Chapter Twenty (Part 4)
When I’m certain he’s gone and he’s not coming back, I finally allow my muscles to collapse, and as soon as I do the tears start flowing again. My eyes are already raw, and my throat sore from the last time, and my fingers come to clutch at my heart and my throat as though I need to pull away the invisible hand strangling me. I hurry away from Marnie’s house, down the ramps towards little Seapoint Beach, where the dark sand is littered with slimy seaweed and rubbish from the day, and the moon glints off the waves, white spumes of foam peaking with each undulation. I sit on a wet, green rock and take out my phone. I feel desolate. Sucked under by my loneliness, the knowledge that I have ruined everything and there are things I’ve broken that I may never repair. There is only one person in the world left to call, and I dial the number.
His voice is cracked and sleepy as it comes over the line. “…Hello?”
I realise that I won’t be able to speak to him without crying. It takes me a long moment to gather myself, my chest heaving with an anticipatory sob.
He repeats himself, more soberly this time. “Hello? Evie, is that you?”
“Hi Shane.” I blubber. “I’m so sorry I called you.”
“What’s wrong?”
I sniff. “Are you… I’m so sorry I know it’s like, almost three in the morning… are you still in Cyprus?”
“No, I’m not, we got back earlier today.”
“Oh. You’re in Dublin right now?” my heart lifts with the thought of him being nearby.
“No, I’m at home in Tullamore at the minute, in mam and dad’s, why?”
“Oh, it’s okay then, don’t mind me.”
I hear fabric crunching over the line, presumably his duvet as he gets out of bed. His voice comes down the line urgently. “Evie, what’s happening? Are you okay?”
“No.” I admit with a soft hiccup, and then my shoulders begin to shake. I bring my free hand to my face, my nose running over my mouth.
“Where are you?”
“I’m on Seapoint Beach.”
“Alright. Can you stay there? Are you safe?”
I nod. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just a bit cold.”
I hear him moving about and the thump of a shoe against the floor. “Hang on, I’m coming.”
“Shane, you’re too far away.”
“I’ll be an hour and a half, there’s no traffic at this time… where’s my keys…”
“I don’t want you to have to do this… I’m sorry I called you and woke you up, you must be so tired…”
“It’s nothing.” He insists. “I’m on the way. Seapoint Beach, the one between Blackrock and Monkstown, right?”
I sniffle “Yeah.”
“Stay there, okay? Don’t move a muscle. I’m coming now.”
“Okay.”
“Call me if you move, or if anything happens. I’ll have my phone with me the whole time.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s grand. It’s nothing.”
We hang up and I wait.
I hear the distant swish of tyres on the road before I see him. The sky is lightening already, even in these early hours of the morning, and his Fiat Punto is backlit with hazy purple as he pulls up to the curb at the entrance to the beach. I gasp with relief when I see him, he gets out of the idling car and I run up the ramp towards him.
“Evie.” He says as I launch myself into his arms. We don’t usually hug each other, not like this, but tonight he wraps his arms around me and holds me to his broad chest so tightly that I’m afraid he’ll crush my ribs to dust. “I’m here now.” He says.
“I can’t believe you came all the way.” I say, the sound muffled in his fleece as he rubs my back. “Sure, of course I did. What else was I meant to do?”
“You could have left me here.”
“I’d never do a thing like that.” he says it with this kind of disturbed edge to his voice, as though he can’t fathom that there are men out there who would. He looks down at me and tuts softly. “What are they after doing to you at all?”
“I can’t.” I sob. “I can’t talk about it now.”
“That’s fine.” He says, and then hesitates before saying, “Where’s your top?”
“Oh.” I say, looking down at my bikini and shorts combo. “The rest of my clothes are in a bag inside the house. I’ll just leave them there.”
“A whole bag of stuff, like?”
I nod.
“I’ll go in and get it for you.”
“You don’t have to, Shane, really, it’s fine.”
“Is there anything important in the bag?”
I pause. “My purse and my phone charger are there.”
“I’ll get it.” He says decisively, and then when I look at him worriedly he reassures me. “I won’t look at or talk to anybody, I’ll just quietly go in and get it and then I’ll leave.”
I tell him where the bag is and how to find it, and then I wait by the car. It’s only five minutes before he comes back with it, takes my hoodie out and tosses it to me. “Throw that on you there.”
