The Things We Do to Our Friends(5)
Ashley was from some village in Staffordshire from which she’d appeared two weeks ago alongside very nervous-looking parents. For some reason, the dog had accompanied them for Ashley’s send-off, and it had wandered around our cramped flat searching for a range cooker to curl up against, looking uncomfortable, before finally settling for a clandestine piss in the corner.
“Where have you been?” she asked.
“Out. I got a job, actually.”
“A job!” she exclaimed, her voice going high, delighted and fearful for me all at once.
“Yes, I need to work.”
“Oh, good for you! There’s so much on, I can’t even imagine getting a job now, but that’s brilliant. Well done, you.”
“I need one. I can’t afford to be here if I’m not working.” I pulled out a bottle of wine from the fridge; I didn’t bother to offer Ashley a glass.
She blushed. “Totally, well, that’s exciting. Where’s your job?”
“A bar. It’s a trial shift, so we’ll have to see how it goes.”
“Soooooo exciting,” Ashley repeated, and she leaned in, keen to hear more. “Do you know when you’ll be working? Will they let you choose your shifts around your lectures? What are the other people like?”
I explained that I didn’t know anyone, and it was just a trial, and there was nothing more to say on the matter. Scooping up my things, I went to my room at the far end of the flat, leaving Ashley to her frenzied highlighting.
I dived under the covers to get warm. My room didn’t have any other seating options.
The wine was to celebrate. I unscrewed the bottle and took a long glug before pouring half of it into the mug by the side of my bed. I felt the tension leave my shoulders and my neck.
When I said that I’d struggled to find friends, it may have been a little pickiness on my part. After all, it was essential that I found people who would help me become who I wanted to be. It wasn’t Ashley’s fault. Ashley was nice and pleasant, and she’d done everything right to get here. Good grades. Hockey club. Clarinet lessons, sleepovers, and her parents driving her to a French tutor in the neighboring village. The structure of it all, the perfect predictability—she depressed me.
There she was, three hundred miles away from home. She could be wild, she could be crazy and change herself, but she seemed unsure of quite what to do.
Her upbringing was so different from mine, which wasn’t the problem—everyone’s upbringing was going to be different from mine—but when I’d met Ashley and her earnest counterpart, our other flatmate, Georgia (whom we rarely saw, as her entire life seemed focused around competing with, socializing among, and talking about the university swim team), I’d known they weren’t for me, even though they were so eager for us all to be friends because it would be nice and tidy.
I knew why I was so keen to avoid them. With Ashley, it was a desperation that seeped like blood from an open wound. The thought of other people seeing that same neediness in me made me shudder. I understood it well. I’d been on the other side, and I’d been somewhat clingy myself, so I wasn’t entirely unsympathetic. But the sympathy wasn’t enough. However much I tried to be nice and easy and rational, Ashley made my skin crawl, irritation rising almost instantly as soon as I started speaking to her. I did everything I could to avoid being drawn into her schedule of cozy nights in, watching comedy box sets from a laptop positioned on a chair.
Living there was about becoming someone else—and I needed the right people around me for that.
I wasn’t sure who I would become. A sketch of an idea existed in my head, but it swayed from one thing to another. I knew that it could be easily adjusted based on who I met. With my wine in hand, my mind was free to wander, and when I dared think about it more, it felt comforting and yet hurt to even imagine, like poking at a raw cut in the side of your mouth with your tongue.
4
There was so much rain, but they arrived perfectly dry for some reason that was never made clear.
A thunderstorm, and in the morning, before it started, outside smelled like damp clothes. The air was too thick when I walked to work, and then the weather broke quite suddenly. Rain fell in soft, fat tears. Inside the bar it sounded relentless, hammering against the roof like a succession of drumbeats, and I could see from out of the window that the cobbles were pitted with inky pools of water. Black cabs sped by and caused mini tidal waves to gush onto the sidewalks outside the entrance.
I recognized them from our very first lecture together. A girl. She was pale and tall, with blond hair pulled off her face and tied up high on her head, so it bounced against her back in a treacly pile of neat curls. I wanted to reach out and touch them.
Alongside her, there was a smaller girl with round cheeks, dark plaits down her back, and big brown eyes. When she smiled, her hand jumped up to cover her teeth, even though they seemed very normal to me. It gave her a self-consciousness in those moments, like a child, but her default expression was a twitchy scowl.
Then two boys, on the skinny and awkward cusp of manhood—still youngish-looking, each with chins that melted into thick necks (Finn called boys like these Chinless Wonders and laughed under his breath at his own wit). They were both dressed in mint-green chinos and crisp shirts, and they took their seats at a booth by the door. I went to get my orders pad, and Finn raised an eyebrow.