Chapter 5 #3
Her eyes are bright. Shining, in a way he can’t handle. But he makes himself look at her the way she is looking at him, straight in the face, coffee cups and a whole lot more between them, fucking hell, and there’s him, just trying to be friends.
Life happens, right, is all he can say, because for all his good intentions, all his hopes to make amends after the party, she can’t play it like this.
Can’t play it like she doesn’t know, like they can crack on as they were, as if nothing happened.
Even though that’s exactly how he tries to play it, too. Most of the time.
I’ve got to go, she says, standing up.
I thought you had some time?
What I have is a life, Bren, Nora says. A business, and a job, and a partner who you never ask about, which means I never know how to – what to –
He keeps looking. Her anger, now, morphed into upset.
It might not be shark bite material, she says, as she shoves her stool beneath the table, but I have tried to share that stuff with you, Bren. It just felt like you never wanted to hear it.
Bren does not respond to this. Doesn’t know how to.
She looks as confused as he is, and they hold each other’s eyes for a moment in which they see and don’t say all that they want to and then she repeats that she has to go, and Bren watches her leave, winding her scarf around her neck and the wet ends of her hair.
Wondering how he’d got it so wrong, yet again. Why he can’t ever get it right.
_
Nora gets back to her café, hot despite the cold, riled with emotion. Without saying hi to Shay, she dumps her bag and coat in the back room and sits down at the desk with the company laptop, which freezes when she jabs at the touch pad; a spinning wheel suspended on the screen.
Hello to you too, Shay says, sticking her head through the curtain.
Sorry I’m late, Nora says.
You’re actually early, Shay says. I thought you were gonna be another hour?
Too busy, Nora says.
Too flustered, more like, Shay says. You look like you ran all the way back from Hampstead.
I’m behind with the chakra workshop, Nora says, double-clicking on the touch pad.
Nora, Shay says. D’you remember what Desmond used to say?
Nora does not answer, clicks once again at the still-frozen screen.
Desmond was their sculpture tutor at Saint Martins; a big, brawny man everyone called Baloo, mostly behind his back.
He’d roared with laughter the first time he’d heard it, before humming Robin Hood and Little John for the rest of the lesson, wrong movie, Des, Nora had told him; same animation, though, good catch.
He said that art journalists are the last thing a society requires, Shay says. Not artists, even, but the people that write about art. Which is the height of sophistication, right? But also the most expendable career on the planet.
Nora does remember this, but does not see why it’s relevant. Uh-huh, she says, as she holds down the power button to reboot the machine.
Our chakra workshop is the equivalent of art journalism, Shay tells her. Not exactly the most urgent of projects.
Great, Nora says. I’ll be sure to write that on the digital ads. Improve our chances of selling some tickets.
Jeez, you’re flinty, today.
You’re flinty every day, Nora fires back, and rather than huff, Shay barks out a laugh, says she’ll leave her to it: this charming mood of hers.
He got bitten by a shark, Nora says, as the curtain falls.
Background voices, clink of teaspoons. Shay pokes her head back into the room.
Bren got bitten by a shark, Nora tells her.
He has this ginormous scar on his leg which was just, like, staring at me, in the water.
He’s been away for twelve years and has at least twelve tattoos to show for it, and he didn’t tell me about them, either, and they look ridiculous, Shay, honestly, like a Rorschach test threw up on him, all abstract and ugly and weird.
Shay nods, her bottom lip protruding with interest. Nothing, in their eleven years of friendship or six years of business ownership, has ever seemed to rattle her.
This is the redhead, Shay says. Who showed up on Saturday, and then again today, looking all shifty and besotted?
He is not besotted, Nora says.
He is shifty, though.
That’s just Bren, Nora says. He’s somehow super confident and really awkward, all at once. I don’t know how it’s even possible, but that’s him.
Oh, it’s possible, Shay says. Kind of like Jesse Eisenberg. Or Cillian Murphy.
I guess?
Andy Warhol, too. Come to think of it, practically every white male artist who ever made it big. Penis equals god-given confidence, equals the prerogative to be socially awkward aka a demonstrable dick. And yet there they are, getting rich and famous anyhow.
Except Bren isn’t rich, or famous. Or an artist.
He is a dick, though?
No, Nora sighs, he’s not. Just does some dickish things, maybe.
Like not telling you he got tattoos, Shay says.
