by V. Moody
“Nobody had a bad thing to say about him,” said Claire. “They weren’t scared, I think they all see him as a great leader.”
“I asked Vizier Yogo what Cheng looked like and all he said was, ‘Magnificent’.”
“What about all the soldiers who disappeared from the fort, did you find out what happened to them?”
They looked at each other, and then shook their heads.
“Or the lizardmen around Fengarad, any idea what the plan is there?”
More head shaking. They really had gone off on a jolly. I wasn’t mad at them for wasting such an obvious opportunity, I was as much to blame as them. If I wanted them to act in a certain way I should have trained them better, rather than not at all.
Jenny was right to some extent. When she said I was the leader and I should lead, it wasn’t just about taking my rightful place at the head of the table, it was just as much to do with instilling in them the correct values to do the job I needed them to do. If I wanted them to act in a certain way, I needed to take the time and effort to teach them. Assuming they’d figure it out for themselves because it was obvious was stupid of me.
I was starting to see that a lot of my problems were caused by my own refusal to do the things I found difficult.
We stopped mid-morning by a stream. The trolls showed no signs of fatigue but the others looked a bit worn down. Maurice began rolling up his trouser legs as he prepared to catch us something to eat. It reminded me of Attica’s amazing ability to lure fish. I absentmindedly wandered closer to the water and raised my hand. As I made the finger movements, three fish leapt out of the water and landed at my feet, flopping about.
I was quite surprised. My teammates stared at me open-mouthed. I tried it again but it didn’t work.
“Who taught you how to do that?” asked Maurice.
I opened my mouth but no words came out. I couldn’t speak. I sort of shrugged and went to start a fire.
Healing, creating light, fresh fish… I was becoming quite the utility player. Any group would be happy to have me in their ranks, if it wasn’t for my personality, obviously.
After we ate I decided we should take a break so everyone could catch their breath a bit. I wandered off to take care of my toilet needs and then went down to the stream to wash up. There was a green area behind some rocks where the ground was strangely spongy. I think it was moss. I lay down on it and stared up at the sky. It was the same blue as the sky back home. You’d never know you were in an alien world by looking at it. A cloud drifted by. It looked like nothing in particular, just a cloud.
“Do you think he’s going to be okay?” It was Claire’s voice, not very far away.
“I don’t know,” said Jenny. “We fucked up pretty bad. I wouldn’t blame him if he went off on his own when we get back.”
“Maybe that would be for the best,” said Claire.
“No. It wouldn’t. Not for him and not for us. Not for me, anyway. He’s in so much pain, Claire. Every time I’m near him I can feel it coming off him in waves. It’s eating him alive.”
I wasn’t sure what she was talking about. I didn’t feel like I was being eaten alive.
“Ah think you should sleep with him,” said Flossie. I was a bit surprised by how direct she was. Not how she was around the guys.
“Really?” said Jenny somewhat sarcastically. “You think that would solve everything?”
“Ah think you’ve been fookin’ dancin’ around each other for weeks. It’s obvious you like each other. If he felt he had someone who cared about him, he wouldn’t hurt so much.”
“You do like him, don’t you?” asked Claire.
There was a pause. I was concentrating very hard so I didn’t miss the answer, as you might expect.
“Yes, of course, I like him. But I don’t know if I like him. I don’t know. He’s always pushed me away, right from the beginning. It’s easy to be attracted to something you can’t have. I wouldn’t want to get involved and then lose interest once I got what I wanted. That would only make things worse.”
“Christ,” said Claire, “you even think like him.”
“Fookin’ made for each other.”
“Who gives a shit if it doesn’t work out?” said Claire. “It’s worth the risk. It’s always worth the risk. Because what if it does work out? It’s so great to have someone you can count on.”
“Yeah,” said Flossie.
“As long as you feel some kind of attraction... Do you?”
There was an even longer pause. “It’s not like I want to kiss him or touch him whenever I see him. I don’t have dreams about having sex with him.”
“Oh,” said Claire.
“Ah,” said Flossie.
So, there you go. All of you who thought I was a shoo-in and should have jumped her bones earlier, now you can see why my reluctance to take the plunge was the right way to go. Sure, we could have had some sort of halfhearted fling and for a lot of guys that would be more than enough to make up for any awkwardness to follow, but I’d never be able to cope with something like that.
Knowing how she felt was a relief. And I even got the news at the best time possible. I complain a lot about the universe fucking me over, but here was an example of the universe cutting me a break. Yes, it was cruel and disappointing, but what better time to be told than when I was completely numb to all emotion? Now that’s what I call lucky.
