But I do appreciate him, I do . . .
. . . I just don’t want to sleep with him.
I have to tell him. The longer I put it off, the harder it’s going to be. Doing it so early is going to seem ridiculous – but maybe the shorter our ‘involvement’ is, the easier it will be for people to forget. For him to forget. For everything to go back to normal.
Maybe he’ll be secretly relieved. Oh, I hope. Wouldn’t that be perfect? I’ll say, “Look, Barry, I don’t think this is going to work out . . .” and he’ll grin and say, “Yeah, I know what you mean. What were we thinking?” and we’ll go back to rolling our eyes at the people who think there’s a ‘spark’.
I mean, what we have amounts to only a few kisses. It doesn’t mean anything, right?
And I start working myself up to the speech I’m going to have to give to him at the end of the night.
Chapter Sixty-One
“Okay, what is it?” he asks. We are in his house and he looks appropriately apprehensive. Boys understand what “We need to talk” means. It’s the universal code for “Prepare to be dumped”.
“I –” I begin, and falter. I look at him – beautiful, beautiful Barry and realise this is going to hurt.
***
Last summer. Lying out in the sun with Barry in his back garden, rubbing sun tan lotion into his shoulders, and he said, “Jeremy’s coming over tonight.”
“Cool. You guys going to do anything exciting?” I asked. “Apart from the usual, of course . . .”
“Dirty mind, Em.”
“Yeah. It’s a gift.”
“Actually, we’re just going to watch a movie. You should come over too.”
“And be the third wheel? No thanks,” I said honestly.
“We’ll behave, I promise,” he grinned. “No, I just want you to meet him. You’re my best friend, I want you to at least know him.”
“You just want to show him off, don’t you?” I teased.
“Sort of, yeah.”
And we laughed, and I was happy that if he was showing Jeremy off, it was to me. That I was important enough for that.
***
October. I marvelled at his mother’s ignorance of her son’s life and stayed over his room two nights after the break-up. Barry and I didn’t talk much. I crawled into bed with him and we held each other and fell asleep like that. I couldn’t do much to cheer him up or make up for the fact that Jeremy was an asshole who cared more about what his friends thought than about Barry, but I could be there for him, something to hold onto, always there.
***
“I think –” I begin, and stop again. God, it’s one thing to make up a speech in your head, and quite another thing to deliver it to someone. “Barry, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had – ” I try.
And I can see by the look on his face that he already understands what’s coming. I stop, because I can’t make myself say it. I can’t because I think I’m going to cry. That look on his face is making my throat tighten.
He doesn’t say anything. And I don’t say anything. And we’re just looking at one another, and we know what the story is.
I reach out and try to hug him and he pushes me away. “Get out,” he says coldly.
And I do.
Chapter Sixty-Two
It’s four in the morning and I can’t sleep.
I keep checking my phone to see if Barry replies to any of my text messages. He’s ignored all of them. I’ve apologised a hundred times and he doesn’t care.
I can’t say I blame him. What’s ‘sorry’ going to do at this stage?
Everything’s just so messed up. And I mean everything, from Abi to Lucy to Declan to Barry . . . and I don’t know what I want.
There’s the honest truth. I don’t know what I want.
I want what I can’t have, and when I have it, I don’t want it anymore. I do whatever the hell I feel like – and then chalk it all up to a learning experience. Never mind the hurt feelings and the lasting consequences, it’s all about following your instincts, right?
I hate myself right now. I’m thinking about Barry and even Declan and hating myself for being everything Declan thinks I am, a bitch who messes with people’s heads for her own amusement, someone who doesn’t care about anyone but herself.
He’d be glad, you know, because now I get it. Finally, Declan, I get it. I get the seething hatred bubbling up inside yourself and how it feels that there is no possible way to deal with it other than doing something big and dramatic like gulping down a bottle of pills or letting a cigarette burn into your flesh. Because it feels so bad, and so awful, that there’s nothing else you can do. The tears aren’t enough, they keep coming and coming but they’re never going to be express fully what’s inside you.
I’m thinking of Barry and how he must hate me and how cold he sounded, like I was no better than dirt beneath his feet, and crying is not enough. I need to do something.
And at the same time I don’t think I have the energy to even move from my bed.
Somewhere around half-six, I fall asleep.
Chapter Sixty-Three
I must be looking particularly depressed on Saturday morning, because even my mother notices something’s wrong.
“What are you moping about?” she asks.
“I’m not moping,” I snap. I’m tempted to say a lot more, but I keep my mouth shut instead.
When you think about it, it’s amazing how little people who share your blood can know about you. Parents – they think they know you, they assume that you’re just like they were when they were growing up, probably, but they really don’t have a clue.
As for Janet – well, she was the perfect child, wasn’t she?
I can’t be perfect. Even if I was a great student and never got into any trouble, I’m still intrinsically flawed. I’m selfish and inconsiderate and oh yes, I play mind games with people and screw them up.
