The Art of Letting Go (The Uni Files) (11 page)

He stares at me for a couple moments more before heading silently out of my room. The door closes behind him and it feels as if my heart has smashed into a million tiny pieces.

I can hear him shouting in the room next door, but I don’t care to listen. I have just wedged my pillow over my ears instead.

Home

It's five hours later and I am still lying on the bed with a pillow over my head. Except it is my bed in my flat. I do not plan to ever leave. I am just going to stay here. There is no way I am ever going to live in that Halls of Residence again.

Meredith was here with Tristan when I arrived. Tristan jumped up and grabbed me in a massive hug. Obviously Ben had been on the phone to them. I gave Tristan a hug before pushing past them into my room where I have spent the rest of the day, hiding under the duvet with a bottle of vodka, refusing to speak to anyone.

I am drunk.

Vodka = Good

Yesterday I had one and a half boyfriends. Today I have none. The irony is not lost on me at all.

11th November

Remembrance Day

12.00 p.m.

Armistice Day always makes me depressed. Seeing all those soldiers who were once so brave and strong marching past the Cenotaph saluting their fallen comrades always moves me to tears. Today it has moved me to near hysteria.

I am drunk. Again. Vodka is my new boyfriend. Ha, ha!

The vodka is numbing everything. Occasionally, I have a moment or two of lucidity when I ask myself, what the hell am I doing? Why am I reacting like a complete nutcase? Sure, Ben acted like a prick and hurt my feelings, but did I really have to run away? It's not like he was ever my boyfriend anyway. I should think of him the way he thinks of me: just someone to have sex with.

Meredith has given me thirty seconds before she starts knocking the door down. I would like to see her try. It sounds funny. Unfortunately, I have run out of vodka and I think it will take too long for her to achieve her objective. I may have sobered up by then.

12.01 p.m.

Oh, blimey! She has started her countdown.

12.35 p.m.

I walk out to find Ben standing in the hallway.

The traitors must have let him sneak in whilst I was in my vodka induced zombie coma. He looks terrible, but I know I look far worse.

I feel tired, really tired and very drunk. Not a great combination when one is trying to maintain an emotionally even keel.

“Ben, don’t bother,” I say before he can get a word in.

“Lilah, will you please let me explain? I know it looked the very worst type of bad, but I promise you nothing happened at all. Becky tried to kiss me, but I told her no. She got a bit crazy and stripped off and then she passed out, she was completely bladdered.”

“That does not explain why she was in your room in the first place, Ben. Or why you didn’t just walk away from her.”

This is my main point, the bit I cannot get my head around. Why was she even there, and if she was there, why was he?

“I know,” he says, looking sheepish. “She kind of made out that she had nowhere else to go and I foolishly fell for it. I didn’t know she was going to do that.”

I look at him in disbelief. “Seriously? You didn't think that she was going to do that?”

I walk into the kitchen to pour a hefty measure of Tristan’s Stolichnaya. I don’t bother with ice or mix.
That
is for wimps.

“So why did you not just come and knock on my door, come and find me?”

The blues scan my face, possibly looking for any sign of forgiveness. He won’t find any. Ever.

“I was drunk, and when I didn’t hear from you all night I thought you might have changed your mind.” He says the words quietly.

I wish that I could believe what he is saying, but I don’t.

He must be lying.

“So the really great news is that John and I split up last night, so cheers to that!” I raise the glass in a mock solute and knock the vodka back.

It burns.

Burn = Good.

Ben looks at me evenly. “That is good, Lilah. You know I am in love with you, right?”

He steps towards me but I freeze.

“Thing is Ben, I do not know what I feel for you anymore, hell I do not even know what I felt. All I know is that I think most men are wankers, and then I met you and thought you weren’t. Now I think you are,” I tell him, knocking back another swig of the good stuff.

This stops Ben in his tracks. “I can’t believe that you think I am lying.”

“This has just made me realise lots of stuff. I mean let’s be honest, you’re in a band that is starting to get successful. It's not like you are going to be short of female attention. I think it's better that we don’t start anything more permanent between us. I am sure eventually you will meet someone much better than me, and I don’t want to wait around for that to happen.”

My words are harsh, but I got it out, the bit that hurts the most. Eventually someone better than me
will
come along, and he
will
be gone. That is just the way it works. It is exactly what I have done to John, and it is exactly what Ben will do to me.

It feels like someone has stolen my lungs.

He stares at me in complete shock. “You think I will do that?”

“I think it will be hard for you to resist.”

The blues drill into me, hard and unflinching. “Then obviously we have made a mistake. It's a good thing we realised now before moving on to the next level.”

I want to ask him what the next level would have been, but I bite my tongue to stop myself.

He turns on his heel and walks out of the door. Out of the door and away from me. I watch the door swing shut with a sense of dread settling on my stomach.
What am I doing?

Meredith and Tristan stare at me like I am crazy, which I very well may be.

“You know he loves you?” Tristan asks.

Yeah, right. Like
he
knows the first thing about love.

“Get lost, Tristan,” I shout as I slam back into my room.

Taylor Swift is singing, "I Knew You Were Trouble." And whilst it is rather annoying, I am inclined to agree with her.

