"Hm?" James had spoken so suddenly, breaking the silence of what had been a very quiet afternoon on the sofa. James was watching telly, I was reading a book with my feet in his lap.
"Hamster and Jezza. I think they know something is up."
"With what, with you?"
"Yeah, that I'm seeing someone."
"What? Are you seeing someone?" I smirked and poked him gently in the stomach with my foot. He obviously wasn't up for a joke, and remained serious.
"I don't know, they... That whole thing with the New Year's party, all the texts I'm getting... They said I always seem to be in a rush home, and they're wondering why."
"I haven't sent you that many texts, have I?"
"Not really, but I rarely got any before. And you always manage to send them when they're around."
"Oh, sorry..." I mumbled, feeling somehow ashamed. "I can stop sending you texts, if you want. And you can put your phone on silent..?"
"It's not the texts, Emily," he said, sounding annoyed and shifted restlessly in his seat.
"What, then?" I sat up and moved my feet out of his lap.
"What, then?" I sat up and moved my feet out of his lap.
"I don't know, I..." He sighed some more, as if he was hesitating to say what was on his mind. It gave me a bad feeling.
"Would it be so bad if they found out, though? If we told them?" I wondered. "I mean, we've been.. this has been going on for what, six weeks now? I don't mean we have to go all public, but we could tell our friends...? Keeping this to ourselves was nice, in the beginning, getting to know each other and everything, but..." My voice trailed off as I didn't get much of a response from James, he just stared stiffly into nothingness. After a long, tense silence he cleared his throat and sighed heavily.
"Emily, I... I'm old," he said simply, and looked at me for a fraction of a second, then looked away again.
"...what?" Was all I managed to say, completely perplexed. I had no idea what was going on, but I had never seen James like this. Something was happening, something I couldn't control, understand or predict. All I sensed was that this was something that scared me senseless.
"I mean, I'm 49, you're 27... The age-gap between us is... huge. I could've been your dad, for crying out loud. We... come from different generations, we're... in different places in life, you've basically just started out, and I've.. been at it a while." He spoke slowly, searching for words as he went, wanting to get it right. My mind was reeling, this was escalating far too quickly for me to keep up with and my first response was ridiculous and feeble.
"I know we've been teasing each other a bit about age now and then, but... I really never meant anything by it..."
"Nevertheless it's true, it won't change. Our age-difference will always be there." He said it with such a finality in his voice, like that was the end of the matter and nothing I could ever say would change it. Annoyance flared up in me.
"And you obviously have a problem with this?"
"Yeah. I guess I do have a problem with it." That finality in his voice again. His answer had made me go cold inside, it wasn't just a sense of foreboding anymore, an anxious doubt in the pit of my stomach, this was a train wreck happening right in front of me, and I had no way of stopping it.
"So what do you want to do?" I heard myself asking, not really wanting an answer because I knew any answer I would get would be one I didn't want.
"I think... I should be sensible, mature person here and just... stop this. Walk away before it gets too serious." I didn't know what hurt me more, that he'd said he wanted to stop it, or that he didn't think of us as being serious.
"Stop this?" Was all I managed, still trying to get my head around these two words.
"Yeah, I.. Do you really think this could've ever worked out? With this much of an age difference? I don't. It's just, better this way, that we just... walk away, and stop seeing each other."
"Like... end it? Break it off?" I asked incredulously. I needed this in letters ten feet high if I was going to believe what he was saying.
"Yes, I think that... would be the best. For both of us."
My breath was shallow and ragged from all the emotions I was feeling, my hands were ice cold, but inside an explosion was going on in slow-motion, gradually building in intensity. Maybe it was my heart going to pieces. Gratefully I sensed that anger was coming to my defence in an effort to shield me from the pain I was feeling.
"So this... This age-difference, it never occurred to you before? You never thought about that until now?" James didn't reply, and still wasn't looking at me. His apathy, his cowardice, his lack of an answer, his refusal to look at me, everything just sparked more anger in me. "So what was this all about then? What was all this to you?" I gestured wildly to the space between us. "Just a fling with a pretty young thing? Was I just a rebound from your previous girlfriend? Did you need to feel more manly, like you still "had" it?" He threw a quick glance at me, looking like a shameful dog that was being told off for being bad. The guilt in that look made me completely lose it. "Let me tell you, mate, if all you wanted was some young, dumb bint to play around with you could've done so much better than me! You probably have bimbo's making passes at you all the time, because you're rich and on the telly, bitches love that kind of thing, don't they!? Couldn't you have chosen one of them to fuck around with? Some blonde, spray-tanned whore who didn't actually care about you?" I heaved for breath, trying desperately to hang on to my anger and not give in to the lump I felt growing in my throat. "You... you know me, I've told you about everything, what I've gone through, what I've lost in my life! Not because I wanted any pity from you, I don't want any pity from anyone, ever! But I was trying to warn you. Do you have any idea how scared I am of caring about another human ever again? How terrifying it is for me every time I feel a connection to someone? How fucking frightening it is to let someone in? Yes, you do, you fucking should, because I've told you about all of that." Without even realising it I had gotten up from the sofa and started pacing while shouting at him. "When I met you, I... You were the one who gave me your phone number. You offered to come build my furniture. You came and nearly broke through my door, insisting to take care of me when I was sick. Knowing all the things you know about me, everything I've gone through, you came all the way to fucking Norway to see me, to... What? Tell me you missed me? And for what? To..." This was where I lost it, my voice cracked horribly and my eyes exploded in tears. "... To fuck around with me for a while and then throw me away when it threatened to get serious? Fuck's sake, James-" Suddenly all my anger gave way to all the other horrible emotions in me; hurt, disappointment, shame, fear. It took all my courage with it and left me with nothing but an instinct to run. Get away. Blinded by tears I snatched my handbag off a nearby chair and headed for the door. While I was frantically putting on my shoes I was hoping more than expecting to hear his voice, or his steps as he came running after me, but there was nothing but the sound of my own, gross sobs. I tore my jacket off the hanger and stumbled out into the dusk of the early evening. Quickly I scrambled into my jacket and pulled the hood up, desperately trying to compose myself enough to stop crying, I couldn't cry hysterically on the tube home. Somehow I managed to take a few deep breaths and will myself to stop the flow of tears. Keeping it in all the way home took a tremendous amount of effort, it was like holding my breath for hours.
