by Lia Louis
“Why does everything you want to watch have a photo of a man in sunglasses or a random moored boat on a misty dock?” I say, looking up at the screen.
Lucas laughs. “And why has everything you want to watch never been released at the cinema?”
“Mm-mm.” I shake my head, swallowing a mouthful of drink. “Not true.”
“Is,” says Lucas, leg bent on the sofa, wrist resting on his knee, remote in his other hand. “Case in point, The Leading Man.”
I laugh. “You only ever bring that one up. Plus, Thandie Newton was in that, and you love her.”
“Well, she was dicked over with that one. A movie starring Bon Jovi—”
“Jon Bon Jovi.”
“And all he does is hide in the streets like a shit Columbo, shagging people’s wives.”
“Sounds like a dream, to be honest,” I say. “You’ve sold it to me. Let’s watch it again.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“Twice was enough,” Lucas laughs, then selects a film with Tom Cruise, and before he can say anything, I am shaking my head.
“No,” I say.
“Fucking hell, we’re going to be here all day.”
Eliot pokes his head around the door, leaning against the white, glossed frame, a smile on his face. He looks at me from under dark lashes, then the TV screen above the fireplace, and says, “And why is there not a Jon Bon Jovi movie playing on that screen?”
Lucas turns at the sound of his brother’s voice and says, “Because I’d like to watch something that was released this decade, El.” Lucas and Eliot have grown closer again since Eliot’s divorce and he moved back in with Lucas and their parents for a while a couple of years ago, before he went to work with his friend Mark, in Canada. And while I’m not sure it’s what it used to be when we were kids, it’s nice to see them together again, around the house, laughing, stupid in-jokes and brotherly piss-taking.
Eliot looks at me and smiles. He lifts his chin. “Did you ever see U-571?”
I tut. “Of course. He played Pete Emmett finely.”
“Lieutenant Pete Emmett, I think you’ll find,” corrects Eliot, and I laugh. “Okay, how about Pucked? Did you see that?”
“Pucked? No?”
“Sounds fucked,” Lucas mumbles beside me, and when I turn to look at him, he’s staring at the television screen, straight-ahead, eyes narrowed in concentration as if he said nothing at all.
“Yep,” says Eliot folding his arms. “He’s the lead. Plays the bad boy. Hair’s wild and all rock star-y. Totally your sort of thing.”
“Seriously?” I laugh. “And I haven’t seen it?”
“Seems not,” laughs Eliot. “Call yourself a fan, Emmie.”
“Well, I guess I know what I’m ordering on Amazon when I get home—oh!” I turn to Lucas, beside me on the sofa. “Unless it’s on Netflix.”
“Nope,” says Lucas, still not looking away from the screen. “No results for… Pucked.” He says “Pucked” as if he’s making fun of it, as if he doesn’t quite believe that’s its name, but he doesn’t smile.
“It might be under National Lampoon—” starts Eliot, before Lucas looks at him, shrugs, and says, “No results.” Then turns back to the screen. Eliot raises his eyebrows at me, and I smile, stifle laughter behind the blanket over my knees. It reminds me of the times Lucas would get in a mood, and Eliot and I would share secret awkward smiles, wondering which girl had dumped him this week, or what menial thing Jean had pulled him up on: dirty towels in the bathroom, an A grade instead of an A-plus.
“Well, I suppose I’ll be making tracks now,” Eliot says, pushing off from the doorframe. “You kids have fun.”
“Making tracks,” I repeat, and Eliot laughs, folding his arms. Rosie is right. Eliot does have really nice arms. She used my phone to scroll through his Instagram last week. “Fit,” she’d said, scrolling. “Super fit. Hot. So goddamn tall.”
“What?” asks Eliot. “Is that so nineties too?”
“Making tracks.” I nod. “A bit.”
“See you then, mate,” cuts in Lucas with a wave and a tight, closemouthed smile, his eyes widening for a second as if to say, “We’re actually really busy here, sort of in the middle of something.” “Enjoy your dinner,” he carries on. “Say hi to Ana for us.”
