How Do You Like Me Now?

by Holly Bourne

  ‘And you’re on.’

  One foot in front of the other. I walk across this giant stage. I feel the eyes of everyone on me. I stop in the middle. I look up. They wait. The giant red clock starts to count down. All I’ve done is look up, and I’ve already lost fifteen seconds. My heart goes berserk, but you probably can’t see it beating through all my control underwear.

  Speak, Tori. Speak.

  I breathe in through my nose. I smile up at them. I deliberately don’t look at the clock again.

  ‘Six years ago,’ I start, ‘if you’d asked me how I was …’ I wait for the beat. I own the silence. Then I open my mouth and continue ‘… I totally would’ve lied to you.’

  *

  @TheRealTori I DID ITTTTTTTTTTT! Oh, my f*ckers, that was the best experience of my LIFE! I want to do it all over again. My TED talk will be posted next week.

  @TheRealTori Look who I met!?!?! Look who I actually f*cking met! Taylor Faithful! Finally! And she was only slightly scared of me! @SpikyWoman

  @SpikyWoman It was lovely to meet you too. And you didn’t scare me at all! Keep telling your truth x x x @TheRealTori

  @TheRealTori From Berlin to Paris – I can’t WAIT to speak to all my French f*ckers. I’ve not slept in two days, but I promise that won’t affect my swearing.

  *

  Tori’s WhoTheF*ckAmI? Official Fan Page:

  To my f*ckers,

  I’ve had the most insane, but the most incredible three days ever. I’ve done an actual TED talk, I’ve met Taylor Faithful, sold out my Paris show … You guys just keep being my everything. I promise you I will always tell you the truth. That’s what got me here. That’s what I owe you, for giving me this incredible life of mine.

  Last stop, I’m doing an ‘intimate’ event at the book shop Shakespeare and Company for competition winners before I go home. I’m looking forward to seeing you there.

  So much love to you all

  Tori x x

  *

  I don’t see much of Paris either.

  My hotel room is also amazing, yet, again, I’m hardly in it. My skin’s breaking out. I’ve not eaten fresh fruit or fresh anything for three days. Meals are something I stuff into myself at airports, or in the back of taxis on the way to somewhere. It’s only been three days but it feels like longer. I yearn for home and Tom and Cat and pyjamas and tea that tastes how tea is supposed to taste. I catnap in the taxi on my way to the bookshop – ignoring the stunning city that gleams in the sunshine.

  The store is beautiful enough to perk me up. It’s how every bookshop should be, I decide. With chaotic piles of books that tower to the ceiling and alcoves and nooks to clamber into.

  I sit with my legs crossed at the ankle so my knickers won’t show in the photos. The intimate crowd of superfans are lovely and kind and laugh in all the right places. There’s only about thirty of them, but the intensity of their adoration makes it feel like more. I answer their questions about whether I’m still with Tom and when my next book will be out. Same shit, different country.

  I’m just about to wrap it up, when one last hand goes up. ‘Yes?’

  It’s a girl who can’t be older than twenty-two. Much younger than my usual readership. She blushes just from me looking at her. ‘Can you do a reading?’ she asks.

  ‘A reading?’ The word stumbles on my tongue. It’s been so long since I’ve been asked to read from my book. In the early days, after publication, it’s all I really did. I went to bookshops and not many people turned up and I’d read a few pages to the mostly-empty seats. But as the book grew and the audience grew, the simple act of reading died. It’s too intimate a thing to work in giant theatres.

  I look to the bookseller to check if we have time. He smiles and nods. We do.

  ‘I’ve not actually read from my book in ages,’ I admit and they laugh. ‘OK, a reading. I can totally do a reading. I don’t have one planned though. Umm, what bit shall I read?’

  ‘Your first date with Man on the Rock,’ she replies, with quiet assertion. ‘The bit after you just met him and spent all that time talking on the mountain.’

  I raise both eyebrows. ‘Oh, OK then. Umm, hang on, let me find it.’

