Clemency

I didn't even notice her at first. Not really. I tended to just keep my head down, slice meat, smile at customers, nick the odd bit of cheese, go home. I wasn't terribly interested in the other faces that appeared in the corridors behind the 'Staff Only' signs. Or, maybe not wasn't interested, just didn't have the social skills to ingratiate myself with the other cast members of the business called 'Tescos'. I would often eat in the toilet if I wasn't able to wangle myself a later lunch spot as I couldn't be guaranteed a table by myself and the thought of walking in and having to ask someone if I could join them just horrified me. It's only now I realise this sort of behaviour is perhaps what stopped me from being the person that others would laugh and joke with and made me the person that they just occasionally smiled thinly at instead.

Her friend was the one to speak to me about a possible date. A lanky fair-haired guy whose name I couldn't remember even if I wanted to. 'Chris' might be right. He looks like the sort of guy that would be called Chris - smily and unassuming. 'Hi' he said. I looked round to check who he was talking to. 'It's Louise isn't it?' I nodded, slowly. 'Listen, my friend likes you' he said, forthrightly. 'Really?' I said, a hot flash of embarrassment rising from my throat all the way to the top of my head. 'Yeah. She wants to know if there's a chance you'd like her too...'. The way he phrased it confused me. I starred at him quizzically, looking for the punchline. He matched my stare with a smirk. 'Yeah there's a chance' I said after a beat too long of silence. 'Ok. I'll tell her'.

Her name was Chantelle Lily.

In later years this name would cause great amusement to those that heard it.

She sounds like she's from Eastenders!

But it never struck me as odd. That was just her name.

She came up to me after my shift ended and said, in a very matter-of-fact fashion 'my friend spoke to you earlier'. 'Yes' I replied, suddenly unsure what to do with my hands.
'I'm Chantelle by the way'
'Louise'
'Do you want my phone number?'
'Um... Ok. Sure'
In truth I was not sure I wanted her phone number, I wasn't entirely sure what was happening at all. My experience of these things at that exact point ran to a holiday romance with a Floridian magician who had groped my boobs but never kissed me and spoke loudly about his girlfriend to some other customers after I went back to his shop a couple of days post-boob grope, and little else. The idea that someone found me attractive was outlandish to say the least. To believe that this boyish looking girl with short black hair had developed a crush on me without me even doing anything, never speaking or joking with her, never smiling or making eye contact with her, just by being around and looking like me, was inconceivable. I didn't know how to act or what to say at the best of times but this was completely out of my field of knowledge. I felt something was shifting and it was out of my control but I wasn't sure how to stop it or if I even really wanted it stopped. She took my phone and inputted her number and then made me do the same.
'All done' she said 'are you working tomorrow?' I nodded meekly and made that sort of 'hey-whatcha-gonna-do-about-it?' self deprecating face I make when I sense I should be making light of something but I don't have the words to do so verbally. 'Yeah, me too. See you tomorrow then!' and with that she abruptly turned and went off to her posse of friends who had gathered outside. I felt flattered and worried and confused. Still unconvinced that someone, somewhere found me at all worthy of a phone number swap with the intention of... Well, with the intention of something I wasn't quite sure of.

As I pulled up to her house she was already waiting for me. Leaning against the gate with her arms folded. She visibly breathed a sigh of relief when she realised it was me in the old white Fiesta.
'Heya!' she singsonged as a way of greeting and bundled into the car in a ball of nervous energy.
'Hiya' I singsonged back in a voice that didn't seem to belong to me
'Where do you wanna go?'
'Dunno'
'Shall we just drive around for a bit?'
'Ok'

She looked at me in this way that meant I suddenly forgot how to drive. This chick was making me nervous.

