She paused to eat some more Cheetos. “So I’m sat there ready and waiting at four, where is he, please? Not here. I’m giving him five more minutes until I go and take my makeup off. He turns up at three minutes past. Wasting my time.” Kyazike kissed her teeth. “He texts me to say he’s in the car waiting outside. Lemme just go wee.” Kyazike stood up, putting all of her weight on my thighs as she did. She stretched her legs, and hobbled to the bathroom.
I splayed my fingers and winced as the joints clicked. Kyazike returned and nestled between my knees again. “So, where was I?” She opened her Twix with elegant fingers tipped with white acrylic nails and took a bite.
“I get downstairs, and when I open the door and spot his BMW, I just stand for a couple minutes so he can take in how amazing I’m looking.” She paused for me to really take in how amazing she might have looked. “Sean gets out the car and I clock that he’s just in a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers. From then I’m vex. He opens the door for me, and I slide in. When he gets in the driver side, I cross my left leg to make sure he can see the red sole. He sees. He tells me I look ‘nice,’ and he starts driving. Remember I told you he wouldn’t tell me where this date was? Well. When he gets to the turning, I’m expecting he’s going to buss a left, toward West End. So let me know why this man is going right, please?” Kyazike asked, her head turning to ask an imaginary audience. “But look, I don’t say anything, I just bite my lip and I keep quiet. I thought, okay, maybe he has a surprise for me, and I don’t want to spoil it. Queenie, the next thing I knew, we were parking in Crystal Palace, fam! And no offense to Crystal Palace, but is my outfit a Crystal Palace outfit? No. So he gets out and starts walking, and from then I’m not saying anything to him, I’m vex. We get to some Thai restaurant and he stops and I just stand there and look at him because I can’t believe this is where he’s taken me,” Kyazike said in disbelief. “Listen, Queenie. I’m not saying that I’m too good for Thai, but this is where you come on a Friday night when you’ve been in a relationship for two-plus years, not where you take someone on a first date. But I just thought to myself, let’s see what this guy is about. So we walk in. The lady come over and asks if we’ve made a reservation. Hear Sean: ‘Table for two under the name Kyazike, please.’ I’m sorry? Is that even legal? How can you be booking to take me on a date and you’re telling the people my government name?” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I take a deep breath and I just think, it’s calm, keep going. We walk through the restaurant and everyone is looking at me in my outfit, wondering what I’m doing there. We sit down at the table and start talking. Queenie. I feel a draft and look up next to me; why is there a hole in the wall being half-filled by a piece of wood? Is this guy mad? Is this really where he’s bringing me?”
By this point I had to put the razor blade down because I was laughing so much that I was scared I’d do one of us damage. “Oh, but he can’t help it! And maybe the food was really nice?” I offered weakly.
“Queenie, I ask him if we can move tables. He calls the waitress over, and this time they take us to a table on the other side of the restaurant by some stairs to the basement. They put Sean in a seat that’s about one centimeter away from the top step, and he asks me if he can swap seats. In my heels, he wants me to sit at the top of the stairs so I’m the one who can fall and break my neck? I tell him to stay where he is.”
I was lying on the sofa now, shaking with laughter, even though I’d sworn I wouldn’t be able to smile again. “It’s not funny, fam, this is my life!” Kyazike shouted. “So listen, it’s not over yet. We eat dinner, the food is average. He manages not to fall down the stairs, even though it might have been better if he had. The waitress comes over to ask if we want dessert, and he says no because he has a special surprise for me. Do you know what his surprise is, Queenie?”
“What is it?” I asked cautiously. “Do I want to know?”
“He wants to take me to a golfing range.” She turned around to face me. “In. This. Dress. In. These. Heels.” Kyazike clapped her hands with each word. “Queenie, when I tell him that I’m not stepping onto a golf course in five-point-five-inch Louboutins, do you know what he says?”
I was laughing so much that trying to breathe was futile, so I mouthed, “What?”
“He says he’ll take me to Tesco Express to get some sneakers. Fam, which branch of Tesco Express sells sneakers? I told him to express me home.”
* * *
Though Kyazike’s date wasn’t especially aspirational, it certainly was inspirational. Without using the term putting myself out there, if I go on some actual dates of my own in this stopgap before mine and Tom’s reuniting, maybe I’ll stop thinking about how heartbreak might actually kill me. That night before bed, I checked OkCupid yet again.
So don’t forget to wash your sheets . . . and your penis
Hold on, this one was quoting Spaced, which meant that he’d actually taken a full three seconds to read what my favorite TV shows were. I replied, and after swiftly arranging to go for a drink the next day, I went to sleep clutching a T-shirt of Tom’s that I’d stolen from the wash basket, breathing in the scent that I was determined to smell again on him.
chapter
FIVE
IN THE PUB, people spoke excitedly and glasses clattered noisily. “My last girlfriend was black.” I looked at my date and blinked, sure I’d misheard him.
“Sorry?” I asked, leaning across the table.
“My last girlfriend was black,” he repeated, not a trace of irony in his voice.
