My Legendary Girlfriend

by Mike Gayle

  As I took my first step towards her my breathing started to deepen. I looked down at my hands, they were shaking. She took a step towards me, her lips tightly pursed. She put her hand to her mouth and took another step. Every second it took until we were face to face, close enough to touch, seemed too long. It was a magical moment, but for once not one that was a product of my imagination.

  She wrapped her arms around me. And slowly, very slowly all the pain and worry locked within my frame flowed away. My senses were filled by her perfume, her body. We fitted together perfectly. Her face was buried into my shirt, next to my lunchtime tomato ketchup stain, the existence of which she was thankfully oblivious to. I took her hands and squeezed them gently. My hands still wouldn’t stop shaking. I was terrified. Absolutely bloody terrified. And she seemed terrified too. We stood there motionless, staring at each other, hoping beyond hope that what was happening was as real as what we were feeling.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked stupidly.

  ‘I’ve come to save you,’ she replied.

  ‘Save me from what? Kate?’

  ‘Lung cancer, eating biscuits in bed, growing fat and old and lonely without me.’

  We both laughed.

  ‘It’s a long story but Kate is history,’ I explained guiltily. ‘She’s history but happy.’

  ‘And Aggi?’ asked Alice, her smiling face converting to a stony seriousness.

  ‘Aggi?’ I repeated, as if I wasn’t entirely sure who she was talking about.

  ‘Yes, Aggi.’

  I smiled. ‘She’s ancient history.’

  Alice didn’t laugh or for that matter return my smile.

  ‘How can you be so sure? I’ve heard you say a thousand times that she was your perfect woman. You’ve always had such high standards when it comes to love. You were telling me only a few weeks ago that your perfect woman had to be this, had to be that – it was just short-hand for she had to be Aggi.’

  ‘Sometimes, you’re as divorced from sanity as I am,’ I began, mock chastising her. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. You are the standard. Before Aggi there was you. She had to fit your standard. I know I thought Aggi was The One but I was wrong. You were The Original One. She was The Wrong One. And now you’re here.’

  ‘And now I’m here,’ she smiled, relaxing.

  ‘But you know it’ll never work,’ I said softly.

  ‘It’s doomed from the start,’ she laughed, tears gently rolling down her cheeks.

  ‘We might as well give up now,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  ‘We’d be fools not to,’ she nodded.

  I wiped away a tear and kissed her eyebrow. ‘Friends should never be lovers.’

  Standing on tiptoes she reached up and lightly pressed her lips against my ear. ‘Or lovers friends.’

  Colin Christie made puking noises. Sonya Pritchard and Emma Anderson shouted, ‘Give her one, sir.’ Kevin Rossiter flicked the pen lid he’d been cleaning his ears with at my head and Julie Whitcomb, star that she was, stood up and gave us a round of applause.

  Epilogue

  In a world where the accumulated wisdom of thousands of centuries still exists – everyone from Socrates to Saint Paul through to Freud and Stephen Hawking – it might seem crass to quote Oprah Winfrey in order to explain where I’d been going wrong in life all this time, but that’s the thing about common sense, it appears in the oddest places.

  I came across the nugget of wisdom in question one afternoon a couple of years ago, while I was on the dole and living at my mum’s. Having just watched Escape From The Planet of The Apes on video for the third time that week, I happened across an episode of Oprah. Too lazy to change channels and, dare I say it, intrigued by the show’s title: ‘Men who love too much; Women who love too little’, I opened a packet of milk chocolate Hobnobs to share with my faithful hound, and settled down to enjoy the programme. As I bit into my biscuit Oprah said something so profound that I inhaled a large fragment of Hobnob, resulting in such a violent fit of coughing that I was nearly sick over poor Beveridge. This is what she said:

  ‘Love ain’t supposed to feel bad.’

  Of course, like most profound statements (including the biblical ‘Love your neighbour’, Marshall McLuhan’s ‘The medium is the message’ and Morecambe and Wise’s ‘More tea, Ern?’, it made an impact on my life for approximately three seconds before it was consigned to the dustbin of history. Until now.

  You see, sometimes I’ll catch Alice looking at me while I’m watching TV and she’ll have a huge inane grin on her face that really doesn’t become her. I’ll ask her what she’s doing and she’ll take her time before answering my question with silence. Then she’ll ask me if I love her. I’ll pretend to take my time thinking over the question and then she’ll throw a cushion at me. This is my cue to tell her that I love her with all my heart (which I do), then she’ll tell me that she loves me more than anything (which she does). Then it will be my turn to joke that because we’re ‘friends’ and ‘more than friends’ it kind of makes her my best girlfriend. And then she’ll laugh, look me in the eye in a manner which still makes me go weak at the knees and say, ‘No, I’m your Legendary Girlfriend.’ Whenever she makes this statement I always nod and smile in agreement – but the truth is I’m not so sure one way or the other. The one thing I am sure of is this: our love doesn’t feel bad.

  And that is all that matters.

  About the Author

  Previously an Agony Uncle, Mike Gayle is a freelance journalist who has contributed to a variety of magazines including FHM, Sunday Times Style and Cosmopolitan. He is the author of three novels, MY LEGENDARY GIRLFRIEND, MR COMMITMENT and TURNING THIRTY.