‘I heard that, you bastard!’ Bee calls from the other room.
‘I don’t give a shit, Bee!’ he calls back.
‘Oh,’ I say, crossing my arms. ‘And this is you not judging my choices?’
‘Well, it’s hard not to when they’re objectively bad!’
‘Then it’s time to look in a mirror, deadshit, because you’re right there with me!’
‘It’s not the same thing at all!’
‘It absolutely is! God, I can’tbelieveI fell for your bullshit!’
‘What bullshit?
‘Mr Sweet Sensitive Put-Together Guy. Just trying to help. Just liked me for me. You were putting the hard sell on me, and I fell for it! But you’re just as bad as him! And I’m just as blind as Bee!’
‘Hey!’ she yells again.
‘Shut up, Bee! No one’s fucking talking to you!’ I shout back, eyes still on Arthur.
‘Hang on. Hang on. We need to slow down a bit before we say something we might regret,’ he says.
I’m already overwhelmed by regret.
He tries to reach out and grab my upper arms, but I shrug him off and step back. He looks so sad. ‘Why are you letting their issues get in the way of us? Nothing about us has anything to do with them!’
I let out a derisive laugh. ‘Don’t be obtuse,’ I say. ‘Everything with us has been about them. From the very start. There wouldn’t evenbean us without them.’
We’re both breathing deeply now, looking at each other, but his eyes say more than I’m willing to acknowledge so I look down at my feet. Quietly, I whisper to them, ‘It makes sense that our ending would be about them too.’
He looks defeated. Heisdefeated, and he knows it. He lets me have the last word, though. Slowly, he turns and walks away. He doesn’t look back. When he gets into his car, he keeps his gaze forward, doesn’t once let it travel back up to me. It’s like he’s erasing me from his mind.
Long after he has driven away and left me behind, I shut the door and walk back into the living room. Bee is scrolling on her phone with the TV on mute. She looks up at me. ‘I ordered some more ice cream, and the driver is three minutes away. Can you meet him at the door?’
I walk into my room and shut the door.
I have hidden him on my social media. I don’t have it in me to block his number or unfollow him. But I hide him, and I delete our text stream so that I don’t have to look at his face or even his name. When I go to clear my camera roll, I find only his two goofy selfies.
An even sadder realisation. We never took any photos together. Our time together wasn’t even real. Without our text stream I have no evidence: no photos, no hearsay, no witnesses. Nothing to prove what we were, what we could have been, to each other. Pics or it didn’t happen.
I don’t sleep that night, desperately trying to recall every conversation, every date. Ensure that I can picture every detail. Remember each word. Print them in big letters on the side of my skull because that’s the only way I’ll know any of it happened.
I don’t want to go to work on Wednesday, but I want to be a hypocrite even less. Only Reg is there, and he doesn’t ask questions. For the first time in a long time, I’m glad no one wants to know a thing about me.
When we get home from the lunch shift, it’s to a delivery on the doorstep: William, sitting hunched over on our top step. It’s giving me flashbacks to last Saturday night.
Bee stops halfway up the stairs, frozen, staring, and I nearly bump into her. Probably my fault for staring down at my phone. Definitely not combing through my photos again just in case. I take one look at the scene—at him staring and her staring—and it really is just nauseating when you’re on the outside of it. Hitch my bag over my shoulder, weave first around Bee, then around William, giving him an eye-roll and a scoff that leavehim in no doubt of my position, and walk inside.
Roughly five minutes later: door slamming, two sets of footsteps, spineless pleading. ‘Comeon,Bianca!’
‘Don’t “come on” me, William!’ Bee shouts down the hall.
‘You’re making a much bigger deal out of this than it needs to be!’ he shouts back. I can only marvel at his spectacularly bad strategy here.
‘How else did you want me to take your little dumping? To use your words, come on!’
‘Hey!’ he says, and I’m imagining him sticking an indignant finger between them. ‘I didn’t dump you!’
