Fierce Fragile Hearts

by Sara Barnard

  ‘I should probably go, too,’ I say. ‘I really do have work tomorrow.’

  Matt nods. ‘Yeah, I need to get back as well. Shall we head out?’ He stands, reaching for his jacket, and I follow suit.

  It takes us a while to actually make it out of the pub because people keep stopping Matt, like they did earlier, to talk to him. He’s polite and friendly, even as he makes his excuses; this is clearly something he’s used to doing. When a conversation goes on a bit too long, his eyes find mine and he smiles apologetically. I don’t mind. I like being on the inside of this, even for a few minutes.

  When we finally make it outside, Matt yelps, ‘Watch the step!’ an instant before I tumble down it. He doesn’t let go of me, so we end up half sprawled against the concrete, both of us laughing. ‘Shit,’ he says. ‘Sorry. I should’ve said that sooner.’

  ‘Just a few seconds earlier would have helped,’ I say. I let him pull me to my feet. ‘Which way are you headed?’ I hope it’s at least part of the way to my flat so I can have his arm around me for a little longer.

  ‘Wherever you’re going,’ Matt replies immediately. His grin is boyish, full of charm and promise.

  ‘Yeah, no,’ I say, laughing.

  ‘Let me walk you home,’ Matt insists. ‘It’s dark. I’m a gentleman.’

  ‘Sure you are.’ I am smiling so much it almost hurts. ‘I’m sure you’d be a gentleman all night.’

  His eyes light up. He bites on his lip momentarily. ‘You are something else,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll take that,’ I say casually, as if the words haven’t made dragonflies start flitting around in my stomach, poking my insides with jolts of pure yay. ‘Seriously, though. Where are you staying?’

  Matt’s lip pouts out dramatically for a second, then he gives in. ‘Kemptown way.’

  ‘Damn,’ I say. ‘We’re going in opposite directions.’

  Matt puts a hand to his chest. ‘You’re breaking my heart.’

  ‘Oh, stop it,’ I say, but I can’t help laughing.

  And then he has taken a step closer to me, he is right up against me, right in the middle of the street. His hand is there on the small of my back. His other hand is at my face. He is kissing me.

  It is a brief, heart-stopping kiss. His mouth opens mine and our tongues touch before we break apart at the same moment. Sometimes a brief kiss is all you need. Sometimes it’s better than more.

  I cannot stop myself from smiling a huge, ridiculous smile. His eyes soften and he tilts his head slightly. For a moment I think he’s going to kiss me again, but instead he says, simple and sincere, ‘You’re beautiful.’

  ‘You’re not so bad yourself,’ I reply.

  He smiles, and it’s like he knows me. Like he can see me. It’s like a light has been switched on inside me.

  ‘Are you doing anything tomorrow?’ he asks.

  Tomorrow. So soon.

  ‘I’m working till two,’ I say, keeping my voice casual. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not heading back to London till five,’ Matt says. ‘Want to hang out?’

  ‘Hang out,’ I repeat slowly.

  He smiles again. ‘I’ll buy you a coffee. We’ll go to the beach.’

  I hesitate. ‘Like a date?’

  He laughs. ‘I’m not a dating kind of guy. But I like you. You’re fun. And I want to see you again before I go back. You don’t have to, though.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. Why not? I want to see him again, too.

  ‘Cool. Let me take your number.’

  We exchange numbers, the lights of our phones shining in the space between us in the middle of the street. I am thinking: He likes me. I am fun.

  We separate with a brief touch – he squeezes my fingertips so gently I am left wondering if it really happened – and a smile. No second kiss. He doesn’t try to touch me or cajole me back to his place. He doesn’t say that he’ll see me tomorrow with a leer on his face.

  I go home disorientated but with a fizz of happiness that starts in my stomach and bubbles up through my chest. I fall asleep looking forward to tomorrow.

  10

  ‘Mess Is Mine’

  Vance Joy

  I don’t hear anything from Matt all the following morning, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to message him first. I mean, it’s possible I daydreamed about kissing him all the time I was making coffee. So what? That’s normal behaviour. It’s not like I was imagining him with his shirt off, or anything. Not much, anyway.

