Run To You (26 page)

It’s the one I’d hoped to avoid, somehow – as though we could just party-hearty-marty and forget everything. Hell, maybe that’s why I convinced myself she was
that
person, instead of
this
person.

The one who asks:

‘What happened?’

* * *

I don’t think I’m having a nervous breakdown or anything. But she does all the things I imagine people do when their friends are having a nervous breakdown. She makes me tea, even though I don’t drink tea, and runs me a bath, even though I don’t take baths. And when I insist that I don’t want to talk about it yet, she persuades me to have a rest until I feel ready.

I don’t think I’m into that, either, but it turns out I’m wrong. I am into that. I’m so into it I pass out the moment I climb onto her shawl-covered bed, despite my refusal to lie down. I just prop myself up against the pillows while she gets my tea, and the next thing I know it’s almost morning.

I’m still in my clothes, and everything is completely silent and dark – apart from the hush-shush of the ocean, somewhere off in the distance, and the first fingers of dawn creeping in under the makeshift curtains she’s put up.

It’s just a multi-coloured blanket, really. A shawl, like the ones she’s using on her bed and over the back of her couch. They’re everywhere, these rough little squares of material, and they give the place a wonderful feel. They turn the light from the window into a kaleidoscope of colour – but it’s more than that.

It’s more than the prettiness and the earthiness of her place. It’s how
lived
in
it seems. She’s been here for a thousand years. She grew up from the ground and claimed it for her own, and I love it for that reason.

I love it for many reasons. There’s something intoxicating about walking out into the living room to find the balcony doors open – no hermetically sealed wall of glass here. I step out into the dawn light and the ocean is right there, separated from me by nothing more than scrubland and a doable jump down. Its smell, its taste … I don’t have to imagine it.

And no one could ignore it. The whole thing has my attention so firmly I don’t even notice Lucy sitting there, until she speaks.

‘Had enough not resting?’ she asks, and I jerk and turn too violently. I’m on edge, I think – to the point where she’s suddenly the villain waiting for the heroine in a place she doesn’t expect. I’m actually imagining her stroking an evil cat.

But I don’t know why.

Because I don’t want her to ask?

Maybe, maybe.

Because I don’t want to say?

Almost definitely. Saying is sticky and difficult, and there’s that feeling creeping through my body again – the one that says I was a fool to let such a little thing bother me. The moment I explain she’ll laugh, and tell me to knock it off, and I’ll have to face the fact that I’ve blown the best thing that ever happened to me because of a little concern about my sense of self.

‘Earth to Alissa.’

‘Oh … yeah. Yeah, I feel much better now, thanks.’

‘You sure, babe?’

‘Definitely.’

‘So you just travelled hundreds of miles, with holiday time I know you don’t have, because you fancied getting a tan.’

‘I
had
holiday time,’ I say, and am actually quite proud of myself for taking the conversation in another direction. Now she’s busy asking me about that, instead of anything dangerous. ‘You did?’ she says, and then I tell her yes and she’s all ‘Well, I guess Henderson must have softened.’

At which point I realise I haven’t deflected her at all.

I’ve just brought her around to something even worse.

‘Come on. What really happened?’ she asks, followed quickly by the
something even worse
. She slaps the arm of her recliner and jerks towards me as she delivers
this
little doozy: ‘If you tell me you’re having an affair with him I will
kill
you, I will just
kill
you. He scratches his balls and then sniffs his fingers, Lissa.’

‘He … what? Wait … what?’

‘Are you sleeping with him?’ she asks again, only this time she speaks each word in this robotic tone so as to be extra, extra clear.

Not that I need her extra clearness in regard to this particular concept. No, I’m all set on that. I’m not as set on
this
, however:

‘I was hoping you’d explain the ball-sniffing, more than anything.’

She waves a hand in response. As though ball-sniffing is so commonplace it barely needs commenting on. Apparently I’m surrounded by men who are secretly doing this gross thing, and she’s just let me go on in ignorance. Oh, the amount of times I’ve shaken his hand! And that guy at the charity thing with no chin – I shook his hand too. He almost definitely scratches his balls and sniffs his fingers, if not something way worse. Maybe he really rummages around down there, underneath the underwear.

