Text copyright © 2017 Carolyn Martin (C. K. Kelly Martin)
Jacket art: all images CC0 Public Domain, free for commercial use, no attribution required.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – The time is right. The Time is now.
Chapter 2 – How far can you see from there?
Chapter 3 – You love that story to bits, don’t you?
Chapter 4 – I think I’m just catching you at a weird time.
Chapter 5 – You have to have someone to say these things to.
Chapter 6 – And now back to our regularly scheduled setlist.
Chapter 7 – You know, let it die a natural death.
Chapter 8 – I think we better have this conversation someplace else.
Chapter 9 – Obviously a perfectly respectable place to have a conversation.
Chapter 10 – You can still say things to me, you know?
Chapter 11 – Look who’s getting bold.
Chapter 12 – Why are you so ready to think the worst?
Chapter 13 – We came all the way over here?
Chapter 14 – It’s just like you said it would be.
Chapter 15 – Wait for me.
Chapter 16 – Try me anytime.
Chapter 17 – If I can, you can.
Chapter 18 – Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.
Chapter 19 – Either take me out or take me back upstairs.
Chapter 20 – What’s there to be sorry for?
Chapter 21 – People must do it all the time.
Chapter 22 – Is it too late?
Chapter 23 – Maybe I used to be better at this.
Chapter 24 – How do you make something feel finished?
Chapter 25 – Don’t say anything now.
Chapter 26 – You keep reminding me of that, all right?
“I realized I was thinking of you, and I began to wonder how long you’d been on my mind. Then it occurred to me: Since I met you, you’ve never left.”
— Unknown
“When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.”
— James Joyce
For my favourite Irish boy,
and for Dublin,
the city of my dreams
NOW
Chapter 1
The time is right. The time is now.
Did you ever want something so much that it felt like a kind of sickness—one you didn’t want to be cured of because you knew stamping it out would leave you with so much less that you’d be a different person? I didn’t know what it was like to feel that way until last summer and I know the feeling better still now.
Sometimes when I’m alone I let myself wallow in it until my throat begins to burn. Most of the time, though, I push myself to keep things together, act like I’m fine and remind myself that I can’t truly be as gone as I feel because it’s not like me to be out of control.
But I am. I haven’t seen him in over four months and I miss him more today than I did the day after we said goodbye. I didn’t have any choice when it came to the way things ended, but I still feel like I made a mistake that I’ll never stop regretting.
Pain begins to radiate across my forehead as memories from last summer stream behind my eyes. Fighting in the street with him, jealous, bitter, and sad. Us curled up together, skin to skin in my aunt and uncle’s shed, breathing each other in like we could never get close enough. The intent way he’d listen, his face a mystery to me. The way he’d look at me, his electric blue eyes making me feel restless, dizzy, and full of ache. I wanted to know every thought running through his mind, unlock him for good and learn all his secrets.
Maybe none of that sounds earth-shattering, but it was to me. His voice. His fingers on the guitar. His perfect wrists. The intensity with which he loved music, as though it was something sacred. Every time he walked into a room he made it feel like a more interesting place. What could be bigger than that?
And what do you do when you don’t have that anymore and the memory of it has to be enough? I can’t work that out, but I know—as my eyes skip around the crowded living room searching out my friends—that it was a mistake to drag Lennox to this party with us. Lennox is someone I could’ve liked before—there’s a good chance we would’ve been something to each other if last summer had never happened—but after, when someone three thousand miles away is occupying all the emotional space inside me, it’s impossible.
Lennox and I have always had a fun time talking movies and kidding around and I guess I wanted, for a few minutes when we were closing the store together earlier tonight, to be the old Amira on New Year’s Eve. The one who was always on an even keel and didn’t spend the majority of her time wanting someone she’d never have again. But now that Lennox is leaning in close enough that I can smell his aftershave it’s obvious I shouldn’t be here with him. Better still, I should’ve skipped any big New Year’s celebrations and headed over to Jocelyn’s place with a movie from the store. Being surrounded by varying levels of drunkenness, frenzied dancing and hoots of excitement is only making me more miserable.
Lennox smoothes one of his thumbs across my cheek and smiles at me as we listen to clambering voices count down to the New Year. I don’t flinch at his touch, but I don’t smile either. I feel bad for doing this to him. Bad enough to kiss him back when the voices reach “one” and he slides his mouth against mine.
It’s not a bad kiss, but it just doesn’t feel like anything. It’s empty. For me, anyway.
Around us people are shouting in happy voices and Bono Vox peals out from the sound system. Being Irish and from Dublin just like him, U2 would have to be the first thing I’d hear in the new year and I almost laugh, the bitterness catching in my throat. Lennox sees my hint of a smile and thinks it’s for him. He moves in for a second kiss, but this time around he’s going to be disappointed because I just can’t.
