Emma watched them leave. Or rather she watched Gee leave, her gaze never leaving that soft red silk shirt. There was no point now in wondering what it would feel like to touch his back, it was foolish to speculate over whether it would be as warm and smooth as silk.
Her throat closed up and she struggled to breath.
Back when Mum and Dad had left her in that immigration office in India, she had thought her world had ended. That had been a few hours but their influence had echoed through her life. The emptiness of being abandoned, the fear that she would be alone and without a family. She had always thought nothing could hurt as much as that. She had sworn she would never let anything hurt her like that again
She had been lying to herself again and maybe the passage of time had dulled her original hurt… because it didn’t come close to how it felt watching Gee walk out the club holding someone else’s hand. She couldn’t stop watching, even after his red shirt was swallowed by the crowd at the door.
He’d really gone. And she was left alone.
The beat of the music was banging in her head. She wanted to shout and scream, run after him and make him understand. The music seemed to be inside her, making it hard to think. But she couldn’t catch the rhythm of it. It came and went at odds with her heartbeat. Clashing. Until all it became was noise.
If she tapped her foot now, who would she be in sync with? The music reverberating around the club? Or would it be those grey middle-aged managers? Offbeat but in sync with each other. And she couldn’t even blame them. Okay, they were the ones who had sent her in to do their dirty work but she hadn’t ever questioned it. She’d never dug under the surface. She had bought their lies as easily as the people who read the Daily Planet and lapped up all the fauxmances she’d ever created.
Was it worth it? Was this what she’d sold her soul for?
***
Opening the front door to the house later that night, she knew Gee wasn’t back.
The house had a certain feel when he was there, like it had a soul. How had she not realised that when he wasn’t there it was merely a house, but when he was in, it was a home?
Her home. But for how much longer.
She wouldn’t blame him if he did chuck her out. She was so stupid. To have thrown this all away, how had she never realised… All she wanted was for him to come back, to walk through the door. So, she could do what, explain? No, she needed to tell him she was sorry. Tell them all she was sorry.
But would he come back tonight? She wouldn’t if she was him. Why should he, what did he have to come back to except a lying housemate who went against everything he believed in.
She’d called a car about an hour after they… he’d left. She wasn’t sure why she’d stayed so long, why wandering round the party ignoring the knowing looks that Dan and Tina were throwing her way had seemed like a good idea… but it had. By being in the place she’d last seen him she could almost believe he’d come back for her. Tell he her he forgave her. He’d never left her behind.
She’d never stabbed him in the back before, she thought.
Emma walked into the living room. The tree, their tree, filling the window. Should she turn the lights on? Use them as a beacon to beckon him home. The house still smelt of cinnamon and pine, smelt like right when everything was wrong.
She leant down to flick the switch and her mind flashed back to earlier. Gee had never looked at her like that before.
She didn’t want the lights on, not now.
On a night like this, she would usually wait up for him, curled up on the sofa until he came blundering in soft and slurring telling her about his night. She moved to sit down but all she could see was Gee, imprinted on the room. One of his hoodies was draped over the back of the sofa. She could smell his aftershave, could see all his books lined up in order.
And it was as if they were all telling her ‘badly done, Emma.’ Looking at her with contempt, the same as he had.
She couldn’t stay. She ran up the stairs, her breath coming in gasps, as the heaviness that had been bearing on her since he’d turned his back got heavier until she thought she’d crumple from it.
Throwing herself on her bed she buried her head in her pillow. Who cared that her mascara and make-up would be smeared over the white cotton. Who gave a shit about something like that when… when her world was falling apart. Because, who was she kidding, he was her world. How had she not seen it?
It was as if everyone had been telling her for years, all those people who thought they were dating. And she’d laughed at them when really, she had been the fool. Will was right, she was clueless.
Would he make her move out?
It was amazing that for ten years she’d never thought about living anywhere else. She didn’t want to but… how had she not known that the big plan she’d crafted wasn’t what kept her safe and grounded, wasn’t the thing that made the world make sense?
No, that all came from Gee.
He had been the foundation on which she’d built everything and now… if it went, if he went, where would that leave her? Would her plan keep her together? A plan built on lies that she had told herself and believed as if they were the truth.
She turned over and held the pillow over her face, sobs shuddering through her.
God, why had she said it? She didn’t feel that way. She wasn’t homophobic, was she?
But she’d said it. She couldn’t deny it. All she had wanted was for them to understand…
God, she wasn’t even being honest with herself in her own head. This wasn’t about them understanding, was it? This was because she wanted her life plan to not be disturbed. She had wanted to keep her job. It had been all about her selfish arse.
She’d been scared. Because if they got to live truthfully, she had no excuse about how she lived her life. If she could lie to herself about what she wanted, if she could spend every day hiding her wants and needs so she felt safer, then why couldn’t they?
She wanted everyone to live like she did. How hadn’t she seen it?
