“Last night? I thought you were planning on doing it today. Did you really get that drunk? Oh, you didn’t mention Mr. Lane, did you?”
I scowled. “I’m really not that stupid, you know, of course I didn’t mention him. I just, I did a really awful job of it,” I groaned and lay down, disrupting the comfy position Emma had been in, head rested on my lap. “I saw my dad kissing another woman and I was really upset and so I told him I’d cheated to get him to leave.”
“Wait, what? Your dad is sleeping with another woman?”
I shrugged, feeling the weight of that knowledge on every muscle. “Yeah, he is. I have to talk to him about it today when I get home, to get him to tell mum.”
“I’m so sorry, that’s awful.” Our positions switched and I was the one being comforted. The familiar feel of my best friend’s fingers dragging through my knotty hair did go some way to make me feel better.
“Yeah, it really sucks dick. My mum’s going to be crushed. They’ll probably divorce. I don’t know how to deal with that kind of thing. Especially not on top of all the other shit. I told Mr. Lane that I’m not seeing him anymore.”
“When did you see him? Or do you actually have his number or something ridiculous?”
“I saw him last night… but he also did give me his number last night. I should probably delete that.” I weighed it up for admitting exactly when I’d seen him. I was just begging for Emma to blame me, to make me feel even worse than I already did. “I saw him when you were dancing with Maurice, that’s where I disappeared to, and then I saw him when I was walking home.” I groaned at the entire memory and Emma frowned.
“Really that bad?”
“Yes. He admitted that he liked me and I told him I didn’t care about anything more than the sex and that I didn’t care if he failed me, but that I just didn’t want to see him again. I’m pretty sure that’s what I said, anyway. I don’t remember much of anything after I got home.”
Emma whacked me across the forehead with a magazine from her bedside table. “You’re a moron. I mean, you do actually like him more than just for the sex, right? If you don’t then fair play, I suppose.”
I almost didn’t admit it. “I like him more than just for the sex.”
“You’re just a moron then, it’s confirmed.”
“I’m not a moron, I was doing the right thing. I can’t be in a relationship now, not after what I did to Luke. I cheated on someone, I’m not fit for a relationship. He’d probably never trust me. I need a new start at university.”
“If he’s telling you he likes you, don’t you think it’s worth the chance?”
“No. Besides, he’s still my teacher, he just wanted to cash in on the rest of his sex and so he tried to sweet talk me, he’d never risk being in a relationship with me when he could lose his job. He doesn’t even know me, really. We’ve had one real conversation in our lives. That would be completely foolish.”
“And yet, you know that you like him, why wouldn’t he know that he likes you?”
Emma really liked to make things difficult with me. I’d have preferred it if she validated my actions and let me just lay this whole thing to rest. There was no reason I should even see Mr. Lane outside of school again – no way for us to be anything more than teacher and student.
“He wouldn’t risk his job, not for an actual relationship. Bringing me to his house three or four times, fucking me, and letting me walk home is practically risk free, really. Who on earth is going to ever know about that? Being in a relationship means texts and going out for dinner and more than just holing up in his house for an hour. I’d be an idiot to think he meant that. And even if he did, I don’t want it. I’m not interested in a relationship right now.”
Emma gave up trying. I wasn’t even sure if my arguments were rational at this point, I just knew that I had to stick to them. Mr. Lane and I were never going to be ‘a thing’ and that was final. We’d gone too far already. I’d already fucked up too many things.
“What time does your dad get home today? Are you going to be able to speak to him alone? Does he know that you know?”
This conversation wasn’t any better, but I supposed they were questions I needed to address. “He gets home at five, just in time for dinner, but I can talk to him after that.” The thought of sitting through dinner, watching him come in and kiss my mum on the cheek, made me feel a little bit ill. “He doesn’t know that I know. I was too shocked to do anything before he’d gotten into a taxi with the whore.”
If I hadn’t still been feeling ill from last night, I got the feeling Emma might have suggested we crack open the wine. Instead, she was forced to sit uncomfortably, with no idea what to say to me. “Well you can stay here as many nights in a row as you want. If you don’t want to be in the house with them, I mean.”
“I couldn’t do that to my mum. I think she’s going to need the moral support.”
“Maybe you could morally support each other.”
“I’m never telling my mum anything to do with this entire escapade. Luke and I broke up because we were arguing a lot and that’s final. I can’t possibly tell her I cheated on him after this, can I?”
“I wasn’t really implying you should,” Emma chuckled, though I could see the concern all over her face. “I just meant since you’d broken up with someone, too.”
