Fiction: You Told Me So (part 1)
Something I’m toying with. Reblogs with comments greatly appreciated.
You Told Me So
She was very understanding. That was the worst part. She was very understanding. I sat on the end of the bed and looked out of the window, down at the wet grey sand of the beach. Some kid guarding the deserted deckchairs was mollycoddling a lighter against the wind, one small flame flickering in the distance. Who the hell did he think was going to come and sit there.
She climbed back on the bed and sat behind me putting her arms around me. ‘It’s not easy,’ she said. I made some small sound in the back of my throat, a pitful little whimper like a puppy that’s not yet used to the sound of it’s own bark.
‘Some dirty weekend,’ I said. ‘It’s not over yet,’ she said as she got off the bed again and went over to her open suitcase, rearranging her smalls in a thoroughly unsexy way like that fag-ash hag that works in the laundrette down our road. The day before I thought I was in love with her but now I was just regretting the whole thing. This revenge was a dish so cold that I could see that it had congealed. I didn’t have the guts to do it. Just like Tolly had said. I didn’t have the balls to fuck.
She stopped fussing with the luggage and went to the mirror, slowly reapplying her lipstick and pulling faces at herself. She still thought it would happen, imagining that my nerves would go like the fog that had bothered us on our trip out there to the seaside, burnt away by the sheer sunniness of her disposition. I thought about drinking. The thought blossomed into a raging desire to get hammered, kicking at my insides, a horrible little infant craving booze.
‘Let’s go out,’ I said a little too loudly, my voice putting me on edge, some other guy’s tone, all jittery. ‘Ok,’ she said sweetly, that fucking sunny disposition still resilient, ‘I’ll just do my hair.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said. She shook her head and started to unpack her many tongs and tools from another smaller bag that had hidden unseen beneath the pile of dresses. I dragged myself from the bed and teetered my way to the bathroom, I couldn’t meet my own gaze in the mirror. I threw water on my face and pushed some through my hair, the only real grooming routine a man should have or so my dad had said. Anything but a bottle of Brut and a can of shaving foam was for poofs. He was a miserable old fucker. I look a little bit more like him every day.