Authors: Claire Hennessy
Chapter Fifty-Six
I get home on Thursday and stare at the photos on the wall, grinning like an idiot whenever I see one with me and Barry. How could I not have seen it before? We make the perfect couple.
Everyone else has been seeing it for ages, of course. It’s so obvious to them. I can’t
believe
it’s taken me so long to realise this.
I sit on the bed and sigh. He’s probably got a lot of homework to do tonight. I won’t see him.
There’s a message on my phone. Heart pounding. It’s from him. I resist the urge to squeal in delight.
I am so very giddily happily in love and I adore it. This is the sort of ‘sickening’ behaviour that Roisín teases me about, but I don’t care. I’m
happy.
I go over to his house after dinner and we hang out in his room, just talking at first, and then he says, “So . . .”
And I say, “So . . .”
We laugh.
“About yesterday,” I say, and he looks worried.
“Look, if you – ” he begins.
“I don’t regret it,” I reassure him quickly. “And I’m glad it happened.”
“Really?” He smiles. (He is truly adorable when he smiles. It’s so cute!)
“Really,” I say, and kiss him.
We are still kissing – and going no further, may I add – when his mother knocks on the door and asks us if we’d like anything to drink.
She seems surprised, but in a good way, to see me and Barry jump apart, embarrassed. He never told her about Jeremy, but I think she must have suspected. For months, they spent all their time together, and after they broke up he stayed in his room, miserable, for a week. How can parents
not
notice things like that? How can they not make the connection? She must have known something was going on.
Parents are experts at the game of denial, I suppose. If they don’t want to see something . . . it doesn’t exist for them.
I want to call her on that almost-relieved look and tell her that Barry would probably be better off with Jeremy, that I’m really not the sort of girl that anyone should go out with. I want to ask her why she thinks it’s automatically better for him to be with a girl than a boy.
I’m jumping to conclusions, I realise, and reading too much into the situation. The world isn’t out to get us.
Did I just say ‘us’? ‘Us’, as in the lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgendered-queer community? ‘Us’, as in me and
them?
As in me, the girl who refuses to believe that sexuality is an issue, turning into some kind of sexuality-is-political thinker/activist?
Oh dear. This is new and scary.
I don’t care about
issues
and all that sort of stuff. Do I?
I mean, what people do in their personal life is personal, right? It’s nothing to do with anyone else. So I’ve always believed, anyway. And I don’t want to have to take a political stance
on the people I fall for
, for God’s sake.
“Emily, can I get you anything?” Barry’s mother asks.
“No, thanks,” I say. “I’m okay.”
Except for the thoughts swirling around in my head, of course. I think I’ll go back to kissing Barry. It’s much simpler.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I am reading the introduction to the
Velvet Goldmine
screenplay in which Todd Haynes talks about sexuality influencing who you are, and I am not sure whether I like this idea or not.
Gay rights and women’s rights and all that stuff, and yeah, I
care
, but not enough to do something about it, not enough to think deeply on the matter or go to a protest or take a stand.
I’d make a movie, maybe, to make a point, but should movies have a political agenda behind them? People want to be entertained, not educated. No one watches a movie to feel like they’re back in school, being told what to believe in.
I’m glad tomorrow’s Friday and I can go out and get drunk and not have to think for a while.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
And so on Friday night we are dressed up and ready for action, me and Barry and Roisín and Andrew-and-Lucy. It’s a weird group dynamic, with Andrew and Lucy being more couple-ish than ever, if that’s even possible, and then me and Barry trying not to be overly affectionate to one another so that Roisín doesn’t feel too awkward, and the fact that there are five, not six of us. Hugh’s going out with Fiona and her friends. We’ll probably see them later. The good (or bad) thing about the size of Dublin is that when you’re under eighteen, you tend to run into almost everyone you know when you go out for the night.
I find myself dancing with Barry. He hasn’t taken his hands off me ever since we got here, almost as if he’s afraid he’ll lose me if he lets go for a minute. Either we’re holding hands, or he has his arm around me, or
something.
I’m starting to feel claustrophobic. He’s never been like this before; does the fact that we’re kissing now change
everything?
It’s so stupid. We’ve known each other forever and suddenly all the rules have changed, when the whole reason that we’re together now is because we got along so well as friends. The logic of that defies me.
But I do
like
the way his arms feel around me when we dance so closely that we should be oblivious to everything and everyone around us. ‘Should be’, because I can’t manage to block the world out, and something about that doesn’t seem right to me. He’s giving me his full attention and I’m only half-here, thinking about Roisín and whether she’s okay or feeling left out of things, and about Lucy’s Debs dress (she hasn’t bought one yet; she should probably get a white one so she can re-use it as a wedding dress), and about all kinds of things that I should be forgetting about when I’m trying to have a good time.
I should be happy, right? This is Barry. I’m crazy about Barry. We’re going to live together in our stylish apartment someday and be essential parts of each other’s lives and never be apart.
And it’s so, so easy to mistake intimate friendship for attraction when you’re looking for someone to fall for.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
I am in Barry’s arms and my head is buried in his shoulder and all I can think is,
Oh, holy crap.
Rebound girl strikes again. I can’t believe what I’ve done.
Maybe it’s a mistake. Maybe I really
am
attracted to Barry and I’m just scared of admitting it to myself, so . . .
No. That’s not the way it is. It’s me playing mind games with the person I care most about in the whole world. It’s just like Declan said, even though it sickens me to admit that he’s right.
It’s me needing someone to obsess over because that’s what I
do
, that’s how I function, constantly looking for someone else to develop a crush on in the search for happiness and true love.
