He shakes his head, hugs his knees to his chest. “I don’t know. Really, I don’t. It’s the worst thing I could have done.”
“Yes,” I say, closing the door behind me. “Yes, it is.”
5
Then
My palms are always itchy when I’m nervous, and they’re practically on fire as I make my way over to James’s flat. It’s only a short walk across London Fields from my own. A fortunate proximity, as I have already turned back on myself five times. This is stupid. Reckless, even. At first, it was just that one night. A friendly couple of drinks without so much as a goodbye kiss on the cheek. And yet, something shifted that evening. Suddenly, it felt like James saw me. I’d taken one of the equally old and useless backup laptops at work to replace my now dead one, but when the gift-wrapped MacBook landed on my desk, I’d looked up to see James watching me from his office, a gentle smile on his face, and knew what he’d done. Sometimes, I’d glance up from my desk and catch him doing that, one ear to his receiver, deep in doubtless important conversation, but still watching. He’d smile, shake his head, and then go about what he was doing.
The first sign that we were slipping from something known into the unknowable was the Friday after Christmas, when he caught me by the lifts on the way out of the office, the shadow of a fading bruise under one eye.
“Hold the doors!”
My guts clenched at the thought of our bodies penned into the same space, lungs breathing the same air. There was something intimate about sucking in the clouds of vapor he puffed out. Like I got to hold a little piece of him inside me. I held the doors.
“Wow—leaving before six. That’s almost skiving by your standards,” I said.
He laughed, slipping into the lift a moment before the doors slid shut. “Well, if you don’t tell the boss, I won’t.”
It had been a surprise to me when James hadn’t made some excuse to peel off or hang back as we headed in the aligned direction of our respective homes; does the MD really want to be stuck talking to the office manager for his entire commute? But as we paced along the chilly East London streets, squeezing together and breaking apart in narrowing and widening pathways, he stuck with me, face bright and engaged. He had this new zest for life since Christmas that was infectious. And I was outwardly engaged, too—delightful even, I’m sure—but inside was sheer panic. I wanted him desperately. I wanted to hand in my resignation and never speak to him again.
My pocket started buzzing a notification. When I checked the screen, I saw the round photo in its center. The white text that floated above it: Melissa Doe. It’s perhaps a quirk of mine that I save her contact info under her full name, rather than just “Mother” or “Mom.” It’s been this way forever. All my contacts are saved like that. There’s just something about having the full name saved that soothes me. I suppose it’s a reminder to look at the whole picture of who people are, rather than taking them in parts.
In any case, I did what I had done for the past few years and quietly declined the call. I knew I was damaged. Wrong. I didn’t need herreminders of that fact. Didn’t need to hear the unspoken insult beneath:You’re so like your father. Didn’t need to feel like any more of a freak. A monster.
My therapist once asked me why I’d not blocked the number. Sometimes I considered it, but I was at once terrified of and drawn to my mother. She was a bottle of vodka and I an alcoholic who couldn’t live without it, even if I knew it was slowly killing me.
I shook all thoughts of her away, eyes latching on to the black-shuttered bar coming up beside James and me as we walked.
“I love this place,” I said, nodding toward it.
“Oh really? I’ve never been.”
“Never? They do this thing called a beer and a bump for only seven quid.” I suddenly felt silly and childish for extolling the virtues of cheap alcohol to this clearly wealthy man. “It’s, um…It’s their house lager with a shot of liquor of your choice. I know it sounds silly, but—”
“It sounds like a hangover waiting to happen.” The laughter in his eyes told me that this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Something shifted in my periphery. A guy in a suit was hurtling toward us down the pavement, phone to ear, yelling obscenities. For a moment, I thought he might barrel into me, but James stepped between us, hand firmly pointing Phone Guy toward the clear stretch of pavement. “Watch it, mate.”
I thought Phone Guy might turn his puce-colored rage on James, but he simply sidestepped, throwing an angry look over his shoulder.
We were stopped now, James and I. It felt like fate.
Words fought each other in my mouth. I found myself blurting out, “No worries if you have plans, but d’you want to stop in and try one?”
His eyebrows shot up. I wonder if he knew what I was doing, what I wanted, despite every reasonable bone in my body knowing I shouldn’t.He made a show of looking at his watch and then looking back at me. I could almost see his mind sorting through where he felt the lines of propriety were. How close to those lines he was comfortable coloring.
“I guess one wouldn’t hurt.”
Inside it was dark and close, tables and chairs pushed up against each other in low light. It was busy, and James and I found ourselves equally pushed up together. It could have just been in my head, but I was sure I could feel the warmth of his leg seeping through his jeans and into mine. It was loud, so we found ourselves having to speak into each other’s ears. I liked the feeling of his warm breath condensing on my neck.
I felt myself slipping into Cool Girl mode. Easy laughs, bright, engaged eyes. But never too engaged. Always just charming enough and aloof enough to seem worth liking. To seem desirable but not easily attainable. It’s not that I wanted him to like me. I needed him to. People only tend to give you what you want when they like you. And what I wanted from him was to be allowed to exist within his sphere of handsome normalcy, even if it was a fleeting bubble that I’d enjoy before it burst.
As we spoke about inconsequential things—office gossip, Netflix binges, weekend plans—I could feel lines blurring, boundaries demolished by the promise of “just one more drink,” pints disappearing as quickly as they came. I plucked up the courage to ask about the fading shiner, unsure which of the office rumors were true.Nothing that exciting, I’m afraid; just an enthusiastic nephew with a new ball and terrible aim.And then the conversation shifted, our words stumbling through the shallows and over an unseen precipice that plunged us somewhere deep.
“I just sometimes wish she’d see me,” James said, removing his tortoiseshell glasses to rub at his eyes. He’d never looked so boyish. “Shefunnels so much into Will that sometimes it feels like there’s nothing left for me.”
Emboldened by booze, I took hold of his knee. “He’s great, but I can’t imagine it’s always easy having an older sibling like him.”
