You Only Live Once

by Jess Vallance

  ‘I’m a lesbian, you know,’ I said suddenly.

  ‘Huh?’ he said.

  I nodded over to the women. ‘I’m a lesbian too. I’m seeing this girl. Sarah. She’s Welsh.’

  The man looked over and made the link. ‘Oh, they’re not together,’ he said. ‘They’re just drunk. Makes them touchy-feely.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, squinting at them. ‘Well, I’m a real one.’

  ‘Cool,’ he said.

  ‘What’s cool?’ Vicky said, coming over to join us.

  ‘I’m a lesbian,’ I told her, starting to get used to the sound of it. ‘I probably should’ve told you before.’

  Vicky just laughed. ‘Right you are, kiddo,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not a secret,’ I said.

  ‘No, I can see,’ she said. She and the man whose name I can’t remember looked at each other and smiled.

  ‘I’m not ashamed! I just like girls!’ I said. I was shouting again. I didn’t know why. ‘Especially French ones, I think.’

  Vicky laughed again and then suddenly she was leaning towards me. I had no idea what was going on until her mouth was on mine. And then her tongue was in my mouth! I didn’t know what to do with it. I just sat there, my face frozen. A couple of people around us said something like ‘wahey!’ but still I didn’t move. Eventually, Vicky stopped licking round my face like a spaniel and she sat back up and laughed. I remember thinking how completely different kissing her felt to kissing Sarah. Sarah was soft and she smelt like washing powder and mint. Vicky tasted of cigarettes and her mouth seemed enormous, like she could swallow my whole head if she wanted.

  I could see Spider, in the group next to us. I looked at him, waiting to see what his reaction would be to his girlfriend kissing me. He just rolled his eyes, took a swig from his can and turned back to his conversation.

  I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was Vicky in love with me? I wasn’t ready for all this. Maybe I was one of those people who just oozes charm and charisma and sex appeal? Someone who literally can’t enter a room without people falling for them? Maybe people had secretly been wanting to pounce on me all my life but it was only now I was telling people I was officially a lesbian that they had the courage to go for it?

  I sat still, my legs crossed, pondering this possibility. Vicky got up and strolled off, and sat down with another group.

  ‘Vicksgottya, eh?’

  I looked up. Scottish Tinks. ‘Vick’s got to you, has she?’ he said again.

  I didn’t say anything.

  ‘That girl is like a fiend for a snog. She likes the new ones best.’

  I just blinked.

  ‘Poor wee lassie,’ Tinks said, laughing, and he too ambled off.

  I realised then what an idiot I was being. This was just how these people rolled! This is how they did things. You want to kiss someone; you just kiss them. It doesn’t mean anything. Nothing means anything in the end. You just do things in that moment, and then that moment’s gone.

  I got up, and staggered around for a bit. The stones had suddenly become very difficult to walk over without stumbling. A few people helped me back up when I had to lean on their shoulders for support.

  I clambered off the pebbly beach and onto the prom, wondering if I could go inside the bar to find a toilet or if the bouncer would stop me on the door and ask for ID.

  ‘Hey, Grace.’

  I looked up. Sarah was sitting on the low wall between the bar and prom, her hands in her pockets.

  She gave me a smile but her eyes were sad.

  ‘Sarah …’ I said stupidly.

  ‘You’ve had a bit, then,’ she said, and she laughed once, but still her eyes didn’t smile.

  ‘A bit …?’

  ‘To drink. You drunk?’

  ‘No!’ I said too loudly. ‘Not drunk. Just, you know … I’m at a party and, you know …’

  I was struggling to think of words. My brain felt full of cotton wool.

  ‘That one seems to like you,’ she said, nodding her head casually towards where Vicky was standing in a space on her own, dancing with her hands above her head, sloshing her can of beer all over a nearby group.

  ‘She kissed me,’ I said, more to myself than to Sarah, as if I was just reminding myself that it had happened.

  ‘I know. I saw,’ Sarah said.

  Slowly, slowly, my brain started to catch up.