It was as if the masks she’d used to hide from other people and herself were being torn off. And it hurt.
She’d been fooling herself for years. She knew why she did all this planning, she’d always known. She was really good at this pretending because she’d been telling herself lies for years.
It wasn’t that plans kept her safe. No, it was that if she organised her life to the nth degree it meant there was no space left for all those big emotions, the ones that were messy and scary. The feelings that couldn’t be corralled and put in boxes with timescales and deliverables. All because if she could control everything she wouldn’t be hurt.
So, yes, well done Emma, mission accomplished. She pushed the pillow further over her face. Maybe she could suffocate herself and save everyone the trouble.
Instead of the one being hurt, she’d hurt other people.
Because they weren’t people to her, were they? They were merely pieces on her battlefield table, or on a chess board. They were tactics and deliverables. How had she forgotten they had feelings too?
When had the rules and regulations she had set up to protect herself become more than armour and turned, instead, into a weapon to hurt others?
Hell, she’d been dismissing Gee and his comments for years, hadn’t she? All his talk about wanting to be truthful, she’d put down to naivety, and his diatribes against the music business as bitterness. She’d brushed it off because she thought she’d never be like his old team, and surely he’d been exaggerating.
She tossed the pillow to the floor. She stared at the ceiling, there was just enough light from outside to see the stain on it. The one that leaked through no matter how many times they painted it.
How could Gee be so honest? How could he show people who he was then lose his job and his passion and not feel like he’d thrown it away?
Surely saying he was straight was just a little white lie, the kind you tell to grease the wheels of life?
But when did those white lies become handcuffs you couldn’t escape from?
She thought back, to all those lies her mum and dad had told her.
‘No, there was nothing wrong, Emma, Daddy and I are just talking.’
‘Of course, we didn’t forget you darling, we got the time wrong.’ When they were two hours late and had to be phoned by the school to remind them.
And then the lies she told them to say she was fine, that she understood. The smiles she faked to hide her heartache. When had she forgotten that they were a mask? A way to cope?
When had she started putting on the mask with Gee too?
When had she let the mask become her life?
She shut her eyes but she could still see Will and Ed’s faces, their eyes wide and hurt, their bodies recoiling from her words.
Crap.
She was like Gee and Johnnie’s team. She thought about how damaged Johnnie had been, in some ways still was. The way he kept Georgie the pug so close. The only being, other than Gee, that he trusted enough to have his best interests at heart.
She opened her eyes again. The stain seemed to be growing darker or maybe that was her guilt.
***
Emma woke slowly, feeling as though she was suffocating. Why was her pillow over her face? She tried to reach a hand up to remove it only to find herself so wrapped in her duvet she couldn’t move. For a moment, she lay there like a human burrito.
Her eyes were gritty and sore, her head ached. She hadn’t drunk that much last night. Her memory was fuzzy, flashes of black and white and then red spilled through it.
Reality came crashing in. Tearing through her. Like a knife across a canvas.
A hangover would’ve been preferable.
Damn. Fuck. Shit.
She punctuated each word with a drum of her trapped heels on the mattress. There was a swooping in her stomach, as if she were in freefall and not sure when she was going to hit the ground. It left her sick and breathless.
She wiggled until she could free her arms. If only she could shuffle off her mistakes the same way.
It was as if she were ten years old again, or any age up to fifteen, before she found out how to make a scaffold for her life. She was hanging on by her fingertips, with no one to ask for help, because she was the only one who could save herself.
All those plans had been meant to be her barrier against this emptiness and panic. The masks she wore were to ensure she never felt like that again.
But she still had those plans and the masks. They were all still there.
And yet she felt like this. Such a flimsy barrier they’d ended up being, turning into shields that blinded her from the truth.
She had always thought she was on her own, that she had to plan and lie so that she could look after herself because no one else was looking out for her. But there had been someone in her corner for years and she’d been too blind to see it for what it was.
Gee.
She could probably pinpoint the exact moment he’d become the foundation everything was built on.
‘What’s wrong?’ he’d said to her as she’d been scrunched in the corner of the coffee shop across the road from the Business School. Her arms had been wrapped round her knees. She would have denied she was rocking if he’d mentioned it.
He hadn’t.
‘Nothing,’ she’d said hiding her face as she wiped her eyes. Never let them see you care, never let them see you less than perfect, she thought. Because those messy feeling were what got her into trouble.
‘This isn’t nothing.’ He’d sat next to her. Why did it have to be him who had to find her, she’d thought angrily. When she’d just about got over her teen crush and could talk to him like a normal human being. Or at least this version of her, who hid the things that no one wanted to know, could.
‘Emma.’ She’d never heard that tone of voice from him before. Exasperated but also smiling. As if he were calling her on her bullshit.
‘Really, I’m fine,’ she’d said tearing at a napkin.
‘Look, if you say you’re okay then fine but in the few months I’ve known you I’ve never seen you less fine. Do you need me to take you home?’