  The bookseller has to lend me a copy of my own book, and it takes a further two minutes to find the right starting point. I look down at the words. Is it weird that I haven’t looked at the inside of this book for years? It feels surreal that I wrote these paragraphs printed on the page. Like it wasn’t me. I’ve not written anything proper like this in so, so long.

  I cough. I look up at the audience to check they’re still into this. Their faces are arranged in apprehensive concentration – they are quiet, waiting for me to start. I cough again.

  ‘OK,’ I say. I am suddenly nervous. I feel like I’m naked. ‘Chapter forty-seven: The Stars are Ours.’ I hesitate. I look at the first sentence, printed there, on the page. The most significant date of my life. I raise the book. ‘I was not ready for this man,’ I start reading. ‘I’d had one whole minute of feeling truly free, truly independent. I’d hiked up to that vortex, I’d chucked all my bullshit into it, and I was enough. Finally, I was enough. Then he had appeared, carrying my discarded rosary beads and saying, “Umm, are these yours? They almost hit me on the head.” When I got to the motel later, I couldn’t fathom how much time we must’ve spent up there talking. It was hours. Conversation spilling out of two strangers, connecting in a way I’ve literally never connected with anyone before. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. This man on the rock.’

  I look up to check they’re all still interested. They are all still interested. The memory of that week starts flowing into me like warm water. I’d forgotten how intense the whole thing was. How I felt like a rug had been swiped out from under me. But in a good way. A special way.

  ‘He picked me up the next evening,’ I start reading again. ‘I’d spent the day agonising over whether to cancel or not. I couldn’t be in a relationship right now. I couldn’t even be on a date right now. This year was for me – just for me. And it had taken me almost all of it to get to where I needed to be. But I couldn’t pick up the phone. I couldn’t say “I can’t meet you tonight.” I felt guided by something bigger than me. Go on the date, a voice told me. You will hate yourself forever if you don’t go on this date. I decided though, that if I was going to do this – if I was going to even consider letting a man into my life right now – I was going to do it by being completely and utterly myself.’ I smile and glance back up around the bookshop again. God, I was so dramatic back then. So determined for everything to be significant and with a narrative. ‘So I didn’t dress up. I put on a T-shirt and baggy jeans. I did not wash my hair. I did not wear good underwear. I did not apply make-up. He was lucky I brushed my teeth and applied deodorant – but that was all. I looked at my reflection as I heard his pickup truck roll up outside my grotty motel. “Be you, Tori,” I told myself. “Don’t be anything else but you.”’

  The memory of that night stays with me after the applause has died down. After the books have been signed. After I sit, sipping coffee, at Gare du Nord, waiting for the Eurostar to take me back and home to him. It was the most perfect date of perfect first dates. Tom picked me up an hour before dusk. He smelled amazing. He looked amazing. Tanned and youthful. The smile he gave me as I opened my motel-room door … Some people wait their whole lives to be smiled at like that. We drove into the desert. I made a joke about him murdering me. He laughed at it – wide and open and with all of his toned stomach. We talked the whole way. There was no empty air, no awkward anything. It was like catching up with my best friend. When we pulled up to a tiny dirt track in the middle of nowhere, all I could see was a picnic blanket and some solar-panelled tealights leading the way to it.

  ‘What’s all this?’ I asked, not able to comprehend what was happening and how perfect it was.

  Tom leaned into the backseat of the truck and removed a hoodie. ‘It gets cold once the sun sets,’ he
replied, handing it over. ‘Here, you’ll need this soon.’

  I pulled it over my head. It smelled of him.

  The train pulls in. Everyone scrambles to get on. I wander in a dreamlike state to the first-class carriage and slump, exhausted, into my comfy seat. I listen to the announcement tell me about my upcoming journey – first in French, then in English. And I smile as I remember …

  The sun set as we sat watching it, drinking beers. The most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen. We talked and talked and talked. And then, when it grew dark, Tom gently extinguished the lights, got me to lie on my back, and showed me the stars. We lay with our heads together as he pointed out the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. It was like being at the planetarium, but the stars were real. The universe above us was our own state-of-the-art projector.

