Isabel

They stood resting their backs against the rough brick wall of the pub, smoking and resolutely not looking at one another.

The weight of things unsaid made the air around them feel heavy.

She stared down at her shoes. They were ratty old converse high tops and had tears running up between the material and the soles; along where the stitching had once held things neatly together. The red of her socks shone through the open wounds of her sneakers. She sucked hard on her cigarette and flicked the tip after every puff.

He turned to look at her. She didn’t seem that different. Her hair was now blond but it seemed to him that her hair had been different every time they were together. Red, black, pink, purple, short, long, curly, straight, in a ponytail, flowing down her back, waxed, in plaits; always something different and yet always unmistakably her.

She pulled her eyes up off the ground and slowly lifted them to meet his.

‘Do you love her?’ she asked. That wasn’t really the question. The question was ‘do you still love me?’ but that was not a question either one was capable of asking or answering.

‘She’s amazing. You would like her if you got to know her properly.’ She chewed the inside of her cheek and frowned at him. That wasn’t what she wanted to know.

‘Does she know you’re in love with Isabel?’

He hadn’t been expecting that. That was too honest and brutal. Their relationship had been based on pretending and projection. They had told one another personal details they had never told anyone else, they had discussed their feelings for one another in embarrassing depth, they had lain in bed stroking one another’s faces and not saying a word. The one thing they had never done is discuss how he felt about Isabel. It was a tacit agreement that this subject was off limits.

‘I’m not…’ His voice trailed off and he looked down at the pavement again, ‘she likes Isabel’.

‘That’s not what I asked’. She said this reasonably. There was even a hint of sympathy in her voice like she knew how hard this was for him. He had always said to her that he loved talking to her because she made him honest which made him realize things about himself that he otherwise wouldn’t. She would demurely drop her eyes, blush almost imperceptibly, and be unable to stop a smile creeping onto her face when he said these things. She knew honesty and her and him were all tied up in how he thought of himself and this was a subject that ruined all of that.

They returned to silence and to staring at her broken shoes. Nearby patrons of the pub were laughing and smoking and carrying on as if this was another normal Saturday night where people can laugh and smoke without consequence.

Finally he said simply, and without apology, ‘Isabel is my friend.’

She sighed and pushed herself off the wall so she was no longer leaning but stood up straight, defiant, finally strong enough to confront the things that lead them to this place where they could barely look at one another ‘I know that. I asked if your new girlfriend knows that you are in love with Isabel.’

He shook his head. It wasn’t a no, it was more a; I can’t answer that without having to then face a whole load of other questions that I never wanted to ask myself, or have anyone else ask me.

She shook her head in return but there was no malice there. She understood completely. She had always understood but now the pretending and projection was gone. Reality had replaced it. She could admit that she understood completely and had hoped he could now do the same. It seemed this wasn’t the case. She turned to leave, ‘are you coming?’

The stub of his cigarette had burned itself out. He looked at it for a moment and then flicked it away but stayed where he was: leaning against the rough wall of a pub, eyes down, shoulders slumped. She nodded ok and walked back into the light and warmth. He continued leaning.