How Do You Like Me Now?

by Holly Bourne

  Tom’s light is off when I return. He’s curled up on one side, Cat twirled up on his feet like a fresh bagel. I feel so disappointed at such a simple act. But it’s late and I have the wedding tomorrow and I’m lucky to not be out there alone, dating men with vanishing wives, and I don’t want to get myself all wound up just before sleeping. So I get into bed and say, ‘Night then.’

  Tom’s already half-asleep. He’s always been able to find sleep easily. I joke that he’s like one of those dolls you lay down and their eyes close. But he lets out a small grunt of happiness and reaches out to pull me into him. His body is safe and strong and warm. I envelop myself in his smell, closing my eyes, feeling loved and safe – so different from only moments ago. He wiggles and nudges his arse into my thighs and I laugh quietly in my mouth and obligingly take up position of big spoon. My boyfriend. All six foot of him. Yet always demanding to be the small spoon. I breathe in the smell of his back and let the heat of his body warm mine. I wrap my top arm over his stomach and lightly graze my hand over his naked body, brushing his unresponsive penis. Maybe just to check it’s still there. It’s warmer than the rest of him. I don’t know what to do with my other arm, trapped beneath my body and folded at an awkward angle.

  This is the first time we’ve touched all day. And, yes, he’s only half-conscious, but still …

  … oh hang on. He’s snoring already. He is not conscious.

  This is the first time we’ve touched all day and he is not conscious.

  I lie there for a while, not even trying to sleep. Just enjoying the closeness. But, as if he can sense my neediness, he rolls onto his front. There is yet again a gap between us where the cold air rushes in. I chew on my lip. We’ve argued before about this. How it’s ‘unreasonable’ for me to analyse his body language while he sleeps.

  I wait a further ten minutes before shuffling up to a seated position and getting my phone out.

  My feed is chock-a-block from tonight’s event.

  @rosianna_90 OMG. Still crying from earlier. Can’t BELIEVE I got to meet @TheRealTori. I now know who the fuck I am and I’m proud xxx

  @WhoTheFuckFanGirl THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TONIGHT. I am so pleased you exist. I wrote a blog about tonight. Pls read it xx

  I reply to as many as I can saying thank you. Lots have uploaded their selfies and I click on every single photo – looking only at my own face and trying to figure out if my forehead looks too big without a fringe. Oh, it looks really big in this one. I zoom in so that my face fills the whole screen of my phone and I tick off every single imperfection. I don’t once look at the other faces of the other people in the photos. Just my own. At one point I zoom in so much that my entire screen is just my forehead. Then I Google ‘haircuts to hide a big forehead’ and scroll through them aimlessly, thinking they’re awfully similar to the haircut I’ve just spent two years growing out.

  @TheRealTori Oh my, my f*ckers. Thank YOU for tonight. I had the most amazing time meeting you all and hearing about your own journeys xx

  The moment I hit ‘send’ my phone lights up with further notifications as it’s liked and shared over and over. I swipe off and, stupidly, find myself on The Bad Website for some reason.

  ‘You’ve got to stop going on it,’ Dee keeps telling me. ‘It’s like self-harming for childless thirty-somethings.’

  ‘I’m only on it to run my fan page.’

  ‘Yeah? So why do you keep complaining to me about everyone posting photos of the inside of their wombs?’

  ‘I can’t help it! And what is with all the baby-scan photos? When did that become a thing?’ I ask for a millionth time.

  ‘I don’t know, but there are now so many monochrome scans I feel like I’ve woken up in Pleasantville.’

  ‘Dee?’ I always ask. ‘Why is everyone suddenly having babies and we’re not?’

  ‘Any idiot with a functional vagina and access to sperm can pop out a fucking baby, Tor,’ she always replies. ‘It’s not exactly an achievement.’

  ‘How are you allowed to be a primary school teacher again?’

