CHAPTER 18 #2
An even sadder realisation. We never took any photos together. Our time together wasn’t even real. Without our text stream I have no evidence: no photos, no hearsay, no witnesses. Nothing to prove what we were, what we could have been, to each other. Pics or it didn’t happen.
I don’t sleep that night, desperately trying to recall every conversation, every date. Ensure that I can picture every detail. Remember each word. Print them in big letters on the side of my skull because that’s the only way I’ll know any of it happened.
I don’t want to go to work on Wednesday, but I want to be a hypocrite even less. Only Reg is there, and he doesn’t ask questions. For the first time in a long time, I’m glad no one wants to know a thing about me.
When we get home from the lunch shift, it’s to a delivery on the doorstep: William, sitting hunched over on our top step. It’s giving me flashbacks to last Saturday night.
Bee stops halfway up the stairs, frozen, staring, and I nearly bump into her.
Probably my fault for staring down at my phone.
Definitely not combing through my photos again just in case.
I take one look at the scene—at him staring and her staring—and it really is just nauseating when you’re on the outside of it.
Hitch my bag over my shoulder, weave first around Bee, then around William, giving him an eye-roll and a scoff that leave him in no doubt of my position, and walk inside.
Roughly five minutes later: door slamming, two sets of footsteps, spineless pleading. ‘Come on, Bianca!’
‘Don’t “come on” me, William!’ Bee shouts down the hall.
‘You’re making a much bigger deal out of this than it needs to be!’ he shouts back. I can only marvel at his spectacularly bad strategy here.
‘How else did you want me to take your little dumping? To use your words, come on!’
‘Hey!’ he says, and I’m imagining him sticking an indignant finger between them. ‘I didn’t dump you!’
I hear Bee gasp in fake shock. ‘No? My mistake. You just wanted to put me on pause for a month so you can fuck randoms on holiday. So much different! So much better!’ And look, she and I might be on rocky ground right now, but the only person below her on my list is William, so I’m secretly enjoying this, hunched behind my door (slightly ajar), trying to catch a visual to match the audio.
Bee doesn’t give him time to respond, but when she next speaks, it’s softer.
I can hear the vulnerability pierce every word.
‘I just want to know why you got my hopes up. Why spend so much time and energy making me think we had a future if you always planned to pull the rug out from under me?’
William walks past my room at this point. He holds out his arms, beseeching, beckoning Bee into his embrace. I can’t see if she takes him up on it. ‘Baby, we do have a future if you’ll just stop self-sabotaging.’
‘You can’t have seriously thought that I or any other woman would accept this.’
‘I hoped you’d understand, I need to do this for my mental health. You know how stressed I’ve been.’
Oh, fuck right off with that, William.
‘Yes, I see,’ Bee replies. ‘You hoped I’d be too lovesick to deny you anything. Sure, baby, go off, do what you need. I’ll be here waiting for you like a good little wind-up doll to help continue the destressing.’
‘No. No! You’re assigning motives to my actions that don’t align with who I am! I never wanted to hurt you!’ he says.
‘If you thought it would all be hunky dory, why weren’t you upfront with me? Why didn’t you tell me from the start that we had an expiration date? Or a pause if you were so sure that any woman in her right mind would fall for that?’ It’s a great question.
‘Baby, you know I’m a people-pleaser!’ he replies.
‘Well, you’re not pleasing me.’
They stop talking, but I’m too scared to venture out in case they’re gearing up for round two or, heaven forbid, banging it out. So I stay, frozen in place, behind my door, begging my ears to pick up any soft noises.
A few minutes later, I hear a thump and a slide. When I see legs stick out in the crack of my doorframe, I gather that William has collapsed onto the floor. ‘So, where do we go from here?’ he asks. Has he even been listening to the conversation he has literally just been having?
‘There’s nowhere to go, William,’ Bee says.
