Fierce Fragile Hearts

by Sara Barnard

  ‘Nothing, it was just an example.’ I wait for him to push me on it, say something like, But you could, if you wanted. You could do anything if you wanted. But he doesn’t, and something inside me sinks a little. I clench my hands into tight fists and make myself say, ‘Maybe nursing.’

  He’s surprised, and he doesn’t even try to hide it, which makes me sink still lower. ‘Nursing?’

  I wish I hadn’t said anything. Not a single word of this entire conversation. I wish I’d never come here at all. I swallow, hard. ‘Can we talk about something else now?’

  ‘Maybe that’s a good idea,’ he says.

  26

  ‘I Wanna Get Better’

  Bleachers

  Kel:

  Suze! Party at mine this Friday. Housemate’s birthday. It’s fancy dress and there’s a THEME. You in?

  Me:

  OBVS. What is the theme, please?

  SPACE EXCELLENCE.

  ????

  Basically Star Wars or Star Trek. Space-related TV/film stuff.

  OK cool! I’m in.

  Need help with a costume?

  How insulting.

  Ha! Sorry. See you Friday!

  ‘Holy hell,’ Matt says, a grin breaking out across his face. ‘Look at you.’

  I pose, arms spread. He’d messaged me when he started walking to Kel’s from his mum’s, where he’s staying for the weekend, so I’d met him at the door. ‘You like?’

  ‘You look stunning,’ he says. He’s good at giving compliments; casual but firm, like it’s a fact. Nothing about him is try-hard.

  ‘Do you know who I am?’ I ask, closing the door behind him. I’m dressed as Han Solo; an outfit I know from past experience is a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

  He laughs. ‘I’m offended you’d even ask.’

  ‘What’s your costume?’ I ask, looking him up and down. He just looks like Matt.

  He glances down at himself. ‘Oh, I’m just me.’

  ‘But there’s a theme.’

  He shrugs. ‘I’m not really a dress-up kind of guy.’

  I’m surprised by how disappointed I am. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Just not my kind of thing. You look incredible, though.’

  I don’t know why I assumed he’d be into this, except that maybe I’d been thinking of him being a lot like me, and I love dressing up. This is probably a good reminder to stop assuming I know him, when I clearly don’t. Besides, he doesn’t have to like fancy dress. It’s hardly a crime.

  ‘Well, thanks,’ I say. ‘And hey, you should know, I shoot first.’

  His whole face lights up into a wide grin. ‘Are you trying to make me fall in love with you?’ he asks.

  I laugh, and he smells so good, and his face is so close to mine. I love that we can joke about this, that we can be so easy together. I step into him and he puts an arm around me, pulling me in close. I drop my voice low. ‘Why? Is it working?’

  He kisses me in reply, and it feels so good. Electricity and fire, all at once. Sparks and flame. I’d happily stay there all night, to be honest, but it’s a party and it’s still early, so we break apart eventually and go to find Kel, who’s Jedi-robed and, as usual, playing bartender. When he sees Matt, he smiles. When he sees me behind him, our hands entwined, it dims a little. ‘You two found each other, then,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, just on my way in,’ Matt says casually, as if we hadn’t been locked together just a couple of minutes before. He glances at me and flashes a wolfish, conspiratorial grin, eyes alight.

  Kel rolls his eyes a little and mutters something I don’t catch, but neither of us pushes him on it. ‘What do you want to drink?’ he asks Matt. ‘Beer?’

  ‘Sure,’ Matt says. ‘Have you got enough? I can run out and get some more.’

  ‘No, we’re good,’ Kel says. He uncaps a bottle and hands it to Matt. The three of us hang out for a while in the kitchen, me swinging myself up on to the counter beside Kel as he and Matt talk. I like watching them together; the ease of their years of friendship showing in their body language, the way they talk to each other. It makes me think of Caddy and Rosie, how being with them feels effortless.

  After a while, Kel’s housemate Aziz – dressed like a redshirt – comes over to recruit us on to his beer-pong team. Matt and I go with him but Kel shakes his head, claiming bartender status. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to be such a giver all the time but Matt’s already followed Aziz out of the kitchen so I decide it can wait and bound after them instead.

