Martinis and Memories

by A. L. Michael

  Drinks were refilled and dessert was served, and I only had a few moments to panic about how much we were spending on this one night before I tasted Savvy’s Belgian chocolate chilli mousse and forgot to care. It was light but rich, with that peculiar but distinct warmth to it, sprinkled with grated dark chocolate and topped with a single rum truffle. On the side was a thick waffle topped with coconut-milk ice cream, dark chocolate sauce and sprinkled with toasted sliced almonds. It was crisp and sweet, the slight bitterness of the melted chocolate dripping into the crevices of the waffle. Then the final touch, served by the waiters and bartenders – a frozen chocolate Martini with a perfect ball of espresso ice cream in the glass, surrounded by the cocktail, topped with chocolate-covered espresso beans. It was a sensational hit of coffee, followed by the booze. Warming the throat but leaving chilled lips. The strangest sensation.

  ‘I do not know how I existed without this in my life,’ I sighed, alternating between sipping and scooping the ice cream.

  ‘You’re going to be awake for hours now.’ Brodie raised an eyebrow. ‘Caffeine before bed.’

  ‘Uh oh, Dad mode is coming out. You going to tell me off when you realize I have chocolate truffles melted on toast for breakfast?’

  He wrinkled his nose. ‘Ugh, that’s disgusting. You don’t really, do you?’

  ‘Come home with me and see,’ I said, suddenly bold.

  Brodie grinned and kissed my throat.

  ‘Um, darlin’, whilst that is a great offer, aren’t you forgetting a certain demonic middle-aged woman who raised you, sleeping on your sofa?’

  I laughed. ‘She hasn’t been staying at mine, she’s been staying at Sam’s. She occasionally comes down to my flat when she wants decent coffee, or something to eat.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you’re the type with a well-stocked fridge, somehow.’

  ‘Fine, but I have more than a 60-year-old bachelor night owl who survives on whisky and dry toast.’

  ‘Fair.’

  The silence settled and I waited. ‘So, what do you think, want to come home with me?’

  It sounded strangely innocent, and I supposed it was in a way. I wanted to sit and talk, and listen to music, the way we had years before, each with an earphone crouched over a CD player on the pier, huddled against the weather. I wanted to lie on my bedroom floor and look at the ceiling and hear his voice telling me stories about the in-between years. I wanted to look at him and trace every moment that had happened on his skin, like rings on a tree.

  I wanted to fall asleep next to him, the smell of citrus and shampoo in my bed as I hovered between aged seventeen and thirty-five.

  And I also wanted him. We’d been going out for a few weeks now, and whilst kissing in doorways like a teenager had been fun at first, I was quickly starting to remember why I was pleased to be an adult who had her own flat.

  Brodie put his arms around my waist and pulled me close. ‘Okay, but no taking advantage of me, you hear? I’m a young, impressionable lad who stands no chance against your feminine wiles.’

  I pulled back to look at him, grinning. ‘You doofus.’

  ‘Well, well. Isn’t this an interesting development.’

  I half closed my eyes against his voice, just behind us. Oh crap.

  ‘Euan!’ Brodie smiled and disentangled himself from me, reaching out to shake hands with his old bandmate. ‘Good to see you, mate! How’ve you been? What a surprise!’

  ‘Is it?’ He stepped back. ‘Didn’t Bel tell you she’d seen me? I’ve been helping fix this place up.’

  He looked at me, piercing eyes filled with disgust. Please don’t say it.

  ‘Quite surprised not to be invited tonight, really, considering all the help I’ve been. But now it’s clear why. She knew you were coming.’ Euan twitched his nose in irritation.

  Brodie frowned, but held up his hands. ‘Mate, if it’s about that hundred quid you owe, it was a long time ago, don’t worry about it. There’s more important things than money.’

  Euan snorted, pure vitriol in his voice. ‘Only people with money say that.’

  Brodie didn’t really know what to say, so he just looked at me vaguely, asking with his eyes what he should do.

  ‘Shall we get a drink?’ he said to Euan, going to put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Be good to catch up, eh?’

