by Grace, K D
Like we used to.
In fact, he’s the person who introduced me to my deep love of that film. Or more: he told me it was about happy space pirates, and then let me hide behind him for two and a half hours while the whole horrifying plot played out.
He laughed a lot, at my trembling terror.
He’s laughing now, as I look at him like I want to kill him.
‘What?’ he asks, through an amusement so deep and total I can’t actually be angry at it. I don’t know how to be angry at Steven. He’s too happy go lucky, too fun, too everything I want to be all of the time.
I don’t want to work in a bank.
I don’t want to live this life.
I want to be awesome.
‘What is it, baby? Why do you always look like you hate me, now?’
I can’t stop the words that then come out of my mouth. They’ve been building for the better part of ten years, and he’s just popped the force-field around them. Now they’re big, and angry, and on the loose.
They make me raise my voice. They make me throw up my hands.
‘Because I do! Of course I do. You make me feel all of these feelings, and then you just fucking cut out on me, every single time. And that was OK, when it was just cookies and movie marathons, Steven, but it’s not OK when you fancy screwing me.’
‘Hold on a second – when have I ever cut out on you?’
I count all the occasions off on my fingers, one by one.
‘At my graduation ceremony, when you saw a duck that looked like a monkey, when I made you that pie and you ran out and ate 12 pizzas, after the – ’
‘OK, well, maybe I was a massive jerk all of those times – but when have I ever cut out on you after sex? Because honestly, I think I would have remembered that.’
I want to squeezes his head until it explodes. So much so that I get pretty close to his temples, with two claw-like hands. Only my need to continue with this conversation from hell stops me from getting all the way there – though my hands remain fixed in rigid, angry shapes.
‘It happened the day before yesterday, you dolt,’ I say, and discover to my dismay that my mouth is rigid and angry too. My words come out like toothpaste, squeezed from a dried-up old tube that’s almost done.
‘Huh?’
‘Oh my God, you can’t be this dense. You were right there with me when you flung on all your clothes,’ I say, but I can tell he isn’t getting it. So I elaborate. ‘You know – before anyone could catch you do something as awful and embarrassing as sex with a fat chick.’
The answering expression on his face is priceless, absolutely priceless. I think his eyebrows take off over the top of his head. His eyes get so big they could double for the moon – and then he explodes. He explodes into incredulity the size of the South of France.
‘You think that’s why I rushed out of there?’
I’m kind of hoping that’s why, now, though I suspect I may have been wrong on a few of my calculations. In fact, I’m getting this really sinking feeling that I may be a total idiot, in about a billion different ways.
‘Who exactly did you want to catch me, Judy? Your brother? Did you want your brother to come down and see you orgasming all over my cock? Because I tell you what, I sure don’t want my best friend anywhere near me while I’m making love to his sister.’
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh.
Oh no.
‘Do you have any idea what your brother would do to me if he knew I’d been violating you all holiday?’
He pauses, but only for a second. I can tell he’s really on a roll, now. He’s using violent hand gestures, frantic nods … I’m never going to live this down. I mean, I knew this was a possibility. I even imagined it happening myself.
I just didn’t apply it to Steven’s Houdini routine.
Because I am an enormous idiot.
‘And that’s what he’d call it too – violating,’ Steven continues, and I know he’s right. He’s right on all of this, horrifyingly. ‘I’m not even sure if he lets himself believe you have a vagina. The other day, he asked if I thought a girdle would be a good birthday present for you. Of course I flee at the first sign of him noticing my angry manly feelings towards you.’
I have absolutely no idea how to answer these charges. So after he’s composed himself a little – or at least controlled his crazy breathing – I go with the first thing that comes to hand.
‘You have angry manly feelings towards me?’
I sound too quiet, and disbelieving, and I know it. But there’s nothing I can do about it. My heart is taking up so much space in my body my vocal chords are struggling just to get words out. They’ve been squeezed down to nothing.
‘Seriously, it’s like you’re talking another language. What sort of feelings did you think I was having, when I put my penis inside you?’
‘Pitying ones?’
It’s the wrong thing to say. He actually punches a person who isn’t there.
‘Pitying ones? What the fuck are you talking about?’
I think I might stay calmer, if he wasn’t kicking at nothing and making huge circles with his hands in the air. The circles make me feel like an even bigger idiot than I already do, and I just have to counter them with something of my own.
So I jab in the general direction of his chest.
And maybe say some words I will later regret.
‘Hey, man – this misunderstanding isn’t all my fault, you know. You’re the one who talked trash about some poor fat girl you fucked,’ I tell him, in a big satisfying rush of pent-up anger. Now he’s going to get the full force of my disapproval, instead of some polite bullshit handshaking. ‘Ha. Yeah. You thought I’d forgotten about that, didn’t you? Well, I haven’t, and I hold it up as undisputable proof that you don’t really like me at all. This is all just some weird game you’re playing.’
Let’s see how you deal with that, I think, but after a second I’m sorry I have.
His answering expression is very un-Steven-like. It’s old, almost, and kind of weary, and I’m not quite sure how to deal with it.
