There’s a loud metal clatter, like the sound of a saucepan falling, which is the last straw.
Huffing, breathless, I pause the HIIT workout video I’m following on YouTube, almost tripping over my yoga mat and the wine-red rug I pushed out of the way in my haste, and storm across the hallway.
I catch a glimpse of myself in the ornate vintage mirror hanging behind the sofa: dripping in sweat, hair scraped back into a ponytail but starting to form a frizzy halo around my head from the exercise. But I can’t even care about the state I’m in. I’m too riled up. No, I’m not just riled up, I’m plain old pissed off.
I throw open the kitchen door and I’m hit by a wall of steam.
“Could you please turn that down?”
“What?” Danny has to shout for me to hear him over the roar of the fan over the oven and the Spanish podcast he’s listening to.
“I said, could you turn that down?”
“What?”
I’m grinding my teeth and resenting the interruption to my workout; I run a hand over my flushed face and don’t notice him reaching to turn off the fan on the stove and hitting pause on the podcast until it’s too late and I’m yelling into a now-silent kitchen:
“CAN YOU PLEASE GIVE ME SOME GODDAMN QUIET?”
Danny blinks at me, taken aback.
I’m breathing hard, but now it’s nothing to do with the workout.
“And will you open a fucking window? It’s like a sauna in here.”
Danny turns down the temperature on the hob, giving the bolognese he’s making one last stir before turning to me. Behind him, the counter is piled with pots and bowls and knives from some earlier part of his cooking process. Somewhere in the depths of my kitchen, he’s found an apron. Pink gingham. I vaguely recognize it as one that my mum bought, when she helped me kit out my new apartment. Even though Serena dropped off a small pile of Zach’s clothes an hour ago, Danny’s not wearing a shirt under the apron; I’d have teased him about it, maybe made a couple of flirty comments, but I think we both know that wouldn’t go down well.
“Your kitchen windows are locked,” he tells me slowly, “and I didn’t want to interrupt your workout.”
“Bit late for that,” I mutter, scowling, but stride across the kitchen to yank open a drawer by the sink and get the key out, unlocking the windows and throwing them wide open. The fresh air feels glorious, especially when I’m overheating from my workout and the kitchen is so steamy. I take a second to try to calm down and enjoy it, to stop feeling so angry. It’s not particularly effective.
Making an effort to sound at least a bit calmer, I tell him, “I couldn’t even hear the workout video over all the noise you’re making in here. And honestly! How can you possibly have used this many pots and chopping boards for one dish? I didn’t even know I owned this many knives!”
“I’ll clean it all up after.”
“That’s—that’s not the point! What about the fact that you’ve been working all day, and you worked all yesterday evening. It’s like you could barely look up from your laptop long enough to acknowledge me all day, and I don’t want to be that couple who don’t talk to each other, and—”
“Not talk? Isla, I was in meetings, like, all day! It’s not like I was trying to ignore you.”
Danny shuffles closer, reaching for me, but I draw away to pace the length of the kitchen again, anger boiling in the pit of my stomach.
He says, “You’ve got all black under your eyes. I think it’s mascara.”
“Well at least I’m wearing mascara!”
He looks at me like I’ve well and truly lost the plot now, his hand-some face crinkling in confusion. “What?”
Oh crap, that didn’t really land with the impact I wanted it to have.
Now he looks like he wants to laugh, which really doesn’t help my mood when I’m so pissed off.
“I—you know what I mean!” I burst out, glowering at him, desperately trying to clean up the smudges of mascara from under my eyes. “I’ve been making so much effort all week and it feels like it’s all you can do to brush your hair!”
Frowning, obviously self-conscious, he rubs the thick layer of stubble on his cheek. “Well, yeah. It’s not like I’ve got my razor or nice shirts or my other pair of good jeans. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m stuck here, with only an overnight bag, and some clothes you borrowed from next door that don’t even fit me right. Sorry if I’m not looking my best this week.”
I’m speechless for a second, because I didn’t even think about it that way.
But oh, I’m so mad with him, and that’s still not the point I was trying to make, or I don’t think it was, and besides, there’s a bunch of other reasons I’m in such a bad mood right now.
And I open my mouth to retort again, my face scrunched up, finger raised as I step forward to jab at the air, and the second I move my leg—
Phhhhbt!
—I let out the loudest fart of my entire life.
In that second, right there in my little, six-by-eight kitchen still full of steam, standing across from my boyfriend of only a month, I want to die. I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole.
Oh God, and it’s not that it was even so loud, it’s the noxious smell like rotten eggs that follows, enough to make me gag.
Danny stares at me in total shock.
I can imagine exactly what he’s seeing now. Some sweaty, red-faced girl half his size, cheeks smeared in mascara, looking angry enough to throw him out of a window for what seems to him like no good reason, letting out the world’s loudest, most rancid fart.
It is a far cry from the image I’ve been striving to cultivate: keeping my legs shaved, using the nice fancy moisturizer, doing a foot mask so even my feet seem perfect and soft, running to the bathroom first thing in the mornings to cover up any new spots, not singing in the shower so I don’t sound like some banshee, avoiding eating anything too smelly on our dates so I won’t smell or taste gross when he kisses me . . .
And to think I was worried about him finding the wine stain on the underside of the sofa cushion, or my Little Mermaid music box.
Everything I’ve done in the last month—the last week—has been for nothing.
I’ve destroyed it all in a single moment.
So I do the only rational thing I can. I flee the kitchen and shut myself in the bathroom.
Danny isn’t far behind, running after me and calling my name, knocking on the door even as I press my hands to it, like little ol’ me can barricade it if he does try to open it.
“Isla,” he pleads, knocking. “Come on, open up. Please? Isla?”
Oh God, I can’t even avoid him, can I? We’re stuck in here together and I can’t pretend that didn’t happen (both the fart and me blowing up at him like that). I can’t hide in this bathroom for the next four days until he’s allowed to leave again.
I’m going to have to . . . ugh, deal with it.
I give myself a few seconds, eyes shut, trying to compose myself.
I’m not losing my mind. I’m just freaked out because this is an extraordinary situation that we’re in, and it’s a lot of pressure. I’m not losing my mind. I just have to explain myself, even if the idea sends a shudder through me.