When I'd recovered my (newly acquired) driving skills she babbled about working at Tesco's (she liked it - that set a warning bell off), about her eventual career aspirations ('prison guard' for the record. I was like, 'figures' and then immediately cursed my judgmental brain), her qualifications (on our second date she confessed she'd lied about having A-Levels 'I don't even know why I did and I've been worrying about it ever since!' It made my heart melt a little), her parents (both dead). She was acting almost as if she was at a job interview that she was desperate to be hired for. Curiouser and curiouser as far as I was concerned. I remained passive, giving little away (I rarely do) and tried to figure her out. Don't get me wrong, I liked her. A lot. What I'd perceived previously as angry energy as she stalked the Tesco canned goods aisle was utterly wrong. It was clear she projected this version of herself that was tough and unfriendly (albeit subconsciously I believe. But then orphaned lesbians probably have to learn a little self-protection don't you think?) but she was actually very sweet and warm and funny and more than a little goofy. However mixed up I was (oh Susie, when will you deign to share a plate of chips and a conversation about Courtney Love with me again?) I knew this girl just didn't fire me up the way certain boys and particular girls fired me up. She was no Susie, let's put it that way. Susie was red lipstick, ripped tights, and danger. This girl was... nice. A boner killer for anyone. When you're 17, nice is as good as bringing your mum on your date with you. (So why did you string her along Louise? Is it awful to admit that it was just because no-one else seemed interested?)

We stopped at the seaside.

'Are you out?' she enquired. 'Yes I am out at the seaside with you' I nearly responded until it struck me what she meant. The lesbian lingo was obviously not second nature to me as it was to her.
'Umm... Yes' I lied 'You?'
'Yeah, ages ago. Well, my friends have known for ages - don't think it was really a surprise to anyone!' she smiled a self-deprecating smile 'but didn't tell my nan till last year. She was cool with it though'
'Cool' I affirmed.

I felt very jealous in that moment; she was so comfortable with who she was. Susie was like that too. I lacked poise, my awkwardness showed up the cracks in my self-confidence. I wasn't sure how to get from where I was to where she was when I had no idea who or what I was in the first place. Not just with the sexuality thing but with everything. Susie stalked from room to room always looking amazing and never worrying about this stuff. The space she occupied always seemed filled whereas I only ever felt half there. Chantelle gave off that aura too, she seemed solid - not fat, I don't mean fat - but like all her atoms where sure of their placing. Mine were not. I sometimes felt like a ghost or an apparition - floating about the place without ever making an impact.

The waves were lapping at our feet as we walked along the shore. There is something lovely about never being far from the sea, it always feel like home and yet invites one to adventure. She stopped and turned to look at me. I could sense what was coming 'We should go' I said 'it's getting late'.

As I stopped outside her house she leaned in for a very chaste hug which I reciprocated.

'We should do this again soon' she said. I nodded and she got out of the car.

As I drove home the only face I could picture was Susie's. I knew Susie was not thinking about me.

Things Remain the Same

'You're the one I choose to drunk call at two-thirty in the morning. How does that make you feel?'

He doesn't say anything but I can hear him smiling widely down the phone. I soak this up for a minute and let the sober part of my brain take a mental snapshot of the moment. I want to be able to travel back to this point in time later on so I can properly examine how I feel. I note that right now it feels nice but awkward. Although we are obviously beaming at each other for a beat too long, I sense he's not entirely sure how to answer the question without incriminating either one of us. There still exists a mind field of emotion between us which we are constantly having to negotiate. One wrong step, at the wrong time, and I think both of us are aware that everything we've worked for up until this point could blow up in our faces. Still though, the fact remains that he's the one I want to drunk call at two-thirty in the morning. I feel myself glowing from the knowledge that we've now reached a point that I can call and he will answer and he will sound happy. He will sound like I've lit him up.

