Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Fifteen
Adam and Jay look up from their lunch when I emerge into the kitchen the next morning. I had gotten home and curled up fully dressed in bed, not waking until past noon. Even Millie looks surprised, padding towards me like an accusing parent.
‘Good morning. Well, good afternoon.’ Adam smiles slyly as Jay gets up silently to make me a coffee. ‘Glad you’re back. Where were you sneaking off to in the wee small hours last night?’
‘I”m sorry I didn’t message you guys. I hope you weren’t worried?’
‘We were a bit confused, but we thought we’d wait until you didn’t come home before we rounded up a search party.’
‘Is everything okay?’ Jay asks, pouring me a glass of water from the pitcher on the table.
They haven’t asked me where I was or what I was doing, which I appreciate. But in this moment I feel too full of what’s just happened, and need to share it with someone.
‘I was with George, Frannie’s brother.’
‘Oh,’ Adam says, and I can feel his restraint as he stops himself asking anything. Jay pulls a chair out for me and sits back down to his breakfast. I join them, pleased to be sat in the warm, with people who make me comfortable, after a night with so much strangeness. I tell them what happened.
Predictably, Jay listens with an impassive expression, occasionally making sympathetic noises, while Adam remains completely silent as his face goes through every expression possible.
‘Well, well, well,’ he finally says as I lay out my journey home through a tangle of late night underground services. ‘A late-night rendezvous with your best friend”s, much older, only-just-single brother. Who would have known you had that in you?’
‘How do you feel?’ Jay asks. I make a noncommittal noise.
‘Right now I just feel tired. But I think when I’ve had some sleep I’ll be either embarrassed or annoyed, or possibly both.’
‘Why would you be embarrassed? It sounds like he’s the one acting like an idiot.’
‘Because,’ I hesitate, deciding how much to say. ‘Because I’ve liked him since I was a teenager. I know that’s a bit weird, but after meeting him again as an adult I realised that I still feel the same way. When I was with him this evening I thought it meant that he finally saw us as being past the point where age gaps matter. And then he made me feel like I can never outgrow the kid he knew.’
‘I can have sympathy for him.’ Jay says thoughtfully. ‘He clearly likes you, but you are younger than him, and there are things that you both need to consider. Is he over his breakup? How would Frannie feel if she found out? He’s right that jumping into bed - or on a sofa - was too quick, and he’s the one with the ex and the sister. He’s the one who should be responsible for considering them.’
‘Oh Jay, you’re being too nice,’ Adam rolls his eyes at me. ‘This guy seems like a complete stick to me, Hydie. It’s like he’s so desperate to do the right thing all the time that he ends up causing problems in the process. It’s the classic paradox of the people pleaser.’
‘So you think leaping into bed with Hydie and giving her all sorts of ideas, even if you’re unable to commit to anything further, was the right move?’
‘Hydie’s a grown woman, not some sad abandoned puppy. He might have hurt her in the end, but this way he’s hurting her anyway. He clearly likes her but he”s messed up anything between them without even giving them a chance.’
They’re talking about me as though I’m not there, trading opinions until Adam makes a snide joke about foiled book jackets and they completely leave the topic. I sit silently at the table, my head heavy with tiredness.
They’re both right, in a way. George initiated everything that had happened between us, then pushed me away. That had been a bad thing to do. But perhaps he truly thought it was for the best. Perhaps he was thinking of my friendship with Frannie, as well as my friendship with both Nisha and himself. If George and I entered into a messy situationship that ended on bad terms, the awful awkwardness caused could have been completely unsalvageable.
And yet even while I think all of this, a horrible alternative occurs to me. George himself said that it was too soon after his breakup, but he had initiated everything. Perhaps he had just been using me. Perhaps he had just needed something to get past his breakup, and I happened to have been there and willing. It wasn’t the George I knew, but as I thought about it I realised that perhaps I was thinking of a George that existed ten years ago. Transplanting that boy onto a man who had become completely different.
I don”t know which was true. And in the end, it doesn”t really matter. Either way, I feel bruised and furious. That George could allow me to taste something I had wanted for so long and then push me away again had felt so painful that I couldn’t stand it, and to still not know if George felt the same way I did is dizzying to the point of nausea.
Something touches my hand, which is resting on my lap beneath the table. It is Millie’s nose, and I lift my hand to stroke her soft ears as she rests her head on my knee. Adam and Jay’s discussion has faded to background noise and, without saying anything, I get up and leave the table. Millie, as if knowing I need comfort, follows me up the stairs to my room and sits hopefully next to my bed as I change into pyjamas and get under the duvet. When I pat the space next to me she jumps up to fill it. I fall asleep comforted by her soft warmth, and the gentle rise and fall of her breathing.
