by Corri Lee
The one that doesn’t exist anymore? Doubtful.
Fat Emmy was feeling bitter, too. He might have been the enemy but she sure liked to look at him. I raised my glass to her in a gesture of solidarity.
“Mother, he’s livid about anything that might interfere with his stupid wedding. I mean, come on, who throws a sakura blossom themed wedding in January? The fundamental basis of the event is a fucking sham.”
“Emmy, language!” She scolded me but her eyes said that she agreed. Born romantic Ivy Tudor was vehemently opposed to artificial flowers of any kind, particularly when they would naturally be in bloom just a couple of months later. By her way of thinking, a fake rose symbolised fake love. I never pointed out to her the potential symbolism lurking behind the fact that real roses died. Maybe it was better if it was fake. It sure as hell wouldn’t hurt so much. “Speaking of your romance, why on earth didn’t you tell me that you’re dating the Blaze?”
Struck-dumb by her knowledge of our ‘relationship’, what else could I really do but play the fool? I’d concentrated so hard on keeping that part of my life hidden from him that I’d neglected to consider that it might find him first. Stupid, of course, when my mother was as hungry for gossip as she was. “Pardon me?”
“This is you isn’t it?” Unfolding a magazine and spreading it across the table between our glasses, she tapped the page at several pictures from the night before at The Roses, showing me in varying degrees of drunkenness while always attached to Blaze. It made my heart ache to look at them. The accompanying article was as reckless to look at but I just couldn’t help myself.
UK rock act Monday’s Miracle stormed Tudor owned ‘The Roses’ in style at their highly anticipated secret gig in Mayfair last night. Founding foreman Blaze topped the bill, rejoining former band mates Scott, Jordan and Matt for the first four songs of their set, leaving the stage with an artful leap across the two hundred and ninety-seven strong crowd.
But the ladies were left lusting when he emerged to watch his friends perform with his frequently pictured companion. Bad news folks, that foxy brunette is officially stoking his fire, and boy, does it ever burn for her!
Our insider couldn’t get close enough to the inferno for an exclusive, straight from the horses mouth, skinny on how it’s rocking in that casbah, but Monday’s Miracle guitarist, Scott, had this to say:
“Oh yeah, they’re the real thing all right... As far as girlfriends go, our man lucked out. Emmy is sexy, smart, hilarious, and drank most of us under the table. I give it a month before he whisks her off to Vegas so none of us have at her after the tour.”
So that’s it, girls. Hang up your fantasies and chuck out the best knickers you wear in case he’s on the bus that might hit you if they’re not fresh on—hot tamale Blaze has finally found love and we got sunburn just looking at it.
“Bloody hell.” It made for difficult reading. Not two hours earlier I was the envy of the female population of Great Britain, maybe even beyond. Now it was only a matter of time before the press found out that I was the conniving slut who’d had him and lost him over the futile desperation to fuck my best friend. My temples began to throb with a tension headache.
You really blew it this time.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
“And he was in your flat yesterday afternoon?”
“Yes, but—” But what? But I lost two men in the space of ten minutes just by being my usual messed up self? “It’s not like that, Mum. Sticking ‘girlfriend’ on it is just a way to make it socially acceptable for it to be public knowledge that we fu—... had relations whenever he had a free five minutes.”
“Pull the other one, Emmeline.” Again, she tapped the pictures, forcing me to look at how happy we’d seemed the night before. “I’ve never seen you smile like that.”
“Can we please change the subject?”
She curled her fist under her chin, looking at me with that worldly, all-knowing look only mothers are capable of. “You’ve had an argument.”
“No, not an argument. We’ve just... reached an impasse. We’re too different, incompatible. He doesn’t have the time I need and—”
She straightened. “What really happened?”
Transparent as ever, I sank down in my seat sulkily and stuck my lip out like a child. “He found out about Hunter.”
“Ah.” I’d always had a feeling that my mother had her suspicions about what Hunter really meant to me, and I think I’d just confirmed them. “And you think that there isn’t enough space in your heart for two men?”
“No, I do. I just don’t think Blaze does.”
