by Kyra Lennon
She smiled when she saw me, but it was a little uneasy. She carried a small overnight bag over her shoulder, and she was wearing blue jeans, a long black coat covering the rest of her outfit. Her hair was loose, and she’d swept it over one shoulder. Similar to the last time I’d seen her, she was wearing little make-up, just light pink lipstick, her cheeks red from the cold.
“Hey,” she said, tucking her bag under the seat opposite mine and sitting down. She rubbed her hands together to warm them.
“Hi.”
My mouth had gone dry all of sudden. I hadn’t seen her since she’d come to the bar, and she now knew more about me than I ever told anyone.
This was a stupid idea. What are you going to say to her? Are you seriously going to bore her with your problems for the next twenty-four hours?
As if she could read my mind, her eyes softened. “We’ve got a lot of time, Ash. I’m thinking we start with getting some coffee and relaxing until we get there. Sound good?”
I nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good.”
I wasn’t sure what it was about Evie, but she seemed to know how to put me at ease. The one topic I needed to talk about clawed at me, but the train wasn’t the right time or place, and I still wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say. I just knew that I’d been given some kind of opportunity to unload some of the things I’d kept inside and I didn’t want to waste it.
Evie looked like she was about to say something when I spotted something that made my blood run cold.
One of Natalie’s friends, Jody, slipped in through the train doors just before they closed, looking up and down the carriage for an empty seat. She saw me as I tried to avert my eyes and called out, “Hey, Ash!” She gave me a wave and I tried to subtly glance at Evie to beg her not to talk to me for a bit longer.
She must have seen the panic on my face because she stiffened when she heard my name being called, and without a word, she just pulled out her phone from her bag and began playing around on it.
Jody walked down the carriage and took the seat beside Evie, who politely smiled at her—as people usually do when someone sits next to them on a train—and shuffled over towards the window, her eyes going back to her phone.
“Alright, Ash?” Jody asked as she rubbed her hands together to warm them. “Where are you off to?”
My own palms were sweating, and my heart was banging against my chest, but I had got good at acting like I was fine on the surface, so I smiled at her and said, “Birmingham to see a band.”
“Oh, yeah. I think Natalie mentioned that. I’m not going that far. I’ll be off at the next stop.”
Thank God.
I wasn’t sure I’d ever been on such a tension-charged journey. I knew my anxiety got high sometimes, but Ash’s energy when I sat down opposite him had almost knocked me out. He was buzzing with nerves, and when one of his girlfriend’s friends got on the train at the same station as me, I thought he was going to crumble. Luckily, she wasn’t going far, but it took the entire train ride to Birmingham to talk Ash down.
To be honest, it had shaken me too. I’d taken time off work for a trip with someone I didn’t know that well, knowing his girlfriend was, at the very least, a mild psychopath. Sure, she wouldn’t find out—the whole time Natalie’s friend had been on the train, I’d curled myself up and read from my Kindle app so she would never have known Ash and I were going to the same place—but even knowing that, I was uneasy. Whatever he wanted to talk about was not going to be good, and I was already at a loss for how to help. Maybe he wasn’t seeking advice though. Maybe he just wanted to get away, and to have a chance for someone to hear him.
That I could do.
It was too early to check in to the hotel, so we decided to have a long lunch in Birmingham New Street Station. As confusing as the platforms were, the upstairs shopping/food area was decent, so we headed to one of the restaurants. The cafe was decorated with Christmas garlands and trees. Festive music blared through the speakers. Once we’d ordered coffee and food, Ash’s posture was still pretty rigid. His eyes darted about the place, as if expecting to see someone he knew. It wasn’t impossible, of course, and after what happened on the train I understood why he was on edge, but we were far away enough from home that he should have at least been able to let go of some of his tension.
“Hey,” I said softly, and his gaze moved to my face. “It’s okay. Nobody knows you. Nobody knows me. We’re okay here.”