Two days later we go to the cinema. I'm hungover from two successive (though not entirely successful) nights of binge drinking. He actually came and rang the bell rather than beeping the car horn or texting to alert me of his presence (which is what I would have done). I open the door and immediately the dogs rush to greet him. They do this to everyone but he's the only one who turns around and starts pretending to run away like a girl whilst holding his hands above his head and squirming. This has the effect of confusing the dogs and making me laugh. Eventually we all bundle back inside and the dogs lie on their backs in front of him like the subservient whores I know them to be. He squats down to scratch their bellies and watches me while I put my coat on. I suddenly feel extremely shy. I've sort of let go of shy from my repertoire of versions of who I am. I'm the girl that last night ended up at an impromptu house party where I kinda, sorta knew one other person and yet spent all of five minutes talking to him and the rest of my time bonding with people I'd never met before. That's not the persona of a shy girl, yet he still manages to coax her out of me every now and again. Normally when I'm a combination of
- vulnerable after expressing something inadvertent the last time we spoke
- sober
- melancholy
- getting looked at like he's doing right now.

Even though at one time I knew him better than any other person on the entire planet I still find it difficult to interpret those looks. Even before our very first kiss when we were stood on a dirt track next to the creek, with the only light being twinkling stars and the moon showing where the ripples on the black water were, nuzzling each other's necks and hugging so tightly that I was worried he'd be able to feel how ill-fitting my bra was, as he took a step back and looked at me before everything changed (if only I'd have been conscious enough back then to realise exactly how much it would all change eventually) I had no real idea of what was running through his thoughts. I knew him completely and yet I never felt like I knew completely how he felt about me.

That was seven years ago but I guess although everything changed, there's still a lot that remains the same.

I shoo the dogs away as it's easier to expend energy concentrating on them rather than think of witty things to say to him. As we sit in the car my mind feels empty and I struggle to engage in normal conversation. Times like these I have no idea why he persists in agreeing to share the same space with me. I think back to how I was on the phone, I remember him laughing a lot, I certainly seemed to be erudite and funny but I start to fear this was an illusion cast upon me by the alcohol. However, he's more than ok to fill in any gaps left by my silences. Sometimes this frustrates me as I'll become more and more an audience member for his ever continuing stand-up routine that's occasionally punctuated by me saying 'do you want to hear my story or not?!' with him answering in the affirmative and then finding another joke or seven to shoehorn into the conversation (choice example: '... Sorry, you were telling me about your friend Danny. Is their surname Behr by any chance? Are they related to Yogi in any way?'). Yet I will remember to ask him about an anecdote that he starts telling at an inopportune moment as the BBFC screen comes up on the cinema screen, after the film has run its course and ends up just being about the fact that he managed to miss the last Ski Sunday.

I'm not sure what annoys me more. The fact that he won't let me talk or that he's funnier than I am.

I fear it's mostly the latter. The fact remains however, that he lights me up like no one else. Some things will always remain the same.

I did not choose him, he did not choose me

It doesn't seem right to say this to one's best friend but here it is; you are fucking retarded if you think he's changed.

He has changed! she chirped. Desperately wanting, needing to believe this lie is true.

If it's lies you want I can give them to you, I am just as masterful at deception as he.

He has changed, she asserts once again. Looking me directly in the eye this time in a challenging (yet futile) gesture.

The air thickens around us. I feel stuck to the spot but long to open the window and let in a fresh breeze. I'm suddenly scared of moving. The atmosphere is making movement difficult, it's too dense, too dark, too stifling.

We consider one another for a moment, drink in each other's gaze, try and put a spin on what the other is thinking. We are both saying to ourselves 'you are wrong, you are wrong, you are wrong' and directing this across the room - trying to penetrate the walls we've both built up with what we believe to be the truth. Walls that he and us created. Walls that seem strong enough to stand, unharmed, for a hundred years or more.

Eventually she speaks; he seemed different when I spoke to him. Like everything he'd been through had made him realise the stuff he needed to.

He's not different. He just knows what to say to persuade you of that. I think to myself.

Out loud I say, 'Ok'.

'Ok' she replies more forcefully. Emphasis on the 'kay' syllable.

This is obviously the way we must play it. We will both act out our parts impeccably, we will both say the lines we are meant to. We will never say a truly honest thing to one another again.

The Start.

It wasn't the first time he had tried this, the flirtation with another. Pushing to see how far he could go, how far he would go. He said 'I just need someone to hold me till I fall asleep' and she had acquiesced.

