Now, perhaps this was too committal. The fact that we had.
I averted my eyes. If ever there was a moment for aversion, now was it. I could read the room. For the first time ever.
I heard her slipping out of the bed quickly, and collecting her things.
Her footsteps, like always, were uneven and scattered.
I knew she was dressed and ready to go downstairs, but I didn’t dare look up, because I just knew, I just knew she wouldn’t be looking at me in a kind way.
What had I been expecting? That we would wake up interlaced together, look into each other’s eyes and smile? Kiss, and then go make breakfast together? That she would eat? This was Francesca Moore. She wasn’t that type of girl.
Everything about her had the air of self-destruction.
Yep, that was it – self-destruction and regret.
Was that what last night was about?
I looked up sharply as the thought crossed my mind, but she didn’t meet my eyes.
She didn’t say a word. But in this instance I could read between the lines. I could guess the space in between. The interpellation didn’t require much disassembling.
She wanted me to get my stuff and go.
Fine.
I got up quickly, naked. Fuck being embarrassed about being naked. It was nothing she had not seen before ... and besides I could feel the simmering rage within me. The anger, and knowledge that everything that had gone on last night, would probably be used against me.
I found my underwear – which was indeed not too flash, and pulled it on, alongside my jeans, which still had my mobile in the pocket and keys.
By the time I was dressed, and had run a hand through my messy hair, Francesca Moore was already halfway downstairs.
I pulled my shoes on, and followed her.
Angry. Yeah I was angry. And furious. And even fucking defeated.
Fucking defeated.
Who even was this at the door? Causing all this racket? Refusing to go unheard?
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Again. For fucks sake.
“I’m coming!” she called. And yeah there was an exclamation point at the end of that statement too, but it wasn’t sharp enough. It was almost as though ... she knew who was there, behind that door. Like she had even anticipated it.
I was about a metre behind her when she threw it open. I couldn’t see the figure on the other side.
But I could hear him.
I could hear him. And I knew who it was.
“Where did you go last night? Like you just disappeared! I’ve been calling and texting you for hours?” Annoyed, furious, incensed.
That was him.
Hamish Chiel.
“I was sleeping,” she snapped at him. I had heard that tone before, served in my direction. Although there was something different in her voice now. I couldn’t quite make out what it was. Something almost whiney.
“What the fuck? I was so worried. You just evaporated.”
“So what? I left with a friend.”
“That guy?”
I assumed that guy was me. But knowing, or not knowing, Francesca Moore meant potentially, it could also be someone else.
She didn’t respond.
Maybe it was me.
“I literally have no idea why I bother,” Hamish Chiel said.
And really, neither did I.
“Don’t be stupid, why would you say that? Stop being crazy and come in,” she said.
And where was I supposed to go?
“Why should I?”
“Give me five minutes to explain,” she responded, pleadingly. Yeah, imploringly.
He sighed loudly.
That’s when Hamish set foot inside the Terrace, and we came kind of face-to-face. Me and Hamish Chiel. And Francesca Moore, of course.
His eyes registered my face. It was kind of the same look Francesca had given me that morning. Only there was more anger.
Much more anger.
And that was my cue. You see, by then I had realised what I needed to do. What was implied in this discussion, and in this scene. I was supposed to leave. I was supposed to slink out of the house, collect my bike, and ride back to Enmore, where I belonged. With Harry. My flat-mate.
I wasn’t to say one more word to Francesca Moore, or to Hamish Chiel.
I owed that much to her. I’m not quite sure why. Because she hadn’t exactly treated me that well. In fact, she had treated me kind of wretchedly.
I wished more people used the word wretched. And that it wasn’t so wretchedly dated. Because I felt wretched all the time.
Like right now.
I also felt like I might vomit.
So, I just stepped around Francesca Moore, and past Hamish Chiel and sailed out of the door.
As I collected my bike, which lay slumped in the garden, I heard Hamish say, “You can’t even be serious?”
And her response, “nothing happened.”
Truthfully. Like she said it honestly. Ten out of ten on authenticity on that big fat, fucking lie.
Because we had in fact fucked the night before. Not just once too. But a couple of times. Three to be exact.
But what was even the point of rectifying something like that?
What was even the point?
As I got on my bike, and started pedalling up Underwood Street, retracing Leo and my steps from the afternoon before, I felt incredibly ill.
Because I was hung over. So very hung over.
But also because I hated myself. Not Francesca Moore. I should have hated Francesca Moore. But I couldn’t. It didn’t seem possible.
The real issue with Francesca Moore wasn’t that she was abhorrent, not in any way. The real issue was that she couldn’t give two shits about me.
In fact, she couldn’t even give one shit.
Not one.
Zero shits. Maybe even negative shits if that was possible.
And the thought made me violently ill.
By the time I was up on Oxford Street, I knew I was going to be sick. And I didn’t really care. So I just got off my bike and vomited out the front of Paddington Library, while an Asian tourist took photographs of me.
There was my demise – captured. A Kodak moment. Ready to be uploaded to Instagram.
I hoped it would just make his stories, and not the grid.
