by Holly Bourne
I started sobbing almost instantly.
Every single kiss that the priest had removed was spliced together to make one short movie of kisses. Shy ones, passionate ones, tender ones, short ones, long ones, nervous ones, giddy ones. Kiss after kiss flickered past as the background music built to a crescendo. It was probably one of the most beautiful scenes I’d ever seen – the bittersweet sadness behind each kiss. The melody of each one, the way they built off each other. I could hardly see through my tears as I sat in the dark and the credits rolled.
Harry jumped up from his seat and vanished up the aisle, while I stayed there and cried. Then the music cut out, the lights came up and the curtains whirred shut.
I blinked and twisted towards the door, where a blurry Harry stood sheepishly at the top of the stepped aisle.
“Umm, did I break you?” he asked.
I tried to laugh, but it came out in an unattractive snort filled with tear-triggered snot. “That was…” I tried to search for a word that came even close to summing it up. “Impeccable.”
“I told you.” He stepped back down towards me, looking pretty darn pleased with himself. “I feel like I need to prescribe a movie list for you, one to counteract all the bad romance films you’re watching for your project.”
I sniffed, and ran my finger under each eye to catch the mascara slug trails. “That’s a stellar kissing scene. Thank you.”
“Any time.” Harry scratched his neck, and the quiet between us felt like it had tiny weights attached to every atom in the air. “Are you in a fit state for me to walk you home?”
I nodded, yawned – stretching up, the lateness hitting me. “I can manage on my own.”
“Audrey, it’s almost three in the morning.”
“Exactly, not even the most determined of attackers will stay up this late. Anyway, statistically I’m more likely to get attacked by you…”
Harry’s mouth dropped open.
“Whoops,” I said, smiling. “I’m too tired to filter.”
“Come on, let me be a gentleman.”
We locked up, setting the alarm and doing the panicked run to get out before all the red lasers activated. Then we stepped into the icy cold of the empty street.
It could’ve been the zombie apocalypse, it was so empty.
Harry stopped in the doorway and lit a cigarette then beckoned with his head. “Come on, crybaby, let’s take you home.”
I scuttled after him, slipping slightly on the crystallized pavement. We crossed the wide crossroads – the traffic lights turning from red to green to red again, commanding no traffic. I felt my thoughts drift to that scene in The Notebook – the one where Noah and Allie lie in the middle of the empty road. You could not be that romantic in England. I’d get frostbite of the bumhole if Harry and I lay on the ice tonight. Not that he would want to…
We wandered the deserted streets, leaving icy footprints that would freeze over again before anyone woke up to see them. We didn’t talk, either out of awkwardness or tiredness. I wanted to say a million things, but also had no idea what they were. So I just tried not to look at him as we crunched along – the cold biting at the back of my throat, my shoulders hunched up in a failed attempt to keep my neck warm.
Harry seemed tense. He lit one cigarette after another, leaning into the cold, not really looking at me. What was going on? Something was definitely going on. And, as we reached the end of my road, he stopped abruptly, turning to me, but not looking me in the eye. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Riiiight.”
He took another drag of his cigarette, blew the smoke out over my head. “Umm, well, it’s two things, I guess. Firstly, I wanted to apologize. For…well…for being flirty when you first started. It wasn’t on. Sorry. You should be able to start a new job and not have some random dude hitting on you.”
My tummy twisted. “It’s okay,” I said.
“Well, I’m sorry. I’ll leave you alone, like that, I mean.”
I bit my lip to stop myself yelling out, No! I’ve changed my mind. Flirt with me shamelessly, please.
“And, well, with that out of the way…” He hadn’t made eye contact with me once. “I, umm, well, we kind of need to film the kissing scene this week. I’ve been holding off, because I know you’re mad at me, and I made you uncomfortable. But it’s got to the point where I really need to film the scenes I’m in… Sorry…I mean, I guess you’re a good enough actress to kiss someone who pisses you off, right?”
