The Places I've Cried in Public

by Holly Bourne

  Alfie stands up and walks away for a moment. Hands in his hair, face tilted towards the sky. Then he’s back by my side, and he’s crying too.

  “Oh, Ammy,” is all he manages, before he pulls me to him, and lets me bury my face into his coat. We sit there, both sobbing, as the magnitude of what I’ve just admitted drowns us both from the inside out. A few dog walkers notice us, then pretend not to notice us crying silently on the bench.

  I close my eyes and feel Alfie’s grief and his kindness. I feel, for the first time in so long, that I am in the right place at exactly the right moment. What a person he is, to be able to push aside all the pain I’ve caused him and still be here, cradling me in his skinny arms, stroking my tear-damp hair.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asks. “I’m here, if you want to tell me what happened. I’m not sure if I’ll say the right thing, but I can try.”

  I sniff. “I’m not sure I can. I just… Alfie? I know I hurt you, I know I hurt you so much. I know I went back on our plan, and it was wrong, and…”

  “Please. We don’t need to talk about that right now. It’s not important.”

  I shake my head. “No, but you see, it is important! Because I’m trying to figure out why I got together with him, why I hurt you, why I got so lost, and how that’s led to everything. I thought, at the time, it was just that I’d fallen in love, but…but…I’ve been seeing this counsellor.” I swallow. “And I’ve started telling her about what happened. She says that love isn’t supposed to go how it went with him. She’s making me start to think that it wasn’t actually a relationship at all. That maybe it was something darker.”

  Alfie’s still struggling to control his emotions. I see his fists clench and unclench, his knees bobbing up and down madly as his foot bounces. “I’m glad you’ve got someone to talk to about it, Ammy. Honestly, I can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear that.”

  I take a breath. “I think it’s helping. I mean, everything feels worse rather than better. But worse in a better way, if that makes sense? Like, I’m finally starting to understand what happened. And, Alfie…” I reach out and I take his cold hand in mine. I squeeze his fingers. “…I don’t want to dodge all responsibility for how much I hurt you, but I’m starting to think that Reese is partly to blame; that he was controlling me, almost. It wasn’t a kind relationship. It felt like I got caught in a tidal wave…that nothing I could’ve done could’ve stopped what happened from happening… I’m probably not making sense.”

  A late-arriving tear runs down Alfie’s cheek.

  “I just found myself outside your house, because I realized it’s not just me who’s been messed up by all this – it’s you too. And I thought it might help you understand it.”

  Alfie’s able to look at me for the first time since I told him. He stares right into my eyes. “Tell me everything, Ammy,” he whispers. “I want to understand it.”

  We sit until our arses are numb, and our tears just keep on coming. I start at the beginning. I start with the day I didn’t send that message telling him I loved him. I skip over the bits that I know he will find painful, and I stop when I get to that night. Because I’m not ready to give words to that night yet, and Alfie’s assumptions are near enough the mark. I can feel his body soften as I fill in blanks or replace his own dark fantasies about what happened with the truth.

  “I just assumed you never thought about me,” he says through tears. “That the break-up didn’t mean anything to you.”

  “Alfie, I thought about you every damn day.” And he lets out a guttural sob.

  Sometimes we tell ourselves stories of How Things Should Go, and we get angry and upset when life doesn’t go to plan. And, sometimes, I’ve realized, we tell ourselves stories of Let’s Imagine The Worst And Pretend It’s The Truth, without actually checking in with real life to see if our dark make-believe is grounded in any reality. And it causes such pain, us being lost in daydreams of if-onlys and I’m-sure-it-won’ts. All of us. And so, I begin the process of dismantling Alfie’s Imagining The Worst.

