He goes on… “She and I, that woman who hit me tonight, she and I were back together. She called during the wedding reception and said she missed me and I said why don’t we give it another go. That even though I was going abroad, she’d wait and I promised the same.”
Hot daggers assault my heart and I almost can’t believe what I’m hearing.
“Then I saw you and I was even more in love with you than ever before. You looked sad and it hurt me to see you that way because I know marriage and a family is what you want more than anything and I wanted to take your pain away. So we slept together, and the next day, me and Gina carried on as normal because it was easier for me that way than do this and risk losing you forever.”
I burst into tears and sob my heart out, holding my arm out for him to stay away because hitting him wouldn’t be enough. In fact, I don’t know what would be enough to make him feel any of the pain I’m currently feeling.
Once I’ve calmed down, I have a few thoughts I want to impart. Just a few. Then he can go.
“You’re telling me you pity-fucked me and decided that rather than open yourself up to potential pain and humiliation if things went wrong between us, you’d rather hurt me in the bleakest, most brutal way possible? Savagely leaving me in a hotel room when you knew I’d told people I wasn’t staying the night and was getting a taxi home. When you knew—”
I almost say it but don’t. When he knew that I was in love with him.
“You don’t understand what it’s like being me,” he says, almost choking, “you don’t know.”
“Oh, I think I do. I think Paul Barton comes first and he doesn’t put anybody before himself. I saw the way Gina” – I say her name like she’s vile – “slapped you tonight, and I understand exactly how she feels. You got a new phone number recently, was that to avoid her? Avoid telling her you were back? Does she know you also had someone out in Japan, eh?”
“How do you know about that?” he barks.
“Oh, I know about everything. Everything. Just not her age, it seems. You kept that tart away from your friends, didn’t you? Because you didn’t want them knowing you were seeing a thirty-odd-year-old woman who was probably desperate and would look past all your glaring failures!”
I stop myself saying more, though I’ve probably said enough. His eyes are full of fury and loathing even though he knows I’m right. He picks them so that he doesn’t have to answer back or face up to his responsibilities.
“Gina’s alright. She’s not a bad person,” he warns.
“And did she see me tonight?” I growl.
“No, she didn’t. She doesn’t know anything about you. She was just shocked to see me on the street.”
He’s disgusting.
I look across the room and straight into his eyes, red and shiny with desperation. “Paul, I don’t even know how you really feel or what you want. You know I want marriage and children but I have no idea what you want. Do you really want to be a teacher? Do you want to live around here? Do you like going from pillar to post? Is that all you know? Would you quit drinking for me? Would you?”
He stands up and puts his hand on his heart. “I know that a lot of my behaviour is because of drink. I wouldn’t do half the stuff I do if I wasn’t drinking, but I can’t help it. I can’t. You don’t know what it’s like, Lily. I grew up knowing that if there’s a problem, you drink, or if there’s something to celebrate, you drink, or if there’s a cold day, a sunny day, a windy day, you drink because drinking is what we do. And at weddings, birthdays, all that, you don’t even count the glasses in your hand, it’s a free-for-all. That’s how my own father brought me up, since I was a young teenager. If you wanna know why my brothers aren’t like me it’s because I was the one down the pub with Dad and they got to stay home, play computers, do their homework, do the dishes, while my chore was always to be by Dad’s side and bring him home, yet all the time he was pouring poison in my ears saying you can’t trust women, you can’t trust friends, you really don’t wanna work too hard because all you get for it is more of a headache… your mother hates me because I like to have a good time, your brothers weren’t planned and might not be mine anyway, your grandfather liked to hit me and smack me about… and all that loops round my head, constantly, no matter where I go. Japan, here, Spain, Germany… doesn’t matter where I am, he’s always with me. His disease is inside me, and I know that it’s a disease, and I know that it’s wrong to drink when I know I have a problem with it, just like him, but I have never, ever had anyone tell me how to cope with life. Never. Except to drink. That’s the only tool I’ve got to cope. Drink. That’s it. I don’t have anything else. This is all I am. This is what he made me.”
He turns his back, walks to the wall and puts his face in his hands, resting his forehead against the plaster.
I go into the bedroom, collect some spare bedding and leave it on the pull-out sofa.
Then I shut myself in my bedroom, pull the duvet over my head and cry, because I don’t know if I can ever get over this. I want to be free of this pain and I don’t think I ever will be.
Does he have the capacity to love me enough for us to get past this?
The tragedy is, he’s only ended up creating what he was trying to avoid in the first place – wrecking things between us, inevitably, by continuing to lie, drink and shag other people while in the throes of alcohol.
I want the man I marry to look at me and think I’m special, that I’m worth his time and energy, his fidelity and his love.
Truly, I’ve not got that from Paul.
Ever.
Except when we’re having sex.
And we can’t constantly have sex.
He needs to think of some other basis to build this on, or it’s over.
Simple as that.
Right now, it feels like only a miracle might eradicate my feeling of betrayal… and the worst thing, that it feels like I have to be sad and desperate for him to give a damn, because when I was happy with Ian, truly happy, Paul wasn’t anywhere to be seen in my life. He was off, wherever, no doubt not sparing a thought for me. He made the choice for us not to be a couple when we were teenagers and he made the choice to love me and leave me at Adam’s wedding.
