I’m not sure I should even write this down in case anyone finds it, even a goldfish.
1) I resolve to never, ever kiss my best friend’s boyfriend ever again. In fact, I’m never going to allow even one errant thought about him to enter my head.
2) I’m putting all unplatonic thoughts of Jack O’Mara into a crate, sealing it with bright yellow ‘toxic’ stickers and chucking it into the hinterland at the back of my head.
‘Happy New Year, mermaid girl.’
Sarah laughs as I pull her into my arms.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper into her hair, making a silent resolution to not kiss anyone other than Sarah this year.
‘What for?’ She holds me at arm’s length, her eyes narrowed slightly.
Shit. ‘For eating so much garlic last night. God knows how you’re able to come anywhere near this pong, I can smell it every time I yawn.’
She looks kind of amused and kind of confused. It’s a good job we’re both more than halfway towards being rat-arsed, because it’s exactly the kind of comment that could land me in all sorts of trouble. Honestly, it’s as if the truth is trying to leak out of me. I’m a petrol can riddled with holes, an accident waiting to happen.
HNY, Lu! Love you!
I trace the letters of Sarah’s text with my fingertip as I lie in bed. The New Year is less than two hours old, but nonetheless, I kissed Jack last year, not this one. This one is a clean sheet.
Love you too, Sar, hope you’re not too drunk! HNY xx
I press send, then click my phone off and lie facing the ceiling in the darkness. I’m grateful that my parents didn’t rush to reclaim my room as a study or a spare room when I left for uni; it’s pretty much as I left it, comforting and familiar. I’ve never been one to stick posters on the walls, but my childhood books line the shelf over the desk and the lilac dress I wore to my high school prom still hangs in my wardrobe. I cannot put a value on how much these things mean to me right now. Being in here is like stepping into a time capsule, or into my own protective Tardis, perhaps. Where would I have my personal Tardis fly me to, I wonder? I know the answer. I’d take it back to 21 December 2008 and I’d make myself miss that bloody bus. That way I’d never have seen Jack O’Mara before Sarah introduced us, and everything would have been okay. I don’t for a second think that I’d have allowed myself the luxury of anything other than platonic feelings for him then, and I wouldn’t be lying here now feeling lower than a snake’s belly. Before the kiss, I’d been able to uneasily square things with myself. I’d struggled with my feelings for him and I’d felt like a crap friend because of it, but I’d stayed on the right side of the line.
What I’ve done now is unconscionable; I can’t even attempt to justify it to myself. I haven’t seen either Sarah or Jack since that afternoon in London. I know he swore me to secrecy, but he didn’t have the right to ask it of me. I’m not blaming him, we carry the burden equally. And I don’t know if telling Sarah would be the honourable thing or just a way to make myself feel better and her feel worse. I’d lose her. I know that much. She’d probably ditch Jack too; there would be no winners. I don’t feel worried that he’s someone who will be a serial strayer, constantly ratting around behind her back; if that were the case I’d tell her without question. Perhaps I’m flattering myself, but what happened felt more personal than that, a few minutes of madness that will weigh heavily on both of our consciences.
I’m not going to tell her. I made myself a promise to for ever hold my peace about my feelings for Jack O’Mara, and there’s never been a time when that promise mattered more.
Sarah’s sleeping, Laurie’s working late at the hotel and I’m sat at their kitchen table drinking neat vodka at half past two in the morning. I’ve never been a big drinker but suddenly I can see its merits. It’s been weeks now since I kissed Laurie. Weeks, and I’m making a right royal fuck-up of pretending it didn’t happen. Literally every time I look at Sarah I wonder if today’s the day I should come clean. Every. Bloody. Day. I’ve been over it and over it in my head, trying to pinpoint the exact moment I was unfaithful. Was it when I asked Laurie to come for a beer? When I held her when she cried? Or was it way back, the very first time Sarah introduced us and we both made the decision not to mention the fact that we’d actually met before? Not that we had, exactly, but we weren’t strangers. I know that much for sure now. It was easier when I could tell myself that Laurie didn’t recall those few moments at the bus stop, but now I know that’s not the truth. I know for a fact that she remembered me, and because she remembered me twelve whole months later, I know that means something else too. Maybe just that she’s like me, blessed and cursed with an excellent memory; but I’m not sure. I’ve been unpicking all of the times we’ve spent together, examining fragments of remembered conversations, trying to see if I’ve missed an undercurrent. It’s not that I think she’s harbouring a crush on me or anything. For fuck’s sake. I’m not being conceited; I just feel like I’ve missed something here.
I mean, it was just a kiss. It’s not like I screwed anyone, is it? But I kissed Laurie, and somehow that’s worse than screwing my way through the whole fucking Playboy mansion, because they’d be forget-me-tomorrow strangers. Laurie isn’t a stranger, and I didn’t kiss her out of anything as basic and easily explained away as stupid, vacuous lust. But I didn’t kiss her to restore her dignity either or because she was fragile and she needed me to make her feel better. I’m not that noble. I kissed her because she looked fucking ethereal under the street lamp with snowflakes clinging to her hair. I kissed her because I’d lied about not seeing her on that bus and I felt like a dick, and I kissed her because the need to know how her soft, vulnerable mouth would feel against mine floored me like a goddamn express train. And now I do know, and I wish I didn’t, because you can’t un-remember something as spectacular as that.
‘Let’s be kind to each other about this,’ I said to her afterwards. ‘It shouldn’t have happened and it doesn’t have to mean anything.’