  I still feel overwhelmed by that date when I think of it now. With the suburbs of Paris flashing past me in the window. I remember thinking, this doesn’t happen in real life; nothing this perfect happens in real life. Tom asked me endlessly about myself and seemed truly bewitched by my every answer. He had this air of magic about him. I felt magic just by being next to him. I could not believe this man had appeared in my life. That he was so gorgeous and amazing and deep and insightful and kind and charming and yet was into me. So, so into me. With the stars glowing above us, and with the conversation spilling out into the darkness, I let him kiss me. The most perfect kiss. And I jumped into my life with him – without hesitation, without regret. Only a dawning knowledge that I’d met my One. Yes, the timing could’ve been better, but they always say they turn up when you least expect it.

  I do not read my magazine on the train journey home from Paris. I stare out of the window and remember those heady first months with Tom. Like they are old clothes hidden in the back of my wardrobe that have become fashionable again. I fall in love with him again, alone, on a train, just by remembering what he was like.

  I mean, he’s still like that sometimes. That’s why we’re still together. But of course he was more like that at the beginning – everyone always is.

  I remember how the second date somehow topped the first. He took me to a national park where the river had carved rocks into natural water chutes. We went first thing in the morning, before the sun had warmed the water, and got the park to ourselves. He took me to the top of a cliff and said that in order to start the date we had to jump into the pool below.

  ‘It’s safe,’ he kept reassuring me. ‘I promise.’

  He made me jump first. I remember falling through the air. I remember screaming as I plunged through nothing. I remember how cold the water was. I remember finding Tom’s warm body in the pool at the bottom. We clung to one another in the icy water and I remember thinking I’ve only just met you. Yet he looked into my eyes, adrenaline pumping through both of us, and he said, ‘Sorry if this is too soon, but I could very easily fall in love with you.’ Not one part of me felt it was too soon. We kissed in that icy water, kicking our legs to stop ourselves sinking, not once feeling the cold.

  The train enters the tunnel. The views of France plunge into a roaring blackness. An announcement: the buffet car is open. I lean my head against the window and remember it all. I remember how, within a week, we were driving across America together. He knew all the places to go, all the places to eat. He dazzled everyone we met on the way, charming them until we were upgraded to better rooms. He asked me continuously if I was OK. He complimented me constantly and on the strangest of things. ‘I love this mole on your toe. I love the way you blush when waiters ask you for your order. I’ve never met a girl that makes me laugh as much as you laugh.’

  The moment we got back to England, he rushed me to his family home to introduce me to his beloved mother.

  That wasn’t all in the beginning either. He is still that man sometimes. We will argue and I’ll scream at him and cry and run out of the house. But then he always pulls out the stops once we’ve made up. I’ve come home to first editions of my favourite books. One time, mid-argument, he put up his hand and said ‘Let’s stop this.’ Then he made me pack a bag, took us to the airport and we flew to Iceland. Just like that. We never resolved the argument but we swam in a blue lagoon and Tom managed to use his connections to get us onto a last-minute Northern Lights tour. He held my hand through gloves while we stared up at the dancing neon sky above. ‘Remember our first date,’ he whispered, his breath crystallising in the air between his mouth and my ear. ‘I was so in love with you, even then.’

  I look down to find I’ve been doodling in biro on the back of my glossy magazine. Drawing spirals and hearts and patterns in blotchy ink. I’ve also written something.

  My heart is stuck in a perpetual waiting room,

  Looking at the clock,

  Wondering when it’ll next have an appointment with the man I know you’re capable of being.

  I stare at what I’ve written. I wince. Then I scribble it out and retreat back into happier times.

