The Night That Changed Everything

by Laura Tait

  ‘Oh, change the friggin’ record, Ben, and tell me the truth. When was it? I know, but I need to hear you say it.’

  His breathing is jagged when he says: ‘The night Arch 13 opened.’

  ‘The night we now call our anniversary?’

  ‘Rebecca, don’t.’

  ‘How could you?’

  My voice is quiet but so full of anguish I barely recognize it as my own. Ben moves towards me but my stare stops him dead.

  ‘Get out,’ I tell him.

  ‘Rebecca.’ He looks at me pleadingly. ‘I love you so much. This has been the worst week of my life. Can’t we just forget the whole thing?’

  ‘No,’ I whisper.

  ‘Becs, we can get past this.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can.’ My voice is croaky from all the shouting.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘You have to leave,’ I say quietly. ‘For good.’

  ‘Rebecca, no.’

  Ben’s eyes have filled with tears, and he tries to reach out to me again, but I move away.

  ‘Go, Ben. It’s over.’

  ‘No,’ he says desperately. ‘I’m not giving up on us just like that. I love you – I even went and—’ He stops and takes a deep breath. ‘Look, I’m not going anywhere until we’ve talked about this.’

  ‘Oh, you want to talk about it? Fine.’ I pull out a chair and plonk myself down at the table. ‘Let’s talk about when you told me you didn’t fancy her?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It could only have been, what? About three or four hours before you slept with her, you told me you had no interest in her? Then you waited until I’d left to make your move.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  He rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands and then looks towards the ceiling. ‘It just happened. I know that sounds like bullshit, but it did.’

  ‘Sorry, Ben, not good enough.’

  ‘She was upset – she’d broken up with Shane, and we got drunk. That’s all.’

  He’s pacing the room frantically, gesticulating all over the shop.

  ‘And then you started fancying her?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So you didn’t fancy her at all, but you slept with her because she was up for it? You want to be that guy, Ben? Really?’

  ‘No,’ he barks. ‘I’m the guy who met a girl he really liked, who didn’t seem interested in me so I got drunk to cheer myself up, and when that didn’t work I slept with someone to cheer myself up, and that didn’t work either.’

  ‘Oh, that’s sad. Here,’ I look around the room, ‘I’m sure I have a tiny little violin lying around – let me play you something.’

  ‘Look,’ he pulls out the chair opposite me and sits down, burying his head in his hands, ‘I’m not going anywhere until you understand what happened that night.’

  A Year Earlier

  Chapter Thirteen

  BEN

  Opening Night

  ‘Anything going on there, do you reckon?’

  My eyes are focused on Jamie and Danielle.

  ‘Nah, they’re just the world’s two biggest flirts,’ says Rebecca. ‘Jamie’s probably the only man in here who doesn’t fancy Danielle.’

  I can’t tell whether she’s giving me a chance to compliment her or just making chit-chat.

  ‘I don’t,’ I say, hoping Rebecca will therefore infer that I fancy her, because right now it feels like she’s the only girl in the world.

  But she says nothing.

  I normally find this kind of stuff easy. It’s like Jamie says: check the mirror to make sure you’re looking OK, look out for the girl giving you signals, make your manoeuvre. Mirror, signal, manoeuvre. And I did look OK when I left the house, and I definitely like her enough to make a manoeuvre, but, man, I have no idea whether this girl is giving me signals or not.

  ‘Ben?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Your drink is dripping on your shirt.’

  ‘Arggghhh. Crap.’

  ‘Want me to go get you a napkin? I owe you one.’

  I laugh, despite the situation. I can’t remember laughing this much in ages. I reckon it’s her delivery. Everything she says is kind of dry, and her eyes are ever so slightly squinty, like she’s permanently questioning something, and basically I’m in love with her.

  I think about what Jamie would do if an insanely hot girl asked him if he needed a napkin. He’d probably take a casual sip of his neat whisky and say something like . . .

  ‘I do if it has your number on it?’

