How Do You Like Me Now?
Page 16
Tori: Men under twenty-five are the answer.
Dee: What are you doing up at 1am? We have the wedding tomorrow. I’m only awake due to heartburn because I’m a fat mess.
Dee: WHAT MEN UNDER TWENTY-FIVE?
I smile and tap out a reply. Tiff pulls away from her conquest and gestures with her thumb to check if I’m OK or not. Her hair is laden with sweat but she still looks gorgeous and spritely. I make an A-OK sign and return to my phone.
Tori: I’m clubbing Dee. With twenty-somethings. I KNOW. But OMG the boys! They’re so enlightened and sexy and educated about women and sexy and interesting and sexy. Did I mention sexy?
Dee: I hate you for going clubbing with fit men without me.
Dee: I hate my heart for burning so hard. I’ve not slept in forever. Fuck this fucking baby.
Tori: Sorry about your heart. I have literally no advice to give you. But I can send you a photo of the hot man who’s trying to convince me polyamory is the future.
The boy emerges from the bathroom, smiling. He comes and sits right back down next to me. Even though I wouldn’t kiss him. Even though I’m the oldest person here by about six years. ‘Yeah, so I’m starting my Masters next year in Gender Studies,’ he tells me. ‘I want to specialise in the early socialisation of children and how much is nature and how much is nurture. Because, if you think about it, gender doesn’t exist in a vacuum, does it?’
‘Can I take your photo? My friend Dee wants to know what you look like.’
‘Oh, yeah, of course.’ He switches from gender campaigner to selfie pro within an instant. I lean my head up against his head and think just how good he smells. I hold my arm above my head to give us a better angle and then smile with my chin down. ‘Let me see,’ he says, taking my phone off me. ‘Oh, not that one. I don’t like that one. Let’s take another.’ He takes charge of my phone and holds it at a better angle and I try and replicate the smile I just smiled because I looked good in the last photo and I’m worried I won’t look as good in this one. My phone flashes. We inspect it. We are both tolerable. I send it off.
Dee replies almost instantly.
Dee: WHERE ARE YOU? I’M ON MY WAY! I’ve now got loin burn as WELL as heartburn.
I show him the message and we laugh with our heads together. His hand is on my leg and that is technically cheating I guess, but it feels so good. To have a man who wants to touch me. We whisper to one another over the music.
‘What do you think it’s like to be in your thirties?’ I ask him.
He takes my hand and stretches out my fingers one by one before entwining them in his fingers and squeezing. I’ve not held hands in so long. ‘I think you know yourself better,’ he replies. ‘But I think you’re sad that you didn’t feel like that when you were young. I think you mourn the waste.’
I shake my head, smiling. I lean my forehead to his. I could still kiss him. This moment could still happen. I’d be the cheat. I’d be the Bad One in the relationship. Tom could throw everything he wants at me and I’d just have to take it because I cheated and cheaters are scum and we all hate cheaters. Tom could be the victim. I could be the arsehole. Tom would love that. He’d be devastated but the self-righteousness would really help him along. The music thumps the walls and it pulses through my body. I am standing on top of a tall building and I’m thinking about throwing myself off without a net to catch me. There’s always a net to catch you in the movies, even if you can’t see it yet. But life isn’t a movie.
My phone buzzes. I have to let go of his hand to see what Dee has written. We lean in together to read her reply.
She’s taken a selfie from below her bump. Her pyjama top is pulled up and the underside of her face is just visible above her swollen breasts and her vein-splodged stomach. She sucks her finger suggestively.
‘DON’T CHA WISH YOUR GIRLFRIEND WAS HOT LIKE ME?’
We laugh. We really laugh. All my affection for this boy flies over to Dee – who is remarkably still Dee, even when she’s pregnant. I stand up. I extricate myself from the first man to pay me any attention in years. It is late and I’m too old to stay out any longer. Also, I have yet another wedding in the morning.
