by Noir, Stella
Am I falling in love with Ethan? Or am I just broken, and because of that I’m unable to see things clearly. Maybe I do need to speak to him before this whole thing eats me up from the inside out.
Chapter Thirty Six
Ethan
21 January 2016. One hundred and thirty days after.
I’ve been feeling more positive this week. I guess that doesn’t really mean all that much based on how low I’ve been feeling in general, but I’ve been up more, eating more, spending less time in bed and actually even spending a bit of time outside of the house. Jo and I took a walk around the park this morning - I still haven’t been brave enough to take the bike or go on my own - and we’re back at the house now chatting a little before she has to head off to work.
My life feels so surreal sometimes. One minute I can be crying my eyes out, the next laughing so hard about something my sides hurt. I used to feel guilty about laughing at all, but now that the lines of reality have blurred into one huge squidgy mess, it doesn’t seem to matter.
My emotions have been hitting me strongly, as though they are finally returning to me. The one that confuses me most of all is the intensity of the emotion I feel when I think about Jo. Jo and I have been spending a lot of time together. I spend more time with Jo than with anyone else. I miss her when she’s not there. I look forward to her visits. I find myself thinking about her a huge amount of the time, even more so sometimes than Alice. It’s a stupid thing to say, but I feel like I may be developing feelings for Jo that might have the potential to complicate my already complicated life. I don’t like thinking about it, so I try not to, and then I find my brain going there again and again, as though it’s a kind of automatic default setting. I have so many questions I cannot even comprehend finding answers to. I think about Alice, I think about what I need and I think about Jo, and I chastise myself for being stupid, male, emotional, confused, sensitive, animalistic and weak. But it’s more than that, and no matter how much I tell myself it will, I know it won’t go away.
It sits between us stronger and stronger each day, neither one of us ready or willing to admit it.
It isn’t unusual for people who have experienced trauma in their lives to find solace in those who have experienced the same. At least that’s what the internet tells me, as though google knows exactly what advise to provide.
“Eeeethan?”
Jo is waving at me and I know I’ve drifted out again.
“Shit, Jo, I’m sorry”, I say. My coffee has gone cold. Stone cold.
“I know graphic design is pretty dull at the best of times, but, come on, this is a really interesting project!”
“Sorry”, I grumble again, and look down at my half drunk cup.
“It’s alright”, Jo says. “I’ll just tell you again next time I come round.”
She’s pretty, but it’s not even that. When I catch myself thinking like that, I try to tell myself I’m appreciating her purely in an aesthetic way, as though a photographer or an artist might, and not in the way that makes me feel guilty for betraying my dead wife.
“Ok”, I say. “Deal.”
Jo looks at me for a moment like she wants to tell me something, only she doesn’t and the moment passes so quickly I wonder if it existed at all. Just before she puts her coffee cup to the side, while she gathers her things before taking it to the kitchen to rinse and leave on the draining board like she always does, when she looks frail and weak and completely alone in this world, and I have an urge to hug her tightly and make her never feel alone, ever again.
She’s gone before I have a chance to do so, and in the two hours after Jo has left and before Martin gets back home, I think about all of the different ways I could kill myself if Jo somehow found out what I was thinking and said she couldn’t ever see me again.
Chapter Thirty Seven
Ethan
31 January 2016. One hundred and forty days after.
If I read you the list of things we’ve done together, it would sound like a compilation of suggested activities for some kind of middle class dating app. Film night, walk in the park, scrabble, coffee mornings, ice skating - her idea not mine - jigsaw puzzle - my therapists idea to help my concentration - you get the picture.
I was thinking about ex girlfriends before Alice, lovers, one night stands, and one thing struck me about all of my past acquaintances - the longest I knew anybody before sleeping with them was Alice, and that was only a week. I kissed her the same night. Everyone else I’d known for less time and in some cases, much less time. I’ve known Jo for over three months.
“So what do you think?” she says, her arms flat across her chest, her legs crossed too, her thumbs tucked into her fists and her fists tucked up under her armpits. Closed as much as she can be.
“It’s very you”, I say.
“That means you don’t like it.”
“No it doesn’t”, I say, quick to defend myself, and worried I’ve hurt her feelings. “It’s great, I love it. That was a compliment.”
My smile diffuses any misunderstanding there might have been between us. This is a huge thing for Jo, inviting me to her apartment, and I’m conscious of keeping my distance and giving her space.
It isn’t until these things happen that you realise how difficult some things can be. Jo’s dishwasher has been broken for months, not because she can’t be bothered to organize for it to be fixed, but because having someone she doesn’t know in the house when she is alone is something she can’t bring herself to deal with right now. It’s not the dishwasher that I’ve come to look at, although I would be happy to even though I know nothing about dishwashers, I’ve come to help her fix her bike, so she can begin to use it for work, and we can go out on bike rides together at the weekend.
“You’ve got a lot of books”, I say, distracting myself while she wheels her bike out from her bedroom. “Alice liked books too.”
