The Cupid Effect (7 page)

‘Complicated is it?' I prompted.

‘No. Not really. It's quite uncomplicated. I love her, she doesn't know I'm alive.'

Your typical stalker scenario, then.

‘She's doing a drama MA at The Met too. Her name's Robyn. You might've seen her. She's been on telly and stuff, she's so beautiful.'

Definitely your typical stalker scenario, then.

‘But it's more than that. She's so funny. I've spoken to her, I've spoken to her loads. She's almost a friend. She's really nice, and clever, and interesting a—'

‘You really don't have to justify your feeling for her to me. You like her, that's all that matters,' I interjected before he ran out of adjectives. For an English student his vocabulary was distinctly third rate.

Ed's whole persona relaxed. ‘Most people I tell think she's just wank material cos she's so beautiful.'

‘I believe you like her. But, can I just say, even if she was just wank material, that's OK too. Some of my best relationships have been based solely on physical attraction. That's how these things happen sometimes. Not that your thing with, er,'
shite, what was her name, what was her name
, ‘Robyn! is like that.'

Ed, who now he'd unburdened his soul obviously felt more at ease with me and in my room, rested back on his elbows, turned his head upwards and stared wistfully at the ceiling. ‘She's perfect.'

I wanted to say that no one is perfect; to label someone as perfect was to set yourself up for disappointment when the one fatal flaw in their character that proves them to be imperfect makes an appearance. One look at Ed's face was enough to tell me he didn't want to hear that. Most people didn't want to hear it. They'd much rather get their expectations up, then have them dashed.

‘She reminds me of this line from a song, “I feel so lucky loving her, tell me what else is magic for?”.'

He was quoting Robert Palmer. Ed, heavy metal Ed, was quoting Robert Palmer. I'd underestimated his feelings for this woman. No one reached for Robert Palmer lyrics unless they were more than knee-deep in the mire of love.

Without warning, my heart started to race. Really pound, hammering and hammering against my rib cage. The sound filled my ears and made me quiver slightly. This was what Ed was feeling for this Robyn one. The emotions he felt ran deep, that was obvious. Robert Palmer had been the first clue to how he was feeling. How he looked now, the expression on his face, was the next clue.

Beyond his limited vocabulary flowed unfathomable seas of emotion. She made him smile, inside and out. He wanted to make her laugh, he often thought of something and wanted to call her to tell her about it. Sometimes he'd lie on his bed, replaying their conversations, enjoying the fact that he'd spent time with her, not knowing that hours had passed while he lay there. She made his heart beat faster by just entering the room.

And his lust. She wasn't just wank material but . . .

Every cell in my body pulsated with his passion. I was suddenly, inexplicably turned on. I hadn't felt like this in a long time. Not even when I'd last had sex, it wasn't like this. Every part of me burnt with lust. A cold shower wasn't going to cure this. How Ed got through the day with all this pumping through him I didn't know. Watching
Angel
now would be a bad idea – I'd probably end up dry-humping the TV screen.

If anything, Ed was understating his feelings. Maybe he just didn't have the right words to explain how much he felt. Well, with me he didn't need to. Sitting next to him told me how he felt.

‘So, she doesn't know you're alive, what are you going to do about it?' I asked.

Ed froze for a few seconds, then his head creaked around to face me. ‘Do?!' He'd screwed up his face. ‘
Do?!
'

‘Are you going to ask her out?'

‘Don't think so,' he scoffed.

‘Why not?'

‘Erm, possibly because she goes out with actors and businessmen, she even went out with a duke once. Those are the kind of men she goes out with – famous, important men, not people like me.'

My legs ached from sitting cross-legged. I prised my lower limbs apart, stood up a little shakily because they weren't used to being contorted like that and shook them out to get the blood circulating again. ‘How do you know she doesn't go out with people like you if you've never asked her out?' I asked Ed.

‘I just do,' he said with the conviction of a man who knew someone was totally out of his league.

‘What if she doesn't go out with people
like
you but actually goes out
with
you.'

‘She wouldn't.'

