The Sight of You

by Holly Miller

  I’m staring myself down in the bathroom mirror, the porthole I smeared into the steam creeping closed already.

  I’ve been struggling to gather my breath, as if someone’s pulled a drawstring very tight around my lungs.

  I want to stop this, but I can’t. I don’t have it in me to fight it anymore. I like her too much.

  I lean over the sink, lower my head. The idea of Callie and me . . . It feels natural and inescapable. Like the first clear sky of spring. A sapling stretching tall from a forest floor.

  And that kiss . . . well, I’ve already relived it countless times in the space of mere minutes.

  But still I feel set adrift. Untethered and unsafe. I think again about the vow I made years ago to protect my heart and sanity.

  And what about her heart, her sanity?

  I look up, stare at what’s left of my reflection. And now here it comes. The reflex I’ve trained myself into, like compressing a brake in my brain. I think of how little she actually knows about me. Of what her face might do if I told her the full story.

  And yet . . . all the logic in the world still has to counteract that kiss. Which is why, when the buzzer goes as I’m getting dressed, I scramble for it.

  Because, despite everything, five minutes without Callie already feels like too long.

  I press the intercom. “Hi.”

  “Hey, babe.”

  My heart dives for cover. “Melissa?”

  She laughs. “Joel.”

  “What are you—”

  “You didn’t seriously forget?”

  A shiver passes through me. I rest my forehead against the intercom. Please, please let it not be her birthday.

  “Are you going to let me in? It’s pouring out here.”

  I shut my eyes. Do I really want to be that guy? “Sorry. Hang on.” I buzz her in, so at least I can explain.

  I haven’t seen her since Halloween nearly a month ago. I vaguely remember mention of her birthday as we began to kiss that evening, slipped into our familiar routine. There’s even a chance I might have murmured something about her coming over tonight. This is all my fault.

  I open my front door.

  “This is a wind-up, isn’t it?” Standing in the hallway, she flips back her hood. Loosens her coat. Her skin is summer-holiday brown.

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I’ve actually . . . made other plans.”

  Until ten minutes ago that wasn’t strictly true. So I feel doubly dishonest for saying it.

  “Other plans, like, a girl?”

  My eyes tell her yes.

  “But you let me come all the way over here anyway.”

  “I forgot,” I finally admit. “I’m sorry.”

  She doesn’t say anything. For a moment, I think she might start crying. I’ve never seen Melissa cry, have sometimes wondered if she even knows how.

  She recovers temporarily. “Well, can I come in for a pee at least? I’m bursting.”

  “Of course. Sorry. Of course you can.”

  And it’s while I’m unthinkingly stepping aside to let her into my flat that I look up. Callie’s at the top of the stairs, still as a startled fawn, Murphy by her feet.

  But before I can open my mouth to say her name, she’s disappeared.

  PART TWO

  25.

  Callie

  Tell me it gets easier. Missing you. I thought it would, but it only seems to be getting harder.

  I want to hear your voice in real life, not just in my head. I want to laugh with you and kiss you. Tell you about all the things I’ve been doing. Have you hold me in your arms, feel your face close to mine.

  But I know writing this is as close as I’m going to get to a conversation. So for now I’ll pretend you’re here by my side, that I’m talking to you. Maybe it’ll help—stop me wanting to see you, just one more time.

  I wish you were here, so much. I’m missing you, Joel, more than I can bear.

  26.

  Joel

  Melissa’s in the bathroom with the door ajar, partway through a speech. Meanwhile I’m lapping the living room, desperate to sprint up the stairs and tell Callie this isn’t what it looks like. (I even find myself wondering if I might actually have time, before Melissa wraps up what’s turning out to be the longest pee in history.)

  “. . . I mean, you don’t forget anything. You never have. You even know my mum’s birthday, for God’s sake.”

  Finally the flush, then running water.

  “So who is she?” She reappears, stops still in the doorway, folds her arms. My heart gives way a little when I take in the elegance of her dress, the curls she’s heated into her hair.

  “It’s the girl from upstairs, isn’t it? The one from the shop. I could tell you liked her when you got all bristly with me.”

  I think about Dominic, the guy she’d been sort-of-seeing earlier this month. I don’t want to call her out on it, exactly. But the arrangement between Melissa and me has always been just that. An arrangement. “Why . . . why are you making me feel bad?”

  “I’m not. Maybe you just . . . feel bad.”

  “I am sorry, Melissa.”

  “So now I’ve got to drive all the way back to Watford in that shitty storm?”

  An explosion of rain hits the windowpane then, like sarcastic applause aimed squarely at me.

  I stare back at Melissa, think of all the times she’s driven up the M1 to see me. Of my never returning the favor because I hate being away from home. Of her accepting all my quirks, rarely questioning my behavior.

  Arrangement or no arrangement, Melissa’s given me way more than I’ve ever given her.

  I sigh. “Of course not. Of course you can stay. I just need to—”

  She smiles sardonically. “Don’t blow her off on my account.”

  A moment passes.

