by Holly Bourne
“Good morning, gorgeous,” he whispered into my skin, tripping the wire on all my senses. “I couldn’t sleep last night, I was thinking about you so much. Come and meet my friends.”
“I was just going to say hi to Han—”
But he took my hand, and I was so overwhelmed that I left my coffee behind as I was taken to his table and was introduced to Johnnie, Mark and Rob – his band mates.
“Oi, you lot,” Reese said. “This is my girlfriend, Amelie.”
“Hey, nice to meet you.” Rob stood up and waved. “Congrats on the talent show, you were great. And commiserations on going out with Reese.” They all laughed, just as I caught Hannah’s eye across the canteen. She made a What the hell? gesture at me, and I shrugged helplessly. I’d fill her in later, once I had planned how to handle her disapproval.
But everything to do with Hannah is a bad memory, and I’m not in the mood to focus on the bad things today. And, that morning, with my left-behind coffee I honestly didn’t mind about and how proud you looked as you introduced me to your friends, was a good memory. A happy memory.
So many good memories lie behind these closed gates.
How you walked me lesson to lesson, being late to your own classes, because you couldn’t stand a minute of not being with me. We’d hold hands and feel everyone’s envy seep out as we passed, giggling and nuzzling our way from English literature to psychology before you rushed off to business studies. There were the lunches spent with your band, being the loudest table in the refectory – laughing, and hiding Rob’s drumsticks while Jack and Hannah watched on from the corner. I tried to get you to sit with them sometimes, but you’d always have a good reason not to. “But the guys have got us the best table” or “In a minute, I just need to chat to Rob about our coursework. Tomorrow?” But tomorrow never came, and I was so distracted by your arm constantly around me, your eyes constantly watching my face as I spoke, like each word that tumbled out was a golden spool of thread, that I never really pushed it.
There were those lazy afternoons in the last gasps of the year’s sunshine. We’d spread out on the college grass after lessons. I’d use your stomach as a pillow and we’d think up song lyrics together. Words spilled out of me back then. I wrote about ten songs in that first month – all of them about you, of course. I went from not knowing you existed, to feeling like I couldn’t exist without you. What was so wonderful was knowing you felt exactly the same.
Well, so you kept telling me.
I leave college behind me and walk the short distance to BoJangles. The streets are busy with people enjoying the novelty March sun. They bury their red noses into scarves but smile as they walk from shop to shop, pushing buggies full of toddlers wrapped in so many layers they resemble a pass-the-parcel. There’s only one seat left in BoJangles, the window seat. I order a latte and sit facing inwards, looking at the groups of mothers jiggling babies on their laps, or grown-up couples ignoring one another as they slurp from giant cups and scroll through their phones. I inhale the scent of my coffee and let the good memories fill me up. The times you and I spent in here together, physically unable to tear ourselves apart. We just stared into one another’s eyes – finding it painful even to unclasp our fingers to pick up our coffee cups. You once reached over and pulled my ponytail loose. “You look so pretty with your hair around your shoulders.” I’d blushed and soon stopped wearing it in a ponytail at all. Anything to please you, to get that hit of adoration.
“When did coffee become such a big deal?” I said once, after hearing another college student order a soy flat-white. “When did your order become intrinsically linked to your identity?”
“That’s a rather deep thought for a latte drinker,” Reese said, and I headbutted his shoulder in affectionate protest.
“I think you’re secretly DYING to add milk to your Americano. But your masculinity is too fragile.”
He puffed his chest out. “My masculinity? Fragile?” He kissed up my arm. “Maybe when I’m around you.” His kisses led up to my ear. “You make me feel completely helpless, Amelie,” he whispered, before we tasted the coffee in each other’s mouths and got dirty looks from people around us.