“I can’t live without books”, Jo says when she appears. “It would be like living without dreams.”
“That’s something I could probably get used to at the moment”, I say, letting Jo pass me to wheel the bike into the living room.
“Are you still having the dream about Alice?”
I don’t want to answer the question, so I kind of nod and then go to where Jo has leaned the bike up against the table.
“I told you in was in a bit of a state.”
The bike is caked in mud and one if not both of the brakes look like they have either seized up or broken completely. Both tires are flat too, but that’s an easier fix. I want to take it apart and look at it bit by bit, examine every detail of it, touch the metal, run my fingers along the grease that’s embedded itself in the chain, lose myself in it like I do with most things. This is perfect for us both. Ever since they put him away, I’ve been looking for a new project to get my teeth sunk into, while I wait and figure out what to do in the long run. Getting Jo’s bike up and running is ideal.
“Do you have any old rags or newspaper”, I say. “Just so we don’t ruin the floor.”
Jo has a stack of old newspapers at the back of one of her cupboards, and together we line the floor with them. She brings me a toolbox, a bunch of cleaning stuff, and a bucket of hot soapy water, which she places next to me and then looks at curiously as though she has no idea what purpose it might serve.
“You might want to change into something you don’t mind ruining”, I say, looking over my glasses and up at her. “We’re going to take it apart, clean as much as we can and see what needs fixing.”
“Do you think it’s going to be worth it?” Jo says. “It might just be better to buy a brand new bike, not that I can really afford that at the moment, but anyway-.”
She trails off. It’s the kind of thing I got used to doing myself. Many conversations of ours at the start of the month took the same form, as though both of us were in some kind of dream world and normal rules of reality didn’t apply. I still feel like that when I come back from a zone out, or ther
e is something that just feels too difficult to deal with or I’m suddenly surprised by a memory or too strong an emotion.
“No way, it’s a decent bike”, I say. “It’ll look completely different when we get it shining.”
Jo goes off to change while I rifle through the toolbox looking for anything that looks like it might be useful. She comes back in old jeans and a wool jumper that has holes in the right arm near the elbow. She does a little twirl for me, perhaps just to cut through the embarrassment, make something out of being the centre of attention when the attention is immediately on you, so as not to hide behind it. She looks good, a little more casual in what she’s wearing, relaxed.
“Perfect”, I say, trying not to draw too much attention to her.
Up until now, I’ve always seen Jo dressed in smart, work style clothes. Her hair always tied up, or placed in a simple pony tail, but never like she has it now, loose and wild to fall across her shoulders. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her in baggy, casual jeans either. Most of the time we have spent together inside or outside of the house she’s worn either tight jeans, long skirts or work trousers. She sits on the ground alongside me, cross legged, her hands allowed to fall into the gap created by the spacing of her legs, her back arched comfortably forward.
“Roll up your sleeves”, I tell her. “That looks like a nice jumper.”
She rolls her sleeves up. “You know I know absolutely nothing about bikes beyond how to ride them.”
“I can see that”, I say, cheekily. “When was the last time you took this for a spin?”
Jo picks up a spanner from the tool box, just to have something in her hand. I’ve noticed this about her. She’s fidgety. She struggles to remain empty handled, not fiddle with something if there is something close by that can be fiddled with. I watch her turn it over in her hands, gauge it, assimilate the information it gives her. After a while, she puts it back into the box.
“Ages”, she says to answer my question. “I can’t even remember.”
I take it apart as much as I can, explaining to Jo what each piece is called, what function it has, whether it’s broken or not, and how it can be fixed. The right brake cable is snapped and will need replacing by someone with a little bit more expertise than I have, but everything else looks in fairly good shape, even if it’s covered in more dirt than I’ve seen in a while. We take the wheels off, take the chain out, clean the cogs and pump the tires up. We talk about her family, her job, her apartment, Alice, medication, therapy and relationships.
“Do you think you ever will?” she asks me, an old toothbrush working the oil out from between the gear ratios. When I don’t respond straight away she looks up to me.
“You know, Alice would have never done this with me”, I say. “We were quite different people when it came down to it.”
“That’s not the question I asked”, Jo says.
I watch her wipe her hand across her face and drag grease along with it. When she sees me looking, she smiles.
“What?”
“You’ve got oil on your face”, I say. “It kind of looks cute.”
“Is that right?” Jo asks.
I nod. “Uhuh. Sort of across your cheek. A little bit on your nose. The corner of your forehead near your hairline.”
I point it all out for her, my hand moving languidly in her direction.
“Huh”, Jo says and then, “You know, you’ve got oil all over your forehead. I didn’t want to say, but it’s like you’ve just had a mud bath.”
My hand goes instinctively to my face, but when I take a look at the back of my hand where I’ve tried to rub it off, it’s clean.
“Come here”, Jo says. “I’ll rub it off for you.”
