This does not make me feel better.
“That was a good night, right, girls?” says Jake as he drives us home, blissfully clueless about the silent drama going on in the back seat.
“You played great, babe!” says Freya, reaching over and resting a hand on his thigh.
“Thanks, yeah, it felt good, like everyone was really feeling it, y’know?” he says. “And Pig, I gotta say that was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen—the end of your set when you grabbed Kingston and knocked the stand down and…” He can’t finish the sentence because he’s actually laughing so hard. Jake. A boy who NEVER laughs. Laughing. So he does have a sense of humor. It’s just a mean one.
“Yeah,” I say, “that was the big ending I was going for.”
“Well, you’ve definitely got the big end, love,” he says.
“Jake!” says Freya, clearly enjoying seeing her boyfriend actually jovial for once but, to her credit, trying not to laugh along with him for my sake.
“What? She wants to be funny, ain’t that right, Pig?” says Jake.
“Yep,” I snap, “that’s exactly right. This is just what I want.”
“You know,” says Chloe, foolishly going against Kas’s advice to shut the hell up, “Leo said—”
“I don’t want to know what Leo said,” I bark at her. “I just wanna go home, OK?”
“Fine,” says Chloe in a huff.
And nobody talks again until we get back to mine.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
After Jake’s car has spewed me out onto the pavement, I ignore Kas’s awkward lip-sucking smile as she gets back into the car, then I yell a short, sharp goodbye to them all, storm up to my front door, and slam it behind me.
I go into the living room and Beige Beardo is sitting on our sofa, watching our TV. I’d managed to avoid him earlier and what with everything else had totally forgotten he was here.
Gee, thanks, universe for chucking this dungball at me after tonight’s already been a crock of crapola. Just what I need.
“Good night?” he asks, and I can’t help it. I start crying again.
“Hey, whoa, what is it?” he asks, alarmed and turning off the TV.
“Nothing,” I blub, collapsing onto the armchair with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. I should just go up to my bedroom. The last thing I want to do is cry in front of this moron. But I can’t seem to find the will to heave myself out of this chair now I’m in it.
The sofa over the other side of the room groans as he shifts around awkwardly on it to face me. “You okay? Do I need to call your mum?”
I take my hands away from my face, go to run my fingers through my hair, but of course Chloe’s cemented it into place with all the ruddy hairspray so I extract my fingers and throw myself against the back of the chair, trying hard as hell to sniff away the tears. “No, no, it’s fine, really, it’s nothing.”
“I think I should call her…” He starts patting down the sofa around him, looking for his phone.
“I said it’s nothing!” I shriek, at a pitch that definitely betrays the fact that it isn’t nothing.
“Okay, okay.” He raises his empty hands toward me. “So…do you wanna—talk about it or anything?” His voice goes weirdly high on “anything.” He clearly doesn’t know how to deal with this, though watching him flounder about awkwardly, trying to deal with this, is actually taking my mind off the crappy evening. A bit.
“No,” I sniffle, dropping my head back against the armchair and staring at the ceiling.
“Well, do you wanna watch TV or…play cards or something to take your mind off the ‘nothing’ that made you cry?”
I huff a sigh of frustration. Play cards? What a dork.
“Look, I’m not a little kid on a hospital ward. You can’t just get out the playdough and make everything go away, okay?” I snap.
Then I feel the tiniest bit bad about being pissy at him. I stick my head forward and for a moment look over at him and see only kind and hurt eyes looking back at me. I roll my eyes and let my head fall back again as I resume my ceiling-gazing. I know he’s only trying to make me feel better. And there’s something about him that’s strangely comforting. Oh God, am I actually starting to like him now? This evening’s going from bad to worse.
“Sorry,” I say.
“No, sure,” he says. Then I hear him tapping out a beat on his beige corduroy thighs, trying to disguise the awkward silence. He clears his throat. “So, er, your mum tells me you want to be a comedian? Sometimes she tells some of your jokes at work. They’re pretty funny,” he says, with a tentative chuckle. “Like, erm, what was that one? Oh yeah—‘Everyone’s talking about infections these days. They’ve totally gone viral.’”