  ‘Oh. But I went out to the gig with you and then we went to the beach and you kissed me and then you said “I like you” and now I’m on the beach again and I kissed Vicky.’

  What had happened with Vicky seemed so completely different and unrelated to my evening on the beach with Sarah that I hadn’t properly processed the idea that, from the outside, this might present a problem.

  Sarah did the hard laugh again. ‘Yeah. That’s pretty much it.’

  ‘You’re angry,’ I said.

  Sarah shook her head. ‘No, not at all. It was one date. I just thought we had a good time and I don’t know, I don’t really do … kissing on the beach every day, you know? I didn’t realise that you did, that was all.’

  I didn’t realise that I did either. But apparently I did. That’s what I did now.

  ‘Hey, Gracie,’ Vicky called suddenly. ‘Come and dance with us!’

  I turned around to see where her voice was coming from, and when I turned back to Sarah, she’d stood up.

  ‘Have fun,’ she said, taking her phone out of her pocket and typing into it, no longer giving me her full attention.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, which didn’t even make sense but I was too drunk to piece together anything more meaningful. She ambled off. I wanted to call after her, but by the time I’d thought about it she was too far away to hear.

  I watched her walk for a while, wondering where she was going. To revise, perhaps. To learn some science. Or to go to bed early to get up for her library shift. Was that why I liked her? Or, why I thought I liked her? She was everything I used to be. Sensible. Planning for the future. But I had to let that go. That wasn’t me any more. Sarah was a good match for the old Grace, not the new one.

  ‘GRAACIIIE!’ Vicky called again. I stumbled over the stones to join her, just in time to see her projectile vomit into the glowing embers of a disposable barbecue, sending up a plume of noxious steam.

  Oversharing

  The morning after the beach party I had my first ever hangover, although of course, I had no way of recognising it as such.

  My first thought was Sarah.

  Oh god, why?

  Why hadn’t I pushed Vicky away? Why hadn’t I better explained the whole thing to Sarah? Why hadn’t I gone after her?

  I reached for my phone and tried to compose a message. I really wanted to say sorry, but it was hard to know exactly what for. If I apologised too much for letting Vicky kiss me, then Sarah might think I was getting ahead of myself, assuming I was more important to her than I was. I decided it was best to keep things vague:

  Sorry about last night.

  Too much to drink.

  As soon as I sent it I wished I’d said something else. Explained myself better. Made a joke. Added a kiss, or even a smiley face.

  I sighed and turned over, then I read through all the tweets and Instagram comments I’d posted during the beach party. I had barely any recollection of writing any of them.

  Some of them were innocent enough:

  Literally nothing better than Brighton beach in the summer.

  Some made me cringe a bit:

  That thing where you go to a party and every single person there is awesome.

  Some were borderline racist:

  Scottish people need to learn to speak English!

  And there were some where I had no way of knowing whether I had actually typed out the words or if I had just sat on my phone:

  Wahhhe JJJJJ YES Why not

  I had also, I noticed, posted a link to an article. I vaguely remembered doing it – I’d been waiting in the queue for the toilet and idly bro
wsing the internet and had found a page that listed out every festival in the UK that summer, with prices, line-ups and camping details. I’d tweeted the link with the comment ‘This is useful’.

  This had been quite a deliberate move, I remembered. I was quite clearly sending a message that Grace Dart was the kind of person who went to festivals. In fact, she was the kind of person who went to so many festivals that she needed access to a one-stop-shop checklist just to make sure she was able to keep a handle on all the festivity.

  The replies I’d received were strange though:

  Ew gross.

  Ouch!

  U OK?

  I looked back at my original tweet and clicked the link I’d posted. I was then that I realised that, horror beyond horror, the information I had somehow shared with my followers wasn’t in fact a handy list of summer festivals but a medical article entitled ‘Do I have herpes and what should I do about it?’

  Somehow, during my post-hospital research into herpes simplex, I’d managed to save the link. And now, I had somehow managed to share it.