“Shane…” I say as he stands at the driver’s side door across from me. “I’m glad that you came.”
“Yeah it’s no problem.”
“And I’m so sorry.”
“No sure, it didn’t end up being a long drive at this hour anyway.”
“No, I mean, I’m sorry for everything else that-”
“I know you are.” He interjects. “And I’m saying you’re alright, we’re here now, it is what it is. I’m just glad you called me.”
“I’m glad too.”
He gets into the car and leans over to open the door on my side. “Come on, in you get. I’ll take you home to your mam.” And I do, and he sticks on the radio as we pull away, driving on towards the rising sun.
End of Part 2
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Chapter Nineteen (Part 2)
After we complete both films, we decide to watch something else. A non psychological thriller that perhaps, we won’t have to pretend to understand the plot this time.
“Let’s not get too confident about our intelligence.” Jen says as she polishes off her fifth beer, and we agree to find something light and fluffy for film three. We’ve finished all of the crisps by the end of the first film, and by the end of the second we’ve had almost all of the beers too, but it’s impossible not to want another Corona when your mouth is so salty yet you’re unable to stop grabbing for the snack bowl.
It’s been a long time since I was drunk around Jude and Jen, since the music festival, the place where I think we all did and said things that we regret, but it’s different now. We’re all two years older, and the experience of being drunk with them is more fun than it is anxiety inducing. Jen becomes a louder version of herself, like Jen with an exclamation point, making comments at everything that happens on screen and doing this hilarious snort laugh that I’ve never heard her do before. Jude becomes a bit undone the more he drinks, a looseness coming over all of him as he laughs along with her with his arm and head lolling over her lap. Still, despite this I notice that he’s careful not to direct any physical attention towards me and keeps his hands very chastely to himself as if trying to deliberately disprove Jen’s claims about how he’s liable to put them on me. At one point we accidentally touch feet and he switches positions on the floor so that there is a full metre between us.
After several minutes of aimlessly and tipsily messing around, we decide to watch something from Jen’s housemates DVD collection, Bridesmaids, a film none of us have seen yet, but have all heard it’s funny so it seems like the perfect remedy for our post-David-Lynch-film anxiety. At least, we agree, we’ll probably be able to understand what’s going on without googling it.
Jude resorts to picking the smallest, most broken up crumbs from the bottom of the crisp bowl to eat as the opening credits roll, and Jen quickly snatches it from him. “I’ll get you more food if you want more food.” She giggles. “You’d swear you were being starved, Hang on.” And she leaves to go and fetch him something else from the kitchen cupboard. I snuggle back into the sofa and hold a cushion, feeling the same lovely, warm feeling I’ve come to enjoy so much from drinking. I can only see the silhouette of Jude’s head contrasted against the bright television screen, his neat little haircut, and for some reason I think it might be funny to jab my toe into the back of his neck in time with the drum beats of the Universal Pictures theme as it plays on screen. Letting my drunk, mischievous little demons win.
“Oi.” He protests, and reaches out to grab my ankle.
“Let go!” I cackle, trying to twist out of his grip but he’s a boy. He’s strong. He doesn’t let me go, and instead holds me steady so he can tickle the sole of my foot. I immediately start shrieking and writhing about trying to kick myself free. “Oh my god, stop!” I beg. “My feet are so ticklish.”
“This is what you get for poking your toes into my neck.”
“Jude!” With my free foot I shove his shoulder, but then he grabs that one too, and I’m left hopelessly giggling on the sofa when Jen returns with a bag of jellies.
She smirks at us as she tosses them at his chest, and he has to release my ankles to catch them. “Are you enjoying the movie so far, lads?”
He rips open the bag and shushes her sharply. “Please, Jen, we’re trying to watch.” She plonks down on the sofa as the movie opens on a black screen, heavy breathing follows as we are thrown into a scene with Kristen Wiig and John Hamm in the throes of passion.
“Ah Jesus.” Jen comments. “So classic, another one of these awful scenes.”
Jude offers me a jelly over his shoulder and I take one. A little red and yellow ring.
“Another one?” I query.