  “Listen, Melissa . . . nothing can happen tonight. Between you and me.”

  Her smile expands, like I’ve just said something adorable. “Oh, you’re being all principled and everything.”

  “Hardly.” I look down at my feet.

  “I thought you were never going to have a relationship. I thought no-strings was all you ever wanted.”

  “It was, but then . . .” Faltering, I catch her eye at just the wrong angle.

  There’s a long pause.

  “Well, she must be really special” is all she says. Then she sparks up a fag, heads into the kitchen to help herself to wine.

  27.

  Callie

  Once I’ve shut the door on what I’ve seen, I wrap myself up in my most comforting wool cardigan and weave my hair into a plait. Then I tip a small shot of whisky into my seabirds-of-Scotland mug—the nearest clean receptacle—attempting to savor the burn as I sling it slightly tragically back.

  Then, a knock on the door.

  Cautiously, I open it.

  “I’m so sorry, Callie.” Joel looks wretched. “I had no idea she was coming.”

  He’s slipped on jeans and a T-shirt now, and his hair’s roughed up, like he’s just rubbed a towel across it. I try not to picture the way he looked downstairs when I knocked—warm and bare-chested, breathing hard, wanting me.

  Or so I thought.

  “It’s okay.” I permitted myself a few silent tears over the whisky, and now I’m worried Joel can tell. “I did know about her, and I chose to ignore it.” All the signs were there, I guess, but to me he just didn’t seem the type.

  “No, Melissa and I . . . we’re not together. Honestly. What we have is just . . . it’s . . .”

  As his words sputter into stillness, I realize I’d been hoping he would have something more mitigating to say.

  He tries again, voice low. “I said Melissa could stay. Just for tonight. She’s had a long drive. But I promise you, nothing will happen.”

&n
bsp; I blink back memories of hearing them together, the night of Halloween. “You really don’t need to—”

  “No, Callie, I like you a lot—”

  I cut him off with a nod but say nothing, because I’m not really sure what that means anymore.

  Above our heads, rain pummels the stairwell skylight, like it’s trying to get in.

  “Can I come by tomorrow?”

  I frown. “I don’t know if that’s—”

  “Please, Callie.” He takes a couple of breaths, as if every word is broken glass inside his mind. “This is just horrible timing. Nothing more.”

  “I’m about to go out,” I say softly, even though I didn’t know it until now. “I’d better get ready.”

  He looks so stricken, and suddenly I feel angry at the waste of it all. Aside from anything else, that kiss was hands-down the best of my life.

  He whistles out a breath. “Okay. Well, have a good time.”

  “I’ll try.”

  But still he doesn’t turn to leave, which gives me no choice but to say good night before ever-so-softly shutting the door in his face.

  28.

  Joel

  Though I feel the strongest urge I’ve had in a long time to punch something, I just about manage to resist breaking my knuckles on the nearest wall. I want to knock on Callie’s door again, make a better attempt at explaining myself. But she gave me a chance and I did nothing with it. So instead I go back downstairs, craving time to think.

  When I get inside, Melissa’s lost the dress. She’s bare-legged now in one of my T-shirts, caramel hair shaken loose around her shoulders. She stops me by the front door, glass of red wine in hand. Running a finger along the dent of my cheekbone, she brings her freckled face close to mine. She smells of fag smoke and a perfume so familiar I’ve come to associate it purely with kissing her.

  “I won’t tell anyone, gorgeous.”

  As gently as I can, I move away, make for the kitchen. “That wouldn’t be a very good idea.”

  She settles down on the sofa. Arranges herself cross-legged so if I looked, I’d see her underwear. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Are you hungry? Shall I order pizza?”

  “What does she have that I don’t?”

  It really isn’t that simple, I want to say. How much I like Callie—it’s not about pros and cons, comparisons or preferences.

  Even though it sounds crazy, the connection I have with Callie feels . . . more fundamental than that. Innate and elemental. Like a lightning strike or moving tide. A hurricane of feelings.

  I picture how Callie looked at me just now, eyes scattered through with fragments of green and gold, like something beautiful that was broken.

  “Pepperoni?” I say softly, so I don’t have to answer the question.

  29.

  Callie

  I leave the flat a short while later, summoning Esther to town for impromptu mojitos. I simply couldn’t bear it if I heard Joel and Melissa going at it again—at least if I’m out I won’t feel like I’m celebrating my new job by lying in bed wearing noise-canceling headphones.

  We sit up at the bar, and I drink too quickly, in the way people do when they’re trying to blunt the edges of something, and for almost an hour I don’t even mention Joel.

  But eventually Esther asks, so I tell her about Melissa.

  “Wait. Isn’t she a prostitute?” Esther says, memory now muddied by mojitos.

  “No, she just dressed as one for Halloween.”

  “How do you dress as a prostitute?”

  “Pretty Woman.”

  Esther winces disapproval, of both the film and Halloween. “And she’s staying over?”

  “He said she’d had a long drive.”

  Her expression becomes so pitying it’s almost humiliating. “Please tell me you don’t believe that. This is Piers, all over again.”