“That’s nice. Was she a nice person?” I asked, taking a very large gulp of my wine. I was still on antibiotics and this red was not going down well.
“She was crazy,” he said, shaking his round head as alarm bells and red flags popped into mine. My date was almost as wide as he was tall, with a huge belly straining under his T-shirt. Blond curls framed his big, rosy cheeks. In essence, he was a giant cherub. He didn’t look like a giant cherub in any of his OkCupid photos, obviously.
I made eye contact with a girl across the room who also appeared to be on a first date. We smiled at each other in solidarity. “Maybe we should go to the smoking area?” I suggested. “Get some air?”
“Or we could go back to mine?” He shrugged. “I’m up for it.”
It just didn’t feel like courtship to me. Maybe I was too old-fashioned in my thinking? I feigned illness and got the bus home. I must have jinxed myself, because on the way back I did start to feel ill. My head felt heavy and my stomach churned. I went to text Tom but stopped myself. If a clean break was what he needed to remind him that he loved me, it’s what I should give him.
Instead, I began to type a message to the group chat I’d formed with absolutely no permission from the people I’d put in it: Darcy, Kyazike, and Cassandra, three longtime friends who knew most of my secrets. I had no business throwing them all together in this digital pen, but it saved me having to copy and paste my thoughts and feelings from one to the other. They’d taken to it quite well, actually.
Queenie
I’m on my way home from the date. It was awful. He looked like a giant cherub
Queenie
But that’s not why it was bad, because big is beautiful as we know, but he didn’t look like that in his pictures! The date was bad because he was awful
Darcy
Awful how?
Queenie
He dropped that his ex-girlfriend was black
Kyazike
LOOOOL
Queenie
And “crazy”
Cassandra
He actually said “crazy”? Or are you paraphrasing?
Kyazike
Why did you even go, fam
Queenie
Something to do while Tom has his space?
Cassandra
I would argue that there are better diversion techniques.
Darcy
At least it reminded you that Tom is the one for you?
*QUEENIE CHANGED THE GROU
P NAME TO “THE CORGIS”*
Cassandra
What’s this?
Queenie
What do you mean?
Cassandra
Corgis. Obviously.
Queenie
The Queen loves her corgis
Queenie
And they support her
Queenie
Like you’re all doing now
Cassandra
And you’re the queen in this?
Queenie
Of course
Cassandra
I think we all know that the monarchy is obsolete.
Darcy
I think it’s quite sweet
Queenie
Cassandra, it’s just a play on words, relax. Unless there are any objections from you, @Kyazike?
Kyazike
Nah, it’s calm. Do what you’re doin, innit
* * *
“Do you know what, Darcy?” I said the Monday after a Halloween party at the weekend that was mostly an emotional blur. “I’m going to make some promises to myself, and uphold them.” I was recalling my decision to avoid all men that I’d made after my disaster date with the giant cherub a few days before.
“What you mean?” Darcy asked.
“Number one, work harder,” I said, beginning to recite the list I’d saved in my phone. “I’ve let work slip so much lately, and there are serious things going on in the world that need reporting and the Daily Read doesn’t seem to be doing it.”
“Like what?” Darcy asked.
“Um, like the killings of unarmed black men and women in their droves at the hands of police, here and in the U.S., mass gentrification, modern-day slavery? Obviously?”
“I don’t really see anything about that, really.”
“Yeah, of course you don’t, Darcy. I was thinking that I could start pitching ideas to Gina?”
“That’s a good start,” Darcy agreed, nodding heavily, her hair falling around her face.
“I worked really hard to get this job, really fucking hard, and I feel like I’m spunking it all away,” I said.
“It’s too early to use the term spunking,” Darcy sighed, putting her head in her hands.
“Number two, maybe slow down with OkCupid,” I said, ignoring Darcy’s disdain. “I’m getting a bit obsessed with the digital attention. About five boys I haven’t met are already giving me their life stories. And when Tom finally has his space and comes back to me, even though I won’t tell him about dates I’ve been on, I don’t really want to have spent the whole time sleeping with boys in cars and meeting crap men who do a good job of occupying my brain space but will ultimately diminish my self-worth.”
“You could delete the app?” Darcy offered.
“No, too far,” I said, shaking my head. “At this point, I have to wean myself off it. Three. Spend more time with family.” I held my three fingers up and waggled the third. “Four, just forget men for a while, and use this break with Tom as a break from men. And five, don’t go home with boys after parties when it turns out the drunken jokes they were whispering in your ear about spaffing on your chest is genuinely all they want to do—”
“Queenie,” Darcy cut in sternly. “I know that we always do tea and talking on a Monday morning, but recently it’s getting a bit too X-rated for the time of day.”
“Fran’s Halloween party really was a night of extreme variables.” I sighed slowly.
“Men like to do that to you, don’t they? It must be because of those.” She pointed at my chest.
“Doesn’t Simon do it?” I asked, sipping my tea.
“God, no, he wouldn’t. Even if he wanted to, I don’t think my boobs are big enough to be sexy for that.” Darcy looked down at her own chest.
