by Lia Louis
The doorbell cuts through my thoughts, and it’s not until I see Eliot on the other side of the door, a grin on his face, that I realize I forgot to text him last night. I’d texted Rosie late, at about ten, and apologized for not being able to be there today, and… shit. I remember my finger on the screen, hovering above his name, to tell him, to text him and tell him I couldn’t go. And I fell asleep. I fell asleep.
His smile fades when he takes in my face. “What’s up? Am I too early? You said eight, didn’t you?”
“I’m so sorry,” I say, bringing my hands to my head. “I—I meant to text you.”
“It’s off?” he says. Then he laughs and says, “Oh well. Probably best. Wouldn’t want to shame all those other carpenters being forced along to blog-ference under false pretenses when, really, it’s all about objectification of our—”
“It’s on,” I cut in, cheeks burning now with embarrassment at bringing him here pointlessly. “At noon. As organized, but—I can’t go.”
Eliot nods, eyebrows knitting together. “Is everything okay?”
“Lucas,” I say, and Eliot’s face freezes, eyebrows still knitted, lips still slightly apart.
“Lucas?” he repeats.
“We spoke last night. He’s—God, I don’t know, Eliot, but he sounds terrible. Said he needed me, needed to talk, and…” I stop when I take in his face. Mouth now a hard line, sharp jaw, tense, eyes unblinking, as if listening to a story he doesn’t buy for a second.
“What is it?” I ask.
Eliot takes a deep breath. “So, what, you’re dropping everything and going over? Now? Just like that.”
I nod slowly. “I’m getting the 11:00 a.m.”
“And what about Rosie?”
“She was fine.”
“And you are too?”
“Am I what?” I ask, face scrunching up, face burning even hotter now.
“Fine with that. Fine with not going to see Rosie today, at something really important to her. Fine with dropping everything—”
“Of course not, but he—he needs me. I’m his best friend, Eliot. He sounded really upset.”
He looks down at the floor, runs his hand through his hair. “Okay,” he says, looking up at me. “Okay.”
“Eliot.” I step forward, out onto the doorstep toward him, remembering our conversation before he left Fishers Way, when Lucas was here. “What did you want to tell me about?”
“What?”
“When you left last week. You said you had a phone call you’d talk to me about. You said you’d explain.”
He pauses, mouth still a tight line. “It was with Mark. He’s launched his business. He needs a hand. And he’s asked if I’d consider going back for a while. To Canada. To help him. Like I’d planned last year.”
My stomach aches at those words. Canada. That’s miles away. “Wow,” I manage. “That’s—that’s a big deal. Will you—will you go?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
I step forward, closing the gap between us even more. “Eliot. Are we all right?”
He nods. “Text me the address of the place,” he says shortly. “I’ll head over there.”
“Are you sure?”
“I can’t let her down, can I?” He stares at me then for a second, jaw tight.
“Take photos,” I say as he gives a nod and takes a step back, hand on his chin, eyes on the floor for a fleeting moment, as if considering something else, then he opens his truck door, gets inside, and drives away.
* * *
WhatsApp from Rosie Kalwar:
OMG ELIOT FOR PRESIDENT. Look at my display! It’s been Insta’d to shit!
WhatsApp from Rosie Kalwar:
Also Fox is practically wanking because Eliot is interested in all his traveling stories, and they are both sitting there talking about Canada and some place I’ve never heard of that sounds totally made-up.
WhatsApp from Rosie Kalwar:
Seriously, Fox is practically climaxing at the stories. Eliot said his friend has offered him work and he might go back though. WTF? You did not mention this?
WhatsApp from Rosie Kalwar:
Almost straddled him myself and shouted in his face “YOU CAN’T LEAVE, YOU HAVE TO FALL IN LOVE WITH MY EMMIE AND MAKE LOTS OF WOOD-CUTTING BABIES!”
WhatsApp from Rosie Kalwar:
Also, that belt. So hot. Utilize it. Role-play is your friend.
“Keep them closed.”
“You want me to keep my eyes closed while I go up stairs?”