*
I wake up a few hours later and, once I’ve established in a panic that I’m not supposed to be at work, type out a message to Frannie. I tell her that I’m sorry I’ve missed a few things, that I’ve been busy and feeling a bit under the weather, and ask if she would like to catch up for coffee soon, just us two. As I brush my teeth and wash off the makeup I reflect on the bizarre events of the last night. For a while, I wonder if George is reflecting in the same way, but decide that it shouldn”t matter to me anymore.
As I replay the scene in my head, I feel once again the sharp sting of rejection. I realise that I’m not only remembering the pain of the night before, but that of another night as well. As though connected through ten years I remember the way George had let go of my hands, so much smaller than his back then, the same pitying expression, and realise that all I have done, after everything, is repeated the same experience, baring my soul only to have it crushed to pulp in the name of doing the right thing
With grim determination I mentally write off the possibility of anything happening between me and George. As strong as my feelings have been for him, I conclude that, ultimately, the events of last night ended the way they needed to for me. Whatever George’s intentions, his actions closed a door in my head that I had allowed to linger open for too long. I had pushed away other elements of my past, and if I was going to have a relationship with Frannie that wasn’t being constantly overshadowed by my childish crush on her brother, George would just have to be consigned to the same emotional graveyard. I would see him if I had to, I would be civil and friendly, but I wouldn’t indulge in the friendship, forcing it to bear a meaning and significance that only I was giving it.
I would put my focus where it belonged, in my friendship with Frannie, whose love I knew was unconditional, and exactly as I needed it to be. I would work to create a friendship with Frannie which did not need me to see George more than necessary. I knew I would have to see him at the wedding. I would not hide, nor would I pretend nothing had happened. I wasn’t avoiding him anymore. Instead I would get through it with as much dignity as I could, then leave George where he belonged, in the daydreams and letters and star-shaped box of a stupid little girl.
Ten Years Ago
When the Star Girlz track began, every girl in the venue cried out in joy. In the crush of bodies, Frannie grabbed me, the glitter around her eyes sparkling in the light like a galaxy.
‘Was this you?’ she squealed with delight. ‘Was this your idea?’
‘It was George’s idea!’ I laughed ‘I just helped choose the songs.’
Over the crowd I could see him laughing with delight, the other adult attendees at the party looking on as twenty teenage girls flung themselves at one another, screaming the lyrics as the song started up.
‘Why don’t you meet me at midnight baby!’ We all shouted at the ceiling of the venue, spangled with spinning lights. ‘Why can’t you see how much I-I-I want you to see me!’ The song was lush with yearning and desire, and as I jumped up and down with the rest of the girls I saw George smiling at us, smiling, I fantasised, directly at me, revelling in our shared victory as much as I had.
Until the first Star Girlz track had come on, Frannie’s party guests had been standing in small groups, chatting and singing along to the music. The plan had been to affectionately embarrass Frannie, but instead the song had lifted the party to a place of shared joy. Girls who had never met before were jumping into each other’s arms and holding hands, their emotions renewed each time the next song started and they once again heard the beginning of a song they had loved as a child, discovering that they still knew it by heart.
When the music eventually faded and the party drifted towards its end, Frannie grabbed my hand and pulled me off the dancefloor. We stumbled towards the table of food and both drank deeply from the large plastic cups of water. I felt flushed and dizzy, had screamed and smiled more than I thought I ever had in my life, carried away in the crowd.
‘There’s the birthday girl.’ George said, approaching us at the table. ‘Hello trouble,’ he looked directly at me, ‘I wondered if we’d lose you both in that tangle of happy Star Girlz fans.’
Without warning Frannie pulled both of us towards her, embracing us both at the same time.
‘Thank you,’ she said ‘I can’t believe you did that for me. I had forgotten all about those songs.’ The shaking of her shoulders told me she was crying, her face pressed against George’s chest.
‘I’m happy you’re so happy, Frannie,’ he laughed, ‘We thought it would be a little prank but it turned out to be so much better.’ George put his arms around his sister and, by default, me. I tried not to tremble as I felt myself pressed into him. He planted a soft kiss on the top of his sister”s head, and smiled at me, before gently untangling himself from us and walking away. I watched him go, my heart ringing like a bell, as Frannie continued to talk to me, watching him slip out of the back door of the hall, where the pool was, where we had all played volleyball earlier in the day.
‘Why don’t we just take it?’ Frannie was saying when I returned my attention to her. She was holding a large bottle of Prosecco, from which all the girls had had tiny glasses poured and handed out by Frannie’s parents. I hadn’t enjoyed it, sharp and sour, but Frannie took the bottle by the neck and led me out of a side door to sit on the steps in the dying light.
