by Bryce Taylor
"Firstly, Justine is married," she says and raises an eyebrow, "ever so happily married, so please don't tell her that you thought she was dating me."
"Secondly, we have been best friends since we were twelve, when we were the two new kids at boarding school and were made roomies. There is no way that any mention of romance survives that kind of experience."
She pauses and grins even more widely.
"Thirdly if you'd mentioned that you accompanied gay doctors to events like this, looking like that," she says with emphasis, a look on her face that says she thinks that I brush up alright and making me melt just a little inside in a way that Diarmuid’s admiration did not. "Well, I just feel like I might have appreciated you more than your date is."
I feel like an idiot.
To say nothing of the fact that I would have very much preferred her appreciation over Gupta's tonight or any other night.
I mumble a few apologetic words at her and escape back to my table, embedding myself in a conversation to avoid looking at her, but when I can't help but glance to her table she and her date are gone.
I barely have time to think about it over the next week, what with a massive hangover, the Christmas break, a slew of extra shifts and Katie and Diarmuid being on holidays. At least I try not to.
I can't help but think about her briefly whilst on the bus to work and in the cafeteria on a tea break. I wonder if I have ruined everything and the thought of not having Leigh around makes me sadder than it should.
Leigh sends me a text message a few days later asking if I want to go to a pre-New Year’s Eve party with her? I message her back immediately that I'd love to.
Chapter 6
I arrive at the party early, knowing that Leigh will be leaving early, going on shift in less than three hours and I'm determined to have her to myself for as long as possible.
The party is on the top of an apartment block, a long flat roof overlooking the ocean and I can only imagine what it costs to live here.
I immediately see Leigh standing at the makeshift bar, wearing her usual jeans, boots and white tee. I have this image of her wardrobe largely being scrubs and ten pairs of the same jeans and a drawer full of white t-shirts.
She sees me and grins, calls my name as if I hadn't noticed she was here.
Then she is folding me into arms that smell of sunshine and a body that is warm in the late afternoon heat.
I leave my arm around her waist as I ask for a glass of wine politely, this being the kind of party that is catered with waiters in black tie.
Leigh also leaves her arm around my shoulder and I try to work out if she is also over-thinking all these kinds of actions or if it is just me pretending to be confidently nonchalant about all these affectionate gestures.
I take her by the hand and lead her to a bench seat and cheers her, clinking my glass of wine to her bottle of mineral water.
We talk, just the two of us right there on that seat, my hand occasionally on her knee, mostly unconsciously, until she has to go and she is hugging me good bye, wishing me an early Happy New Year and leaving me to realise that I am more drunk than I'd noticed with all those top-ups from diligent waiters.
That the party is now filled with people and the sun has now set and I don't know if I am up for walking back to the pub for New Year’s eve with Katie and Diarmuid.
That I wish I had taken her up on her offer of a ride home because I'm suddenly uncomfortable with the thought of talking to anyone now that Leigh has left.
A group of people crowd onto the other end of the bench and I get up to give them space and also so that I won't have to make small talk and stand in the corner and try to work out whose party it is exactly that I am at. Clearly it isn't Leigh's.
Then I catch sight of Justine, looking sophisticated and stunning, her arm hooked through the arm of a distinguished looking older gentleman, who seems slightly too old to be her husband and slightly too familiar to be her father.
Our eyes meet and I immediately feel the urge to leave, only she is coming my way and I have no obvious escape route.
Then she is standing in front of me.
"Hi," I say, slowly when she doesn't say anything to me. Feeling incongruously nervous under her steady gaze as if I am prey she has been hunting for.
"So, are you gay?" she asks me bluntly, not wasting her time on greetings or introductions.
I stare at her nonplussed for a moment.
"No," I tell her simply. I'm not, I might like girls but I'm not gay.
Justine raises an interrogatory and disbelieving eyebrow.
"I'm not gay," I tell Justine stubbornly, wondering why I am even answering her question at all.
"Fine," she says annoyed when I continue to stare flatly at her. "Whatever, you like girls. More to the point, you like Leigh."
I shrug noncommittally, eyeing the stairs for escape.
"You are going to break her heart when she finds out," she says accusingly after a moment.
I raise an eyebrow. That's going a bit far.
Maybe we will have some fun, maybe we won't, but I have no intention at all of breaking her heart.
"Leigh would never, if she knew, that there was a possibility." Justine stops and swallows, looking worried, stricken almost.
Not wanting to say anymore, not wanting to breach the confidence of a friend.
