At First Sight

by Hannah Sunderland

  He chuckled, though his tears were still falling.

  ‘Just because it’s not talked about, doesn’t meant that it shouldn’t be.’

  ‘See, I told you she’d understand.’ Ned’s voice made me jump. I’d forgotten he was there in all the drama.

  I suddenly understood Charlie’s skittish behaviour, his rapid changes in mood, his disappearing acts.

  ‘How’re you feeling now?’ I asked nervously.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not gonna stick my head in yer oven or smother myself with scatter cushions.’

  ‘That is very good to hear,’ I said, moving toward him and pulling him into another hug. I wanted him close with my protective arms around him to keep him safe.

  He cleared his throat of emotion, the sound loud in my ear. ‘Ned said this thing to me when I called him a couple of years back and it’s stuck with me ever since.’

  I felt Ned bristle with pride beside me. ‘Oh yeah and what was that particular pearl of wisdom?’ I asked.

  ‘He said “it’s the moment you think you can’t, that you realise you can” and right now, I feel like I can.’

  I felt the weight of an arm land on my shoulder as Ned joined the hug.

  ‘Ned?’ I asked.

  ‘Uh-huh?’

  ‘That wouldn’t happen to be a Celine Dion quote, would it?’

  ‘Yes, Nell. Yes, it would.’

  I closed the oven door and stood with my back resting against the counter, paused as my brain tried to catch up with everything.

  It was awful to even contemplate, but I couldn’t help wonder how different things would have gone if I’d taken a packed lunch that day instead of going to the café or if Caleb hadn’t been late and I’d gone home on time instead of being forced to stay longer to cover him.

  I guess it was flattering, knowing that someone had spent twenty minutes talking with me and he’d decided to stay alive because of it, because I’d given him hope of something beyond his sadness. But there was a pressure in my chest now that hadn’t been there before. What if I didn’t live up to the hope? What if I bored him and he decided that falling face first into concrete from a great height was a more appealing option than talking to me for a moment longer?

  What if I was only postponing the inevitable and setting myself up for a hurt like no other? I just knew that from now on I was going to be the girlfriend equivalent of a helicopter parent, but I wasn’t even his girlfriend. Oh God this was all so confusing and I was already nervous, even with him only in the next room.

  The sound of the doorbell ringing cut through my thoughts.

  ‘Ned, could you get that?’ I called down the hall, as I popped the cap from my second bottle of Peroni and grabbed two for the others. I flung all of the caps at the bin, managing to get one of them in, the others clanging to the floor as the doorbell rang a second time. I tutted, grabbing the bottles as I went to answer the door myself.

  I stepped out of the kitchen, the cool bottles chinking in my hands, just in time to see that Charlie was standing at the door, the Yale lock already unlatched in his hand. I glanced through the frosted window pane and the bottom fell out of my stomach as I recognised the silhouette of the person on the other side.

  ‘Charlie, no,’ I whisper-shouted and moved towards him at what felt like quarter speed. But he didn’t hear me and before I could move more than three steps, the door was open and the two men were staring at each other awkwardly.

  I heard a small whimper leave my throat. There was no hiding. I was in plain view, so I slapped on a smile and pretended that this wasn’t going to be the world’s most awkward encounter. ‘Joel. Hi.’ I forced my feet to move towards him, even though my body was urging me to turn and run in the opposite direction. I’d be able to scale the back fence if I really needed to, right?

  ‘Hi,’ Joel said, his voice small, shocked. He looked from me to Charlie and then to the box sitting in his hands.

  There was a moment of crippling, writhing silence where not one single member of our Mexican stand-off had any idea what to do.

  Eventually Charlie outstretched his hand in Joel’s direction.

  ‘Hi, I’m Charlie Stone,’ he said with a hastily slapped-on cheerfulness that I had seen so many times, but only this time did I see through it. Joel looked down at his hand as if he suspected it rigged with explosives, before taking it and shaking it firmly.

  ‘Joel. Oni.’

  I don’t know why they were being so formal, acting like this was a job interview.