  My point is I can totally survive without ever seeing him again. It’s not like there’s a shortage of guys in Brighton for me to—

  Buzz.

  My heart leaps, the traitor.

  Matt:

  Hey! Still on for coffee and the beach?

  No kiss. But an exclamation mark. This has potential.

  Me:

  Hiya. Sure, where shall I meet you?

  Matt:

  Cool. Seafront. Bandstand? 2.30?

  Sounds good. See you then.

  I am a cool, collected, in-control girl. My messages give absolutely nothing away, because there’s nothing to give away. I’m going to go and chill out with him at the beach. That’s what people do in Brighton.

  I go straight to the bandstand after work, so my clothes are bog-standard jeans and a T-shirt. Maybe this should bother me, but it doesn’t. I’ve never seen the point in dressing up for guys. If they just want you for what you’re wearing then they’re not worth dressing up for anyway, and guys who just want sex will take it whatever you’re wearing. Meeting a guy in the most relaxed clothes I own makes me feel confident. It’s a counter-intuitive way of getting the upper hand.

  I did touch up my make-up before I left the cafe, though. I’m not that relaxed.

  I make it to the bandstand first and sit in the sun, closing my eyes under my sunglasses. There’s a couple behind me having a fight, something about an anniversary. I wonder how long they’ve been together.

  ‘Hey.’ The voice is above me. A shoe touches the tip of my Vans.

  I look up. ‘Hey.’

  Matt smiles at me. ‘Afternoon. Coffee?’

  I pull myself to my feet and brush myself off. ‘I’m sick of coffee. I’ve been pouring it all day. But a beverage of some kind would be good.’

  He doesn’t move in to kiss or touch me, just swings himself so we are side by side and starts walking towards the pier. ‘Which coffee shop is it you work in?’ he asks.

  ‘Why?’

  He grins. ‘Suspicious. You don’t want me dropping in?’

  ‘No way,’ I say. ‘I don’t want you seeing the apron I have to wear.’

  ‘Now I really want to drop in,’ he says, ducking when I take a swipe at him. ‘I bet you’d look cute in an apron.’

  ‘Cute?’ I repeat, smiling. It’s such a daytime word.

  ‘And synonyms thereof.’

  I’m about to call him pretentious but he silences me by taking my hand. Just reaches out and takes it, like it’s a normal thing to do. He lifts my hand and presses a kiss into my knuckles, his eyes full of something I’m not used to seeing, then lets go.

  There’s a full-on jazz band playing inside my chest. My heart is a tambourine. I want to step back into the moment, already passed, and stay there. I want to tell him I like his face even more in the daylight.

  ‘How very suave of you,’ I say, raising my eyebrows at him, half approving, half teasing. ‘Very 1920s.’

  ‘Like I said,’ Matt replies. ‘I’m a gentleman. Hey –’ he gestures ahead of us to the Palace Pier – ‘what’s your favourite place on the pier?’

  I make a face. ‘I’m not really a pier kind of girl.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ he says cheerfully. ‘What’s not to love about a pier? Crowds of tourists, obnoxious music on a loop, that oily doughnut smell …’

  I look at him.

  ‘Come on.’ He lets out a laugh. ‘It’ll be fun. I’ll buy you a smoothie. Because, I am … wait for it …’

  ‘Don’t do it.�
�

  ‘A smoothie.’

  He looks so pleased with himself that I crack up laughing despite myself.

  ‘If you’ve never had fun on the pier,’ he says, ‘it’s because you’ve never been on the pier with me.’

  ‘You sound very confident in your fun-making abilities.’

  ‘I know how to show a girl a good time.’ He says this with a straight face, then flashes a wicked grin at me. My heart pings.

  ‘Go on then,’ I say gamely. ‘Prove it.’

  He does. We spend one of the best hours I’ve ever spent in Brighton. He buys me a mango smoothie and then drinks most of it himself as he tells me about the Paul-McCartney-is-actually-dead conspiracy. He puts his arm around me as we stand at the edge of the pier, pointing to buildings in the distance and telling me what they are.

