Chapter 35

CHAPTER 35

THURSDAY

NOVEMBER 17, 2016

10:00 P.M.

He is standing on the welcome mat with tulips in his hand. I gesture for him to come into the living room, and he walks past me to the sofa. I put the tulips on the counter and wonder which of us should speak first. It’s him, of course.

“So… you never showed last night,” he says, like a police officer.

Somewhere, I am in bed with him talking about how much fun Patrick’s birthday was. Somewhere else, I am alone wondering how Patrick’s birthday went so wrong. He thinks that I chose not to meet him last night. He doesn’t know that the choice was taken from me. He also doesn’t know that, in another draft, he is a dead body on the tracks.

“Why, Enola?”

There is a gentleness in how he says my name, and my throat tightens. There he is: a blood shadow stuffing a turkey with an onion because a lemon would be overpowering. This is our first Christmas, I say, wrapping my arms around the torn ligaments in his neck. It’s not actually Christmas, honey. We’ve got mistletoe, I say. That’s sage, he replies. We laugh until the turkey is golden, and his corpse is scraped from the tracks like gum.

I wonder what it felt like.

“Enola?”

“Okay, so look—” I start to speak, but he stands up and advances, cautiously, like he’s asking for consent to be closer. I don’t give it but I don’t refuse it either and so now he is holding me. His breath is coffee, and his eyes are red. He is wearing the same gray T-shirt. He is hungover and tired from moving house. (Somewhere, I am flattered that he made it over tonight.)

“Honey, yesterday you said that if we were going to be a couple, then we had to be honest with each other and, well, Pat said the same thing.”

Honey. It’s jarring, like hearing it whispered in an empty room.

“So, here’s the thing,” he continues, looking down, “you asked me about Steph, and the truth is”—he pauses—“that something did happen.”

I go to move, but he locks his hands behind my back.

“ But it’s not what I want.”

I try to pull away again, but he holds fast. “Please listen, Enola. You owe me that much.”

“I owe you nothing!”

“I think Steph got jealous because she knew that you were the first person in a long time who I was really into. And then when I saw on Instagram that you were seeing that guy, what’s his name, Vinchester?”

“ Virinder .”

“Whatever. Look, I got jealous and something happened when we were drunk. She wanted it to happen again but I didn’t.”

My face feels hot and my heart is racing.

“Did you hear me? But I didn’t.”

“You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie to you.”

“I asked you a direct question and you lied!”

“Because it didn’t mean anything and I didn’t want you to make it into a big deal!”

“A big deal… How can you even…?” I try to wriggle free, but he holds my face. I try to remove his hands, but I can’t, and so I hold them as they hold me. I tell him to stop it, but he says no. His eyes are burning. “I’m sorry, Enola. Okay?”

“It’s not enough.”

“I know, look, you’re right. I lied last night. I don’t know why I’m like that. I’m a cunt. I’m an arsehole. I didn’t want to hurt you and I felt attacked and I lied and I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay?”

He has never apologized like this before. I loosen my grip, and he loosens his. I move away from him and sit at the kitchen table. He sits in the seat opposite. I drop my head and speak into the wood. “When we were together, did anything…?”

“No! Of course not.”

“Is it over now?”

“Yes! Look, it was a huge mistake. She’s very intense and she thought that it all meant something that it didn’t. If anything, Enola, you’re the one who put the idea in my head.”

I think about how he speaks about the women in his life. His ex-girlfriend, Jessica. His stepmother, Karen. Now Steph? Everyone was intense, everyone was crazy, lunatics all.

“So it’s my fault you hooked up with your ex and lied about it?”

He cocks his head. “Honey, I admit that I reacted badly. But to be fair, you had just read my message—”

“ I didn’t mean to read your— ”

“Yes, fine, you didn’t mean to read it.” He lifts his hands to instruct me to lower my voice. “But then when you didn’t show up last night, I realized that I had been a twat and I spoke to Pat and he made some really good points. I’m thirty-seven now and everything is finally working out with my book.” He waits for me to respond, but I’m speechless. “Well. That’s something… isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“That I’m telling you I want to be with you.”