  Dee isn’t here to stop me though, so I scroll past all the inevitables. Scroll scroll scroll. Judge judge judge. Feel empty feel empty feel empty. Smug couple pictures of smug couples going somewhere smug on a smug date and then taking a smug photo of themselves being there. The endless, endless baby photos and updates about all the major milestones said baby has got to. (‘LOOK, SHE SMILES.’ ‘SOMEONE IS ALMOST WALKING.’ Even: ‘SOMEONE TRIED EGG FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME TODAY.’)

  There are endless likes and endless comments as everyone dutifully validates people making socially-acceptable decisions at the socially-acceptable age to make them. Well done, well done. Go you, go you. Congratulations. Go you for finding the person and doing the engagement photoshoot and buying the flat and having the baby in it. Well done, well done. That is what you are supposed to do, so well done, well done.

  There’s a photo of Jessica and her bridesmaids preparing for tomorrow. They all wear personalised matching dressing gowns and drink from champagne flutes. They are in a line with one hand on one hip and all their front legs bent to make them look thinner. I feel a stab of anger that Jess didn’t ask me to be a bridesmaid, combined with relief that I’ll never have to wear a personalised dressing gown.

  Jessica Headly

  Toasting my last night as a single gal. Can’t believe tomorrow I get to marry my best friend and become MRS Jessica THORNTON.

  Here are some of the thoughts I have:

  You are a traitor for changing your surname.

  You have lost lots of weight for your wedding and are now either as skinny, or skinnier, than me and now I need to set my alarm early so I can work out tomorrow.

  If one more person tells me they’re marrying their best friend I will run out of vomit.

  Who is that girl two in from the left? She is prettier and thinner than me and I hate her. Maybe I should click on her profile and look at every single photo her privacy settings allow and torture myself with how she is prettier and thinner than me?

  Who would I pick as my bridesmaid? No Tori. You don’t believe in marriage, remember? Well, that’s not quite true, is it Tori? It’s Tom who doesn’t believe in marriage. Well, it’s not like he’s said that exactly, just more that he seems very adamant that marrying you isn’t a good idea at all. But that’s fine, you don’t want any of that archaic shit anyway.

  I press ‘like’ and turn off my phone.

  *

  My alarm goes off at the rather painful time of six and I smack it off before it wakes Tom. Cat winds herself around my legs as I stumble to the toilet and doesn’t stop figure-of-eighting until I’ve poured a generous amount of stinky food into her bowl. I change into my expensive workout gear in the spare bedroom, even though I have no plans to leave the flat. Then I tiptoe to the living room, close the door, and sync up my phone to the TV, turning the volume down low. I then pick a ‘fat burning’ HIIT workout from my subscription package.

  I hit play.

  I lunge and lunge and lunge. I squat and squat and squat. ‘Deep squat now – deeper, deeper.’ I keep my back straight when the instructor reminds me to. ‘Tummy tight.’ I suck in. ‘Now really work those abs.’ Crunch, crunch. ‘Don’t pull on your neck when you come up.’ ‘Now back for some final lunging.’ Every time I deep-lunge I imagine what it will do to my legs. How it will make them look. Tight and toned and bump-free and how I’m told they should be. I will be able to wear short skirts in summer and people will look at my legs and know that I am in control of my body. ‘Lunge lunge lunge, really bend your knee at the back. Go down, not forward.’ The overexcited instructor yelps at me with enthusiasm, hardly breaking a sweat. She takes the word ‘perky’ to whole new Dante’s-Inferno levels.

  Afterwards, I try to take a post-workout selfie in my giant bathroom mirror. But I’m too red and too sweaty and I forget how mad I look without my eyebrows drawn in – like an egg balanced on a pair of shoulders. I reach for my m
ake-up bag and pencil them in. Then I add a tiny bit of mascara, some under-eye concealer and lip tint. I take another photo. Much better. Though it still takes me twenty shots to get the exact combination of laissez-faire, empowered, and naturally-pretty-but-not-like-I-know-it. I brighten the photo up on my phone while my sweat dries and hardens into my clothes. Then I pick a good filter that makes me look even better, but not like I’ve obviously used a filter.