I slurp at my latte and it hits my stomach hard, the caffeine turning it into slosh. I’ve not eaten breakfast again, but I’m not hungry. Your stomach needs to not resemble an accomplished knotting badge entry in order to feel hunger. Two mums loiter beside me, eyeing up my empty mug and sending please leave vibes to me, so I screech back my chair.
“It’s all yours,” I say, dodging past the one with the double buggy.
They don’t even say thank you, just rush to claim it with their giant toddler-transporters.
I push out into the winter sunshine and wander to the end of this tiny, nothing town. I turn left, and I’m outside the yellow door of the recording studio. I relive that perfect first date for the eight millionth time, until it’s too painful to stay.
I turn back towards town and walk to the local park – scene of many more good times. I eat my cheese sandwich on the bench where you finally agreed to take off your hat so I could see what you looked like without it, and I gurgled with laughter as you tried to snatch it back. I walk to the sludgy concrete pond and remember when we decided to skip form time to feed the ducks instead. We made up little names and storylines for each duck.
“Look, that duck has a different beak from all the other ducks and they won’t hang out with him,” I said, trying to throw my bread just towards him.
“Poor Beaky.” Reese made his hands into a trumpet. “HE’S JUST BEFORE HIS TIME, YOU BULLYING, DUCKISH TWATS,” he called at the other ducks, who scattered from the noise while we giggled.
“It’s okay, Beaky. Your time will come.” I threw him my last piece of bread. We invented Beaky’s whole tragic backstory and planned his dramatic duckish coming-of-age.
“Even feeding the ducks with you is the best thing ever,” Reese said, before plunging his hands into my coat pockets to warm them up, groping me a little through the fur, while I squealed, “Not when Beaky is watching.”
I look for Beaky now, but I can’t see him anywhere. Maybe he didn’t look that different to the other ducks. Maybe we just conjured him up, because we were cute and falling in love and that makes the whole world feel magical. I shiver, pull out my Coke bottle, take a sip and think about happy memories.
You never know if happy memories are going to become sad ones. They glow and shine in the vast realms of our subconscious, making that part of our brain feel like it’s filled with glitter. We pick them up and cradle them like expensive cats, or wriggle into them like they are jumpers we’ve left to warm on a radiator. Until the day when, for one reason or another, life can suddenly make this happy memory into a sad memory instead. Good memories exist in the naivety of not knowing any better. Those perfect first weeks I shared with you – I didn’t know they were numbered. I couldn’t imagine it. They wouldn’t have been happy memories if I’d been worrying it could all go as tits-up as it did. I guess a happy memory is only logged and labelled accordingly if you can live in a moment without fear of it going wrong. In the moments when true happiness is so overwhelming that you forget to be scared of it ending.
But, in time, those moments can easily become bittersweet.
Or, in my case, maybe just bitter.
It’s getting dark – the afternoon still glooming its way into evening far too early. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through spring, not even with the snowdrops. I can see no light on any horizon, no reason to get out of my warm bed in the mornings. I wave goodbye to probably-not-Beaky and make my way home. There’s only one spot left on this happy memory detour and I’m heading straight towards it.
“Amelie, you’re back.” Dad greets me at the door with a ruffle of my hair. “Did you have a nice time out?”
I nod as I peel off my coat and dump my bag on the shoe rack.
“That’s great. Now, are you ready for my cooking tonight? Your mother has l
et me make a northern feast! Pie and mash and gravy and all things Yorkshire. You up for it?”
I nod again, keen to get into my room and finish this.
“I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
I wave hello to Mum as I walk past the living room, taking off my mittens, scarf and hat. I drop them onto the carpet when I get to my room, and flop down onto my unmade bed and cry quietly into my bed sheets – pretty much what I do whenever I get home. This whole memory map may be about all the places I cried publicly, but there’s been a whole lot of private crying going on too. I do my usual twenty minutes until I almost can’t breathe any more, then I sit up, rubbing my nose with the back of my arm. I look around the walls of my bedroom, which are white and bare because the landlord won’t let me paint it or Blu-tack anything up.
