The Lonely Fajita

by Abigail Mann

  ‘Six months.’

  ‘Exactly! That’s no time at all! You’re still shagging a couple of times a day at that point. Elissa, this relationship isn’t something happening to you that you have no control over.’

  She’s right. She’s completely right. And I think that’s why I start bawling. Proper sobs that come right from the pit of my stomach. Suki takes the beer out of my hand and shuffles forward to hug me, which only makes me cry more.

  ‘I’m really sorry, Elissa! Honestly, I didn’t mean to make you upset! I’m a fucking idiot, I always put my foot in it.’ The sharp little bristles of Suki’s scalp rub against my cheekbone.

  I draw a finger along my lash line, which is an old habit first taught to me by my mum. Apart from the really important stuff, like how to dab your eyes demurely in a toilet cubicle to stop your mascara from smearing, most maternal duties were delegated to my nanny.

  ‘It’s fine, it’s fine,’ I say to Suki, who looks unconvinced. ‘Really. You’re right. It’s been niggling at the back of my mind for a while, I think. I don’t know if that’s why I’m being all sad and useless at the moment. I think I’m … I think I’m just feeling a bit sorry for myself. When he comes back from Vegas, we can properly talk about it.’ Oh God, that sounds so much lamer coming out of my mouth than I imagined.

  ‘You do what you need to do, babe. This Snatch night has come at the perfect time! I’ve never left a Snatch night feeling anything other than fucking elated. You might come out with a UTI you didn’t go in with, but that’s nothing a bit of cranberry juice can’t fix.’

  ‘You make it sound so sexy.’ I smile.

  ‘There you go! There she is!’ Suki smacks me on the arm, a little too hard, and thrusts my beer back into my hand.

  ‘Do you want to hear about the next instalment in my lame life?’ I say.

  ‘Hit me.’

  ‘There’s a very slim chance I’m moving in with a pensioner in Hampstead.’

  ‘For real?’

  I tell her about Annie, the strange retirement cottages, the porter, and Craig the creepy warden.

  ‘He sounds like an Operation Yewtree in waiting.’

  ‘That’s what I thought!’

  ‘Men are trash.’ Suki swigs her beer, pausing to burp over her shoulder. ‘And it’s no rent?’ she says, wistfully.

  ‘Nope.’ I yawn and rub my eyes. ‘Well, only a contribution towards the bills, but that shouldn’t be too much. I’m not gonna do it, though.’

  ‘Er, are you serious? Definitely do it! Annie sounds like a right laugh! It’s a BBC Three sitcom waiting to happen!’ Suki says excitedly. ‘It can’t be worse than living with boys and their gross pubes.’

  ‘How would you know?’

  ‘I just do. It’s something you hear about. Boys leave pubes everywhere. It’s a thing. Unless this Annie was a hippie in the 70s. She might leave gross grey pubes everywhere.’

  ‘Please can we stop talking about the pubes of my maybe future housemate?’

  ‘Do you want me to tell you about Jazz’s instead?’

  ‘No! No pubes talk!’

  Suki stands behind the sofa and I hear the rattling of bottles.

  ‘We may as well get started now. Fancy a Suki special?’

  ‘As long as it’s nothing sexual.’

  ‘It’s a cocktail! Which could be sexual, depending on your inclinations.’

  She waves a bottle at me. Inside, gold flecks catch the light, suspended in a clear liquid. ‘Mama’s got her party juice in.’

  Chapter 11

  I wake up the next morning (just, it’s 11.42 a.m.) and feel weirdly bright-eyed considering the time it was when I got in. My feet and shins throb from dancing and I’m desperate for a wee, probably from the huge bottle of water Maggie made me drink in the taxi on the way home. She turned up at Snatch about half an hour after we got there, with Martin trundling behind looking decidedly meek, an excessive amount of eyeliner smeared around his eyes. He’d taken her tongue-in-cheek suggestion of ‘blending in’ far too literally, giving him a Jack Sparrow look without the confident swagger.

  What happened afterwards is a blur, but I do remember a largely empty dance floor filled with liquid smoke and disco lights that were just sparse enough to flatter the sweaty, gyrating attendees. My fitness tracker says that I burnt 503 calories, so I’ll take that as a win. I was drunk in a way that I remember being as a teenager, when music sounds like it’s coming from inside your own chest.