“Yeah sure we were just talking about this recently, me and Jude. The way Hollywood does sex scenes is always awful. It’s like,” She gestures to the screen. “It never looks normal, it’s always just played up for comedic effect, like, do you know what I mean?”
“Kinda, yeah.” I say. “But I never really thought about it.”
“It’s alright to show egregious violence on film but it’s not okay to show ordinary sex, like they think it’d be too awkward if they made it look enjoyable.”
“This is a comedy film though, no?”
“Yeah but I mean in general. It pisses me off.”
“Hm. I suppose.” I bite my jelly ring in half as John Hamm does a ridiculous cross eyed face on the bed. “Like, they always make it seem like those women are having the time of their lives. She can’t be enjoying that.”
“No. I agree. Not with those moves.”
I laugh, feeling pleased to be genuinely qualified to participate in a conversation like this now that I’m miraculously not a virgin anymore. I attempt to say something a little bolder. “Right! Because like, it’s not that good, like it’s always a bit shit, they try to make it seem good on TV but it’s just not true.”
“Maybe, I dunno, I honestly wouldn’t know what it’s like for straight girls.”
“Not as good as everyone wants you to think it is.”
“Isn’t the whole thing about it that it’s meant to be nice?”
I shrug. “It’s fine.”
A laugh bursts out of her “Alright Evie.” She says, giving me a little incredulous side eye at the same time. “Who is it that’s been giving you a shite time?”
I feel my face flush, but try to laugh off my embarrassment. “No! It’s like, it’s okay, but it’s not amazing is it? The literal sex is the part you just kind of… do it… do it for them, right?”
“Hmm… I don’t know if I’m exactly qualified to answer that.” She rakes her fingers into the top of Jude’s hair and gently pulls his head back so he’s looking up at her. “Judey, what do you think?”
“What do I think?” He repeats, his Adam’s apple visible under the taut skin of his throat.
“Do you think girls are supposed to like sex?”
He laughs. “I wouldn’t know, I’ve never done it”
I feel as though I have to think extra hard to block any images from my mind at that moment that would allow me to think of him in ways that I’m certainly not supposed to. The existence of thoughts like these irritate me, like they just come on me without me meaning to, without me wanting them. I should be over this by now and yet…
Jen leans her head on her hand and regards me with a sly smile. “So who was it?”
“Who was who?”
“The unfortunate fella who’s awful in bed. Who was he?”
“Jen, so nosy.” Scolds Jude.
“Oh come on, we’re all friends here.” She protests. “It wasn’t that Slim Shady looking fecker from your birthday party was it?” She’s grinning because she’s sure it isn’t, because to her the idea of me sleeping with someone like Dean is hilarious, something that would be a bit embarrassing for me to do, and once again I feel looked down upon and judged for my choices.
“So?” I say defensively.
“Wait.” She says, touching Jude’s shoulder. “Was this the same guy who ripped that empty baggie of coke open in front of you and licked out the residue on the inside?”
“I…” He hesitates, eyes flashing briefly to mine. “I didn’t tell her that part.”
Jen covers her mouth. “Oh no!”
“It’s okay.” I say neutrally. “I don’t mind that, it’s fine.”
“Oh god, sorry.” She says, reaching out to touch my arm. “You’re not a thing though, right? Like surely it was just a kind of a fling thing, or?”
I sigh and glance away.
“Ah you’re not going out with him.” She insists. “Hardly, with Aldi Eminem.”
I catch a smile cracking through on Jude’s face then, and his head drops down as he tries to disguise his laugh, and that’s it. I’ve had enough of being laughed at, no, mocked by these two. I announce I’m going to the toilet and get up from the couch to walk away.
“Oh, wait, Evie! I’m so sorry!” Jen calls after me, but I don’t look back. “Oh, it’s okay, Jen, don’t worry about it.”
Then once I’m in the bathroom I stare at my reflection, my shoulders heaving with each breath, my hot hands clinging to the sides of the porcelain sink so tightly that I know my knuckles must be white. Not only am I angry, I’m also fairly drunk. Not really a recipe for success. I try to take deep, meditative breaths but my furious thoughts keep on erupting through. How dare they. I think. They don’t even know him like I do. How can they just sit there and laugh at him to my face like I’m stupid for liking him. Do they think I’m stupid? Are the things I do just a big joke to them?