Either way, I don’t think she’s right to say:

‘It’s not a big deal.’

‘It
isn’t
?’

‘Absolutely not. Unless you
are
sleeping with him, in which case it’s such a big deal it’s kind of blowing my mind.’

‘I’m not sleeping with Mr Henderson,’ I say, as I take the recliner next to hers. It’s cold and vaguely damp from the misty morning air, but I barely register it. I’m all in with this conversation now, and nothing else matters.

Not even a moist backside.

‘In fact, I’m kind of offended that you could think so.’

‘Well, you’re leaving me very few guessing options. You suddenly want to come out here, you’re being all mysterious, you’re barely even trying to hide your tears behind that strain-face you do … none of that is like you.’

I glance away at the ocean, searching for something that isn’t there.

Myself, maybe.

‘Then what
is
me?’

‘Movie Friday nights and failed relationships.’

‘That sounds
terrible
.’

‘It’s not so bad. The former is fun and you’re usually much more excited about the latter.’

‘Excited?’ I ask, and though I try to stop my voice squeaking with incredulity, I definitely fail. I sound like Mickey Mouse on helium.

‘Sure. You hate being in relationships. You can’t wait to escape and once you have you feign sadness for five minutes before rolling right back into your safe little life.’

‘That’s … that’s quite an assessment.’

‘A cruel assessment?’

‘Maybe a little,’ I say, but what I really mean is
a lot
. I can’t tell her that, however. If I do I’ll have to explain how close it is to the bone. I’ll have to talk about Janos and running away, when just thinking about it is making me hyperventilate.

Do I really have such an obvious pattern? I try to think back, but all I can make out as far as the eye can see is an endless stream of assholes and idiots, most of whom deserved relief after being discarded. There was Mick who stole from me and Derek with his penchant for prostitutes and Paul with constant passive-aggressive gaslighting. I remember him saying, once: ‘No, I didn’t say you were fat, babe. I said, wouldn’t it be great if you could fit into a size eight?’

I can’t be blamed for running away from these men.

But it’s possible I can be blamed for running away from Janos. He didn’t steal, or make me feel bad about my body shape. I’m not even sure if I can describe what he
did
do.

So, instead, more deflection.

‘And anyway, you’ve got room to talk. What exactly are you doing here, in the middle of some Mediterranean nowhere? You know, I thought you’d gotten involved with some underworld criminal,’ I say, and I swear I do it in all seriousness. For a while those were my real and honest thoughts, but in response to them she just cackles.

‘Criminal
underworld
?’ she asks, then again on an increasing scale of incredulity. ‘I just wanted to relax in the sun, Lissa. Nothing bad happened.’

‘Well, I can probably see that now,’ I say, but my tone is too sullen and too whiny. I have to haul it all the way back before I can deliver my trump card: ‘But come on – I find out you’re going to these secret rendezvous, and the next thing I know you’re gone. What was I supposed to think?’

She gives me a look I recognise only too well – her sly
I’ve got you now
look. Her little pink mouth purses and her eyes gleam in a way that reminds me too much of Janos, before she sing-songs her point.

‘So you unearthed my diary.’

I flush red and fumble around for a second.

‘It’s not like I had to unearth it,’ I say, and her smile broadens.

‘No, I guess that’s fair enough. I didn’t exactly hide it.’

‘You wanted me to find it, didn’t you?’

‘I might have done.’

‘And now you’re torturing me.’

‘A tiny bit.’

‘It wasn’t Mr Henderson, you know.’

‘That’s starting to occur to me.’

‘It was someone I met … someone I met …’ I start, but I can’t finish the job. There’s this big chunk of oxygen caught in the back of my throat, and the more she leans forward – partly disbelieving, partly enthralled by something stupid old me is about to say – the harder it gets to say it.

So it’s lucky, really, that she says it for me.

‘Oh, my God. It’s someone you met through an assignation.’

‘It’s … possible that’s the case.’