I also kiss girls, parents dearest. How do you feel about that? Is it ‘just a phase’ or is it something that needs to be ‘fixed’ or is it just ‘wrong’? I still like boys, though – does that make it better or worse? Easier to confront or harder?
(God, I hate my life.)
I try calling Barry, but his phone just rings and rings. He’s never going to speak to me again, is he?
That’s nearly five years of friendship down the drain because I make stupid decisions. I am completely disgusted with myself.
Chapter Sixty-Four
I end up calling Lucy and she comes over after she’s had lunch. We go up to my room, and I can’t help but think that I’m glad Janet isn’t here to spy on us.
“I broke up with Barry,” I say.
“What? Oh, Em, honey, why?”
“It just – I don’t know, it just didn’t feel right.” Sitting here, talking to her, I can feel all the thoughts rushing through my head about to spill out. “But maybe that was selfish of me, maybe I should have given it a chance, maybe it could’ve worked out and he wouldn’t hate me right now . . .”
“Give him time, he’ll get over it,” she says.
“What if he doesn’t? What if he stays angry with me, and we just stop talking? It happens, Lucy, you know it does.”
“Barry cares about you too much to let that happen, you know that. And you care about him. Don’t you?”
I nod. “He’s my best friend, of course I do.”
“These things happen – people screw up, make mistakes, it’s no big deal, we all do it.” She sounds terribly nonchalant and blasé about the whole thing. I suppose she would, but I don’t know how she can be. I mean, these are people’s feelings we’re talking about.
People’s feelings. Right. Because I cared about Declan’s feelings so much, didn’t I? He doesn’t matter, because he’s always so melodramatic anyway and it doesn’t take much to get him started.
I am such a hypocrite. I hate it when people mess around with me but I’ll gladly do it to others. Pot, meet Mr Kettle, I think you two will fin
d you have a lot in common . . .
“You do,” I say softly.
Lucy looks at me in surprise. “What?”
“Screw up,” I elaborate.
“Thanks, Emily,” she frowns. “I really needed to hear that. What on earth are you talking about?”
“You cheat on Andrew all the time and he’s willing to forgive you because he loves you and because you always say it’s a mistake. Well, guess what, Lucy, after a while these things stop being mistakes and it’s just you doing whatever the hell you want to do because you’re beautiful and charming and you know you can get away with it.” And I think I might be just ready to cry again. Oh, for God’s sake.
“What’s going on here?” she exclaims in frustration, before she realises. “Oh, this is about you and me, isn’t it?”
“No.” Lie. It wasn’t meant to be. But it is.
It’s about the fact that she kissed me last weekend and then got engaged to her boyfriend, that’s what it’s about. Or the way she’s always used me whenever she sees fit, the way I’ve learned to use people.
God, I hate epiphanies. They’re all about the things that you try to ignore and pretend don’t exist coming to the surface and making you realise what a horrible person you really are.
“Emily, I –”
She is hurt and defensive and angry, and I’m on the verge of tears, and she’s engaged, and I’ve just broken my best friend’s heart, and clearly the worst thing in the world would be if I kissed her right now.
But I do have a tendency to make stupid decisions.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Transition Year, sitting outside with Roisín at lunch-time.
“Hey, was that your boyfriend I saw you with in town?” she asked.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said, puzzled. “When was this?”
“Last weekend. I waved, but I think you were too wrapped up in him to notice –”
“Oh, that was Barry,” I said. “We’re just friends.”
“Really? You seemed really close for ‘just friends’.” She smiled.
“Nah, we really are. He’s one of those people that you know you’re going to be friends with forever but who you’d never actually go out with because you know each other too well, you know?”
“Ah, right,” she nodded. There was a pause and then, “So who’s the person you keep texting, then, if you don’t have a boyfriend?”
The person was Natasha. I’d forgotten Roisín had asked about who I was texting and that I’d answered, in vague terms, that it was just someone I was sort of going out with. I wasn’t lying, exactly, just – being selective about the truth.
“Just someone,” I said vaguely again.
“And does this person have a name?” she asked, clearly intrigued.
“Her name is Natasha,” I said finally, somewhat defiantly, as if I was challenging her to be shocked.
“And where does she go to school?” Roisín asked.
I was thrown by this. “What?”
“Where does she go to school?” she repeated.
“St Anne’s,” I said. “Um – shouldn’t you be freaking out right about now?”
“What, because you have a girlfriend?” she asked. “I sort of suspected it, so . . .”
“Oh.”
“Well, considering you kept on saying ‘someone’ . . . I figured you wouldn’t be doing that unless you were trying to hide something.”
“I wasn’t trying to hide something,” I sighed. “I mean, I was, a little, but that’s only because – well, you know what the girls in this school are like. Most of them would freak out.”
“It’s got to be hard for you,” she said sympathetically.