He looks as though he’s spent weeks finding me the perfect gift, and it hasn’t occurred to him that I don’t want it. Strangely, the end sequence of The Matrix comes to mind, where Neo sees everything as green coding. I always knew that he was selfish and narcissistic, but, for the first time, I can look past the effect it has and see the mechanics.

“Isn’t this what you want?”

Think about it, Laa. Think about how he makes you feel.

“No,” I say.

His eyes search mine. “But yesterday…”

“Yesterday was a mistake. I asked you about Steph and you manipulated me and that’s what you always do when things don’t go your way.”

“I didn’t manipulate you.”

“You’re doing it right now! You’re saying that you lied because you didn’t want me to make a big deal about it. You’re trying to back me into a corner, so then when I react, you can say: ‘See, that’s what I was afraid of!’ We both know what you’re doing. I don’t want to hear your excuses. I just want you to leave.”

His face changes, and he leans back in his chair. “You only want me to leave because you know what’s going to happen if I stay.”

“You speak like we’re inevitable.”

“We keep ending up together,” he replies with a slanted smile.

“That doesn’t mean what you think it does.”

Shifting forward, he clasps his hands. “You can’t just turn off your feelings, Enola.”

I move back on my chair. “No, but I can change my actions.”

“You’re just angry because of Steph,” he says, shaking his head.

I stand and move into the living room. “Of course I’m angry about Steph! It makes me feel sick thinking about you together! You’ve lied to me countless times about her and—”

He turns in his chair to face me. “No, I didn’t lie! Not really. Not when it counted. It’s just complicated between her and me sometimes.”

I hate hearing that. It’s complicated between me and you.

Out the balcony window, red and green lights zip up and down the Shard like shooting stars. Or shooting pains.

“I know that you feel something for me, Enola.”

I turn back, hands wide. “Yes, of course I do. I love you.” This is only the second time that I’ve articulated it. The words feel powerful. “But it doesn’t matter what I feel because it’s not what I want.”

“And what about what I want?”

“I’ve been compensating for what you want for two years. You don’t love me.”

“That’s not true,” he says.

I wipe a layer of dust off the orange spines on the bookshelf.

“It’s not ,” he repeats emphatically. “Look at me, Enola.”

The turquoise Vonnegut is still in the wrong place. I move it back to where it should be.

“Look at me,” he says again, and so I do. He is resting his elbows on his knees, and his eyebrows are forcefully raised. “Enola, I”—my heart flips the way it did that night outside the beach house—“I do love you.” But after he says the words I have waited to hear for two years, he swallows and puts his fist to his mouth, grimacing in a way that implies it was last night’s alcohol he just regurgitated.

I turn back to the books.

“Did you hear me?” he says, voice croakier from the stomach acid.

It’s strange, but I always assumed it would feel like a victory when he said those words to me, like his love was a trophy I could win by running faster than everyone else. But now that he has said them, they sound unnatural, and I’m angry that he would be so reckless with my heart that he would fight to change my feelings knowing that his own might have changed by morning.

“You don’t love me,” I say.

He slams his hand on the table. “How dare you tell me how I feel? That’s your problem, Enola. You always assume that you know how I feel. Fuck me. You’re acting like you’re perfect. Well, let me tell you, you’re not fucking perfect. You’re selfish. Self-obsessed. Self-centered.”

I face him and shout: “ All of those mean the same thing .”

“ Yes, well, that’s how fucking self-absorbed you are .”

“What else?” I ask. He is the band around my wrist.

“You’re the victim of your own story. You apologize all the time and you think that makes you nice but it makes you manipulative. You never say what you mean. You’re passive-aggressive. You never give me the benefit of the doubt. You accuse me of things that you do yourself. You don’t talk about your feelings; you don’t talk about what you’re afraid of; you don’t talk about your issues. You’re a hypocrite.”

“Are you finished?”

“Do you want me to be? Because you’re enjoying this, I think.”

I laugh, and his tone softens; we are like waves in the ocean moving back and forth.

“Look, last night I was just stressed and—”

“You’re always stressed.”

He stands and walks toward me, but I hold out my palm and halt him by the coffee table.

“Fine. I’m a big stressy nightmare. I’ll do better,” he says with a sigh.