I can see the dirty rag in her hand and I know her game already. The moment I let her near me, she’s going to cover me in oil just to get her own back for me laughing at her. I pretend I’m being compliant, hide the rag I’ve been using to clean behind my back and move the short distance across the newspaper towards her.
When I get there, it’s clear that we both know what we are planning to do. We smile, unable to hide the excitement of the potential surprise. We are kneeling in front of each other, both raised off the ground a little, both with our hands behind our backs.
“Go on”, I say. “I thought you were going to-.”
“Show me your hands”, Jo says, cutting me off before I’ve finished speaking.
I show her a hand at a time, passes the rag between them behind my back to keep it concealed. She shuffles a little closer to me when I’m done, readying herself for what I expect to be a quick lunge to cover me in whatever grease she’s managed to cover her rag in.
“Close your eyes”, she says, in a way that makes me think she’s just thought of it. “I don’t want to get soap in them.”
We’ve not been this close before, and although we’re not touching each other, we are close enough to do so. You know when you’re next to a stranger, or someone you like, and your legs or your arms are touching, you get that kind of jumpy sensation in that part of the body, as though just being aware of the connection means you somehow can’t help it from moving. I have that now, in my knees and the tips of my fingers.
It’s like we are playing the kind of game you’d encounter at a children’s birthday party, and we’re both waiting for the music to end or a sign from a parent to tell us to go.
“Ok”, I say unsure of how to get out of it, “but don’t be too rough with the sponge, I’ve got sensitive skin.”
I sort of squint up my face, but keep my eyes just about open. I play around so it’s obvious I know something is coming, opening one, closing it again, opening the other. Jo laughs. I steal the moment and quickly drag the dirty corner of my rag across the tip of her nose, my hand back behind my back so quickly she hardly has time to respond. She looks at me, touches her finger to her nose and then looks at the oil on the tip of it. When she looks back up to me, we are both smiling.
“Ok”, Jo says. “If that’s how you want to play it. I was just going to help you out and clean the oil from your face-.”
While she’s saying this, I watch her reveal the rag she is holding, and run it casually across the as yet uncleaned chain.
“What are you going to do with that?” I ask rhetorically.
“With this?” she asks innocently, the rag held up to show me. “I was just going to carry on cleaning, you know, until you decided to change this into something else.”
Her movements are deliberate and precise. I watch her fold the rag carefully with the oil on once side, gather it between her fingers, shift her weight towards me and prepare herself to strike. We are both trying not to smile, but it’s proving difficult.
“You know, I only did that because I thought-.”
I don’t have a chance to finish the sentence, before her hand is out quickly to draw the dirty rag across my cheek. Jo settles back onto her heels, her smile impossible to hide now. I run my fingers through the streak of oil on my cheek, look at the grease deliberately, and rub it together between my fingers, as though I’m trying to make sure it’s real.
“Huh”, I say. “If that’s how-.”
She cuts me off again, this time the rag making contact with my other cheek, in a slow swipe that takes in my nose and one of my eyebrows. She does it at a pace that would be easy to stop, or avoid altogether, but doing that wouldn’t be part of the game. When she’s done, she’s shaking her head and trying unsuccessfully not to laugh.
“Something funny?” I ask. “Do I have something on my face?”
Jo is going a little red. “No”, she says, her laugh swallowing the words.
I clear my throat. “You know”, I say, choosing the dirtiest part of the bike to grease up my rag.
“Oh no”, Jo says, butting in. “That’s not fair.”
I ignore her and continue, “There’s a lot of grease on this bike. This could go on for-.”
I try and catch her by surprise, but she sees i
t coming from a mile off, grabs my arm by the wrist and kind of pulls it away. We tussle for a little while in the air, before we both lose balance and end up sort of lying together next to each other on the floor, rags held prone and arms tangled.
The more we push each other away, the closer our faces get to each other, and it kind of happens before I’m able to stop it.
We kiss. First of all we do it lightly, our lips barely brushing together, and then again, much more passionately. Finally, we come to our senses, push each other away and stand up, each one going to a different side of the room.
“Shit, fuck, shit”, I find myself saying. “Fuck, Jo, I’m sorry. Fuck.”
I wonder if I’m apologizing to the wrong person, when my mind instantly goes to Alice.
“Lets just pretend that didn’t happen, OK?” I say, not even sure if I mean it.
Jo still hasn’t said anything. She’s turning the rag over in her hand and biting her lower lip. Mine are still tingling and I try and wipe the stolen kiss away with the back of my hand. Seconds pass, that could be whole minutes. Neither of us knows what to say. The bike sits there between us like a morbid reminder of a parallel universe we now have no chance of returning to.
Then come those famous, recognizable words. “I think you better leave.”
Chapter Thirty Eight
Jo
7 February 2016. One hundred and thirty three days after.
I haven’t seen Ethan since it happened. I don’t know how to approach it at all, so like every other problem I’ve ever had in my life, I sweep it under the carpet in the hope that blind ignorance will make it go away. The problem with this is that I know from experience that this is easily the worst thing to do, and much more importantly than that, I miss him not being around.