It’s several minutes before I calm down a little bit, but still, the thing that rings most certain to me is that I no longer want to be here. I think about getting my bag and leaving, hoping maybe the long walk home will clear my head a bit. I can’t imagine anything worse than sleeping here, and then I open the door, and Jude is standing there, and I know there’s about to be a catastrophe.
“Evie.” He says. “Are you alright? I’m sorry.”
I close the door behind me and step out into the kitchen with him, aware that Jen is still sitting in the other room so I will have to speak quietly. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not like I was laughing at you, I’d never, it’s just that thing she said took me off guard.”
“It’s okay, I get it, like, it’s really funny that I’m seeing Dean, right?”
He sighs. “No, it’s not funny…”
“But what?” I prompt, because he looks like he’s struggling with whatever he really wants to say about it.
“I’m just surprised by it.” He blurts out. “Why that guy?”
“Why him?”
“Yeah.”
“Why anybody? Why does it matter to you?”
His eyes slide over towards Jen on the couch, the dialogue in Bridesmaids louder than the volume at which we’re speaking to each other, but still, he’s hesitant to say another word. He reaches for the handle of Jen’s bedroom door and opens it. “Can we just talk about this in here for a minute?”
I shrug. “Yeah, whatever.” And I step inside the room ahead of him and flip on the light. The rain is hammering against the window now as the skies have split open and unleashed something like an apocalyptic rainstorm. Sheets of water are sloshing down the glass, each wet streak glowing with the city lights outside.
Standing across from him with my arms crossed, I repeat my question to him as he shuts the door. “So? Why does it matter to you?”
He grimaces. “Isn’t he a bit of a weirdo?”
“No.”
“No?”
“You don’t know him.”
“You’re right, but I met him, and he freaked me the fuck out. There was absolutely nothing behind his eyes.”
“He was high, Jude, what do you expect?”
“It wasn’t only that though, he just gave me the creeps. His vibe was so off. Didn’t you ever feel it?”
“No.”
“Don’t be angry with me, I’m just-”
“What is it with you?” I demand. “Why do you get so involved in my life in this way?”
He pauses. “What do you mean?”
“I just want you to tell me why you care so much about who I go to bed with, or who I even choose to date, as if it’s any of your business, or actually, as if it even affects your life one tiny little bit.”
“It-”
“Actually, you’re being exactly the same way about Dean as you were about Liam.”
He blinks. “Liam?”
“Yes! For some weird reason you hated that I liked Liam. You were so horrible about him right from the start, like when you told me that stupid story about giving him fake weed, and made me feel embarrassed about fancying him, and the way you always talked about him like he was a total loser. Like, for what? What was the purpose of that? Just to poke your fingers around in someone else’s happiness and ruin it for fun?”
He looks incredulous. “Happiness? Come on, you didn’t fancy Liam.”
“I did!”
“You did not.” He insists, eyes wide. “He made you physically cringe! It was so obvious. Every time you were together and he put his hands on you you made this face like you’d touched wet food in the bottom of the sink. You were embarrassed to be around him long before I even told you that story.”
“I wasn’t, you got in the way! And now you’re trying to do the same thing with me and Dean. You can’t just back off and let me do what I want to do. And for what reason? It’s like, it’s not even like you have a clear motive. To me it just seems like you really like putting other guys down so that you come out looking better than them every time.”
“Fine, I was mean to Liam, and I regret that. We were fifteen when we gave him the fake joint, we were stupid children, but I’ve grown up since then. I never consciously drove a rift between you two, I don’t know, maybe he pissed me off a bit. Maybe I was jealous of him, but honestly I can’t really remember what I was thinking about that summer, I was a mess. But you didn’t fancy him, I’ll die on this hill.”
“You don’t know what I was thinking. He’s a nice person and I hurt him because of you.”
“Evie, Liam is fine. No doubt he hardly even remembers this. If it was because of me then it was because you let me ruin it. Subconsciously you wanted me to.”
I scoff. “Hardly. As if you were around us enough times to read all of that from us anyway.”
“Anyone can tell when a girl isn’t feeling it. I bet he knew it too.”
I hesitate. Liam did know. It was the whole reason for his frustration at me.