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“We’re not even going to try?”

“We have tried.”

“ I haven’t tried!”

“That’s not my problem.”

He lifts his arms then drops them. “Fuck, why are you being such a—”

“Such a what?”

He doesn’t answer; he just looks to the ceiling like he needs a moment to recharge. But I don’t give it to him. I don’t need to do anything for him anymore. I don’t need to be cool or funny or nice . I move past him into the kitchen and continue: “This is your problem. You only care about people when they’re useful to you.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means that you love me until you don’t. You’ve just come in here and told me that you’re happy with your book and you’re thirty-seven and all that shit and now you want me. People are people. They’re not things you can pick up and put down. You want me right now but tomorrow I’ll say or do something that doesn’t serve you and you’ll lose your temper again!”

“People fight, Enola. It’s not a big deal. And yes, thanks for pointing it out, I can be selfish sometimes, but you’re the one who got insecure and sensitive and stopped being able to laugh at anything.”

“I didn’t stop laughing, you just stopped being funny. And I was right to be insecure because you did hook up with Steph!”

I face the stove, thinking about his hands in her black hair, her thin lips on his neck, the words he said to her in the dark. You’re the only one who understands me, Steph. I hear him inhale on his vape pen like it’s his inhaler. I turn back and notice how red his face is and the thickness around his waist.

He rubs his mouth. “Steph and I happened when you were with someone else, so it shouldn’t really concern you. I didn’t even need to tell you and I’m really wishing that I hadn’t, to be frank.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t backtrack.”

“No, I am sorry that I lied. But you are insecure, Enola.”

“If you think someone’s insecure, then you reassure them! You don’t double down!”

“I’m not going to pander to people,” he says, matter-of-fact, the same tone he used when he told me that his dad advised him to prioritize himself in a relationship.

“It’s not pandering, it’s kindness, and I’ve spent years feeling like I wasn’t good enough or loved enough, so why would I put myself through more of that just so you can feel like you don’t have to pander to anyone?”

“Don’t be dramatic. Obviously I’ve never wanted you to feel like that,” he says lightly, flicking his eyes over his shoulder like there’s someone there to agree with him.

I think about the way it feels when he smiles at me, like I’m in on the joke. I wonder if I’ve ever really been in on the joke. I remember what Ruth said at my party two years ago: It seems to me like the jokes are his.

“It’s not obvious , though. You’re a lion. You pounce. You wait for weak moments and then you pounce.”

“You pounce too, Enola.”

“You think getting emotional is an attack?”

“It is!”

“It’s not!”

“Stop acting like you’re innocent.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“You literally just compared yourself to a gazelle.”

“That wasn’t the point of the metaphor.”

“It’s not all my fault when we fight, Enola.”

“But I never want to hurt you. You are actively unkind, and I’ve come to realize that is one of the worst things someone can be.”

He begins pacing. “Great, so now I’m the worst thing that someone can be? Last night you wanted us to be together and now I’m the worst thing that someone can be?”

I pour myself a glass of water. He stops pacing and stares while I drink, challenging me to respond, which I do, calmly: “Yes, and I’ve been acting like I don’t have a choice and I do have a choice. We always have a choice.”

He scoffs. “Come on. This is just Ruth’s shit.”

I slam the glass down on the counter. “This has got nothing to do with Ruth. All Ruth has ever done is ask me what I want. When have you ever asked that? When have you ever cared about what I want or feel or think, even?”

He approaches me, and I back against the fridge.

“That’s not fair, Enola. You can’t accuse me of not being there for you when you never tell me anything.”

“Because you don’t want to know! You like to feel needed but you don’t actually want to be needed.”

“No, you’re the one pushing me away. And it’s not the first time. You broke up with me, remember? You’re so quick to forget the things that don’t support your argument.”

“I broke up with you because I told you that I loved you and you told me not to be silly.”

His mouth opens and closes as if he’s thinking of what to say; then he sits at the kitchen table. “Fine, okay, I shouldn’t have said that, and maybe I wasn’t ready at the time, but we were just finding our feet again.”

“You were relieved. Your exact words were: ‘I understand.’”

“And then you moved on to that guy instantly.”

