This is a Love Story (25 page)

‘What, Chloe? For Pete’s sake, I don’t understand what’s going on here!’ I yelled. A skinny woman with her hair in a tight ponytail tutted and gave me daggers. This probably looked much worse than it sounded.

‘
You
want to know what’s going on?’ she raged, moving towards me now like an angry tiger, her finger pointed straight at me. Well, at least she had changed direction. I suddenly realised that she meant business and backed myself up against the wall.

We were attracting quite a lot of attention by now, so I tried to calm her down with frantic arm gestures. Her hair was matted with water and her plaits were sticking to her neck and cheeks, but she was still so beautiful. I wanted to pull her close to me and kiss her until she stopped being so angry, but I didn’t think that would work this time.

‘I’ll tell you what’s going on.’ She gritted her teeth again and pushed both of her hands against my chest. I could feel the cold of the tiles against my sopping wet back.

People were really staring now. A group of teenage boys found the sight of a soggy me cowering under my girlfriend’s grip very amusing. Tears were welling in her eyes and it dawned on me that this was really quite serious.

‘You, Nick, are in love with someone else.’ There was a loud sigh from the audience. It was like
Jerry Springer: The Underground
. ‘I’m sick of hearing about all the things you like to do together. I’m sick of being told where she is at any given time. I’m sick of hearing about her favourite colour, or her favourite flavour of ice cream. I don’t care about her dad and how ill he is, and I certainly don’t want to know about your fucking art exhibition. Got that?’

OK, this was quite nasty. An elderly woman covered her granddaughter’s ears.

Chloe was definitely slightly less attractive than usual right now.

A wave of anger swept over me but I had to stay calm. She was totally wrong. I was not in love with Sienna. Yes, all right, I had been, but not now. I grabbed hold of her hands and pulled her close to me despite the fury I was feeling. I just wanted to end this circus display, tell everyone to disappear and deal with this in private like we should have been doing in the first place.

At first she resisted as fat tears slid from her eyes, which were now so dark brown they scared me. The colour that I’d once adored now seemed so foreboding.

I could feel her body trembling as she gave in and let me hold her against my chest. She was genuinely very angry and I’d had no idea she felt like this.

‘Chloe, for God’s sake,’ I whispered into her ear, pulling a great handful of soaking curls away from her face and looking at the assembled crowd with a ‘sod off’ expression on my face. Some of them took the hint and scuttled back to their lives, which must have been immensely boring in comparison.

‘I don’t love Sienna like that, OK? But you have to understand how important she is as a friend.’ When I said the words I felt her shake against my chest as she started to cry even harder. But I had to be honest with her. ‘Chloe, please. There’s a real difference. If Sienna and I were interested in each other like that do you not think something would have happened by now? We’ve been friends for a very long time – you have to understand that, sweetheart. And if you can’t, then I’m not sure if we can . . . You know . . .’ I trailed off, not sure how I could finish a sentence like this.

But there it was. The big ultimatum. Basically, what it boiled down to was that my friendship with Sienna was more important than my relationship with Chloe. I should have phrased it differently. Now the words were out there I couldn’t take them back. I could tell I shouldn’t have said it.

In fact I definitely shouldn’t have, because the next thing she did hurt. It involved her hand and my face. A collision of the two that left a red mark on my cheek with five clearly visible fingers. I swear I heard clapping . . . Ouch.

And just like that, she was gone.

She really wasn’t that kind of woman – you know, someone who thumps men in public. She was a gorgeous, flirty, delicate little flower, who was occasionally feisty, but generally the sweetest thing you could ever be lucky enough to know.

That was the awakening, really; it dawned on me that this wasn’t really very fair on anyone. On her. On me. On Sienna. But I wasn’t really willing to change anything, either. I was fiercely protective of my friendship with Sienna. I had fought for it, against my true feelings, for years. I had battled so hard to suppress my feelings, and succeeded. I could never let her go.

