Bad Girl

by Sarah Michelle Lynch

  “Are you going to take it?”

  He finally takes his jacket off and sits back in the cushions, slouching, looking more like he’s staying.

  “I’m still thinking about it. I don’t really need to move, I’m just wondering if I want to.”

  “You mean, to go someplace where there’s plenty to distract you, get out of your own head kinda thing?”

  “Yeah, cos I can work anywhere and I mean, the house… I’ll probably sell it, eventually… memories and all, but I can live there a bit longer, it’s no hardship.”

  I heard all about that house from Lily. Funny thing is, I reckon there’s more to Susan leaving him than he realises. From what Lily told me, they have a small mortgage on that house that Adam pays for. Perhaps her dad bought that house for them because he knew Susan would never be granted a mortgage from a reputable lender… owing to her record as a joint bankruptee when she was with Markos.

  I look sideways and try not to stare as he looks blankly in front of him. He’s the same old Adam, boyish and kind of cute. I remember the first time we screwed. Everyone was on a night out around Leeds in the summer holidays and me and Adam got lost on a detour down a side street to steal kisses from one another while nobody was looking. I hadn’t told anyone I liked him and he hadn’t told anyone he liked me, either. We were nineteen and it’d been there for several years but I think it was only when I left for university in York that he started missing me.

  Anyway, we were lost down this street and then we saw this gate leading to a tiny garden with tall bushes either side.

  “How about it?” he asked, flicking his eyebrows up and down.

  We found seclusion, surrounded by the bushes and a wall on the other side, which he pushed me up against. I remember he was frantic and didn’t last long. He used a condom and told me afterwards, “So that’s what all the fuss is about.”

  He lost his virginity to me, the girl who lost hers at fifteen and had been putting herself about for years already. The tone of his speech and his treatment of me for months after that told me he saw me only as a fuck buddy. Secretly I harboured feelings. Whenever he looked at me with those blue eyes I’d melt. He didn’t realise it, but I’d struggled to orgasm with other boys but with Adam, once he got the hang of things, I wasn’t struggling at all. Pity it was only ever secret trysts and dirty alleyway fucks. He never saw fit to take me out on dates or ask me to tea at his mum’s. It was always this big secret, until it wasn’t. Paul caught us this one time when we were snogging in the beer garden of a pub one night in winter, when we thought nobody else would be out in the cold with us.

  Paul didn’t say anything, but the look on his face told me he didn’t approve. I could have got over that but it was the look on Adam that sealed it for me. He looked really awkward and ashamed. I hated that. Nobody would have ever said it to my face but they all said I was a slag behind my back, no doubt. But what they didn’t ever ask themselves was why a young girl was so interested in sex. Maybe if her mum was so into it, she should be too, I thought.

  After that, I stayed at university more and more, didn’t come back home at weekends. Adam would text and ask where I was and I would tell him I was busy. It fizzled out and we never spoke of it again. Saskia and Marie knew about it but I never told Lily until much later because she and Adam were really good friends and I didn’t want it all to get awkward.

  Adam was the first guy I ever actually liked, my first love maybe.

  I’m looking at him now wondering how I can even compare him to Cole, who’s a big guy, charismatic, Aussie, has piercing green eyes and tattoos and piercings. Adam would probably faint if presented with a needle! Cole isn’t so narrow-minded either.

  Maybe I thought all these years that having someone like Adam, who’s a good boy, was the fantasy I should aspire to. When maybe I should’ve realised all along that a bad boy with a good heart was more for me.

  Adam catches me looking at him and asks, “What? Do I have something on my face?”

  “Just thinking about the past,” I admit.

  “Yeah?” He looks towards the TV again.

  “How things have changed so much.”

  “Yeah,” he says, slouching even more.

  “I think when I heard you and Susan were getting married, I was kind of a bit devastated. That was the night I asked Cole if we could have some time out in Australia together.”

  He shakes his head. “Why were you devastated?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it meant that our childhood was slipping away, I don’t know.”

  He crosses his legs but his foot jiggles restlessly. “You didn’t want to come to the wedding?”

  “Not a bit. But especially after she warned me off going near you.”

  “What did she say?” he asks.

  I give him my best, “HA!” and then become more contemplative. “She said she’d gouge my eyes out if I ever tried to get back with you. Told me I was a dirty hag and that you were too good for me.”

  “But I never told her about my sexual history, only that there was one other besides her.”

  I turn my head and stare at him. “WHAT?”

  He shrugs, brushing it off. “So what? Just because there was only you and then her, doesn’t mean I haven’t had a lot of action, you know.”

  I’m more shocked to realise that in the grand scheme of things, I’m probably a bigger part of his sexual journey than he is of mine. How weird. I was always of the assumption I was just a dirty little secret… a game of some sort.

  “So, she must have had a feeling it was me, then?”

  “I guess so,” he concedes, “that’s how she did things. She could see through people.”

  “She is one messed-up young lady, Ads.”

  “Not so young, actually. She’ll be thirty-two now. Wonder if she’s picked her next sperm donor yet.”

  “Who the fuck knows?”

  “Yeah.”