Right.
Or turning up at your engagement party, to surprise you. That douche bag.
Nora stares at the laptop background, which is a photograph of Horace asleep on the art café floor.
Then she walks her feet slowly in a quarter-circle, spinning the desk chair so that she’s facing Shay, who’s watching her from the doorway.
Bangles on her own rose-tattooed wrists, which Nora barely notices, or at least has never asked about.
Am I overreacting, Nora says.
You? Shay flashes her sharp-toothed smile, her nose piercing twinkling like a fleck of glass. Never.
Nora nods, once, and Shay snickers. Looks over her shoulder, tells a customer she’ll be there in one sec, then looks back at Nora who is now chewing her thumbnail.
He is fit, Shay says. The redhead.
Bren, Nora says.
The tattoos and the shark scar might just have tipped him from nomadic hipster into dark, dangerous question mark, Shay says.
He’s definitely a question mark, Nora says. The laptop has rebooted, is ready for the password now. She types it in but the screen shakes, rejects it.
And he’s single? Shay says, and Nora bashes the keys too hard as she retypes. Yes, she says. Or at least, she thinks so.
You don’t know?
He’s not exactly forthcoming, in that area.
I thought you said you were best friends?
And I thought you were off men, Nora says, still so hot, from rushing back; how is she sweating, like this, when it’s February.
Men, yes, Shay says. Question marks, no.
Well with Bren, life would be a series of question marks, Nora says, and Shay says sign her up.
When Nora shoots her a look she says hey, no judgement, please!
That not everyone gets to be as lucky as her, in full requited love with a nice normal guy who washes up and pays half the mortgage and understands pink tax.
Some of us have to scrape the barrel with the Brens of the world, okay?
And Nora wants to say that Robin is more than just a nice normal guy, and that to be with Bren would hardly be scraping the barrel, but both seem to imply things she does not want to, should not need to prove, and so she says neither.
Tries the password again, her hair still soaking into her scarf.
_
That night, Robin is home before her, and he has called this venue that he loves, doesn’t she love it, too? It is beautiful. A white box in the middle of a silver birch forest, glass roof, lots of light. Definitely different. Debatably intimate, but that’s on them, and their guest list.
I’ll call them tomorrow, if you like it, he says.
Where is it?
Devon, he says, which is random, Nora says.
Or romantic? By the ocean, lots of space.
It could be a nice getaway for people. I did a shoot there, once, when it was first built, Robin says, as he flips his laptop closed, clears the dining table of work so that he can make room for dinner.
He’s wearing felted slippers on his feet, a dark green jumper rolled to his elbows.
I remember thinking it was so peaceful. I’d never seen anything like it. They do yoga retreats and stuff, not just weddings. I still know the guy that runs it, Jed something.
Well, give Jed something a call, Nora says. Why not.
I will, Robin says, but then he says hey. Are you okay?
I’m fine, she says. I’m great.
Everything good with the café, today? How’s the chakra series going?
Can I leave you with these onions, she asks him. I really need a shower after my swim, today. I can’t warm up.
Course. Have a bath, if you need.
Yeah, maybe I will.
In the bathroom, she opts for speed and stands beneath the showerhead on full blast. Trying to work out her thoughts, separate them into strands.
Marrying Robin. Seeing Bren. Feeling one thing and also another.
Anger, love; resentment, concern, and something else of a different colour, a shade she can’t quite identify, a mix of now and then and what’s coming.
She goes to shampoo her hair, uses conditioner, by accident.
And when she gets out, her skin red raw, she finds she’s replaying that stupid fantasy kiss, just kid’s stuff, though, like wanting to be a Power Ranger or a pop star when in reality you wouldn’t want to be either of those things; she’s thinking about Robin, too, and the venue in the woods, so sleek and far away.
She’ll tell him she’s not sure about it.
She’ll tell him right now. But once she’s dried off and in her dressing gown, she glances at her phone on the bed, Robin singing along to the radio in the next room.
Look, Bren’s text says, on the screen: this is not going how I’d hoped.
New message, then, because he sends them in stilted sentences rather than one long block; like he’s talking to her.
It’s meant to be a nice thing, being here
Meant to be good to see you
Sorry about the party
Sorry about the shark
Sorry about the nothing-ness that apparently isn’t interesting, like the chocolate
I actually brought you some back from the airport
I forgot to bring it, today