I held onto the black console, feeling the familiar curves of the plastic. It was basic. Basic and chunky and I loved it. It had just two bright red buttons and a large slot at the top for the games. Consoles nowadays could make you tea and wipe your bum at the same time.
The best thing was that Sienna was coming round too and I couldn’t wait. We had talked about these consoles all those months ago at the gaming fair, and when I was twenty-one and beating the hell out of pixellated enemies in Street Fighter, she’d been in her teens and bouncing along the platforms of Donkey Kong. It was perfect.
She was due round in just a few minutes so I started dishing up the Chinese I’d ordered. Her favourite was shredded beef, mine was sweet and sour chicken. I knew she would definitely eat some of mine too, so I’d ordered extra.
There was a quiet knock at the door, three gentle strikes. The cold night air filled the hallway as I let her in.
‘Sienna!’ I shouted, as if I was surprised to see her, scooping her into my arms and giving her a big hug. Her little frame was buried beneath a trendy winter coat, which she threw off as she rushed into the kitchen. Her presence was a little like a miniature whirlwind. I could never quite keep up with it.
‘Yes! You’ve bought my favourite!’ she cried, clutching a huge bottle of cider for us to share. We carried the contraband into the living room, pulling the curtains shut and pushing the world out. It was just me and my favourite girl now.
A tiny lamp in the corner of my living room was all we needed; the TV was flickering a harsh blue light as it waited for the fun to start.
‘I take it your dad’s OK tonight?’ I questioned, tearing the paper packaging on a bag of prawn crackers, the contents spilling all over the carpet.
‘Yeah, he’s fine, Nick. I think he was glad to see me out of the house so he could have some peace.’ She straightened her back as she answered, the memory of our row obviously still fresh in her mind. She started to shovel forkfuls of takeaway into her mouth. The girl can eat. I love that about her.
I opened the cider and poured it out, the cold liquid immediately creating a thin coat of condensation on the exterior of the glasses. I didn’t know what to do first – gulp the drink, hog the food, or tell Sienna how I felt. (Although I wondered if I would actually pluck up the courage to do the latter.) This was wonderful.
‘Nick, I’ve been talking to Pete again lately, you know . . .’
‘Who’s Pete?’
‘That homeless guy who sits on the car park bench at work.’
‘What do you keep talking to him for, Si? You nearly got into serious trouble over that.’
‘I know, I know, but I keep feeling bad that I haven’t invited him to live with me and Dad for a bit. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.’
I suddenly felt a bit awed by her. Sitting next to me was a girl in her early twenties who seemed to have more room in her heart to care than anyone else I had ever known. She had enough to contend with looking after her dad; she shouldn’t be worrying about how to mend everyone else’s lives. She was so in tune with the world, so grown-up for someone so young that it scared me a little. However, I couldn’t help feeling that her idea was a little on the naive side . . .
‘I understand where you’re coming from, but wouldn’t that be too hard on you and your dad?’ I queried.
‘Well, that’s just it. It would be really hard. The flat is small, and life is difficult enough for him already. But I still feel bad about it.’ She looked at me, searching for answers in my silly face like she so often did.
Sienna was so kind I was convinced she must spend the majority of her life feeling guilty. If it weren’t for her dad and the limitations of space, she would probably have a house full of homeless people, stray dogs, kittens, pigeons, and lonely elderly people she had helped onto buses. It was ridiculous.
I didn’t know much about this homeless bloke, but I knew he was lucky to have her in his life. Despite her beauty there was not a drop of arrogance in her soul. And I knew why: Sienna was so gorgeous people just didn’t tell her. How couldn’t she know? That was what they probably thought. It was too obvious.
‘Now, I have two games: Donkey Kong or Street Fighter. You choose,’ I said, changing the subject, feeling the need to brush away the harsh realities of life and replace them with violent eighties video games.
She giggled and picked Donkey Kong. I knew she would. I pushed the game awkwardly into the console, feeling the familiar crunch as it sank into the bizarre mechanics inside. I took a couple of large swigs of my cider, kicking my trainers off into the corner of the room and nearly knocking down a tall lamp in the process. God, I was an idiot. She seemed to like it, though – it made her laugh that deep giggle that sometimes proved difficult to stop.
