Page 75 of Stella is Starting Over

I kiss Orla on the cheek as the taxi driver revs the engine of his Honda, very obviously clear that he wants to get to the airport right now.

‘How are you feeling?’ she asks, smiling up at me.

‘Dreadful,’ I say. ‘You must have given me poisoned whiskey.’

‘That’ll be it,’ she agrees. ‘And poisoned Guinness. And poisoned malbec. And poisoned apple Sourz.’

I whimper. ‘I’d forgotten about the apple Sourz. This is the roughest stag I’ve ever been on.’

‘It’s a sten,’ she corrects me. ‘For the hundredth time. Now get on the plane and I’ll see you for the wedding.’

She slams the door behind me and I wince at the impact, then wave weakly out the window. ‘Is there a really smooth, non-bendy route to the airport?’ I ask the driver.

‘No,’ he says.

Orla’s ‘sten’, a word that I’m never going to use in good conscience, was a two-day event at a house a few miles outside of Dublin. She figured that she’d only known her soon-to-be-husband for nine months, so none of their friends had met each other and this was the best time to get us all in one place, building some bonds so that there’s good craic (another word that I can’t use out loud without sounding stupid) at the wedding.

I was surprised to be invited, if I’m totally honest. But her new bloke didn’t seem at all worried that Orla and I had shagged on and off for some years, and had invited a couple of his own exes on the trip. Maybe this is how grown-ups deal with their past flames? Anyway, I’d originally said no because it was too far and I felt like it was a pity invite, but Orla rang me and bullied me into booking a plane ticket. It’s a strange, lovely thing, the friendship that we’ve fallen into. After everything went wrong last year, and I didn’t get offered the job in Dublin because I left before the interview (a fair call on their side), she decided that we were going to be sorting-our-shit-out buddies. So she came up with a list – a boyfriend, a better job and some new friendships – and I tried to do the same, and we checked in every week to see how we were doing.

In the first few months, Orla met Jason, who teaches English at a posh school in town, went on a date with him, fell spectacularly in love with him and quit her travelling-all-the-time job (that did not promote her to partner) in favour of a local one so that she could spend more time with him. He popped the question after they’d been together six months and I – and it turns out also her other friends, as I found out at the ‘sten’ party – was sceptical until I saw them together and then it made so much sense that no one had a word to say on the matter. Whichever way you cut it, she’s smashed her list of life improvements out of the park. I, on the other hand, am still working on mine.

‘Are you flying back to London now?’ asks the driver.

‘Yes.’ I nod.

‘Home to the wife and kids?’

‘No,’ I say. I shake my head and then regret it. ‘No wife, no kids.’

‘What’s wrong with you, then?’ He laughs.

It’s a good question. In fact, it’s a question that I’ve spent some of the past year trying to figure out. And how have I been doing that? Therapy. The thing that I swore I would never do, because it’s self-indulgent and unnecessary and pointless, the thing that I thought was basically a Ponzi scheme for having too many feelings. Turns out, I was wrong.

It took a bit of shopping around. The first guy I saw seemed to have a kind of men’s rights activism streak to him, and kept telling me how the women I’d picked weren’t worthy of me. I explained that they were all not only worthy of me but dramatically better people than I am, and that was kind of the problem, and we ended up in a weird row. So then I found Martin, a tiny man in his sixties, who wears little round glasses and helped me realise – without telling me anything – that I’m still a bit traumatised from the failure of my marriage. The joke marriage, the marriage that I use as a punchline on first dates, the silly youthful mistake that I totally don’t care about. Turns out, I weirdly did care about it. And even though I was a complete shit during that marriage, I was still hurt by the stuff my ex-wife did that wasn’t great, which is how I found myself sitting on a sofa in a flat in Wimbledon, sobbing over the fact that my ex cheated on me over a decade ago, and then sobbing some more about the fact that I failed at being married, at the idea that my parents were disappointed, and the reality that I’ve missed out on being a young dad and then, of course, the big fat juggernaut at the end of it all, Stella.

I waited several sessions until I broached Stella because I felt a bit like the scared horse in one of those films I secretly like where a sad girl meets a sad horse, and they heal each other. I was scared that he’d say something I didn’t want to hear about Stella and it would break all the good stuff that I’ve started feeling about him. But he didn’t. I raised it, very lightly, as a new strand of something I wanted to talk about. And then I very slowly unpicked it, meeting her and liking her, and being afraid that I was going to ruin it, and then the weird waltz we did around each other where we didn’t date or sleep together, but we couldn’t stop spending time together. And then the bit where she got together with that arsehole, and the way I was horrified at my relief when he turned out to be evil, even though that probably traumatised her. And then, finally, the moment where I told her I was ready and I knew what I wanted, and she turned me down. Point blank. I just stood in her kitchen trying not to cry and then I picked up my stupid wheelie suitcase, which really didn’t add any dignity to the horror of the situation, and walked to the end of the road and then waited for a bus, which didn’t come, before eventually calling an Uber. When I got home I’d spent so long holding the tears in that I couldn’t even cry.

‘I’m a commitment-phobe,’ I reply to the taxi driver, having given my answer far too much thought.

‘Oh, right,’ he says. He doesn’t ask any more questions for the rest of the journey.

The flight home is easy and my flat is exactly as I left it, because no one else lives here and no one else visits and that’s a depressing thought. I put all my clothes straight into the washing machine, unpack all my other stuff and then I turn my TV on and load a game of FIFA, hating myself for having an endless, empty evening to play video games.

There is a fix for this, obviously. Martin has pointed out that I’m probably ready to start going on dates again and that we’re not going to know whether my commitment-phobia has improved until I actually try to commit to someone. Several times I’ve tried to download the apps and force myself to write witty responses to stupid questions, but I feel too old for it all, too world-weary. I don’t want to tell the world what my death row meal is, or two truths and a lie. I don’t want to go to Clapham for a first date with a management consultant named Jess or Tess or Beth who broke up with her long-term boyfriend because he didn’t want to move in together. I don’t want any of it. And I’m astounded by the bravery of everyone who manages to keep doing it, all those women who had feelings for me, who I couldn’t love back because I was broken and refusing to sort out the brokenness; how did they get back on with it? Presumably they just swiped until they met someone who wasn’t emotionally unavailable and started again. Which is what I should do. I know that.

The doorbell goes. I must have ordered something from Amazon and then forgotten about it. Most likely someone on the ‘sten’ mentioned some life-changing product and I drunkenly ordered it in a desire to prove that I was listening and really in earnest when I said it sounded great. I shove my feet into a pair of trainers, treading the backs down like they’re a pair of clogs.

‘I’m coming!’ I shout down the intercom. ‘Please don’t take it next door, they steal stuff.’ Then I clatter down the stairs, throw open the door and standing on my doorstep isn’t a tired-looking delivery driver about to take a picture of me holding my parcel, but a woman. A woman I haven’t seen for almost exactly a year.

Stella.

‘Hi,’ I say.

‘Hi,’ she replies.

The sky outside is moody. It was warm when I got back from the airport, but it’s cooled since then.

‘I just got back from Dublin.’