Tiff notices. She comes over. Her lipstick is smudged from kissing a man who has now vanished. She is not bothered about it at all. More men will come. She’s not ready for anyone to be The One yet anyway. It would ruin everything because they would change too much in her twenties, and then she’d be facing a break-up at the socially-inappropriate-age-to-be-single of thirty.
‘You going?’
I bring her in for a hug. ‘I am. Thanks for inviting me.’
‘Dude. Any time. And let me know how the new book is coming.’
The boy follows me through the throng of people to the rickety staircase that will take me into the cold air. He follows me outside where the young congregate and smoke and giggle and take photographs of themselves having fun. I know that they’re not really having fun. I travel the world giving talks about how it is never what it looks like. But, despite all that, I feel a pang. A pang that part of my life is over and it will never come back.
‘It was really great to meet you,’ I tell Boy. I reach out for a hug, just a hug. ‘Thank you for giving me hope in men again.’
He twists his face so we are almost kissing for the third time. He bites his lip. ‘Come back to mine,’ he whispers into my ear.
I pause.
‘I can’t.’
‘You can.’
I close my eyes and smell him one more time. I wonder how good he is at sex. I don’t even care actually. It would be sex. I would actually have a man in bed with me who wanted to do something with this body of mine.
‘I … you know I have a boyfriend.’
‘Come back to mine then. He’ll never know. Come on. You want it, I know you want it.’ I pause because I do. I really do. Then he says, ‘We’ll have to be quiet so we don’t wake up my parents, but they won’t mind you coming back.’
I stifle a laugh. The fantasy coughs up a lung and then dies on the pavement. I do not laugh. I lean in and very gently brush my lips with his. I cup his young face. ‘Not tonight,’ I say. And I turn and walk away.
I feel my swagger. I am one of those cool women in TV shows who walks away from men who fall for her without looking back, even though she knows they are watching. I am powerful, I am sexy, it’s all going to be—
‘Fucking prick-tease cunt!’ the boy shouts at my back.
*
It hurts to wake up. It hurts to be in the shower. It hurts when I see the state of myself in the mirror. Even with all the light-reflecting foundation, even with my special creams, even with my dress from Whistles that glides tastefully over the bits of me that I want glided over.
Tom thinks it’s hilarious that I went clubbing with a bunch of twenty-year-olds.
‘HOW’S THE HANGOVER?’ he yells into my ear as I struggle to keep down my free-range poached eggs on rye toast.
‘You’re not funny,’ I reply, as he kisses me on the forehead. Always on the forehead.
The wedding is in London, which is brilliant because we don’t have to pay a fortune to stay overnight and we can get there by tube. Let me tell you about how this wedding is different. It is different because Harry and Claire have managed to arrange the whole thing in less than a year. Isn’t that spectacular? It’s different because they have tiered cheeses as their wedding cake, because they totally love cheese. That is a defining characteristic of their entwined personality. It’s different because Claire wears a plain dress to show off her very expensive designer yellow shoes, because Claire loves shoes and that is a defining characteristic of her personality. It’s different because their own daughter, Bonny, is the flower girl, because they did not get married before they had children – because they are modern like that. The ceremony is in a registry office because Harry hates organised religion to the point he’s almost religious about it and that is a defining characteristic of his personality. We sit
with Dee, who really is every cliché you hear about pregnancy and blooming. With her long red hair and her huge pillowy boobs, she looks almost like a Raphaelite painting. I squeal and hug the rest of our university friends while we wait for Claire. They say it’s been too long and it’s such a shame I had to miss the hen do as I was in Berlin but that they saw the TED talk and isn’t it exciting all this book stuff. Amy looks stressed. Her toddler, Joel, pulls at her dress as she balances her baby on her boob. Her husband, Nick, not doing enough to help. He and Tom complain quietly about all the football they are missing to be here today.
We quieten as Claire walks down the aisle – until Bonny drops the basket of rose petals upside down and we all laugh. That will be a story they’ll tell her for the rest of her life now. As they make their vows, I try not to think about the fact that Harry screwed someone else from his office four years ago when Claire was pregnant. I still don’t know how she forgave him. She even moved in with Dee for two months to punish Harry enough until she forgave him. But they look happy enough, pledging their life together.