Another cloud drifted overhead. The way it was longer at one end, with two balls sticking out, it reminded me of the first cloud.
I gave it a few minutes so they had time to leave, then I got up and returned. I wouldn’t say I felt cheerful, but it did feel like a weight had been lifted.
We spent the rest of the day plodding towards the mountains. Keezy refused to divulge any details about where we were going or how it would enable us to get back to Flatland, but I saw no reason to doubt him.
Once it got dark we could have kept going but it seemed wiser to pace ourselves. We set up camp and I put up my tent. The others didn’t have any camping equipment but it was a warm night and we had a big fire, so it wasn’t like they’d die of hypothermia.
Putting the tent up without Attica’s help was a pain, but I managed. I crawled in and collapsed. Sleep would have been nice but I just lay there listening to the sound of the others talking.
After a while there was the sound of someone coming into the tent.
“Are you okay?” asked Jenny.
“Yep.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened back at the village while we were gone?”
“Nope.”
I felt a hand on my back. I quickly rolled away and sat up. “What are you doing?”
Jenny seemed surprised by my sudden reaction to what was a simple pat on the back. “Nothing. I was just trying to comfort you.”
“Okay. But please don’t. I know for most people it’s no big deal, a back rub, a hug, whatever, but when you’re not used to people showing you affection it can lead to misunderstandings. Obviously you don’t feel like that about me, which is fine, understandable even, but it’s still hard to deal with for someone like me.”
I felt I had put it out there very maturely. I accepted her lack of interest but it wasn’t really fair to get all touchy-feely and whatnot.
Jenny stared at me. “How do you know I don’t feel like that about you?”
“I heard you talking to Flossie and Claire.” She seemed taken aback by this. “Honestly, it’s fine. I’m glad I found out before I got my hopes up or anything. Would have made things awkward. This way at least—”
Jenny leaned in and kissed me on the mouth. It felt nice. Soft and warm, like I suppose a kiss is supposed to feel.
I responded instinctively. I slapped her.
15. Enola Gay
Normally, you would expect the guy to steal a kiss from the girl, and the girl’s the one to slap him. When was my life ever normal?
Of course, a man should never hit a woman. And he definitely shouldn
’t hit a woman who’s carrying a dagger. Jenny didn’t reach for the blade at her waist, she just looked at me with surprise.
I looked away and stared intently at the ground. I could have apologised and generally grovelled for her to forgive me, that would be the normal thing to do. I hadn’t hit her very hard, but that was hardly the point.
Once I took responsibility, it would be game over. My position of moral superiority would be forfeit and I’d never be able to get it back.
She was the one in the wrong. Yes, I overreacted and did something terrible, but that didn’t take away from what she did. Using the thing I was weakest against—affection—to manipulate me, to get me to do whatever she wanted, was reprehensible.
Right?
I did what anyone would do when they’ve made a mistake they don’t want to admit to. I blamed her.
“You shouldn’t have done that. It’s not fair.” I was trying my best to sound pissed off and indignant, like I had been horribly wronged, but it was hard because what I really felt was horribly shitty about what I’d done.
Jenny didn’t say anything.
“You… you shouldn’t use your body to get guys to do what you want.” Great, now I was calling her a slut. “You’re better than that.”
Jenny still didn’t say anything. I looked up from the patch of grass I had been focused on. Jenny was looking at me, very calm. Her lip was bleeding. Not a lot; a red bead had formed on her bottom lip. I must have caught the inside of her mouth on her teeth.
I reached out my hand. “I can heal that.”
Her hand shot out and grabbed me by the wrist. “No,” she was unsettlingly calm. “I don’t want you to heal me. I want you to look at me.”
My gaze immediately returned to the ground.
“Colin, you hit me.”
“I… It wasn’t… I didn’t mean…”
“You hit me, Colin.”
“You kissed me!” It sounded a lot less idiotic in my head.
“What do you think of guys who hit women?”
“This isn’t like that.”
“It’s exactly like that.” She still had me by the wrist. Her grip tightened. “What would you call a guy who hits a woman, Colin?”
“Scum,” I whispered.
“Then why did you do it?”
I looked up at her, angry because she was forcing me to admit my crime even though we both knew I was guilty. “You know why.”
“Because of a kiss? You think that’s why you abandoned everything you believe you are? Would you ever let a girl—me or anyone else—take that away from you?”
She was right. She had kissed me, but so what? Was I a fucking child that one kiss could wreck me so hard?
“What happened while we were gone, Colin?”
“This has nothing to do with that.”
“This has everything to do with that. Tell me.”