We each took a drink straight from the bottle, and she rested her head on my shoulder.
‘I wish you were my sister,’ she said, her voice a little clumsier than usual.
‘I wish I was too,’ I felt her giggle against my shoulder.
‘Maybe you should marry George,’ she said mischievously. I laughed, trying to sound normal, as though her words hadn’t shot me full of nerves. I took another drink from the bottle. With each sip the sour taste was transformed into something deep and sophisticated, like I was swallowing starlight.
‘Or maybe we need to marry two brothers,’ she said, ‘maybe if we found twins we both liked.’
‘What if we got them mixed up one day?’ I said. Frannie burst into laughter.
‘Well, I’m sure they would tell us.’
We sat together on the little step of the doorway for a while longer, feeling the effects of the alcohol moving through us. I had never been even tipsy before, I felt as though I were in an old film, everything just slightly blurred and given a warm, hazy tone. We heard Frannie’s mother calling for her and she got to her feet, slightly wobbly in her strappy heels. I got up after her, my hands out to steady her. My own body was stable, though my mind felt strange, as though my thoughts were underwater. She passed me, to go in through the door to find her parents.
‘Are you coming?’ she asked. I felt hot. Autumn was unseasonably warm, and the time in the sun earlier in the day had burned my shoulders, and the cooler evening wind felt soothing against them, against my cheeks and chapped lips.
‘I’ll be another minute.’ I said and turned away. I walked carefully around the walls of the house, thinking only of the coolness against my skin until I saw blue lights dancing against the wall, walking towards them as though drawn to will-o’-the-wisps in a forest. As I turned the corner I realised I had been seeing the lights on the outside of the venue, bouncing off the water in the pool, which was still lit and uncovered, casting a blue shimmer across the little courtyard like a mermaid’s lagoon. As I approached I heard him.
‘Hello, trouble. Fancy seeing you here.’
I jumped, caught off guard, alone with him. He was leaning against the wooden fencing that divided the house from the rest of the world. Behind him, a thin moon was glowing silver, like a coin caught mid-flip. He smiled at me in the dark, and I could feel my love-struck heart thudding against my chest.
‘Thank you for your help with today,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate it. Frannie loves you so much, and it made her birthday perfect.’
I was fizzing with the excitement of the party, of the warmth of the sun earlier in the day that had sunk into my skin. Prosecco sparkled in my stomach. I was giddy with feelings, the carefully held emotions I had for him were spilling through my hands and I felt as though I had to give them to him, as though the sheer power of the feelings I had for him meant that he must surely feel them for me too.
He watched me, his eyes questioning as I stepped towards him, my hands twisting nervously, but my mind bold and sure. I opened my mouth.
I have spent ten years trying to pretend that night didn’t happen. If I think back on that moment I see it as if watching the scene from the side. I see myself small and pale in front of him, a child gazing at him as though I were approaching some mythical being. From where I stand in my mind, watching a child approach someone who is so much older than she is, it is so obviously wrong. After I had told him how I felt there had been the most awful silence, like the moment after a gunshot, and in that second I had come to my senses, realised what I had done. I remember feeling as though I was crumpling to the ground, even though my body wouldn’t move. I wanted to run away and hide, I wanted to disappear into mist. But I stayed, looking at him in horror.
He had walked towards me, and taken my hand in his and for a moment I had thought he was going to kiss me. Even now I remember the sudden terror, feeling how small my fingers had been as his had closed round them.
‘I am so flattered,’ he said carefully, ‘that someone as wonderful as you would feel that way about me. And when you feel this way about someone your own age they will be incredibly lucky.’
And I had said nothing. He had put his hand gently on the top of my head and walked back into the house, leaving me staring at the moon, a mocking white smile that had watched the whole thing.
A few minutes later I had come back into the house and, avoiding George, had found Frannie’s father and told him I was feeling unwell. I had looked so pale and distressed he hadn’t asked any questions, just beckoned Frannie over to say goodnight before taking me to his car and driving me back to my home. I remember it was the only time he had spoken to my mother, thought it strange at the time, though now I know he must have been worried I wouldn’t be properly looked after. He had touched the top of my head in the same way George had before he left, which had opened the wound anew and I had run past my mother to my room and howled silently into my pillow.
For a decade, I had tried to push down the pain of that night. It had cost me my relationship with Frannie’s family, it had almost cost me my relationship with Frannie herself. And yet, it had always been there. However much I ignored it. Curled in my chest, like a little animal. I felt it now, sitting on my bed as I thought about his hands on my skin, the thrill of his mouth on mine. Everything was falling in on itself, and I was somehow both people at once, the two rejections finding each other through time and fusing to create something all-consuming, like a collapsing star.