  ‘Nice t’meet yer,’ Charlie uttered.

  ‘You too,’ Joel mumbled unconvincingly before looking at me with boiling eyes. ‘Erm …’ He dithered in that aggressively awkward way that he always did and stepped forward, holding the box out to me. From here I could already see the pitiful array of things inside. An old toothbrush, the bristles way past the point of usability, a rechargeable camera battery for a camera I no longer owned, some out-of-date blush, in a garishly bright pink, from about five years ago, and a strategically placed photograph of the two of us at a family barbecue with his parents. This was by far the weakest of the boxes he’d presented to me. He must have been running out of things to fill them with by now. ‘I don’t know if you still need any of it, but I thought you’d want them all the same.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, handing Charlie the beers and taking the box from Joel.

  Joel’s hand brushed mine, accidentally on purpose, as I took it from him. I placed the box down in the hallway, successfully hiding the wave of nostalgia that crashed over me like a tsunami when I looked at the photograph of us that sat in the box. I remembered that day well; it was one of my favourite memories with Joel.

  ‘How are you doing?’ I asked, turning back to him.

  ‘Fine. Fine. I’m fine.’ He looked from Charlie to me, wounded. ‘Thriving, one might say.’

  We both frowned at his strange choice of words and obvious lie.

  Don’t do it, I said to myself inside my head. Don’t you dare say it, Nell. Keep your mouth shut and do not let those words in your brain come out of your mouth. ‘You can come in if you like.’ I hated myself!

  Please refuse. Please, please refuse.

  ‘No, I don’t think that would be good for anyone involved.’ He looked up at Charlie, jealousy-fuelled hatred all over his face.

  ‘Okay, well thank you,’ I said. ‘For the box.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Enjoy your evening,’ he said through gritted teeth, gave Charlie one last long stare, turned and walked away.

  As I watched his figure disappear, the one that had once caused me to pulse with excitement whenever I saw it coming towards me, I felt a deep chasm of sadness open up inside me. How easy it actually was for inseparable people to separate, for lovers to drift to strangers, before becoming nothing at all.

  I sat on the sofa beside Ned, with Charlie sitting on a mound of scatter cushions on the floor, his shoulder leaning against my leg as he watched the film with wide, interested eyes.

  Needless to say, I didn’t pay much attention. It’s hard to do so when you find out that the man you have a crush on had planned to kill himself less than a month earlier.

  The thought of him not being here, of me never knowing him, was too upsetting for me to even contemplate and that only added to the fear that whatever had overwhelmed him twice before, may well overwhelm him again.

  It wasn’t until the second half of the film until I felt his fingertips snake under the hem of my jeans. He didn’t venture far, but the heat of his skin on mine, no matter how little skin that was, made me forget how to breathe. His fingers moved in circles, etching rings of goose bumps on my flesh, and I wondered how it might be to feel those goose bumps elsewhere, to have them cover me from head to toe.

  It was almost half ten before Charlie and I found ourselves stood on either side of the open front door, the frigid air seeping in and raising the hairs on my legs that I probably needed to start doing something about.

  ‘Than
k you,’ he said, his hands shoved into his pockets against the cold and, I suspected, out of nerves. He was fully exposed to me now, his pains an open wound for me to see and all I wanted to do was help him heal them.

  The impatient part of me begged my mouth to ask the question that my brain was screaming. What was it that made you feel that way? And can I help? But I knew not to push him.

  ‘No worries,’ I replied with a reassuring smile. ‘Thank you for telling me … what you told me. I know that couldn’t have been easy.’

  ‘It was time for me t’tell yer. I should’ve known yer’d be all right with it anyway, with what you do.’

  ‘If you need to talk or even if you just need someone to distract you, then you know where I am.’

  He looked down at his foot and kicked at the ground with the toe of his scuffed black boot.

  ‘You’re a good friend, Nell.’

  The word ‘friend’ smarted a little after everything. I’m pretty sure friends didn’t fondle each other’s ankles during film time, but now was not the time to raise this point.