  I knew there was no point posting extended updates explaining to my followers, as nurse Claudette had done to me, that it wasn’t necessarily a sex disease and that a cold sore was a perfectly innocent, common complaint. Instead, I just quietly deleted the tweet. Although I knew that, as is the way with these things, the damage was already done.

  Like Disgusting

  I heard Paddy driving his remote-control car into my bedroom door repeatedly before he eventually burst through. He was completely naked apart from my school tie, which he’d tied around his head.

  He jumped onto my bed and pushed his forehead against mine. ‘Ugh!’ he said, backing away and covering his whole face with his hand. ‘You stink like disgusting, Gracie.’

  I felt like disgusting.

  ‘Get Mum,’ I said to him. ‘Tell her I’m seriously ill.’

  Paddy’s eyes widened and he jumped off the bed.

  ‘Muuuuuuum!’ he shouted from the top of the stairs. ‘Grace is Sicily ill!’

  A few moments later, Mum came into the bedroom. She was carrying a glass of water. She took something white out of a little blue sachet and dropped it into the glass. It fizzed violently as she handed it to me.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Overdid it, did we?’

  ‘What’s that?’ I said, taking the glass and watching the little white lozenge dart around like something from a science experiment.

  Ollie came in to join the party, and he, Mum and Paddy stood in a row at the end of my bed. Ollie and Mum both had their arms folded. When Paddy realised this, he copied the pose and shook his head in disappointment at me.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Ollie said.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Paddy echoed.

  ‘You know you’ve got it bad when you have to drink that.’ Ollie nodded towards the glass. ‘Looks and taste like spit. The only thing to make you feel worse than you do now, I guarantee it.’

  ‘It will make her feel better!’ Mum protested.

  Ollie shook his head. ‘Nah. No way. You always say that but it’s a lie. Maybe hangovers in the eighties or whatever were different.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ I said, putting the glass down next to my bed. ‘I cannot even begin to entertain the idea of putting anything in my mouth. All please leave now.’

  ‘You were the one who summoned me!’ Mum pointed out.

  ‘Well, now you are dismissed.’ I lay back on my pillow and put the duvet over my head. ‘Well done, family,’ I said, my voice muffled by the covers. ‘Thank you for your invaluable support.’

  I had a lot of Twitter and Instagram comments since yesterday’s drunken update spree and many of my followers were speculating about the intensity of my hangover this morning. I decided to give the people what they wanted and live-tweeted my delicate emotional and physical state for a while to distract myself from the fact that Sarah still hadn’t replied.

  I kept alternating between feeling too hot and too cold and I just couldn’t get comfortable. In the end I got desperate enough to sample the spit-flavoured drink.

  Ollie was right. It was repulsive. I took two mouthfuls before I felt myself gagging. Then I decided to get up and have a shower.

  When I came downstairs fifteen minutes later, I felt marginally better, but still not healthy by any means.

  ‘It’s a lovely day,’ Mum said. ‘I’ve made you a ham and coleslaw sandwich. Go and sit in the park and let the alcohol evaporate from your pores.’

  ‘I don’t want to sit in the park with a ham and coleslaw sandwich. I want to sit very still in a darkened room and contemplate my unfortunate situation.’

  ‘Either you go out, or you stay here and help me with him.’ Mum nodded towards Paddy.

  He was trying to get Dick the giraffe to stand upright on the back of the sofa, but Dick’s floppy stuffed legs meant he kept tumbling forward.

  ‘Dick,’ Paddy said seriously. ‘I do not have time for this.’ Then he turned and shouted, ‘Mum! Make Dick stop being so floppy!’

  ‘Paddy, stop shouting, for god’s sake!’ Dad yelled from the top of the stairs before returning to his bedroom and slamming the door.

  I looked at Mum. Dad wasn’t really the snapping kind.

  ‘What’s up with Dad?’

  Mum frowned and looked upwards towards their bedroom. ‘He’s been in a bad mood lately. I think it’s your nan. He’s still sad. Will be for a while, I should think.’

  I nodded and looked down. I felt guilty. Of course he was. That should have been obvious.

