving at her from the dance floor, shirt unbuttoned now as he jives to Night Fever.
Pulling her towards him, twirling her under his arm, everyone cheering, looking at the two of them.
Almost everyone.
Her heartbeat high.
_
Midnight comes, and most people have left.
Robin got pleasantly drunk and is asleep on the sofa, danced out and wearing only one shoe.
Stragglers kiss the top of his head as they filter out and Nora says goodbye to them at the door, more hugs, more congrats.
Shushing them as they make noise down the street, worried about the neighbours, though most of them, in all fairness, had been at the party.
Robin’s doing. That ability he has, to befriend pretty much anyone.
And then she closes the door and is left alone in the hall.
Soft lamplight from the living room, as she leans her head against the wood. Breathes out.
Bren must have left at some point, while she was dancing or mingling, wondering how to play this and not looking his way.
She can’t believe he did that, she thinks.
Can’t believe she let him.
But she latches the door, straightens her waistcoat. In the living room Robin is snoring lightly and she picks up a few dropped olives off the carpet, gathers empty glasses to take to the kitchen. Down the hall, through the doorway, when her heart stops.
Because he did not leave.
He is there, standing in her kitchen with his back to her. Tanned neckline, laced-up boots. Opening a drawer before closing it, then rolling open another.
Looking for something? she says, and at her voice, Bren pauses. Slides the drawer shut, turns around.
I was just, he says.
Snooping?
She puts the glasses down and Bren clears his throat. A noise that Nora has heard only over the phone, or on a lagging video call, for so long. Something simmers inside of her, like olive oil left on a low heat.
She looks at him looking at her. Sees the pendant around his neck.
Shall we start over, Bren says, and there’s a lightness in his voice.
Start over, she repeats.
Tonight, she wonders, or back twelve years.
From across the room, he half shrugs again with just the one shoulder, easy-going, nonchalant.
Waiting for her to go first. Standing there with the shadows beneath his eyes, the magnets he’d sent her scattered behind him on the fridge door.
Same smile. Same freckles on his neck. As if, like she’d said earlier to Shay in the yard, this is entirely normal.
I know I invited you, Nora says, but you didn’t reply. You didn’t say anything.
Just like you didn’t, Bren shoots back. No heads-up that you were getting married. Just a jpeg file, attached to an email.
Colour travelling up her throat, at that.
Midnight black outside the kitchen window.
Which is fine, Bren says. Obviously.
He shrugs again, with two shoulders now, and looks so unconcerned that Nora wonders if she should be, too.
I wasn’t being accusatory, she says, attempting a lightness of her own. I’m just confused, that’s all. Did you come back just for … I mean …
She rubs her arm, wishing she hadn’t drunk so much at the start of the night; wishing she didn’t feel so tongue-tied in his presence. Wishing she could pin this feeling, this slow-motion bass of her heartbeat, solely on too much alcohol.
Of course, Bren says. This is you, Nora. And this is a … big deal.
A bigger deal than your dad’s funeral? she says, but as soon as she does, she wishes she hadn’t, because something changes in his face. That ease of him dropping, like a curtain. Shutters brought down, locked up for the night.
I didn’t mean, she begins, but he says no, he gets it. He … thought it would be a nice thing, showing up like this. But clearly he’s read this all wrong.
No, she says. It’s –
I’m gonna go, he says, and he walks out the kitchen so she’s left looking at the empty wine glasses and the fridge magnets, the space where he had just been standing, thinking no, this isn’t right.
She has pictured their reunion many times over the years, and this is not it. This is not how it’s supposed to go.
Bren, she says, as she follows him down the hall, music still playing, her fiancé, she assumes, still sleeping. This is stupid. You came all this way.
And you’re right, Bren says. It was stupid.
It wasn’t, Nora says, a note of urgency in her voice as he tries to unlatch the front door. It was just – unsettling! You didn’t talk to me, all night.
You didn’t talk to me, either.
So you didn’t talk because I didn’t talk?
I flew across the world to be here, Nora.
So shouldn’t crossing the room be the easy part?
She is forcing humour into her words now; pleading with him, to see, come on, isn’t this funny?
But Bren releases the latch, says he’s jet-lagged, and she’s, you know. Got a life, here. He shouldn’t have sprung this on her.
No, you shouldn’t’ve, Nora says, but it doesn’t mean I want you to leave. I just – she holds up her palms – would’ve liked some notice, Bren, that’s all. I printed Polaroids of everyone. I didn’t print you a Polaroid.
I don’t care about the Polaroids, Nora, Bren says.
Where are you staying? she asks, slightly desperate, now, as he opens the front door.
He’s left his expedition rucksack – the one he’d owned as a teenager, would pack for hiking weekends with his dad – propped against the wall of the flat.
He lifts it onto his back, the street deserted, now. All of her other friends long gone.
I’ll figure it out, Bren says. A hostel, maybe.
There aren’t any hostels in suburban Hertfordshire, Nora tells him, and before she knows she will offer, she says stay here. We can have breakfast, in the morning. We can talk, properly, you can meet –
But it is her turn to falter as Bren clips his bag straps around his waist, still not looking at her. Sorry, Nora, he says, and he truly sounds it. Sorry I messed up.
And does he mean now, or does he mean then, and it is like a needle being pushed through her heart as he turns to walk down the path.
Bren, she says, a wild note in her voice, and to her surprise, he turns. Eyes on hers again, that nothingness – so practised, so calm – in his face.
Is that it, she asks him.
He stands there, looking at her. Weeds pushing through the concrete at his feet. Overgrown grass, cars mounted on the kerb. No one awake. No one watching.
And he unclips his bag and drops it to the ground and moves forward and kisses her, right there, on the night of her engagement party, with her fiancé – her good, generous, desirable fiancé – asleep inside, just feet from them.
And he tastes how she’d always expected, of strawberries, and summer, and her hands go to his hair and it is thick and coarse and she tugs on it as he lifts her, moves her backwards so that she’s up against the outside wall, takes her feet, just slightly, off the floor, and his chest is so firm and so solid against her own and nobody has ever picked her up like this before, like she weighs nothing, and she wraps her legs around his hips and she is not thinking about how he left, how she stayed, how they never were, she is only thinking of now, of this, of the touch and the heat of him, but of course, none of this happens.
Of course it goes through her mind but this is Bren, and her, and they are polite and awkward and never face their true feelings, could never be so remotely bold or morally questionable, haven’t seen one another in twelve years, haven’t touched each other since the week he left, and flashes of thoughts, like this, hot and burning, are all that she has: all that there will ever be, between them.
So no. This does not happen.
Cars parked, stars out.
No movement, towards her, from her oldest friend.
He simply clips his other rucksack strap into place, the one across his chest. That firm, solid chest she has not touched.
Night, Nora, he says, ignoring her question. Congratulations, by the way.
And then he leaves her. Again.