  Suki’s ‘party juice’ turned out to be a lot of vodka, pineapple juice, and a slug of honey that she poured into a pint glass, garnished with a satsuma wedge and garish peacock straw complete with concertina tail. Thankfully, we had our first drink so early that I didn’t spend any money on drinks at Snatch. That, and the promoter let me in for free because Suki roused the queue into a half-hearted rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ that was so sluggish and depressing, I was taken pity on and waved inside.

  The rest of the morning passes in a comfortable blur of period dramas in bed (a 1980s version of Mansfield Park this time) and frequent cups of tea. Predictably, as soon as she gets home, Shamaya notices that the heating has been on outside of our allocated allowance (apparently she could feel warmth in the walls). For the next few days I try and stay under Shamaya’s radar by keeping to my room, only sneaking out to heat up a ready meal every now and then.

  By 10.30 a.m. on Wednesday, I have approximately zero ideas for the meeting everyone is now calling ‘The Big Pitch’. I suggested ‘The Great Dating Pitch Off’, but I guess I read the room incorrectly, because no one thought it was a good idea and Bismah gave me a withering smile that made me feel a bit stupid. I’ve tried drawing a spider diagram to help with ideas, mainly because I saw Adam do it first, except his was on a big roll of brown paper spread over an entire table, and mine covers a Post-it note. I feel this adequately represents our varying degrees of confidence.

  I have no idea how Mitchell thinks this is going to work. Bismah, who has been here the longest, told me that in the early days, Mitchell used to change his mind about what kind of app he was developing all the time. Just before Lovr was born, we joined the ‘matching market’ and linked users with niche hobbies (like 1930s steam trains and Catalonian stamps from the Civil War era), which turned into a haven for weirdos with dodgy fetishes. According to Rachael on the front desk (who hears all the really good gossip because she has a trustworthy face and sympathetic voice), Lovr came about after Mitchell’s wife left him for a long-standing business partner who made his fortune selling water in recyclable tin cans.

  I tap my pen on the table and think. What do people want from a dating app? Options, right? Whilst filtering out the arseholes? But then again, if your first date was a good enough experience, would it matter if they moaned about their ex’s poor music taste over a plate of dough balls?

  I spend far too long watching the screensaver on my computer screen bounce from corner to corner before admitting defeat. I decide to let my ideas ‘percolate’ over an intense game of competitive Tetris with Hans from Rotterdam. Just as I’m about to swipe victory from under his nose, my phone buzzes. I jump in my chair, knocking my phone to the floor, but manage to accept the call just before it clicks onto voicemail, by lunging under the desk.

  ‘Hang on, one second,’ I whisper into the mouthpiece, which makes me feel like I’m orchestrating an espionage. Everyone is highly strung at the moment and Mitchell has been especially volatile. Yesterday morning he gave us all little nods as he marched through the room towards his office, which wasn’t so odd except for the huge stack of A-level business textbooks he was trying to conceal under his arm.

  I slide the courtyard door open and put the phone to my ear.

  ‘Hi, sorry. Just had to go somewhere I could talk.’

  ‘Elissa! It’s Alina!’

  ‘Alina! Hi!’

  ‘We’ve had some great news! Annie thinks you two really clicked and she’s happy to open her home to you as a compani
on. Exciting, eh?’

  Oh my God. My stomach contracts and I’m not sure how to place the feeling. The night out at Snatch had made the whole ‘granny roommate’ thing seem distant and detached, like it was a fun idea someone else had and I was playing along with it.

  Tom sent me a string of messages yesterday morning just as I got off the tube; a picture of him and the guys eating brunch, a WhatsApp saying that he missed me, and a short clip of a taught, lean stomach alternately flashing in pink and blue club lighting. When I looked closer, my name was written in lipstick just under the belly button of a woman whose face remained out of shot. It’s a strange way of saying it, but I guess it shows he’s missed me? Despite Suki’s chastisement of my weak-willed approach to Tom’s indifferent behaviour, I feel like it would be stupid of me to abandon our relationship. Deep, fiery, passionate romance is a farce anyway and makes me feel awkward. Unless it’s Poldark, of course, but that’s different.

  ‘Elissa, you there, hun?’