  Euan shook his head, lost in his own thoughts. ‘I should have known. I should have known the minute you came back she’d drop me. I thought we were getting somewhere, Bel. I’ve helped with this place, we were getting on again, like old times. But you were just waiting for him, just like before.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ I said. ‘Before was different. I cared about you, but it didn’t work. This time I was clear with you, Euan, you can’t say I wasn’t. I was kind, but that was it. You know that. You can’t be trusted, you never could.’

  He looked bitter, dejected. ‘What, so no one can ever change? No one can grow? You can change your name and dress like a vamp and talk like you were born holding champagne glasses in each hand, but I can’t grow up?’

  I felt the rage rising, I felt this strange sense of déjà vu, as if we’d had this fight a hundred times before. And perhaps we had. Him insisting he could change, me unyielding and exhausted, eventually giving in just so I could get enough sleep to go to work in the morning.

  People were starting to look, and I motioned to Jacques to turn up the music, moving around behind the bar out of sight. I felt Brodie following behind me, but gestured for him to stay back a little.

  ‘Euan, you have turned up twice with a fresh black eye since we ran into each other again, and don’t try to hide the fact that you’re limping. Either you keep getting into trouble with that woman who isn’t single, or there’s something more dodgy going on. I’ve been kind, and you helped me, and I appreciated it. I paid you for your time!’ My voice was starting to go hoarse as I tried to stay low but wanted to scream. The cheek of it! I knew he’d turn up and make everything about him. As always.

  ‘Well, you should! You have everything and I have nothing! Doesn’t it go “what’s yours is mine”?’ he spat back, shoulders hunched and head down. He was drunk too, that much was clear, the slight slur of his words, the way his eyes couldn’t meet mine before rolling back slightly.

  I looked past him to Brodie. He tilted his head as he looked at me, then to Euan and back again. Oh crap. I guessed I was going to have to get to it some time.

  ‘No, that’s not how it goes,’ I said. ‘I think you should leave.’

  Euan’s laugh was hollow. ‘Yes, fine. I’ll go out the door like a grown-up. Not leaving in the middle of the night like a scared child.’

  ‘Who’d you think I was scared of, Euan?’ I asked, staring him down.

  ‘Me? I’d never hurt you!’

  ‘I was scared of wasting my fucking life like you. Always being a loser, always feeling sorry for myself, always blaming someone else for my mistakes. All these years later and nothing’s changed, has it? You were pathetic then and you’re pathetic now. And I want you to go.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw him crumble. I thought perhaps the cruelty would burst through the drunkenness. Most days, back then, if I was fierce enough he’d turn into a blubbering mess.

  Instead, he turned to go, shaking his head in shock. When he reached the door he paused, and I braced myself for whatever he was about to do or say.

  ‘Shocking, just shocking. Brodie, mate, did you ever hear a wife say such awful things to her husband?’

  The colour seemed to drain from Brodie’s face and as I turned back to Euan I noticed the smirk just before he pushed through the door with his shoulder and staggered out into the street.

  I took a breath, and dared a glance around the bar. No one was looking. Everyone was chatting, bobbing to the music and congratulating Savvy on her menu. Jacques had ensured an extra round of champagne was getting passed around, guaranteeing that I was not the centre of attention.

  ‘Wife,’ Brod
ie said, still looking at the closing door. ‘You and Euan? You married Euan?’

  ‘I was a sad, lonely idiot. I thought he was my ticket out of town,’ I said.

  ‘How long after I left? How long did it take?’ Brodie looked at me with an intensity I remembered from our younger years, when he got agitated about a missed rehearsal or a band member signing solo with a label. He sensed injustice.

  ‘You mean how long was I left helplessly pining for you? How long is an appropriate amount of time, Brodie, is there a handbook?’ I snapped.

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I don’t know, a few months maybe? I wasn’t exactly keeping count,’ I huffed. ‘I left before you came back. So some time before that. It didn’t last long, the relationship. It was a mistake that fell apart pretty quickly.’