  For the first time since I met Reese, I really start telling someone about him. Someone I know. And, together, Alfie and I begin to understand. Sometimes that’s all you can do in life, when it comes to pain – try and understand it. We all carry scars and scorch marks around with us. We cuddle up each night with ghosts of damaging memories – we let them swirl around our heads, never able to settle or heal because we can’t make sense of this terrible thing that happened to us, and why we’re finding it so impossible to get over. You can’t force pain to leave until it’s ready to. Like the most annoying party guest, it only leaves in its own sweet goddamned time. Meanwhile there’s nothing you can do but carry it until it’s ready to be released. But understanding the pain – why it’s there, why it’s not leaving – it makes that burden much easier to bear.

  In time, we silently stand together and walk back to Alfie’s house, picking up another coffee on the way. We sit on his wall and slurp at it, going over it all some more, until the coffee’s gone and all the words I can manage have come out and it’s almost time for me to get the train home.

  “I guess I should go.” Alfie looks at the time on his phone. “I’ve got loads of chemistry write-up to do before tomorrow.”

  “Yeah, my train’s in an hour. I should go get the bus.”

  Alfie looks at me – really, truly, looks at me, with nothing but love and kindness. He smiles sadly. Part of me thinks I don’t deserve it. But being with him, if only for two hours, has reignited the part of me that believes I do. That we all deserve to be treated kindly, no matter how inclined we are to fuck up.

  “I’m so sorry, Alfie,” I say. I will never have said it enough times.

  “I’m so sorry too, for what you went through. Are still going through.” My throat closes again but I manage to stem the tears. “Stay in touch, yeah? Let me know how you’re getting on?” I nod and nod. “And keep talking to that counsellor lady.” I nod again. Alfie’s head twitches towards the house. I sense this is goodbye now. “I’m always here for you, Ammy,” he adds, finally. “You can call any time.”

  Tears twitch at the edges of my eyes. My voice comes out like a tortured mouse. “I’m always here for you too.”

  We hug goodbye. So hard. Neither of us quite wanting to let go, and yet knowing this is the only way. I want to cry, yet again, because I know this is the end of us. I will never know if we’d have made it if you hadn’t come into the picture, Reese. If we’d have gone to Manchester and made it work and done everything we’d promised. Part of what I need to get over is the what-ifing over Alfie and me.

  “Apologize to Jessa for me, won’t you?”

  “Tell her yourself. We all miss you, Ams. Come back and visit soon, yeah?”

  I trundle my way to the bus stop. The last time I was here, the last time I walked along this road, I didn’t carry the scars I carry now. The ghosts of past-Amelie brush past me – oh, how carefree she was. I will never get her back. I will never be the girl I was before you and what you did to me.

  But I can understand it.

  That is what I tell myself as the train pulls out of the station, as I leave my home behind and travel back to the strange town filled with bad memories, which I’m now supposed to call home. As I lay my head against the window, I whisper it to myself over and over.

  I see the chimneys, spurting steam out into the air.

  “I want to understand it,” I say out loud.

  I want to understand it.

  Something strange has happened.

  You sent me a message at two a.m. last night, two weeks after I returned from Sheffield.

  I read it as I’m brushing my teeth and mentally gearing up for yet another lonely day at college, and yet another strenuous hour of counselling.

  Reese: I think I’m still in love with you. x

  “You okay?” Mum asks over breakfast, as I stare at the message and then stare at it some more. And then, after I’ve finishe
d doing that, I follow all the staring with staring at the message some more. “You’ve been rather absorbed in your phone this morning.”

  I manage to look up and smile at her and not look at my phone for thirty whole seconds. “I’m alright. Sorry. I, umm, just…got a weird message from someone.”

  Mum wrinkles her nose. “Someone hasn’t sent you a dick pic, have they?”

  I drop my phone in a clatter. “Mum!” I laugh in shock. “How do you know about them?”

  “I read about them in the newspaper. I can’t see the point in it myself. Maybe if they were more attractive to look at I’d get it, but…”

  “Mum!”

  She starts chuckling and I find myself laughing too, right down into my stomach.

  “So it’s not a penis photo then?”

