Dear Emmie Blue

by Lia Louis

  “Yes,” I tell him. “Thanks, that’d be really helpful.”

  “Cool,” says Eliot. “Text me your address, yeah? And I’ll be in touch soon with times and all that.”

  On the bus home, I check my phone. Lucas has read my messages and not replied, and when I check his Instagram, he and Marie have checked into a hotel in Honfleur, a photo of them holding two cold misty glasses of white wine. “When you both finish work early and ur wife-to-be suggests a spontaneous night away! #itswhyimmarryingher is the caption, followed by ten grinning emojis in a row. I try to ignore the sinking heart in my chest. He’s too busy to talk me down from the panic, from sadness, because he’s with his fiancée. His wife-to-be. Of course she comes first—before me.

  The bus winds through town, getting closer to my stop. I see lovers, hand in hand, parents dashing after toddlers. I see the building that used to be Moments—the children’s photo studio I worked at for six years before it closed. A signless office now. I see the flat in which I lived with Adam, then alone, until Fishers Way. The old single-glazed windows that seeped heat in the winter, have been replaced, the doors of the Juliet balcony, white now, with blinds at the windows.

  Change.

  Everything is changing. Except for me.

  * * *

  Mix CD. Vol. 3.

  Dear Balloon Girl,

  Track 1. Because I taught you to swim in the sea (do not listen to my brother, it was definitely me)

  Track 2. Because Bon Jovi. They need no reason.

  Track 3. Because there are only 120 miles between us and that really isn’t that long

  Track 4. Because you aren’t what happened to you

  Track 5. Because you’ve never seen a shooting star

  Balloon Boy

  X

  Eliot is early on Friday. A whole half an hour early. I don’t even realize he’s arrived until I lug my case downstairs and hear his voice. I find him in the kitchen, standing in the doorway, talking to Louise, who is, as ever, stirring something on the hob.

  “I used to use Shelby’s all the time. It was the only place to go,” she is saying. “When that closed, I didn’t really have any reason to go to Hastings anymore, which I suppose is a shame.”

  Eliot is nodding, waffling about a man with a “bad hip” and a pawnbroker’s, and Louise is saying, “Oh yes, Clint’s owned that shop since he was twenty-one.” I have never heard her talk so much, and she sounds awake, bright. It hardly sounds like the Louise Dutch I know.

  “Hey,” I say from the hallway, and Eliot turns to face me. He’s in jeans and a white T-shirt—the logo of a band I’ve never heard of on the chest—and it makes his tan seem even more golden. “You are really early.”

  “Nice to see you too.” He smiles, and then with a shrug says, “I heard there was traffic. Left early. Clear roads, so here I am. Yours for a whole extra half hour.”

  Louise looks past him, her mouth twitching a small smile at me, before looking back at the pan on the stove. It smells of garlic and woodsmoke down here. She’ll be making vegetable chili again, I bet, or a spiced chutney from all the tomatoes she grows in the conservatory.

  “I see,” I say. “Well, I’m ready to go when you are.”

  “Okay.” Eliot nods, a hand in his pocket. “Well, Louise, it was really nice to meet you.”

  “Oh, you too,” she replies. “Bye, Emmie. A safe journey.” I don’t think she has ever wished me a safe journey before. It’s not that Louise is rude, but she is standoffish most of the time. Reluctant, I guess is the word, to engage or give too much away.

  “Louise seems nice,” says Eliot as we buckle our seat belts in the front of his truck.

  “She is. Quiet.”

  He raises a dark eyebrow, throwing a look over his shoulder to the rear window. “Yeah?” he says. “She didn’t seem too quiet in there.”

  “Well, maybe she likes you more than me,” I say with a smile.

  “Hard not to,” Eliot laughs.

  “I think maybe she thinks I’m a bit of a wet blanket,” I tell him. “She can’t understand why I go to France all the time, when Luke rarely comes here. Tells me I use the ferry more than I use the bus, and What’s wrong with his legs? She’s always asking me if I’ve seen certain jobs in the local paper too.”

  Eliot frowns. “Maybe she’s looking out for you.”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But I also think she believes I’m some sort of weird dreamy damsel with my head up my arsehole.”