  We share a bag of chips, and though our fingers touch and collide, even as the salt and the grease and the vinegar coats our fingers and our lips the same way, we don’t kiss. He teases me with a chip, holding it out to me, pulling it back, then pushing it into my mouth. But he doesn’t kiss me.

  Further along the pier, he stops at one of the oversized claw-machine games and promises to win me a giraffe. This is clearly impossible and I lose track of the coins he wastes trying to achieve it anyway. Eventually he turns to look at me with the most adorable mix of embarrassment, guilt and bravado on his face I’ve ever seen.

  We head into the arcade and play air hockey until I’m breathless. After, he parks me at a 2p machine and I realize after a minute or two of feeding in the coins that he’s disappeared. I push in a few more coins and cause a cascade to tumble down from the 2p cliff edge. I’ve never won so many coins in an arcade before and I’m thrilled and annoyed with Matt for missing it, but then I turn and there he is, holding the giraffe so its face is his face. He ducks his head out, grinning.

  I give my pot of 2p coins to a girl who’d been trailing after two older siblings and she lights up like I’ve given her an actual fortune. Matt and I leave the arcade and walk to the end of the pier, where the wind blows my hair around my face so uncontrollably that the world blurs. When I laugh, my hair blows into my mouth and I taste salty air.

  Matt uses both his hands to brush the hair from my face, tucking it behind my ears. He’s smiling at me, his face is so close, and we kiss because it’s inevitable, because that’s what you do in moments like this. It is so different from the countless kisses I’ve had before. He doesn’t press his pelvis against mine, doesn’t shove his tongue past my own, doesn’t push a hand under my clothes. It isn’t a question or a demand. It’s just a kiss.

  He puts his arm around my shoulder and we walk back along the pier. I tell him about how when I was a kid, my family had a Westie named Giles, which is the kind of story I can tell from my childhood that is true, happy and ordinary. I don’t have many of those, and I usually ration them, but with Matt it spills out.

  And then it’s time for him to get the train back to London. I walk with him to the train station and wait as he buys a coffee for the journey. When we part, he takes my hand and kisses my knuckles again. I think chaste, and I smile. He tells me he had a great time, and I nod, say I did too. I watch him walk away. We didn’t talk about seeing each other again. He hasn’t told me he’ll message me. Our time together feels bracketed into a day, safe and special and contained. A parenthesis of goodness.

  I go home and boil water for noodles, which I eat sitting on my bed, straight out of the pot, watching YouTube videos. Rosie calls and we talk and laugh for a while about things that matter and things that don’t. When I go to bed I put Radical Face on Spotify and lie in the dark, listening until I feel sleep coming on.

  This is my perfect day.

  Matt messages me the next day, and then again the day after, and we fall easily into one of those indefinite WhatsApp conversations you have with the right people. He follows me on Twitter even though I only got an account to follow Taylor Swift when I was about thirteen and never tweet. I scroll through his old tweets – making sure not to accidentally like any from months ago and reveal myself – and see that his Twitter self is a lot like his on-stage self: cool, funny, a bit dry.

  I listen to his music, of course. In the privacy of my little bedsit, I go all-in, listening to the songs on Spotify (an EP and a couple of collaborations), SoundCloud (more songs, but rougher) and finally YouTube, where I find a load of videos people have recorded on their phones of him at various festivals and pub gigs like the one at the Third Bridge.

  I send a few links to Rosie for her opinion and she sends me back a dry Is this guy real or am I gatecrashing a daydream you’re having?

  Me:

  Ha! What do you think, though??

  Rosie:

  Not my type. Nice voice, though.

  Rozzles!! More please.

  I see why you’re into him. He’s very you.

  I’m not INTO him.

  lol ok. Anyway, I want to meet him properly before I give you the go-ahead.

  Why do I need a go-ahead?

  Because he’s male and you’re you.

  Rozzzzzzzz.

  Rosie:

  Just let me protect you goddammit.

  Me:

  Did Caddy let you vet Kel?