He nodded slowly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t sleep much last night. I thought for sure something would go wrong. Natalie would freak out about me leaving, or she’d find some reason to make me stay, or you wouldn’t be on the train, and…”
It had never occurred to me to let him down. I too had been nervous, but there was no way I wouldn’t have got on that train. I didn’t fully understand it, probably because I wasn’t ready to delve that far into my thought processes, but I felt as though I needed this time away too, with someone who didn’t have any expectations of me. Someone who didn’t know my past, and didn’t have any pre-conceived judgements about who I was. I wouldn’t have changed my best friends for the world, but sometimes, they were too close. Whatever happened over the next twenty-four hours, I was certain we would either cement our friendship, or we’d end it going our separate ways forever.
My stomach turned over, but I tried to ignore it and put my focus back on Ash. “But none of those things happened,” I interrupted gently. “Aside from the early… incident, we’re okay. We made it. Now all we have to do is relax.”
He shifted slightly. “About that.” He closed his eyes for a few moments, as if composing himself. It wasn’t working as his cheeks began to colour. “Natalie… when I go out… She has trust issues. If I go somewhere, she always asks me to take a photo to, you know, prove I’m where I said I was going.”
I felt my eyebrows rising towards my hairline. “Have you ever given her a reason not to trust you?” Aside from sitting in a different town, waiting to check into a hotel with a woman you barely know? The thought and his words brought on a fresh onslaught of panic. What if he was just a really good actor and he’d got me there to…
To what? No. The things he had told me, and the things I’d seen, were real. He was in a fucked up situation, and him meeting me wasn’t an act of disloyalty. It was an act of desperation.
“Never,” he said. “I’ve never cheated on her, and up until today, I’ve never lied about going to a gig.” He paused and scratched at the back of his neck for a second. “It wasn’t anything I did that made her not trust me. She just… doesn’t.”
“And she wants you to do this all the time? Wherever you go?”
He nodded. “Even when I go to work sometimes. She doesn’t always expect it when I’m at work now because, after a while, she ended up with a load of pictures of the bar on her phone. I had to try and make them different because one time it was really busy and I sent her a photo I’d sent her before. That didn’t go down well.” His eyes misted over, as if remembering something, but they quickly cleared. “But when I go to a gig, or anywhere that isn’t work, she likes me to prove where I am. And if she’s not home when I get back…” he trailed off, shaking his head.
“What?” I asked curiously. I didn’t mean to pry, but the amount of control she had over him was blowing my mind.
“When I got home from Exeter, she wasn’t in. She knew what time I would get back though, so I sent her a photo of the clock in the kitchen to show I was back at the right time.”
I blinked a few times, trying not to let my mouth drop open. “Jesus, Ash.”
Did he not see how wrong this was, or was he just ignoring it?
“So, tonight, I need to go to the club,” he said. “I know we’re not going in, but I just need to take a photo of the outside to prove I was there.”
“Will that be enough?” I asked, trying to prevent my eyes bugging out of my head. “You don’t have to go in?”
“No. The outside is usually enough. I never t
ake photos when I go to shows because I want to actually watch them, and not through my phone screen, so she doesn’t expect it.”
I nodded slowly.
“You don’t need to come with me,” he said quickly, and his expression told me this confession was humiliating enough without dragging me along to be a part of it. “I’ll just go there quickly in a cab or something, and then come straight back.”
“It’s okay,” I told him. “I don’t mind coming with you.”
He shrugged. “It’s up to you.”
“The other option is that we actually go. Maybe we can still get tickets on the door?” I wasn’t against it. Since we were there anyway, there was no reason not to. We had the rest of the day and night to talk; why not have a bit of fun while we were in town?
“They sold out yesterday. I’m sorry. If I’d known you wanted to go, I would have bought tickets.”
His expression had changed again, from embarrassed to awkward, like he thought I might be angry with him for not thinking of it.
“If I’d wanted to go that badly, I would have told you,” I said with a small smile. “It’s fine. We’ll go and do what you need to do and then we can go back to the hotel, or out somewhere else if you prefer.”
“Is there anything you’d like to do?”
Yeah. I’d like to throw a fist at your girlfriend’s face. Unfortunately, I was not much of a fighter.