I held on to the controller like it was a newborn child, wondering how on earth to play the game. It had been a long time and my memory was failing me. Sienna looked worryingly ready, chewing her bottom lip and squinting at the grainy screen. There was no way she could win. It would crush my pride so badly it might never be fully restored. It would be almost as bad as the incident with her dad, and that had been bloody embarrassing. I had avoided her for at least a week after that. No – gaming was my territory . . .
‘Right then, Si,’ I declared, toasting her with my glass. She returned the gesture before settling down into the corner of the sofa.
The next few hours were a blur of cider and laughter. She tried to distract me in every way she could, even pulling my jumper over my face at one point. I still kicked her arse. The order of the universe had been restored and I was a happy man. There was so much shrieking and hysteria I was surprised the neighbours hadn’t started banging on the wall.
The clock was moving swiftly towards 1 a.m. when we piled on as many layers as possible and headed out to the garden. I was clutching two rum and Cokes and a big, fat cigar.
We sat down next to each other on a towel I laid on the decking, and she rested her head on my shoulder. It was the perfect fit. The brutal cold made her body shake like a puppy so I put my left arm around her and squeezed her tight. I took a deep drag on the cigar, puffing the smoke out in perfect little rings. Maybe if I tried hard enough I could tell her I loved her like this . . .
No. That was silly. And impossible. Sienna needed me in her life. I suddenly felt myself backing away from the prospect of just telling her, finally. Suddenly all my self-persuasion retreated so quickly that I could barely hear the words that had been rattling around in my brain. I never wanted to be the one to break her heart, to disappoint her, to be late for dinner or to hog the bed. I never wanted to be the person to make her cry, or turn out to be a huge let-down. She meant too much to me for any of that. While I believed I could love her better than anyone in the world, I didn’t really trust myself to be . . . well, good enough.
‘Pass it here, warthog,’ she said, pulling the cigar from my fingers.
I watched her as the smoke drifted from her lips. She seemed so pure to me that the contrast between her face and the smoke billowing from her mouth was verging on artistic. I could take a photo of this moment and put it in a gallery and everyone would just look at it in wonder. Who was this girl? What was she all about? Where had she come from?
‘What’s up, Nick? Are you all right?’ She turned towards me. Our faces were millimetres apart and her breath was sweet. This would have been the perfect moment to kiss her. But I just couldn’t.
‘Yeah, I’m fine, dude, just chilling out.’
Dude? What a load of shit. ‘Dude’ was what I called her when I was scared and needed her to be my friend. ‘Dude’ was not the woman I had yearned for every single day since I’d first seen her face peeping over the top of a newspaper.
‘Any nice girls in your life at the moment?’ she asked me, turning her delicate profile towards the moon, which hung in the sky as if suspended by invisible string.
‘Yeah, I guess so . . .’ I responded, my mind scanning through the da
tes I had been on recently.
I wasn’t really telling the truth – they weren’t that nice. One of them had tried to drag me behind a bin for sex after just one date. Another one clearly had a few boyfriends and saw me as a bit of a plaything, which suited me OK but didn’t really set me on fire. And then there was Kate . . . Beautiful, tortured Kate. I never knew that I had taken a broken doll home with me that night in Brixton; all I’d wanted from the evening was a one-night stand, but she needed fixing and she looked to me to do it. Kate was really the closest I could have got to someone serious over the past few months, but something was holding me back. I was tired of holding her face and telling her she was gorgeous, exhausted by the teary phone calls from her at three in the morning. I should have seen our wild night as an omen; there was something in the desperation of our passion that indicated our shared vulnerability. I was hurting from my row with Sienna and needed the distraction, and Kate needed someone to make her feel beautiful again. I did, and it was like a drug to her.
‘Who is it, Nick?’ I felt her body tense up; I guessed she must be cold. We didn’t talk about this stuff too often.