I passed out at STD man’s place. Did I pass out after or during sex?
I attempted to gather my memories. There was no sign of STD man now, he must have been somewhere, sound asleep ... but from memory, he’d been hot but not much of a conversationalist.
What was his name? Jimmy, Jamie ... I couldn’t quite remember.
My head was pounding. I had a crippling headache. Awful. The room spun around me, like I was stuck in a ball that was being bounced around. The need to vomit was rising.
I tripped over the events in my mind.
Jimmy, Jamie ... STD man and I’d had sex a couple of times. I insisted we use protection. ‘If it’s not on, it’s not on,’ I remembered slurring at him last night. So many guys insisted on no protection, as long as you were on Prep. Like that was going to protect me from everything else.
He had begrudgingly agreed to the condom. The sex had been ok, satisfying for the moment ... but now I was empty. I constantly yearned for the attention, and I loved the chase ... but was it just to satisfy my primitive needs? Or my twisted way to seek validation?
I glanced around now, trying to get my bearings. Definitely a living room. I was on a cheap pleather couch, and there was an immense television hanging on the wall opposite me. I sensed I was in a share house, as multiple bikes lined the living room wall.
I was naked, and there was a strange bruise starting to bloom on my outer thigh. Could have been a randomly induced alcohol or sex injury.
It was time to leave. I didn’t want to stick around any longer.
I hated the awkward morning after chats. And I could just sense that Jimmy or Jamie wouldn’t be into it either.
Slowly rising to my feet, I almost tumbled back down. Not good.
Where were my clothes? Think Leo, think!
Probably in the kitchen, that’s where we had first had sex. They were probably discarded there. I tiptoed across the living room of the apartment, and into the galley kitchen. Yep, there they were. Jeans, t-shirt, underwear, one sock ... and shoes.
I started to pull everything back on. Who cared about the other sock? The other sock could spend the rest of its life flung behind his fridge for all I cared. At this point in time, all I needed was a speedy, quiet exit.
Wallet, dead phone and house keys were still in my pockets, bingo. Big nights normally resulted in me losing at least one, but last night I just seemed to have misplaced four hours of my life. I was OK with that.
Today was going to be a good day.
I edged my way out of the apartment ever so quietly. Was he awake? He was probably holding his breath in his room, waiting for me to leave.
Don’t worry Jimmy, Jamie or STD man, I’m finding this equally as awkward as you.
Outside, the sharp light hit my face, almost blinding me. Christ.
But the air felt fresh. I felt dirty. I desperately needed a shower.
I scanned around me with almost closed lids, I was near a park, and a river?
Georges River.
Shit!
The guy lived in Parramatta. I had caught an Uber here last night.
I couldn’t believe I had trekked it all the way out here for a hook-up.
Wonderful, dead phone and stuck in Paramatta. I was praying that I still had money left on my metro card to train it back into the city. This was the last thing I needed.
I brushed it aside. Let it go Leo, let it go. Just get home.
I knew where the station was, and I set off in that direction.
Sticky, hot, broken, cursing myself and my poor life decisions ... I needed to sleep it off, and that cold shower.
My mobile felt like a grenade in my back pocket. Had he texted me? Had he called? Luca that is, the person I really cared about. It was burning a hole in my pants with its weight of expectation.
There was no way to check, and I would only be able to find out when I got home, in an hour. The wait would be agonising.
Deep down I knew he hadn’t, but I preferred to live with hope, rather than the certainty that he didn’t care.
It took me more than an hour to get back to Enmore, maybe even two. Because I was all about accuracy at that moment. About counting. Yep, all about it. I’d had sex three times with Francesca Moore last night. I had vomited twice on the ride home, once in Paddington, and the second time on Cleveland Street. And three times I’d considered riding into oncoming traffic. Not even joking in a self-deprecating way, or anything. Literally, the thought crossed my mind a few times. Near the Carriage Works on King Street and finally on Stanmore Road.
I was by no means, a new day rising.
Instead I was some sort of decrepit, dishevelled thing. There was vomit on my jeans and sweat rolling down my brow. And I felt like .... I felt like the road back home was lined with shame. It had been assembled or accumulated everywhere. The indignity. The infamy. The pain.
It was fucking grim.
Fucking grim.
The thing was, now all I could do was replay everything about last night in detail, over and over again in my mind. Only now I could see it all through another lens. One where she didn’t like me. Not even close.
I realised now that she had just been self-destructing.
It was self-destruction masked as a common mistake. Drinking too much. Sleeping with the wrong guy. It was thinly veiled as a late teenage blunder. Part of the human condition’s frailty and vulnerability. But it wasn’t that at all. She just liked to blow her entire life up. She liked to plop a grenade right down in the centre of it, and watch it all being obliterated.
She enjoyed it being ripped to shreds.
Here’s what hurt the most, I was that grenade. I’d been used to annihilate her world. Had I considered it at the time? Had I known it? When she was standing opposite me on Oxford Street and I had removed her fake eyelashes? Or when she had told me I was pretty in bed? Or maybe even when I had been inside of her?