  ‘Yes! I’m here! Sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘I said Annie’s happy for you to move in whenever’s convenient for you, but there’s no rush. She isn’t one of our high-dependency clients, so as long you’re happy you can move in any time in the next month.’

  I’ve googled the legal framework of tenancy agreements, and I’m pretty sure that it’s not a big deal for Tom to leave and move elsewhere with me, especially if we find someone else to take the room, a problem Yaz has already solved for us. I’ve bookmarked the page to show him.

  ‘Look, I’m really sorry, but I think I’m going to have to pull out. I’ve had a … change of circumstances. I really appreciate what you’ve done so far, but—’

  ‘She doesn’t always make the best first impression, but she’ll grow on you.’

  ‘No! Nothing like that! It’s just to do with my boyfriend, honestly.’

  Alina barely disguises a sigh. On the line, I hear the weight of her fatigue. ‘You’re all right. These things happen. Bugger. Thought we’d solved our Annie problem. You sure you weren’t put off? Because you’re only obliged to offer fifteen hours a week in support.’

  I eventually convince Alina that Annie had nothing to do with my withdrawal, although with her sharp, brusque demeanour, I can imagine she’d slip salt in my tea by Easter.

  By the time I head home that evening, the awkwardness of the phone call makes way for something verging on a good mood. Mitchell and Rhea were out in meetings all day, the others ignored me to work on their pitches (allowing for an uninterrupted, two-hour YouTube binge) and Tom is back tonight. During the night, he messaged me a link to a beautiful beachside hut in Indonesia. Aside from a week gorge-walking in Wales, we haven’t been anywhere remotely verging on exotic, unless you count an alumni university sports tour of Leicester, which I don’t. Could this be him suggesting an actual holiday? The kind I’d need to buy mini shampoos and a neck pillow for?

  The prospect of Tom getting back from Las Vegas is both exciting and a little anxiety-inducing. But that’s normal. I don’t know what kind of mutant girlfriend I’d be if I didn’t feel slight trepidation at the thought of what happened in a place synonymous with lap dancing and poor life decisions.

  ***

  As I walk up to the house, I can see our bedroom light on behind the scraggly branches of a crab-apple tree, so Tom must be back. I’ve missed him. I have missed him, haven’t I? Yes, I’ve definitely missed him. I have enjoyed sleeping like a starfish in our three-quarter-size bed, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t missed him. I plod upstairs, avoiding the precarious stacks of leaflets and bills that line the communal staircase.

  ‘Hey, you’re home!’ I call down the hallway, wiggling round his bag that blocks most of the narrow corridor.

  ‘Yep, I’m in here.’ Ouch. His voice sounds like a cement mixer. Must have been a heavy week. I push our bedroom door open and find Tom hunched on the edge of the bed. Part of me wants to laugh; he looks like an anxious football manager, more so because he’s still got his ‘going out’ brogues on. I hover at the door, but when he doesn’t get up, I go to sit next to him, my initial excitement deflating like a punctured balloon. I rest my head on his shoulder and slip my arm through his.

  ‘Good stag? I want to know everything: who got a tattoo, where you put the tiger, how many times you said, “What happens in Vegas …”’ Tom smiles, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. Oh shit.

  ‘Yeah, yeah … it was good. Really good.’ He’s not looking at me. Why isn’t he looking at me? I feel like I’ve swallowed a scoop of crushed ice.

  ‘So, that place in Indonesia looks cool. We could—’

  ‘What place?’

  ‘The link you sent me earlier? The place in Kuta, I think it was?’

  ‘Ah, shit, yeah, that was meant for someone at work. Sorry.’ Well, that was an anticlimax. Of course, why would he want his actual girlfriend to go on holiday with him? How completely bonkers of me. Disappointment sits heavy on my shoulders and I’m irritated at the feeling.

  ‘Look—’

  Oh God. No good sentence starts with ‘look’.

  ‘You know I said I wanted to go travelling. But, like, really go travelling. For a proper period of time?’

  What is a ‘proper period of time’? A month? Three months? A year?

  ‘Mmmhmm,’ I hum. Of course, travel! A surefire way to delay making any grown-up decisions. I could easily jack in my internship. I’m not sure why we haven’t considered this before.