I closed the door behind me in my own apartment fully expecting to break down entirely in a crying fit that would last for hours. Curiously enough I didn't. I just felt numb, empty, as if I was floating in a vacuum. Maybe I was just in denial, refusing to believe what had just happened. Paradoxically I ended up sinking down on my own sofa and turning on the telly. Though not really seeing, just staring into space, zombie-like. I expected as much as I dreaded a phone call, or a text, but the phone remained stubbornly silent. I felt completely beside myself, as if I was having an out-of-body-experience. The part who was sitting on the outside of me, calmly assessing the situation, realised that I would be in no shape to work the next day and I called in sick. When I hung up I didn't even remember what I had said on the phone. My reaction came when I hobbled into my bathroom, thinking numbly that I should probably get to bed. Not sleep, I didn't believe I would be able to, but at least just lie down. Hanging over the edge of my hamper was my favourite of James' t-shirts, a grey one with "Dad's Army" and "Don't Panic!" on it. I'd borrowed it off him once while at his house and just worn it home, thinking I'd wash it and return it. Seeing it brought me forcefully back to the night I had borrowed it, and somehow to every night I had spent with him, every time I'd kissed him or laughed with him, and I collapsed in a heap on the bathroom floor, stupidly clutching at his t-shirt. How long I was on that floor I will never know, I only got up when the pain of lying on a tile floor got bad enough to make a dent in my sorrow and tell me that I should get up. I dragged myself to my bed and landed on it heavily, still clutching that damn shirt.
I woke up feeling miserable and it took a while for my mind to catch up with my body. Why was I here, in my own bed? Alone? And why was I feeling so awful? Then it hit me, and the pain shot through me as sharp and real as it had the day before. It really felt like grief, as awful and desperately painful as when someone died. Some moments I even wondered if this was worse, because James hadn't died, he was still alive. He'd just chosen not to be with me anymore. The ones who had died at least didn't have much choice in the matter.
Over the next few days I went through all the stages - denial, anger, disappointment, depression, bottomless grief. Meticulously I went through all the aspects of a million thoughts, I turned every instinct and feeling in and out, analysed and wondered to the point when I believed I was going mad. By the end of it I felt so drained and exhausted I didn't think I had anymore to give. Then the cycle started all over again, and all I could do is just hang on to the rollercoaster as it sped up and out of my control. I refused to give myself more than two sick-days. Out of experience it was okay, even necessary, to give grief space for a little while, delve into it and try to work through it. But eventually, if you gave it too much room, it would consume you, I had let it consume me for many years in the past. I needed a distraction, something that would occupy my mind and let me shift focus when a new wave of loneliness and pain hit me. So I went back to work, and decided to delve into that as deeply as I had into my sorrow, hoping it would somehow outweigh it, drown it out and relieve me of it. With ferocious intensity I threw myself into my work, taking on double shifts and extra shifts as much as I could, grateful to be so exhausted at night that I passed out without too much thought. James' shirt was lying under my bed, buried in a heap of laundry I never had time to do anymore. The phone remained silent for days, and then weeks, without a sound from James. And I kept to myself, not talking to anyone about James by choice. My friend Cathy, who was really my only option to talk to in London was away on her annual trip with her husband, they went away for about a month every year to some exotic place, this year it was Galapagos and I had no idea how to reach her. In moments of desperation I thought about calling Hammond, even if only to ask to talk to Mindy, as I liked her and she seemed to have understood far more about me and James than anyone else had. I thought about calling my sister, the only one at home I could've imagined talking to, but she was so busy with family life. And frankly, it felt like such a failure, having lost him. Like I had somehow done something wrong and ruined a potentially good thing. I couldn't bear the thought of having to tell her that, I felt shameful over it. Or maybe I was just ashamed at how naive I'd been, that despite all my fears and worries had let my heart run away with me that quickly, and that badly. That I'd let myself become so emotionally attached to and dependent on a man who thought so little of our relationship. Or whatever it had been. During some of my darkest and most desperate nights I revisited some old habits in thinking about life, and death. Mostly death. Life felt hollow and pointless. And it always amazed me how ruthlessly life just just.. ploughed on, like nothing had happened, like my heart had been broken. It brought back memories of a period in my life, many years ago, when I had been completely and dangerously suicidal, busy plotting the details of how I was going to end it all. I found a strange comfort in knowing that I was far, far from getting to that point. I kept thinking of my favourite lyric lines - "it's too late to die young now". I had made it through losing my mum, and losing my soul brother. I wasn't going to let a bloody boyfriend be the reason I committed suicide. He was the coward, the one who took the easy way out. I wasn't.
Somehow, without understanding or knowing how I had gotten there, I felt like I had some control. What had felt like all-encompassing emotional chaos was now reduced to bitterness and self-blame. Which in turn fuelled some sort of cold determination. It still hurt, but somehow I could control it now, own it and shove it to the back of my mind.
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