I reassess Justine and see that this is not the kind of thing that she usually does, accosting people she doesn't know and it's partly because of Leigh, protectiveness of her and partly because Justine must have been drinking all afternoon too and whilst she can hold it well, she can't stop some of the overly expressive gestures and language that is leaking out.
"I know," I tell her and I did. Subconsciously I did anyway, I don't need her say it out loud that Leigh would never let someone get too close to her, let someone need her too much. Never let it become two-sided.
Justine looks out into the darkness over the wall and rests her wineglass on the edge.
She lets out a long breath.
"Can I tell you a story?" she asks in a falsely lighter tone.
She doesn't wait to see if I agree.
"When Leigh and I were at university, she was a bit of a player. Our first year she slept with more girls than, well, too many. A lot. And the second year too," she says.
She gives a derisive huff to show exactly how much she approved of that.
"I thought her main issue was the commitment, I just thought that she needed to meet the right girl," she says and then stops, pursing her lips, not sure if this is a good idea or not to tell me this.
"Well, she did meet a girl. Only the girl, she wasn't. Well, she was already taken," she says, going on anyway.
Justine looks across at me and I raise an eyebrow in return. So, what?
After all, practically everyone already has someone at university.
"Yeah, only not like that. You can't make this shit up, the girl, she's Catholic. She's taken vows to be a nun. She's studying nursing."
My eyes are in danger of falling out of their sockets.
"Yeah," Justine says looking pleased at my incredulity. "Only Leigh. She must have been the last fucking nun to take her vows on the planet. I didn’t even know that was a thing anymore."
She stops.
"So, Leigh and this girl. They are hanging out all the time."
"All of the time," she repeats with emphasis. "Leigh, she doesn't do things in half measures. So, she is at the library with her, endless coffees, morning jogs, breakfast, lunch you name it, Leigh is right there with her. They are inseparable. Leigh stops partying completely to find the time to be her everything."
"And the girl," I ask, "she doesn't know?"
"Oh no," Justine says, "this is one of the most fucked up things. She knows. Leigh told her."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, she tells Leigh that it's ok that Leigh is in love with her, that they can still be friends."
"No way," I say, incredulo
us.
"Yeah, that is second most fucked up thing," she says.
I almost don't want to know what the most fucked up thing is.
Justine sees that I have her undivided attention.
"So, the most fucked up thing is, that after all this, six months of basically dating without sex, you know all this hugging, hand-holding."
Justine stops and raises a delicate and pointed eyebrow in my direction obviously having noted Leigh and I together tonight.
"Going to the movies together. Picnics in the park. You know, the whole nine yards. After all that, she tells Leigh that she is renouncing her vows."
She pauses for dramatic effect.
She really doesn't need to.
"She says she has met a guy at church a few months ago and they are getting married."
Holy shit.
I'm not expecting a happily ever after, but still, that is just ruthless.
"Leigh." Justine stops. Searching for words. I don't think she tells this story often. If she ever has.
"Leigh is fine. She moves back to London. A few one-night stands. Throws herself into her final two years. Then into work," she is saying this without emotion, because both of us know it can't really be true but Leigh is the kind of person who could make it look like it was true.
She lets out a long breath.
"Only."
She lets out another breath.
"Only she doesn't ever come close to having another relationship. Not that that was one. She says she is too busy. She just screws girls. That's all."
That isn't all. Justine still has more to say. She swallows the last of the wine in her glass convulsively.
"Except that now she has 'friendships' with these girls." The inverted quotes and contempt now are unmistakeable. The way she says 'that girl' and 'these girls'.
She goes on. "Friendships with girls that can never be more than friendships. Girls that are married. That are taken in some way. Girls that she has these intense romantic flings with for a few weeks or a few months. Because who can resist Leigh when she is filling every hole you never knew you had. When she is paying you the attention that your partner hasn't in years."
The words are tumbling out, bitterly.
"Then she loses interest or they do. She stops having time for them. I thought she was getting better. You know, since she got back to Sydney. Not one 'friendship' that has been serious enough for me to find out about it."
She stops and looks away from me, her jaw clenched.
"Did I mention that, that girl, she was Irish too? About, oh I don't know, your height, your build, blue eyes, pale skin, long dark hair," she says, turning back to me, pinning me with her eyes.
I did not know that.
"Looked and sounded a lot like you," she adds unnecessarily.
"Leigh must have had such a shock when she ran into you," she says flatly and I can see the hate in her eyes.
Fuck.