Had there ever been the subtlest of vibes? The bitter tang of it?
Like fucking cyanide.
Maybe. Only I hadn’t wanted to think it. Imagine it’s not there, and it’ll be okay.
Bullshit.
By the time I was close to home. I was pretty sure I was going to cry. And I didn’t cry often. I mostly cried when things physically hurt. Like when I had been in year seven and had stood too close to the backswing of a baseball bat, and it had split my head open like a watermelon. Or when I inadvertently sliced off the tiniest part of my index finger when I was chopping tomatoes in my parents’ kitchen last summer. It had been the smallest of slithers. A few milometres of translucent skin, lying there next to the tomatoes ... it kind of looked like a floppy contact lens. A strange still life.
So yeah, I cried, when I was physically hurt.
I didn’t cry in movies. I didn’t cry at funerals – even though sometimes I felt the wave of it coming on, I always blinked the tears away, and cleared my throat a couple of times to arrest the development. Not even at Granddad’s funeral. And we were close. But there was some sort of lasting societal trope about being strong for your mum. Especially at her dad’s funeral. I’d held it together.
But right then, in the final moments of that fucking terribly epic ride, on that hot Sunday afternoon, I felt myself give into it.
Besides who even cared?
Someone had just taken a photograph of me vomiting outside a public library. What did it matter if I started sobbing uncontrollably on my own street? Again, who even cared?
Certainly not Francesca Moore. As ascertained previously, she was in negative shits territory.
And besides, I was pretty sure I would never recover from this.
I felt dirty and deranged. And I was both of those things. In this case, it wasn’t imagined.
I smelt like sex, and sweat, and vomit, and my head ... my head was a mess.
My head was a dank and disgusting place. I didn’t even want to be in it – but I had no choice.
As I climbed off my bike, and dumped it, I swiped a hand across my snotty nose, and wet face. Not even trying to calm down.
Here it was ... I was a loser.
A complete and utter loser. A creep, really. A pretty, worthless piece of shit.
I had wasted months of my time thinking about this chick, no, dreaming about her. I had imagined everything about her. Of course, I’d had the prompts in between. The conversations, the social media, the messages, the looks ... but then I had embellished on all of that. I had spent my time gluing sequins and glitter to the image of her. I’d embroidered her outline, and made her my dream-girl.
And then I’d sought her out. That’s what I’d wanted. To understand her. To comprehend her. Or something like that ... I wasn’t sure, maybe I just wanted to be near her. Or quite simply, for her to feel the same way about me.
Isn’t that what we all wanted?
Now the whole thing had a sordid after glow. Like it had been contaminated by a nuclear reaction.
She wasn’t who I thought she was.
Francesca Moore was just a hallucination.
I tracked my way up the back stairs, to our apartment. A gruesome two bedroom above a store that sold luxury mirrors, cheap.
There was an irony to it.
I was fucking ugly. Repulsive.
I managed to get the door open. At that point I’d stopped crying. I was all cried out, and it had only taken about five minutes. It was by far the longest I’d ever cried.
Harry, my awkward flatmate and unwilling friend – was sitting on our weary, mustard coloured couch playing our Xbox one. I knew the drill, it was retro Xbox Sunday. It made me even sadder.
He was wearing his glasses, and th
e same Backstreet Boys t-shirt I’d spotted him in yesterday morning. I could smell him from the door. Rank. The smell surpassed my own. That was saying a lot. Given I’d vomited. Twice. Remember the accuracy required here. And partially, I’d vomited, on myself. Luckily that had occurred on Cleveland Street and there had been no Asian paparazzi in position for the picture.
Why did we have such poor physical hygiene? What did that say about us?
“What happened to you?” he said, and stopped playing the game.
That meant I looked pretty bad. It was unlike Harry to notice anything in the real world when he was in the midst of retro Xbox Sunday.
His tiny eyes peered at me. He looked perplexed. Like the zombie apocalypse was literally happening in his home. Like I’d climbed straight out of one of those old school video games.
I went to respond. My mouth even arched open, like I was about to say something. But nothing came out. My mouth just remained in that position. O like in shape. Poised. Frozen even.
Where was I supposed to begin? I’d found Francesca Moore after stalking her down based on her SnapChat location. I’d walked her home, we had slept together (yep, three times, keep the mind focussed on exactitude). I’d had a panic attack (because of the immensity of the occasion), and then her boyfriend had turned up, and she had pretended like we hadn’t slept together.
And now ... now well, they were probably fucking.
I clamped my mouth shut because I might vomit again.
“Are you okay?” Harry asked, ever so slowly, as though he might startle me if his tone was more acute.
Was I okay? It was an interesting question.
Most signs would point to no. Absolutely and utterly no. The vomit, crying and erratic behaviour were surely big enough signposts.
I was not okay.
But guys didn’t say things like that to each other. I couldn’t just open my mouth to my flatmate and tell him the inner most workings of my soul. That’s not how it worked. Sure, we shared some stuff, but it was minimal, and usually we shared it after the sting had past.
The Overthinkers Page 8