Eliot smiles, amused. “I’m not going with Ana, actually, but… thanks.” Then he nods at me. “Have a good evening, Ozzy—I mean Emmie.”
Moments later, as I am drinking my cocktail, I realize Lucas is staring at me, eyes burning into me.
“What?”
He gives a tight shrug. “El was a bit… overfriendly.”
“Was he?” I laugh. My ears burn as they always do, preblush, and I’m glad my hair is long enough now to hide them. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, joking about with you, stampeding in on our conversation, going on about Bon Jovi being in all those films and ha-ha, you haven’t seen that one, oh dear, Emmie, maybe we should watch it together sometime…”
“Jon Bon Jovi.” I nudge him. “And he wasn’t being overfriendly, he was just being Eliot, he was being—”
“Emmie, my brother has barely spoken to you in years and suddenly you’re what, best mates?”
It would be obvious to anyone with even a single drunken, dancing brain cell that he’s jealous. Lucas would get like this sometimes, and admittedly, so did I. Territorial in our friendship, especially if one of us made a new friend. “I’ve heard a lot about this Fox. You trading me up?” Lucas’s jealousy is partly protective, though, I think, and with Eliot, I understand why.
“We’re just catching up,” I say. “And to be fair, I haven’t really seen that much of him. Yes, he gave me a lift today from Marie’s, but only because the taxi didn’t show up and I knew you were at work—” That was the lie I had told Lucas, about what happened after leaving Marie’s party, and he’d annoyedly told me to call him next time.
“And he took you to your dad’s too.”
I look at him. I’d told Luke about Marv on the journey up from Calais, when he picked me up from the ferry. I hadn’t said anything about Eliot being the one that took me.
Lucas nods once. “So, I’m right.”
“Did he tell you?”
“No. He canceled suit shopping, and I couldn’t get hold of you. And after that”—he points at the doorway, and then to me—“I guessed.”
I feel oddly attacked. As if I’m being accused of something. My cheeks are burning now, as well as my ears, and my shoulders are tense, up by the side of my face. “But what does it matter?” I say. “He offered. He knew about the cards and he knew how much it was playing on my mind, and—I said yes. So I didn’t have to go alone.” What I want to say is, “Well, you didn’t offer, did you, like you would have done once upon a time? You haven’t been over once in seven months, to see where I work those ten-hour shifts, the burns on my fingers, to see how much I’ve changed the sweltering, dusty room I live in since I moved in. To go to the pub with me, the beach for a day, wander around my little town, like we do yours.”
Lucas draws in a deep breath, hangs his head, and covers his face with a hand. “Maybe I’m being a dick,” he says.
“A bit of a jealous dick, yeah.”
He looks up at me between his fingers. I smile, and so does he. “I’ve got ye olde friendship jealousy, haven’t I?”
“You do. Do you need me to tell you that you’re still my best friend? Make you a little friendship bracelet?”
Lucas laughs, groans into his hand. “God, I’m sorry, Em.” He looks up, dropping the hand from his face. His hand lands on mine. “I am. And I know I haven’t really been there like I should, lately. And I wish I’d been there today. To put Ana in her place. Uptight bitch.” I spun Lucas an enhanced truth; told him it was Ana that made me feel uncomfortable yesterday. I didn’t mention anything else. The montage. The feeling empty and lonely.
Lucas pauses, eyes on mine. A silver pendulum clock ticks
on the mantelpiece, the TV screen dims from inactivity. “I’m sorry if I’ve been too wrapped up in the wedding stuff,” he says quietly. “But it’s mammoth, you know, Em. It’s all this pressure and it feels fucking massive.”
“I know, Luke.”
“But I’m here right now. Me, you, sitting here, films, blankets, your obscure, weird suggestions…” He laughs, gray eyes scrunching, his hand drifting up to touch my arm, then higher, thumb brushing my cheek. “It’s like it’s always been.”