  The game of beer-pong is a mess – no one seems to know or care what the rules are – and so Matt and I duck out after ten minutes, heading out on to the patio together instead. It’s cold but there are enough people to make it bearable, and someone’s docked iPhone is blasting Bleachers across the garden.

  Matt and I are sharing a cigarette, his arm around me, alternating between smoking, talking and kissing while we move unconsciously to the beat, when someone calls, ‘Matt!’ from behind us.

  Matt’s arm uncurls from around my waist and I glance over to see a pretty, dark-haired girl wearing a blue uniform dress that I think might have something to do with Star Trek. She’s smiling at us. No, not at us. Just at Matt.

  ‘Oh, hey,’ Matt says. ‘Didn’t know you’d be here.’

  ‘You didn’t ask,’ the girl says. Her eyes flick towards me, up and down my body in an instant, then back to Matt, dismissing me. ‘How’ve you been?’

  Matt reaches his hand up to touch the back of his head, the way guys do when they’re nervous or awkward and trying to hide it. ‘Not bad. You?’

  I can’t believe he’s letting this go on with me just standing here. Even the best guys are utter wimps. So I shrug and stub out our cigarette before I walk away, because like hell am I putting up with it. I head into the kitchen, winding my way through the chatting, laughing people, and find Kel at the table pouring shots.

  ‘Hey!’ he says, smiling at me. ‘Tequila?’

  ‘Tequila!’ I sing, taking one, and he laughs.

  I close my eyes when I take the shot, feeling the spirit burn down my throat, warming me up from the inside. When I open my eyes again, Matt’s standing there, looking sheepish, like a little boy.

  ‘That was just Tegan,’ he says.

  ‘Great,’ I say. ‘So what?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘For what?’ I reach for the bottle of tequila but Kel swipes it away, raising his eyebrows at me.

  ‘I didn’t want you to leave,’ Matt says.

  ‘I haven’t left anywhere. I’m right here.’

  ‘Come back out with me?’ he asks.

  Kel thunks a bottle down on the table harder than is necessary and we both look over at him. ‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ he says. ‘I’m just the mutual.’

  There’s an awkward silence. Kel starts rearranging beer bottles. Behind us, someone yells, ‘Stacey! You goddess!’

  Searching for a solution to all of the weirdness that seems to have erupted between Kel and Matt and me, I say, as brightly as possible, ‘Hey, did you know I can open beer bottles with my teeth?’

  Kel glances down at the bottles, then back at me. ‘That sounds dangerous.’

  I flash a mischievous grin at him, holding out my hand for a bottle. ‘All the best things do.’

  His laugh is dry. ‘Go on then, you show-off.’

  It’s a party trick I’ve been able to pull off since I was fifteen, a sure-fire way to impress people, if that’s what I’m going for. The ultimate cool-girl trick. But tonight, for the first time ever, I fail. And I fail hard. The first bottle cap lifts between my teeth as normal, but the second wrenches, the bottleneck jerks in my mouth, and suddenly there’s glass and blood and— Ow! Shit. Ow!

  ‘Fucking hell, Suze!’ Kel pushes someone aside, already reaching a tea towel up to my face. I lean past him, spitting glass and blood into the sink.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I hear a girl say, her whole voice a shudder. In my head, it’s Tegan. ‘Gross.’

 
‘What did you even do?’ Kel demands, trying to get a proper look.

  ‘Kel, chill,’ Matt says, his hand on my back. ‘Give it a minute, yeah?’

  The taste of blood in my mouth is so horribly, painfully familiar that it’s making tears sting in my eyes. I rinse my mouth out, once, twice, three times, but still blood rises fresh against my tongue. ‘Fuck’s sake,’ I mutter, taking the tea towel from Kel and winding it into a small enough wad to fit into my mouth.

  ‘Do you have to go to A&E?’ Kel asks.

  I shake my head. ‘It’ll be fine.’ Through the tea towel, my voice is muffled.

  ‘You didn’t swallow any glass?’

  I shake my head again, running my tongue over my gums and teeth, checking the damage. A shard of glass must have cut into my gum, but my teeth are still intact and the wound, currently pulsing blood, will heal. Mostly, I feel ridiculous. And a little shaky.

  ‘OK, good, but you’re dripping blood on to the floor, so …’

  I glare at Kel. He glares right back.