Lucas chuckles from behind me, his hands on my waist. “Just trust me.”
“I do. But also, try not to let me break my spine.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
I got into Calais an hour ago, and Lucas seemed so much happier than I expected him to be. He was grinning, eyes bright, dressed for the frosty weather, in a black overcoat and a gray jumper beneath. Smart and as waspy as ever. He greeted me with a giant coffee and hugged me, groaning into my ear as he lifted me, raising me onto my tiptoes. “God, it’s so good to see you, Em.” Then he said he had somewhere to show me, and before I knew it, we were on the motorway, on our way to Honfleur, like we used to, on our Dream House Drives, the winter sun high in the sky, the in-car heating on full.
“You’re going to get lost again,” I said as large dual carriageways turned into meandering country lanes, and he’d laughed and said, “With any luck, eh?”
We stopped at a tiny café, where, dominated by hunger, we ordered far too much food to take away and eat in the car with us. Sticky buns, toasted sandwiches, crisps, and two boxes of macarons, and like the old days, we slowed by huge mansions, and Lucas, now armed with several years’ experience in architecture, pointed out things that were mostly lost on me.
“It’s to give the illusion of no seams at all, you see.”
“I do.”
“Do you?”
“Sort of.”
“Close enough, Em.”
Then we pulled up here—the house in which I am currently being led blindly around. An ultramodern detached, three-story house—perhaps too white and modern for my tastes—with a stone driveway, a double garage, and a gate with touchscreen access. It is one of three houses in a row, in what feels like the absolute middle of nowhere. All three of them stark and brash among the green, soft surroundings.
“Why are you pulling up? Say if the owners come out,” I’d flapped.
“She doesn’t move in until next week. This,” he said, clicking open the car door and nodding toward the house, “is my latest baby.”
I followed him, stepping out of the car, and laughed, looking up at the vastness of it; the pure Grand Designs–ness of it. “This? You—you designed this?”
“Certainly did. Well. My firm did. I was the lead.”
I stood back, gawping, my chest puffing up. “Luke. This is… amazing. You used to draw shit like this on envelopes when we were kids.”
Lucas laughed, coming to stand beside me, muscular arms folded. “I know, right?”
“And here it is. In real life.”
The pride I felt for him surged through my body, like sunlight. He dreamed of this. Of this job and of houses like this, and here he is, before it, within it, something he imagined, brought into existence. Nothing but fields and dust had been here before, and now, it was a house that is someone’s to-be home. I’ve only seen the hallway so far though, a huge, sweeping staircase dominating the center of it, winding up to a mezzanine balcony. Doors, white and rectangular, with huge panes of glass inside. Modern. Much too modern for me, but beautiful. It’s things like the clock: a clock that’s just a shadow on one of the walls, that screams Lucas to me. It’s all so him. “You’re so Austin Powers,” I’d said to him once as he’d fawned over gadgets—things with buttons and codes and contraptions appearing from kitchen counters with the click of a switch.
We reach the top step now. Lucas moves so he is beside me, but he doesn’t take his hands from around my waist. I hear th
e squeak of a door handle. The air smells like wet paint and new wood, but swiftly, I am hit with fresh, late-winter air.
“Are we outside?”
“Wow. All that Diagnosis Murder certainly paid off.”
“Fuck you,” I say, and Lucas laughs. “Remember, I’m your eyes right now, Em. Don’t bite the hand that feeds.”
He takes my hand in his now and says, “Keep coming, keep coming.” Then he lets go. “Hold your hands out,” he says, and he places them to grasp what feels like a cool, steel pole, his warm hands on top of mine. I feel him beside me, my eyes still scrunched shut as I promised.
“There better not be a dungeon on the other side of my eyelids.”
“You wish,” he says, amused.
“I would run so fast…”
“Go on. Open ’em up.”
And when I do, I am winded at the sight of the view. Stretches of nothingness, of heathy grass, and just at its edge, the sea. Turquoise, glittering with winter sunlight.
“That’s the port,” he says. “Remember? Where we’d walk and talk, when we were kids.”