“Three months of dating isn’t really the same as thirty years of marriage,” I muttered, drinking sickness and nervous sickness mixing together in the most unpleasant way. “I don’t know if I can even do this. It’s going to be so horrible.”
“You’ll be fine, and it will all be fine eventually. I’m always here when you need to chat and stuff.”
“Thanks, Emma.”
At least she would always be there, even when I managed to push everyone else away.
***
We sat at the table as though everything was normal. My dad laughed about something stupid his friend had supposedly done during their trip, but my face was a blank slate. It was taking everything in me not to leave the table and I received a great number of worried glances from both parents.
No doubt they thought they’d been sitting down together after this to try and decide what was wrong with me.
It was all incredibly sad.
I hadn’t touched a single thing on my plate, either. I felt like throwing up. My stomach swirled with unease and whenever I lifted my gaze from my lap it was overpowering.
There was no way I could have this conversation, with either parent.
I had to pray my dad would tell my mum and didn’t make me do it. I wouldn’t be able to take her crumpled face.
Their giggles echoed around the room. They sounded like school kids, sharing funny stories about other people that they’d been supposed to keep to themselves.
I didn’t know whether to be relieved or horrified when my mum began clearing the plates away. “Are you really not going to eat anything?” She put the back of her hand to my forehead. “It’ll do you good.”
I shook my head, throat dry. “No, thank you.”
“Okay, well, I’ll leave it in the fridge. You can warm it up later when you’re hungry.”
He slipped into the kitchen and my dad stood up, ready to settle down on the couch and watch some TV. I blocked his path with a grimace on my face. “You’d better tell her about that woman you were with last night.”
Silence reigned supreme as my dad attempted to process what I’d just said. At first it was wide eyes, as if he couldn’t possibly have heard me correctly, and then it was despair. “You can’t tell her,” he whispered in low tones. “You can’t say a word.”
“I can and I will, but you should be the one to do it, not me.”
He was shaking his head so much it made me feel queasy and all the colour has dissipated from his face. Even the healthy glow he always carried after work thanks to his evening drinking had vanished. “We need to talk about this. Let’s go to the garage.”
I nodded once,
not seeing the point. I didn’t need his excuses or his reasoning. Cheating was never okay and he had to tell my mother. That was all there was to it.
He shut the door so there was no chance our voices could be heard. “You saw me?”
“I was out for Emma’s birthday and yes, I saw you. And now you need to go and tell mum. I’m not sure what the garage conversation is needed for.”
I could barely look at him. He’d always just been my dad, doing everything I asked of him and more.
And now he’d broken up our family.
It was amazing how my opinion could change in the space of a few minutes, but it seemed like everything I’d ever known about him was being turned on its head. He was a loving husband and dad; we were the happy family that people were jealous of.
“You have to think about this. It was a mistake and I love your mother.”
“It wasn’t a mistake, it was pre-meditated. You lied about your fishing trip. Don’t try and get out of this. Go and face your consequences.”
And the only thing he could really do was nod. “You should go out,” he pulled his wallet from his pocket and offered me some money. “Go and get some food with Emma or something, you don’t want to hear this.”
I really didn’t, and yet I crawled upstairs and lay in my bed listening to the screaming, swearing and crying.
My own crying was silent as I wished I could remove the past month from my life.
Chapter Seven
Today had been the hardest day of life.
The moment I’d gotten to school, I’d been met with stares. Luke had obviously told someone, who’d told someone else, until everyone in the school knew that I’d cheated on him. We’d never been together at school, Luke hung with his friends and I hung with Emma, but everybody knew we were together.
Everyone had always wondered how we’d even started talking. I was the non-entity who barely spoke a word to anyone and Luke was the swim captain, bringing home the school trophies.
And so that fact that I’d been the one to screw him over was certainly big gossip.
I kept my head down and cursed Emma for choosing today to stay off sick. She’d apologised profusely, even ringing me up because she knew how cruel it was to be off school the day after I’d had to cause my parents’ divorce, but she’d been throwing up all night and she really couldn’t come in.
It turned out it was even worse than I’d been expecting.
I wasn’t simply allowed to wallow in the shadows about my life, I had to actively avoid the people who were talking about me behind my back. And it wasn’t pleasant.
Thankfully, no one was allowed to talk in the silent study area and that was where I headed, taking the seat closest to the librarian.
English had been painful.
I’d kept my head down all lesson, letting Oscar’s perfect voice wrap around me, but never daring to look up and meet those green eyes. He could hear the whispers and at want point he sent two girls on the front row outside for talking whilst he was lecturing.
Everyone kept quiet after that and the smile on my face had been miniscule, but I was mostly just filled with regret.