And it couldn’t be Lucy and it couldn’t be Abi and it was so easy for it to be Barry because it’s Barry, and I adore him, and respect him, and everyone
expected
it.
It’s hard not to do what people expect of you. You start to see yourself and your life through their eyes. Especially when it’s your friends, because you love your friends, and their opinions mean so much to you – but it doesn’t make it right or real or true.
It doesn’t make me in love with Barry.
Because if I were really in love with him, I wouldn’t have this sense of being trapped, of having a niggling feeling that something about this is wrong, that I love the intimacy but it can never be sexual between us, because I don’t feel that way about him and I’d give anything in the world not to hurt him.
Yeah, it’s too late for
that
, isn’t it?
Chapter Sixty
And of course once I’ve realised this, everything’s different. To him, nothing has changed, and we’re still dancing, still a couple, still Barry-and-Emily or Emily-and-Barry, but for me – it’s like I’ve stepped into an alternate universe.
To everyone else Barry-and-Emily makes sense, and I’m the only one who sees that it doesn’t fit, that it’s not going to work.
And even
he
doesn’t see it, because he has feelings for me, and everybody knows it, and what kind of an ungrateful bitch am I not to appreciate this amazing person who cares so much about me and makes me laugh and makes me feel safe?
But I do appreciate him, I do . . .
. . . I just don’t want to sleep with him.
I have to tell him. The longer I put it off, the harder it’s going to be. Doing it so early is going to seem ridiculous – but maybe the shorter our ‘involvement’ is, the easier it will be for people to forget. For him to forget. For everything to go back to normal.
Maybe he’ll be secretly relieved. Oh, I hope. Wouldn’t that be perfect? I’ll say, “Look, Barry, I don’t think this is going to work out . . .” and he’ll grin and say, “Yeah, I know what you mean. What were we thinking?” and we’ll go back to rolling our eyes at the people who think there’s a ‘spark’.
I mean, what we have amounts to only a few kisses. It doesn’t mean anything, right?
And I start working myself up to the speech I’m going to have to give to him at the end of the night.
Chapter Sixty-One
“Okay, what is it?” he asks. We are in his house and he looks appropriately apprehensive. Boys understand what “We need to talk” means. It’s the universal code for “Prepare to be dumped”.
“I –” I begin, and falter. I look at him – beautiful, beautiful Barry and realise this is going to hurt.
***
Last summer. Lying out in the sun with Barry in his back garden, rubbing sun tan lotion into his shoulders, and he said, “Jeremy’s coming over tonight.”
“Cool. You guys going to do anything exciting?” I asked. “Apart from the usual, of course . . .”
“Dirty mind, Em.”
“Yeah. It’s a gift.”
“Actually, we’re just going to watch a movie. You should come over too.”
“And be the third wheel? No thanks,” I said honestly.
“We’ll behave, I promise,” he grinned. “No, I just want you to meet him. You’re my best friend, I want you to at least know him.”
“You just want to show him off, don’t you?” I teased.
“Sort of, yeah.”
And we laughed, and I was happy that if he was showing Jeremy off, it was to me. That I was important enough for that.
***
October. I marvelled at his mother’s ignorance of her son’s life and stayed over his room two nights after the break-up. Barry and I didn’t talk much. I crawled into bed with him and we held each other and fell asleep like that. I couldn’t do much to cheer him up or make up for the fact that Jeremy was an asshole who cared more about what his friends thought than about Barry, but I could be there for him, something to hold onto, always there.
***
“I think –” I begin, and stop again. God, it’s one thing to make up a speech in your head, and quite another thing to deliver it to someone. “Barry, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had – ” I try.
And I can see by the look on his face that he already understands what’s coming. I stop, because I can’t make myself say it. I can’t because I think I’m going to cry. That
look
on his face is making my throat tighten.
He doesn’t say anything. And I don’t say anything. And we’re just looking at one another, and we know what the story is.
I reach out and try to hug him and he pushes me away. “Get out,” he says coldly.
And I do.
Chapter Sixty-Two
It’s four in the morning and I can’t sleep.
I keep checking my phone to see if Barry replies to any of my text messages. He’s ignored all of them. I’ve apologised a hundred times and he doesn’t care.
I can’t say I blame him. What’s ‘sorry’ going to do at this stage?
Everything’s just so messed up. And I mean everything, from Abi to Lucy to Declan to Barry . . . and I don’t know what I want.
There’s the honest truth.
I don’t know what I want.
I want what I can’t have, and when I have it, I don’t want it anymore. I do whatever the hell I feel like – and then chalk it all up to a learning experience. Never mind the hurt feelings and the lasting consequences, it’s all about following your instincts, right?
I hate myself right now. I’m thinking about Barry and even Declan and hating myself for being everything Declan thinks I am, a bitch who messes with people’s heads for her own amusement, someone who doesn’t care about anyone but herself.
He’d be glad, you know, because now I get it. Finally, Declan, I get it. I get the seething hatred bubbling up inside yourself and how it feels that there is no possible way to deal with it other than doing something big and dramatic like gulping down a bottle of pills or letting a cigarette burn into your flesh. Because it feels so
bad,
and so
awful,
that there’s nothing else you
can
do. The tears aren’t enough, they keep coming and coming but they’re never going to be express fully what’s inside you.
I’m thinking of Barry and how he must hate me and how
cold
he sounded, like I was no better than dirt beneath his feet, and crying is not enough. I need to
do
something.
And at the same time I don’t think I have the energy to even move from my bed.
Somewhere around half-six, I fall asleep.