“Oh my God, I do. Way back, when for a while we thought my dad lived around here.”
“In a house like this.” Lucas smiles.
“A bed shaped like a drum set.”
“Roadies guarding the gates like trolls,” Lucas says, and we both laugh. We stand close. Arm to arm, the fabric of our jackets touching.
“Reality is a bit different,” I say, gazing out to the port.
“But at least you know the reality,” says Lucas gently, and I nod and tell him he’s right. Gulls swoop overheard, and we watch tiny boats bob, like in souvenir pens, on the horizon. It’s quiet up here. Calm.
“I really miss it,” I say. “The surmising. The dreaming.”
Lucas leans, forearms moving to rest on the balcony. “We still can, can’t we?”
“Hard to dream up drumming, cool fathers when you know your real father is probably a hack.”
Lucas nudges me and says softly, “It’s his loss, Em. Totally. He has no idea what he’s missing.”
“I know,” I say.
We stand, looking out to the sea, side by side, and I look up at the sun; the same sun that shone down on us, all those years ago, as we planned and dreamed out loud, speculating where we’d end up, never once doubting that we wouldn’t be there together.
“You made this,” I say after awhile, looking behind me at this beautiful house—this design—and back to the view; the blue distant sea, the blankets of green, the tufts of pure white cloud.
“And there’s many more where that came from.” He smiles at me, and moves closer again, the tops of our arms pressing together.
“You did it,” I say, and he presses a cheek to mine, our skin warm from the sun.
“Just the Lamborghini left to get now, eh? Oh, and to actually own a place like this. It’s Ana’s, you know.”
“Ana? As in Eliot’s Ana?”
Lucas nods, gives a heavy shrug. “Well, she isn’t Eliot’s anymore, but yeah. That Ana. She’s not due to move in for a week or so. We’ve got some stuff to straighten out before she does.”
I nod, unconvinced, and can’t help but think she would rather anyone here but me. “What happened with her and Eliot?”
Lucas brings his hands together, eyes on the horizon. “He ended it. And to be honest, I’m not surprised. He’s not been happy for a while.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but then… he reached his scary age, you know?” he says, as if it’s fact, as if it’s common knowledge. “The same age as his dad was, when he died. And I think El’s thinking life’s short. If it doesn’t make him happy…”
“And she didn’t? Make him happy, I mean.”
Lucas looks at me again. “I’m not sure anyone’s ever made Eliot completely happy.” Lucas looks over at me then. “What? You thinking you do want mates’ rates after all?”
I clear my throat. “Actually, I was just thinking that I can see you and Marie here, in a place like this.” I change the subject. Because now I can’t get Eliot’s face out of my head. The disappointment—the hurt—in his face when I told him I was coming here, instead. And Canada. He told Rosie about Canada. He might go back. How would I feel if he went back? If I didn’t see Eliot again for… I don’t know how long. “Yeah, I can see you raising a couple of kids in a place like this,” I carry on. “Couple of dogs. Or horses. Marie strikes me a horse type.”
“Really?”
I look at him. “Yeah. I mean, in my opinion, if you want all those kids Marie keeps going on about, you might need a few more carpets. Make it a bit more kid-friendly. But apart from that. Looks like your perfect marital home, if you ask me. Very you two.”
His face falls a little and he looks down at his hands gripping the bar of the balcony. “Marital home,” he repeats. “Can you really see that, Em?” It isn’t a question, it’s more of a scoff.
“Why do you say that?”
He sighs, doesn’t answer, and looks up to the sky.
“What happened, Luke?” I ask then. “When you called, you said you’d had a big fight. Is everything okay now? I didn’t want to pry straightaway but…” I trail off. “It’s why you called me in the first place.”
Lucas groans, rubs his face with his hand. “Ah, man, it was stupid. We were a bit drunk and talking about exes and… I told her about Holly. Do you remember Holly? At uni? It was like a million years ago.”
“I remember.”
“It just came out, that we were engaged, and she was—gutted.”
