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Chapter Nineteen (Part 2)

When I trudge out into the clinic waiting room the following weekend, Claire shoves her phone into her handbag and stands up to catch me in her arms as I fall into her for a hug. “That was rotten.” I groan.

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Oh dear, is it still sore?”

I don’t answer, I just make a pitiful sound into her shoulder as my womb twinges with pains that I thought were limited only to the very worst and most cursed days of my periods, but the doctor told me it’s normal to experience it as my body adjusts to the IUD. This new, strange alien body will be part of me now for five years, a tiny T shaped piece of plastic that hardly looked capable of wreaking so much havoc on my innocent body when I obsessively googled photographs of it in the moments before the procedure.

“It feels fucking horrible.” I complain.

“I’m sorry, babes.”

“And it was a man.”

“Oh no!”

“He told me that I reminded him of Natalie Portman when he was digging around indiscriminately in my cervix.”

“They shouldn’t let any men near our vaginas.” She declares, and I grunt in agreement, a pathetic sound, muffled by the polyester of her pink puffer coat. Smoothing down the back of my hair she wonders, “Is there anything that’d make you feel better? We can stop by Big Tesco and get loads of snacks for you.”

“I’d like that a lot.”

And that’s what we do, even though I’m the one that has to drive us there because Claire still hasn’t applied for her licence, but she lets me wait in the car and rest while she does the mad dash around the supermarket as a consolation. She emerges with a heaping bag of far too much, but that’s what I like about Claire. Everything she does, she does all the way, to excess. She does nothing with reserve or restraint. It’s everything, all of the time, and it fills me with immense joy to see this shopping bag, Pringles and Kinder chocolate and big packets of chocolate biscuits poking out the top of it, promising me unlimited indulgence until the button on my jeans pops off and I am lying in a heaping mound of crumpled wrappers.

At home she makes me some tea and settles me on the sofa in a pair of her impossibly fluffy slippers with the TV playing Dawson’s Creek while she goes upstairs to pack a huge bag for her weekend down the end of the road at Shane’s house. She makes sure I have enough of everything, painkillers, hot water bottles, blankets and fuzzy socks, and when she’s satisfied with my state of being and has ensured that I’m nestled perfectly in a cloud of fluff she waves goodbye to me at the door and tells me that if I need anything I can just text her and she’ll be right over.

“What would I ever do without you?” I say.

“You’d survive, babe.”

At eight o’clock that evening, Jude swings by after his nightly visit with Jen, who is now recovering at Michelle’s. He makes a ridiculous face when he sees me cocooned on the sofa, his bottom lip jutted out and his forehead crinkled up in almost theatrical sympathy. I note his extremely expressive eyebrows. He leaves his coat on a hook and comes over to deliver three quick kisses to the crown of my head. “Poor Evie.” He says, and he cups my cheeks in his hands as I look up at him with eyes that I know are big and soft and begging for reassurance, but I suddenly feel as though I’ve never yearned for something so badly as his sympathy.

“How are you feeling?”

“Still sore.” I say.

“I can’t imagine, but it looks like Claire has you taken care of.”

“She’s my guardian angel.”

“Good with this kind of thing, isn’t she?”

I lift a hand to run it through his dark hair. “I missed you.”

“I know, it’s been hectic.” He drops to his knees on the floor in front of me, still holding my face and kisses me gently, lips brushing against mine until I feel formless and soft, but I have to pull back when he starts trying to incorporate some steamy tongue action. “No,” I say weakly. “Don’t try and get that going with me, I’m too feeble.”

“Ah, sorry, I got carried away.” He sits on the floor by my feet so that I can have the whole couch to myself, but he holds my foot in his lap and rests his back against my knees.

“How’s Jen doing?”

“Not as badly as you, apparently. I didn’t know that getting an IUD put in was such a brutal procedure.”

I snicker. “I get it, you think I’m playing it up for sympathy.”

“I don’t think that, I wouldn’t know,” He turns around so he can flash me a grin. “But you know, Jen has a shattered thigh bone and nerve damage and only one of you is sitting around cocooned in fluffy blankets and surrounded by half-eaten chocolate.”