I then plunge myself into the final batch of happy memories.
The good times I had with you. Here in this room. This bed…
I know this all hurts but I have to do it.
Because Mum and Dad didn’t get home till late most evenings and college finished at three, after only four dates with Reese – each one more perfect than the last – I took him up to my flat.
We stood on opposite sides of my room, suddenly nervous, like we hadn’t been solidly kissing in any spare moment for the previous two weeks. Neither of us knew where to look. Till he stepped towards me and we catapulted at each other and kissed like we were about to die in a plane crash. We fell backwards onto my bed, and all we did was kiss but our legs were tangled and it took so much effort to stop.
We finally unwound our bodies and Reese laughed at my hair all messed up.
“You’re so stunning,” he said, mesmerized by my bird’s-nest head. Then he put his hat back on and went over to examine my vinyl collection. “So, what do we have here then? You have a record player, that means you’ve passed the brilliant-girlfriend test.”
“Of course I have a record player! What do you want to listen to?”
It got dark as we pulled out sleeve after sleeve and Reese told me things I hadn’t known about some songs and also told me lots I already did know, but I didn’t mind pretending that I didn’t because it made him so happy to teach me.
There are so many smidgens of happiness that dance in the memories of my bedroom. Little smiles Reese made, the way I’d notice him looking when he didn’t think I’d notice, that time he threw his head back with laughter at one of my silly jokes.
Then, after less than a month, we slept together for the first time. So early, so quickly, yet it had felt like we’d waited so long. I remember I was sad that day, because Hannah and I had argued about Reese for the first time.
“You’re kind of…disappearing into him, Amelie,” she said over coffee and English notes at BoJangles. “It’s weird. Why don’t you hang out with Jack and Liv and me tonight? We’re going to the cinema.”
“Sorry, we’ve just been so lost in songwriting, that’s all. The cinema sounds good. I’ll ask Reese if he’s up for it.”
Reese and I walked home together that day after college, hand in hand, stopping every five feet to kiss. “Shall we hang out at yours and write some songs?” he asked between kisses, both of us knowing that songs would not get written.
“Hannah and that lot have invited us to the cinema.”
He screwed up his nose like I thought he would. “No way. Not tonight. They’re probably watching some shite with loads of boring acting in it.”
“I don’t think so. Even if they are, it would still be nice if we hung out with them.”
“But they don’t like me!”
“What? Yes they do.” It wasn’t true but I said it anyway.
“Amelie, come on. They never come sit with us at lunch, do they?” It was true. I had offered but Hannah just pulled a pained face. “You can go with them tonight if you want, but I won’t feel comfortable going.”
“But you’re away the rest of the weekend, at your dad’s.”
“I know. But if you’d rather go to the cinema…” He pulled me into the nook of his armpit. “Don’t you fancy spending some time alone? Just us?”
He may as well have said to a junkie, “Do you fancy some drugs?” I was already dreading our separation that weekend, missing him before he’d even left. Hating his dad for being a cheating arsehole and leaving Reese and his mum when he was a baby. I mean, didn’t his dad think about how that would impact our weekend plans? I nodded and nodded and laughed as he kissed me too much for a public place. I sent Hannah yet another apologetic message as we climbed the steps to my flat, and I didn’t even feel guilty because I was so, so obsessed with the idea of us alone.
Amelie: Can’t come tonight but can do tomorrow??? Hannah: Yeah, sure. Shame not to see you tonight though. I reckon you’d really like Sofia Coppola.
“See?” Reese said, reading the message over my shoulder. “Told you they’d be watching weird art shit.”
When we got in, we did that clichéd thing of kissing the second the door was closed, staggering backwards to my bed, attached by the mouth. We had sex. Just like that. Like it wasn’t a big deal, like we’d known each other longer than we had.
