My Ideal Boyfriend Is a Croissant

by Laura Dockrill

  GO! GO! GO, ME! YES! And pant. Pant. CLIMB THAT MOUNTAIN. CAN. CAN. CAN! A dot of sweat from my head lands on my wrist. I watch it splash.

  And…as if by magic, it happens…

  The endorphin hits…

  I am alive. POW! WOW! BOOM! KA-POW! RAAHAHAHAAHHHHH­HHHHH­H! I FEEL SO AMAZING! Like a wicked spell has been cast over me and I reel in the thrill of the drill of my heart as the music switches I realise I am smashing it to “It’s Raining Men”! YEAH IT IS! Hallelujah!

  And before I know it we are winding down, bikes are slowing. The music changes tempo, soft and simple. We can stretch. We can settle. Bones crack and creak like grandfather clocks, like fractured antiques. We clap. We say well done to each other and thank you. A fully grown adult man tries to high-five me but we miss; it’s awkward because we’re tired and also I’ve never really been good at high fives anyway, especially with a stranger—no, with anybody. They make me anxious. We wipe our bikes down. The mirrors are foggy with a mist of sweat and condensation. I can’t see myself even if I wanted to. Pant. Pant. Red. Lungs crushing. Arms rattling. Legs zinging.

  I did it. I actually did it.

  I am the last to leave….

  “Well done,” she says to me. “You did really well.”

  And I go over to the mirror and write the letters BB in the steamy mist.

  SUSHI

  I grab one of those little sushi trays from a sandwich shop on the way to the gym. Japanese people must laugh at our sushi. Even I know it’s embarrassing and I know nothing. But I like the idea of it as a snack and using the little plastic fish of soy sauce to dribble over my rolls. Mum and Dad think it’s hilarious that kids eat sushi these days. It was so exotic to them. You know the wasabi, in most places, isn’t even wasabi. It’s horseradish dyed green. It’s really hard to grow wasabi here. It’s OK, though. Too cold. A bit cloddy. I LOVE horseradish.

  When I work at Planet Coffee more I’ll save up all my tips and take Dove to Japan to eat real sushi. I think of Max. And the cafe with the cats. Shame that never came to anything.

  BAGELS

  Everybody fights over who invented the bagel but I can completely understand this because did you know bagels are poached for a bit in water before baking? Who even thought to do that? They are amazing.

  SALAD CREAM

  I know it’s gross but sometimes I really enjoy taking a page from the book of ham in the fridge and dolloping a splodge of salad cream inside it and wrapping it up like an envelope wonton parcel and eating it down like a snake would an egg.

  I like the vinegary sweetness of it.

  Salad cream really can bring any sandwich to life.

  I think about calling Max back. But is he the kind of person I can eat salad cream ham wontons in front of? I just don’t know.

  Besides, these days, I might intimidate him with my own mighty wonder-self and badass strength.

  GREEN TEA

  After basically being a boss at spin I decide to try yoga. Some people have brought their own mats. I don’t even have a mat. I should get a mat. Where do you even get a yoga mat from? Can’t you just use a towel? Will people judge me if I use one of the gym’s mats? Why am I worrying? SHUT UP.

  The teacher is an older man. The sort of man my dad would hate because he seems like the kind of person that is an accidental millionaire and just does this job for the fun of it. We start on our feet. Talking about posture. The gaps between our feet. Our hips. Breath and shoulders. We all watch our reflections in the mirror. Some can’t do it. They avert their eyes. We are all different. With bits that go in and go out, that curve and fold. We are different ages, with different interests. The only thing we all have in common is that we all have bodies that we want to, or need to, take care of.