  ‘OK,’ I sighed. ‘I’m going out then.’

  Strangers

  Lying in the sun in the park I felt so exhausted and broken that I dozed off, right there on the grass.

  When I came round, I anxiously fumbled for my phone. I was sure that Sarah would have replied. Even if she was at work, she must’ve had a break by now.

  There was nothing.

  I realised that it was quite likely she never would. What did I expect her to say? I wished I’d asked her a direct question, something that she could only ignore if she wanted to send me a very clear signal not to bother her. As it was, I wasn’t sure what it meant.

  I groggily contemplated what I could do that day to continue my philosophy of spontaneous living. I decided that I wasn’t really in the best state for seizing the day. It would take all my concentration just to survive it.

  I took my phone out of my pocket and texted Til.

  I’m in the park, dying a slow and painful alcohol-related death. Come down.

  When Til arrived half an hour later, she had with her a text-book called Understanding Plumbing and Heating Systems.

  ‘Looks fascinating,’ I commented, with one eye open.

  ‘It’s all right, actually,’ she said. ‘I want to be prepared. It’s not that long till we go back.’

  I made a face. ‘It’s ages yet.’

  ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘A few weeks. Haven’t you got any reading to do? I bet there’s a ton of pre-work for the kinds of A levels you’ve signed yourself up for.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ I said, and I really didn’t. ‘Stop going on about it, will you?’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Til said with a shrug. Then she nodded over to the corner of the park. ‘Look. There are your mates.’ I noted a tone of disdain in the way she said ‘mates’.

  I looked to where she was pointing and saw Vicky and Spider in the same place they’d been the day before, sitting cross-legged on their rainbow blanket, playing cards.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said, pushing myself upright. ‘Come and meet them.’

  ‘Fine.’ Til sighed and closed her textbook and we went over.

  ‘Hey,’ I said as we approached.

  ‘Oh hey, babe!’ Vicky said with a wave.

  I was surprised to see they both had open cans of beer next to them. I could barely look at one without feeling ill. I supposed they were more seasoned partiers than I was. W
hich wouldn’t exactly have been hard.

  ‘This is my friend Til,’ I said.

  Til nodded and managed only the coolest of smiles. ‘All right?’

  ‘You want to play?’ Spider said.

  We nodded and he dealt us into the game, but after a couple of hands I had to announce my retirement due to my pounding head.

  Til said, ‘Yeah, I’m done too. I’m going to go home and unscrew a U-bend.’

  ‘She’s training to be a plumber,’ I explained.

  Vicky screwed up her nose. ‘God. No way I could handle putting my hand down other people’s manky dunnies all day. Rather you than me, babe!’

  Til rolled her eyes. ‘Yeah. Anyway. Bye.’

  She got up and headed towards the park’s main exit.

  Vicky pulled a face. ‘God. She’s a bit uptight, hey?’

  I just shrugged. Til didn’t look back as she reached the gate and let herself out of the park and into the road.

  ‘You have a good time last night?’ Spider asked.

  I nodded slowly. ‘I think so.’

  Spider laughed. ‘You were making lots of new friends. I think you told everyone on that beach about how important it is to seize the day.’

  I groaned. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Idiot.’

  Spider shook his head. ‘Nah. You were fine. People liked you! So what’s the story anyway? You doing some kind of bucket-list challenge?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not really. It’s not as organised as that. I’m just trying not to waste time. Not to waste any days.’

  As I was saying this, it occurred to me that maybe a list wasn’t a bad idea. I had been using ‘My Ultimate Bucket List’ for inspiration, but if there was one thing I knew for sure it was that time was short. Maybe a list would help me make sure I didn’t miss off anything vital?

  Spider thought for a moment. ‘Is it like that saying “Do one thing every day that scares you”?’

  ‘I don’t know. Not quite, I don’t think. I don’t really like being scared. I’m not aiming for fear. I went on this massive swing thing the other day but I didn’t like it that much. It wasn’t the best thing I’ve done, anyway, since I started the plan.’