Seeing as I was in love with someone who happened to be a 250-year-old vampire that lived only in my telly, I didn't think of anyone as out of my league, so didn't see why Ed, when he knew this person, should think like that. I mean, if I knew I was going to end up with said vampire, then why shouldn't he at least ask this woman out?

‘There's this expression us old folk use,' I said, staring at Ed. ‘It goes something like, “Faint heart never won fair lady”. Be a coward about this and you'll be dreaming about you and her until you read about her wedding in
Hello
. Besides, the worst that can happen is she'll say no.'

‘No, the worst that can happen is that she laughs in my face, tells me to piss off then emails all her friends and they laugh at me too. Or she could publish my picture on the Internet with a transcript of our conversation, so the whole world will laugh at me,' Ed replied.

‘Or she could say yes and turn out to be a total cow, which'll mean all this time you've loved her from afar has been wasted on some silly bint. That's the worst that can happen.'

‘No, the laughing thing is definitely the worst.'

He had a point. I took my seat back in the bed, covered myself with the duvet again. ‘I know how you feel.'

Ed smirked. I'm sure he thought I had no idea what love of the unrequited sort was all about. He'd be surprised. My unreturned affections hadn't been exclusively aimed at fictional TV characters.

‘No, really I do,' I reassured Ed. ‘I spent over nine years in love with someone and, it's a long, loooonnnnggg story, but the short of it is, I'm between relationships. And, sometimes, I mentally kick myself when I talk to him. Or he leaves messages with my new flatmate.'

‘Ohhhh . . . Drew! He's Drew?'

‘Yes. He's Drew.'

Drew and I had been in the same psychology classes and I'd had a major thing about him since we were assigned to work together on a project in first year. We'd become friends after that assignment, but despite us being very close friends, I'd never really known how he felt about me. On the one hand, we'd spend hours on the phone often talking about sex (some of our conversations were so pornographic they bordered on phone sex), we'd sit too close, hug for too long, stare too much. He'd often turn up at the house I shared with three other people with a six-pack of beer and a video and we'd cuddle up in my bedroom and watch it. On the other hand, nothing happened.
Ever
. Not during college, not after college. I sometimes got the feeling that he was thinking about kissing me, thinking about taking our relationship to the next level, particularly when we were lying on my bed watching something he'd taped, but it was all just think with him. He never
did
anything. I did consider kissing him, of course, but I was never sure how it'd be received. You see, if there was one thing I'd learnt about men, it was that if they liked you enough, nothing, except possibly an act of God – and even then it was a close-run thing – would stop them making a move. So, why did Drew never just lean down and cover my lips with his, even when his arms were holding me close to his chest? Because he didn't like me enough, was the short answer.

Still, even though I knew this, even though I had this short answer, I was confident that would change over time. He went out with other people, I'd see other people but none of those relationships ever lasted. Because the two of us were going to end up together, weren't we? When we were single, we'd flirt till it hurt, all preparation for us getting together, I thought.

Three years ago, he met his girlfriend, Tara. Met her, then rang me up in a tizzy saying, ‘Ceri, it's happened, I've met her. I've met the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I've met
The One
.'

I'd always listened with interest when he'd met other women. It was the kind of interest that came from knowing it'd never last because, well, they weren't me. He and I were meant to be. It was written in the stars, in the Domesday Book, practically anywhere you looked it said ‘Drew & Ceri 4 ever'. This time had been different. I could hear it in his voice. The excitement and joy and shock that he'd met his ideal woman. He was in love. After two hours, he was in love. She was, indeed, The One. And she wasn't me. Or like me in any way. (Whashisface Tosspot asked me to move in with him about six hours after I got that call from Drew. By all rights, I should've taken to my bed with a bottle of wine and a box of tissues, instead, I'd gone to meet Whashisface Tosspot. Maybe I'd suddenly realised that now my long-term plan for happiness was heading off into the sunset with someone else and I needed a back-up plan, a sunset companion of my own, Whashisface Tosspot became it. It could've been that, but personally, I favour the Jedi Mind Trick/Work Of The Devil explanation.)