  I post it.

  Annoyingly True Things That Are Annoyingly True no. 256

  Exercise really does help your motherf*cking mental health.

  I cannot tell you how much I hate cardio. How much I dread it. I will never, ever, be the sort of person who looks forward to a run. But working out does keep my head in check, and that’s the only reason I do it. Not to look good, but to feel good. If any of you figure out a way to get healthy endorphins WITHOUT having to sweat them out – please DEAR GOD – let me know … #PostWorkoutSelfie #MentalHealth

  It has over six hundred likes by the time I’m out of the shower – freshly shaved and my hair washed with thickening shampoo. I scroll through the praise as I dry my hair upside down for added volume. The comments are all lovely, as they always are. Most of them congratulate me for taking such a positive stance towards mental health. That is good. That is what I wanted. But I cannot ignore the spike I get in my endorphin levels when some of them miss the point and tell me how hot my body is:

  ‘Wow – you are so beautiful.’

  ‘Looking gooooooood Tori #WhoTheF*ckIsYourTrainer?’

  ‘How do you get your thighs to look like that?’

  And that’s what I secretly hoped would happen and I’m glad it’s happening because no one needs to know and it really has helped me feel better.

  My body is not enticing to Tom, however, who is drinking coffee in bed when I return. Today’s pathetic attempt to get him to find me sexually attractive is the most pathetic of pathetic attempts. I wander deliberately into our bedroom wearing amazing lingerie for today’s wedding. The lingerie is red and lacy and slutty but in a sophisticated way. It makes my breasts look like red velvet cupcakes – the sort you take a photo of before you eat them because they came from a trendy bakery. The bra just grazes my nipples; the pants are so see-through they may as well not exist. If I sneeze, it could rip the fabric.

  ‘Morning,’ Tom says, slurping from his coffee mug. He’s on the iPad again, catching up on all the noise he missed while he slept. ‘Did you sleep OK?’

  I will try one more time. I stand with a hand on my hip, displaying my body at the end of the bed. ‘I slept fine,’ I reply, striking another unnatural pose. ‘Have you seen the phone charger?’

  He points to where it’s plugged in on his side of the bed. I do not walk around to get it. Instead, I get on my hands and knees and lean over Tom to reach it. My red velvet nipples practically dunk themselves in his coffee.

  ‘Careful, Tor. I almost spilled my drink.’

  I grab the charger and lean back. Do not cry, do not cry. You only have an hour to do your hair and make-up, you do not have time to cry. I plug my phone in, and give up all hope of ever feeling good about this relationship again. And then … then Tom playfully slaps my bum.

  ‘Good undies, Tor. You know I’ve always loved that arse.’

  I beam back – instantly cured of sadness – and he’s giving me That Grin. That Grin that I’ve missed so much. Like a schoolboy who’s just dipped my pigtail in an inkpot. I launch myself at him. I may not have time to cry but I do have time to have sex. Sex is less messy than crying. I climb back onto Tom’s body and kiss him aggressively. He kisses me back for ten whole seconds before he pushes me away by my shoulders.

  ‘I don’t want you to be late for this wedding.’

  Years ago, at the beginning, Tom wouldn’t have cared at all about being late for a wedding – not that we had many weddings to go to back then. Sex with me always came first. Sex with me even though we were late. Sex with me even though we’d had sex twice that day already. Sex with me because he found the TV show we were watching boring. Once, sex with me in the toilets at a wedding.

  Now: no sex because you will be late for the wedding that I’m not even coming to.

  I smile and draw the shutters on my humiliation. I climb off him and chastise myself for playing it wrong. Being sexually needy isn’t sexy. I messed it up. He saw through the red velvet nipples. I’m too sexually available. Maybe I should try to withdraw again. Remove the interest, the pressure. Make him wonder where it’s gone. Make him work for it. That’s sexy, right? I did try playing sexually hard-to-get last year and all that happened was Tom and I didn’t touch each other for a month. (He hardly noticed. If he did, he only seemed relieved I was leaving him alone.) But maybe I wasn’t doing it right.