She was a smart girl. Physical affection hadn’t worked, but now she had a nice, solid block of guilt to work with. She was out of my league in even more ways than I had realised. I had no fallback position.
It didn’t matter that she had provoked me, that I hadn’t meant to hit her, that I could easily refuse to accept any wrongdoing on my part and stay in control of the situation. The only opinion that mattered was mine, and I wasn’t too impressed with myself.
The laser-sharp pain in my chest I thought I had quashed, glimmered to let me know it was still there, waiting.
I took a deep breath. “May-May had a kid.”
Once I started I couldn’t stop. As I spoke, my wrist still held in her vice-like grip, tears rolled down my face. When I finished, the tears turned to sobs.
She let go of my wrist. Her arms encircled my neck and she pulled me towards her. I resisted at first—once I allowed myself to accept her warmth, I’d be lost—but she was ruthless. She drew me into her chest, my face rested on the irresistible softness and I melted.
“I lied.” Jenny kissed the top of my head. “What I said to Claire and Flossie was a lie.”
I was confused. “Which part?”
“The part where I said I don’t know how I feel about you. The part where I said I don’t think about kissing you, touching you, that I haven’t had dreams about you… all of it.”
If she wanted to backtrack a little so as not to hurt my feelings, I would understand, but she was denying it all, which made no sense whatsoever. “Why?”
“Because it’s embarrassing.” That I could understand. “If I said I liked you and then you rejected me, I’d look like a fool. If I said I wasn’t interested and then I ended up with you somehow, I could always say I’d had a change of heart. They’d accept that.”
I pushed myself off her chest (which took some determination) and looked her in the face. “Wait. Why would I reject you?”
She sat up. “You’ve always pushed me away, right from the first day. I tried everything, but you weren’t interested.”
“So you’re saying you were interested in me from the first day?”
She nodded.
“What are you talking about? How could you have been?”
“I knew it when you had the panic attack.”
“You’re saying that’s what attracted you to me?” Maybe she was mental. It was the only thing that would make it plausible.
“You knew we weren’t back home anymore. You knew before anyone. You didn’t handle it all that well, but you were way ahead of everyone else. I wanted to be on your team but you rejected me.” She gritted her teeth. “I know I’m not a fucking princess, but you could have at least given me a chance.”
The princess thing threw me little. “Are you talking about Laney?”
“How many princesses do you have fawning over you?”
“She’s thirteen!”
“So? She won’t be for long. And she’s a fucking princess.”
She had a real issue with the whole princess thing.
“I don’t like Laney, I like you. I always have.”
She didn’t look entirely convinced. She leaned forward and began unbuttoning my clothes.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think I’m doing? I’ve waited long enough.”
I froze. She wanted to have sex. This wouldn’t end well. It never ended well. I’d only had two sexual partners and both had left their mark on me, and not in a good way.
It probably seems like a weird reaction. Whatever problems I might have had in the past, the girl I liked, who I found incredibly attractive, wanted to sleep with me. I should have been jumping up and down with joy. I guess the only way to explain is to tell you about the two other girls.
The first, let’s call her Hiroshima, I met at a Christmas works do. I had only recently left school and started working. I was seventeen. I didn’t know the people very well and was quite shy.
She was the sister of one of my co-workers who was visiting and got brought along because his wife couldn’t be bothered. She was older than me, but not by a lot, and we were both far younger than everyone else. She wasn’t much of a talker either but we ended up seated next to each other in an Indian restaurant in Enfield Town.
Over the course of the evening we started chatting and we got on. You have to remember this is back when I still believed my life was the same as everyone else’s. A job, a girl, a place of my own—the possibilities were endless. And I could even be charming when I put my mind to it. Well, I could fake interest in what other people were saying.
Through a series of cleverly worked manoeuvres—mainly relying on her brother being very drunk—I got her back to my place.
Things followed the normal course of events and we ended up naked and entwined. So far so good. My main concerns were not getting too over-excited too quickly, if you know what I mean, and not making her feel she was just some girl I picked up for a shag. I liked her.
It wasn’t until she started crying that I realised something was wrong. Everything had gone smoothly up to that point, and even th
e joining together of our two sweaty bodies had passed off without a hitch. I was inside her, things were rubbing together in pleasurable ways, and then the waterworks.
It turned out she had recently broken up with her boyfriend, the love of her life since she was fourteen. He had met someone else and her dream was dead.
I offered to stop but she insisted I carry on. She needed this to get over him.
Finding out she didn’t really like me that way and I was just a means to an end was disappointing, but sex is sex. If this was how my first time was going to be, at least I’d have got it out of the way. I’m all about the romance.