12th November

Class was awful. I drank a half a bottle of vodka just to get there, which is bit like having a Bloody Mary for breakfast, but without the Mary. I would have ditched, but, unfortunately, I missed a lot during the haircut debacle and have used up all my sick excuses. I don’t think ‘the sexy boy from next door has broken my heart’ excuse is one that the faculty will be sympathetic with.

Ben sat behind me as always. Instead of the lovely zinging electricity that usually flowed between us, there was just dead air. My chair had all four legs firmly on the ground. Barbie was there but she kept her head down and sat on the opposite side of the room. Good. She can keep her black lacy underwear away from me.

I miss him, though. It feels like I am stuck in some terrible soap opera that's going to end soon and the credits will come up.

Taylor Swift is singing "White Horse" in the background. And I want to cease to exist.

15th November

Drunk again. Another Bloody for breakfast lacking in Vitamin C.

Meredith has asked when I am coming home. I don’t think I am. I did not tell her that, I just shrugged vaguely. It’s not her fault, and I miss her like crazy, but at the moment every time I see her I just think about Ben and what the last couple months of us all living together has been like. The dinners, the wine, and the communal gossip while sitting in the kitchen watching him cook.

Jayne caught up with me as I strode over campus. She misses me as well. They all miss me. Ben never comes out of his room and has not touched his guitar in days.

I don’t care.

16th November

Really, really drunk.

Smoked a million cigarettes.

I was going to go to the library, but I fell up the first two stairs and changed my mind.

Meredith has been with me. I asked her to give me the exact low down on what happened. I don’t really want to know but at the same time I really do. It’s like if I don’t find out, the curiosity will kill me, much like it will kill a cat.

This is her blow-by-blow account of the night:

8 p.m.—Arrive at gig. Ben goes to set up. He is checking his phone every thirty seconds to see if I have texted him.

8.30 p.m.—They start the set. Ben makes Meredith hold his phone in case I text, and at least that way she can give him a thumbs-up.

Why, oh why, did I not text him?

(Scrap that. It should not have made any difference whether I did or not. Also, I have to remember this is Meredith’s shameless pro-Ben propaganda.)

9.30 p.m.—The set finishes and the band joins Meredith, Tristan, and Jayne. As they are ordering drinks, Barbie and her little crew of ho’s turn up and join in. Barbie seems to be making a play for Dave, which gives Jayne (who is already making a move) the royal hump.

Ben is pacing and drinking a lot. Tristan tries to calm Ben down by saying that there is no chance I am going change my mind, and that he has never seen me like this with anyone before and he knows that Ben is here to stay.

How wrong can he be?

10 p.m.—Ben is quite drunk and still staring at his phone. Barbie moves in, asking him what the matter is. He slurs something about waiting for someone to make a decision. She laughs and says something along the lines of how if it were she, there would be no question of decision-making. He looks at her like she is crazy and says, “Thank fuck it isn't you."

She strops off.

And that is all Meredith knows. She was drunk and decided to convince Tristan it was time to leave. The last they saw, Ben was staggering a little, packing up the band’s gear. Barbie had retreated to a corner, where she was obviously plotting her revenge.

None of this makes me feel much better, apart from wishing to God that I had just picked up and used my bloody phone.

17th November

8.30 a.m.

Thank goodness it is Saturday. I don’t have to get up and face anyone.

11.45 a.m.

Ben just came around again, but I did not open my door, I just sat on the floor against it. I think he sat on the other side.

After a while I heard him get up, the sound of his bare feet padding on the carpet.

“It’s no good. She’s just not going to speak to me.”

He sounds hurt, like I have betrayed him somehow.

How very dare he act like I have betrayed him, or let him down!

But then there is this little voice in my head which says,
Yes, Lilah, but he did wait patiently for you for weeks whilst you fannied about, getting the balls to make the right decision.

Then there is another voice saying,
He did look for you for nine months and recognise you when finally seeing you again. That must mean something, right?
Something more fundamental than 'We are just playing around at being together.'

I cannot allow myself to think like that. Just have to remember the black underwear.

11.47 a.m.

Right. Where is that vodka?

19th November

On campus again. It is horribly awkward, but this time I manage not to consume any alcohol before going.

This is progress.

Ben sits behind me, as always. I can feel his gaze the whole way through the morning and afternoon two-hour lectures.

After class I go to the library with Meredith—making it up the stairs without injury. Funnily enough, Ben does not wait around to walk me there, or to make me giggle, or to absentmindedly hold my hand, tracing patterns with his thumb.

23rd November

9.30 a.m.

It’s my Birthday. Happy bloody Birthday.

I’m not going to do anything. Mum and Dad are not talking to me—apparently they are never going to forgive me for breaking up with John—and I’m not talking to anyone else.

1.45 p.m.

I‘ve spent the day in bed. I could not face a morning of uncomfortable lectures.

Before the black underwear incident I had fantasised that Ben and I would spend my twenty-sixth birthday snuggled, preferably naked, doing all those amazing things that we are so good at doing together. Instead I am having some quality time with my stand-in boyfriend, Vodka. Although today I may go for his twin, Gin, as it is a special occasion.

A card was pushed under my door earlier, handmade from Ben. On it he has drawn a mass of forget-me-nots. Inside it says:

I love you and miss you. Please come home.

My god, I want to go home. But I can’t. How can I have a relationship with someone who, whenever he goes out to play guitar, I visualise skinny girls clad in black lacy underwear throwing themselves at him?