by Bloom, Anna
“Eww, Mum. No one shares boyfriends.”
I cringed. What did they talk about at school?
“I don’t mean like that. But what I did was wrong. I should have let him go. I guess he was happy with her before he met me, but then he didn’t like me enough to break it off.”
My chest hollowed out like the inside of a pumpkin on Halloween.
“Did you? In the end?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Why do you struggle to say things? Angie says it’s because you have a switch that turns on your mute mode.”
I rolled my eyes. “I guess that’s one way to see it.” I eyed her closely. “Do you have the switch?”
She shrugged. That could be a yes or a no.
“I used to want to put my hand up so much in class. I knew I had the right answer, always, but I had this fear bubbling in my chest that maybe I’d say something wrong; maybe I hadn’t heard the question right, so I’d sit there, staring at the table, and then someone else would say the right answer and I’d be so bloody cross with myself.”
She didn’t respond.
“It was suffocating. The desire to show what I could do, combusting with the fear of being wrong. So many times, I should have said something but then I didn’t.” I pushed at my hair, tucking it behind my ear. “I actually just spoke to Ma about it. I asked why she never took me to see anyone to get help.”
“What did she say?”
I snorted a little. “That you don’t need to see a professional to deal with shyness.” I shook my head. “She didn’t get it though. She didn’t understand what it was like to sit in fear of saying the wrong thing. My own research now tells me it’s social anxiety. It’s why I’ve been able to keep the business running. I understand my shortcomings and can work with them.”
“Did Dad know?”
“Yeah. He knew.”
“I wanted to get my nose pierced because I wanted to be noticed.” Her unexpected revelation almost had me sliding off the bed.
“Hannah. You don’t need to make a statement to get noticed. Everyone sees you.”
“Do they?”
“Well those who are worthy do.”
Matthew was in my head again. Gah, bloody man.
“Did you ever hurt yourself when you felt suffocated?”
This was it. One of those moments when you just can’t mess up had arrived.
The pressure built inside me. A kettle on a stove ready to whistle.
I dug out deep words that would otherwise stay buried forever. “Once I bit myself pretty damn hard. It bruised for a week.”
“Did it make you feel better?”
“No.” I stared at my forearm like I expected the round ring of my teeth to still show. “I was always too scared of what Nonna would say.”
“Why?”
I placed my hand on Hannah’s leg, waiting for her to pull away. She flinched but didn’t shrug me off. “When she saw the bruise, she asked me what had happened. I couldn’t tell her I’d done it myself, so I told her it was Eric Lawson. Nonna stormed around to his house and told his mum off.”
“Ooh, Mum. You did something bad.”
“I know. I lied.” More than once. All the bloody time. “I’m not perfect, I never have been.”
“You should have told Nonna the truth.”
“She would have told me I was ridiculous, but then as my mother she should have known anyway and helped me. I live with that regret now.’
Hannah’s lips pouted into the shape of a strawberry.
“So I’ll do you a deal. I think the nose thing looks cute, but you have to go to school. If you take it out now, then when you are sixteen and you go into sixth form, I will take you to get it done myself.”
She turned and leant onto her elbow. “Really?”
“Really. But… I want to you to be brave enough to talk to me if you need help. I’d do anything to stop you being tied in knots the way I always have been. Can we make that deal?”
I got up from the bed and dropped the chocolate bar next to her. “I’m sorry, Han, I’ve got to go now to do some urgent work.”
I was at the door when she called me. “What happened with the man you wanted to punch?”
“Oh, I still do.” And maybe I wanted to kiss him too. Really, really badly.
From the look on Matthew Carling’s face today I’d say that would never happen.
Hannah laughed, a sound so strange it took me by surprise. She snatched up the chocolate bar. “I’ll make the deal, but then you have to get help too if you still need it.”
Pinot Fog
Four days into the two weeks to save Supersaver Foods and I couldn’t take much more.
“Stewart.” I sidled up to his cubicle and leant against his desk.
“Yes, uhh, Ronnie?”
“Question.” I re-crossed my legs hoping to stun him with some thigh into giving me the answer I needed. “If we don’t complete this job for Supersaver Foods and don’t get paid, exactly how viable are we? How many months can we bankroll ourselves for?”
“Have you got any more tenders coming in? You’ve been pretty focused on Supersavers.”
They really needed to change that name… but no… no to everything.
“Well not straightaway. Maybe I should relaunch the social media advertising, see if we can get some clients in that way.” I chewed on my bottom lip while I thought. “Maybe I’ll get Fred to load up some fresh designs onto the website and I’ll get Natalie to work on the Google analytics to see if we can push ourselves higher in the search results.
“Or maybe we should consider that the market is slow, things are unsteady everywhere, people aren’t spending and hold on to our own cash?”
I tried my very hardest not to pull a face.
“The money from this job will see us through the summer. Hopefully the market will pick up by then. Maybe if Matthew Carling puts out a good word for us, more people will come along. It hasn’t always been this quiet.”
He reached up and placed a hand on my arm, squeezing.
“I don’t think I can work with him,” I whispered.