And it’s quiet again. I hear a door shut faintly. Opening my door, I see William, alone, on our floor, well and truly outstaying his welcome. ‘I think it’s time to go, William,’ I say. He looks up at me with a sneer.
‘I bet you’re just loving this, aren’t you?’
‘Loving that you fucked my friend over? No. Loving that I was proven right that you’re a slimy bastard? It’s not unsatisfying.’
He stands up. ‘You’re a bitch.’ Oh, good one.
‘Mysteriously, Bill,’ I say, relishing not giving a shit about his name preferences, ‘your assessment of my character carries little weight with me. Now please leave my house.’ Why didn’t Bee take the rubbish out before washing her hands of this situation? I’m always left cleaning the apartment.
He won’t leave. He actually steps closer to me, a leer on his face. My heart starts to beat a little faster. I start making some calculations—if I step back, can I get into my room and shut the door without him grabbing me? Am I faster than him? Why did I leave my phone on the bed?
‘Look at you, acting all smug. You think you’re any better than me? Artie’s just using you, you know.’
Excellent. We’ve entered the stereotypical misogynistic sex-based insults portion of the argument, directed at me by a man with (clearly) zero self-awareness.
‘You’ve already spread your legs for him, haven’t you?
’ Was he always this much of a comic-book villain?
‘You really think he’s going to stick around after that?
Who would want your damaged ass? Gambling-addict mum, absent dad…
working as a fucking waitress at your age.
And you act like you’re better than me?’
Tears gather at the edge of my eyes and my vision goes blurry with the effort to blink them back.
I’m not going to let this bastard see me cry.
‘Hey, Willy.’ Ignore the quiver in my voice.
‘One thing I’ve got going for me over you is that my name is on this house.
And if you don’t get the fuck out of it now, Billiam, one thing you’ll have over me is a police report. Leave. I won’t say it again.’
I can see him considering his options. But he does decide to go. As he closes the door, I can’t help but yell, ‘And it’s just weird that you force everyone to call you William all the time!’ Then I lock the door before he can retaliate.
I throw my face to the ceiling. ‘Bee!’
‘Stop shouting!’ she says, emerging from her room. ‘There has been way too much shouting today.’ She rubs her temples. ‘I think I’m getting a migraine.’
‘I don’t give a shit, Bee. How did Billy know about my mother?’ Bee flinches. It’s the use of the nickname, I think. I’m not sure she fully appreciates my anger just yet.
‘I told him.’ She shrugs, like it’s a casual thing. Like she told William I prefer pistachio gelato to vanilla.
I shake my head, unable to compute. ‘Why would you do that?’
‘It just came up. It’s not like it was a secret.’ And then she shrugs again.
My whole body is convulsing. There are no tears now—I’ve reached the level of angry that desiccates the eyeballs. ‘It very much was a secret, Bee. You can’t just go telling people that.’
‘Oh come on, everyone at school knew. It was common knowledge!’
‘No, Bee. No one knew. Or no one was supposed to know. Because I only ever told you.’
I wonder what the me from before would think about all this. Four confrontations with three separate people. I’ve just condensed more confrontation into three days than I have so far experienced in my entire life.
Of course, once the adrenaline dissipates and I am left with the moon and my own thoughts in my bedroom, it becomes painfully clear that I have backed the wrong horse.
Not Billy, because he’s not a horse, he’s a toad.
But I turned away Arthur, exorcised him from my life, the one person who has done nothing but support me in a thankless and painfully one-sided manner for months, and who also happens to give really good head, in favour of Bee.
Bee who left it to me to eject her man from the premises and be subjected to his bullshit insults.
Bee who apparently told everyone and their multiple dogs about my mother’s gambling addiction and the destruction of my family that flowed from it.
Bee who, despite the two arguments we have had in the last week, has never once uttered the word ‘sorry’ even in my general direction.
This is the horse I picked.
Arthur was right. About all of it. And I made him leave.
Now I have to find a way to live with that.