I considered all this as the two remaining members of the audience stared at me in utter disgust, then turned away as I pressed my fingers to my throbbing face. They were teenage girls in hip-hop style streetwear with ponytails piled on the tops of their heads. They gave me the look of people who know everything when clearly they knew nothing really. Not compared to an adult who had dealt with several real-life relationships. That alone was deeply irritating.

I walked back to my car like a naughty dog, my wet tail between my legs and my ears thoroughly clipped. She had gone. I tried calling her several times, but her phone was off. I resented having to chase her around London when I had done nothing wrong. I hated the whole thing. She had no idea about the torment I had been through with Sienna.

Too angry to start driving, I locked my doors and lit an emergency cigarette from a packet rattling around with the service booklet in the glove compartment. The smoke seeped out through the tiny crack of the open passenger window.

My heart was thumping hard in my chest. There was only one person who could make me feel better right now and that was Sienna. I picked up my phone and held down the 2 button – she was on speed dial. The phone rang twice but I panicked and hung up. Calling her now would be totally inappropriate and I certainly couldn’t tell her about what had happened. I had kept all this arguing away from her. It would be too late to explain it all now.

I took more deep drags on my cigarette and exhaled hard, the nicotine rushing through my body, giving me that familiar buzz I craved so much in situations like these. That was when I remembered Ross telling me that night in Brixton how girls and guys couldn’t just be friends. But we’d managed it, hadn’t we? It’s not as if Sienna had feelings for me. Surely not? I knew she didn’t like me like that. And I had certainly pushed my feelings aside. No, that was nonsense.

Eventually, when my heart rate had slowed down a little, I drove home, taking deep gulps of air all the way. When I pulled up to my drive I saw the figure of a beautiful blonde girl on my doorstep. My beautiful blonde girl. Thank God.

I was so relieved she was there – now I would have a chance to talk to her properly. I got out of the car and walked towards her slowly, a little bit nervous after she’d hit me so hard. My skin was still stinging.

‘Nick . . . Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,’ she said, walking up to me and putting her hand up to my face. I winced as she touched my right cheek.

‘Shit, Nick. I can’t believe I did that.’ She began to tremble again, clearly startled by the strength of her reaction.

The next few hours we spent soul-searching over tea and chocolate biscuits in my kitchen. I gave her a towel and she mopped herself dry; I put the heating on and hoped we could sort this all out.

‘Just so I can understand, Nick. Can you tell me, from the beginning, how you met and how you’ve become so close? I’ve just never known a guy and a girl to be . . . well, such good friends,’ said Chloe, looking down at her feet resting on the wooden boards. Her socks were draped over the radiator. She had peeled off her soggy jeans and sat in a pair of my shorts. She looked much better in them than I did.

‘Please?’ she pleaded, raising her eyes in my direction again. She crossed her legs to get more comfortable.

My mind started to wind back to the day Sienna and I had first met. I probably shouldn’t tell Chloe that I’d fallen in love with Sienna from the first moment I saw her, over a copy of
Metro
,
just when I’d thought my life was crumbling around me. That it had felt a little like she’d been sent to rescue me. That I still believe to this day that she was . . .

No. I definitely shouldn’t mention that. ‘Well, OK. If you’re sure you’re interested,’ I said, pouring out two glasses of white wine to replace the tea. It was time to move on to the harder stuff now.

‘Well, I guess it all started about two and a half years ago. I’d been to Ibiza and had a week off sick afterwards. She’d started work a couple of weeks before, so we met for the first time at work when I got back from my time off.’ I paused. I cast my mind back to the moment those lift doors had opened, and how everything had seemed to go in slow motion. How I couldn’t believe my luck when I saw her sitting there.

‘Yeah, and then how did you become friends?’ she asked quickly, an expression of fascination on her delicate features.

‘A couple of weeks later Ant sent us both to a gaming fair in Florida – she went as a writer because Tom was off sick. Yes, that was it – I remember now.’ I leaned back in my chair as all the memories came flooding back. Flashes of her hair as we ran around the strip of bars; the lights, the drinks, the food . . . The piggyback attempt that saw us both graze our knees and laugh till we cried.