‘Judy, I didn’t realise I was talking trash about “some poor fat girl”. All that stuff I mentioned … I like that stuff, other than the part where she turned out to be a total maniac and I had to run away from her. But then, the reason I was willing to put up with her various other flaws is because I like curvy girls. I really like curvy girls.’ He pauses, right before the kicker. Then he delivers it, with all the punch he can muster. ‘Probably because of you.’
I think the world just tilted on its axis. Everything is sliding sideways, including me. All I can see is fireworks, and I’m not even looking up. I’m just rolling with the earth as it slowly turns upside down and inside out.
‘Are you OK? Do you … Do you need to sit down? It’s kind of hot out here … I’ll get a fan. Or do you want a cold drink? Maybe a cold drink will –’
‘Stop talking about cold drinks.’
‘OK.’
‘I want to talk about this.’
‘Are you sure? Because I think it’s really disturbing you.’
Honestly, they should call him the amazing Steven Stark. How on earth did he guess a thing like that, when I’m barely able to hang on to planet earth?
‘It is, but I still want to know: what do you mean by probably because of you?’
‘Isn’t it obvious?’
‘If it were obvious, Steven, I wouldn’t be crouching a little bit because my knees no longer want to hold me up.’
He nods, with something like sudden understanding.
‘Oh, that’s what you’re doing. I thought you needed the bathroom.’
‘Shut up.’
He tries to smother his resultant laughter behind one hand, and fails. Which seems more like an intentional thing on his part, seeing as how massive his hands are. Surely if he wants to keep his laughter down, he could manage it?
Or at the very least, he could manage to not blow my mind.
‘OK, OK,�
�� he says, in such a simple way. We could be talking about him giving me a ride to the cinema, if it were not for his follow-up comments: ‘It’s just … You know. You drive me crazy. You’ve always driven me crazy.’
I think my mind is now all over the floor.
‘And you don’t think it might have been a good idea to maybe tell me this? I’ve spent the last ten years pining for you like an idiot, you idiot.’
It’s easier to say it with the two idiots in there. But it doesn’t look easier for him to accept. He stops laughing almost immediately, and then goes one further than that – his face sags, like one of my punches finally connected.
‘You’ve pined for me?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Don’t say maybe if the answer’s yes.’
Now he’s put me in a pickle. The safety of maybe is calling to me, but if I go with it the terrible expression on his face might deepen. He looks heartbroken, I think, and that’s what ultimately decides me. It’s like seeing myself over the last ten years, and wanting more than anything to erase all of those aching, lonely feelings.
I can do it, if I reach out now.
I can take them away from him.
‘Then the answer’s yes.’
‘You pined for me?’
‘Of course I did … Steven, you must have been aware, on some level, that this little doof following you around had a crush on you,’ I say, but even I don’t believe this now. He clearly had no idea, and even more frightening: I think he might have felt the same way, all this time.
In fact, I now know that he felt the same way, all this time.
It’s why the world revolves, and he is me and I am him.
It’s why he says things like this:
‘Honey, until you got mad at something I possibly implied I had no clue that anything I said had any effect on you at all. Mostly when I say things, you smirk, roll your eyes, or blank me.’
Oh God, it’s true. I do. But how was I supposed to know these reactions were bad? I thought it was of vital important to seem indifferent to him, at all times. If he’d found out that I secretly adored him, he might have … He could have …
OK, now I realise that he would have probably just dated me.
But the point is I didn’t know this before. I thought he was indifferent to me.
‘But then you got so mad and I thought … I don’t know. Maybe you did like me, kinda. And I wasn’t about to pass that up. I got tired of passing you up, for various probably stupid reasons: you seemed to hate me, your brother might kill me, I knew you when you were pretty young and that’s kind of creepy …’
I don’t want to tell him that those are probably really excellent reasons. He might take all of this back, if I do. And besides, I completely don’t hate him and I’ll kill my brother if he tries to kill Steven, so that’s two out of three.
The third is slightly weirder.
‘What do you mean, kind of creepy?’
‘Well … You know. You were just this little gawky kid and I was like your other big brother. And then suddenly … Suddenly you weren’t a little gawky kid any more.’ He hesitates, but this time I really hate him for it. Because I’m holding my breath, and any delay could potentially mean the end of my life.
And then he speaks, and all I can think is it would be worth it, to die on this note.
‘You threw me such a curveball when you turned into this amazing woman, overnight. I didn’t know what to do with myself around you, any more.’
I know what he did. He told a lot of fart jokes, and got me in a lot of headlocks. He played the fool for the better part of ten years, and worse: I believed him. I let him keep me at arm’s length for so, so long, just so I didn’t have to be scared of myself and how I look and what he might think of me.
And now that I know … Now that I know, I’m still too afraid to speak.
So I guess it’s good that he says it all for me.
‘But I think I have an idea, after all this time. At the very least, I know I should start by telling you that I’m not embarrassed to be with you. I don’t care who knows that I’m crazy about you, even if it’s your brother and he kills me. And most of all, you should definitely be aware of the one thing that made me come here – that always makes me want to come to the place where you are. I love you, Judy.’