  ‘No,’ I say. I pull my dress off the hanger and cascade it over my head. I get out some body lotion to rub into my freshly-shaved legs. ‘Can’t be late. Jess would kill me.’

  *

  I pull up outside Dee’s flat and fire off a message.

  Tori: I’m outside. You better have the Moulin Rouge soundtrack with you x

  I see one tick become two ticks but still turn off my engine. Dee is a minimum of ten minutes late for everything, to the point where she doesn’t even say sorry any more. I’m on a yellow line but the road is as dead as the opening scene of a post-apocalypse film. Brixton is only quiet in the early hours of weekend mornings. The rows of converted Victorian terraces show no sign of life. Every curtain is pulled shut against the bay windows. Everyone sleeps. Evidence of the night before is everywhere. Takeaway packages spew up leftover chips and chicken wings across the pavement. A small puddle of lumpy vomit dries in the spring sunshine. This is London so no one will wash it away. It will stay there until it rains, or some desperate pigeons eat it. I grin at an empty bottle of Cherry Lambrini left upright on someone’s front steps. But the grin quickly morphs into a pang. A pang for being younger. The sort of younger where you drink Cherry Lambrini on your front steps, sucking hard on a fag and talking with wild gesticulations at all the friends around you who are also drunk, smoking and talking animatedly about the state of their constantly dramatic lives. I know it isn’t as fun as it looks – I wrote a whole book about how it isn’t as fun as it looks – but it’s not the fun that I miss, it’s the fluidity. Where a chance encounter, or an impromptu night out, or a wrong turn, or a last-minute trip could suddenly somehow change everything, alter your direction so utterly – without it ever being too late to change course again if you didn’t like the latest view. Yes, back then I felt lost, but now I feel so stuck.

  Lost is easier than stuck …

  The slam of a door and Dee wobbles towards the car under a teetering tower of luggage. She stumbles and a bag drops to the ground. She drops another as she bends down to pick up the first. She swears profusely.

  I put the window down. ‘We’re only staying one night, you know that, right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she glares at me. ‘But I’m having a wardrobe crisis and you need to help me decide what to wear.’

  I release the boot and she chucks her stuff in with such abandon that my whole car shakes. Then she throws herself into the passenger seat, puts down the window and launches straight into a massive debrief of last night.

  ‘So, this guy, right? Last night. Oh my God, Tor. It was the best date I’ve had in ages. He didn’t send me a photo of his flaccid penis. Nor his erect penis for that matter – which is slightly better, but still a red flag. Then he actually took me to a half-decent place. Not Gordon’s Wine Bar. I swear to God if one more fucking guy thinks it’s “cute” to take me to Gordon’s – where we just stand there awkwardly, watching everyone else around us on bad dates also standing there awkwardly – I may give up wine for ever. But no. He took me to this nice restaurant, with proper napkins …’

  I just about manage to keep up as I wind us around hissing, lurching buses, and determined joggers who run out in front of me. By the end of
the date, we’re on the South Circular, which is surprisingly traffic free. I stream along it and Dee’s hair blows all around her face as the breeze blasts through the window.

  ‘Right, so then it’s time to say goodbye,’ she continues. ‘And, for the first time in ages, I actually want someone to kiss me. I want him to kiss me. And we’re all building up to it. There’s leaning and positioning and chin tilts – the whole shindig. But, just before the lunge, he stops and says: “There’s something I need to tell you.”’

  ‘Oh God.’ I indicate to get into the left lane and swear at a bus that won’t let me in. ‘That is never good.’

  ‘I know, right? But I thought maybe he was just about to go off to war or something.’

  ‘We’re not at war, Dee honey.’

  ‘You’re always ruining my fantasies.’ She throws her head back and laughs. ‘Right, so I’m there thinking the whole war thing might be quite sexy. That maybe being a military wife would suit me. I’d get months to myself, a nice army house to live in …’