  Brodie frowned at me, those glassy green eyes almost black in the dark of the room. ‘How can it not have lasted long if you’re still married?’

  ‘Because I disappeared and was so busy building a new life and a new persona that I never got around to divorcing him. He just turned up, down on his luck as always, and out of some nostalgia, I was nice to him.’

  ‘The same nostalgia that means you’re being nice to me?’ Brodie asked seriously, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘I’m sorry, are you saying I’m having some sort of existential crisis because I was nice to some guy I was with a lifetime ago?’ I snorted.

  Brodie’s eyes narrowed. ‘Which guy would that be, me or him?’

  I laughed then, but this time it was spiteful and sharp. ‘Excuse me, but you were the one who left, who fucked off without so much as the occasional postcard. I didn’t owe you anything. In case you forget, you got married and had a kid. I just ran off to London with some knob you played in a band with once.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘But nothing.’ I held up a hand. ‘I am so pleased to see you, and back then I missed you, really missed you. You were my best friend. And if you want to know about that time and how it came about, and how quickly it ended, I’m happy to talk about it. But you don’t get to judge me on how I lived my life once you were gone.’

  Those drinks had definitely gone to my head. I wasn’t even entirely sure if I’d said all those words. I’d definitely said them very quickly. But I felt powerful, and that was the point.

  ‘Point taken,’ Brodie said, nodding. He licked his lips, obviously trying to hide how agitated he was. ‘So how about we go talk about it? You’ve enjoyed your night, right? Do you need to stay much longer?’

  Honestly, I was tired. Bone tired, and the night seemed to be a success. I could leave. Thank Savvy, tell Jacques to pass on my congratulations, and spend one night focusing on my relationships rather than my business. It was risky, but it might just be okay. It might just be a risk I needed to take to have a normal, balanced life.

  And I had waited almost thirteen years for Brodie Porter. I couldn’t afford to waste any more time.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I loved my flat with the lights off. I let the light stream in through the open windows, casting a blue glow around the room. The evening breeze was cool, with the smell of the faded warmth of the day, and the sounds of the London streets below still showing signs of life.

  It got magical later at night, when the streets were nearly deserted and it was easy to forget which city you were in. Some nights, I even dreamed of the sound of the sea. Though I’d never admit that to anyone.

  We sat on the floor in the living room, drinking the beers Brodie bought from the corner shop on the walk home. I let the room stay dark, in the hopes that it would make it easier to talk. We didn’t really know each other at all, not as adults. I had been in love with a boy over a decade ago, and seeing him again was heady and exciting and felt full of possibility… but no one was the same person they were at seventeen, or twenty-one.

  Thank goodness.

  ‘So,’ he said, jumping right in, picking at the label on the beer bottle. ‘So, tell me about Euan.’

  ‘Straight to the point.’

  ‘You can’t blame me for being curious.’ He shrugged, those glassy eyes soft and kind.

  ‘You’re not angry?’

  ‘Not… not at you,’ he said, ‘and not in any way I’m allowed to be. We grew up and had lives, we didn’t make any promises to each other.’

  That much was true. How to tell a story with context? How to tell him that if he’d turned up even a few months or a year after I’d run off, I’d have gladly disappeared with him instead.

  Poor Euan had been right all along. He was always second best. And that made me feel a bit ashamed of myself.

  ‘Okay, so me and Euan. You left, and I understood, but I’d lost my best friend. My only friend, really.’ I paused. ‘Not that I’m blaming you, or putting this on you…’

  God, it was hard caring about people’s feelings. Maybe this is why I’d been alone for so long. It was easier to do what the hell you liked and make yourself happy first.

  ‘The only people I’d really hung out with were your bandmates, so I carried on going to see them play and practise, and Euan always tried to make me laugh. I thought he was trying to make me feel better.

  ‘After a while, it was clear you weren’t coming back, and honestly, the flattery and adoration worked on me. He was convinced I was brilliant and special and I could do anything. And my mum was getting worse. I’d stopped dancing and we were barely speaking most days. She kept walking in and throwing away trophies and medals, or ripping up my old outfits. She said she didn’t know what the point of me was if I didn’t dance.’