I think it’s about time I made some of the choices.
Chapter Twenty-One
The next morning it’s like I’ve woken from a dream and last night never happened. I’ve had such a stuffy, deep, exhaustion-fuelled sleep that for a moment, I really believe it never happened. We didn’t argue and he didn’t cry and I didn’t feel broken in two.
Then as my mind clears the fog of sleep, the pain I’ve harboured for so long resurfaces – pain I’ve kept tight inside my closed palms, kept away from any other part of me – or that’s what it feels like. Since Adam and Susan’s wedding – in fact, since that Christmas when we first had sex – I’ve been constantly holding onto some hope that he’ll change, miraculously scoop me up and save me from myself. But how can that happen when he’s the one who broke me? He’s my disease, my problem… my undoing… my Achilles heel. Even Theo who I’ve grown so close to in the past two years has near enough given me the impression that while I’m with Paul, he won’t condone it and he doesn’t want to know.
The painful, tragic truth is that I’m not Paul’s number one. If I were, he’d have behaved so differently and treated me so much better. I’m not his priority, never have been, and if he didn’t want to hurt me, he should never have cornered me at Chloe’s house that Christmas Eve. Not only that, but I realise now that many of my insecurities stem from Paul’s treatment of me, both now and in the past, when we were teenagers. Of course, we were young and foolish in school, who isn’t? But some people who meet young stay together if they’re right for each other and it feels to me like it’s some fatal flaw alone that is preventing that – either Paul’s relationship with alcohol, or his inability to see me for who I am and not just his doormat. Or am I deluded and all the things I’ve felt over the years
, all the times we clicked and talked for hours at the back of a pub or party…
Perhaps I was mistaken, all this time and none of what we’ve shared was ever right. If it has all been false and fake on his part, then maybe that’s why I get it so wrong in my other relationships, because all the time with Paul I’m being duped into thinking I have a connection with him – even while deep down I know from his camp it’s phoney. Then, with everyone else, I can’t help but think it might be phoney with them, too. If I can’t trust one of my oldest friends and am constantly pulled back and forth with his hot and cold tendencies, how can I trust that anyone is being genuine, if he’s not? Maybe that’s where it all went wrong with Ian – I was too scared to tell him what I wanted because I was afraid he would leave me. He knew I was growing dissatisfied with everything and he was just as much a coward, also scared of being alone even though he knew I wanted marriage and babies and he once told me those were the furthest things from his mind.
Paul enters the bedroom without a knock and discovers I’m awake. He looks wrecked, tired, depressed. He doesn’t seem to have slept on the pull-out sofa and I can see he meant to creep in without waking me, just to get some clothes.
He slides across the carpet, collects some stuff from his drawers and escapes back out as quickly as he came in. No words? Nothing? Does he know better now than to dare talk himself out of this one?
I listen as he steps into the shower, not whistling or singing as he usually would. He’s got a great singing voice too.
My heart clenches. I don’t know what this is… this masochistic human tendency to attach so many memories to songs, to times when we were happy-go-lucky and there wasn’t any stress or expectation – we were just friends. Except we never really were. I’ve always fancied him and I know he’s always fancied me. I think maybe he’s looking for something he can relate to and he doesn’t see it. I always thought he was so perfect, a great big brother, always standing up for his kid brothers. I always looked at Lydia and saw someone so proud of her sons and I always thought Brendan’s absence was down to his working hard, putting dinner on the table.
In my mind’s eye I focus and realise my love for him stems from all the things we’ve seen and done together. Trips we all took as a group, in the summer holidays between university semesters. Matching novelty t-shirts. Meals he and I would make together for the group. Conversations we’d have about our friends and how they’d fuck up whatever relationship they were in at the time – only for us to be proven right.
Or is it that he just sees me as so much more than those other women and he can’t handle it? Can he not deal with how much more I mean to him? Isn’t he man enough to give himself up to love and fully commit?
After his shower I hear him cleaning his teeth and spraying hair products, combing his hair into place no doubt. He leaves the bathroom and appears in my doorway, refreshed and resolute, I see – something new in his eyes. Hope, maybe. Denial?
“I’ve got some things to do but I’ll be back later.”
My heart clangs, wondering if he’s only coming back to pick up his stuff.
“What things?” I demand, because he can’t just swan around and tell me he’ll be back later without explaining himself.
“I’m going to put things right,” he says, “you’ll see.”
He leaves the flat and I have no idea what he’s going to do to rectify this, but we’ll see, won’t we?
It being a Saturday, I drive out of town and do my grocery shopping at the big Asda. I visit Costa for a large coffee and toasted sandwich and drive home leisurely, in no hurry.
All the while it’s playing on my mind – what is he up to? Where is he? What is he thinking?
I arrive home to discover he’s back before me, waiting on the sofa with a load of paperwork spread in front of him on the coffee table. I’m wondering what the hell is going on when he leaps up and helps me with the shopping.