  The words come out before my brain can inform my mouth that I’m drinking a pink cocktail, not a neat whisky, and that I can’t take a casual sip because there are so many pieces of fruit that I’m having to use a straw.

  Shit.

  Rebecca looks awkward, like she’s thinking of the best way to get out of here, and basically this is what happens when you manoeuvre without a signal – you crash.

  It’s as though the value of time starts to multiply, because the two or three seconds that follow feel like two or three weeks.

  I attempt to save myself the embarrassment of a rejection by offering to get us another drink, but I can literally see the relief in her eyes when she spots Danielle heading towards the door.

  ‘I’ll be back in two minutes,’ she says, and I’m content with that until I realize she’s still dealing in multiplied time, and two minutes actually means, well, never.

  I stand there, and even though I’ve only met the girl once, my crest is well and truly fallen. I can’t take my eyes off her. She’s so elegant, and together, and self-assured. In fact, I realize now, she has all the attributes of a woman who would have no problems giving me signals if she was interested.

  So obviously she isn’t.

  I see Jamie glance my way. He’s with Rebecca. Which means she wasn’t going to find Danielle at all; she just lied to get away from me. And now she’s probably telling Jamie all about me hitting on her, and he’ll never tire of reminding me about it, but actually, this is partly his fault: he said he’d invent a cocktail especially in my honour if I cleared some glasses, and I ended up with . . .

  . . . whatever this is. I look like a right tit.

  I decide to stop looking, lest she think I’m some kind of stalker. I down the rest of the cocktail and go ask Russ and Tom if they want another drink. They don’t.

  ‘Same again?’ says Jamie as I approach the bar.

  I look around to see where Rebecca has gone and catch sight of her back as she walks out of the door.

  ‘Very funny,’ I say dejectedly. ‘What on earth was that?’

  ‘A cross between a margarita and a piña colada,’ he says.

  ‘And how was that in honour of me?’

  ‘Because it can’t decide what it wants to be.’

  He trots off to serve someone else, clearly delighted with his joke, but I can’t be annoyed with Jamie tonight. This place is awesome, and it’s all his.

  ‘I need to talk to you later,’ he shouts over.

  Oh, here we go – it starts.

  ‘I’ll look forward to that.’

  I sit at the end of the bar feeling sorry for myself, glugging my pint in the hope it will make the image of Rebecca less vivid in my mind. I’ve just ordered another drink when I see Danielle pull up a stool just down the bar from me. She orders a Bramble and a Black Russian, which makes me wonder if Rebecca is coming back, but when they come she downs one and immediately picks up the other herself.

  A group of people squeeze in beside her, all elbows and bags, and with a huff she shuffles up.

  ‘Watcha, Ben.’

  I watch her down the second drink.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, I just . . . Me and Shane just broke up.’

  ‘Oh.’ I’m not really sure what to say. ‘I’m sure it was just a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Yup, I certainly misunderstood.’ />
  She stretches her lips taut to reapply her lipstick and I try to remember if Rebecca was wearing any? I don’t think she was.

  ‘That’s bad news,’ I say.

  ‘Blimey, Ben,’ says Danielle. ‘You’re really cheering me up here!’

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, smiling as it dawns on me what a drag I’m being.

  I open my mouth to explain but realize I can’t tell her. She is Rebecca’s friend, and anyway, who gets mopey about a girl they’ve met once?

  ‘Girl troubles,’ I say vaguely.

  ‘Oh, well in that case,’ she says, ‘let’s get shit-faced together.’

  She waves Jamie over and doesn’t seem to hear me say that I’m pretty pissed already.

  ‘Two Jägerbombs, please, handsome!’

  Jamie studies her for a second.

  ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that, Jamie,’ she says. ‘I could drink you under any table in here. Go on, pick one.’

  Jamie laughs and starts on the Jägerbombs.

  We polish off the shots and I’ve not even put my glass down when Danielle jumps to her feet as ‘SexyBack’ by Justin Timberlake comes on. ‘I love this song!’