  Yoga is actually quite hard. There are bits where my body shakes, my muscles trembling weakly under the weight of me. Sometimes the mat slips, my hand so sweaty that I slide forward. Sometimes I can’t wait for a pose to finish so I can untangle myself and rest. My breathing is short and stubby in places; other times I find my breath has held itself all together and my jaw is so clenched that my teeth feel like they might be cracking and I have to remember to let the breath go. My knees stiffen. I can only just touch my toes. Some people can’t even touch their knees but nobody is bothered by that in here. Once I warm up and relax I start to enjoy it. I like warrior pose, where the instructor tells me to pretend I have a laser beam of light shooting from my middle finger, and then in triangle pose I look up to my open hand pointing towards the sky. I let my spine twist. I like the animal names of the poses: the hare, the cat, the cow, the cobra, the downward dog. It’s so visual. We put our hands to our hearts. We rub our hands to “make warmth,” then we place the warm hands on our chest. It’s nice.

  I could get used to this yoga business, I think. But then, suddenly, the whole class betray me and zip up into headstands. HUH? WHAT? When did we become acrobats, please? Even the old people are doing it. And I’m just on the floor, in child’s pose, out of my depth. The youngest in the room and maybe the least agile and flexible.

  Great. Yoga is annoying anyway. Green tea tastes like fish-gutty pond water.

  BUT THEN we get to lie back on the mats and relax. I do a position called “corpse.” But I don’t feel dead. I feel far from it. My mind is racing. Thinking about Dove and her life and her body. About what’s going on in her brain. How small we are. I’m thinking about all the things I’m going to do this year. And something changes. I feel a small tear sneak out of my eye. They might call this reflection. I don’t know what it is. Because it isn’t sad tears. Is it OK to be this young and confused? I feel overwhelmed, flooded with promise. I think about how exciting and scary it is to be alive. Why it matters so much: because we care. Because it’s all so important and precious. You know…whoever is reading this…confidence isn’t something you can buy on a shelf in a chemist and roll under your armpits to protect you. Confidence isn’t something you can simply dream up or manifest. It comes from a place deep down. It’s a muscle, just like a biceps or the imagination, that needs training and attention; it can’t go to sleep. Self-love needs reminding. Needs activating and strengthening. You have to love yourself. It’s the start of everything. The rest will follow naturally.

  OIL

  “I didn’t throw the oil away. All the oil is there.”

  “That one we got in Greece, in the can, that’s gone!”

  “It’s all gone because you used it; it was empty!”

  “You could have asked me.”

  “You weren’t here. You weren’t living here before Dove—” Mum stops herself. “Why would I keep your stuff here if you weren’t here?”

  “It’s still perfectly good food regardless of whether or not I’m here.”

  “Perfectly good food?” Mum laughs. “Bill, ask the girls, ask the girls if a seven-year-old jar of anchovies counts as ‘perfectly good food.’ ”

  “I’ve been putting this stuff in food for years. It’s preserves. You don’t have to worry about sell-by dates and all that rubbish—it’s the supermarket’s way of convincing you to buy more.”

  “I’m sorry, but we didn’t all grow up in the olden days of blackand-white televisions where everything came in a tin or vinegar!”

  “You’re just being spiteful now, Lucy.”

  “You’re just being unreasonable.”

  “Me? That was hundreds of pounds of produce.”

  “Hundreds of pounds. You’d get more for your moth-eaten tracksuit bottoms.”

  And Dad bolts over to us both, kisses us both on the head, puts a lead around Not 2B’s neck and storms out of the house.

  It was actually me who used all that Greek olive oil, so that’s how I know Mum’s telling the truth.

  I am well into oil. It has pretty much become one of my main actual factual interests. When I was little I though
t of oil more like a cleaning product. I knew it was useful but now I could HONESTLY drink a pint of olive oil. I’m assuming no nurse has the time to read this whole diary like an actual book so it won’t be a problem if I say that my favourite way to have oil is slathered over ripe tomatoes with salt crystals like snowflakes that are as big as clip-on earrings, or just fill a dish and plonk a wodge of crusty bread in and let it sail and sink in the silky green gloopiness.

  The oil is always the main event.

  Groundnut oil is one of the newest members of my squad. You know groundnut oil makes the best roast potatoes in the world? You have to buy Maris Piper potatoes, peel them, chop them into lovely coffin shapes, boil them up until you can poke a knife easily right through, drain them, bash them about in a colander and then let them cool. Completely. Overnight if you can bear it. The idea is to let them chill with all that fluffy crust around them. In the midnight air, they sort of become frozen yetis. Then smother them in groundnut oil, sea salt, garlic cloves and rosemary….Makes the best potatoes ever.