‘Well, Kate’s lovely. But I don’t know if I can cope with the drama any more. She makes me feel a bit suffocated, really, but I can’t just leave her to fend for herself. I’m too deep into the situation . . .’ I paused, realising that I sounded like a bit of an arsehole.
‘Does it feel wrong?’ she questioned, quietly this time, as she pulled her coat over her knees.
I could smell her hair; a beautiful, appley scent. ‘No, I don’t think so. I think I like the idea of her, but the reality is too much to handle. She isn’t my girlfriend, obviously . . . but she’s almost made herself that by default. I feel like the choice isn’t mine.’
I was surprised the words were spilling out like this. Talking to Sienna, my thought processes were coming out in some kind of neat and tidy order, when in my head they had been swimming around like alphabet soup.
‘I think you should try harder, Nick. I think she might need you. Sometimes, people need you and it’s so scary you push it away when actually you want it to be closer.’ She looked at me and I suddenly felt the weight of a new responsibility. One I had tried to deny, but when Sienna put it so simply I felt I had missed something hugely obvious.
‘Well, I’d better go now, my lovely,’ she said, suddenly looking down at her watch.
The cold instantly bit into my clothes as her warm frame moved away from me. It was very late now and I could tell work would be a struggle in the morning. My head was spinning.
‘Can you call a cab?’ She looked up at me in the moonlight.
‘Of course. You can stay in the spare room if you want?’
‘No thanks, Nick, I should get back, really.’ She wandered into the living room and I followed her inside. I heard her climb onto my sofa again as I opened the fridge for some chilled water. ‘I’ll call a taxi firm in just a second, Sienna,’ I shouted down the hallway, but there was no reply.
I started shuffling through the papers on the kitchen worktop, looking for a taxi number, frustrated at my own lack of organisation. After a few minutes I finally found a business card. I picked up the phone and walked into the living room, but I was surprised to see her lying on my sofa, fast asleep. That was quick, I thought. She must be exhausted.
I didn’t really know what to do, so I stood there looking at her for a few moments.
Her beautiful face was lit by the blue screensaver on the TV and she looked so peaceful.
I wondered about her dad and if he would be OK if she wasn’t there in the morning, but I knew his social worker always popped in when Sienna left for work so I guessed he’d be all right. It was a difficult situation to gauge.
I couldn’t bring myself to disturb her, so I went upstairs and pulled the duvet from my bed, carrying it down carefully so as not to trip on the edge and fall down the stairs, landing in a tangled heap at the bottom. That was exactly the kind of thing I would do. I gently laid it over her, noticing her ribs rising and falling as she slept, and crept quietly up to my room.
I lay under a thin sheet. It was cold, but it was OK. It was just fine because I knew that Sienna was here, safe and warm under my duvet, even if I wasn’t under it with her. As I tried to drift off I thought about my life, and how far I’d come since the break-up with Amelia. How much of that was down to Sienna? I wondered. Just having her around felt like such a blessing I had to pinch myself. I slowly slipped into the land of dreams, my legs twitching occasionally and bringing me back to consciousness until I was lost in the satisfying murk of sleep.
I reckon it was about 3 a.m. when Sienna’s silhouette appeared in the shadows of my room. I could only just make it out. The click of the door as it opened had brought me out of my dreams and through one eye I squinted at her hovering around like a ghost. Was she sleepwalking? I stayed quiet and played dead, wondering what on earth was going on. She stood still for a few minutes; my heart was beating so hard in my chest I could hear it on the pillow.
Should I say something? Walk over to her? I’d heard sleepwalkers lash out if you wake them . . . Then there was some more movement and she sat on the edge of the bed, letting out a loud sigh. It was an unhappy sigh – I knew her that well. There was another pause. Then silence. The black of the night. She gently spread the duvet over the bed so as not to wake me, and slid underneath its heavy weight. Her long hair swished against the pillow, a strand brushing my neck.
