Page 104 of What It's Like in Words
“‘Shut up’?” he says, amused, angry. He folds his arms and looks at me like I’m a painting in a gallery he is studying.
“Firstly, there’s nothing wrong with wanting that stuff and, secondly, stop telling me what I’m thinking and start listening to what I’m saying! God, why do you feel the need to dominate everything? You take up all the room! What Iwantis to be a person. A whole fucking person. And I’m never going to be that if I’m with you!”
He is silent, and then he exhales. “Look, Enola. I know I’m shit at the emotional stuff and I can be a short-tempered cunt but we do make each other happy.”
“Feeling happy and being happy are different things.”
His face contorts. “What the fuck would you know about being happy? You’ve just told me you’ve spent years feeling not good enough and not loved enough.”
“Fuck you.”
His eyes flash. He stands and moves to me. He presses his palm on the fridge and leans so our faces are close. “What makes you happy, then?” he says in a near whisper. “That guy with the hair? Does he make you happy?”
I maintain eye contact even though my heart is pounding. His black waffle jumper has a toothpaste stain, and I want to lick my finger and clean it for him.
“Normal things make me happy. Not existing from one fight to another, not wondering how you feel about me every second of every day, not spending those days thinking about you instead of myself. Not being in constant fight-or-flight.”
“Okay, well then, just listen. I spent all night talking to Pat and—”
“No. There is nothing you can say. The last two years have been about you. The things you’ve said and the things you haven’t. Even when I was with someone else, it was still about you—which makes me a really shitty person, by the way. But I’m done. I don’t want my good days to be days that you decide are good and my bad ones to be ones that you decide are bad.”
He tucks my hair behind my ear and his hand lingers on my neck. “Sorry to break it to you, honey, but that’s a relationship. Maybe you’re not ready for one.”
He tilts his head like he’s about to kiss me, and it would be so easy to let him. But instead, I say: “Or maybe youarejust a cunt.”
He drops his hand.
“Please go now.”
He waits for me to say something else, but I slide away from him and walk down the hall to the front door. He doesn’t follow immediately, but when he does, he looks bemused. I hold the door open for him to leave.
“Fine, Enola, if that’s what you want, then. I’ll go.”
He moves to the door, and our faces are close again. I want to run my fingers through the silver in his hair. He searches my face and then says: “Goodbye, then?”
He’s added a question mark because he thinks that we’ve been here before. But this isn’t another twist in the plot. This is the end. Or rather, the revision. I’m rewinding the story until I’m back in the pub in Broadway Market listening to Amy pontificate about paint colors and he’s putting his feet up and calling Chris a cunt and I’m thinking about taking the bus home but deciding to walk because I love the rain.
“Goodbye,” I say with a forceful full stop.
I was never scared of living without him. I was scared of him leaving. Like wanting a tumor removed but being terrified of dying on the table.
“Wait.” His hand stretches before I can close the door. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t need that.”
“I know, but I mean it. There is just something about us that brings out the worst in me, but that has never been your fault.”
He keeps his palm on the door as if he’s afraid that I will close it before he’s finished speaking, then smiles—a burnt end of a smile—and removes his hand. I think about the perfectly cylindrical mole on his forearm that looks like a planet, how it’s not actually a mole, it’s a pencil mark from school. Then I close the door and I am still alive.
AFTER HE LEAVES,Igo to the bathroom, turn on the shower, and undress. There is the comforting hum of the water pump as the room heats with steam.
but that has never been your fault
I feel the water in my bones. It’s like the first shower after camping. My skin is hot and cold at the same time. I imagine the hairs on my arms like trees in a forest, myself as a universe.
but that has never been your fault
I turn off the water and wrap myself in a towel.