  She throws both arms in the air and starts dancing on her own. A few blokes, including the one who knocked into Rebecca earlier, turn to watch, and she offers her audience a smile as she bounces her head from side to side. She attempts to coax me over to her with an outstretched finger but I stay put.

  At the end of the song Danielle returns to her stool. She reaches for her latest cocktail, but takes just a sip this time.

  ‘Rebecca always says I turn into someone else when it comes to Shane,’ she says, looking sad. ‘Have you met Rebecca?’

  ‘Briefly,’ I say, struggling to focus. The booze is really starting to go to my head. ‘We got talking earlier.’

  ‘I love Rebecca.’

  ‘Me too.’

  Danielle looks up at me and I realize what I just said. ‘You love Rebecca?’

  ‘No, I meant a different Rebecca – an old friend.’

  ‘Well, I hope you never lost her because I can tell you that whoever said that thing about it being better to have lost and loved than never having been lost at all was talking shit.’

  I decide against correcting her.

  ‘Tennyson,’ I say instead.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Tennyson was the one who said it. Married for forty-two years, died before his wife.’

  ‘Then who the fuck is he to tell us it’s better to have lost and loved?’

  She looks up at me, smiling into her drink as she takes a sip.

  ‘Are you laughing at me, Ben?’

  Rebecca is right, Danielle probably could have any bloke in here. And even if she is the biggest flirt in the world, I feel flattered that she’s flirting with me. It’s at least taking my mind off things, though I still wish it was Rebecca sitting here beside me.

  I look for Jamie so I can ask what he wants to talk to me about, but he must be changing a barrel or something.

  ‘Where is Rebecca?’ says Danielle, inspecting the room.

  ‘I guess she went home.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Danielle. ‘Maybe I should take a leaf out of her book. One more cocktail and I think I’ll be dancing on the bar top, and I’m not even gonna tell you what happened last time I did that.’

  I laugh tiredly.

  ‘One more lager and I reckon I might fall asleep on the bar top.’

  ‘Do you want to share a taxi?’

  ‘OK.’

  Danielle gets up.

  ‘Shouldn’t we wait for Jamie to get back?’

  ‘I’ll text him,’ she says. ‘I’ve had enough goodbyes for one night.’

  We wait under the neon red Arch 13 sign for a black cab, but we don’t have to stand there long.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asks the driver as we climb inside.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Danielle looks at me. ‘Where are we going, Ben?’

  I wake up feeling like my head might just break into tiny pieces if I were to move it so much as a millimetre.

  Without opening my eyes I try to work out how I got so steaming drunk that I feel like this, but the night is a blur. I start from the beginning, and slowly things come back to me. Talking to Rebecca, finding out that she lived in Japan, laughing lots. I’m up to the point where my cocktail is dribbling down my shirt when the reconstruction is interrupted by an unfamiliar text tone.

  I open my eyes, just long enough to see the blonde hair on the pillow next to me, and then I squeeze them shut.

  Fuck.

  I sense Danielle reach down the side of my bed for her phone. Daring to open my eyes again, I see that she is staring intently at her screen. I presume it is Shane. She looks ever so slightly confused.

  After several minutes she returns the phone to her handbag and finally looks at me. I offer her a neutral smile, because I don’t want to be horrible about the fact that, well, this isn’t going anywhere. Who knows, maybe we might even end up being friends if she doesn’t take it too badly.

  ‘Let’s just pretend this never happened, shall we?’ she says.

  Danielle sits up and twists on to her feet in one clean movement, then puts on her dress as smoothly as it slipped off. I get the feeling this whole thing isn’t new territory for her, and quite frankly if I did have feelings for Danielle, I’d be thinking this little performance was quite mean. Thankfully, the only feelings involved – from both sides, it seems – were the ones we were trying to forget.

  I offer to see her to the door but she thanks me and says there’s no need, and she’s literally out of the house within two minutes of putting down her phone.

  I lie there, not quite sure what just happened. I can hear Avril in the room next door. She is clearly moaning at Tom, but I can’t hear his replies even though the walls are paper thin.

