I’d cried as I’d waited for my future to be spelled out in little pink lines and thought about what a baby would mean for us. I couldn’t raise a baby alone. I didn’t have the money, we didn’t have the space and I couldn’t imagine a young life being shaped in that horrid little hovel that we’d shared at the time. Thankfully there had been no baby and, even though it would take me a good long while to be able to act on the feelings of discontent I had towards our relationship, that was the moment I knew that the forever that Joel and I had promised ourselves at the start wouldn’t be as long as we’d both thought.
Us ending was for the best. There wasn’t a person alive or dead who would argue with that. We were happier apart. We functioned better, got along better too and we respected each other way more than we had done over half of the duration of our relationship. But over the last six months, to the chagrin and dismay of the few who knew, we’d started to become each other’s cushion against the harsh world that we hadn’t had to engage with before.
We were both in the same terrifying, unfamiliar boat and so it only seemed logical that we would run back to each other for solace.
It all started when Joel’s dad had died. He’d been at working at the builders’ merchant, where he’d been for over fifteen years, walking between the stacks to help a customer find something. A forklift on the other side of the stack was getting a pallet of cement bags from one of the high shelves when the whole stack collapsed. Joel’s dad and the customer had died instantly and Joel had been devastated. He’d comforted his mum, but one night as she slept off the tranquiliser that the doctor had given her, he’d gone out walking and ended up at my front door.
Ned, my housemate, best friend and colleague (it’s a long story), was not a fan of Joel, to put it lightly. He thought he was a waste of space who’d wronged me far too many times to be excused, but Joel had been the first and only love of my life and there’s a bond there that you can’t deny will always exist. I’d let him in, shed a tear or two along with him and he’d ended up staying the night. Now, I didn’t sleep with him out of pity. I don’t want anyone thinking that I’m some sort of compassionate hooker, paid in sad stories. He was lonely and I was too. I think we needed each other with a kind of mutual loneliness that could only be solved in one way.
After that, Joel and I spent quite a bit of time together. I had been close with his mother and brothers and so I had helped them with the funeral arrangements and been there with my friendly, absorbent shoulder when they needed it. His father’s side of the family came from Nigeria and so I had never met them before. His grandmother was so old that she reminded me of when you burn paper and the ash retains its shape. I feared that one touch might damage her deep brown, creped skin and turn her to dust. We’d talked on the phone and I’d been on the front of every Christmas card that the family had sent to her for the last six years. So, no one had the heart to tell her that we’d broken up. I’m pretty sure she’d have gone into cardiac arrest right there and then if we’d told her. We’d kept up the charade for ten days, until the family went back home and Joel and I parted awkwardly at the door.
We’d slept together about fifteen times since then, which was fifteen more times than we had over the last eighteen months of our relationship.
These nights of weakness usually came when one of us was upset or lonely, when one of us had had a bad day or if we were simply bored.
Ned told me that I was being reckless, but I reminded him that if his ex-wife showed up, the last thing he’d do was turn her away.
I sighed into the bunched-up duvet that I’d pulled over my face and slipped out of bed as soundlessly as possible. I took Joel’s faded red Bob Dylan T-shirt from the floor and pulled it over my head before easing open the door and running to the bathroom.
I jumped into the shower and turned the heat right up in an attempt to scald away my shame. I’d felt awful last night, my stomach churning with regret at not having the balls to ask Charlie for his number. When I’d called Joel and invited him over, I’d wanted to be calling someone else. When I’d plied him with beer and kissed him in the kitchen, I’d imagined he was Charlie. When I was leading him upstairs, I don’t know what I was thinking, but my head wasn’t filled with what I know Joel wished it was. I sanded off a layer of skin with an exfoliating mitt and dabbed myself dry with a fluffy towel before going and standing by the mirror and taking a long, hard, literal look at myself. I looked the same as I had yesterday; perpetually tanned skin – courtesy of my father as my mother was as pale as Casper – same long chestnut-coloured hair, same large unruly eyebrows sitting above even larger brown eyes. But added on to that familiar image of myself were dark bags beneath my eyes, weighed down with all of the self-hatred that I felt towards myself right now.
I knew how this encounter would end. It would be the same as all the other times and I didn’t know if I could have that conversation again. I combed out my hair, brushed my teeth, heaved a great