I think of Marie, at that table, in that café, telling me how scared she was to be happy, that Lucas chose her to propose to, and I can see why something small like that would feel like a mountain to her.
“It just got stupid, got out of hand,” he says. “You know what it’s like, after too much wine, and yeah, okay, maybe I should have told her at some point, but everything was so good, Emmie, and—I dunno. I was a kid then. It didn’t matter. But Marie said it’s because she asked me to my face, if I’d ever proposed before, and I’d said no countless times.”
I pull my mouth into a grimace. “Ugh. So a bit of a mess then.”
“Totally. And I mean, I get it. She’s been hurt before, and she gets insecure and… I haven’t exactly helped things in the past, what with that business trip to Belgium last year, when we last broke up. You know, when I texted that girl from the Oz office, like a dick. But it all just sort of went to shit last night. Mountain and molehill, you know?”
I hesitate, then stand a little straighter. “You texted her?”
“What?”
“You texted Ivy?”
Lucas’s brow furrows, gray eyes narrowing, the sun catching on his lashes. “Um, no, not now, I’m talking about like, two Novembers ago. When we broke up. The last time. You remember.”
“I do,” I say. “But you told me you didn’t text Ivy. You told me she texted you and you didn’t reply and that is why Marie and you split up. Because Marie was paranoid.”
Pinkness spreads across the freckles on his nose. “Did I?”
“Yes.”
Lucas sighs, hands stretched out in front of him, as if about to clap. “Look, it was nothing, Em, it was a stupid flirty text that I shouldn’t have sent, and I wanted it to go away. Forget it happened.”
“But why did you lie to me?”
Lucas laughs, then stops at the sight of me, drawing back. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. Yes, I am. Why lie to me when you know I would be there anyway.”
He shrugs heavily, standing, stuffing his hands in his pockets, shoulders square. “Because I was probably ashamed. I didn’t realize I lied to you. I thought you knew.”
“Well, you must’ve realized at the time.”
“Emmie, come on.” He ducks then, to meet my eye, an almost amused “you’re making a big deal out of nothing” smile on his face. “I’m marrying Marie in two weeks. We sorted it. And Ivy is w
ater under the bridge—”
“Oh, you are marrying Marie, then?”
He looks at me, jolts back as if he’s been slapped. “What do you mean?”
And suddenly I feel like a fool. I came here to help him. I thought he needed me, and that he needed help. Like he did when he was backpacking. Like so many times before.
“I was worried it might be called off or—your voice on the phone, Lucas, you sounded—”
“I know, I know. Look, I admit, I was nuts with worry. I thought that was it. That’s why I called you. But Marie and I talked this morning, before I picked you up. We talked through it and—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you.” He takes his hands out of his pockets, holds my shoulders. “It means the world to me that you’re here.”
I look at him, and wonder how much of this is calling me, asking me to come, just to see if I still would. And I think of Ivy. A small thing, yes, but I defended him fiercely after that breakup, thought Marie to be jealous and unreasonable. And I think of Eliot. Lovely, reliable, gorgeous Eliot, turning up always when I needed him, for Louise, for Rosie, for me, beside me on that bench, beneath shooting stars. And his face when I brought up that night. The sadness in his deep brown eyes. The regret. What he said. About things not being how they appear.
“Lucas,” I say. The winter chill swirls around us, goose bumps prickling my neck. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“That night. Of our nineteenth. Never Have I Ever.”
Lucas looks at me and nods, quickly. Color draining.
“What don’t I know about it?”
“W-What?”
I swallow. “It was you, wasn’t it?” I ask again. Because I know now, looking at his face, at his body language, the way his shoulders have gone rigid and his jaw tight, that there is something. He looks the same as he did when I asked about Ivy. I know. I have known, really, since the night of the shooting star. But I’ve been too frightened to look it in the eye. To say it aloud. And any shred of doubt I’ve had, that the night of our nineteenth was all down to Lucas, I’ve watered with every kind thing he’s done, every nice thing he’s ever said, until denial felt easy. And I want him to say it, here, in front of me, in front of the port we’d walk along, dreaming up our futures.