  When I was eighteen I’d wear a hangover with pride, but in my mid-twenties I’m at the point where I just want to hide away from the world for a day, possibly two, and that’s what I fully intend to do until a text message of my own reminds me I’m supposed to be meeting Jamie for breakfast. He adds that he’s got something for me.

  Ibuprofen, hopefully.

  Frank’s is nothing special to look at. In fact, there is paint peeling off the window sill and most of the mugs are chipped, but the full English is up there with my Mum’s, and Frank himself always greets you like family.

  ‘You look rough today, Ben,’ he says, ushering me to a table with some napkins wedged underneath one of the legs. ‘Still, nothing one of my specials won’t fix.’

  Frank is Greek. The bottom half of his face is darkened by a shadow of stubble, while the top is permanently tanned, so that he resembles a Crimewatch photofit.

  ‘Make that two, please, Frank – Jamie’s on his way.’

  A few minutes later Jamie bounds in looking ready for a heptathlon.

  ‘When I said you needed to work out what to do with your life,’ he says, sitting down opposite me, ‘I didn’t mean that you should do one of my best mates.’

  ‘How did you—’

  ‘Rebecca told me.’

  I bury my face in my hands. ‘It was just one night, mate.’

  ‘That’s not what Rebecca seems to think.’

  What the fuck?

  ‘What did she say exactly?’

  ‘That she liked you. Well, she never said it in so many words, but—’

  ‘Who likes me?’

  ‘Rebecca.’ Jamie shakes his head. ‘Jeez, who do you think I was talking about?’ Luckily his question seems to be rhetorical. ‘She gave me this.’

  He holds out a napkin, and for a few seconds I look at it in his hand, puzzled.

  ‘Well, this isn’t the reaction I was expecting,’ he says. ‘I thought you’d be made up?’

  ‘I am, I just . . .’

  I really thought she had blown me out. I would never have done anything with Danielle if I’d thought there was even a ti
ny chance . . . But I didn’t, and so I did, and I know that means I can’t . . . But then again, if we really are pretending like it never happened, then maybe . . .

  I go to take the napkin, a strange guilt coming over me, but Jamie pulls it back.

  ‘Not until you make me a promise,’ he says.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m only giving you this if you like her.’

  I think about the question for a good eighth of a second.

  ‘I do, mate – I do.’

  ‘Really like her, I mean. You’re not getting this unless you promise me you’ll treat her right, and won’t get carried away until you’re sure it’s not another flight of fancy.’

  He is looking right into my eyes.

  ‘I promise, mate,’ I say, locking everything that happened after I left the bar last night into a mental vault. ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  REBECCA

  Monday, 10 November

  It’s only when I’m cycling over the bridge that it hits me: I didn’t leave the house this entire weekend. I didn’t even get dressed. No exercise, no fresh air, no human contact. That’s not healthy.

  Still, these are the things I’ve managed not to do:

  – Talk to Ben. The only words I’ve uttered to him since he sat at our dining table, ripping up our How We Met story into teeny tiny pieces and sellotaping it back together again into something flawed, sticky and way less poetic, were to tell him to leave and never come back.

  – Talk about Ben. Come to think of it, I haven’t talked at all since Friday. Telling Ben to go was the last time I used my voice. That’s a weird thought.

  – Sit in bed sobbing while simultaneously eating ice cream and looking through old photos of the ‘good times’.

  – Throw away Ben’s left shoes, smash his framed Manchester City shirt or wee in his shower gel.

  – Talk to Ben.

  Anyway, contrary to post-break-up protocol, I’m doing all right.

  Mostly.

  Actually, if I’m being really honest, I should also add these to the list of things I’ve not done:

  – Cooked. At all. Meals this weekend consisted of an Indian takeaway, a Chinese and a pizza.

  – Tidied the flat. It’s already starting to smell like the bin section at an international street food market. In fact, the only semi-productive thing I achieved this weekend was relenting and booking a weekly cleaner. She starts today.