Aloud, I said, “No. All I really want to do is have a relaxing night where we eat food, have a couple of drinks and maybe try to make you smile.”
That was what was missing from him. He did smile sometimes. He even laughed occasionally, but the few times I’d been with him, he was mostly rigid-bodied and hesitant to let go. A bit like me when I was inside a music venue. We were opposites in that sense. Even though I got lucky sometimes, live music shows made me anxious, whereas Ash came alive. But in everyday life? I was bubbly and knew how to fake being happy. Ash was always tense.
“Fair warning, I probably won’t relax until I’ve sent Natalie that photo,” he said. “But I’ll try.”
“I understand. It’s too bad it’s not summer. We could go take the photo now and she wouldn’t know any different.”
That comment made his lips curve upwards a little. “Yeah. That would have been good. But she’s expecting darkness.”
That’s because she’s the fucking queen of darkness.
I was pleased for my internal filter, because, although Ash was not in a good place with Natalie, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t take too kindly to me voicing my thoughts. He had to be crazy in love with her, right? Otherwise, why stay? It was still way too soon in our friendship to go into that though. Right then, I didn’t want to delve too far. I wanted him to feel comfortable to talk in his own time.
“Well, we’ll go get the photo later. It’ll be dark by five, so we can go early,” I said. “And then, if you want to go out we can, or if you prefer, we can just go back to the hotel. And if you’re still worried about someone seeing us, I don’t mind if you come to my room instead of going to the bar.” I held my hands up. “And I mean that with no weird agenda.”
He shrugged. “Never thought you’d have one.”
His words were tinged with a hint of resignation again. Like he couldn’t fathom that anyone would be interested in him. The thought made me sad, because there was nothing wrong with him at all. The heaviness behind his eyes hid some of it, but he was a good-looking guy, and it hurt my heart that he didn’t know that he deserved a lot more than he had.
Maybe that was going to be my job. My role in his life. To show him his worth. After all, when I’d needed that, I had good friends to help me. Maybe it was my turn to do the same for someone else.
A few hours later, we’d checked into the hotel, been out to the place where our non-gig was happening to take a photo of the club, and had the girlfriend’s approval, along with a text back from her telling him to have fun, with kisses on the end. I had to hold back a rant at her response. It was no wonder Ash was confused. On the one hand, she was making him prove where he was, and on the other, she was sending him sweet texts. What a complete mindfuck.
After we got back from the club, we went to my room and ordered some food. Nothing fancy, just a large pizza and some chips to share. Ash seemed a little awkward sitting on my bed, but it was the easiest place for us both to sit while we ate that wasn’t the floor. The pizza box and bag of chips sat between us; me at the top end of the bed, and Ash at the bottom. Even though we were distracted by eating, I could still sense that he wasn’t entirely comfortable. It wasn’t just that he wasn’t speaking, more that he seemed lost in his own thoughts.
After a while, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Ash, are you okay?”
He glanced at me over the slice of pizza that was on its way to his mouth. “Yeah. I’m okay.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Listen, I am an expert overthinker, and I can see when someone else is doing it too. So… do you want to talk about it?”
A tiny smile played on his lips. “I like to think that I’m good at hiding my overthinking, but, I guess not.” He took a bite of the pizza and swallowed it down. “I was just thinking about being here. Not that it’s a bad thing,” he added quickly, looking at me to gauge my reaction. I smiled softly, letting him know I understood. “I don’t like lying. I wish I didn’t have to.”
The words, ‘why don’t you just leave her?’ were almost out of my mouth but I bit them back. I knew what it was like to stay when everything was broken. I was getting hurt every day I stayed when I knew I should have walked away. I understood that desperate hope that things would fix themselves. That the person I fell in love with would make a return, and tell me everything would be okay again. Knowing the truth, that that was a stupid fantasy, just made it harder.
There is nothing worse than knowing you’re suddenly sharing your life with a stranger.
“Now who’s overthinking?” Ash said, raising his own eyebrow, and I laughed.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to drift off. But, I know what you mean. About us being here. It’s not like you’re cheating on her, but there’s still a lie involved. I’m not crazy about it either, but I do understand.”