I bend my head and push my hand gently against his shoulder, hoping Lennox will read my body language and revert automatically back to the friendly working relationship we had before tonight. Don’t make me explain, Lennox. Please.
Lennox’s lower lip drops and disappointment flickers across his face. Only for a couple of seconds, but that’s long enough for me to digest it. Then he sort of freezes with his arms at his sides, his head slowly distancing itself from mine.
Lennox’s brown eyes peer expectantly into my own. When I take too long to say anything he shrugs dejectedly, like he doesn’t understand. “What just happened?” he asks.
I’m grinding my molars and staring past him, trying to come up with the right words, when Yanna appears in my line of vision. She throws her arms around me and hugs me tight. “Happy New Year!” she bellows.
“Happy New Year!” I yell ba
ck, my voice cracking.
By the time we’ve let go of each other the space where Lennox was standing is empty. I think I spy the back of his checked shirt disappearing into the crowd. “Where’s Ker?” I ask. Kérane’s the other friend we came with tonight and the one we usually worry about in party situations due to her tendency to drink too much, make out with random guys, and generally get out of hand.
I spin to look for her, but I don’t need to search very hard because seconds later she’s bopping over to us with a hedonistic grin plastered across her face. Obviously somebody is having a good time. Kérane hugs Yanna first, her streaked blond hair falling over them both like a cloak. I’m next and my nostrils flare as I inhale Ker’s beer breath.
Our agreed rule is that none of us will drink at parties unless it comes out of a sealed bottle or can (it’s too easy for someone to slip something nasty in otherwise), but since it’s New Year’s and I have no reason to think Kérane’s broken the golden rule, I can’t complain until/unless she starts falling down, slurring or getting unduly frisky with someone she doesn’t know.
“This is gonna be our year,” Ker sings, shaking her hips. “Six more months of high school and then we’re free!” Well, not free if your definition includes avoiding educational institutions, but freer. No one calling our parents if we don’t show up for class or dictating when we can use the bathroom.
My mind flashes forward to next fall. I picture myself in a lecture hall with a hundred other eighteen-year-olds, analyzing Citizen Kane or The 400 Blows, movies most people my age don’t care about, but those ones will. The professor will be some award-winning indie director with dark corkscrew hair and a no-nonsense attitude. She’ll spot my talent early on, take me under her wing and help me fine-tune my writing skills, turning me into an unstoppable force of creativity.
This time last year that would’ve been my number one fantasy—that and my parents getting back together. But since then my dad’s moved into the house with us again and although I’m absolutely still heading for film school to meet other film fanatics and write screenplays, I don’t want the ache that goes along with having met him last summer to fade. The thought of forgetting him makes me so sad that I don’t know what to do with myself. It’s like that old Dusty Springfield song Jocelyn sent me a YouTube link for near the end of September when it still made sense to everyone that I was missing him because it was only freshly over.
I just don’t know…I’m lost.
Maybe it should take longer than one summer to get that fucked up about someone. But maybe if someone’s special enough for you to get fucked up about, the length of time you knew them doesn’t matter. Maybe I was as good as gone the night we met, when we had that first conversation out in my aunt and uncle’s backyard, under the stars.
“We should call Joss to wish her a Happy New Year,” Kérane adds, beaming.
She’s right and Yanna reaches into the back pocket of her jeans to pull out her phone. If this party had happened last year Jocelyn would’ve been right here with us. So much can change in one year that if someone were magically able to confide what was going to happen during the next twelve months you wouldn’t believe them.
I haven’t had enough beer to excuse what I’m about to do, but I can’t take it anymore. The thought that this year will be one in which I don’t speak to him feels devastating. I can’t let it happen.
Yanna is pressing her cell to her ear, Kérane’s swaying in time to the strains of early eighties U2 and I’m on the verge of tears smack in the middle of a New Year’s party that I should never have shown up at. My chin’s wobbling with the strain of trying to hold back the rush of emptiness working its way up from my stomach and into my jaw. I need to get out of public view before I break down entirely and Yanna and Ker have to mop me off the floor.
“Maybe the time is right,” Bono sings. “Maybe tonight.”
It feels like a sign, but who am I kidding because I’d do it anyway. The time is right. The time is now. I mumble to Yanna and Kérane as I point vaguely towards the right, “Bathroom! Be back in a sec.”
Yanna adjusts her ear as though she’s going to ask me to wait, but I don’t give her a chance, I’m motoring in the direction of the stairs like I’m about to puke. Yanna’s older cousin is one of the people throwing this party and he pointed out the main floor bathroom on our way in, but I don’t want to have to worry about people lining up behind me and banging impatiently on the door. I need more than two minutes alone.