I'll never forget the sudden horror that rushed through me when I heard Drew's words. It'd hit me, right then, that we weren't eventually going to end up together. That maybe, if I'd told him earlier how I felt, things would've turned out different. I didn't want that for Ed. Or for anyone. ‘What if' was no way to live your life. ‘Always regret the things you did do, never the things you didn't,' someone once said. They weren't wrong.

‘I'll tell you Ed, nine years of unrequited love that results in nothing more than friendship hurts, quite a lot. Hate to see you waste your twenties like I did, mate. Ask her out and if she says no, at least you'll know. You can find someone else to lust, I mean, love.'

Ed was silent for a very long time, he pursed his lips slightly and his eyes clouded over, he was thinking very hard by the face on him. My eyes strayed back to the TV screen and to the gorgeous but silent David Boreanaz. I jumped guiltily when Ed rejoined me in the land of the speaking.

‘You really think I should ask her out?'

‘I do,' I replied. ‘I would. But only because I know now that the one thing more painful than rejection is looking at yourself day after day and wondering “What if”. There's this line in
Strictly Ballroom
that I remind myself of whenever I start to chicken out of stuff. It goes, “A life lived in fear is a life half-lived”. And, let's be honest, who wants to live half a life when you can have a whole life? That's like eating half a chocolate bar when you're hungry enough for a whole one and you've got a whole one in your hand.'

‘All right, all right, all right,' Ed mumbled, nodding slowly.

‘Anyway Ed, I've got to watch
Angel
now, but feel free to stay.'

Ed smiled at me wryly. ‘Is that OK?'

‘Course. But no talking.'

‘Are you sure you don't want to enjoy it, you know, alone.' Ed waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

I grabbed a pillow and thwacked him with it. ‘Listen you cheeky
get
, you ask out actress woman then you can take the mick out of me and how I run my love life, all right?'

Ed grinned, accepted my proffered can of beer and lay back on my bed.

Bless you, but you still need a wash and blow-dry.

What if ?

I asked myself that a lot. A lot. I still, for example, thought: What if I'd taken English lit A-level instead of politics A-level? Would I be the politically-minded journalist I'd become before I ran away to Leeds? Or would I be someone else? Would I have become interested in Psychology or have done an English degree? And what if I'd done an English degree, would I have met Jess? What if I'd never met Jess . . .

Thinking ‘What if' always made me homesick. And after talking to Ed, I started feeling homesick. Not for London, I had nothing to be homesick about in London. My parents, my sister, my brothers, their various families, a few friends were there. I'd left them behind, but since I didn't live with any of them, I didn't miss them. In fact, I'd probably start to see them more now I didn't live within an hour's journey of them. Two hundred miles apart was probably exactly what I needed to inspire me to see my family more often. No, I was starting to feel homesick for my time in college. To see all the people I'd gone to college with. Pastsick, really.

After Ed gave up on
Angel
and went off to bed (or to play heavy metal quietly), I got my photo albums out and lay on my bed looking through them. Pictures of my room in halls, pictures of the living room in my last student house, three streets over from where I was now. In that pic, I'm stood by the stone fireplace, wearing my floor-length blue velvet, long-sleeved ball dress. Specially bought – at a bargainous £10 in Oasis – for my graduation ball.

I flicked on a few pages and there was a picture of me and Drew at the graduation ball, a few hours later. Him in his smart black tuxedo, black bow tie, his razor-cut blond hair and cheekbones making him look rather effete. I was
so
in love with him when that picture was taken. At least I thought I was in love with him. That fierce, all consuming love hadn't changed until, what, three years ago. Like I said to Ed, I spent most of my twenties in love with a man who didn't even know I was alive. We had our heads close together, in the picture, my jet black bob almost touching what was left of his blond hair, our faces glistening with sweat because we'd spent half the night dancing and we were both flashing 100 watt smiles at the camera. Drew's arm was slung casually around my shoulders. I knew exactly what I would've been feeling – quivery and giggly, thinking, ‘Oh, GOD! Drew's touching me in front of a camera! It's a sign! He does love me really. Tonight could be the night.' I stroked my fingers across the plastic covering the photo, as I got another pang of pastsickness. Awww, young Drew, young Ceri. So bloody stupid. We didn't even get less stupid the older we got. Well, I didn't.