I look at him. I say nothing.
“I’m scared shit’s changing,” he says quietly, hand drifting from my face.
“It is changing, Luke,” I say gently. “You’re getting married. You’re—”
“But it doesn’t have to. Not completely. Not totally.” He’s looking at me now, and it feels just like it did outside the bar. That heavy, almost tangible pull, the swelling clouds of unsaid things bowing, sagging above us, threatening to spill out.
“I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve not gone anywhere, Lucas,” I say, and he says, “I know.”
I put my arms around him before anything else spills free, and when usually I feel like he’s holding me up, this time, I feel like it’s me holding him.
We choose a film, something neither of us have heard of, and before it starts, Lucas says he’ll go and refill our drinks. At the doorway on his way out, he stops.
“I’m glad we talked,” he says. “And you know I’m just looking out for you, don’t you?”
When he leaves the room, I think about Eliot. And I think about the night that it changed between us three.
Had I forgotten? Had I forgotten just how much that night hurt me? How tall I was standing, after all those months of hard work, until that night where Eliot told my biggest and most soul-destroying secret to his girlfriend, who used it as a disgusting, cheap laugh? He’s never said sorry, has he? He’s never once brought it up, the night everything changed. Never ever said sorry. Maybe I’d feel better if he did. Or maybe, to him, it was nothing. “No big deal” as he always says. “Life’s too short, Em.”
Lucas returns, two lime-green cocktails refilled.
“Shift over,” he says. “You’re hogging the blanket.”
June 8, 2006
The movie credits roll, the black screen with white text darkening the lightless room. I look to my left. Yep. He’s asleep. Lucas is out for the count, head lolled to one side, his breathing slow and deep.
Eliot, squished next to me, whispers, “He asleep?”
I nod. “Out like a light.”
“Ah,” he says, smile in his voice. “Wore himself out. Little love.”
I giggle, turn to look at him, but can just about make out Eliot’s face, his head leaned lazily back on the sofa, smirk on his lips, his long legs straight out in front of him, the blanket only covering him up to the knees.
“What’s the time?”
Eliot shrugs. “Late.”
“Unhelpful,” I whisper, pulling my legs up to my chest and the blanket to my neck. The thought of moving from beneath this warm, cozy nook on the sofa, beside softly sleeping Luke, the lights out, and walking to the bottom of the dark garden to the guest cottage, is totally unappealing.
“So, I guess we’re all sleeping here, then,” says Eliot with a yawn, flicking the TV off.
“Mhmm. Can’t be arsed to move.”
“Ditto.”
“Just don’t snore,” I say, and lean my head against the sofa. We’re face-to-face, inches apart, but I can hardly see him in the darkness, just the peak of his nose, the edges of his eyelashes, caught in the light of a glass candle on the coffee table.
“I don’t snore, cheers,” says Eliot, voice low. “I’m an elegant sleeper. Like a little wood sprite.”
I laugh, blanket over my mouth. I’m so tired and so sleepy that I feel drunk. My eyes adjust, and I can just see Eliot’s mouth, a lazy smile at one edge, his eyes sleepy slits.
“You look weird in the dark,” I whisper.
“Thanks, Em.”
“You don’t have a nose.”
“I assure you I do.”
I laugh again, and Eliot takes my hand under the blanket. “What are you—” He brings my hand up to his face.
“See,” he says, pressing my fingers to his warm face. “Nose.”
“Ah yes,” I whisper. “A fine, functional, if slightly oversized feature.”
“You still talking about my nose?”
I explode into stupid, sleep-drunk giggles under the blanket, and Eliot laughs deeply, quietly, and says, “Shhhhh.”
There’s silence then, and I close my eyes. Eliot still has my hand. Safe. Warm.
I don’t realize I’ve begun floating off, into sleep, until I keep coming to, as if on a merry-go-round, passing consciousness every few moments, and it’s then that I’m aware of Eliot’s thumb stroking my knuckles. I’m woken awhile later, to silence, to Lucas’s leg, hot and heavy against mine, to Eliot kissing my forehead, and leaving the room.