Stewart sat up a little straighter. “Who?”
“Him,” I whispered again. “He makes me want to bang my head against the wall.”
“Mr Carling seems pretty focused on you.”
“He hates me. That’s the focus.”
Stewart nodded his head either side, his hand still on my arm. “We could…” He gave me the ‘go out for dinner with me’ puppy dog eyes.
I cut him off quick. “Sorry, Stewart, I shouldn’t lumber this all on you.”
“Anytime.” His hand squeezed my forearm.
Straightening from his desk, I tried to wrestle his grip from where it lingered when the familiar clack of Natalie’s heels landed on the tiled floor. “Oh, sorry to interrupt.”
My gaze slipped straight from her to the brooding man behind. I’d liken it to staring into Medusa’s hair; his furious expression could turn any warm-blooded woman to stone.
“No need.” I broke free of Stewart and waved to my office with what I hoped was a warm smile. My stomach sank as Stewart’s words shifted themselves on the Scrabble board in my head. We really couldn’t afford to fuck this job up.
“Natalie, could you call Fred down please? I believe he has some ideas to share.”
“Hm.” Matthew’s shoulders were as rigid as a board.
I narrowed my gaze, thinking of some way I could accidentally throw something at his face without it being obvious that I’d taken aim. “Is there something wrong, Mr Carling?”
“Not at all. Just admiring what a friendly firm this is.”
We stared at one another and Stewart looked between us. Natalie leant on the cubicle wall, a smile flitting across her mouth.
“Marvellous. Let’s get this meeting rocking and rolling. I am sooo excited, sooo excited.” I brushed past him, ignoring the little shiver ripping along my skin as I met his firm body beneath his suit. What I
wanted to know was where the man who used to laugh at suits and people with briefcases had gone. Apparently, he’d been eaten by a managerial monster.
“I don’t like any of these.”
Fred reeled back, and I felt for the guy. His blonde hair was tousled into waves. Nothing unusual there; but his eyes were lined by shadows, and I knew that for once they weren’t put there from being out clubbing or whatever it was he did in his spare time. He’d worked hard on the vision boards he had propped up on the table.
“None of them?” I asked.
Fred still stood suspended between the table and the flip frame holding his sketches. I appreciated every single stroke he’d put into these designs.
Matthew seemed to have different ideas.
It’s why he was a cock.
“Well, hold on.” I held my hand up. “That purple one is brilliant. It’s strong, concise, it’s—”
“Not what I want,” Matthew finished for me.
I stared at him and I’d never been so torn between pure annoyance and utter despondency.
Tears pricked my eyes. There wasn’t a hope in hell’s chance I would let them show.
“Fred, thank you so much. Please could you give us a moment?” I refused to let my voice waver.
Fred sent me a lingering glance which said, ‘are you sure you want to be left with this bad-tempered bastard?’ I nodded and he breathed a low groan of relief and almost skipped towards the door.
He wasn’t stupid.
No one wanted to be in the room with us; even Natalie had given up trying to win over her future husband with mugs of builder’s tea.
When he’d gone, we watched one another. The time ticking slow had nothing to do with the clock on the wall.
“I don’t know why you are here, Matthew. It’s clear you don’t want to be. Please go and use a different firm who can give you what you need.”
The words spelled the end of my business, but I had to say them. I couldn’t sit there under his black-as-night stare a moment longer.
“No. I don’t have time now.”
My head rolled back on my shoulders. He adjusted the sleeves of his pale-lavender shirt and as I lifted my head back straight on my neck again, I caught a flicker cross his face.
As though despondency and annoyance threatened to destroy him as much as they did me.
Words welled in my chest. The fear of them being wrong threatened to lock them away forever but I knew I had to make this work; it had to be a workable situation.
I filtered through every word in the dictionary until I found some that fit together in a halfway useful sentence. “I don’t understand.”
His fingers linked and that pale strip of skin on his left hand drew my attention. What happened? How could I help? Was there anything I could do? All the feelings of old fought against the Matthew I faced down.
“You will have to elaborate,” he said with a sweep of his right hand.
And then I wanted to punch him again.
“I don’t understand the animosity you have towards me, and why if you are feeling it you are still here. We were friends once, good friends. At least I thought we were. I know it was a long time ago now, but I guess I always believed…” I stopped myself from saying anything else.
“Once.” A snap of a bark that threatened to make me crumble.
My chest crushed; a spring petal smashed underfoot.
“Why are you so angry with me? If anything…” I stopped. Too late.
“If anything…” He rolled his hand again, and I wanted to bite it off like a feral dog.
“I should be angry with you. The last time we saw each other you were so rude to me, appallingly so, and that was it, three years of friendship over. But now you sit there like…”
“Like…?” Did he not want his hand?
I gnashed my teeth and spat out, “Like I hurt you.” It was ludicrous to even say it. He was the one who hurt me.
“Listen, Matthew. I’m sorry if the fact I couldn’t speak that night, couldn’t get the words right has upset you, but surely you don’t still think about that? You’ve been living a pretty amazing life. Look at you, the CEO of a huge company. Neither of us are who we once were.”