  Eliot chuckles. “And you aren’t.”

  “I’m a lot of things.” I smile. “But I’m not that.”

  “Good to know.” Eliot starts the engine, his arm coming round to hold the back of my seat as he reverses off the drive, gravel crunching under the wheels. “Emmie is no dreamy damsel,” he says.

  “With her head up her arsehole,” I add.

  “With her head up her arsehole. Noted.”

  We start driving, winding past the coast, the sun reflecting on the water in silver sheets, and I tell Eliot to nudge me if he needs me.

  He turns down the radio, which is loud and blaring a classic rock song that sounds as though it’s being sung by a man who is standing a country mile away from the microphone. “What?”

  “Do you mind if I put my earphones in? I’m listening to this podcast. About being a best man… or woman, in my case.”

  His mouth lifts at the corner. “Interesting.”

  “It’s just, I won’t hear you if you speak to me.”

  “That’s all right,” he says. “I’ll tap instead. Bit of Morse code.” Then he carries on singing quietly along to the radio. I look out the passenger window, trying hard to hold on to the words being spoken in my ear, about best man speeches, about stag dos, but they merge together, become a swirl of background chatter, and my mind wanders. I used to look across this same ocean we drive by now, when I was a child, and I’d think about my dad over there, somewhere, traveling around with his band, handsome and strong, adoring fans waiting by the tour bus, or outside the large iron gates of his rock-star mansion, hundreds of hands holding concert programs and marker pens in the air, like flags.

  “I used to listen to rock bands on the radio and imagine their drummers were my dad,” I’d told Lucas once. “I used to think my dad was in Bon Jovi until I was about twelve.”

  “Until you realized Tico Torres wasn’t from Brittany?” he laughed. “Or called Peter.”

  “Well, I’m glad you find it funny, because I was heartbroken when I realized there was no way my dad could’ve been their drummer.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that meant I had no in to Jon. No way of meeting him, no way of having him stare angstily across at me backstage, pretend he can’t stand me, that he doesn’t even see me, because he’s a rock star and rock stars don’t fall in love. No way of him inviting me to a party, despite himself, and rescuing me from a drunk… and then kissing me in the rain, in the dark, before falling in love with me.”

  Lucas had laughed, slung his arm over my shoulder, and said, “You’ve been reading fan fiction again, haven’t you?” Then, “And there is still time, Emmie Blue. Jon Bon would be insane not to drop everything the second he lays eyes you.”

  Eliot taps my leg. I pull out an earphone, look at him.

  “Any requests?” He gestures out of the window. I hadn’t even noticed we’d stopped, the engine killed, the radio off. “I’ve got to get some petrol. Chocolate? Sweets? Bag of charcoal?”

  “I’m okay, thanks.”

  Eliot nods and gets out of the car. My phone vibrates on my lap. A message from Lucas.

  * * *

  Lucas Moreau: So are you with the rag n bone man then?

  I lean forward to catch a look in the side mirror at Eliot slumped against the truck, one hand under his armpit, another on the pump, brown eyes on the ever-moving dial of the petrol gauge. I look for shreds of evidence, like I used to when I was a teenager, that Lucas and Eliot share a gene pool. They have the
same shoulders. Broad, rounded. And their lips. Their coral-pink lips, and the way they chew them when they’re bored or concentrating. Eliot’s doing that now.

  * * *

  Me: Safely on board. Just stopped for petrol!

  Lucas Moreau: Can’t wait to see you :)

  Me: Same :*

  Lucas: PS. Good luck with Smeliot. Don’t be bored to death. I need you in one piece.

  * * *

  Moments later, Eliot slides into the driver’s seat. He chucks a chocolate bar in my lap.

  “Picnic still your favorite?” he says, turning the key in the ignition.

  “Yeah, wow. Well remembered. Thank you.”

  “No worries.” Eliot gives a wry smile as we pull away. “You can stick your earphones back in now. I’ll nudge you when I think of something else to say.”

  “It’s okay.” I pause the podcast and wrap my earphones around my phone. “It’s finished anyway.”