Sex with you…oh god. I’m in my bed, clutching my arms, and I almost can’t think about it. I have never felt more connected to a human being than I did doing that with you. You stopped, halfway through, Reese, and just stared into my eyes. I…
I…
I shouldn’t be doing this.
Why am I doing this?!
Why am I lying here and crying again and torturing myself with all the good things?
It’s like I can’t help myself. I CAN’T. Focusing on the good is not good, it only makes the pain worse. Now I’m not sure if any of it was real, if any of it really happened.
Because how could you look at me that way, Reese, and then do what you did to us? Those two things cannot coexist. It literally makes no sense. Why did you say you missed me if you didn’t?
Dad’s clattering in the kitchen. Soon dinner will be ready, and I need my face to de-blotch by the time I drag my pathetic arse to the kitchen table. My parents can’t bear to see me sad any more. I’ve used up my break-up sympathy quota. We were only together four months. I know my levels of misery are not appropriate to the length of our relationship, but try telling my feelings that. I’m sour, like curdled cream. It’s been over a month now. Why am I still so broken?
I can still almost smell you on my pillow.
I watched you nap after we finished, and smiled in such a deep way it was like I was tattooing contentment onto my insides…and…
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!
I smack the side of my own head. I let out a grunt of pained exasperation.
“Your Yorkshire feast is almost ready,” Dad calls from the kitchen, interrupting my mental freefall. “I’ve made so much gravy you could drown a cow in it.”
I take a deep breath in, filling myself with enough faux enthusiasm to reply without my voice shaking.
“Can’t wait,” I call back. “I’ll be out in a second.”
I dragged myself into college today and dragged myself into my music lesson. Surely that deserves some kind of medal? I’ve been feeling pretty damn proud for getting through till eleven a.m., especially as you still haven’t messaged since you told me you missed me last week. I mean, I’ve not listened to a word Mrs Clarke has said for the last hour, but I turned up. That counts for something, right? However, just as the bell goes and I’m wrapping myself in multiple layers, Mrs Clarke interferes.
“Amelie?” she calls my name gently, just as I’m stepping past her.
I stop rather than say yes.
“Do you have a lesson now?”
I shake my head, regretting it instantly because I sense a Chat brewing.
“Neither do I.” She gestures to the empty chair opposite her desk. “Sit down? It would be good to talk to you about your coursework.”
Coursework.
The word bulldozes into one
ear and zings right back out the other, producing no emotional response in me whatsoever. She may as well have said the word potato or brick. She must pick up on my complete lack of caring because, as I slump down, she says, “It’s already two weeks late.”
“What’s two weeks late?”
Her eyes widen slightly behind her glasses. “The first draft of your music coursework.”
“Oh yeah, of course.” I try to laugh but it comes out hollow. “D’uh, you were just saying.”
Mrs Clarke picks up a pen and taps it on her desk in a perfect music-teacher rhythm. “Ideally I like my students to have two go-arounds with their composition before we submit for marking. The way it’s going, you’re only going to have time for one. You’re so talented, it shouldn’t be a problem.” She smiles kindly. “So…umm…Amelie, where’s your coursework? How far have you got with it?”
My throat closes. “I’ve not started it.”
There’s an unsurprised silence. “That’s what I was worried you would say.”
I just stare at her, because I’m not sure what else to do. There’s no room for worrying about music coursework, or any other part of my life. Reese, you’ve blacked out the sun. You’ve made me pathetic, and uncaring about anything that isn’t you. I take another deep breath and prepare for a bollocking. But Mrs Clarke doesn’t bollock me. Instead she takes off her glasses and rubs her make-up-free eyes wearily, looking all weird and naked and shrewlike without them. She plops them back onto her nose, becoming Mrs Clarke again, then she looks me right in the eye.
“I’ve been a sixth-form teacher for over fifteen years, Amelie,” she tells me. “Do you really think you’re the first student who’s let boyfriend trouble completely fuck up their A levels?”