Blazed (21 page)

Blaze turned to face me, frowning. "You're in love with him?" Why did that sound less wistful?

"Irrationally so. It's a nine year habit I've never had a reason to quit."

"And now?" 

Ah. The crux of the matter. He needed me to tell him that he was a good enough reason to let go of my stupid infatuation and I couldn't. It wasn't that simple
— I couldn't just turn it off for him. If I could, why would I for a life of no guarantees and why wouldn't I have done it sooner?

"It's like quitting drugs to become an alcoholic, Blaze. Either way, I'm damned to spending my life mooning after a man I can't have. If I erase him from my life, what do I have left when you go too? Some nice new clothes, some new scars and a few memories? I don't know that I'm not the sort of person who needs something to be reckless about. My life would lack purpose. And I know that's unhealthy and
co-dependent, but—" He cut me off with a kiss.

"I have to go."

"I know. I've said too much."

"No. You said what matters. But I do have to go because you have a lunch date with your mother."
 
Shit
. In the midst of all the outrageousness and revelations, I'd completely forgotten. "I set clothes out for you. Something nice and demure to hide your war wounds."

"You're quite the domestic god." He smiled but it lacked his usual enthusiasm and sincerity. It was like looking at the first lie he'd ever told. "You hate me, don't you?"

"I could never hate you. I hate him." I could understand why. Finding out the significant woman in your life had a history of self-harm and a latent eating disorder must be tough, but for her to then say that she was dividing the love that should have been concentrated on one person— that had to sting. Knowing who he was had to be rubbing salt in the wounds.

"I'm sorry that you didn't meet a better person, Blaze. Somebody a little less colourful."

"I'm not." He leaned over to recover a duffel bag he'd stowed under the couch and quickly dressed into trousers, half-buttoning his shirt before he rose to collect his shoes from the bedroom. I didn't move, just watched him get ready to walk out of my door for what I presumed would be the last time. 

He lingered a moment too long when he kissed me a poignant goodbye, cradling my face in his hands. "I'll call you."

IF he'd wanted to vengefully wound me as he left, the
 clichéd brush off did the job nicely.

JULY WAS TOO hot and too fickle. Even with a stupid floppy great sun hat, the heat was too much until the breeze made my skin prickle. I'd been in that state of hyper-awareness before, seeing and hearing everything that should have been hidden out of sight, sitting in some giant, isolated goldfish bowl that resonated everything, separating me from a world I still watched while it still looked in on me. Detached from my feelings, completely apathetic but still present, about as sentient as a robot.

"I'm sure he didn't mean it, love." I tipped my chin just slightly to look at my mother under the brim of my hat for some kind of clarification. The sun glared off her white silk shirt making it hard to have a conversation looking right at her.
 

We looked strangely alike that day, my own shirt and pencil skirt outfit almost matching hers. Two golden blonde
 sophisticates lunching on the terrace of a restaurant only the dirty rich could swindle reservations for. It felt shallow and disingenuous but it was exactly what I needed; something a million miles away from my usual habits and somewhere nobody would ever think to find me, not that anyone would look. As for being habitually ashamed, that didn't happen when I was out with Ivy. Her purity was as noble as gold and bloody contagious. Plus I had my hat. I was, for all definitions, intents and purposes, completely covered.

"Hunter." Knowing she couldn't see, I rolled my eyes and sipped at an intensely saccharine fruit cocktail containing a whole shelf full of spirits. "His mother spoiled him horribly, he doesn't think before he speaks. He's been very lucky unlike
—" Her sentence stemmed off into an awkward and apologetic half-shrug. "He knows how to work a room but he's horribly impersonal. I imagine he's awfully jealous of your new romance." 
The one that doesn't exist anymore? Doubtful.
 Fat Emmy was feeling bitter too. He might have been the enemy but she sure liked to look at him. I raised my glass to her in a gesture of solidarity.

"Mother, he's livid about anything that might interfere with his stupid wedding. I mean, come on, who throws a sakura blossom themed wedding in January? The fundamental basis of the event is a fucking sham."

"Emmy, language!" She scolded me but her eyes said that she agreed. Born romantic Ivy Tudor was vehemently opposed to artificial flowers of any kind, particularly when they would naturally be in bloom just a couple of months later. By her way of thinking, a fake rose symbolised fake love. I never pointed out to her the potential symbolism lurking behind the fact that real roses died. Maybe it was better if it was fake. It sure as hell wouldn't hurt so much. "Speaking of your romance, why on earth didn't you tell me that you're dating 
the
 Blaze?"

Struck-dumb by her knowledge of our 'relationship', what else could I really do but play the fool? I'd concentrated so hard on keeping that part of my life hidden from him that I'd neglected to consider that it might find him first. Stupid, of course, when my mother was as hungry for gossip as she was. "Pardon me?"

"This 
is
 you isn't it?" Unfolding a magazine and spreading it across the table between our glasses, she tapped the page at several pictures from the night before at 
The Roses
, showing me in varying degrees of drunkenness while always attached to Blaze. It made my heart ache to look at them. The accompanying article was as reckless to look at but I just couldn't help myself.

UK rock act Monday's Miracle stormed Tudor owned 'The Roses' in style at their highly anticipated secret gig in Mayfair last night. Founding foreman Blaze topped the bill, rejoining former bandmates Scott, Jordan and Matt for the first four songs of their set, leaving the stage with an artful leap across the two hundred and ninety-seven strong crowd.

But the ladies were left lusting when he emerged to watch his friends perform with his frequently pictured companion. Bad news folks, that foxy brunette is officially stoking his fire, and boy, does it ever burn for her!
 