“What’s happening?” I mumble, as he directs me to the sofa, the excitement in his eyes making me nervous.
“Come and sit down,” he asks.
“I should really put the shopping away. I’ve got some frozen stuff.”
“Okay, do that and then come back.”
I hurry to the kitchen and stuff things in cupboards and the fridge freezer as fast as possible. By the time I’m back in the living room, I’m sweating, out of breath and scared what it is he’s going to say. It all looks… not like Paul. What happened to him?
I join him on the sofa and he shows me some paperwork he got from the bank. “I’ve got some money my grandad left me that nobody knows about. He said I could do what I want with it and he wasn’t going to leave any of it to Dad because he’d just drink the money down the toilet. So with that and our salaries, we could secure a mortgage and I’ve been and got some ideas of what we could get if we moved out of town a little, somewhere a bit nicer and quieter.”
I’m worried he’s losing it; I’m also worried I’m being overly critical for thinking that.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m changing,” he says, “I’m getting out of the city with you. My job’s on the outskirts anyway and I was gonna have to commute every day, so why don’t we move? Settle down. Get married and start a family. Isn’t that what you want?”
I take a deep breath and gulp. “Yes.”
“Great! These are just ideas for now. We’ll have to see how my job goes first and prove to the bank we can do it, but why not, eh? Why not?”
He hands me a leaflet for a three-bedroom house with a nice bathroom, big garden, a couple of reception rooms and a converted loft. It could be a family home for us, for sure.
I look down into my lap and have to ask the question I fear the answer to. Is this mania normal, or is he just trying to avoid what happened last night?
“Is this what you want, Paul? Isn’t it sudden? Isn’t it rash?”
He turns to me and takes my hands. “I want what you want.”
“But shouldn’t we go slow, try to live together for a while first before buying a house? I mean, we’ve hardly even dated. I know we’ve been friends for years, but romantically we’ve only been together a few weeks. We should be smart about this.”
His eager smile turns into a frown and he looks away. “I see.”
“No, no, you’ve got it wrong. I do want all that, I do, but… do you? Do you really, Paul?”
“More than anything,” he mumbles, showing his vulnerability when he looks me in the eye, hurting.
I take his hands. “If you really want all that, you have to prove to me you can be my guy. You have to stop drinking, full stop, also see a counsellor about how your dad’s disease has affected you. And if this new job doesn’t work out, you might have to face facts and really have a rethink about your career, because you just don’t know how you’ll get on. Because you have to admit, you’ve been living these last few years like a nomad, never staying in the same place. I get it, if that’s what makes you happy, but you’ve got to be practical about this and see that it’s all going to take some adjusting. It’s going to take time. But if you can promise me that I’m your priority, then that’s great, because you’re mine. It’s just going to take time for us to get there but we have time.”
He nods his head slowly, still looking a bit dejected. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
“You’ve hurt me, Paul.” I have to hold back a sob, turning my face away.
“How do I make it right?”
I wipe my cheek, my head still turned to the side. “You have to just be honest with me when you’re going through stuff because it’s when you’re not honest that things go bad.”
“I know.” He looks down at his lap, head in hands.
“If you ever cheat on me, now that we’re together, I’ll leave you. That’s my red line. And if you drink, you might cheat, so you can’t drink. That’s the end of it.”
“Okay,” he mumbles.
“I’ll even stop drinking too if
you like. It’ll be hard but I’ll manage it. We can check out the millennial low-alcohol products that are now clogging up the supermarket.”
“That sounds okay,” he chuckles.
“One day at a time, and maybe, eventually, you can move back into my bedroom.”
He looks at me, aghast.
I nod my head and stand up, moving towards the kitchen.
“Brew, then?” I ask.
“Yeah… please.” I hear the shock in his voice.
I’ll deprive him for as long as it takes for him to realise that it’s either me or his urges. He also needs to see that he can love me in ways that don’t involve sex. He can take care of me, comfort me, be here for me. He doesn’t haven’t to use his cock all the time to do the talking. He’ll have to engage his mind from now on and face up to everything he’s been suppressing, meaning we have hard times ahead of us as he comes to terms with having a selfish alcoholic as a father. I have hope he can do better.
So much hope.
I pray, with time, the pain will go away… replaced by something else.
Something better.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I arrive home from work a few days later to the smell of pasta and bolognaise sauce. Since last weekend and that whole mess, he’s been cooking every night and seems to be hoping I’ll let him back into my bed. We’ll see…
I throw my stuff down and head to the kitchen where he’s just about to serve up, draining the pasta over the sink. “Hey, go sit down, it’ll just be a tick.”
I notice jars of herbs lying around, the cheese grater out beside a packet of parmesan and the many, many dirty pots in the sink, ready for washing later. He seems to have made it all from scratch, so wow. He is a good cook and I know this because he was the one always cooking on group holidays. However, he could’ve just bought a jar of ready-made sauce and I would’ve been happy. It’s not like he’ll be able to continue cooking like this once he goes back to work after the Easter holidays. Speaking of which, it’s Good Friday this week and I’ve got a bit of time off over the weekend and next week. I can’t wait.
Bad Friends Page 13