“Oh, Emmy...” And here came the pep talk... “Men are very proud creatures—very territorial. I’m sure he’s just stewing and will be beating your door down again in no time. What was the last thing he said before he left?”
“ ‘I’ll call you’.”
“Oh.” After a beat, she clicked her fingers at a waitress and pointed at her glass. “We’re going to need another round.”
Uh huh... that was what I thought.
Ivy’s driver dropped me off at Esme’s around nine in a state of near catatonia, barely able to walk, speak, yet still clasping that ridiculous sun hat. A liberal attitude towards drinking to excess was apparently a Tudor trait, residing in all of us. My family had a reputation for knowing how to throw a party, and now that reputation apparently lived independent of the name.
Nobody recognised me for a while, not until Daniel strode into the bar in his gayest finery, looking to whet his whistle after Sunday lunch with the in-laws. Somehow, the temporary camouflage that came from my new old hair was liberating.
Jonathan had gone straight home, as drunk as me by all accounts, leaving Dan and I to stare across a table at each other the way we had done in so many restaurants, bars, canteens and hospital wards so many times before—me dejected and him feeling bereft of a limb in his partner’s absence. He was co-dependent. He wouldn’t deny it.
For Daniel, watching me was like watching a woman hang from a bungee rope. I’d plummet, then gleefully spring back up. And then I’d fall again and again, the enthusiasm of my bounce getting less and less, climbing a little less high every time until there was nothing left but down. The last time he’d seen me hanging with no gambol was when he’d been dragged out of my private room away from the sight of me screaming and struggling at doctors trying to fit a nasogastric tube. I saw that memory play through his mind sometimes, obvious from the way he paled for a second and the dark shadows crossed his eyes. It might have been worse than finding me bleeding to death and I didn’t know exactly how much bounce he thought I had left.
Chris didn’t join us either, apparently pissed off that I hadn’t turned up the night before. As much as I appreciated that my friends were sensitive, I couldn’t help but feel like they couldn’t stand to see the bigger picture sometimes. I rarely acted through malice, so my actions were never a slur on them. It was hard to win when the people there to support you were as self-loathing and downtrodden as you.
The habitually quiet Sunday lull was in full swing, or lack thereof, when Esme found us, first frowning at me like she didn’t recognise me, then slamming the same magazine I’d been shown by my mother down on the table.
“What the hell is this?”
“A magazine?”
“Don’t act cute, Emmeline.” Jesus. Esme had never used my full name before. “You were at the secret Monday’s Miracle gig. With Blaze. And them. Some fucking warning might have been nice.” I should have known that my decision to monopolise the evening would come back to bite me, but I had enough alcohol in me to slur a retort.
“If you were so worried about me, all you had to do was call. Nobody ever has the sense to just call, you all have to presume the worst of Emmeline Tudor, the hopelessly fucking suicidal.”
“No, I—”
“Is it cold up there on your soapbox, Esme? Do you—she who is so naturally beautiful—really think that I don’t deserve to be the cen
tre of focus in a room sometimes? How often do I get a shoo-in standing next to you like some glorified fucking wingman? How dare I enjoy my last blissful night with Mr. Decadent without my babysitters?”
“Emmy, shut up! I’m pissed off because of the journalists who’ve been crawling around here all day!” Stunned out of her anger, Esme sat down next to me and drummed her fingers across the table’s top. “You’re a mean blonde. A hot, mean blonde.”
An involuntary giggle escaped from my throat with the sob I’d been holding in all day. Once I started, I wouldn’t stop, and nobody wanted me to lose that control.
“You have that look like you’re crying but the tears won’t come out. What do you mean ‘last night’?”
My ‘crying inside’ look was easily detected by my friends and seldom discussed. It only ever came as a result of a feud with Hunter and their patience was exhausted where he was concerned. Chris and Esme didn’t know him well enough to rationally comment on his behaviour, Jonathan knew him only as a student and Daniel kept a rigid silence on the matter. He was grateful for the acceptance he’d been afforded as a gay outcast in a society that championed conventional lifestyles and conformity, but disliked his attitude enough to not jump to his defence. Not a single one of them had the energy to rehash old debates with me and only the hint that my latent tears were for someone else drove the curiosity.