“That was two months later and…” I put my hands over my face. “ This is why I didn’t want to talk.”

He smiles and says: “Because you know that I’m right.”

“ Because it’s pointless. It doesn’t matter. What you’re saying doesn’t matter. This isn’t about you. It’s about me. I’m at the stage of my life where I know what I want and—”

“Aha! This is what it’s really about,” he says, nodding. “Houses and marriage and babies.”

I slam my head back against the fridge. “ Shut up! ”

“‘Shut up’?” he says, amused, angry. He folds his arms and looks at me like I’m a painting in a gallery he is studying.

“Firstly, there’s nothing wrong with wanting that stuff and, secondly, stop telling me what I’m thinking and start listening to what I’m saying! God, why do you feel the need to dominate everything? You take up all the room! What I want is to be a person. A whole fucking person. And I’m never going to be that if I’m with you!”

He is silent, and then he exhales. “Look, Enola. I know I’m shit at the emotional stuff and I can be a short-tempered cunt but we do make each other happy.”

“Feeling happy and being happy are different things.”

His face contorts. “What the fuck would you know about being happy? You’ve just told me you’ve spent years feeling not good enough and not loved enough.”

“Fuck you.”

His eyes flash. He stands and moves to me. He presses his palm on the fridge and leans so our faces are close. “What makes you happy, then?” he says in a near whisper. “That guy with the hair? Does he make you happy?”

I maintain eye contact even though my heart is pounding. His black waffle jumper has a toothpaste stain, and I want to lick my finger and clean it for him.

“Normal things make me happy. Not existing from one fight to another, not wondering how you feel about me every second of every day, not spending those days thinking about you instead of myself. Not being in constant fight-or-flight.”

“Okay, well then, just listen. I spent all night talking to Pat and—”

“No. There is nothing you can say. The last two years have been about you. The things you’ve said and the things you haven’t. Even when I was with someone else, it was still about you—which makes me a really shitty person, by the way. But I’m done. I don’t want my good days to be days that you decide are good and my bad ones to be ones that you decide are bad.”

He tucks my hair behind my ear and his hand lingers on my neck. “Sorry to break it to you, honey, but that’s a relationship. Maybe you’re not ready for one.”

He tilts his head like he’s about to kiss me, and it would be so easy to let him. But instead, I say: “Or maybe you are just a cunt.”

He drops his hand.

“Please go now.”

He waits for me to say something else, but I slide away from him and walk down the hall to the front door. He doesn’t follow imme diately, but when he does, he looks bemused. I hold the door open for him to leave.

“Fine, Enola, if that’s what you want, then. I’ll go.”

He moves to the door, and our faces are close again. I want to run my fingers through the silver in his hair. He searches my face and then says: “Goodbye, then?”

He’s added a question mark because he thinks that we’ve been here before. But this isn’t another twist in the plot. This is the end. Or rather, the revision. I’m rewinding the story until I’m back in the pub in Broadway Market listening to Amy pontificate about paint colors and he’s putting his feet up and calling Chris a cunt and I’m thinking about taking the bus home but deciding to walk because I love the rain.

“Goodbye,” I say with a forceful full stop.

I was never scared of living without him. I was scared of him leaving. Like wanting a tumor removed but being terrified of dying on the table.

“Wait.” His hand stretches before I can close the door. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t need that.”

“I know, but I mean it. There is just something about us that brings out the worst in me, but that has never been your fault.”

He keeps his palm on the door as if he’s afraid that I will close it before he’s finished speaking, then smiles—a burnt end of a smile—and removes his hand. I think about the perfectly cylindrical mole on his forearm that looks like a planet, how it’s not actually a mole, it’s a pencil mark from school. Then I close the door and I am still alive.

A FTER HE LEAVES , I go to the bathroom, turn on the shower, and undress. There is the comforting hum of the water pump as the room heats with steam.

but that has never been your fault

I feel the water in my bones. It’s like the first shower after camping. My skin is hot and cold at the same time. I imagine the hairs on my arms like trees in a forest, myself as a universe.

but that has never been your fault

I turn off the water and wrap myself in a towel.

but that has never been your fault

I put on a new T-shirt, tuck myself into bed, and disappear.