I have to be very careful not to look at Tom in case he interprets it as me wanting to get married.
After the ceremony and throwing confetti and getting our photos of all of that bit, we hop on the tube to get to the reception. They’ve hired out a whole gastro-pub and filled it with roses. Stacks of bread with dipping oil adorn most tables and I leap onto them and soak up as much of last night as I can. Dee joins me by the bread and we stuff it into our mouths. I even block her while she downs half a glass of my prosecco.
‘If one more person comes up and touches my stomach’, she threatens, necking her glass, ‘I swear I will fart on them.’
‘But I touch your stomach all the time.’
‘You’re my best friend, you’re allowed. But honestly Tor, six people have grabbed my belly already today. Some weird uncle of Claire’s even held his hand there until it kicked! And I’m supposed to just smile and let it happen because of the miracle of life or something.’
‘Is there any way of setting up some kind of electronic device that shocks people who do it?’
Dee dips another chunk of bread into oil and swallows it whole. ‘It’s easier just to fart on them. I’ve got so many farts just desperate to come out.’
The back of the pub has huge floor-to-ceiling windows leading out into the beautiful-for-London beer garden. We watch as Claire and Harry pose for non-traditional shots with their non-traditional wedding photographer who has tattoos and everything. He’s very excited by Claire’s yellow shoes and has her standing on a picnic table to get some proper shots of them. Dee and I watch Harry and Claire touch each other between set-ups – how they laugh so hard the corners of their eyes wrinkle.
‘Do you think Nigel would ever cheat on you?’ I ask her, still watching out of the window and remembering those months Claire spent crying in Dee’s kitchen.
She laughs. ‘He hadn’t had sex in three years when I broke his seal. Chance would be a fine thing. Why? Do you think Tom would?’
I shake my head and stop eating the bread because I’ve had three slices now and I don’t want to get fat. ‘No. It’s the one thing about him I’ve always been certain of. His dad cheated on his mum then left when he was young. He’s really … weird about it.’
In fact he’d break up with me if he knew about the boy from last night – even though nothing really happened. I sigh and suppress all the emotions last night triggers. ‘Do you think you’ll ever marry Nigel?’ I ask.
Dee takes another slice of bread but squishes it into a ball rather than eating it. ‘We’ve talked about it,’ she admits. ‘I don’t see why not. I mean, we’re going to have a baby. Marriage is less of a commitment than that.’
I cannot believe they’ve already spoken about it. Like it’s a natural path to walk down, rather than one I constantly have to pretend I’m not dragging Tom along. I feel envy boil through my arteries. I think it’s not fair. I think they hardly know each other. It sounds terrible to admit this, but I always thought I would get married and have children before Dee. I was with Tom and we were stable and committed whereas Dee was the one who was shit at relationships. And now … now. God! Being in your thirties is like a game of Snakes and Ladders. You may think you’re beating everyone, but you’re only one dice-roll away from falling down a snake and suddenly coming last. And the person stuck on square four may randomly land on a ladder and suddenly overtake you in this game to get everything sorted before your ovaries go kaput. That’s a really good analogy actually. I should put that in the book I’m hardly able to write. The book I’ve given myself a month off social media for so I can finish it in time. It’s not helping though. My word document is still mostly blank. I just can’t think of anything to write. I keep worrying about Tom reading it and what he’d think and how I don’t want to have another argument. I think about that snake on the board – that arsehole snake you get around square ninety-seven that takes you right back to the start. If I break up with Tom, it will be like sliding down that really long arsehole snake. Whereas Dee has just shot up that motherfucking huge ladder and the finishing square is in sight. But I don’t have any more thoughts because the uni lot are running over to us, their hands outstretched to caress Dee’s bump.
‘Oh my God, Dee! I swear it’s the perfect shape,’ Sally says, rubbing Dee’s tummy like it’s a Magic 8 Ball. Sally was in the room next door to me in halls. She once went out clubbing in just a bra and knickers and a pair of bunny ears. Her child is sitting with Amy’s child by the soft play area. ‘Not long to go now! When are you due?’
