Chapter 10

I hadn’t spoken to Bobbi since the night she’d stayed over in the apartment. Because I was staying with Nick and not thinking about anything else, I hadn’t tried to get in touch with her or put much thought into the question of why she hadn’t called. Then after Melissa came back to Dublin, I got an email from Bobbi with the subject heading ‘jealous???’

look, i don’t care if you have a crush on nick, and i wasn’t trying to embarrass you or whatever. sorry if it came across that way. (and i’m not going to be moralistic about him being married either, i’m pretty sure melissa has affairs anyway). BUT it was real y fucked up of you to accuse me of being jealous of him. it is just so stereotypical y homophobic to accuse a gay woman of being secretly jealous of men, which i know you know. but even more than that it’s real y devaluing to our friendship to make out like i’m competing with a man for your attention. what does that say about how you see me? do you real y rank our relationship below your passing sexual interest in some middle aged married guy? it hurt my fucking feelings actual y.

I was in work when I received the email, but none of the other people who worked there were around. I read the message several times. For some reason I deleted it briefly, and then went into my trash folder to retrieve it almost straight away. Then I marked it as unread and opened it to read it again as if for the first time. Of course Bobbi was right. I had called her jealous to try and hurt her. I just hadn’t known that it had actually worked, or that it was even possible to hurt her no matter how hard I tried. Realising not only that hurting Bobbi’s feelings was within my power but that I had done it practically offhandedly and without noticing, made me uncomfortable. I wandered around the office and poured some water from the cooler into a plastic cup though I wasn’t thirsty.

Then eventually I sat back down.

It took me several drafts to finish writing my reply.

Hey, you’re right, it was a weird and wrong thing to say and I shouldn’t have said it. I felt defensive and I just wanted to make you angry. I feel guilty for hurting your feelings over something so stupid. I’m sorry.

I sent it and then logged out of my email for a while to get some work done.

Philip came in around eleven and we talked a little. I told him I hadn’t written anything in a week and he raised his eyebrows.

I thought you were all about discipline, he said.

I was.

Are you having a weird month? You seem like you are.

On my lunch break I logged back into my email. Bobbi had replied.

ok i forgive you. but real y, nick? is that your thing now? i just feel like he probably unironical y reads articles cal ed ‘one weird trick for perfect abs’

if it absolutely had to be a man i assumed it would be someone wussy and effeminate like philip, this is so unexpected.

I didn’t reply to that. Bobbi and I had always shared a contempt for the cultish pursuit of male physical dominance. Even very recently we had been asked to leave Tesco for reading aloud inane passages from men’s magazines on the shop floor. But Bobbi was wrong about Nick. That wasn’t what he was like. Really he was the kind of person who would laugh at Bobbi’s cruel impression of him and not try to correct her. But I couldn’t explain that to her. I certainly couldn’t tell her what I found most endearing about him, which was that he was attracted to plain and emotionally cold women like me.

By the time I finished work I was tired and I had a headache, a bad one. I walked home and decided to lie in bed for a while. It was five o’clock. I didn’t wake up until midnight.

*

I didn’t see Nick again before he left for Scotland. Because he was on set from early in the morning, the only way we could talk was

online, late at night. He was usually tired by then and seemed withdrawn, and I started writing only terse responses to his messages, or not responding at all. Online he talked about trivial things, like how much he hated his co-workers. He never said that he missed me, or thought about me at all. When I made any reference to the time we’d spent in his house together he tended to skip over it and talk about something else. In response I felt myself becoming cold and sarcastic.

Nick: the only reasonable person on set is stephanie me: why don’t you have an affair with her then.

Nick: wel i think that could only harm our working relationship me: is that a hint

Nick: also she is at least 60

me: and you’re what like.. 63?

Nick: funny

Nick: i’l run it by her if you want

me: oh please do

At home I watched YouTube clips of his film and TV

appearances. He had once played the young father of a kidnap victim in an episode of a long-running crime drama, and in one scene he broke down and cried in the police station. That was the clip I watched most often. He cried exactly the way I imagined he would in real life: hating himself for crying, but hating himself so much that it only made him cry harder. I found that if I watched this clip before we spoke at night, I tended to be more sympathetic toward him. He had a very basic HTML fansite online that hadn’t been updated since 2011, which I looked at sometimes while we were talking.

I was sick at the time, I had cystitis. For a while the persistent discomfort and mild fever felt psychologically appropriate and I did nothing about them, but eventually I went to see the college doctor and she gave me antibiotics and a painkiller that made me drowsy.

I spent the evenings looking at my own hands or trying to focus on a laptop screen. I felt disgusting, like my body was full of evil bacteria. I knew that Nick was suffering no similar after-effects.

There was nothing equivalent about us. He had screwed me up in his hand like paper and tossed me away.