I scoff. “Did I not tell you about the doctor saying I look like Natalie Portman right into my vagina?”

“You did.”

“What do you think about that?”

“He’s right a bit, no? I’ve thought that before actually.”

I bat him lightly across the back of the skull, and after he flinches he twists around to pepper my knees with apologetic kisses because they’re the only part of me that he can reach. “I’m sorry. I genuinely do feel bad for you, and I know that you must be really sore, and I’ve just burst into your apartment and started making fun of you.”

I sigh, “Maybe I am leaning into it a bit. I just like sitting around having an excuse to do nothing, to be honest. Do you think I’ve Munchausen’s?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s your thesis?”

A grimace. “Coming. Let’s not talk about college for now, I feel up to my neck in it all. It’s nice to just get out of the house for a night. I want to do nothing too.”

“Well I was watching Dawson’s Creek if you feel like jumping in.”

“Is this the show about the teenagers with the insane vocabulary?”

“Exactly,” I snicker. “Do you want me to catch you up?”

“Yeah, yeah, please. Tell me everything that’s happening.” He adjusts himself so that he can lay his head on my thigh, and listens intently as I tell him everything, about Joey and Dawson and Pacey, Andi, Jen and Jack and everybody in between, and then we watch it together in comfortable silence until I’m sleepy enough to hit the bed.

“You don’t have to go.” I tell him as he makes moves towards his Carhartt coat, and when he turns to me I can tell that he’s trying hard not to be too eager about the possibility of sharing a bed again. “If you want me to stay and keep you company, I can.” He says, and we are whispering. I don’t really know why, but I suppose it’s late, and something about the night makes it feel involuntary.

“I’d like that if you would.”

“Well, of course.”

“I don’t have a toothbrush for you.”

“That’s okay, I’ll use yours,” he breaks into a smile at my expression. “I’m joking, obviously I wouldn’t do that. Unless you really didn’t mind.”

“Would you actually do that if I let you?”

He considers this. “Maybe.”

I shake my head and start heading upstairs. “You’re sick, Jude. Sometimes I’m concerned about you.”

He follows. “It’s not really that sick, I’ve already invested serious hours into the inside of your mouth, how much worse could it be if we shared a toothbrush?”

“Because a toothbrush is full of the dirt and plaque someone has scraped off their teeth and gums, I can’t imagine voluntarily putting that into my mouth.”

He shrugs. “It’s a bit gross but, like, I don’t find the idea of it totally repulsive.”

“Well you can use your finger.” I lead him into the bathroom where he immediately pretends to grab my toothbrush from the cup by the sink. “You think you’re so cute.” I say accusingly, even though I’m really the one who thinks that, and as we brush our teeth next to each other I admire the way that we look together, and how I wouldn’t complain if I could see us like this, doing something ordinary together in a bathroom mirror forever and ever.

“Nice room, Evie,” He says when we go inside, and I realise that it’s the first time that he’s seen it.

“Sorry about the clothes on the floor.”

“I don’t care about that. I like all of your things,” He saunters over to my easel in the corner, where there’s a half-finished pencil drawing. “This is lovely.”

I feel obliged to deny it. “It’s not.”

“Yeah, you’re right, it’s rotten,” He throws his eyes skyward. “I feel a bit sick looking at it actually, can we face this thing away from your bed when we’re trying to sleep?”

I laugh, and then immediately get a new twinge of pain in my womb, prompting me to clutch my stomach and tumble back onto the mattress with a self-sympathetic groan. “Stop.”

“Stop telling funny jokes?”

I make another noise, not unlike an injured animal and his face comes into frame above me. “Baby,” He says, and another, more fluttery feeling joins the ache inside me. “Do you want me to get you anything?”

“My hot water bottle.”

“Okay.”

“Can you fill it up again so it’s nice and hot?”

His mouth twitches up. “Yeah, of course.”

“Do you think I’m being a bad patient?”