“But what is sexy about that? And why are they so proud of doing it?” I wondered aloud.
The kitchen door opened and Silent Jean shuffled in. She stared at both of us in turn as she made a cup of coffee slowly and silently. When she finally left the kitchen, she shot me a suspicious look as she closed the door behind her.
“Did you have fun, despite the—?” Darcy asked, gesturing at my chest again. “I was looking after Simon for the half an hour we were there. He got so smashed that I had to take him home.” Darcy hoisted herself up onto the kitchen counter. “He always gets so into his own head about being the oldest one at these things, so drinks himself into oblivion.” She crossed her legs and shook her foot agitatedly.
“Before you left, Simon found the time to take me aside in an annoyingly forty-year-old and patronizing way to tell me that you were worried about me or something,” I told Darcy, hoping that he’d been making it up.
“Well, Queenie, I am worried about you. But we can talk about it later; I need to go and pick our summer interns.” Darcy squeezed my shoulder and left the kitchen.
“I’m worried about me,” I said to the empty kitchen.
* * *
Later while Gina was moaning (something about her children not wanting to go to boarding school so acting up by bullying the nanny), my stomach started to hurt, and my vision began to blur at the edges. I excused myself and went outside for some air. A security guard found me crouching by the entrance and asked me to move along to the designated outside space, pointing me toward the smoking area. I stumbled over and leaned against a wall. I felt myself sliding down it slowly but didn’t have the strength to stop myself from falling to the ground. I opened my eyes when I felt someone grab onto me with both hands.
“Are you okay?” asked a man holding me firmly at arm’s length. It took me a few seconds to realize who he was.
“Tweed Glasses,” I mumbled. “Sorry about your shoes.”
“I beg your pardon?” he asked. I hadn’t expected his voice to be so deep.
“Nothing.” I looked up at him as everything stopped swirling so violently. He wasn’t actually wearing his glasses, and looked down at me with bright green eyes dotted with flecks of amber.
“Don’t apologize.” He smiled, and his eyes crinkled.
“Okay.” I swooned. It was so nice to be physically supported by someone.
“Right, if I let you go, are you going to hit the ground?” he asked gently.
“I think I’ll be okay,” I said, the feeling coming back to my legs. He let go, and stood back, his hands hovering by my sides.
He was taller than I’d realized. As if height equaled the protection and manliness that I was lacking thanks to Tom’s cold shoulder, I went to do the doe-eyed looking up and blinking to appear more attractive, but I didn’t have the energy.
“Well, at least you aren’t ruining my shoes this time,” he said, and laughed.
“God, you actually remember that?” I asked.
“Yeah, I had to go home and give them a polish.”
“Sorry, I was having a bit of a day. Boy troubles. Nasty business.” The memory of that week flooded my head, and I reached for my stomach, hoping I wasn’t about to hit the deck again.
“Okay, let me get you back upstairs,” he said. “You sit in the culture section, right?” I nodded, and let him steer me through the building and back to my desk.
“Thank you,” I said to him sincerely. “I think I should just make a sweet tea or something, I think my blood sugar is off.”
Tweed Glasses wrote his e-mail address down on my notepad and made me promise to e-mail him when I was feeling better, “so that I know if I should momentarily switch careers to be your day nurse.”
On Monday, 29th October, Jenkins, Queenie
I’ve managed to make it through the afternoon without falling on any of my colleagues. Thank you again for earlier!
On Monday, 29th October, Noman, Ted
The pleasure was all mine. It’s been a long time since a pretty girl fell for me. I could get used to it.
On Monday, 29th October, Jenkins, Queenie
br />
Whoa. Very corny response, Ted. I take it back.
What was going on here, then? Was this flirting? Why would he want to flirt with someone who looked half-dead and had acted as such by quite literally falling to the ground?
On Monday, 29th October, Noman, Ted
You can’t blame a man for trying, Queenie. I finally get to talk to the girl I’ve been tracking around the building for weeks and I lose my cool. . . . Forgive me.
On Monday, 29th October, Noman, Ted
Nice name, by the way. Suits you. . . .
I recalled promises one and four that I’d made to myself that morning: focus on work, and no men. I took a sip of sweet tea and worked on some pitch ideas for Gina. I’d wanted this job so that I could be a force for change, and for representation, but so far all I’d done was file listings and check copy.
* * *
A few days later, no more fainting, but I’d exhausted myself by arranging for my best-friend tier to go to a fireworks display. The thinking behind it was that friend activities might make me feel a bit more myself, but so far I was feeling more social secretary and mediator than anything. Darcy, Cassandra, and Kyazike have all individually surpassed themselves when it comes to support recently, mainly just by allowing me to text and text and text, though I was beginning to worry that it was all a bit of a Queenie show at the moment. I don’t want my friends to think they exist purely to listen to me talk about how much of a joke my life is.
THE CORGIS
Kyazike
Is it gonna b cold
Cassandra
Well, it’s November, so probably.
Queenie Page 7