  Eliot nods, a hand on the wheel, the other holding a sport-bottle of water to his lips. “Right,” he says, sipping. “So, what’re we doing, then? Operation STEN-ing as we drive?”

  I shake my head. “Not sure the legend would be happy that we were organizing things without his priceless input.”

  “Ah shit, very true,” he says. “Okay. How do you fancy telling me about this interview I caught you walking out on?”

  I look at him, shake my head. “Not really. If you don’t mind.”

  “Nope. Definitely don’t,” he says. “All right, how about you choose the next topic of conversation? Just, uh, don’t choose fate again. Or chance. If you don’t mind.” He looks at me and gives a grin that makes his eyes glint. Despite myself, I smile.

  “If it wasn’t for the Picnic, I’d have called you a dickhead just then.”

  “Ah.” Eliot smiles. “See, that’s why I gave you the Picnic before I made the joke.”

  We drive—clear traffic, smooth tarmac, blue skies—and Eliot clicks arrowed buttons on the stereo, flicking through stations. He settles on one, and it hums quietly. A soft, slow Beatles song that he taps along with, his fingers on the steering wheel.

  And I don’t know if it’s the sea air, the calm quiet between Eliot and me that waits to be filled, or if it’s being right beside someone I could once be my whole self with, but I tell him. “I got a package the other day,” I tell Eliot. “Birthday cards. From my dad. For when I was a kid. And there’s this address on the back…”

  Friday, June 9, 2006

  “You can’t choose Maltesers, Luke.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Because Maltesers aren’t chocolate bars, and the whole point of choosing one chocolate bar for the rest of your life, is choosing a chocolate bar.”

  “Well, that’s bullshit.” Lucas pushes his sunglasses up his nose with one finger and turns his face to the sky. “And I am sticking with it.”

  “Fine.” Eliot looks over at me and shakes his head, smiles. “And you’re sticking with a Picnic?”

  “Hell would have to freeze over before I chose another.”

  “But with all those raisins, it’s pretty much fruit.”

  “Picnic, and that’s my final answer, Eliot.”

  “All right. And I’ll stick with Dairy Milk.”

  “And that’s because you’re a boring bastard,” says Lucas groggily beside me on a sun lounger. “Come on, then, what’s next? Potatoes? Choose one sort of potato to eat for the rest of your life. Me first. Mash.”

  “Mash?” Eliot grimaces and pulls his aviators down over his eyes. “I may be boring, dude, but you are disgusting.”

  It’s a sunny, cloudless day, and we are sitting in the Moreaus’ back garden, Lucas and I on the bed-like sun loungers at the bottom of the garden, while Eliot slumps on a navy-blue old-style deck chair. Jean and Amanda have gone out to buy things for a barbecue for mine and Lucas’s birthday tonight, and like always when I’m here, I’ve had the most wonderful day, so far. Which means I feel a bit uneasy. It’s weird, but in moments like this, with Lucas and Eliot, our cheeks aching from laughing, with nothing to do but to make up silly games to pass the time, with cold lemonades at our feet, the sun in the sky, and nothing but lovely plans for the next few days, it feels almost risky to be this happy. It feels like I am goading all the things that could go wrong, to happen. Because everything was so awful, so hopeless, before Luke. I lost my best friend because she believed her dad over me. That I was a silly teenager with a crush. That the only assault was on her family with my lies. A family I’d known and trusted and idolized for five years—her sister, Megan, Georgia’s mum, and Georgia’s father, Robert, too, of course. Even Georgia’s grandmother, who’d pop in on Friday nights for a takeaway when I’d stay the night, with pajamas and popcorn, and Robert always so funny, so interested in Georgia and me. And I lost them. In one blink. Classmates who’d lend me pens, laugh at my jokes, compliment my new bag, now laughed at me, snarled at me, called me awful things I can barely think about, let alone say aloud. Even the teachers. Most were kind, but I’d often catch a couple of them looking at me out the corner of their eye. I was a mystery, I suppose, with missing school trip admission slips, a mum like mine, mostly absent, but who wrote long complaint letters about the pointlessness of subjects I was learning, as if she was anything but. My life lost all warmth, all love, after the night of the Summer Ball. And friends like Lucas and Eliot—a family like this. A life like this, all this acceptance. This love. It feels too good to be true. For me, at least.