  ‘We’ll go to the bathroom,’ Matt says. ‘Come on, Suze.’ He takes a light hold of my elbow and steers me out of the kitchen. ‘Don’t mind him,’ he says. We step over the NOT UPSTAIRS sign and head towards the off-limits bathroom on the first floor. ‘He’s not good with blood. Or accidents in general. Or basically anything not going to plan.’

  In the bathroom I rinse my face, wash my mouth out another couple of times, and then press the tea towel back in because there’s not much else I can do. I roll my eyes at Matt, aiming for cool self-deprecation, and he smiles in that way he does, like he’s seeing me.

  We sit together on the floor, backs against the wall. When the flow of blood seems to have stemmed enough for me to take the tea towel out of my mouth, I say, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. It’s cool.’

  ‘This wasn’t how this was supposed to go.’

  ‘How was it supposed to go?’

  I think about how we’d kissed in the hallway, the feeling of his hand at my neck. I’d imagined an evening of that, and more. Us together, punctuated by drinking and laughing and talking.

  ‘Well, there was meant to be less blood,’ I say, trying to smile. ‘Less Kel being grumpy. Less glaring from random girls.’

  ‘Who? Tegan?’

  I roll my eyes at him.

  ‘God, don’t even think about her. She’s not worth thinking about. You don’t have to be jealous.’

  ‘Get over yourself,’ I say, a little more sharply than I’d meant. ‘I’m not jealous.’

  His eyebrows go up.

  ‘I’m not,’ I say. ‘I’m annoyed that you just totally ignored me when she turned up. And that you sound like a fuckboy.’

  ‘How am I sounding like a fuckboy?’

  ‘Think about it. Am I going to go to a party one day and see you there with another girl, and then after you’ll talk to her about me like you’re talking about Tegan right now?’

  ‘That’s not the same,’ he says. ‘Tegan was one night. Once was enough.’

  Irritation makes my voice harsh. ‘Are you being this much of a dick on purpose?’

  ‘I’m just saying it was a one-night thing. She knew that.’

  ‘You literally just said, How am I sounding like a fuckboy? Do you still need me to tell you?’ I shake my head. ‘No costume and you’re being a dick about a random girl. You’re very disappointing tonight.’

  ‘All right, no need to be a bitch about it,’ he says.

  ‘Kind of not OK to call me a bitch, but OK,’ I say.

  ‘You literally just called me a dick. Twice. And you called me disappointing.’ He turns away from me, resting his elbow on the edge of the bath. I hear him mutter, ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Fine, just go if you’re pissed off,’ I say.

  He looks back at me. ‘Do you want me to go?’

  ‘I don’t care either way.’

  I don’t mean it, and I regret it as soon as the words are out of my mouth. Mostly because of how his face drops, how hurt he looks, in the seconds before he covers himself. ‘Whatever,’ he says, standing.

  ‘The whole point is we don’t mean anything to each other,’ I say.

  ‘The whole point is we do,’ he says. He pauses, and I know he’s giving me a chance to make this better, but I just shake my head and look away, like he’s nothing but a temporary annoyance. ‘Fine,’ he says, mostly to himself. ‘Forget it. I’m out.’

  He leaves and I’m alone, sitting on the bathroom floor, bloody tea towel in my hand, dressed as Han Solo. What a total failure of a night. I’m annoyed with myself and Matt and everything. Why can’t things just go right for once? Why does something always have to go wrong?

  I lean my head back against the wall and take out my phone, scrolling through Instagram for a while to pass the time. I’ll wait until my mouth stops hurting so much, and then I’ll go and find Kel. Maybe I can at least smooth things over with him before I go home. If I wait long enough, maybe everyone will have forgotten about the whole broken bottle thing by the time I go downstairs.

  After about half an hour, when I’ve started counting the tiles over the bath, the door opens a little and I look up, expecting to see Kel, but it’s Matt.

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  Matt rests his head against the door frame and eases his hand through the gap in the door. He’s holding two beer bottles that clink between his fingers. ‘Peace offering?’

  I swallow, trying not to smile. ‘I should probably be the one with a peace offering.’

  ‘Is that a Suze version of an apology?’

  I point at the beers. ‘Is that a Matt version of an apology?’

  He smiles. ‘Touché. How are the gums?’