“I do.” He dots my nose with a kiss. “But it’s alright, I’d probably be worse if it was me.”

When he goes downstairs to heat up the water I swiftly change into my pyjamas and crawl under the covers, switching on the bedside lamp and snuggling in with the duvet pulled all the way up to my chin. He comes back after a short while and passes the hot water bottle to me, and then I ogle him wholly un-subtly as he undresses down to his t-shirt and underwear and slots into the bed next to me. “All good?”

“Mhm.”

“Poor Evie,” He says, and makes a little clucking sound that makes me giggle. “You’re so soft. I didn’t think that you were a softie, you know that? I used to think you were a dark, mysterious, dangerous man.”

“I am a dangerous man.”

“Yeah, right.”

He gets up on his elbow to look down at me. “I still make you a bit nervous though, don’t I?” and he bites his lip, which sends a shiver right through me. I don’t know how he can do that, turn a moment of lighthearted banter and fun into something that feels immediately sexy and forbidden. My mind immediately goes to the last night we spent in the same bed, and though I could hardly see him then, I can imagine that he had that same look on his face then as he does now.

“Do I make you nervous?” I ask, and he nods. “Yes,” and falls back on the pillow to stare up at the ceiling. I jolt when I feel his hand snake towards me beneath the covers, but he only wants to rest it on the hot water bottle that covers my stomach. “Did you do this because of me?” He wonders. “Like, the whole IUD thing. Was that for me?”

I feel awkward. “Maybe. I also, like, on Friday I got tested too.”

“Tested?”

“At the sexual health clinic. For STIs.”

“Oh, I should probably do that too,” He says. “Good idea. You’re prepared.”

“Should I not be?” I say anxiously. “I just thought that you were supposed to do that, maybe it’s not something we should even talk about, I don’t know, I just don’t want you to think that-”

“No, it’s fine!” He says. “You’re being smart and mature, we should have discussed this ages ago, I’m just- well, I’m glad that you’ve been thinking about it and you want it because I-”

“I definitely do. I know that we haven’t really addressed it much but I had the best time at your holiday house.”

“You did?”

“Yes, and I wanted to do it again, I just felt-”

“Nervous, yeah, me too.”

“I didn’t think that you got nervous about those things.”

“Of course I do.”

My hand lays on top of his. “Are you still?”

“Yeah, obviously. I still want you to like me afterwards, I don’t want you to freak out or not find it that enjoyable, I dunno. Of course I’m a bit apprehensive.”

I smile. “Well I think that’s nice.”

“All of that stuff,” He says after a minute. “The test, and the IUD, was it expensive? Because I feel like if I’m the reason that you did those things then I should pay you back for it.”

“No, it was free,” I say. “I have the medical card.”

“Oh. Well I would have paid, it that counts.”

“It does. That’s actually mad nice of you.”

“Sure.”

We say nothing for ages then, and I flick off the light as soon as I think he might be falling asleep, and he turns over to his side and curls his arm over me. “Goodnight, Evie,” He murmurs, and then I have a new thought. “Cyprus,” I whisper. “I never told you about Cyprus.”

“The island?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you have some facts about it that you wanted to share, or…”

“No. Would you want to go?”

“When?”

“Easter. To Claire’s holiday home. She and Shane are going.”

A pause. “But my thesis.”

“You have three weeks to really buckle down, right? And if you’re not finished you could bring your laptop with you, do you think?”

“Yeah, maybe, I just really have to get it done because I’m going back to Berlin to finish my studio work for the whole of May, and-”

“I know, and if you don’t want to come then-”

“No, no, I do, I really do. I’ll figure it out.”

“I think it’ll be really nice.”

“Yeah, it will. A bit of sunshine won’t hurt.”

“Exactly.”

“Picture it, Evie,” He says sleepily. “You’ll be swimming in the sea again, your favourite place to be.”

“And you’ll be with me.” I reply, and then think about that, and the warmth of the sun on our skin and the delicate breeze in our hair until I drift away into the most peaceful sleep with a smile on my face.

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