  Oh please. As if Caddy needs anyone vetting anyone for her.

  So I’m the special case?

  Yes. So very special.

  I actually just wanted to know what you thought of the music.

  SURE YOU DID. Like I said, not my kind of thing. I could listen to it without dying, though.

  Have I mentioned that I love you?

  Ew, don’t get all emotional now.

  Xxxxxxxxxx

  I hate you too xx

  She messages me the next day – You liiiiike him – which makes me laugh because I receive it right in the middle of a WhatsApp conversation with Matt, where we’re ranking Elvis songs in order from ‘most classic’ to least. He knows a lot more Elvis songs than I do – my family was never big on Elvis – so I’m actually googling most of the songs before replying. It’s a lot more effort than I’d usually put into a simple WhatsApp conversation with a boy I’ve kissed.

  But I like it. It all feels pressure-free and nice. He lives in London, so it’s not like we can see each other and spoil it all by sleeping together. Which we clearly would, let’s be honest. And we probably will, at some point. It’s basically inevitable. But I like that the physical distance means we get to be properly friendly as well and actually get to know each other. I like him. He likes me. And I like that that’s enough.

  11

  ‘Bird’

  Billie Marten

  It’s a Monday, and I’m leaning against the counter at Madeline’s during a lull in customers, wondering if a basset hound–beagle cross is called a ‘baggle’, when I hear the word ‘abuse’, and my whole brain snaps to attention. I glance around at Jamie, who’s on shift with me, obliviously washing the coffee machine, and then towards the radio, which spat out that word into my lovely, beagle-y headspace.

  ‘Do you think Tracey would mind if I changed the station?’ I ask. He shrugs, but it’s too late, anyway. I’m already listening.

  The radio, which we’re allowed to have on during quiet periods unless a customer complains, is broadcasting the news. ‘Colin Ryeland denies murdering his stepdaughter, Kacie-Leigh –’ Oh no. Oh no – ‘who was just eight years old when she died of injuries consistent, the prosecution alleges, with being kicked repeatedly in the chest.’ Oh God. Oh God, no. My heart is thundering, which makes no sense at all, and I try to breathe through my nose, slow and steady. ‘The trial opened this morning with statements from—’

  I lean over and turn the radio off with one simple click. Silence. Breathe. I reach up and tighten my ponytail, feeling the strands of my hair under my fingers. I think: Blonde. I touch my bracelet. Silver. My apron. Green.

  Everything’s fine.

  ‘Thanks,’ Jamie says. ‘That shit is so de
pressing.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I say.

  ‘It’s a weird story, though, right?’ he adds. ‘I read about it this morning.’

  I try to think quickly of a way to divert him without giving away my secrets, but my brain is working too slow, and ‘Mmm’ is all I manage.

  ‘It must just’ve been an accident,’ he continues confidently. ‘The guy they’re blaming says she fell down the stairs, and I believe that. He seems like a decent guy. I know they’re saying that he kicked her to death, but how could you kick someone to death?’

  Blonde. Silver. Green. Everything’s fine. Blonde. Silver. Green. But the words have landed heavy in my brain and flipped a switch. I am on the kitchen floor. Blonde. There is nothing but noise. How could you kick someone to death? Yelling, screaming. Silver. My arms around my face, my head. A boot in my chest. Green.

  My blood is on fire, screaming through my veins, roaring in my ears. I take a step back from the counter, very calmly. I even manage to say, in a completely normal voice, ‘Back in a sec.’ I head out into the back, through the staff area and into the toilet. I lock the door, and as soon as the bolt slides into place I lose it. That’s what happens; it’s like losing the part of myself that holds me together. I press my forehead against the door, my hand against my mouth, and give in to it. The roar in my ears that might be my breath, or my panic, or my own thoughts – who even knows? My heart pounding thick and fast and heavy in my chest, like it just wants out of me.

  I’m too far into it to do any of the things I’m meant to do. All those tricks and techniques I learned so carefully from the staff at Gwillim. The breathing exercises and the breaking of thought patterns and everything that makes so much sense, they all become pointless little sandbags against a tsunami of panic.