Louise lies back, her eyes closed, as if she’s listening to a beautiful piece of music and not me, reading from a book with old pages the color of hay.
“What do you think?” asks Louise, her fingers laced together in her lap, a ring on every knuckle. “Will she go back for him?”
“The dressmaker?”
Louise nods, eyes still closed, head tilted back on the velvet of her armchair.
“Yes,” I say. “I think she will. I think she’ll realize that although she wanted this job in Germany, she isn’t happy without him and… what?” I stop, book in my lap. “I’m wrong, aren’t I?”
Louise smirks. “I’m not saying a word about whether you’re wrong or right, Emmie, but I’m just wondering why you don’t think he will come and find her.”
I pause, and smile. She’s good at this, Louise. At asking questions you’ve never considered. “I don’t know. Good question.”
“Why should she leave her dream job,” she says, “to go after him? Why can’t he go after her?”
“Consider me told.”
Louise smiles, brown eyes glittering. “Do you have time to read to the end of the chapter?”
“I do,” I tell her. “There’ll even be time for a cup of tea before my shift too.”
Louise nods happily, and I carry on. This is something we have been doing ever since that day I found Louise in bed unable to get up, which have multiplied over the last few weeks. Those days, where she can only get downstairs to the sofa, or the conservatory, where she stays most of the day, or worse, when she stays in bed, seem to be ever-increasing, and when they arise, I do what I can for her. She is fiercely independent, though, preferring to do something that may take someone able like me only five seconds, even if it takes her hours. But I like that about her. She’s strong. She needs no validation.
“I don’t need company,” she once said to me, but I think that is a belief she is slowly shedding. We talk now. Nonstop, actually, and even eat dinner together most nights. The gap in the bridge between us is closing, and I like the way it feels. I never thought I cared, but it’s so nice coming home to someone who wants to hear about your day. It throws me, though, and Louise has made me promise that I will no longer apologize for simply speaking. So many times I have found myself going off on a tangent, telling her about a funny customer at work, or something hilarious Fox and Rosie argued about, or about France, and then stopping and saying, “Sorry. I know this is probably really boring for you.”
“Boring?”
“Yes. Me, harping on about things that don’t really matter, people you don’t really know.”
And Louise has looked at me every time, her wrinkled brow furrowing, and said, “That is called a conversation, is it not, Emmie? How relationships are made, slowly sharing pieces of yourself, in turn?”
And I try to remember that. That Mum and her rolling eyes and sighing when I would come home from school, desperate to tell her about my day, my new friend, the
funny thing that happened in PE, or the band Georgia’s mum was taking us to see, anything I’d seen or experienced that felt important enough to say aloud, was not how any person, especially not a mother, should react to another human being doing what Louise called it—sharing a piece of themselves. It was heartless, really, I know that now. And sad more than anything. But I wonder, even now, after sitting here with Louise for almost two hours, if I will ever shake the feeling that I am sharing too much of myself, boring the other person to tears, so in turn, draw back. Close my book, as Eliot would rightly say.
Eliot. I haven’t seen him since that night I sat with Lucas and watched movies, like old times. It’s been about four weeks now. We’ve texted a few times, but there’s something about what Lucas said that night about looking out for me—that reminder of what happened on our nineteenth birthday—that has sent my barriers up again, like the sides of a cage.
I click on the kettle, the book on the kitchen counter beside me, the place in it marked with a pointed plant label stick.
The doorbell sounds.
“I’ll get it,” I call out to Louise, and when I pass the lounge, I see that despite being in a lot of pain today, with her back and legs, she was shuffling back into her seat where she had tried to get up and see to it herself.
I swing open the door of Two Fishers Way, the dust of the porch dances in the sunlight that floods in.
“Emmeline,” Marv says from the doorstep, the jiffy bag of cards in his hand. “I was wondering if we could have a chat.”