  “MUM!”

  “You can tell me if it is. I’m cool. I can handle it.”

  “It’s not. Oh my god.” I pick up my phone from where it fell to the carpet and reread it. My laughter stops. “It’s a message from Reese, actually.”

  Mum’s laughter stops instantly. She closes her eyes and pinches the top of her nose, before arranging her face into a neutral nothing. “Oh…”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t know you were still in contact with him.”

  “I didn’t either.”

  I’ve been trying to talk to my parents more about everything. Joan suggested it. “You shouldn’t have to go through this all alone,” she said at last week’s session. “Maybe open up a little?”

  “But what if they don’t understand?” I’d replied. “What if they think it’s all my fault?” And I’d taken a tissue from the familiar box.

  I read the message again, and again. I’m reading it so much that I miss my mouth and drip porridge onto my floral dress.

  “Bollocks.” I get up to dab it off. Mum wets a paper towel and hands it over.

  “You weren’t very happy when you were with him,” she mutters, as I attack the stain. “And you’ve not been very happy since it ended.” She pauses, and I see her weigh up every word carefully, reaching for the ones that will cause less damage. “We were worried about you, Amelie.”

  “I know.”

  “You know we’ll never tell you what to do, Amelie, but…but…maybe really think things through before responding.”

  “I wasn’t going—”

  She held up her hands. “I’m just saying.”

  I’ve decided to shelve how I feel about this message until I speak to Joan later. I’m finding it very hard to trust my own instincts about anything, you see. Joan’s been making me revisit our memories, Reese, and she’s been taking out this supersonic magnifying glass and holding it up to each one, forcing me to see it in a different way. She says things like:

  “Do you really think your first date was romantic? Have you considered that maybe it was quite manipulative? I mean, he said he wanted to get to you before anyone else did? That doesn’t seem very healthy to me.”

  And…

  “None of the things you mentioned wanting in this relationship seem that ‘crazy’ to me. In fact, they seem quite normal. Have you thought about whether this boy was the one with the problem, not you?”

  After every session I feel a bit lighter and a bit cleaner, and a bit like I may actually like myself and not think I’m a crazy fucked-up mess. It’s a physical effort waiting for each counselling session. Every hour I see Joan I feel like I’m given a huge gasp of oxygen, before I have to plunge back into the depths of college and having no friends to talk to, and having to see you with her. My lungs hurt, and every week I worry I may not be able to make it until Friday. I absorb and absorb and hurt and hurt and then run to Joan’s and vomit it all up, and get her to make sense of it. And then grab another breath.

  I’m so glad I only have this morning to get through before my next session – especially after your message.

  I call goodbye to Mum, turning down her offer of a lift. It would get me in too early, and it’s gorgeous out. I also need time to reread your message and figure out what the hell’s going on.

  It’s like you know, I realize, as I’m staring blankly at my reflection, combing my hair. You can sense the bond between us loosening. You always had that psychic sense, you could always tell when you’d pushed me too far, been too distant for too long, made me start getting angry and fed up and thinking I deserved better. Then BAM – back came Reese, the boy I thought I loved, rather than the cold, unfeeling silence I’d been dealing with for weeks. Now I’m finally starting to see you for who you are, rather than the you we both told ourselves you are, and you can obviously sense it, so BAM – here comes the message I’ve been longing for. The reason I’ve checked my phone every minute of every day since we broke up.

  I collect my bag, stuffing in my notepad filled with new song lyrics and my completed English essay. Joan said that “this boy” had taken up too much of my life already, and I shouldn’t let him take up any more. “You’re letting him win, Amelie,” she said recently. “Don’t you see? If you let all this affect your music and your exams, you’re still letting him in, you’re still letting him have control over you.”