It felt almost like pity, and I didn’t like that. “Not really,” I said firmly. “I don’t care, it’s just that I don’t really see the point in making an unnecessarily big deal out of something that isn’t that important, you know? I just want to save myself the hassle.”
She nodded. “Seems like a pretty good attitude to have, I guess.”
***
After I got to know her a bit better, we talked about Lucy.
***
“First girl I ever kissed. First girl I ever knew I liked. Not the first girl I ever slept with, but the first that really mattered. Of course, she had a boyfriend at the time.”
Roisín looked a little shocked by this. And this was the edited version of events.
“Things were messed up then,” I elaborated, trying to justify it. “She was really upset, and I was just so crazy about her that I would have gone along with anything she asked me to do.”
“And did her boyfriend ever find out?”
“Yeah. It was a while afterwards, though, and they’d been through a lot together since then, so it wasn’t a big deal. I mean, they had a fight about it, but it lasted less than a day. They have a really strong relationship, it’s great. Really amazing.”
“You sound kind of jealous,” she noted.
I laughed as if it was a ridiculous suggestion, and avoided giving a real answer.
Chapter Sixty-Six
“Oh, crap.”
“What is it?” I say, stretching out lazily, loving the sensation of bare flesh next to flesh. God, her skin is so soft. I’m tracing circles on her forearm and she –
– is getting up and pulling on her clothes. “Crap,” she repeats.
She has to be somewhere, I surmise, and she’s going to be late. That’s what it is.
The land of denial is a fun place to be.
“I can’t believe –” she starts, and looks at me. “Oh, God, Emily, we shouldn’t have –”
“Done that?” I finish for her. I think she’s taking her lines from the “Ten Things Not To Say To A Girl Immediately After Sleeping With Her” book.
“You know we shouldn’t have,” she says.
I do. I do know this. Logically I know this. And then there’s the non-logical part of me, and all it wants to do is grab her and make her come back to bed and fall asleep in her arms.
“I’ll talk to you – soon,” she says, slipping her feet into her shoes.
“Are you going to tell Andrew?” I ask, sitting up.
She stares at the floor for a second. “No. I can’t. It’ll hurt him too much.”
“You never worried about that before,” I say with just a tinge of bitterness in my voice.
“Things were different then,” she says. She’s looking at her hands. Her engagement ring.
“See you, Emily,” she says, and leaves.
The CD player is still blasting away, blocking out any noise the parents might have heard. Placebo, ‘Every You Every Me’, and I think the ache is back.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Declan calls me that night and invites me to a party one of his friends from school is having. I am tempted to make a snide comment about how amazing it is that these friends who he accuses of hating him deep down still manage to invite him out, but before there’s a suitable opening, he starts talking: about how he’s only been invited because he was there when they were all talking about the party and how he couldn’t really have not been invited after that, but that it’s clear that he’s not really wanted, and that he thought I might like to come along, and we can perhaps have a talk . . .
It’s truly amazing how he forgets that we’re supposed to be fighting when he wants something out of me. I am tempted to go and get horribly drunk and forget about everything else in my life, but then I contemplate the thought of having this talk that Declan so wants to have with me, which will involve me telling him that sex doesn’t matter and him saying that it does, and me being generally hypocritical about the whole thing because it does matter when I want it to, so instead I refuse the offer.
He’s huffy. He will, eventually, get over it.
And if not, good riddance. I’m sick of looking out for him. I’m not responsible for what he does. I have enough to worry about.
I decide to watch a movie to try to tak
e my mind off things, but it seems like I can’t even find shelter in them anymore. Either they’re movies I’ve watched with Barry and know that if I watch them now, I’ll hear his commentary in my head, or they’re movies with pretty heroines that remind me of Lucy, or they’re incredibly depressing to begin with. So I end up lying on my bed listlessly and alternating between running through the events of the last few weeks in my mind, and trying to block it all out completely.
I wonder what love really is. Does Lucy really love Andrew? I mean, she must – but then why isn’t she faithful to him? And I know he loves her, but if that means forgiving someone for cheating on you several times – well, if that’s love then I’m not sure it’s such a wonderful thing.
I wonder if Lucy will end up telling Andrew about what happened anyway.
I wonder what Barry would say if he found out. He’d probably call me a slut. He’d probably be right.
I wonder if it’ll all be better in the morning. I hope so.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
The homework is piled up on the desk and all I can think of is that my life is too much right now without having to think about school. I just don’t care. I’m going to be in trouble for not doing any of it, but I’ll live. The teachers just don’t understand. They forget what it’s like to be young, to have more pressing concerns than algebra and irregular verbs.
I try calling Barry again, but there is no answer at his house or on his mobile. In a way I’m slightly relieved. When we do talk it’s going to be awful.
I want to step out of my life for a couple of weeks and return when everything’s been sorted out. I’m annoyed that I can’t.
Why does Barry have to take things so seriously? Why doesn’t Lucy take anything seriously? And why is it so hard to find a happy medium?
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