He tells the joke all wrong, with the stress on the wrong words. But still, I don’t know if it’s because it’s kind of sweet that he remembered one of my jokes or whether it’s because the joke itself is a tiny bit funny, but either way I can’t help cracking a small smile. “Yeah, I remember that one. Mum always likes it when I give her medical jokes.”
But then the idea of writing jokes shoots my thoughts right back to the nightmare of this evening and I shudder at the memory.
“But no, I don’t wanna be a…comedian. Not any more,” I say.
“Oh,” he says. “Sorry to hear that.”
With every ounce of effort left in me, I sit forward and look at him, then I rest my elbow on the arm of the chair and let my head loll onto it. Truth is, I’m feeling so crappy my body’s finding it hard to find the will to hold itself properly upright. “Look, if you must know, we went to an open-mic night in a pub tonight.”
“Did you?” he beams. “That’s great!” And then he remembers my age. “Hang on, a pub? Haylah, I’m pretty sure your mum wouldn’t be cool with that. Also, weren’t you just meant to be at Chloe’s?”
“Calm down, Chewbacca. I didn’t drink or anything!” I snort, immediately regretting it as he aims those sad, understanding eyes in my direction again. This is all I need, a smattering of guilt on top of this evening’s already unbearable crap-cocktail of humiliation and defeat. “Please don’t tell her, and look, that’s not the point. The point is my so-called ‘friend’ made me get up onstage tonight, totally unplanned, and I tried to do the comedian thing, but…it was all a big fat disaster. I totally humiliated myself. Onstage. In front of everyone. Including some older kids. I don’t know how I’m going to show my face in school on Monday.”
Ruben looks genuinely sympathetic. “Oh, Haylah, that’s awful. I’m so sorry. But hey, you know, I hear most comedians epic fail onstage the first few times, right?”
I try to sail past his trying to be down-with-the-kids talk, but frankly it serves as a stark reminder that I’m talking to a total twazzock. Yet still I carry on talking to him. Possibly because I’m too upset to think clearly. I stare down at the carpet, “Maybe, but…this was different. There was—there was a guy there that I like and… Oh God, it’s awful!” and I sob some more.
The sofa he’s on groans as he shifts his weight, and for a moment I’m slightly panicky that he’s going to get up and come and give me a hug or something. I mean, surely we both know that the only way that gross-out scenario is ending up is with him in the back of an ambulance, right?
Luckily, he thinks better of it. “Oh, come on, don’t cry! Erm, look, if he’s a good guy, a little thing like this isn’t gonna put him off, is it?”
“It’s not a little thing, all right! If you haven’t noticed, nothing about me is little,” I spit. Honestly, I’m trying not to—but it’s like he wants me to go mental at him.
“No, no, I didn’t mean little. I’m just trying to make you feel better. I’m sorry.” He laughs. “I really want us to be friends, Haylah—and I’m doing a terrible job of it.”
And then, like a lightning bolt, I suddenly see his gentle, calm voice and kind and understanding words for the manipulative mind games that they are. Of course he wants me to like him. Because then I’ll
encourage Mum to like him, and then he’ll wheedle himself and his pet beard into our lives for good, changing everything, taking Mum’s love and attention away from us, until he abandons her and I have to clear up the mess he leaves behind.
And why am I even talking to this twit about stuff I haven’t even said to my mum? And how dare he come in here and tell me my living nightmare this evening is just a “little” thing—he knows nothing about me, about any of us.
The angry fire in my belly gives me a new energy, so I stand up, my hands on my hips. “Didn’t Mum say you could go when I get home?”
“Sure, but I don’t wanna leave you upset. I know she wouldn’t want that.”
And then, maybe because he’s just being so annoyingly nice, when all I really want to do is hate him, I see red. And I fire all the anger of this evening’s humiliation and disaster right into his furry face.