  So I’ve been turning up to lessons, and trying to write songs again, and just about coping with seeing you about the place. There are exams to revise for and coursework to get handed in this week. Generally I’ve been doing okay…a little better… Apart from those times when you pass me, and I’m back in that hotel room, and I start shaking uncontrollably and have to go lock myself in a toilet cubicle and shove my head between my legs and relive the whole damn thing like it’s happening right that moment, and start crying and shaking harder, and it takes me at least ten minutes to get a grip on myself…

  …Other than that, I’m doing okay.

  I look at my phone again. It will have told you I’ve read the message. I wonder how often you’re checking to see if I’ve read it yet, to see if I’ve replied. As I lock the front door, I almost feel sparks in my fingers.

  Power.

  Right now, with this message on my phone, and you knowing I’ve read it and it’s my turn to reply, I have the power. I am in control. I have the ball in my court. Is this how it always felt for you? Were you fizzing, and smug about yourself, being able to relax because you weren’t the one waiting for a reply? I smile, enjoying the feeling, thinking how very rare it is. Or was…

  Then.

  “Amelie?”

  I launch out of my skin.

  “What the fuck, Reese?”

  You’re here outside my flat, with my favourite hat on – the one with the yellow trim.

  “Can I walk you to college?” you ask casually, like the past few months didn’t happen.

  I can’t… I don’t know… What’s happening? Why are you here? You’re never here! I only speak to you in my head now.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “You’ve not replied to my message.”

  I start walking, not waiting for you to follow. My legs want to march away, they’re aching to run, though my heart is telling me to slow down and let you catch up. Or is that only habit?

  You fall into step, your longer legs making it easy to keep pace. “So?” you ask.

  I try not to look at you, but I sneak a glance and it’s a mistake. You look tortured. You look like you mean it. Your eyes are bloodshot from lack of sleep and wide with desperation. I feel my fingers twitch with the power again, though the electricity splutters as I’m still so thrown that you’re even here.

  “I didn’t know what to reply,” I say. Even though I owe you nothing, let alone a reply.

  “So you don’t know if you love me?”

  I throw my head back to the sunny sky. “Reese! What the hell are you even saying?”

  We’re at the corner by the zebra crossing. I step out but you reach and grab my hand, pulling me back onto the pavement. “I miss you,” you say. “I think I’ve made a mistake.”

  Here’s what I know
I should do:

  • Feel nothing

  • Tell you to fuck off

  • Proceed to fuck off

  Here’s what I actually feel:

  • SO, so relieved

  • Happy

  • Hopeful, thinking, I knew it! I knew it. I knew if I was patient, you would come back to me. I knew you could never really love her, when you loved me so hard! Maybe it could work this time? Even after everything.

  Here’s what I actually do:

  • Say nothing

  • Let you hold my hand

  “You’re not saying anything.” You fill in my gaps for me. “Look, Amelie, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for going off with her. I wasn’t thinking.” I start counting the clichés, to give myself a distraction from all the happiness I feel but also know is wrong. So wrong. “It didn’t mean anything. I was just confused. She doesn’t compare to you.” I drop your hand and cross the road and pretend this is me being strong, but it’s not like I’ve told you to piss off. I know I’m entertaining you, and the horrendously dangerous possibility of Us. You know it too. We walk our usual way to college, like back in the good days, and the bad days, when your silence along this path was akin to torture.

  You promise me the world. You apologize for everything you think you’ve ever done. You miss out real apologies though – like for what happened in Sheffield, and all the other times after that, and all the ways you dissolved everything I was, until I was only salt water. Instead, you apologize for what you think I’m mad at. “I was scared by my feelings. The first time we got together, I was drunk. It was all her. I was too drunk. I mean, if it was the other way around, you could say she took advantage.”

  I’ve waited so long to hear all this. Every word melts into my heart. Relief pulses through me, releasing each muscle. It always used to be like this between us – me holding my breath and holding my breath and holding my breath and then, just when I thought I would pass out, you’d come back to me. Your love would come back to me.

  This is the longest you’ve ever made me wait though.