‘And what happened?’

‘Nothing, Chloe. But we did get on very well. She’s a good friend, probably my best friend now. And I have to be honest with you here, that’s just the way it is.’

She looked really disappointed, but I had to be brave about this. If she couldn’t cope with this friendship, she wasn’t the one for me.

Even though I was lying a little bit . . .

But it was my business. It was my business who I had loved in the past, not really anyone else’s.

‘So how did you end up going out together so often, and going to her dad’s for dinner and stuff?’ I think she was beginning to calm down now, but she still looked quite concerned. I offered her a cigarette and she pushed it between her lips and struck a match, the smell of sulphur filling the air.

‘Well, we became good friends when I went to drop something off for her and she wasn’t in, but her father was. She’d never told me he was ill, and he passed out on me. I thought he had died, Chloe – there were paramedics and everything. Then she got back and we had a tremendous row and it all kind of came out, all the stress, all the years she had cared for him, everything she’d been through . . .’

Chloe nodded her head in understanding. She was a good person, really, just a little wild sometimes. And it was that animal-like behaviour that had made her so exciting in the first place.

She looked relieved . . . almost. ‘And so you’re telling me that you’ve never come on to her and nothing like that has
ever
happened between you?’ She stared at me, her eyes piercing mine.

A silence filled my ears. My blood ran cold. A sudden flashback filled my brain of that strange, dark night when she’d held on to me for hours and I’d felt like the world was mine. Her body, her warmth – it was all so far away now. But the crash back down to earth had been one of the most painful experiences of my entire existence and I could still feel it, just like I could feel the bruise on my face.

‘Nothing has ever happened, Chloe.’ Telling her about
that
night wouldn’t make things better. Not for anyone.

Chloe fell quiet and ran her finger around the rim of her wine glass, trying to make it sing. She looked tired but her cheeks were still rosy.

‘I love you, Nick,’ she said softly. It was the first time she’d ever said it. My heart stopped and I felt the heat of fear and joy all at the same time.

It had been a while since she’d said that sentence: ‘Let’s take it slow.’ That one.

And I remembered exactly where we’d been on the beach that day in Brighton and how the wind had smelled. She’d had a banana milkshake and I’d had a chocolate one, and I’d been so glad she said it because it had meant I had time, more time to get my head straight.

Yet here I was, months later, sweating just like I always have done since the second she came into my life.

I couldn’t say it back. I didn’t feel it yet. But this wasn’t a bad thing because I knew I felt a lot. I had faith in that. I adored Chloe; I worshipped the ground she walked on, the way she left people spinning every time she waltzed out of a room, the way she kissed me. I was so close, but I just needed more time . . .

There are several things I could have said next that would have resulted in either another slap or me being single, or both. Such as: a) Really? b) Gosh, well, what can I say? Or worse still . . . c) Thanks. I am smarter than that, so I took option d), which was to walk over to her, kiss her on the lips and carry her upstairs.

For the first time all night, she laughed.

Eight

‘A little box I carry everywhere with me . . .’

Nick

The big day had arrived. My birthday. Thirty. That looming number I’d spent my twenties dreading and yearning for in equal measure.

Dreading because I’d had that ‘oh dear God, I only have a few years to become something really quite special’ feeling, and yearning for in case I woke up on the day and found I actually
was
something quite special.

The reality was, at first, nothing special at all.

I woke up at 8 a.m., which was a nice start. I was alive. It was a nice, sunny autumn day. I opened the window to let some air in; it was fresh and crisp and I loved it. A squirrel jumped gracefully onto a branch, almost within touching distance, before scuttling down the thick, rough bark. An elderly man was walking his dog on the street below, a broad grin on his face.

Chloe wasn’t in my bed. I remembered I had deliberately put her off in case I had some kind of panic attack and ended up breathing into a paper bag.

The first big observation was that all my limbs were working just fine. I didn’t have a sudden urge to convert my shed into a woodwork den and start recording the birds I saw in the garden on spreadsheets. So far, so good.