I gesticulate wildly, one finger pointing and the other firmly anchored to my hip. It’s an imitation of a well-worn stance of Mum’s when she’s angry, but it seems to work. He actually flinches as I yell at him.
“Well, how the hell do you know what she wants and doesn’t want? You don’t know her, you don’t know us, you don’t know what we went through with…Dad, with anything! Okay, Noah seems to like you. Well, NEWSFLASH! Noah also likes jamming crayons up his nose, doesn’t mean it’s good for him! And the longer you stay around, the harder it will be on him when you leave so, so why don’t you just move on to the next bored and lonely middle-aged single mum and leave us alone, yeah?”
My rant over, Ruben slumps forward, his elbows on his knees, looking down at the floor. He rubs his thumb against the back of his other hand and seems to be building up to something and, for a moment, I think he might stand up and slap me, which would be great because then I’d really have a reason to hate him. But instead he sighs, looks up at me, a sadness growing behind his eyes and red cheeks glowing behind his beard, and says, “Because I love her, okay?”
“What?” I say, my hands dropping from their strong Mum position down to my sides. I wasn’t expecting this. And part of me is thinking, How DARE he? He doesn’t know her, not like we do—he can’t love her the same, and another part is thinking, Oh God, they really are going to get married. Everything’s going to change. It’s going to be Dad all over again. This just stinks.
He takes another deep sigh.
“It’s true. I love your mum. Look, she doesn’t know it, so please don’t tell her, but…I’ve loved her for years. She’s funny and warm and clever and—”
“Yeah, all right, you’re actually making me heave a little bit now.”
“Okay, okay. We’ve been friends at work for a long time… But I didn’t ask her out because I knew what she’d been through, what you’ve all been through, with your dad leaving and everything, but now seemed like a good time, and I don’t know if she feels the same yet but—”
“She doesn’t. Okay?” I gabble.
What? Where did that come from?
Ruben looks bewildered and actually seems to deflate in front of me, like a punctured Ewok blimp. I feel a bit bad and also a bit panicky about what I’m going to say next as the words rise in me like a belch that can’t be swallowed down.
“She told me the other day she just thinks you’re a friend, and it’s all a bit awkward because she knows you like her more than that and she’d never love anyone else like she loves Dad, so…” I trail off.
I’ve gone too far and I know it. Ruben will see through this, see through the desperate yammering of someone who’s had a cack-pot of an evening. He’ll tell Mum what I said and then, oh God, then I’ll really be in trouble…
But instead he just says, “Right,” and looks back down at the floor. “Understood,” he says, nodding slowly.
“Sorry,” I say, still angry, but getting a small flash forward to the guilt I’m going to feel later. I push it away and look at the floor too.
“Okay, so I’d better leave now,” he says, getting up from the sofa, grabbing his coat, and avoiding eye contact with me as he passes.
Possibly because he’s crying.
“Yeah. I think you should leave. It’ll be best. For all of us,” I say softly.
He nods. And leaves.
I sit back down in the armchair. In silence. I can feel the itchiness of tears drying on my cheeks. I try to rally my emotions, keep them strong, keep them inside. I’ve done a good thing here. I mean how dare he try and be my friend? How dare he fall in love with my mother? Come here and throw his niceness around and expect to be made a part of the family?
I seethe.
I grit my teeth.
I cool down.
And then I feel terrible.
But I mean, I’m right, aren’t I? Better he leaves now than later? I’m just thinking of Mum and Noah. We’re better off staying as we are. No point in bringing in some new relationship that might just break us all again. After tonight, I don’t really think there’s any point in trying anything new.
It only ever ends in humiliation and disaster.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning I wake up late, but it only takes a second before the memories of the horrible night before start jabbing at my brain like skewers. I don’t want to come out from under my duvet. Possibly ever. Then—as usual—Noah bursts through my door and starts jumping on me.
“Haylah, Haylah!” he hollers.
“Ow! Noah, what is it?” I say, my arms flailing around in the air, trying to stop him or push him off.
“Ruben’s here!”
