Page 51 of People In Love
It comes to him now, like the shuttering billboards above the old car wash he’s passing. Her gaze, vacant. Stoned. His father’s face looking up at him, almost pleading, as his heart stopped beating in the driveway. His mother’s shock. No tears. Nora, holding him afterwards, and he walks faster and gets out his phone, checks the flight scanner app instead of the route that’ll take him to the tube station.
Close, balmy air, he craves. So different to the cold, colourless March of right now. Sand soft and white as talcumpowder, as the girl on the beach fingered his then-long hair. Asked him, in her breathy voice, if he wanted to talk about it. Like nobody had ever tried to unpeel the layers of him, like this, as if Nora hadn’t done that already – didn’t even need to, in fact, and so he’d laughed at her, this girl in her bikini and sarong on that beach. Properly. Three years after he’d left. He hadn’t laughed in so long, and he told the girl this: I haven’t laughed in so long. Like she’d healed him, somehow, not because she’d pried him open with that question, but because he knew the answer to it on some deep, molecular level, no, I do not want to talk about it, that is the last thing I will ever want, to talk about all the things that won’t change if I do, and so they did not talk and they did not touch or fuck or trade phone numbers. She left, he thinks, sometime before sunrise, as he fell into an exhausted half-sleep there on the sand, and the next day he felt like a shell, like what made him a real, feeling person had upped and left from the inside. Just like the light in his father’s eyes. And right now a car blares its horn at him because he has crossed the road without looking, still fixed on the flight app, so he throws his hands up, sorry, shit, blood racing, everything too bright and too dark and that old sparking wire in his gut, it’s this place, it’s being home, it’s breathing the same air as his mother, even, which does something to him, makes him emotionally unstable, and he’s scared he’ll end up like her, her stuff is hereditary, after all, but he doesn’t need to think about that, he refuses, keeps moving.
_
He finds a burger place, seats himself at a booth. Music playing, wooden forks, the menu laminated and half the size of the tabletop. He lifts it to look, not absorbing any of theoptions, not sure if he’s even hungry. And when he finally lowers it, Nora is sitting across from him; Bren jumps at the sight of her, and swears.
What wasthat, she asks him, thudding her phone onto the table, the screen alight with his tracked location.
You scared me!
No, she says. Before, out there. What’s going on with you?
But Bren can’t answer. Flips the menu over, looks at the drinks. Nora keeps staring at him, her concern changing to confusion, then anger.
I thought you had to get home?
I changed my mind, he says. Fancied a burger.
Which, now he thinks about it, isn’t a lie. He needs carbohydrates and salt. Something solid and grounding, hot chips, some kind of kick back into the present, sriracha mayo, maybe, some sliced jalapeños.
I don’t understand, Nora says.
Bren is still scanning the menu. Doesn’t understand, himself.
Youwere the one who offered to come dress shopping with me. You were the one who said you wouldn’t up and leave, or bungee jump out of my life again. But you’ve just pissed off, for no reason.
He is not sure he’s ever heard her swear before, and it throws him. He lowers the menu and almost laughs, mainly because pissed off means being angry, to him, it’s not a verb, but she’s so cross, he knows he shouldn’t laugh at her right now. And it’s not funny. Not really.
That’s not how this works, Nora tells him, gesturing between them.
And what is this, again?
What doesthatmean?
It means, Bren says, that sometimes you’re not over something when you think you are, for Christ’s sake.
He regrets it as soon as he’s said it. Tries to cover himself.
Like the fact that I got on that plane, he says, and you didn’t.
Nora’s mouth opens, just slightly, at that.
Shall we share some fries, he asks her.
Back up a bit, she says, not looking at the menu he’s proffered. You’re mad because I didn’t comewithyou?
I think I’ll get the chilli beef, he says.
Or you’re mad that I’ve set a wedding date?
A side of onion rings, maybe.
How are these things related? Nora asks.
Come on, Nora, they’re entirely related! You weren’t going to settle down. You were going to see the world, do something different with your life.
No, Nora says,youwere going to do those things. Just last week you were saying how great I’m doing, when you came over. What changed?