This was the beginning. The beginning they would go back to and talk about but it had in fact started a long time before that. Before either of them were able to acknowledge it. She realised now that she had been a child then. She had thought of him often in the intervening years but never like that, never as she had in the first few months of knowing him when the longing she felt would sometimes distract her from whatever she had been tasked with doing that day. He didn't know of course, no-one did. It was just another crush, to look back now she didn't really recognise the person she was then. That girl was too young, too inexperienced, too afraid of life.

He put his forehead to her forehead and tried to nuzzle at her cheek with his nose. She wriggled away, sensing the mood change of the room had finally come to fruition. Although it had seemed inevitable it was still a shock when he made this move, a signal that things were different now. She knew it should stop here. That she should get up and go away. Leave him to feel ashamed and embarrassed for putting her in this situation but she didn't. She stayed.

'I don't think this is a good idea' she had said. 'Let's have some more wine' he had suggested.

So they drank wine and sat looking at each other, their knees touching. 'I used to be in love with you' she said, matter-of-factly 'when we first met. I thought you were the most amazing creature I'd ever encountered'
'Why didn't you say something?' he enquired, genuinely mystified.
'You were married and I never believed you'd like me that way'
He shook his head, 'you could have saved me ages ago. We've wasted so much time'

She looked at him, trying to assess whether this was just something he was saying to wear her down or whether he really meant it. Either way, it was working.

He shook a cigarette out of the packet and lit it for her. Their fingers touched as he handed it over. They both knew that now, the evening had only one conclusion. They both stood outside of themselves watching as it reached this conclusion. He stroked a stray hair behind her ear. 'Let's lay down and go to sleep' he said.

That was the start.

Valerie on the doorstep

Valerie stood on the doorstep and sighed. A sudden urge to run very fast and very far came over her. She looked down at her hands and watched as they reflexively reached for the doorbell whilst her brain looked on in horror, ‘this is a bad idea! You’re going to regret this!’ it screamed, but it was too late. The doorbell had already been pushed.

She took a step back and attempted to regain some control over her breathing. She was aware that the t-shirt she was wearing depicted Marcy and Peppermint Patty saying ‘Never give your heart to a blockhead’. It seemed somewhat appropriate.

“If this was a movie this would be the framing shot” she thought.

The three hour drive over here had been a masturbatory fantasy in which she was cast as the lead in a tragic-romantic comedy. “This is the bit where the introductory credits would roll” she decided as she pushed a homemade mixtape into the car’s ancient tape deck and lit a cigarette up, pulling away from her preferred parking spot in the office’s car park. Earlier that day she’d been sat in that car whilst having her lunch trying really hard to concentrate on the book she was reading and getting nowhere. The same words were stroked by her eyes again and again and yet none of them managed to connect with her brain. Excitement and fear jostled for pole position in the assault of feelings she was being subjected to. She was going to see him. That boy, the one who six months earlier had said he loved her, that had said he thought of them belonging together and who had subsequently pretended like it had never happened. Six months on the consequences of this were going to be played out.

It had been a long time coming.

The drive itself had gone by in a blur. Valerie’s favourite songs fought for prominence over the sounds of her rattling engine. The sky had been full of vivid reds and burnt oranges, which were so bright they were literally stunning and had made it difficult to see as she drove determinedly toward the sunset. When beauty blinds is it time to turn back? she pondered. I can be such a dick when I want to be she countered.

The service station had appeared at the exact right moment on her travels. Her legs were starting to cramp up and she could feel a spot aching to burst it’s way to the surface of her skin that needed immediate attending to. You always have such good timing she told the spot. The spot did not reply, silence was its weapon.

She shook her legs as she unfolded herself out of the car and made her way, fighting against the drizzle, into the neon lit husk containing the usual amenities; toilets, fast food, slot machines, and massage chairs. She had yet to ever see anyone pay for these massage chair services but sometimes toyed with the idea of giving it a go herself – she would always immediately discard such a ridiculous notion: people could see you in those things.