  “Go on then, Em,” says Lucas, nudging my knee with his hand, across the small gap between the loungers. “Spuds. Go.”

  I hesitate. “It’s got to be chips.”

  “Yes,” says Eliot, clapping slowly, as Lucas groans. “Homemade chips, that’s what I said.”

  “Chip shop chips or homemade, nothing else,” I say.

  “Ah yeah, shit, those ones you make are good,” says Lucas, hand behind his head. “But I still think I’m sticking with mash, you know.”

  “Mash is shit,” says Eliot. “Sorry, dude, but it’s school dinners to me.”

  “So? School dinners were the bollocks, what’re you even talking about, El?”

  “Get rid of the the and you’ll be spot on. Our school dinners were bollocks.” Eliot sips his lemonade and gives me a lazy smile. “Your turn, Em. Choose the next question.”

  I pause, my head to one side. “Um. Celebrity crushes? You can only have one for the rest of your life.”

  “Deal.” Lucas yawns.

  “I’ll go first,” I say. “Jo—”

  “Jon Bon Jovi,” say Eliot and Lucas at the same time, and the three of us look at one another and burst out laughing. The boys stretch over and slap each other’s hand in a high five. “Nice one,” says Lucas, and then he looks at me and grins. “Too easy,” he says. “It’s always Jon.”

  I can’t believe now that I reached out to Georgia last week. It was a weak moment, I suppose. I was alone in the college cafeteria, and so was she. I looked at her across the room and saw a thousand memories play out in front of my eyes in a moment. When we were in year seven and we’d do each other’s hair. When we were fourteen and her mum took us to see Busted and bought us a poster each and we were so excited, we cried when they came onstage. Sleepovers, where we’d shared a bed, a pillow at each end. Baking. Makeup. Sunday roasts. And I felt desperately sad, thinking that we had shared all of that, and now we couldn’t even say hello. It wasn’t her fault. It was his. Not hers. Not mine. His. But I had barely opened my mouth, barely got to her table before she had stood and said, “Don’t you dare, Emmie. Don’t you fucking dare.”

  “You like blondes, don’t you?” Lucas cuts through my thoughts. “I mean, you say you don’t have a type, but you do.”

  “I guess,” says Eliot, then looks at me. “Whereas he just likes them with eyes, a nose, and a mouth, right?” he says to me, and Luke bursts out laughing.

  “Hey, fuck you,” he says. “I am not that bad, am I, E
m?”

  “You are,” I tell Lucas. “I’m sorry, and I love you, but you do fancy everyone.”

  “And you don’t?”

  Eliot shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “I tend to only fancy one person at a time.”

  “Anyway,” says Lucas, turning over on his side and nodding at me. “Next one. Movies. And you better not say any of those train wrecks you make me watch, Em. They’re barred.”

  I don’t need Georgia. I have Lucas. I have Eliot. That will always be enough.

  Marie holds a powder-blue dress next to me and smiles.

  “This color and your blond hair,” she beams, “is a dream come true.”

  “I do love the blue,” I say, and she puts the dress back on the rack, her brown eyes not leaving the line of dresses, plumes of creams and blues and yellows. She grabs at another.

  “Oh! This would work too, no?” A dress swings in her hand from a padded pale-pink hanger.

  “Oh, definitely,” I say, reaching and running a hand over the fabric in her hands. Jean, Lucas, and Tom have gone to Jean’s tailor, and when I woke up this morning, within minutes of rubbing my eyes and sitting up in bed, I was surprised to find Marie knocking on the door, and not Lucas. I answered it looking like something from a swamp, to find her hair glossy and blow-dried, face made up, and top to toe in perfect but casual Parisian fashion, keys in her hands.

  “No rushing,” said Marie, “but the boys are already up, and I thought us girls deserved some proper time too. There is a boutique near Lucas’s office that has beautiful dresses and ball gowns. I thought we could take a look?”