This time she doesn’t just slap the arm of her chair. She yells aloud the words ‘Shut’ and ‘up’
,
and almost gets to her feet. I have the overwhelming impression that she’s going to applaud – or wants to. I don’t know why, but she definitely wants to.

‘You mean you actually
went on one
, and shagged some guy, and then things
got serious
? Is that honestly what you’re saying to me right now?’

‘I want it to be, but I’m kind of frightened by your shock.’

She throws back her head and laughs, but it doesn’t sting as much as it should. Mainly because she mitigates it with the sweetest gesture ever – a kind of squeezing of my upper arm, and a little shake, and these soft words that almost make me tear up.

‘You have no idea how cool you can be, my good friend,’ she says, and suddenly there’s all this pricking going on behind my eyes. I guess I just didn’t realise how much I’d missed her. And I especially didn’t realise that she might have missed me. That I am important to her, or interesting to her, or cool – even though I’m always sure I can’t possibly be.

‘It wasn’t really all that amazing.’

‘No?’

‘I hid the first time I went,’ I say, and she laughs again. God, she’s so sunny when she laughs. It’s like the dawn breaking over my dark little melodrama.

‘That’s so you.’

‘I thought I was searching for you – and I kind of was. But then later I realised …’

‘You actually wanted to see what happened,’ she finishes for me, nodding in this knowing way. ‘That’s so you, too.’

‘It is?’

‘Oh, sure. You pretend to yourself that you don’t really want something all the time. In fact, I think you once said to me that it’s better not to hope for stuff, because then you can’t be crushingly disappointed when it doesn’t happen.’

I blanch, but I can’t deny it.

‘That does sound like me.’

‘Is that what you did here? Blew something off before you could start hoping?’

I think her words turn me to stone. There’s really no other explanation for the way I freeze in position, mouth pinched and eyes just ever so slightly wide. I’d say it was some sort of reaction to the truth, but it can’t be, it isn’t, that’s not why I did this.

Even if it probably
is
why I did this.

‘It wasn’t … really like that.’

‘So what was it like?’

‘I don’t know. I thought it would just be some exciting sex. And it was, but then …’

For once, it’s her on the edge of her seat and me telling the gripping tale. She’s really leaning forward now, but of course the problem is – I just want her to lean back. There’s a reason why it’s usually the other way around, and it’s mostly because I don’t know how to do this. I’m not good at the details, like her. I’m not good at framing the whole thing and getting right to the heart of it.

Though I suspect part of this is that I don’t
want
to get to the heart of it. I’m not even sure how to describe the exciting sex part, if I’m honest. She gets this look on her face when I say those words – half-intrigued, half-disbelieving – and it’s rather intimidating.

Maybe it won’t sound real, I think.

Because it doesn’t sound real to me.

‘We started … meeting regularly, I guess.’

‘You met one of the assignations regularly?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Like, more than once.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘And you know how rare that is, right?’

‘I’ve been told.’

‘But it happened anyway,’ she says, and now I’m sweating.

‘I swear I’m not making this up,’ I fumble out, but she doesn’t narrow her eyes or anything. She just pats my hand, and says more soothing things.

‘Hon, I know you’re not. It’s obvious you’re not. This is just me, marvelling. I went to three of those things, and each time it was a different guy, and uniformly they were all as cold as ice. If I’d suggested meeting for a second time I’m pretty sure they would have asked why I was speaking in another language. It’s just not that kind of deal.’

‘So … what made you go?’

She laughs.

‘For the same reasons they did. I wanted to have fun. I wanted to be involved in something sexy and exciting – so did you! Everyone wants that, sometimes.’

‘Then what made you stop?’

‘I wanted a different kind of sexy and exciting. Which I guess is true of you too.’ She leans back in her chair and gives me this long, considering look before continuing. ‘Now you’re in this deep, huh?’

‘I guess you could say that.’

‘What’s up? He push for too much?’

I know it’s possible that she means the right kind of pushing – the one I actually felt from him. But instinct tells me she means another kind of pushing altogether. She’s still thinking in terms of the assignations, and all the kinky things he could have possibly asked me to do. In her head she’s got him dressed up a gimp suit, and me running around naked at some sex party.