Pretending: The brilliant new adult novel from Holly Bourne. Why be yourself when you can be perfect?(10)

Maybe some girls would find that possible?

Although, I bet those girls wouldn’t have behaved like a complete frigid nutter in the first place … Girls like Gretel.

That’s the thought that sets off the crying. A few tears seep down my cheek, sinking into Simon’s dirty pillowcase. I sniff and wipe my face, staring at the blackness of the ceiling. Simon stirs and I sniff louder as I play out a fantasy in my head. The fantasy that he will wake up to see I’m upset, and it will create an outpouring of love from him. He’ll sit up, turn the light on and say ‘Hey, hey, what’s going on?’ and I’ll say ‘I’m sorry I made it weird.’ He’ll tuck my hair back and say ‘I’m sorry I made it weird too.’ We’ll laugh about how awkward it was. Then he’ll tuck my hair back again, because, let’s face it, you can never have too much of that, and he’ll say, ‘I’m really sorry, April, I didn’t mean to freak out. I’m so glad you confided in me about what happened, and, now I’ve had some time to digest it, it’s nothing. I really, really, like you, and I’m so excited that we met.’ That’s all the talking we will need. We’ll collapse into one another and kissing will turn into mind-blowing sex – the sort that will totally erase the painful misfire we just shared.

This fantasy calms me for a moment. I turn over and watch Simon’s contented face, bathed in the artificial orange from the streetlight outside, the rise and fall of his breath. My fantasy triggers a deep stirring of love for him. This perfect man in my imagination.

A minute, it lasts. Before the truth builds itself around me. The truth that I’ve ruined it with this man, and he has ruined it with me. What sort of person is capable of falling asleep when the woman whose body you were just inside of is clearly very upset? In one final attempt to wake him and see if he can be the man I want and need him to be, I snuffle. To no avail. He stays solidly unconscious. And that’s when my anger at him flips into anger at myself in my predictable trauma response. The shame and self-blame bombard themselves through my body, filling me with loathing.

I’ve fucked it up, I’ve fucked it up, I’ve fucked it up.

Like I always fuck it up, like I always fuck it up, like I always fuck it up.

Because I’m too fucked up, too fucked up, too fucked up.

The tears gain momentum. My chest starts heaving with the effort of controlling the sobs. The saltwater soaks my hair, drips off the edges of my face. Eventually, the sobs are too huge to contain. I tiptoe politely to Simon’s en suite so I can get on with the serious business of totally falling apart. At first, I try clinging to the toilet to cry, but he’s left skid marks all over the rim and just the sight makes me gag. I put the loo seat down and huddle on the bath mat.

He didn’t even clean the skid marks off the loo before I came round. That is how little you mean to men who mean things to you. You’re not worth the effort of scraping shit off a toilet for.

I end up foetal, forehead on the floor, my lungs heaving as I free-fall into despair. At some point, I hear Simon’s flatmate let himself in. I bite my lip and whimper silently as I listen to his getting-ready-for-bed noises. I hear him make something in their kitchen, the sound of the TV coming on low, some late-night comedy show with canned laughter, the scrape of food being eaten off a plate. I imagine how Simon will tell this faceless man what happened. I picture his shock. The words he will use. ‘A bit too damaged, unfortunately’. ‘Better off without that.’ ‘Oh well, plenty more fish in the sea.’ The sound of a light being switched off. The kitchen extractor fan runs itself to a stop. The flat falls quiet again.

I’m aware of how very alone I feel.

All my loneliest moments in life involve a man asleep when he knows it’s likely I’m crying.

I have only two options: a) to be the weirdo who disappeared in the night, or b) to be the weirdo who is still there in the morning. I pick b), as a stupid part of me is still determined to make this work somehow. I cannot handle the humiliation of being so very wrong about him. We may very well wake up sober, and be able to talk about it. I surely didn’t imagine the closeness between us? We don’t even have to go into it, I don’t even particularly want to go into it, but just talking, like we were so good at earlier this evening, could get us on the right path again.

At around 3 a.m. I crawl back into Simon’s bed and attempt to lose consciousness. I play back my favourite memories of what we’ve shared so far. Our first date, our first kiss, his smell, his …





I wake with a start.

My head throbs from too much wine and too much crying. My mouth festers with dryness. Simon is awake, sitting upright in bed. I swear he grimaces when he realises I’ve stirred. Any hope I harboured dies with the grimace. My gut kicks into the familiar feeling of impending break-up – the slurry in my stomach, the wobble of my top lip, the resigned inevitability of it.

‘Morning,’ I say.

‘Morning.’

‘Did you sleep OK?’

‘Yes, you?’

I nod my lie and notice him not leaning down to kiss me.

‘Do you want breakfast?’ he asks. ‘There’s this place around the corner. They do good avo on toast. You like that, don’t you?’

He wants to end this over breakfast so he feels less like a bad guy. I cannot do this. I cannot have someone say kind things to me again over sourdough when they are also telling me they never want to see me again. No amount of avo on toast can take the sting out of rejection.