My tummy plunged. This was what tonight was leading up to – not anything romantic. It had just been a gentleman-like buttering me up, so he could tackle this awkwardness. I wasn’t replying, only digesting. So Harry gabbled on.
“I mean, we can try and do it in one take. And I promise I won’t be all, like, well, like me. LouLou had a go at me…told me off too… I mean, I was going to apologize anyway, but I thought you’d like to know she kicked my butt.”
“Harry, it’s okay,” I managed to stammer out. “I’ve done kissing scenes before.” Although only with Milo, who I was also seeing, so I’d never actually kissed someone I didn’t like. Not that I didn’t like Harry. Actually, some sliver of me plummeted with the knowledge that acting was the only way I would get to kiss Harry now.
“Yeah, I assumed so. Even so, I wanted to talk it through with you, check it was okay.”
“It’s fine,” I insisted. “But I appreciate you…umm… apologizing. And taking the time to talk it through.”
“So, it won’t be awkward?” He still wouldn’t meet my eye, so he couldn’t see my forced smile.
“It will if you keep asking if it’s awkward.”
He laughed, a hacking one that bounced around the empty street. “True, true. Anyway, that’s all sorted. Come on, I’ll walk you to your door. Like the gentleman I really am not.”
It was my turn to laugh. Though I still felt disappointed. In a way I didn’t have a grasp of yet. We walked the twenty metres or so to my door, past the sleeping Victorian terraces. When we got to my doorstep, I stopped, hovering. Exhausted from how late it was, but also, part of me not wanting to say goodbye. All the kisses from Cinema Paradiso flickered past my eyelids, making the bottom of my stomach ache.
“Thanks again,” I said, reaching in my bag for my keys. “For the movie, and the apology, and walking me home and all.”
I looked up once I’d found my keys and this time Harry was staring right at me. Our eyes met. Breathing got tricky. He reached up and ran his hands through his mad hair. “I’m sorry for the comment I made too. About you not being like other girls. You…well…I guess you’re not like other girls in that you didn’t melt into a puddle when I said it.”
I raised my eyebrows. “So you have used that line before?”
“Maybe.” He grinned, but didn’t look proud of himself.
“I knew it.”
“If it means anything, for what it’s worth, I actually meant it when I said it about you. But you were right. I shouldn’t be, er…turned on by your emotional trauma.” He leaned forward, so our breath mingled. “I’m sorry for suggesting you are anything other than perfectly ordinary.”
I instinctively leaned closer. “I’m practically dull.”
Then, before I could compute what I was doing, I leaned forward to kiss him. An urgent need spreading through my stomach, up my arms, bypassing my brain. I was going to, I was going to…
“Ouch. What?”
Harry had dodged back at the last moment. I clashed my head into his jaw, the pain radiating through my skull. It was like someone had injected a syringe full of humiliation directly into my heart.
“Shit, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I yelped.
Harry was rubbing his jaw. “What was that?”
My keys were in my fingers, my back was to him. I fumbled with the lock. I had to get out of here. Oh my God, I’d tried to kiss him and ended up headbutting him. Like a freaking…WWE wrestler.
“I don’t know what happen
ed. I’m sorry. I have to go. Thanks for…everything…sorry.”
The door opened. I couldn’t get through it quickly enough. What was wrong with me? Seriously, what was I doing? I HEADBUTTED HIM. I needed to not be here. I needed to escape what I’d just done, how embarrassed I felt.
I heard laughter as I bowled through the door. “Audrey? Wait. Come on! Audrey, come back.”
But I was safely over the threshold and I swung the door shut in Harry’s face, running up to my bedroom. Peeling off my coat and scarf, like they were layers of humiliation I could remove. I heard him call through the glass one last time, more urgently. I ignored it. I got into my bedroom, dived under the covers and curled up in a ball.
It’s safe to assume I didn’t sleep much.