“Again? What? Why?” I say, prying my eyelids open.
I feel bad about dumping all that stuff on Ruben last night, and I know I shouldn’t have taken it out on him, but I still think telling him it’s going nowhere with Mum was the right thing to do. For her sake. For our sake.
But he’s back here again already so I guess he just ignored me. And probably told Mum what a cow I was.
“I think maybe we had so much fun last night Ruben’s come back to play with me again!” screeches Noah. I manage to push him off me and he jumps down to the floor, though unfortunately it doesn’t stop him from enthusiastically banging on about Ruben and embellishing his speech with energetic actions. “We played knights and dragons! He was a big dragon and then he was a princess and I had to save him from a castle!”
“A big bearded princess. Wow, I bet all the other knights were jealous,” I say, pulling the duvet back up to my ears.
“And we played ‘Spoon Balloon!’”
I roll onto my belly, burying my head in my pillow. “That’s not even a thing, Noah.”
“It is! You get a balloon—we got one out of the birfday box—you know, the one with all the candles and buntyling and—”
“Yeah, I know the birthday box…”
“And you hold a spoon and hit the balloon in the air.”
He hits me hard on the bum to illustrate his point.
“Ow. Sounds like quite a sport. I’m surprised they haven’t put that in the Olympics yet,” I say.
He climbs up on me again, sitting on my back, facing my feet. The weight makes breathing slightly challenging, but the pressure digging me further down into the mattress is strangely comforting. “Yeah, so he’s here again and Mum’s making tea and says she wants me and you to go to the corner store so we can buy a treat like a cake or a gingeybread man or Pop-Tarts or a sausage.”
“I doubt she wants me to buy a sausage to have with tea, Noah, but Pop-Tarts does actually sound good. Ugh. All right, I’ll get up.”
“I like sausages! Especially beef,” he says before raising his little fists into the air, thumping them down onto my bum and yelling, “Cowabunga!”
“Brilliant,” I wheeze. “Right, get lost so I can get dressed.”
And he jumps down and prances out of my room, singing, “Sausage time, sausage time, sausage time!” as he goes.
I pull on some comfort clothes, anything I can unearth from the piles of deb
ris on the floor that’s soft and baggy, which ends up being jogging bottoms that’ll never realistically be used to jog in and a smock-like T-shirt of Mum’s. I emerge from my room, my curled and hairsprayed hair from last night now clumped together and stuck to my cheeks, looking like a big brown octopus clinging to a pumpkin.
Ruben is sitting at the dining table, picking at his fingernails, while Mum makes a pot of tea.
I brace myself. I bet he’s at least told her about me going to a pub last night to get back at me for what I said to him, and I’m about to get a right rollocking.
“Oh, hi, love!” Mum says brightly. “Good night at Chloe’s?”
“Erm…yeah,” I say, shooting a questioning look at Ruben, but he doesn’t look up from his fingernails.
“Could you just pop to the store with Noah, darlin’, and get some Pop-Tarts or something?”
“Yep, Okay. Come on, Noah,” I say.
We walk up the road and around the corner to the local mini supermarket and pick up some flapjacks and Pop-Tarts—and a chocolate bar to keep us going on the way home, a sort of pre-breakfast snack. Noah insists on doing the self-service checkout which takes forever as he turns each item around in his little chubby hands first before finding the barcode and gently presenting it to the scanner, as if it might bite him if he doesn’t keep his palms flat and fingers together. An angry line builds up behind us.
“You’re not feeding a goat, Noah—if you just wave the thing in front of the scanner, it finds it for you!” I hiss through gritted teeth.
“I just like to help it out,” he says, resting his other hand on the carrier bag until the machine panics and tells everyone there’s an “unexpected item in the bagging area.”
Walking back to the house, chomping on our chocolate bars, even the chocolatey goodness fails to remove the memories of last night. Flashbacks of me trying to cuddle Leo’s dad while my arse destroys the stage in front of a howling audience, including Leo with his arms around Chloe, haunt me with every step.
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