  I am not surprised it took me ages to re-like oil again. It was what I used to smear in between my thighs to make the tops of my legs not rub when I was younger. It only made them worse and fried up my inner thighs like pork chops.

  Dad will be back any minute because he really will regret taking that stupid stinking Dalmatian with him.

  “Thank God, I thought he’d managed to move back in for a second,” says Mum. “I was about to make up an elaborate lie that we had to get the whole house fumigated for termites so he couldn’t come back.”

  The termite being—well, you guessed it—Dad.

  ICE

  It’s boiling at Planet Coffee. My mascara is dribbling down my face, weeping, and Alicia is fanning herself with every available makeshift fan she can find. Because of the insane weather we have a massive queue for iced coffees.

  “Guys, guys, we need more ice,” she orders, hands on her still pretty much flat belly. Sometimes it blows my mind to think there’s an actual PERSON in there. “More ice, now, can you both go? We need a lot. A LOT, A LOT!”

  Max and I, aprons still on, leave Planet Coffee and, waiting for the cool breeze, instead get punched in the face with the smack of more hot air.

  “Wow, was the air con on in there? It felt boiling.”

  “It’s warmer out here than in there!”

  “OK, supermarket?”

  We jog as quickly as we can towards the supermarket. Max is so tall and his strides are effortless and long and elegant and I’m like a hybrid of a turtle and a pug snorting beside him. Even though I’ve been going to the gym, I’m not like him. I’m panting, red-faced and sweaty. Even my top lip is sweating. My hair has gone frizzy and is sticking to my face. If I wasn’t with Max I’d be calling Cam confessing that this was a major setback to my personal fitness. WHEN does fitness kick in so that you are able to just, like, swim the River Thames and not even feel it?

  The closest supermarket is completely out of ice and the queues are so long too.

  “What?” Max moans. “How can they be out of ice?”

  “It is a Saturday and the hottest day of the year, Max. Barbeque day.”

  “I s’pose. ’K, let’s try somewhere else.”

  We jog/die along the high street towards the express supermarket, which doesn’t even stock ice cubes. Then to the garage, which has ice coolers but not ice cubes.

  “No frappés today, then,” Max says as we head back.

  “Oh, what about in here?”

  I spot a Turkish fruit and veg shop and the heat is beating down on all the fruit displayed outside. Pomegranates, yellow mangoes, limes, lemons, oranges, peaches, apricots. There are half and whole watermelons, juicy and rich and the sweetness of strawberries, tomatoes, kiwis and bunches of black and green grapes.

  “It smells amazing,” Max says. He leans forward to inhale. Ripe, natural sweetness.

  A man with a fluffy moustache steps out in front of a multicoloured beaded curtain that rattles musically.

  “Hello, mate. Excuse me, I don’t suppose you have any ice for sale, do you?” HE’S SO SWEET TO EVERYBODY. I LOVE HIM. STOP LOVING HIM, YOU LOOK TERRIBLE.

  “Ice?”

  “Yeah, ice.”

  “How many you want? One bag?”

  “How much have you got?”

  “Come.”

  We follow the man inside and the air is immediately cool. Three fans purr excellently and the air offers us welcome relief from the chaos of a sweltering Saturday high street. The man tells us to wait as he leaves us to go out the back.

  “I think my friend Camille bought a pomegranate from here a while ago and she spilt it all down her front,” I tell Max.

  “Pomegranates are special,” he says. “You know they say there are twelve segments in each fruit, six in half…You know, like the months? AND 365 seeds in each one just like—”

  “The days of the year?”

  “Yeah, exactly. One for each day of the year. They are proper in sync with nature. Mad, isn’t it?”

  “How do you know that?” I ask curiously.