‘Christmas. It’s going to be one of those babies who has a complex about its birthday,’ Dee says.
They all crowd around and take it in turns to touch it. Dee rolls her eyes at me when she can see nobody is looking.
‘Have you done pregnancy yoga?’
‘Are you planning a home birth?’
‘God, the thought of not being in hospital if something goes wrong.’
‘I was in labour for two days. When it was over, I looked in the mirror and I’d burst every single blood vessel in my face from straining.’
‘I ripped so badly I had to sit on a rubber ring for two weeks. It’s never been the same down there.’
‘My contractions stopped just as Clara crowned. I had to lie with her head stuck for two minutes until the next contraction kicked in. I needed a lot of stitches after that,’ Amy adds.
Dee grabs my hand and squeezes it. Hard. I try to butt in, but it takes a while for Amy to finish her story about how the gas and air wasn’t connected properly during her second labour.
‘Think of all the babies being born right this moment,’ I interrupt. ‘Thousands of them coming into the world just this minute. All completely fine.’ I turn to Dee. ‘Whatever happens, it will be over in a day.’
‘Mine wasn’t,’ Amy pipes up. ‘I was in labour for forty-two hours.’
Dee squeezes my hand even harder, pulverising my fingers. I blink and reach for the kryptonite I keep in my handbag at all times. ‘But you wouldn’t change it, would you?’ I ask all of them, unleashing my weapon and chucking it into their faces. ‘I mean, having children is worth it, right?’
They are quiet for half a second.
‘Oh God, no. They’re the best thing in my life.’
‘It’s worth it, Dee. The pain is totally worth it. Then you have a gorgeous baby for the rest of your life.’
They turn to me, their prickles up and quivering, for even daring to suggest there’s any moment, any moment at all, when they wish they hadn’t had their beautiful gorgeous children.
‘It’s so powerful, Tor. You won’t understand just yet. But when you and Tom get there.’
‘Finally!’ Amy shrills, laughing as she tips her head back to swill more champagne down it. She’s on at least her fourth glass. Nick is on babysitting duty tonight.
And it’s Dee’s turn to squeeze my hand to give me strength.
‘Didn’t she look beautiful?’ I say, when I run dry. ‘Wasn’t that moment where Bonny tipped the basket over just the cutest? Oh, yes, yes, I am that woman who wrote that book. Thank you. Your niece loves it you say? Well that’s just made my day, thank you so much. Me? Married? Oh no. That’s my boyfriend over there though. Six and a half years. Yep. Oh no. Not yet. But maybe one day.’
Tom is behaving well enough. This is only the second time he’s gone to the loo to check the football scores. He comes back smiling, so some man he has never met, and who probably has sex with underage teenagers without consequences, must have kicked a ball into a goal. I’m rewarded with physical affection. He puts his arm around me as we wait to be told where we’re sitting. He laughs and hugs me tighter when the uni lot cluster together and share stories of our drunken antics in university halls.
‘Tor, do you remember in first year when you stole that fridge from the boys’ corridor?’
‘I’m still not sure how I managed to pick it up and carry it.’
We all roar in a circle and Tom pulls me in and kisses the top of my head and I melt for what this must look like from the outside. We’re pestered with questions about when Tom will ‘finally make an honest woman out of me’ and he takes it well enough. We reminisce about the nights out we had, and the fancy dress costumes we made, and the pasta with tomato ketchup we used to eat as a meal. We’re bonded forever by these stories of being young with nothing to worry about but three hours of lectures and getting a two-one that nobody asks you about from the moment you graduate. Nigel, of course, is hearing all of these for the very first time. It’s casting a further bewitching spell. He rubs Dee’s tummy and he smiles at the best story about her – the one where she stole the DJ and made him come back to ours for a party. Considering everything, I’m in quite good spirits. There is something relaxing about a wedding, where every hour of the day is catered for. No surprises. Just a paint-by-numbers day. It’s nice to see my friends, even if I am totally the odd one out now, and it’s going to be an OK day actually, until …