  We draw to a halt in St Pancras far too soon. I’m still lost in the memory of our holiday to Greece, and how we made love in a sandy, abandoned alcove. The sort of sex that you have to call ‘making love’ because there isn’t a better word for it when you connect like that. I shake my head, and pull my wheelie suitcase down from the overhead compartment. My phone beeps to life, realising it’s back in its own country – telling me that fact by SMS message in case I hadn’t noticed myself. I also have a message from Tom. I get off the train and pull to the side, away from the crowd, letting people flock past me to customs.

  I’m so in love with him in this moment that I really need this message to be the Tom I’ve been daydreaming about.

  Bingo.

  Tom: Welcome back superstar! How was the rest of your trip? X

  Oh, my smile. How it stretches. He called me a superstar! I feel like one because of this message. I glow as I tap out my reply.

  Tori: Just got to St Pancras now. So very tired but can’t wait to see you! Where you at? X x x

  A reply straight away. We have missed each other. We do miss each other. Still. This is important. This is a good sign.

  Tom: Really close. I’m watching the game in Kings Cross with Sam and Declan. It’s about to finish. I want to show off my superstar girlfriend. Come join us? X

  Tori: Which pub? On my way x

  I pick up the handle of my suitcase and I wheel my way towards him.

  Month Four

  Dee Harper and Nigel Tucker are in a relationship

  82 likes.

  Tori Bailey likes this.

  *

  I have a pouch.

  A band of flab has been slowly building itself a little house just below my belly button. I can’t fathom why. I’m not eating any more food than I usually eat. I’m not exercising any less than I usually exercise. I’m even doing sit-ups, though I hate them and never think I’m doing them right and gave myself that back spasm last year after attempting a Victoria’s Secret workout on YouTube.

  And yet, I have a pouch.

  I grab at it when I shower. I stand naked sideways and examine it in the mirror. I spend so much time just staring at my reflection sideways on. I hold in my stomach and see my pouch lessen. I let it go and watch the pouch flop out again.

  They told me this would happen.

  That your metabolism slows, that you should enjoy being young and eating what you want when you can. When I was a student I would drunkenly shove a chip butty down my face at three a.m. and yet wake up with a flat stomach that looked good in cropped tops.

  Not any more.

  Tori: I have a pouch.

  Dee: ???

  Tori: My stomach. It’s grown itself a pouch. I’m so old I am now the sort of woman who needs jeans that cover their pouch.

  Dee: Tor, I love you. But please shut up. I’ve had a fucking pouch since I was twenty-two. X x

  I wince at the message from Dee. I can’t tell if she’s joking or actually hates me. I read it over and over again, trying
on different tones of her voice in my head. Things between us have not been as OK as they could be. I can’t pretend I’ve not seen less of her since Nigel. We haven’t gone drinking once since the wedding. She’s always asking me to do daytime things instead, like coffee, and walks around the park, and art galleries. ‘I just think we should try to be more sophisticated,’ she says, pretending it’s nothing to do with wanting to spend each evening with Nigel. I also feel like I can’t talk to her about Tom any more. I feel defensive now that she’s all loved-up – like she’ll look down on me or something.

  I don’t know what to do about this pouch. I’m lying in bed and I’m supposed to be preparing for a big meeting with my publisher tomorrow. But I’m grabbing at my spare flesh and jiggling it up and down. I pull it upwards into a happy face and then downwards into an unhappy face. I open the mouth of my pouch and make it talk. ‘Why are you so flabby and old, Tor?’ my pouch asks in a silly Sesame Street voice. ‘Where did your youth go?’ Suddenly I am inspired. I grab a sharpie and draw cartoon eyes just above my stomach. Then I manipulate my stomach into all sorts of stretched faces and take at least fifty photos of it on my phone.

  Tori’s WhoTheF*ckAmI? Official Fan Page:

  To my f*ckers,

  I was twenty-five when I wrote Who The F*ck Am I? Thankfully, I am not twenty-five any more. Here is my proof.