The sun had set by the time she wandered back to her car (a run-down, beat up, wreck that still worked even though no-one thought it should) and continued the journey still thinking all this would make excellent montage material for the opening credits.

Eventually she pulled up to the kerb a little way away from his house and rechecked her make up, then rechecked her make up again. Now or never she told herself, unsure what was awaiting her at the end of the garden path she dawdled up to.

She stood on the doorstep and sighed. A sudden urge to run very fast and very far came over her. She looked down at her hands and watched as they reflexively reached for the doorbell whilst her brain looked on in horror, ‘this is a bad idea! You’re going to regret this!’ it screamed, but it was too late. The doorbell had already been pushed.

The door opened. She wavered a second before walking inside.

Fading Scars

You were you again the day after. You laughed and joked and we verbally sparred. We were the most 'us' we could be. It was glorious. The cuts all over your left wrist were still there and you insisted on displaying them like a medal of honour or something. Something you were strangely proud of. Look what I did. Look how sad I am. Here's the proof. You guys didn't believe me but see, here's where it shows. Little red lines like lots of little pen marks made in an ink war conducted on your wrist, like we played when we were kids. I rolled your jacket sleeve up because you said it hurt when the fabric made contact with those little red lines and you made a joke about being 'very Don Johnson'. I said you were more like Chandler Bing due to the 'using humour as a defense mechanism thing'. You laughed and agreed. Pop culture references abound, Jeff Goldblum impressions in play.

That night I lay there in your arms and waited for you to fall asleep (I know that once you do that gentle twitching thing you do that you're unlikely to be roused) and then slipped from out under the sheets and slid onto your cold floor in my pants and your t-shirt and I started to cry.

You're too in love with your misery to be with me.

We've spent countless hours asleep in one another's arms, fucking, laughing, fighting. None of that means anything to you.

As I write, weeks later, I've still got the scars and bruises on my legs from where we got too carried away that last time. That last time I saw you and I could still see a bit of you left, a bit of you not ravaged, a bit of you that still wanted saving. I hate that I chose to save myself instead.

I want those scars to fade. I want to forget.

I still want you.

Gamma Ray

I sit on my usual bench and watch as he crosses the courtyard. I have a cardboard cup filled with hot black coffee clutched between my hands. He looks hurried and distracted. At some point in the past I feel sure he would have felt me staring at him so intently and, just by a look, I would have been able to pull him off the course he seems very set on walking now and brought him over to me. This does not happen today. It seems both very right and very wrong that this is the case.

I tug at the collar of my jacket so that it is pulled up further around my neck (although it is summer the temperature demotes a much chillier time of year). As I do so I get a flashback of when things changed. There are some sentences that will do that to a relationship. One minute they are one thing, the next, something completely different.

‘I love you’ does that.

‘I slept with someone else’ does it too.

Then there is the sentence he said to me: ‘Today is the day my father died.’

We were lying on my bed. Sunlight was streaming through the window and falling across the upper part of his face (when I think of that summer this is how I always think of him; half in shade and half in the light).

I frowned slightly. This wasn’t the response I’d been expecting when pointing out that he didn’t seem his usual, affable self.

We lay there for a moment considering each other. Me resting on top of his chest and he with his left arm under his head propping him up slightly. Finally I quietly said; ‘how?’

‘He drunk himself to death. I was 16 when it happened.’ He shifted. The sunlight poured onto the pillow under his head as he reached for the cigarettes (I should clarify, my cigarettes. I paid for all the fripperies like these) on the nightstand. He drew two slowly out off the pack and offered me the extra. I kept my gaze steady and considered what to do or say next. In the absence of anything better I kissed him. I tried to use that kiss to give him back everything he’d lost, everything he’d never had. We’d been playing before and now it was real. He gave me a part of his past and I gave him a part of myself.

He reaches the double doors on the opposite side of the courtyard from where he started. I watch him disappear and take a sip of my coffee and wonder to myself how many other people know that today is the anniversary of when his father died.