Did he really say that? He can’t have really said that.
‘I love you so much.’
I think he did just say that.
‘I love you to distraction.’
He said it so hard that I really need to say it back, only I can’t because of the ten years and the catalogue of errors and my heart, which feels so bruised and battered I don’t know if it will ever beat again. I’m still stuck in Frank mode.
I can’t get into this gear, where I suddenly get everything I’ve always wanted.
Life doesn’t work that way, I think.
Until he takes my face in both his hands, and kisses me, kisses me, kisses me. He doesn’t kiss me with half of his strength, or part of his feelings, or with some tiny bit of something which is all I’m ever allowed. He kisses me with everything he’s got.
And I give everything I’ve got back.
I don’t have to live half a life, any more.
‘I love you,’ I say, with every ounce of strength I have. ‘I love you, Steven Stark.’
Bewitched in Budapest by Justine Elyot
Chapter One
On my first night in Budapest, I woke up to find a strange man in my bed.
Now, while the decision to come here had been taken so rapidly that I hadn’t had time to do any research on the place and had little idea of what to expect, I was fairly sure this wasn’t normal. I’d had vague notions of goulash, gypsy violinists and splendid 19th Century architecture. A strange man in my bed, not so much.
In the low dawn light filtering through the ill-fitting shutters, I turned my head fractionally – afraid of waking him – and tried to discern the contours of his head and upper body. Judging by the shape beneath the covers and the feet sticking out of the bottom, he was tall and well-built. His face in repose was peaceful and rather touching, but in a more animated state I could imagine it being proud and even fierce, or perhaps I was just projecting my own prejudices about men with large moustaches. Moustaches like that always seemed to come with a bayonet, in my mind. The full lips below the thicket blew out brief whistles of air whenever he exhaled. He had long eyelashes and thick, dark hair. Like most of the Hungarian men I’d spotted between the airport and the apartment, he was a looker.
But what the hell was he doing here?
Carefully, with infinite precision, I edged my body away from him. The heel of my left foot found the place where the mattress ended and my toes flexed, looking for the floor. Just at the moment I tried to pivot my hips away, he flung an arm across my chest. His arm was very heavy and I abandoned all my efforts to handle this situation calmly and screamed.
He grunted and muttered something completely incomprehensible and then his eyelids fluttered and I did my best to scramble away but that arm was just a dead weight, so I kicked him hard in the shin and tried to bite him.
That woke him up.
There was a horrible moment of pure terror during which I felt sure my heart would splat across my ribcage, then his eyes focused and his stare was every bit as shocked and appalled as mine, which was weirdly reassuring.
He sat bolt upright and stabbed a finger at me.
I don’t know what he said, because I don’t speak Hungarian and besides, I was too busy leaping out of bed and leaning flat against the wall, trying not to vomit with panic.
He spoke again, rising to his knees so that the covers rumpled about his hips, exposing his bare chest and the gold chains around his neck. He really was fit. Pity he was probably some crazed axe murderer who preyed on women alone in their Budapest beds.
This time I understood one word. The word was “Jodie”.
‘Jodie!’ I seized on this, no
dding my head urgently. ‘She is gone.’
‘English?’
I nodded.
‘Jodie is gone? What you mean?’
‘She’s at Lake Balaton for the month. You know her?’
‘Lake Balaton? Who she is going with?’
‘I don’t know. Some guy she met. Sorry. Are you … her boyfriend or something?’
‘Who am I? Who in hell are you?’
‘I asked you first. And I think I have a right to know what strange men are doing in my bed.’
‘This is my apartment! You answer me.’
I skipped a beat, let my jaw drop for a moment. His apartment?
The note Jodie had left for me on the kitchen table came back to mind.
‘You can get round the landlord by sweet-talking him. He’s a bit scary at first but a pussycat really.’ What had she called him? She’d told me his name, but I just couldn’t remember it. It was a strange name and I had no idea how to pronounce it.
‘So you’re …’ Oh God, what was it? ‘…János?’ I pronounced it Jay-noss.
He snorted and shook his head. ‘Yah-nosh,’ he corrected me. ‘Yes. And you?’
‘Ruby. Friend of Jodie’s. She said it would be OK …’
He sat back down and pulled the sheets up to his chin, his lower lip stuck out like a sulky child’s. ‘She say nothing to me. She is bad person.’
Well, I could see how he might get that impression. Jodie had a reputation that could fill a trashy mag back at home, but her heart was in the right place and you never had a dull time when you were with her.
‘Were you and she …?’ I broke off delicately. I’d made it to the bedroom door. I didn’t want to bear the brunt of rejected passion, not at half past five in the morning.
‘Was nothing,’ he muttered. ‘We are friends, is all.’
‘Friends with benefits,’ I said, eyebrow raised.
‘I not understand.’ He pressed his lips together for a moment, then put his head to one side and looked at me properly. His eyes were a keen, clear blue and I felt I was being stripped down and X-rayed beneath my pyjamas.
‘So, Ruby,’ he said. ‘You want to stay here?’