“Hunter called the flat and Blaze answered. He knows the score now, he just doesn’t want to sing from it.” I scrunched my eyes up and flopped forward to bury my head in the crook of Esme’s neck, haunted by the memories of standing just off stage, watching him with wide-eyed wonder. “And boy, can he sing.”
A faint whimper rattled in Esme’s throat. It was the kind of helpless noise she made when she was speechless over something she’d been expecting for a while. I’d heard it the last time she’d been told that a book she’d been chronically obsessed with had been delayed for release by six months.
“What did you do about the journos?”
“Plead the fifth, of course. I didn’t want to give them any reason to whip their cameras out in here.” As beautiful as she was, Esme’s anonymity was as precious as mine. She’d turned down so much acting work in a bid to keep her face out of the public eye, preferring to just be a disembodied voice over the urban A-List goddess she could have been, all in the interest of keeping her mother away. I didn’t even know if Esme was her real name, but her face was unmistakable to anyone. I couldn’t imagine that she’d changed that drastically over the years to be unrecognisable.
“I would never intentionally screw up your privacy.”
“I know, I was being irrational. And so are you. Blaze wouldn’t—”
“He said ‘I’ll call you’.” Trading glances with Daniel, Esme pulled me up straight by the shoulders, the stunted flow of encouragement trapped by her own flailing faith.
“He’s a very honest man. I think he’s earned your belief in him. And you’re not going to like this, but I think you need to cut Hunter off.” It wasn’t something she’d needed to tell me for me to know it. The idea to blank him out the way I had recently done unintentionally had crossed my mind so many times before, but like I’d told Blaze, I didn’t know what my purpose would be if it wasn’t to moon after him.
“I can’t. It fucks with my head when he calls me because he’s such a prick and I still want him for reasons I can’t even explain anymore. But it’s still there, that sense of needing him in my life. I hate and resent him, but he visits and I need him to kiss me, to love me obsessively like I do him. The sadistic craving for something that’s done so much damage.”
“And Blaze?”
“Just as sadistic.” I shook my head at myself, recounting every other time Hunter had broken the lines of communication for a while and left me at a loss. Like the miles weren’t enough, the emotional distance between us left a migraine-like ache in my skull until he called out of the blue and spoke to me like nothing had ever happened, leaving me confused and reeling from the abruptness of his turnaround. I never harassed him with correspondence in any form; he always came back to me and I was grateful for it. It was the delusion that he needed me as much as I needed him that kept me dreaming.
And that was exactly how it had played out with Blaze. I would wait and hope, counting down the days until I fell back into his good graces. And if it never came, I might still hold on, convincing myself to believe my own lies.
There was no way back once I’d put an emotional investment into a man, no matter how involuntarily. I needed them both like water and air. Not one without the other. All or nothing. Double or bust.
The days I felt like I was living on the periphery were always the hardest to get through. My lips would chap, stomach cramp, and I’d always end up run down and nursing a common cold because my immune system gave up before my brain did. My leukocytes were quitters. My appetite suffered and my body buckled under the strain of being sick and hungry. I was always cold, even in the sunshine, and walked hugging myself to keep warm. I’d been told that I’d been lucky to avoid any permanent damage from my eating disorder but I couldn’t possibly see how these moments in my life were part of the best case scenario.
But whatever was going on inside, I didn’t feel it. Just the vague sense of plodding on for everyone else’s benefit when I wanted to do nothing more than curl up in bed and hibernate. I was in a bad place, but it wasn’t that place. My bungee cord still had some spring in it but was granting me a reprieve before it yanked me back into the real world. This was just the eye of the storm, a place where I could wistfully sigh for no reason and nobody would pester me with questions about what was wrong.
Monday was the worst. Unable to sleep, I spent the early hours of the morning clearing the clothes and toiletries Blaze had left behind into a box. I’d get it all back to him Somehow. Someday. Washing my sheets would have come up on my list too if the flat hadn’t been inexplicably tidied when I staggered back home from Esme’s. If he’d sneaked back in to clear my bedroom of his blood stains as a consolation prize, I’d hate to be trading gifts with him at Christmas.
