“It’s only two years,” Alfie had said, clutching my face the night before I left, my entire sixteen years of life packed into cardboard boxes. “Then we’ll both be at Manchester and we can be together again.”
“What if you can’t wait for me that long?”
“You know I will.”
“I don’t want you to feel tied to me and resent me,” I’d said, crying and not sure I really meant it.
“I won’t. And neither will you. We agreed, remember? We’re free to do anything with anyone, apart from falling in love.”
“It’s literally impossible for me to fall in love with someone who isn’t you.”
I’d certainly meant it at the time.
We’d kissed and both cried and had sex for only the eighth time, and it was bittersweet and clumsy and a bit snotty, but still lovely. Afterwards, we stayed up all night, whispering about how amazing Manchester would be.
“Okay,” I said, only two weeks later – feeling like every centimetre of distance between us was an individual knife in my stomach. “Thanks for calling. I really appreciate it.” Another tear splashed onto my dress before I had a chance to catch it.
“I’m so glad your first day went okay.”
“Me too…thanks again.”
He rang off and I looked at my phone for a very long time as a wave of grief hit. My phone wobbled in my shaking hands and a teardrop splashed onto the screen. That was all it took, visual confirmation of my sadness. On this bench, this very bench, all those months ago – when the sun was shining and I hadn’t met you yet – I dropped my head onto my lap and I cried. Anyone could’ve walked past and seen me. The grief was too raw for me to care. My back shuddered, my dress splattered with salty tears and trails of snot.
I am on this same bench now, my bum numb from the cold. I’m sat in exactly the same place and I want to reach through a wormhole in time and comfort myself, pat my own back. I reach out with my gloved hand, like I can touch my former self. Like I can wipe away her tears. Like I can pull her hair back from her ear and whisper into it, urging me not to do all the things I was about to do. The things that led to the me I am now. This empty husk, this confused mess.
It started here.
I don’t understand what happened yet, but I know it started here.
If I can join the dots, maybe I can begin to understand. Because I don’t understand any of it. Nothing about the last six months makes any sense. Not how I behaved or what I’ve lost and how much it hurts. It’s a mess within a mess.
This bench is Dot Number One. This is the first place I ever cried in public.
I close my eyes against the freezing night air. I feel Past Me rise up, like I’m sitting on my own ghost. I feel the tears on her face, the shudders of her back. I reach through time and I whisper to her:
“Oh, Amelie, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
The words turn to frost and float out over the railway tracks.
I’ve had a week away from seeing you and half-term has lowered my tolerance to be around you. It feels like there’s no oxygen in here. Maybe because it’s pissing it down outside so everyone’s sheltering from the rain. Or maybe it’s because the heating is cranked up to maximum and all the windows are steamy. Or maybe it’s the scent of mass-produced spag bol wafting over from the kitchen. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because you are here. With her. In the corner.
I can’t believe you’re here and you’re kissing her and I feel like I could die right now.
I’m alone, as always. Exhausted from being up so late last night, sat in the opposite corner, my knees hunched up, the hood of my hoodie popped, curling up like a snail that doesn’t want to get smushed. I don’t really come in here any more. I hide away in the music room, or fold myself into a silent cubicle of the library. I look through the mass of sweaty bodies – of people laughing and eating spaghetti and not thinking about how heartbroken they are – and I stupidly pick out your face. You’re smiling at her from under your trilby hat. You’re looking at her how you used to look at me. It hurts in such a profound way there almost isn’t room for it in my body.
Why am I doing this to myself? I think, for the millionth time since I got here.
I see Jack and Hannah cuddled up at a table near the door, doing a very good job of pretending not to notice me. My stomach’s heavy with bile and the smell of lunch makes it worse. I’ve hardly been eating and my parents are worried, and I’ve hardly played guitar and Mrs Clarke is worried, but the only person I want to notice all this and worry is you.
And you’re not worried, Reese. In fact, you don’t see me at all.
Which is so dumb, because it was here that I first met you. And you more than noticed me that day.
Of course, this sweaty canteen didn’t look like this back then…
“Whoa, for a shitty college talent show, they’ve really gone all out,” Hannah said, as we pushed through the doors of the refectory.
The three of us stopped and looked around to marvel at the transformation. A professional stage had been erected where the jukebox usually sat. A makeshift bar had popped up in the kitchen. A proper lighting rig hung from the ceiling, and the whole place sparkled with some intergalactic projection, casting Milky Ways across the walls. The place was packed, like the whole college had decided to come. We were two weeks into term and everyone was still keen to mingle and bond.
“How did the stoned music-tech people have the energy to do all this?” Jack joked, making Hannah laugh. I smiled as I looked between them. I had the bonus of knowing they liked each other before they did – a front row seat for the Jack and Hannah Show. It made me very happy for them but also made me miss Alfie so much it hurt to breathe.
He’d not messaged me in a week.
Not that he was supposed to. Alfie was free, I was free. That was the plan. But that didn’t stop me from freaking out that he’d met someone else and forgotten about me and Manchester. This just about distracted me from my IMPENDING STAGE FRIGHT OF ABSOLUTE HELL.
“Where do we put our stuff?” I asked, hoisting my guitar onto my other shoulder.
“I don’t know,” Hannah said. “I don’t need anything for my slot. In one of the classrooms, I guess?”
I took a deep breath, because this meant I had to separate from them, and go talk to other people to figure it out. This made me very nervous and I was already very nervous because I was about to sing my soul out in front of a whole new college of people. Back in Sheffield, I had a little following, which took the weensiest edge off my stage fright. But here, I had no idea if my music would land whatsoever. “I’ll go find out.”
“Cool. We’ll get some drinks,” Jack replied, opening his blazer like a swaggery gangster and tapping his nose. “What mixer do you want? Coke, or lemonade?” He had a small water bottle filled with vodka, hidden in his inside pocket.
“Coke, please.”
“Meet you near the stage,” Hannah called as Jack steered her through the gathering crowd. They vanished into the swell of people – some of whom I was starting to recognize now I’d been here two weeks. Carolyn, a girl from my English class, walked past and said “Hey”. I waved back and blushed, hating myself for being so socially awkward. More people trickled in, creating a bottleneck by the doors as they stopped to take in the transformed cafeteria.