Home? Well, that was a joke and before she could stop herself the tears started up again.
He needed to go away, he shouldn’t see her like this.
She opened her mouth and hiccupped.
Gee stared at her and laughed.
Emma flushed. She was such a mess. All because her parents had failed to pay the deposit for her flat. This was why she didn’t like to rely on them, but they had promised. And that was the last time she’d make that mistake.
Now she was homeless, for the summer and for next year. Her almost housemates having to tell her in those ‘oh so sorry’ gentle pitying voices she thought she’d put behind her at school. The same sideways tilt of the head that happened when they found out no one had bothered to see you in the school play. Or when you were left waiting to be picked up because they forgot you again. Each blaming the other for ‘not having told them’ that she needed looking after.
Home. No wonder she had cried. Had she ever really had one?
‘Hey,’ and she was suddenly wrapped in a warm hug. Gee smelt of coffee and a little of the cigarettes she occasionally saw him suck on out the back of the Business School building. His arms were strong. The leftover remains of her fourteen-year old self had a giddy moment that Gee Knightley was actually hugging her. Her nineteen-year old self wanted to lean on him. But… people let you down.
Maybe if she leant for just awhile until she got her plan in action?
‘What is it?’ Gee said into her hair.
She really should’ve washed it.
And it all came out. Well not all of it, just the house situation. The rest, well, Gee witnessed it over the years.
She’d heard that tone of voice from him, exasperated but also smiling, all the time. She’d liked to think it was one he kept especially for her.
That was the day that home became Gee.
And yesterday was probably the day it stopped.
***
After half an hour of wallowing in gut wrenching misery, she rolled out of bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. The day after the Christmas party everyone was allowed to spend the morning ‘working from home’. The word ‘home’ hurt. She pulled on an old battered hoodie of Gee’s that had migrated to her room and a pair of his socks.
Would he notice if she snuck them into her suitcase when he asked her to leave? She crept out of her room and downstairs.
He still wasn’t home. She could tell from the stillness of the house. That energy level was still low, she was waiting for the spark to come back and set it all alight. Because that is what he did for her. Made everything brighter and better, the colour in a grey world.
Was there any way back from this?
She pulled out her tablet and curled up on the sofa, a cup of coffee steaming next to her. She knew she should check the band’s social media, but the last thing she wanted were any pap photos or fan accounts of seeing them with Gee. For once she would leave them be, someone else in the team was on duty. If there was anything she needed to sort out they would message her.
Instead she pulled up her Google document, the plan that was everything, that had become everything, had consumed her. For the first time, she could see it for what it was, a spreadsheet of meaningless activities.
She snorted at her stupidity. Why did she think she was going to just magic some relationship out of thin air at exactly the right moment? Some plastic guy she didn’t feel anything for so that she could keep her life rolling along with no ups and downs.
She couldn’t even manage to make a fake relationship truly work for other people. And if she found this mythical perfect man that she didn’t love? Would he put up with her crap like Gee did? Or had done, anyway.
It didn’t matter, because that man wouldn’t be Gee.
And she had wanted that life so badly. But why? Just so she could turn into a grey person like those grey men from last night who couldn’t keep a beat, who were out of sync with a rhythm that was like the sound of a heart. Did that mean they didn’t have one anymore?
She jumped, as there was a scrape on the front door. Someone, Gee, using his key.
Emma sat up and with a shaking hand reached for her coffee, it sloshed over the sides and onto the table.
‘Fuck,’ she whispered.
There was nothing to wipe it up with. She couldn’t let Gee know how rattled she was. Her hoodie was black. She quickly pulled her sleeves down over her hands and used her forearm to wipe up the spill.
There, all gone. If only it was that easy to wipe away last night.
Did she call out to him? What did she do? When had it got to the point that she didn’t know how to act around Gee?
She heard his footsteps coming closer to the living room door, would he come in or not? She watched as he came to the doorway. He looked tired, wearing a jumper that she didn’t recognise under his coat.
She felt like she’d been punched.
He hadn’t come home, she knew that, which meant that he’d stayed somewhere else. With someone else. That didn’t mean that he’d been doing anything with them but… it didn’t mean he hadn’t been.
Why couldn’t she breathe? Why was this a revelation? There had been plenty of times when Gee had wandered home after getting lucky. But never after having looked at her with such disgust and disappointment. And she knew he hadn’t been out on any dates or pulling, not since Halloween. Not since that night.
Before she had always been confident, always known she came first with him but now… Why hadn’t she appreciated that security?
Had she always known that deep down she had considered him hers? How horrible she had been to want him to carry on as though nothing had happened after the kiss.
She was a shitty friend.
‘Hey,’ he said, his face closed off. She couldn’t read him.
‘Hey,’ she croaked, half getting up. Should she go to him?
‘I need a shower,’ Gee said backing out of the room and heading upstairs.