  ‘Well, I’ve decided I’m going to do it. It’s really exciting actually. Ben is moving out to Jakarta for work using this global hot-desking thing and I’m going to join him for a while.’ A while. Another decidedly vague measure of time.

  ‘Riiiiight.’ I’m quickly realising that these plans don’t involve me. He’s nodding now, a sort of bouncy nod with his lips sucked in. Well, it’s more of a grimace, really.

  ‘When are you thinking of going?’ I ask. A laugh creaks out of his throat but it’s too loud. Too loud for him, anyway. He doesn’t really laugh much.

  ‘Well, that’s the funny thing. There’s this project I’ve been given at work that doesn’t exactly require me to be in London. It’d be good if I was more mobile because there’s stakeholders over in the Far East that need a bit of coaxing and it’s always better to work on them face-to-face, so if I’m based there I can head up more of the client relationships, which is what I wanted to go into anyway, so this is a fast-track really …’ Tom lets his last few words trundle off with an upward intonation like he’s pulling together the thin strands of an explanation.

  The icy feeling moves from my stomach and rises up my throat, grating my words before they leave my mouth. I’m half hoping that I’ll cry, so that Tom has the visual cue he needs to start apologising, or to touch me, or to do anything that isn’t just sitting there spouting corporate buzzwords at me.

  It’s always been his backup, whenever we’ve talked about something awkward or difficult – the ‘benefits’, ‘trajectory’, ‘risk’, or ‘value’ of whatever it is he wants to do that requires me being out of the way.

  Tom jiggles his foot up and down, making my knee bounce awkwardly against the bed frame. ‘That’s not really telling me when you’re thinking of going,’ I say. Oh, he’s so uncomfortable. I know he’s uncomfortable because I can feel how his body is tightly wound next to mine and yet I really, really don’t care. I don’t want to beg him to think about it and I definitely don’t want to cry. I really want to cook some fucking ramen and eat it in bed with an episode of Gilmore Girls on my laptop. And for him to be somewhere else.

  ‘Well, next week, actually, I’ve sorted out a lot of the logistics with work and I can stay with Ben until I figure out my own place. I’ll be back and forth a fair amount. Work are paying for flights, so it frees me up a lot.’

  He rubs his thumb across the bone at the top of my spine and it makes me want to slide out from under his hand, off the bed, and through the floorboards in
to the convenience shop below. ‘So, you never intended to find another place with me? Last week, when I was trying to get my head around this stupid “I can’t break the lease” malarkey …?’ I’ve added a very immature, thick-sounding voice to imitate him. It’s not my finest hour.

  ‘Not exactly, but yeah, I had thought about it. Talked it over.’

  ‘With who, Yaz?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Ah, that makes sense.’ I say, my words sharp. ‘And where do I fit into all of this?’ Yes, Elissa – you can’t be more direct than that. Good girl.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Right.’ Oh.

  We sit in silence, listening to the muffled sound of Yaz singing Jamiroquai lyrics as they mingle with a pulsing beat that only serves to heighten the painful awkwardness between us. He wants me to give him a solution; to tell him that it would probably be best if we weren’t together; to tell him that it would be too hard to try and make it work in different time zones. But, I can’t do it. I won’t.

  I always thought that break-ups would be full of rage and shouting, with someone unquestionably in the wrong and the other begging for forgiveness, then a vase would be flung against the wall and smash and everyone would reflect on how this was a metaphor for their fragile relationship. But, there isn’t enough wall in this room to throw something against and the only thing Tom has ever bought me is a pair of bamboo chopsticks, which I like a lot, so I’d rather keep them intact.

  ‘I’m going to go and stay with Mum and Dad for the rest of the week and then I’ll head over on Monday morning to get my stuff. Look, I know this is awkward, El.’ Wow, understatement much. ‘But it means you’re free to stay in the room until the end of the month, so it gives you a bit of time, you know.’

  Time? Time for what? Oh God, the rent. I can’t afford rent by myself. Well, I can’t afford it with Tom, either, because of the dodgy conditions of my internship. This is how it’s worked since we moved here; Tom pays the whole of our rent, then I feel bad about it and use my lunch expenses to buy us dinner a couple of times a week. It’s the only reason I was able to take on the internship in the first place – his economics graduate salary was more than enough to cover both of us.