Our insider couldn't get close enough to the inferno for an exclusive, straight from the horses mouth, skinny on how it's rocking in that casbah, but Monday's Miracle guitarist, Scott, had this to say:

"Oh yeah, they're the real thing alright... As far as girlfriends go, our man lucked out. Emmy is sexy, smart, hilarious, and drank most of us under the table. I give it a month before he whisks her off to Vegas so none of us have at her after the tour."

So that's it girls, hang up your fantasies and chuck out the best knickers you wear in case he's on the bus that might hit you if they're not fresh on
— hot tamale Blaze has finally found love and we got sunburn just looking at it.

"Bloody hell." It made for difficult reading. Not two hours earlier I was the envy of the female population of Great Britain, maybe even beyond. Now it was only a matter of time before the press found out that I was the conniving slut who'd had him and lost him over the futile desperation to fuck my best friend. My temples began to throb with a tension headache.
You
 really 
blew it this time.
 Yeah, yeah, I know.

"And he was in your flat
 yesterday afternoon?"

"Yes but
—" But what? But I lost two men in the space of ten minutes just by being my usual messed up self? "It's not like that, Mum. Sticking 'girlfriend' on it is just a way to make it socially acceptable for it to be public knowledge that we fu— ... had relations whenever he had a free five minutes."

"Pull the other one, Emmeline." Again, she tapped the pictures, forcing me to look at how happy we'd seemed the night before. "I've never seen you smile like that."

"Can we please change the subject?"

She curled her fist under her chin, looking at me with that worldly, all-knowing look only mothers are capable of. "You've had an argument."

"No, not an argument. We've just... reached an impasse. We're too different, incompatible. He doesn't have the time I need and—"

She straightened. "What really happened?"

Transparent as ever, I sank down in my seat sulkily and stuck my lip out like a child. "He found out about Hunter."

"Ah." I'd always had a feeling that my mother had her suspicions about what Hunter really meant to me, and I think I'd just confirmed them. "And you think that there isn't enough space in your heart for two men?"

"No, I do, I just don't think Blaze does."

"Oh Emmeline," and here came the pep talk... "men are very proud creatures, very territorial. I'm sure he's just stewing and will be beating your door down again in no time. What was the last thing he said before he left?"

" 'I'll call you'."

"Oh." After a beat, she clicked her fingers at a waitress and pointed at her glass. "We're going to need another round."
 

Uh huh... that was what I thought.

IVY'S DRIVER DROPPED me off at 
Esme's
 around nine in a state of near catatonia, barely able to walk, speak, yet still clasping that ridiculous sun hat. A liberal attitude towards drinking to excess was apparently a Tudor trait, residing in all of us. My family had a reputation for knowing how to throw a party, and now that reputation apparently lived independent of the name. 

Nobody recognised me for a while, not until Daniel strode into the bar in his gayest finery, looking to whet his whistle after
 Sunday lunch with the in-laws. Somehow, the temporary camouflage that came from my new old hair was liberating. Jonathan had gone straight home, as drunk as me by all accounts, leaving Dan and I to stare across a table at each other the way we had done in so many restaurants, bars, canteens and hospital wards so many times before— me dejected and him feeling bereft of a limb in his partner's absence. He 
was
 co-dependent. He wouldn't deny it.

For Daniel, watching me was like watching a woman hang from a bungee rope. I'd plummet, then gleefully spring back up. And then I'd fall again and again, the enthusiasm of my bounce getting less and less, climbing a little less high every time until there was nothing left but down. The last time he'd seen me hanging with no gambol was when he'd been dragged out of my private room away from the sight of me screaming and struggling at doctors trying to fit a nasogastric tube. I saw that memory play through his mind sometimes, obvious from the way he paled for a second and the dark shadows crossed his eyes. It might have been worse than finding me bleeding to death and I didn't know exactly how much bounce he thought I had left.
 

Chris didn't join us either, apparently pissed off that I hadn't turned up the night before. As much as I appreciated that my friends were sensitive, I couldn't help but feel like they couldn't stand to see the bigger picture sometimes. I rarely acted through malice, so my actions were never a slur on them. It was hard to win when the people there to support you were as self-loathing and downtrodden as you.

The habitually quiet Sunday lull was in full swing, or lack thereof, when Esme found us, first frowning at me like she didn't recognise me, then slamming the same magazine I'd been shown by my mother down on the table. 

"What the hell is this?"

"A magazine?"

"Don't act cute, Emmeline."
 
Jesus.
 Esme had never used my full name before. "You were at the secret Monday's Miracle gig. With Blaze. And 
them
. Some fucking warning might have been nice." I should have known that my decision to monopolise the evening would come back to bite me, but I had enough alcohol in me to slur a retort.

"If you were so worried about me, all you had to do was call. Nobody ever has the sense to just call, you all have to presume the worst of Emmeline Tudor, the hopelessly fucking suicidal."

"No, I—"

"Is it cold up there on your soapbox, Esme? Do you, she who is so naturally beautiful, really think that I don't deserve to be the centre of focus in a room sometimes? How often do I get a shoo-in standing next to you like some glorified fucking wingman? How dare I enjoy my last blissful night with Mr
 Decadent without my babysitters?"

"Emmy, shut up! I'm pissed off because of the journalists who've been crawling around here all day!" Stunned out of her anger, Esme sat down next to me and drummed her fingers across the table's top. "You're a mean blonde. A hot mean blonde." An involuntary giggle escaped from my throat with the sob I'd been holding in all day. Once I started, I wouldn't stop, and nobody wanted me to lose that control. "You have that look like you're crying but the tears won't come out. What do you mean 'last night'?"