Of all of the things I’ve ever said, that ranks up there amongst the most crass. But what else was I supposed to say? That I felt as if she’d just kissed fucking stardust into my mouth; that of course I saw her on that bus after all?
I knock back the contents of my glass and refill it. It’s no good. I need to speak to Laurie.
I knew I couldn’t avoid Jack for ever. God knows I’d like to, but this is my complicated, messed-up life, and I’ve just come in from a late shift to find him sitting at my kitchen table in the dark.
‘Where’s Sarah?’ I say, dispensing with any form of greeting because I’m knackered and I’ve lost the art of talking to him about inconsequential things.
‘In bed.’ He’s nursing a tumbler – water or vodka, I’m not sure.
‘Shouldn’t you be too?’ I glance up at the kitchen clock. Three in the morning isn’t a healthy time to be drinking alone.
‘Couldn’t sleep.’
I don’t quite believe him. This is only the third time I’ve seen him since that afternoon we … I don’t even like to repeat in my own head what we did – and it’s the first time I’ve been alone with him since then, by both of our choices, I think. He scrubs his hand over the stubble on his jawline, backwards and forwards again, a nervous tick. If I had stubble, I’d probably do the same.
I pour myself a glass of water. ‘I’m going to call it a night.’
He reaches for my wrist as I pass him. ‘Please, Laurie. I need to talk to you.’
I want to tell him that it won’t help, but the bleak look in his eyes softens my resolve, so I sit down wearily at the table, taking in his tired face and his rumpled T-shirt.
‘Is that what you were doing? Waiting up for me?’
He doesn’t do me the disservice of lying.
‘I feel like the world’s biggest shit, Lu. I don’t know how to get past it.’
I cup my hands round my glass. I don’t know how to help him. What am I supposed to say, that it gets easier? So trite, and not even especially true. Why is he doing this, anyway? Because he thinks I’m the more practised liar and wants some tips? I’ve turned our conversation from that day over and over in my head. Jack doesn’t remember me from the bus stop. He has no recollection of me before Sarah introduced us to each other. It’s crushing, because I’ve spent months and years being defined by that moment, and yet it’s freeing too, because it’s as if he’s rubber-stamped the fact that I need to let it go now. And that’s what I’m trying my hardest to do.
‘It was a really awful mistake, Jack,’ I whisper, staring at my hands. ‘More my fault than yours, if it helps.’
‘Fuck that,’ he says, sharp, loud enough for me to cast a warning look towards the doorway. ‘Don’t you dare do that to yourself. I’m the one who’s been unfaithful here.’
‘Sarah’s my best friend,’ I say pointedly. ‘She’s like a sister to me. However unfaithful you feel, trust me, I’m up there with you on the feeling lousy scale.’ I swallow a mouthful of water. ‘There isn’t a pecking order for guilt here. We were both wrong.’
He falls quiet and takes a sip of his drink. From the smell wafting my way, I’m guessing it isn’t water.
‘Do you know what I hate most of all about what happened, Laurie?’
I don’t want him to tell me, because if it’s the same thing that I hate about it, then we’re both only going to feel worse for acknowledging it.
‘I hate that I can’t forget it,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. Was it?’ I’m glad he doesn’t raise his eyes from his drink as he speaks, hollow, too emotional. ‘Did it … did it mean anything to you?’
His quiet, explosive question hangs there, and I swallow hard. For a while I can’t look at him, because he’ll see the truth all over my face. I know what I have to do. I’ve lied to Sarah for two years straight now. Lying to Jack shouldn’t be as difficult. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Excruciatingly so.
‘Look,’ I say, finally meeting his troubled, beautiful eyes full on. ‘I was upset and horribly low, and you were kind and lovely, because that’s who you are. We’re friends, aren’t we?’ I break off to swallow the painful tears in my throat, and he nods, his hand pressed against his mouth as I speak. ‘We’re really, really good friends, we had too much to drink, and it was Christmas, and we stupidly blurred the lines between friendship and something else. But we stopped and we both knew it was awful, and it’s done now and it can’t be undone. What good can come of letting it rip Sarah apart too? You’re sorry, God knows I’m more sorry than I’ve ever been about anything in my life, and it’ll never, ever happen again. I don’t think of you in that way and I’m damn sure you don’t harbour secret fantasies about me, either. If we tell Sarah, it’ll only be to salve our guilt. And do you think that’s a good enough reason?’
He’s been shaking his head slowly all the time I’ve been talking, his hand still over his mouth as if he feels nauseous.
‘Nowhere near good enough.’
I nod. ‘Just go to bed, Jack. Go to bed, go to sleep, and when we get up in the morning, we’re both going to get on with the rest of our lives without ever mentioning this again. Not to Sarah and not to each other.’ I take a breath. ‘Not even to a goldfish.’
He looks away from me, pushing his hand through his already messed-up hair. I’ve been flailing around so much in my own guilt that I haven’t really stopped to wonder how Jack was handling it. Not all that well, so it seems, and I almost resent him for needing me to teach him how to carry the burden of his guilt.
I sit at the table for a long time after he’s gone. I make a coffee and let it go cold as I look out of the dark kitchen window over the rooftops of Delancey Street. I think of Sarah and Jack asleep down the hall, and of my parents back at home, and my brother and Anna, his new wife, tucked up in the smart new house they bought after their wedding in the springtime.
Two, and two, and two, and me. Maybe I’ll buy myself a goldfish.