  He goes to the fridge and brings out more beer. I crack another open even though there’s still some left at the bottom of my first. This new one is more chilled.

  “Are you getting a taxi home?” I ask him.

  “Probably will have to. Probably go to Mum’s. Still got my key.”

  There’s a period of silence. I switch over to a film and it plays as background noise as much as what we were just watching on the BBC.

  “Have you talked to anyone professional yet?”

  “Nope. Why?”

  “Just asking.”

  “You think I need to?”

  “I think that guy Markos needs to. He’s not as good at hiding his feelings as you are. Just saying.”

  “Shouldn’t probably admit it, but I actually feel relieved. Like a weight got lifted.”

  “Yeah?” I’m still incredulous.

  “Aside from the sex, I don’t know what we really had in common or that united us. Maybe wine and food… I don’t know. All I know is that it really fucking hurt to begin with, but now I don’t feel this anvil on my shoulders all the time.”

  I look sideways and when I do, my heart skips a beat in the way it used to. I shouldn’t want Adam. He’s not as glorious as Cole, who I still love and probably always will. The thing is, I also still love Adam and probably always will. He’s a part of my childhood. We all used to spend every day together growing up. We went on holidays. We slept in tents together at festivals. We wrecked each other’s parents’ houses. We lived those heady days united, when there was no responsibility, no ties, no worries… no burdens. Everything I feel when I look back to my younger years is wrapped up in them. We shared all of it. I think in some respects, Lily and Theo needed to move away to start their new life together. They wouldn’t have been able to do it if they were stuck here, reminded of the past so often. They say that couples who met at school or university and end up staying together are extremely rare cases. Cole and I met later and he’s a year older than me, too. He’s a different nationality, for fuck’s sake. If there’s anyone who coul
d save me from myself, it’s probably Cole.

  So why do I still feel this pull towards Adam? He does have the sweetest mouth, the loveliest hair and eyes and a great cock, but he’s not my biggest adventure. Cole is. And he won’t let me go. I’ve tried to persuade him to let me go, but he won’t.

  “It’s not your fault, you know? What happened with Susan.”

  “It is in a way,” he admits.

  I don’t argue with him. Broadly speaking he’s not to blame, but I guess his naïveté did contribute.

  “You’ll find someone else,” I reassure.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. She was quite beautiful. In spite of everything, that’s one of the hardest things to let go of. Loving a woman that beautiful… it changes you.”

  I don’t know if this is part of the whole Stockholm syndrome thing, so I say nothing, even though he surely realises there’s much more to it than beauty… and bloody hell, way to make the only other woman he’s ever slept with feel inconsequential!

  I’m starting to question if his motive for being here tonight isn’t just to get some quick, no-strings sex when my phone rings. I see it’s Cole and motion to Adam, “Just gotta take this.”

  I walk to the kitchen and answer, “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Hey,” he says, “some people just wanted to say hullo.”

  He puts his mum and dad on and baby sister. “Hey Chloe, happy Christmas! You look well. You look good. When are you coming back? We miss you! Come back!”

  This goes on forever until we’ve discussed my plans for the big day tomorrow and they’ve reminded me their tradition is always to cook a load of seafood on a barbecue down at the beach.

  Cole takes his phone outside their family house to speak with me in private on the decking and asks impatiently, “Have you decided yet?”

  I roll my eyes but can’t help grinning. “No. It’s only been three hours since you last asked.”

  “I miss you, Chlo. That’s all.”

  “I promise, I’m thinking about it.”

  “Good.”

  “I’d better go, let you enjoy the day, make the most of it. Send everyone my love.” My heart squeezes; I really love his family.

  “I will. And Chlo?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just make a man happy and say yes, okay?”

  “I’ll see,” I tell him. “Catch you later.”

  He rings off and I walk back into the living room to find Adam gone.

  I check the hallway and he’s nowhere.

  I look around the living room and notice he’s scribbled on a bit of paper: You’re a good friend Chlo. Happy Christmas xx

  Chapter Seven

  I don’t sleep much the night before Christmas. This festive malarkey is a bit shitty when you haven’t got a belly full of booze. Next year I’ll make sure I’m invited to some impossibly glamorous party, or better yet, I’ll make sure I’m out of the country, someplace where they don’t celebrate it and I don’t have to be reminded that I’m essentially alone.

  At six a.m. I receive a text from Adam, surprising the heck out of me.

  Merry Christmas

  That’s all it says.

  Merry Christmas, I reply. Where did you go?

  I shouldn’t have been putting upon you on Christmas Eve, sorry

  It’s okay

  I didn’t wake you? he asks.

  Body clock. I’m usually awake early

  I don’t sleep these days, he says.

  Did you stay at your mum’s?

  Yeah

  I’m not looking forward to seeing mine

  Why not?

  It’s not easy, Adam

  I know

  His messages stop for a full five minutes, then he texts: Are you going to see Cole again?

  I don’t know, maybe

  You should, he says.

  Maybe I should.

  I mean, why the fuck am I even working a shitty job and single? When I could be Cole’s wife already, living the dream, my days spent volunteering at animal sanctuaries and conservation projects. Those were the jobs I loved most.