There’s no way he could think of that night the way I did. That moment of being suspended on the doorstep. Stuck between what I wanted and what I thought was the right thing to do, unable to articulate either.
His gaze intensified; heaven fell to earth as the blue melded with black. “I thought we’d be friends all our lives, regardless of how you responded to my half-hearted suggestion of something more.” He was all minor chords now, rolling hills and subtle but steady rain.
The booming pound in my chest threatened to swallow me within its beat. I’d become one with the sound. Never ending, I’d roll with it unable to break out of its grasp.
“You asked me if I ever thought about if we could be anything more.” I withered away on the inside, drying like a desert about to be blown apart by a stiff breeze. “And I said…” I stuttered. “I didn’t know.”
Stupid words. Stupid, stupid words.
My memory skipped to later that night, flashing lights, and a packed dance floor. “And then you told me to fuck off, which was incredibly ungallant of you.”
His fist curled, but I ignored it. His face etched into a mask of fury, his eyes blazing, but I wouldn’t stop now.
I was talking.
“So, if anything, I should be angry at you for being the rudest arsehole I’ve ever met. You fooled me for three years. Three bloody years of me thinking you were unlike anyone else I knew: sincere, sweet, noble. Three years and then for you to just turn to me like that and say that, like I was nothing to you.”
His fist landed on the table. “That’s not how it was at all.”
“Oh please. Don’t you…”
He stood, pushing back from the table. “I don’t think this is helping anything.”
“Well we aren’t saving your company, are we?” My chest heaved with an empty ache.
His eyes dimmed to almost black. “No, we aren’t.”
Silently, he picked up his jacket and walked for the door and I fell back in my chair, not realising I’d perched so far forward as we spoke. I hurt at the absence of him in the room. The bang of his fist on the table seemed to echo, remaining in the place he’d sat. That wasn’t how it was at all? Well it was; that’s exactly how I remembered it. I’d never forgotten it. Never gotten over it no matter how much I tried.
My outburst would have been almost soul cleansing if it hadn’t hurt so much.
I wiped at a tear as it slipped along my cheek and left a hot sticky trail in its wake. He’d broken my heart that night. I’d been foolish to hold on to the heartbreak for so long.
Still, I’d said it now.
I could let it go now.
“He’s so rude.” My palm pressed into my face, holding my head up. I knew I’d sat in the same position too long and would have a red mark that would look like slap-cheek syndrome.
“He really doesn’t like you.” Natalie looked like she sympathised. “He’s so incredibly hot, but you know what they say, perfect on the outside, rotten on the in.”
She was so right. That’s how he was now. “No.” I waved my hand, just like he did earlier. Sarcastic and offensive. “No, he really does not like me.”
I’d resorted to an emergency summit meeting at the pub.
“I’m sorry, guys. I’ve tried to keep us going, but I don’t think Supersavvveers will save us.”
I giggled and slipped sideways off my hand. “Get it, supersavers, save us.” I looked around the table but no one else seemed to see what I’d done with the words there. “And anyway, you know I’ve been thinking maybe I should start dating again. It’s been five years.”
Five long years. My sex life was a drought in summer during the hosepipe ban.
Wait a minute, did I say that out loud?
Natalie patted my hand as Fred came back to the ta
ble with a tray of drinks and slipped into the seat next to mine. “I’ve been telling you, Ronnie. You need to come clubbing with me, loosen up.”
Ugh clubbing. I shook my head.
“I should probably go home and check on Hannah.” I let out a gust of air from my mouth. I didn’t really want to grow up. Well it wasn’t real grow-upping was it? My mother was there for that.
Natalie squeezed my hand. “She’s thirteen, Ronnie. When I was that age, I preferred it when my parents weren’t home.”
“What if she’s got something else pierced? Oh God, what if she’s got a tattoo? Men are wankers, across her forehead.”
“She won’t.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you knew Matthew when he first came in?” Natalie prompted with the skill of a wily gossip.
I groaned. I doubted I’d see him again. Our parting in the office seemed kind of final, which was ironic considering I thought we’d already had our final parting. We needed to stop talking about him now.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, we all want to know.”
“He was my best friend.”
Natalie snorted, but I nodded, trying to stay focused on her. A deep white wine fog had sunk down into my brain and misted itself around the edges of my faculties.
I really should go home.
Fred, his blonde hair just registering on the edge of my vision, nudged his shoulder against mine and nearly pushed me off my seat. “Boys and girls can’t be friends, everyone knows that.”
“That’s not true. We were.” God it hurt so bad. “We were.”
“No, Ronnie. Someone always ends up falling in love and someone always gets hurt.”
Ohhh. It’s soooo true. Why didn’t anyone tell me that eighteen years ago? Why was there not a special lecture during orienteering week where they told you how to steer away from heartbreak and destruction?
“Yeah, well. I guess I know who got hurt in this one.”
“So, dating?” Natalie clapped her hands together, and it helped me focus—for two seconds. “We need to hook you up, get you online.”
I managed to hook my gaze onto her red lips. “I’m not internet dating.”