  ‘You can totally stay here, if you want. We have a spare room.’ And you’re always welcome in my bed, I added, but only in thought. Also, I’m scared that if I say goodbye, it might be the last time I ever say it.

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll be fine.’ He looked back up and I could tell from the slight strain between his brows that he was embarrassed when he had no need to be. ‘Say, what are you doin’ right now?’ he asked, suddenly imbued with some sort of enthusiasm.

  ‘Probably gonna head to a rave, take some drugs, an orgy or two. You know, just a regular Friday night.’

  ‘Damn it.’ He sighed overdramatically, playing into the joke. ‘So, you wouldn’t be at all interested in coming for a quick walk with me?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yeah. There’s somethin’ I wanna show yer.’

  Chapter Nine

  The halo of light pollution floated above the town responsible for it like a radioactive cloud, the street lamps and warmly lit windows nothing but tiny dots of light from the top of the clock tower. Charlie had let us in through a back door that he had a key to because he’d once worked on a show here and had ‘forgotten’ to give it back. He’d reassured me that he was only bringing me here to show me something, but still, climbing to the top of the tower from which he’d planned to never come down alive, made me feel on edge.

  We’d climbed the seemingly endless metal steps to the top, the sounds and light of the clock mechanics whirring above us and creating the perfect atmosphere for a horror film murder scene. I had thought twice about walking into a strange, dark building with him, so I’d sent Ned a text to tell him where I was and I felt comforted that, if in the unlikely event that Charlie turned out to be a serial killer, I had a purple belt in taekwondo to lean back on. Mum had bought me lessons for my birthday that year I’d had my bag snatched on the way home from work, but I thankfully hadn’t had to utilise my skills yet.

  When we’d arrived at the top of the tower, Charlie had walked out on to the bird-mess-spattered, softly lit paving stones, surrounded by a half wall, and crouched down in a corner that the diffused light from the clockface didn’t reach. I watched him closely and he stood a moment or two later with a bottle of whisky in his hand. I recognised it as the fancy bottle I’d kicked under the table when I’d first met him.

  ‘No one else comes up here then, huh?’ I asked, hugging my arms around myself.

  ‘Only the odd maintenance person, but other than that, it’s just me,’ he said, walking towards the edge and sitting on the low half wall. Seeing him that close to the edge made my stomach flip but he just pulled the cork from the bottle and held it out to me. ‘Come and join me.’

  I took a steadying breath and went to join him at the edge. My fear of flying was simply a by-product of my acrophobia and as I looked down at the distant pavement below, I felt my head begin to swim and my knees go all hot, as if they might collapse underneath me.

  ‘Erm, I’m good over here, thanks.’

  ‘Yer scared of heights?’ he asked.

  ‘Just a smidge.’

  ‘Come on. I won’t let yer fall,’ he replied.

  ‘Na, I’m good.’

  He chuckled and held the bottle out to me where I stood. I’d never swigged whisky from a bottle before. Everyone who did it on TV always had a certain roguish ease that made them look cool doing it. I, however, swigged too much resulting in rivulets of whisky running down my cheek and neck before disappearing under the collar of my shirt.

  ‘Smoothly done.’ Charlie chuckled again and took the bottle. He lifted it to his lips and swigged cleanly. ‘So, what do you think? Pretty cool, huh?’ He nodded in the direction of the clockface. It was strange seeing it this close. The sheer hugeness of it, coupled with the whirring from the gears and cogs working inside, made it feel ominous, almost like you were watching your life tick away before your eyes.

  ‘I come up here when I need everything to be a little quieter, to get away from all the noise down there,’ he said, looking back over his shoulder at the town below us.

  ‘It’s nice. Would be nicer if it was lower down though.’

  He stood and walked over to me and I felt my breaths coming easier with each step he took away from the edge.

  I felt a sudden, gentle warmth in my hand and a moment later, his fingers laced through mine. I turned to look at him, the rush of hormones doing nothing to stop the world from spinning beneath me.