  It’s complicated, I text him.

  It doesn’t seem like he’s ready to give you up…

  That’s true, it doesn’t. Cole told me recently that since I left, he’s been on dates with two girls and each time, it didn’t go anywhere. He says he can’t get over me and he’s useless without me.

  Change of topic… I warn him. Do you ever wonder if we might have… I don’t know… been good together?

  I chew my nails, waiting for his response. I’m feeling just vulnerable enough to expose myself. How much more painful can this get?

  I have Cole who won’t give up… and I have Adam who I still feel a pull towards. But Adam is divorcing, he’s not in the right place… he’s not together like Cole is. He is however from the same town as me. He doesn’t live halfway across the world. But Adam… surely… if it was meant to be, it would have happened by now.

  I don’t think about that, he tells me, his brutal honesty crushing.

  We were kids, Chlo

  We were nineteen going on twenty – not zygotes – I think that we were old enough to think for ourselves back then.

  Sorry I asked!

  There’s no response for a good ten minutes, during which I contemplate taking a bath or going for a run, anything to soothe the soul.

  Then my phone pings again.

  I think there’s this thing, he explains, where you have the lust, and that’s great, really, it is. We had that. I had that with Susan, too in the beginning. It’s pretty easy to have that with just about anyone you kind of fancy, you know?

  I see he’s writing more and I’m waiting patiently. He’s obviously thinking this over carefully.

  But then there’s this point you reach and it’s like life suddenly stands in your way of going any further unless you decide to love the person or not. I think it’s a choice. We can fall in love and be in love… but after you actually choose to love someone… everything changes. You change. You’re never the same again after that. I didn’t know I was opening myself up to a world of potential pain, but you know what? I still reckon I would’ve done it.

  I think about his message for a long time. I even run a bath and dunk myself beneath the water while I think about it. I’m still in the bath when I reply.

  You’re saying I ought to choose Cole? To make the conscious choice to try?

  I’m saying there’s a choice, Chlo. Love isn’t like this fateful thing, I don’t think. There’s a choice. I know that for you that choice is harder than it is for other people. That’s what I think, babes x

  I cry tears so hot they wouldn’t be difficult to distinguish from the other droplets of water on my face.

  I still think about you

  He doesn’t reply for ages, then he does:

  I think about you, too. But it’s a different version of me that does. I like to reminisce and remember the person I was

  Before Her

  LOL, he says.

  You deserve better, Adam

  So do you!

  I cry in the bath, properly this time. Maybe I’m getting my period. Maybe it’s this time of year when everything feels heightened and my Vitamin D levels are so deficient and every other movie on the tele is a romance and it just feels so shitty to be alone at this time of year, even though I know, I brought this on myself.

  I think I must be like Lily was with Paul. He was her sickness, as Theo describes it.

  I don’t know why I find myself thinking about Adam so much, but I do. Sometimes I wish he’d just come over, like he did last night, but instead of leaving like a dickhead, I imagine him fucking me without any kind of propriety. Like we used to do. No romance, no nothing. Just the wriggle of his eyebrows and a, “So, how about it?”

  But do I miss him?

  Or do I miss the whole free and easy aspect of it?

  I’ve tried to forget him, I really have, but I can’t.

&n
bsp; Maybe I’m not meant to forget him.

  Maybe, I don’t know, this is normal.

  Perhaps in Lily’s deepest dreams, in her darkest thoughts, there lies Paul. They’re still together somewhere in her memory and he’s not the liar he turned out to be. In her most private moments, when it’s just her and her memories, maybe she allows herself to remember him and still love him.

  Is it the hardest thing of all to say goodbye to someone you loved, when the thing is, they’re to an extent responsible for shaping who you’ve become?

  Lily never would’ve been so bold to go for a man like Theo before she got her heart broken. She always went for guys who were her lesser because she struggles with low self-esteem issues. Emboldened, maybe crushed so much she was braver or maybe just more reckless, she finally saw what had always been in front of her: Theo, pure and simple. He’d always been there for her.

  Adam is ten times the man Paul is and we have always known it, all of us. Adam is the one who kept him out of too much trouble – slipping bouncers the odd tenner, dragging Paul out of pubs when he could see things were getting heated… not to mention the women he warned about Paul having herpes, if just to keep the notches on his bedpost down to a more civilized amount.

  Yet a part of me fears if Adam and I were to give in and go to bed, after all these years and all this time wondering, maybe we’d discover it wasn’t really that good after all. Perhaps fantasies and daydreams pertain to a certain time in your life and it’s better not to revisit or you may end up wrecking the fantasy and leave yourself with nothing to smile about in your quietest moments. For instance, Theo must know that Lily will always have feelings for Paul. They conceived a baby together, for fuck’s sake. And Lily must know that he’s chosen to love her despite all of that… and it actually makes even me a little jealous that she has that. It also makes me feel a little bit amorous towards Theo, of all people, who I never harboured feelings for ever. Not once. But seeing him with Lily and their baby, I have to say, I see the attraction big style. He’s a real fucking man and he’s gorgeous, inside and out, because of it.