I tried to start writing again, but everything I produced was full of a bitterness that made me ashamed. Some of it I deleted, some I hid in folders I never looked inside. I was taking things too seriously again. I fixated on perceived wrongs Nick had done to me, callous things he had said or implied, so that I could hate him and therefore justify the intensity of my feelings for him as pure hatred. But I recognised that the only thing he had done to hurt me was to withdraw his affection, which he had every right to do. In every other way he had been courteous and thoughtful. At times I thought this was the worst misery I had experienced in my life, but it was also a very shallow misery, which at any time could have been relieved completely by a word from him and transformed into idiotic happiness.

One night online I asked him if he had sadistic tendencies.

Nick: not that i know of

Nick: why do you ask?

me: you seem like someone who does

Nick: hm

Nick: that’s worrying

Some time passed. I stared at the screen but didn’t type anything. I was one day away from finishing my antibiotics.

Nick: is there an example you’re thinking of?

me: no

Nick: ok

Nick: i think when i hurt people it tends to be through selfishness Nick: rather than being an end in itself

Nick: have i done something to hurt you?

me: no

Nick: are you sure?

I let more time go by. With the pad of my finger I covered his name on my laptop screen.

Nick: are you stil there?

me: yeah

Nick: oh

Nick: i guess you don’t feel like talking then Nick: that’s ok, i should go to bed anyway

The next morning he sent me an email that read: i can see you don’t real y feel like keeping in touch at the moment, so i’m going to stop sending you messages, ok? i’l see you when i’m back.

I considered writing a spiteful email in response but instead I didn’t reply at all.

The following night Bobbi suggested we watch one of Nick’s films.

That would be weird, I said.

He’s our friend, why would it be weird?

She was on my laptop, searching Netflix. I had made a pot of peppermint tea and we were waiting for it to brew.

It’s on here, she said. I saw it on here. It’s the one about the bridesmaid marrying her boss.

Why are you even looking for his films?

It’s a pretty minor part but he does take his shirt off at one point.

You’re into that, right?

Genuinely, please stop, I said.

She stopped. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor and she reached to pour herself a splash of tea to see if it was ready.

Do you like him as a person? she said. Or is it just like, he’s good-looking and married to someone interesting?

I could tell she was still hurt by the jealousy remark, but I had apologised already. I didn’t want to indulge her hostility toward Nick, especially since I wasn’t talking to him then. It was obvious to me that Bobbi’s feelings were not sincerely hurt anymore, if they ever had been, and that she just liked to make fun of me whenever I experienced romantic feelings. I looked at her like she was something very far away from me, a friend I used to have, or someone whose name I didn’t remember.

Melissa’s not that interesting, I said.

When Bobbi went home I looked up the film she was talking about. It had been released six years previously, when I was fifteen. Nick appeared in it as a character with whom the protagonist has a regrettable one-night stand. I found a video link and skipped ahead to the scene where he was getting out of her shower the next morning. He looked younger, and his face was

different, although even in this video he was older than me. I watched the scene twice. After he left, the protagonist called her friend and they laughed hysterically about what a jerk Nick’s character was, which was a bonding moment for their friendship.

I sent him an email after I watched it. I wrote: Sure, if that’s what you want. I hope the filming is going okay.

He replied at about 1 a.m.

i should have told you before, but i’m going to be in the north of france for most of august with melissa and various other people. it’s a huge vil a type place in a vil age cal ed etables. people are always coming and going, so you’re welcome to come and stay for a while if you want, though i can see why that might not appeal.

I was sitting cross-legged in bed trying to work on a spoken word thing when the email notification came through. I replied: So are we stil having an affair or is that over now?

He didn’t reply for a while. I guessed he had gone to bed, but the possibility that he hadn’t yet made me not want to work any more. I made myself a cup of instant coffee and watched some YouTube videos of other spoken word performers.

Eventually a notification came through on instant messenger.

Nick: are you awake

me: yes

Nick: so yeah look

Nick: i don’t know what you want

Nick: obviously we can’t see each other very often Nick: and having an affair is reasonably stressful me: haha

me: are you breaking up with me

Nick: if we never actual y see one another

Nick: then the affair just consists of like

Nick: worrying about the affair

Nick: do you see what i mean

me: I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me over instant messenger me: I thought you were going to leave your wife so we could run away together

Nick: you don’t need to be defensive me: how do you know what I need

me: maybe I’m actual y real y upset

Nick: are you

Nick: i never have any idea what you feel about anything me: wel it doesn’t real y matter now, does it He had to be back on set early that morning so he went to bed.

I kept thinking about the time I gave him head and he just lay there quietly letting me do it. I had never done that before, I wanted to explain. You could have told me what was so bad about it instead of just letting me carry on. It wasn’t kind. I felt so foolish. But I knew he had done nothing wrong really. I considered calling Bobbi and telling her everything, in the hope that she would tell Melissa and then Nick’s life would be ruined. But I decided it would be too humiliating a story to relate.