Although I can hear Cassie laughing at me in my head.Another deep emotional connection eh, Jay?
I’m attracted to Lily, there are no two ways about that. She strikes me as different to the women I usually date. More self-assured, self-contained, and her question proves it.
Would I like to go for a drink with her? I would love that.
I nod my head and am about to accept, knowing I have a broad smile across my face and my eyes are dancing with yes please. I like a confident woman and I am keen to spend more time with Lily. She makes me laugh, appears open and honest and clearly shares the same filthy type of humour as me.
I hear Cassie’s voice –you’re never gonna manage to last more than a week.Argh! Looks like she wasn’t far off. There is no way I can fall at this first hurdle. I find Lily attractive; but Ican’tgo for a drink with her.
How am I going to phrase this? A no is a no, and that should be fine as it is, and I suspect will be with Lily, I can’t see her going all pouty and kicking up a fuss. But a no when you want it to be a yes and somehow want to convey that this isn’t a rejection of them as a person but merely a life circumstance… How do you get that in a no?
Honesty, I’ll just go for honesty and hope she recognises it as the truth and not just a line, a fabricated escape clause.
‘Lily,’ I lean forward to show how sincere I am and make firm eye contact, ‘I would love to go for a drink with you, really I would. But I can’t. I want to explain why but honestly, it’s complicated and I know that makes me sound like a lame social media statement. But know that if I could, I would. So, whilst it’s a no, it’s a reluctant one with sincere regret attached.’
‘Jay, it’s fine, a no is fine. I would have beaten myself up had I not asked. But now I can fly out to China tonight knowing it’s off the table, we’re all good.’ And she winks at me.
She winks.
‘Yes,’ I say, grateful that she is good-natured about it. ‘I mean honestly, it’s a good thing. We wouldn’t want you on that trapeze wire without a hundred per cent focus. There’s an argument that my very-pissed-off-cos-I-want-to-say-yes no may have saved your life.’
‘Seriously?’ she asks, placing her hands on her hips and cocking her head to one side, the amusement etched around her eyes showing she isn’t really pissed. I flex my muscles and she shakes her head with disbelief and we dissolve into giggles as if we have known each other since we were kids.
Chapter Ten
Lily
Iam going out tonight – work-related – and have just slipped into my screamingly scarlet I-am-confident-better-be-scared dress and am drawing on eyeliner, giving myself the most perfect flicks before I flutter at myself in the mirror.
I can’t stop dwelling on Jay’s rejection and even though it is the nicest I have ever received – one of the few, truth be told, since I became an adult – it stings. For all his I-want-to-say-yes speech, the bare facts are he said no. A clear no that’s caused all my deeply held insecurities to rise to the fore, floating to the top like oil in water, pulling tiny bits of jetsam – broken, scrambled little bits of nothing that form a tangly, grubby, binding whole – with it as it does so, reminding me of who I used to be.
Jay had sounded genuinely disappointed, but he is adept when it comes to flirtation. On the flip side, the body rarely lies like the mouth does, and his eyes were dilated as he looked at me; I was checking that shit out. But whilst most of us are aware a dilated pupil is a sign of romantic or sexual attraction, it can also be down to fear – very possible – a brain injury – he did say no – or excessive drink or drug use and he was smelling like a distillery the first time I met him.
I reach for my scarlet lippie and mwah my lips at the mirror and then sink down onto my bed. I lie back with my knees raised in a triangle and stare at my ceiling as I take myself back to my schooldays, closing my eyes as I do so and acknowledging the pain that I felt then. The sadness, the embarrassment, the fear and the resignation that came from being the one that was seen as the freak, the ugly girl, the fat girl, the girl no one wanted to be seen even talking to because unpopularity is more contagious than headlice.
I was always chubbier than the other girls at school. Mum used to have to dress me in adult clothes, taking up the hems and the sleeves and saying things likeIt’s because you’re so grown up that you’re in a twelve or a fourteen, so much more mature than the other girls,intimating that women’s UK dress sizes were related to age not girth.
She didn’t fool me, or at least not for long.
And of course, the more I was aware I was different, the more I would snaffle up snacks to my room. The obvious thing to do was to eat less, but it was a crutch I wasn’t prepared to give up. I was a child!
Puberty did not make this better. I was an early starter, final year of primary school; I had the joy of wearing a size sixteen to eighteen at this point –And you only eleven as well, so mature. Not only was I dealing with periods but I had spots too, spots all over my face; getting worse as I got older, spreading across my shoulders, my neck, my chest. The thought of wearing a swimsuit back then as I do now would have terrified the bejesus out of me.
By this stage I had stopped jumping in the waves with my sister because I would have landed so hard every sea creature between the English coast and France would have been catapulted up on to the beach. Add in the fact that I was a walking dot to dot and had so many spots and bloody splotches where I’d scratch and pick at them, my body would scare Jackson Pollock. It was a miracle I ever agreed to leave the house. And in truth I didn’t much.
My best friend from primary school had left when her parents moved from the area and, seriously lacking social skills, I buried myself in my studies and munched my way through Wotsits, Marshmallow Teacakes, Curly-Wurlies and Freddo frogs. My love for these foods had now turned into serious cravings; it was as if no matter how much I had, my body could not get enough. It wanted more and more and more.
And then there was the hair, no joke. I got hairy. Not beautifully sculpted 90s Rachel hair on my head, oh no. The hair on my head was a mess, but what was worst was the rest of the hair.
All.
Over.
My.
Body.
Kids at school called me Harry, it didn’t sound particularly mean, nothing for the teachers to discipline them for like on the rare occasions someone called me Pizza Face or Hairy Maclary, no. Only, every single person in the class under the age of sixteen knew that they were referencingHarry and the Hendersons, a show we had all gobbled up in primary school. Yup, they were calling me a Sasquatch and there was nothing I could do about it. And they only knew about the hair that seemed to spring from nowhere on my upper lip, my chin. Dear God, if they had known I had to pluck around my nipples they would have captured me in the night and sold me to the circus. Which is pretty much what happened in bygone days.