Sienna
It was nearly one in the morning and the cider had well and truly taken effect. I had that beautiful woozy feeling, the fine line between tipsy and drunk. All my cares seemed so far away. It was just Nick and I at his place, and nothing else seemed to matter. Nothing at all.
We had played Donkey Kong for hours, and it was an effective distraction from the tension that was building up between us. But now the console was off, I was well and truly switched on. My attraction to him was so overwhelming now it scared me.
‘Fancy sharing a cigar outside?’ he asked as we stood in the hallway, pulling on a dark brown padded jacket with a green stripe detail on the arms as if I had already said yes. It was one of those trendy jackets you see on London men who prefer to use oversized cans rather than inner-ear headphones, read the Independent and keep their brightly coloured trainers dangerously clean. He had that look about him. It drove me crazy.
He found a jacket for me too, a big black Helly Hansen number that was several sizes too big and made me look as if I was ready for a ski trip. The smell of his aftershave washed over me as I zipped it up. I could barely contain my urge to just hold his face and kiss him, right there in the hallway.
Nick made two rum and Cokes in the kitchen on our way out, and selected a big fat cigar from a selection of five in his cupboard near the back door. He also grabbed a towel and laid it down on the decking outside. The air was so cold I had to zip the coat further up my neck, but the alcohol provided an additional layer of protection.
We sat down and Nick lit the cigar, the strong smell spreading all around us. The moon was so bright it was as if someone had left one of those economy light bulbs on, making everything look like the set of a vampire movie.
I started to tremble a little, shuffling my bum along the towel so I could have a little of his heat. Being this close to him was so torturous I could have cried, but at the same time I was happy. It was bittersweet.
Nick put his arm around me and squeezed as he started puffing out the smoke in little circles. They got wider and softer as they drifted off into the freezing night air. He looked like he was deep in thought. Distracted. Far away. I asked him to share the cigar, pulling it away from his fingers before he had the chance to reply. I knew this was cheeky, but I was nervous. Deep down, I knew that if we didn’t get it together tonight, while the moon was full and the stars were glittering, we probably never would.
There was more silence, so I asked him if he was all right, turning towards him so ou
r noses were almost touching. I felt the heat of his breath against my lips and stared into his eyes. I could kiss him. I really could. Right. Now. Well, go on then, I thought. Do it . . .
But it was too late, and he broke the quiet by saying: ‘Yeah, I’m fine, dude, just chilling out.’
Dude? The moment was gone and he called me dude. Damn.
I asked him if there was anyone in his life at the moment, hoping we could get on to the subject that way, my breath creating puffs of whiteness against the crisp air.
‘Yeah, I guess so . . .’ he replied, squinting slightly to stop the smoke going in his eyes.
Oh dear. I bet there was someone I didn’t know about. Maybe he was right on the verge of being in a relationship.
‘Who is it, Nick?’ I asked, desperate to be put out of my misery. I hoped it hadn’t shown. He started talking about Kate. I had vaguely heard her name once or twice. I think he met her on some night out in Brixton back when things were funny with us after that argument, but he’d described her as a ‘tortured soul’ when her name had come up in previous conversations. Tortured soul. This didn’t sound like something he should have to contend with.
I asked him quietly if it felt wrong to be with her, and pulled his coat over my knees. Now we were talking about another woman, the cold seemed to seep into my bones.
‘No, I don’t think so. I think I like the idea of her, but the reality is too much to handle. She isn’t my girlfriend, obviously . . . but she’s almost made herself that by default. I feel like the choice isn’t mine.’
I was surprised to hear him talking so honestly to me about this. For some reason we’d always kind of skirted around the details of our relationships. I’d always assumed it was because Nick was private about these things. And for my part it was because I wanted him to know that I was available if he ever felt the same. That’s bad, isn’t it?
Suddenly I was worried he’d picked up on my feelings for him. I started backpedalling to protect myself and said things to push him closer to Kate, in the desperate, secret hope that he would just say: ‘There is someone else – it’s you.’ I felt instant guilt. This Kate girl, whoever she was, could have been perfectly lovely. Why was I wishing ill of their relationship? It was hideous and not like me at all.
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