Whenever I closed my eyes, it all came back. Me lurching in like an unattractive freight train. Lunging with my mouth open. Smashing into Harry’s face.
One thing was very clear. I needed to stop doing sexual things with boys. I was obviously incapable. Of being alluring. Of putting my head in the right position. Of knowing someone was interested. Or even where their mouth was, as opposed to their jaw.
The shame was so huge that I even cried, smothering my face into my pillow so Mum wouldn’t hear me.
He’d laughed.
I’d tried to kiss him, and he’d laughed.
Why had I tried to kiss him?
The night dragged on. I grabbed snatches of sleep where I could. But it was like a film entitled Audrey’s Sexual Humiliation had been pushed into my mind and some evil twat had pressed the play button repeatedly.
Flashes of Milo’s hands on me, and then how they flopped off my body when he couldn’t get in. Flashes of him saying It’s okay, it’s okay over and over, but not looking me in the eye. Harry’s laugh bouncing off my shoulder. My head hitting his jaw… I’d tried so hard to repress this. So hard to run away from the zinging shame of what happened with Milo and now, kissing Harry and embarrassing myself AGAIN, sent it catapulting back. All the more vividly as the humiliation had had months to stew inside the locked vaults of my mind.
I was jarred awake by my alarm clock. I lurched up in bed to bash it onto snooze. I closed my eyes slowly, feeling sleep finding me, then…
It all came rushing back and I was too humiliated to even doze for ten minutes. I got up and showered, to try and wash off my shame. I gathered my hair up, squeezing it into Mum’s flowery shower cap so I could stand totally under the water. Then I dried off. I shoved on some clothes for school and lumbered downstairs.
Mum was whistling in the kitchen, stirring a pan of porridge. “Morning. Didn’t hear you come in last night.”
The only way through this morning would be coffee. I went to put the kettle on. “I stayed at work late, there was this…umm…thing I had to watch after closing.”
A beautiful film made of kisses where people didn’t lurch in madly and smack heads…
“I worry you’re not getting enough sleep.”
“It’s fine, I’m good. I like my job.”
Mum’s whistling turned to humming as she poured her porridge into a bowl. “I’ve made enough for you.”
“Amazing, thank you.”
We ate in what I guess she would assume was contented silence. I was too tired to analyse why she was so cheerful. Mum finished before me and clattered around the kitchen, asking if I wanted to maybe watch a film later tonight as I wasn’t working. “Although you’re probably sick of movies, aren’t you?”
I grunted non-committally, dripping porridge into my mouth like a baby bird, thinking.
I had some initial thoughts:
I needed to quit my job, sharpish – even though it was the only thing I liked right now
And the zombie movie
And then go hide somewhere where Harry would never be
…and possibly get some advice on how to go about doing this.
I needed brutal, honest advice.
I needed Leroy.
He couldn’t stop laughing.
“Leroy, stop it! It’s not funny!”
He threw his head back as we skidded along the icy pavements to school together. I was already doubting if tough love was actually what I needed this time.
“Oh, but, Audrey, it is. You HEADBUTTED him.”
I shook my head and tried to storm off in a mood, but it was too slippy to really storm off anywhere properly.
“Audrey? Come on, Audrey!”
I sighed, stopped.
“Sorry,” he said eventually. “I’m just in shock. I thought you were sworn off boys?”
“I am.”
“So headbutting him was an attack?”
My face glowed again at the memory; it was going to take a long time to get immune to it. “No, I was trying to kiss him.”
“But…” It was no good. Leroy collasped into laughter again and I couldn’t laugh back. Not yet. It was still too raw and ripe and, oh God…I could never see Harry again! I was too ashamed.
Also, as I thumped Leroy on the arm and told him I didn’t want to talk about it any more, I realized I was something else.
I was confused.
Nothing about what I’d done last night made any sense.