I imagined what could have happened if I’d just admitted that I did like him. Maybe after school today I could have gone to his house and we would have laid and he would have comforted me and maybe I could have felt like everything might be okay in the end.
Instead, I sat here and berated my own stupidity, knowing that if I could actually relive that moment I would have done exactly the same thing.
He was better than me and he deserved someone else.
When it came to badminton practise, I was more than tempted to just leave. One of the girls on our team went out with one of Luke’s closer friends and so there was no chance of me having a reprieve.
Actually showing up at the changing rooms let me know it was going to be even worse than that, because I hadn’t been picked for the county tournament, they’d been forced into picking me. The girl who started for the team normally was in the hospital having her appendix removed. I definitely hadn’t been the first choice and, paired with the rumours about me cheating, I was practically public badminton enemy number one.
I shrank away from the group whilst our coach explained the tournament format and how everything would work. There wasn’t a lot of time to practise for it, but she assured us we were good enough to win. We had two weeks and then we’d be playing. Practise would be every other day.
I wasn’t sure I could stand to be around my teammates for that much time.
They still didn’t say anything straight to my face, but their expressions said it all. Sneers every time I dared raise my gaze from the floor and a constant flood of whispers about what a bitch I was. They weren’t overly quiet whispers.
Warming up was fine, but I would have killed for some headphones as we jogged up and down the sports hall. I could have just ran and blocked everything out – I’d always found it relatively soothing and decided that, if I ever got a decently paying job, I’d invest in a treadmill.
Today I just felt nervous. The urge to just jog straight out the door and hole myself up in bed for the rest of my life was almost overwhelming. But, I kept my feet moving in the straight line of the sports hall, my breathing as steady as it could be.
I could do this. It wasn’t like anyone really cared about me or what I’d done. They just liked to gossip. And I didn’t care about them, I never had done and I shouldn’t know. It shouldn’t have mattered what they had to say about me, but it did.
When we set up for drills, my hands felt numb. People were slamming the shuttlecock towards me with outrageous speed, and I was more uncoordinated than normal, too. It was a disaster in the making. “There’s no way we’re going to be winning anything if that’s the best you can do,” my partner for this drill grumbled.
It was no surprise they felt bad about having to play with me, I really was just average and everyone else was above the bar. We were a standard school, but one of the younger kids’ mum was a professional coach and so our performance level had shot right up. Well, the people with natural talent had shot through the roof, I was still scraping behind and had been enjoying the casual practises and getting to play a few matches.
The competitive setting wasn’t my kind of thing at all.
In game, we practised against the team of the year below us, and they smashed. I missed almost every serve and when I dropped my racket, even the girls I was against couldn’t hold in their sniggers.
I couldn’t deal with pressure and right now it was being heaped onto my shoulders. The wiping of my tears was subtle and no one noticed them, but I was beyond glad when practise was finally over.
I scampered out of the room before anyone else had even stood up and ignored my coach’s request for me to stay behind and talk to her.
There was no way I could play in this tournament. I was average at the best of times, but with all this shit piling up around me I was playing abysmally. I’d cost them games and I couldn’t face their angry stares when that happened.
I swiped at my tears without care, now, sniffling in the most unattractive manner. I’d email the coach tomorrow and tell her I couldn’t play. They could find someone else, someone better who they didn’t hate, hopefully. And if not, at least there would be no real life embarrassment for me. It was the same conclusion whether I played or didn’t. We’d no doubt lose.
“Lily,” the voice cut through the silence and I wished I’d got my headphones even more now. “Wait, I need to talk to you.”
“About what?” I stopped, even though I longed to do anything but, and prayed that none of the other girls walked this way. I didn’t want to see their reactions if they saw me talking to Luke now.
“I have to apologise,” he scratched the back of his head and took in my tear stained face. Why he thought he had anything to be sorry about was beyond me – that just showed how much of a better person he was than me, I supposed. “I only told one person an
d it just spread. I thought it was implied that I didn’t want him to tell anyone, but I’m just so sorry it’s all happened.”
“It’s not your fault. And besides, it’s the truth so what does it matter?”
Luke still looked like he was beating himself up about it. My broken expression probably wasn’t helping, even if I was trying desperately to reign it in. “And I shouldn’t have left you to walk home on Saturday night, it wasn’t fair. Look, I’m sorry about how all this has gone, I wanted you to know that.”
I stared at him, mouth practically agape. “What are you talking about? You should hate me. I hate me. I did the shittiest thing known to man, why are you apologising?” I wanted to sob, but instead my voice just cracked periodically. “Look, please don’t say sorry to me when I’m a complete bitch. I just want you to move on with your life and not talk to me again. Just go and be happy.”
Three Hundred Words Page 6