“I’m sorry. I really didn’t mean to put you in this position.”
“You didn’t. I made a choice to be here. And I’m glad that we came, Ash. But if I could choose it, things wouldn’t be this way. In an ideal world, your girlfriend wouldn’t be controlling and we could hang out like friends usually do.”
That was what had been missing from my life, and probably his too. Someone who was just… around. Someone to do fun things with, with no expectations. No strings.
He nodded. “Yeah. That would be better. But I’ll take your friendship for as long as you want to give it.” Ash reached into the bag of chips. “You’ve spent a lot of time listening to me talk about my problems. Maybe you could tell me more about you?”
I shifted my position, crossing my legs in front of me then reaching for another bit of pizza. I wasn’t against telling him about my life, I just hadn’t been prepared to do so right then. He knew some small things about me from previous conversations, but I guessed he was probably curious about what my situation was, or had been.
“You don’t have to,” he said quickly, backtracking. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be too nosy.”
“You aren’t,” I told him. “I just… it’s been a while since I talked about it.”
That didn’t mean it wasn’t on my mind a lot though. It was always on my mind.
After a few moments, I said, “I met my husband when I was seventeen. We met at college.” I felt a small smile cross my face as I remembered seeing him in the college café, getting some water, dressed in his football kit. “He had this gorgeous smile and I knew right away that he was someone I wanted in my life. Luckily for me, he felt the same way.” I laughed lightly, pulling off a piece of my pizza. “We had this amazing friendship that… it made me fe
el like he was the one for me, forever. We got married when we were twenty-two.”
“Wow, that’s young. I can’t imagine getting married at that age.”
I laughed. “Yeah, looking back, it seems crazy. It works for some people, but I wouldn’t recommend it.” I put a bit of pizza in my mouth and ate it slowly. “We had a great marriage for a few years. We decided we wanted to have children before we were thirty, and so we started trying when we were twenty-four. I found out I was pregnant on my twenty-fifth birthday and it was the best day of my life.”
I smiled again, remembering how excited I’d been to tell Jay the news. He’d held me so tight, and kissed me like he was the happiest man in the world. “Everything was going really well. Or at least, it seemed to be.” A lump formed in my throat as I thought about what I was going to say next. About that awful, awful day.
I dropped my piece of pizza back down into the box and wiped my fingers on one of the napkins that had come with the meal. “There were some… complications,” I said, not wanting to go into all the details. I’d fought hard to stop re-living them, so I wanted to make this as brief as I could. It didn’t stop the pain though. I could feel it burning in my stomach, crawling upwards and gripping at my lungs, stealing my breath. I swallowed, trying to keep hold of my emotions. “I hadn’t been well, and I hadn’t felt the baby moving around inside me, so I made an appointment with my doctor. At thirty weeks, I was told that my… my baby boy had died.”
The first tear rolled down my cheek and I brushed it away quickly. I couldn’t look up at Ash. I needed to get through the story. “There are no words to describe the way it felt. Losing a part of myself. A part of us. I went into a deep, deep depression, and as much as I tried not to shut Jay out, I know I did. We did talk about it a little, but, for the most part, I became withdrawn. I didn’t want to go over what had happened over and over again. I wanted to pretend it didn’t happen. Some might say I was selfish because I didn’t want to do anything. I cried a lot.” I wiped away another few tears. “Jay was great. He really tried, but after a while, it was like… both of us just gave up. We both ended up staying in work later and later. Hardly ever socialised. Then, about two years ago, he told me he’d met someone else.” I threw my head back for a moment, trying hard not to re-live the second most painful moment of my life. “I knew it was over. It had been for a while, but it still hurt to know I’d been replaced. He said nothing had happened with this other woman, and to this day, I don’t know if it was true. But I think he cheated.” I shrugged. “I knew there was no point fighting for him. For us. And in a weird way, him leaving was just… I don’t know… inevitable, I guess. There was no animosity between us. It was so friendly, it was almost funny. But since then… I’ve had to work hard to get my life back.”