  ‘I won’t let you fall,’ he said with a sad smile. ‘I’ve got you.’

  My heart fizzed in my chest as his eyes steadied mine and, all of a sudden, I wasn’t as frightened anymore.

  ‘So, I want you to picture the scene,’ Charlie said, his voice calm and far away. ‘This is my place where I come to think, to get away from everythin’ and one day, when it all gets a little too noisy down there and somethin’ bad happens that changes my life forever, I walk up those stairs and … well, yer know what I was planning to do; yer don’t need the details.’ He slid his free hand into his pocket and withdrew the orange marble that I’d seen him messing with in the café when we first met. But now, on closer inspection, I realised that it wasn’t a marble at all. It was frosted and misshapen into an almost oval and looked more like a glass pebble than anything. He didn’t mention it, just rolled it between his fingers like a worry bead. I was going to ask him about it, but I didn’t want to interrupt his story.

  ‘After hours of sittin’ up here until my fingers were numb from the cold, I decided that it was time. But I couldn’t do it, I was too afraid, and so I threw myself backwards instead and landed on the floor, right there.’ He pointed to the ground. ‘I lay there for a while, tryin’ to figure out what to do next, when a pigeon landed on the wall. I rolled my head to the side to look at it and that’s when I saw this.’ He unlaced his fingers from mine and walked back over to the ledge, crouching down and pointing to the wall that he’d just been sitting on. I moved to his side and knelt down beside him, following the tip of his finger to just below the lip of the wall. I hadn’t noticed it before, but from where I crouched, I saw the sticker for the helpline. It sat there, orange and white with patches where the weather had eroded it away to show the brick beneath. I read it and noticed a spelling mistake. ‘Caring for your mental heath.’

  Around the edges, someone had written something in Sharpie pen, the letters still there but hard to read.

  ‘The sun will come up tomorrow, and who knows what the tide will bring along?’ Charlie said dreamily.

  ‘It’s beautiful. Is it a poem?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘No, it’s Tom Hanks. It’s something he says in Castaway, which is my favourite film. So, I’m lyin’ here, lookin’ at a sticker for a mental health helpline that I’ve never noticed before, despite the fact that I’ve been spending a lot of time up here, and that sticker just so happens to have a reference to my favourite film written in pen around the edge. Funny, don
’t yer think?’

  ‘Seems almost like …’ I didn’t want to end the sentence, for fear of sounding like an idiot.

  ‘Fate?’

  I nodded. ‘Like the universe wanted to make sure you stuck around.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who put it here?’ he asked. ‘I mean, it looked pretty battered when I saw it two years ago, so it must have been up a while.’

  ‘No,’ I answered. ‘I’ve never seen us use stickers like this.’

  ‘That’s a shame.’ His shoulders sagged a little as he spoke.

  Charlie ducked back inside the tower and tinkered around with a switch on the wall until the light from behind the clockface died down and he returned with an ancient-looking blanket, which he shook out and laid on the floor.

  ‘What did you turn the light out for?’ I asked.

  ‘To give our eyes time to adjust. You can’t see the stars with that thing on,’ he said, lying down on the blanket and folding his arms behind his head. I sat down beside him and lay back, mirroring his pose. He was right about this place being quiet, removed. From here the lights of the town were duller, the sounds muffled and unobtrusive. It hadn’t taken me long to start to feel the cold deep inside my bones and when Charlie saw me shivering, he shuffled closer, pressing his side to mine to share his warmth. The more my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the more stars became visible and before long, the sky was littered with thousands of glittering specks.

  ‘So,’ I said, breaking the silence and rolling my head to the side. ‘Not only did that sticker lead you to Ned, who spoke with you the first time, but also to me, who helped you the second time. And it just so happens that us two live together.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Charlie said, rolling his head to face me. ‘Improbable, huh?’

  ‘Seems to me that someone up there really cares about you, Charlie Stone,’ I said, still trying to comprehend it all. He turned back to the sky and swallowed what looked like a lump in his throat. ‘And someone down here does too,’ I added.