  “My grandma told me,” he says. “Although to be fair she does also have a browning branch of a Christmas tree in a vase by the window from five years ago that she waters nonstop in the hope it grows into a whole new Christmas tree, so…It’s pretty dead. So…she might be making this stuff up.”

  “I like the sound of her.”

  “Yeah, you would. She has a pet crow, well, a crow that visits; his name is Colin. She feeds him crushed-up Rich Tea biscuits. He apparently has a girlfriend too called Wendy but Wendy doesn’t visit much. Too shy, apparently.”

  We browse the shelves. The shop is bigger than it seemed, with four aisles stuffed with cans and pots of spices and jars of stuff. Fresh mint and herbs line the front, with more fruit and vegetables and a fridge stocking coloured drinks. It’s hard not to lick the glass. There are spider plants and palms and rows and rows above covered in garlands of fake flowers—pinks and yellows, reds and oranges. Fake plastic fruit too, shiny red apples and grapes and bananas dangling overhead. More beads. Coloured clothes pegs. Glass teapots and decorative mugs. There are ornaments, funny water fountains and comical dustpans and brushes and candles and incense, sheets of twinkling fabric, little embroidered silk shoes and doormats. The smell is rich with star anise and vanilla and frankincense.

  “Well, I know where I’m doing my Christmas shopping this year,” Max laughs in a whisper. “This shop has everything.”

  “It feels like we’re on holiday.” I am stunned, looking around in this weird magical paradise. I feel myself cooling down.

  “Yeah, it does.” We wander round, pointing and smiling, waiting for the ice. “So…haven’t seen you for ages, are you OK?”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I’m not avoiding you.”

  “Sure? I mean, I get it if you are. I can see why that night has bad memories for you; I just don’t want you to…you know, associate me with bad memories.”

  “How do you speak so clear?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You just speak with clarity. It’s nice.”

  “OK?”

  “Sorry. I was weird. I was. But I’m better now. I don’t know. I promise I think nothing bad about you. I’ve just had things, you know…on my mind.”

  “You thought more about what you want to do…with your life?”

  I shrug. I wander ahead. Wanting to touch everything. Suddenly I become so overwhelmed and grateful and happy and excited. I can’t even begin to put my finger on it, but it rises up through my chest and I could just cry. I say, “I want to do so much. I want to live, really live. I want to do all the things you’re meant to do in all the places. I want to…eat cheeseburgers and chips and milkshakes at an open-air drive-in cinema in America and laugh and we
ar boots and short dresses—” Max laughs but I’m not laughing; I’m just smiling. I carry on. “I want to drink black coffee and red wine and eat steak and baguette in Paris and have a lovely little shiny bob and be really good at eyeliner. I want to eat tapas, standing up, in a backstreet cafe in Barcelona, with a tan and loose-fitting clothes. I want a roast dinner in an old pub in the middle of nowhere in the countryside, with a watermill attached to the side and my stupid dogs to be well behaved and lie there while I look over the newspapers and let the cuff of my jumper curl over my wrists and my hair, tussled from the wind, be heavy with rain and hope. I want to eat street food in Thailand and wear those yoga pants that make you look like you’ve pooed yourself, and wear no makeup, and do a handstand in yoga. I want to go everywhere; I want to do everything. I just want to be happy. Do you know what I mean?”

  And then Max kisses me. He has to arch his neck down just a bit to do it. It’s warm and neat and not messy. He holds the back of my head, which is sweaty but I don’t care, and his other hand is on my lower back. I kiss him back. My eyes are closed and if I even open them for a second I just see the blurring rainbow of all the wonderful things behind and the beautiful things in front too. I like this. And my mind is silencing out the whole world and I think about kissing and how it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever tasted. And I feel truly beautiful, even though I am wearing no makeup. And sweating like I’ve been at spin class ten times over. My heart is hopscotching.

  “Ice, ICE! Lots of it.” We jolt apart, startled by the moustached man’s enthusiasm. He rests one foot on top of the ice bags like it’s land he’s just claimed as his and with a grin on his face announces, “I see you kiss.” He chuckles. “You want borrow a wheelbarrow?”