  “Joel’s not Piers. He couldn’t be more different.”

  Esther torments an ice cube with her straw. “Don’t you remember when Piers canceled dinner because his ‘cousin’ was staying over—who turned out to be that girl he met at the golf course?”

  I shrug and sip my drink in an effort to soothe the sting of recollection. It doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped.

  Esther attempts to squeeze sense into my hand. “I’m just not sure he sounds like a great long-term prospect, Cal.”

  “Why not?” I say, desperate for her to come up with a single argument I can convincingly disprove.

  She lowers her face to mine in drunken solemnity. “He’s ditched you for a girl who turned up on his doorstep.”

  To be honest, I’m quite drunk now too, which makes that doubly hard to argue with.

  * * *

  • • •

  The next morning I’m out of coffee, but I can’t risk running into Melissa, so I sit down next to my living room window and wait for her to leave. The sky is goose-feather gray, the air rich with late-November rain. From a nearby tree that will blossom in spring comes the drill of a robin’s alarm call. I watch the world begin to wake, lengthen its ligaments. Curtains nudge open and the street stirs with its familiar symphony of footsteps and closing doors, shuddering engines. Silhouettes solidify as the sky grows gradually whiter and lighter, shot through with the steam from flaring boilers.

  Sooner than I expected she is there, sidestepping puddles, sugar-brown hair long and loose around her shoulders. She has one of those coats with a faux-fur collar, and a car that probably cost twenty times my monthly rent. Flicking the lock, she climbs straight in without looking back.

  I set out as soon as her brake lights wink at me from the end of the road.

  * * *

  • • •

  Unfortunately, she hasn’t got very far, because I bump into her by the corner-shop chiller cabinet. She’s one of those awful people who don’t need makeup to turn heads, who seem to have the skin tone and the lashes and the bone structure built in.

  To my surprise, she smiles, and it’s a much friendlier smile than the last one she gave me. I’m hoping that’s not because she’s just had the night of her life, though I have to concede it’s a definite possibility.

  “Can’t drive without it,” she says, lifting up her carton of iced coffee. I suppose that’s what people do in awkward situations—make small talk about whatever it is they’re in the middle of doing. “He was out of milk, and I hate it black.”

  He, I think. No need for a name. We’re both only thinking about one guy.

  A beat or two passes, and I realize Melissa’s waiting for me to say something. “Listen, if I’d known you two were—”

  “We never said we were serious. That’s not really Joel’s style, if I’m honest.”

  I’m unable to tell if she cares. “Right.”

  “He hasn’t told you, has he? About his . . . issues.”

  I say no, because I guess I’d know if he had. As Melissa inclines her head and lowers her voice, I feel a lick of guilt because, last night’s events aside, Joel’s been nothing but lovely to me. Yet here I am, helping her gossip about him in absentia. She’s beckoning me forward, teasing me into crossing a line.

  I don’t ask, but she tells me anyway.

  “He’s a real loner, you know. A bit . . . disturbed. He’s dead against having any kind of relationship. And have you ever seen that notebook he carries around with him?”

  I want to leave, but she’s throwing scraps of information at me now like bait.

  “Do you know what’s in it?”

  Finally, she’s got me. I bite. “No.”

  She hesitates, no doubt by design, and chews on her lip. “Oh, maybe I should let him tell you.”

  I’m gripped by the sudden urge to grab her arm and press her to continue, but right at the last moment, I resist. If there’s something Joel needs to tell me, th
at’s up to him.

  “Okay,” I say, with a shrug, making to move past her.

  “It’s a bit mad. You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  I meet her eye. “I don’t want to know. Please?”

  A self-satisfied smile. “You’re right. If I were you, I’d want to stay blissfully ignorant too.”

  “Excuse me,” I say softly. “I’m running late. I’d better go.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I glance at Joel’s door on my way back into the flat, but I don’t stop. I just keep moving.

  30.

  Joel

  Steve rests rock-solid glutes on the edge of a table in his gym’s tiny office. “You’re in luck. My next client’s not till twelve.”

  I stay by the door, hands in my back pockets, wishing I’d thrown on a couple of extra layers. Steve’s gym is unheated, since it’s one of those places where people take sweating seriously.

  My heartbeat’s racing in time to the house music on the other side of the door. And not because of the coffee I’ve just downed. This is it. No going back. Please . . . you’ve got to believe me, Steve.

  “I need to know I can trust you.”

  Steve folds his arms. Quite a feat when your biceps resemble bowling balls. “Of course.”

  “No, really. I’ve got to know that what I say won’t go any further. Including Hayley.”

  He sizes me up, like I’ve asked if he can turn me into Arnie. “You mixed up in anything illegal?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Then this goes no further.”

  I’m standing on the cliff edge again. Only this time I’m actually going to jump. I feel it physically, the dizzying, hazardous height of the thing. It’s the first time since uni, since I got laughed out of the doctor’s surgery. “When you were studying . . . did you ever come across people who were psychic?”

  A silence, fully wired.