I went to work exhausted, keeping one hopelessly optimistic eye on my phone, but still dragged myself to Esme’s that night, chasing a higher level of numbness through intoxication and my usual meaningless fling. The minute I started breaking my routine was the minute I’d be beyond recovery.
The fatigue of Monday was the start of the nosedive. On Tuesday I woke in a cold sweat, racked with shivers as a fever set in. The four ulcers that popped up in my mouth overnight chased away any lasting inclination to eat. My body felt like lead, aching too much to move, but I still forced myself through the usual day, taking Esme home with me that night. I wanted my daily orgasm, but I didn’t want it at the hands of anyone else if Blaze wasn’t there.
The unproductive string of casual fucks I left in my wake had always felt like a betrayal to Hunter when I crept away from them, but I needed them to feel like I wasn’t somehow faulty or deformed. The more I did it, the more I felt like he wouldn’t want a woman so ‘well travelled’, but every man—or woman—I laid became a faceless vessel for a fantasy that I was sleeping with him.
Now, I couldn’t act on it like I used to because I didn’t want to be wanted by anyone else. Nobody else fit me or knew my body like Blaze. Nobody appreciated the way my back arched more and more as I crept higher towards the climax he pushed me halfway to with a smile.
On Thursday, I woke up after apparently seeing in Wednesday disorientated and incoherent. I slept like a corpse and couldn’t be roused, setting off a mass paranoia over the state of my physical and emotional well-being. My doctor told Esme that my body just needed the rest, so my friends sat in on a bedside vigil watching over me like I was already dead. They sat around me on my bed playing cards over my unconscious body, occasionally disturbed by my conversational but wordless rambles and aimless stumbles to the bathroom.
I don’t remember any of that. A seething Esme o
rdered me back to bed on Thursday morning, but I ignored her, red nosed and hoarse. I needed the normality of menial employment in my life and my job was hardly strenuous.
“You’re over-reacting.” She shot me a look that would have melted lead paint. Honestly, I didn’t feel too bad once the fever had settled, at least I didn’t until I picked up my phone and remembered what had made me ill in the first place.
The picture of Blaze and I still stood prize of place as my wallpaper, his eyes much brighter and greener than I remembered. Sunday morning replayed in my mind; a montage of still images pasted into my memory like some perversely masochistic scrapbook of regret and ‘if only’s. How had my life flipped so quickly?
“Call him.” Esme pushed me down onto the couch to brush my hair, knowing that she wouldn’t win the argument of me missing work again. Being largely unconscious and oblivious to breaking so many of my firmly set habits the day before stopped me from getting crazy about it, but I wouldn’t give myself a reason to crack now I was lucid.
“Don’t be ridiculous. Even if I was the type of woman to chase men, wouldn’t he have called already if he’d meant it?”
“Maybe he’s waiting for you to call him?”
I surprised her by laughing through gritted teeth. My scalp hurt enough to touch without the added insult of the knots that tangled my hair from root to tip. My whole body felt bruised. “I thought I was supposed to be the naive one. I may not be a seasoned pro at interacting with men beyond the bedroom, but I’m pretty sure thinking a woman has another man on her mind when you screw is a major turn off.” Not that I wasn’t guilty of inflicting that insult on four years worth of men.
“Was Hunter on your mind?”
“No, are you crazy? In case you hadn’t noticed, Blaze has a way of paralysing neurons and synapses with a look. It’s easy to forget to breathe around him.” Just thinking about him made me feel tired and bone weary. I didn’t think we could really be classed as ‘broken up’ when we’d never really been together, but I suddenly understood why women were rendered whiny and insufferable even when they’d been the one to call it quits. I just wanted to talk about him, like recalling all his traits out loud would keep him alive, but I was sure that doing it was just as bad as my already unhealthy tendency to self-harm. If anything, my unwillingness to be that fucked up over a man again drove my motivation to not fall victim to old vices. To be that pathetic once in a lifetime was enough. Twice, and people would probably leave me to die shamefully.