“Look, this isn’t about Liam. I don’t want to talk about him.” He says, and takes a deep breath. “But Dean…”
I stare at him warningly. “Dean is none of your business.”
“No… I know, I just can’t explain the feeling I get around him, and the feeling I get from you. Something about it feels bad.”
“So you’re trying to ruin it based on, what, a vibe?”
“I am not trying to ruin it.”
“I don’t understand why you keep insisting on making things so hard for me. Let me date a bloody boy, who cares? Your life will be so unbelievably unaffected by this, just go back to Berlin and live your life and stop thinking so hard about mine.”
“I don’t want to stop thinking about yours, I care about you.”
I stand there staring at him, hands dropping to my sides and clenching into fists. My inbreath quivers with fury. “I am still so angry with you.” I say quietly.
His face collapses in on itself a little bit, his inner eyebrows shooting up to create this desperately sad expression. “Why?”
I say nothing, he already knows why.
“If all this is about how I lost touch with you when I moved-”
“You didn’t even try to keep up with me. You gave me half hearted emails for like, three months, and even then your responses were so sporadic that you might as well have not bothered. So much for all that stuff you said to me at the festival about how you wanted to keep on knowing me, when actually, you didn’t care at all.”
“Of course I cared. I’m here now, I still care.”
“No, you know, I think you were messing with me the whole time. I think it was all about an ego boost for you, you wanted to mess around with my feelings, see what would happen if you flirted enough with the most naïve girl on the beach, break up her summer fling and see if you could get her to like you, just to prove that you could.”
“What?”
“And you’re still trying to do it, even now that you live in a different country you can’t surrender any control over my choices. You still see me that way, don’t you? Do you think it’s funny or something? Nobody else is allowed to have me, but you don’t want me either. You just want someone fawning after you and following you around and telling you how great you are. If you cared about me you’d have been here the whole time but you weren’t. You couldn’t even check in on me once, and I’m still angry about it. You just ran away and left me here on my own.” My words, and the ferocity of them make him flinch. For the first time since we’ve started arguing I feel like I’ve maybe been too harsh, but I believe in the validity of what I’ve said.
“I showed up to that going away party because I thought you’d want to say goodbye to me.” I continue. “But actually, I had a horrible, awkward night where you barely spoke to me, and instead made googly eyes at your ex. Then you didn’t even wake me up to have that breakfast you promised me.”
“What was I meant to do?” He says, sounding defeated. “Walk into the room and shake you awake? I hated the idea of invading your privacy like that, and I thought maybe you just wanted to sleep on, like, I don’t know, maybe you didn’t want to say goodbye to me after all.”
“Of course I did, it’s the thing I wanted most, couldn’t you tell?”
“I wanted you there that night.” He says, dark eyes wounded. “I had a different idea of that party in my head, but I felt so detached when you got there and it just got worse as the night went on. I don’t remember what I was thinking. I wasn’t sure of the right way to process what I was feeling.” His hand comes to his hair and messes up the front. “And, by the way, I don’t really know what you mean about Michelle. We broke up for a good reason and-”
“The way you were looking at her-”
“Okay, but between Michelle and you there was no competition.”
There’s a long, heavy pause between us then, and I feel my palms prickle, heart spurring in my chest. I draw my words out slowly. “What do you mean?”
“I mean it would have been you, every time. A million times.”
And I watch him. There’s something vulnerable and unguarded about him in that moment, his eyes darting anxiously across my face, his lips parted as though he has more to tell me, but then in an instant that look is gone, replaced by a line between his eyebrows. “It’s not a good idea to have this conversation.” He says decisively. “This old stuff, it’s not really worth revisiting.”
“Yeah, let’s not bother.” I say. “It’s not like it’s important.”
“Right.”
I swallow hard. “So with Dean, you don’t like that I’m with him because you think he’s a bad influence.”
He nods.
“Not because of any other reason.”
“I…” He trails off.
“Not because you want to sabotage another one of my romantic relationships out of jealousy.”
“Evie, it’s not… I can’t. I’m in love with somebody else, Astrid means the world to me, and it’s not fair of me to delve back into all that messy, teenage stuff with you. I don’t want to say anything else to you that I feel I can’t be honest with her about.”
“Right.”
“We’re friends, I don’t want to jeopardise that. I don’t want to make it complicated.”
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