Justine opens her purse and takes out a packet of cigarettes. Extracts one, lights it, the glow of the flame highlighting her cheekbones. Takes a long drag. Blows it out in one long stream.
Looks at me sideways and offers me the cigarette.
I haven't had one in a year but I take it. It tastes horrible and it fills a corner of my soul that was dying for nicotine, that corner that was a little dead already anyway.
I have no idea what to say. We stand there in silence for a minute passing the cigarette back and forth.
"What are you going to tell Leigh?" I ask her eventually.
"Nothing," she says, derisively. "It's too bloody late now, I just get to sit back and watch this train wreck happen and hope that Leigh isn't too badly hurt."
She drops the butt in her glass and turns and leaves.
I don't see her again for twelve years.
Needless to say, my New Year's Eve is fucking ruined.
Chapter 7
After New Year's, Leigh and I keep up our usual breakfast dates, only now I am obsessively aware of how weird this all is. That it is completely implausible that she has the time for me, that so many things don't make sense.
That somehow, she finds the time at least twice a week to meet me after twelve or fourteen or eighteen hours of working. That she is always so completely interested in everything I have to say, that I don't care about her motivations because when I am with her because I feel happy, a peace, my constant anxieties in abeyance.
As if the last two years in London never happened. For the whole hour we are together, Leigh holding her peppermint tea cupped in her hands, her whole focus on me, adding the occasional insightful remark now and then.
Because of this I ignore all these inconsistencies, everything that Justine told me, I ignore the total lack of possibility of everything, of anything coming of this, I just let myself get swept up in the experience, in whatever this is.
One evening after work I'm walking down the high street a bag of groceries in hand, not thinking of anything at all, for once not even thinking of the mundane or rerunning conversations I've had today to see if I did anything stupid. Just watching the rain pour down, one of those regular Sydney events where a storm boils in off the horizon, dumps an entire month's worth of rain and vanishes a few hours later leaving rivers and lakes behind in the concrete and roads.
A young lad is sitting on the corner at the bus stop, backpack in hand, looking worn and tired. He can't be more than nineteen and my heart goes out to him. If he is sleeping rough tonight it isn't going to be pleasant. He has his knees drawn up to his chest and he is staring at the drips falling from the bus stop roof.
I stand next to him, casually inspecting the timetable as if I'm interested in the next bus.
"Fecking nice night to be out," I say casually in his direction. There is no one else around so he knows that there is only him I could be talking to.
He glances up and I look into his eyes, almost as startling blue as Leigh's and instantly I want to take him home.
To make everything better.
"Yeah," he says softly in a voice that sounds rusty and unused.
I sit down next to him, close enough that he looks surprised, well aware of how he looks and smells and that no one would usually get this close.
"I'm still not used to this Sydney weather yet," I tell him.
He is staring at me and if he could look more Leigh I don't know how. His face up close is pale and gaunt, no hardness in his eyes, not yet, but an apathy with the vulnerability. Not enough meals and not enough care in recent memory to give him hope.
"In Dublin," I tell him, "it just drizzles for days and days. You always know in the morning if you are going to need your wet weather gear. Here, here it's like a bloody lottery, bright and sunshiny in the morning, bucketing with rain in the afternoon and clear skies by sunset."
I stick out my inappropriately flip flop clad feet and raise an eyebrow at him for emphasis.
He smiles at me, tentatively, sweetly and I can see that no one has spoken to him, really spoken to him in days. He has probably been moved along or ignored by every single one of the hundred or so people who passed him by today.
I talk about the weather for a little while longer until even I can't stretch out the one-sided conversation anymore.
"Do you want to grab a bite to eat?" I ask him.
He stares at me sideways, this apparently being even more of an unexpected event than a random stranger talking to him at the bus stop.
I smile at him. "Yeah, you know like for dinner?" I ask him.
He stares at me mutely.
"I'm not asking you on a date," I tell him grumpily.
He starts to laugh. "That didn't actually cross my mind," he says, amused at the idea that I would be picking up some random homeless guy on the street.
"Or trying to make you join a cult," I clarify.
"Good to know," he says dryly, still waiting for an actual reason.
"I've gone hungry a few times myself," I tell him reluctantly after a long stre
tch.
"Oh," he says softly, looking abashed, sorry that he has made me sink to his level.
"Pizza?" I ask him.
"Yes, thank you," he says even more quietly.
We talk of music for a while, bands we both know and love, old and new. He says he'll just have one slice of my pizza and I tell him that I'm ordering two and they are both going to be supreme with extra mushroom if he doesn't pick one.