  ‘Bit better.’

  ‘Can I … come in?’ When I nod, he eases through the gap in the door and closes it behind him, sitting down on the floor beside me. He hands me one of the bottles, already uncapped, and I take a sip. ‘Feeling better?’

  I make some weird motion somewhere between a nod and a shrug. ‘How’s everything downstairs?’

  ‘Dramatic,’ he says. ‘You missed a fight. Some drunk guy spilled his drink on a girl, and her boyfriend wasn’t happy. It got violent.’

  I’m suddenly, weirdly, grateful for the glass that cut my mouth and sent me upstairs for long enough that I’d miss a fight that would probably have triggered me. Being around violence – even the kind that isn’t directed at me – makes me panic. The thick, paralysing kind of panic I can’t disguise. If it had been a choice, I would definitely have gone for Matt seeing the bitchy side of me rather than the weak one. Thank you, beer bottle.

  ‘Is it still going on?’ I ask.

  ‘It was over pretty quickly,’ he says. ‘Kel got between them. But they’re both still around, so it could kick off again, who knows.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. I hesitate, not wanting to reveal myself. ‘Maybe we could stay up here a bit longer?’

  ‘Sure,’ he says, easy. ‘Hey. I’m sorry tonight went south.’

  ‘Me too.’ I touch my head to his shoulder and he drops a light kiss on my hair. It’s nice.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’ he asks. ‘We could try again.’

  I smile and lift my head to face him. ‘Yeah? I’m working, though.’

  ‘We could hang out after? I could take you out,’ he says.

  ‘Intriguing,’ I say. ‘Are you going to try and charm me?’

  He laughs. ‘I wouldn’t dare.’ His eyes meet mine. ‘I’ll be positively charmless.’

  I raise my bottle to his and he clinks it obediently. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘I’m in. Let’s try take two.’

  27

  ‘Everywhere I Go’

  Lissie

  The first half of my shift the next day drags long and slow. After the morning rush there are barely any customers and it’s just me and Tracey, my manager, sharing the space behind the counter, making small talk. I spend my break on my phone chatting with Rosie on WhatsApp, talki
ng about one of our old friends from school who’s just got pregnant and is having to drop out of their university course. It feels good to be talking about someone else’s problems for once. Matt messages, suggesting we meet in town to find food at six. I smile as I reply, reminding him to leave the charm at home, and he responds with a selfie of his deadpan face.

  At the end of my break, I push my phone deep into my apron pocket and head back out to the front counter, glancing at the clock as I go. Four more hours of shift and then I can go home. Madeline’s is quiet and there’s no queue, just Tracey talking to a man who—

  Oh fuck.

  Oh fuck.

  It’s Dad. It’s fucking Dad. Standing there at the counter, talking to my manager. He’s all smiles, his face cheerful and open. There are two versions of my dad, that’s something you should know. The version the world sees, and then the version behind the closed door of my childhood home. The public Dad is warm and friendly. Charming. ‘Oh, your dad, he’s great.’ A lie in the shape of a person.

  I’m frozen in place. As I watch, Tracey laughs at something he’s said, nodding. I’ve never told my manager anything about my childhood; why would I? So she has no idea who she’s really talking to, what it will mean for me that he’s here.

  ‘Ah, there she is,’ Dad says. He’s spotted me. He’s smiling.

  ‘Suze,’ Tracey says. She’s smiling too. ‘I was just about to come and get you.’

  ‘Suze,’ Dad repeats. Is he mocking me? I am not ‘Suze’ to him. ‘Suze’ was invented post-Reading. Post-Dad. I am not ‘Suze’ to him. ‘Can you spare some time for your dad?’

  ‘I’m on shift,’ I say. Thank God for employment and shift patterns and being behind this counter. ‘Sorry. You should’ve said you were coming.’ So I could have been far, far away. ‘I would’ve timed my break or something.’

  ‘Oh, it’s fine for you to take a bit of an extra break,’ Tracey says. She thinks she’s being kind. ‘It’s quiet. If it gets busy, you can just jump up and come back, OK?’ I look at her, trying to keep everything that is inside me off my face. She blinks, the first hint of confusion in her expression. ‘Your dad was just telling me how you don’t see much of each other since you moved to Brighton.’