  Brodie’s eyes widened, and I shrugged it off like it was no big deal. I’d had enough time to ponder those words over the years. I knew that if I ever reminded her of what she said, I’d be faced with denial. That she would never say such a thing, that she was a good mother.

  There was no point going to other people for closure. Sometimes you just had to deal with your own shit and move on. We were getting to a good place; I didn’t need to bring up every awful thing she’d said.

  ‘So we left. I decided I was in love with him, and we’d run away together and it’d be terribly romantic.’ I snorted. ‘He wanted to go to Brighton, but that was way too close. We got to London, used my savings to get a room in a shared house, and then everything started to fall apart.’

  Brodie said nothing, just sipped his beer and listened, nodding in the right places.

  ‘I was working myself to the bone, just trying to make ends meet. I was auditioning, I was dancing, modelling. I worked in a bar. Every time I went for an audition they told me I had to lose weight, so I started surviving on coffee and cigarettes, grateful to be working all the time so I didn’t think about being hungry.

  ‘If you looked at photos of me then, I looked nothing like myself. I became obsessive. I had to be the best; I had to be more beautiful than those twenty other same girls I was always up against. I was close to breaking point, and then Euan proposed.’

  ‘How’d he do it?’ Brodie asked, suddenly leaning in.

  I snorted. ‘He said, “let’s get married,” and I said, “okay”. That was it.’

  ‘Romantic.’

  ‘For someone who realized she had no friends, no family and no one else… for someone whose daily existence convinced her she was an ugly failure with no talent, and that her mother was right, she was no good unless she was dancing…’ I shrugged. ‘Yeah, it felt romantic. It felt like a promise of safety. I’d come to this huge place alone and I didn’t have anyone but him. So we got married.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘I’d managed to calm down a bit after Sam hired me to be his assistant. I was supporting the girls from behind the camera instead of competing to be in front of it. Sam was warm and funny, but didn’t take any shit, and I felt like I had an ally. Kind of a dad figure, if I’m laying my issues on the table. He’s the person I’d go to.

  ‘Euan still had no job. He gambled away my money, got
into trouble. Spent his days drinking and smoking, couldn’t hold onto a job for more than a couple of days. Non-stop scraps and scrapes and there were so many months where I worked myself sick to make sure we made rent. I started to resent him, but then he’d turn the shine on – it was just bad luck, it wasn’t his fault, could I help him be better?’

  Brodie growled a little at that, and I patted his hand. ‘I know, but I was young, and lonely. I can see through that bullshit in a second now.’ I clicked my fingers.

  ‘So how did you leave? It sounded like you left.’

  I nodded. ‘Sam had been encouraging me to put some money aside for months. He paid me a little extra on top and it went into a different account. He called it a fuck-off fund. He also said he had a little flat available to be rented at a very reasonable price to a girl who needed to get away from an arsehole.’

  Brodie snorted with laughter. ‘Did you not think…’

  ‘That it was all a scam and he was going to hit on me?’ I twitched my nose, thinking. ‘I guess I thought he might, but I kept waiting to be disappointed by him, and it never happened.’

  ‘So you just packed up one night? Was there a big fight or something?’

  My stomach hurt at the thought of it, the only secret I’d kept from Sam, from Euan, from everyone. The only thing I’d kept to myself.

  ‘Not a fight,’ I said, my throat low and hoarse. I focused on the light through the curtains. ‘I found out I was pregnant. I hadn’t noticed, because I’d become so thin and stressed I barely had periods anyway, but when I noticed, I took a test. And there it was, my future, mapped out.’

  I could still feel myself standing in that shared grimy bathroom, my foot against the door as one of the housemates hollered that he needed the toilet, as I held that test and realized that my life was going to be just like this, forever. I immediately ran through the next few years: being pregnant, Euan being initially elated, then annoyed when my focus wasn’t on him. Me, struggling to continue to work, having to leave the baby at home with him, worried and anxious that something would happen. Even more exhausted, even more stressed, even more numb.