Two girls, one with matted dreadlocks and the other with frizzy green hair and pasty makeup, are sitting near the bottom of the staircase with a stack of black and white photographs in their hands. Other than that the area looks clear of people. The house itself is in a semi-shambles state. Halfway up the stairs there’s a cigarette burn on the carpet and the lone picture hanging crookedly at the top of the steps is a faded one of the Toronto skyline on a summer’s day. The photograph’s glass front panel is smudged with fingerprints, as though someone was determined to molest it, and as I trek along the upstairs hallway I pass over a worn bit of carpet two shades lighter than the rest. Somebody bleached it trying to get out a stain, I bet.
The house smells like it’s been in the possession of students for decades. Dusty and faintly like stale pizza. A dark grey towel’s hanging off one of the closed bedroom doors and I hear at least two people giggling behind it. My ears categorize the sound as drunken hook-up laughter and I start to panic that someone will be hooking up in the bathroom too.
Luckily, when I reach it the door’s ajar and I can see at a glance that the room’s empty. The second thing I notice is that there’s a pint glass with muddy yellow liquid sitting in the middle of the sink.
I flick on the light, slam the door shut behind me and lean back against it, my hands shaky. No, they only feel shaky. When I spread out my fingers in front of me and stare at them they’re as steady as they would be on any other day that I hadn’t made up my mind to do this. Equal parts longing and anxiety whirl around under my ribcage as I tug my phone out of my purse and key in:
I hope you had a great Christmas and I want to wish you and the band all the best for the New Year. World domination!!
I stare at my falsely cheerful words on the screen, my heart racing and my head pounding as though it’s about to split open like a fault line. My finger taps send and for about thirty seconds I savour the relief I’m feeling at having gone and done it.
Then doubt sets in and the ache springs back with a vengeance. I set my cell on the counter and focus on the abandoned glass in the sink. If this were a movie it’d foreshadow something. I’d open the door to leave and Lennox or some other cute guy would be standing in the hallway waiting to reclaim his glass. He’d be exactly what I need and we’d have a conversation that would be the beginning of me leaving last summer behind.
Real life is more complicated. It doesn’t matter who’s waiting outside or what they might say to me. I’m not forgetting about him anytime soon.
I dump the contents of the glass into the sink as a formal rejection of the phony movie scenario. Then I snap up my phone and sit on the edge of the bathtub with it, willing it to beep and let me know I have a new message.
It’s after five o’clock in the morning in Dublin so it’s likely he won’t even see my message for hours. That doesn’t stop me from ogling the phone for at least another four minutes, after which I impulsively begin punching the keys again.
I miss you. I think about you a lot.
This time, there’s not even the most temporary sense of relief after I hit send. I immediately regret crawling out on a limb and I feel sick with myself as I shuffle out of the bathroom and back to my friends.
Yanna’s standing next to Kérane, repeatedly pushing the same bit of stray hair back behind her ear while Ker laughs into Yanna’s phone. “There you are!” Yanna exclaims, pivoting towards me. “I was just about to go look for you.”
“There was a line for the bathroom,” I
lie.
“Say hi to Joss,” Kérane booms, shoving the phone into my face.
I pinch Yanna’s cell between my fingers and trill, “Happy New Year! I wish you were here.” Or that I wasn’t. Both of us are screwed in different ways.
“Happy New Year,” Jocelyn says back. “Yanna said you brought Lennox.” She says his name like he’s an expensive door prize. “Nice move.”
“You’d think,” I say reluctantly, my eyes scanning Ker’s and Yanna’s faces to gauge how closely they’re listening. “But not so much really.”
“Uh-oh,” Joss chimes. “What happened?”
What happened is the two texts that I sent him when I wandered off to the bathroom and, with Yanna’s cell still pressed to my ear, I slide my own phone out of my purse and check it in case anything has changed during the last two minutes.
But no, he hasn’t texted me back. Has he even read my messages yet? Why did I have to confess that I miss him when he’s probably already with someone else?
I begin striding away from Yanna and Kérane. My nose feels snotty and I’m keenly aware, with the part of my brain that’s still rational, that I’m being ridiculous. I’ve held it together (mostly) for four months. Why fall to pieces now?
Because he’s receding further and further into the past and what we had, is now what we had last year.
“Hey!” Jocelyn exclaims. “You still there, Amira? Mir?”
I rub roughly at the corners of my eyes as I head for the stairs. “I’m still here,” I mumble. “Things are just…kind of messed up.”
“Messed up how?” she wants to know.
I feel stupid explaining because between the two of us she has the tougher situation, no question, but the second I reach the safety of the bathroom I tell her everything. The empty kiss with Lennox. My subsequent internal meltdown. The two text messages I sent to Dublin.
Just Like You Said It Would Be Page 1