“Eliot?” Ana, voice frosty, with the face of a disapproving police officer, appears, the doors of the bar closing behind her, a square fawn-colored handbag swinging from her shoulder. She asks him something in French. He gestures to me, then says, and only for my benefit, “Emmie just wants to go home now. I thought we could share the taxi, see her home safe…”
Then she speaks fast, sternly, eyes on Eliot the whole time, never once even acknowledging me, the heathen in the unpressed dress, and then Tom appears behind her, red blotches on his cheeks, shirt open down to the chest. He sees me but looks away, at his phone in his hand, and begins to walk away. Ana follows. Eliot calls after them in French, but she doesn’t react, walking straight and tall beside Tom, like a teacher who has just broken up a fight.
Eliot puts his hand on my arm. “Ana has said it’s best Tom leaves. He’s sharing our taxi.” He bites his lip, nostrils flaring. “It’s fucking bullshit, I know, but… look, I’m happy to come with you to the taxi rank and walk with you, see you home safe—”
“Em?” Lucas appears now, skin flushed, and when he sees me he speeds up, shoes scraping on the pavement. “God, are you okay?” He puts his arms around me, tight and safe and strong, smelling of aftershave and whiskey sours. I scrunch my eyes closed, hold him close, and when I open my eyes, fleetingly, a moment later, I see Eliot walking slowly away after Ana, hands in pockets.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I overreacted, I know.”
“No,” he says. “He overstepped the line and you… you just reacted.”
“It—it was the way he stopped me. He—”
“I know,” he says. “Em, you don’t need to explain. You don’t need to say a word.”
He looks down at me, waits, but I can say nothing else. The adrenaline leaves my body as fast as it came, and then it all catches up with me. I cry into his shirt. And yes, I am crying because I’m embarrassed and I am crying because I’m shaken up, my whole body surging with the shame and guilt I thought was long-buried. But mostly I’m crying because my heart is aching, like a wide-open wound behind my ribs. Because I am alone, and I am scared. And I want to tell him I am, like I do everything else. But I can’t. With this, I can’t, and that’s what’s so hard.
Lucas looks down at me, pushes the hair out of my face, spidery strands sticking to the tears on my cheeks, and I see him swallow, Adam’s apple contracting in his neck. He stares at me, sadness clouding his eyes, and I feel it between us. Heavy. Like static. Neither one of us moves. Tell me, I think. Tell me you’ve made a mistake.
“Emmie,” he says. His lips remain parted, as if words are there, queueing up. But nothing comes.
“You’re—you’re getting married,” I say, my words barely there.
“I know,” he whispers. And for a moment I tense, because I really think he’s going to kiss me. I don’t want him to. But I do. All at the same time. But then he takes a deep breath and says, “God,” and takes a step back, as if he’s just been shaken awake. “D-Do you want—another drink, or… sh-shall we go back to the cottage?”
I will him to step back toward me, to tell me he doesn’t want this. To tell me he feels it too. But he runs a hand through his hair, straightens his shirt at the neck, and I see it happen, as if a button has been pressed. Confident Lucas is back. Knows-it-all, content-with-exactly-where-he-is Lucas.
“You stay,” I say to Lucas. “I’ll go back.”
He’d usually fight me on it, usually insist on coming with me, but he glances behind him, to the sounds emanating from the bar, and nods.
“You’re sure?”
“Positive,” I tell him, and after saying goodbye, I head in the direction I saw Eliot and Ana take earlier. I walk and walk, aimless, stopping only once to look up at the sky, stars like a spray of white paint on black silk, and want to ask it why? Why did you pull me toward him, for miles and miles, if this is how it ends up?
* * *
Mix CD. Vol. 4.
Dear Balloon Girl,
Track 1. Because
Track 2. I hate
Track 3. Watching
Track 4. You
Track 5. Sail away
Balloon Boy
X
“So, is this the bloke with the beard?”
Rosie scrunches up her nose. “Beard? Emmie, he never had a beard. Didn’t even have an ounce of stubble. Dunno what I was thinking, to be honest.”
I furrow my brow. “But I’m sure you said he was really hairy. Mike. Mike with the bike. And… beard.”
Rosie, mid prawn sandwich, bursts out laughing. “It wasn’t a beard, you wally.”
“Oh, you thought it was a beard, but it turned out to be… dirt?” asks Fox as I push my finger through the tiny gap in my bag of Maltesers for the last one.
“No. God, you two are shit. Mike was the one with the pubes.”
“Ah. That’s the one. Easy mistake to make.” I crunch and look over at Fox, who is wearing the expression someone might wear when they have just heard someone say the moon landing wasn’t real and conducted in a studio.
“Um. Sorry?”
Rosie looks at him, pulling off a crust. “He had loads, Fox,” she says with a shrug, and stuffs the bread in her mouth. “Like loads. Like…” She looks around her, mouth full, as if searching for the perfect word to pluck from the sky. “A disco wig down a pair of trousers.”
I burst out laughing, watching Fox grimace as if trying to work out an algebra equation, before he says, “Well. I’m sure Mike would be thrilled to hear his crotch described in such a way,” and Rosie laughs.
“Thrilled,” she says. “Only my nan says that.”
“Only your nan and me,” Fox says, leaning into her, and sitting here in the sunshine on the beach with the both of them heals me like chicken broth does, like medicine. It was all I wanted to do when I got home from France last week; come to work and see them both, talk about dating and busy lunch shifts and Fox’s new paisley trousers. And pubes, apparently. I needed distance. Just a few days to gather my thoughts, to get back on track. It’s knocked me a little, that night at the bar, the same way hearing a song that was played at the Summer Ball used to, the way seeing a man in the street who looked like him—like Robert Morgan did. And it’s that weird little moment between Lucas and me on the street too; the hesitation. I have since put it down to drunkenness. Lucas is an affectionate drunk. New Year’s Eve is one of the examples, I see now. Our twenty-fifth birthday, when he pecked me on the lips and stayed there longer than he should have, and said, “I just really fucking love you, Em,” before puking onto the pavement. But the whole night made me crave Shire Sands. A quiet tea with Louise in the morning, Radio 4 mumbling in the background. Rosie and Fox. Toast in bed, a Hallmark movie. Some quiet time at home, to digest it all.
“I’m not sure Emmie could deal with another wedding this soon,” says Fox now. “Isn’t that right?”
I look up, blinking, eyes glazed, fixed on the horizon. “What’s that?”