I had Media first thing. Mr Simmons paced the room, talking about the different types of film shots we would need to know for our exams, but I couldn’t concentrate. I descended into a confused-about-Harry abyss, trying to make sense of my emotions. Alice scribbled notes eagerly and I watched her pen move over the page. She was the only person I knew who still put circles as the dots of her i’s. She must’ve sensed something was wrong because she pulled out a page of her notebook.
I picked it up, wondering what to do. When Milo broke up with me, shattering any emotional progress I’d made since Dad left, I’d thought I only wanted harsh honesty. People who didn’t sugar-coat. Or bullshit. Or simper. Or say things would be okay when they wouldn’t be. That’s why I’d gravitated towards Leroy – he was the embodiment of that. But now my heart had begun to open again. Working with Harry on the movie, embracing my pain rather than staying numb, I’d started to actually work through some of it. And the crushing embarrassment of yesterday was my big wake-up call. I couldn’t shut out what had happened any more – it was resurfacing like potent acid reflux and I didn’t know what to do or where to go or how I felt. It made me realize I needed…girls.
Not just girls, The Girls.
I shook my head and scribbled back.
Alice was still. She stared at the page, probably as shocked as I was. After essentially freezing her out for six months, she was entitled to write Piss off, Audrey.
Instead, she just wrote Sure, followed by two smiley faces with hearts for eyes, and I almost welled up at the kindness.
The lesson dwindled on and I took no notes. So when Mr Simmons asked me to stay behind, I prepared myself for a telling-off.
“Audrey, sit.” He gestured to a chair he’d pulled over to his desk. “You got a class right now?”
“I’m free until after lunch.”
“Good. Well then, I’ve been meaning to chat to you.”
The apology was on my lips when he charged right on. “It’s about this coursework of yours. I read through the kissing research you did and, well, Audrey. It’s impressive.”
“It…it…is?” I’d never excelled at any subject other than Drama before.
“It is. It was very interesting, but more than that, I like how you’ve interpreted the statistics. I was marking last night, and I hope you don’t mind, but I showed my wife. She was riveted. She also told me to tell you that it’s a travesty that A Room with a View only got one nomination.”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”
He laughed. “Anyway, I didn’t call you back just to share my wife’s opinions. It’s about two things actually. The first is about the project itself. I thought you’d benefit from maybe adding a professional opinion.”
“Sir?”
“Like interviewi
ng an expert? See what they have to say about 10 Things I Don’t Like About You.”
“I hate about you.”
“You know what I mean.” He batted my correction away with his hand. “But maybe ring a relationship therapist, someone like that? See if they’ll talk to you.”
I chewed my lip. A relationship therapist? Was there such a thing? “Will I get extra marks?”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes. And, God forbid, Audrey, you may also find it interesting.”
“Okay…” It couldn’t hurt. My other grades were tanking. I fiddled with my bag strap. “What’s the other thing?”
“I was just going to ask about your uni application. Where are you thinking of going? What subject do you want to do? Do you know?”
I shook my head. It was always going to be Drama, Drama, Drama. That’s all it had ever been. What I’d spent my whole life working towards. And then Milo had happened and I’d just dropped it.
Hang on…
For a second, the hugeness of that thought hit me. WHAT THE HELL? I DITCHED Drama because of Milo? Because I was embarrassed?
It was like a ton of concrete dropped on my head. Not only had I allowed my shame to mess up my relationships with people, but I’d allowed it to screw up school as well. Not just school – my whole future. I twisted my hands around on themselves, hardly listening to Mr Simmons blah on about UCAS as the enormity of that decision grabbed me in a chokehold, making me gasp for air. How had I allowed this to happen to my life? How had Mum and Dad let me do this? They were too busy imploding to save me from imploding. I mean, Leroy had tried, once, to talk me out of it but all I could remember was crying so hard in humiliation that I could barely hear what he said. My Drama teacher had tried before he left but I was so, so determined to quit.
“Audrey?”
I mean, what was I thinking? I’d just given Milo that power over me? To ruin my chances, to take away the thing I loved the most?
“Audrey?”