Telling Tales. Charlotte Stein
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I remember how often he used to search for words, as though the real, normal, sane ones eluded him. As though his brain constantly wanted to put weird things in there instead, like You look really pumpkin. Just very bicycle.
Odd, that it only makes me want to leap in there with all the casual conversation I don’t usually have, and that he resolutely cannot provide.
‘So do you – I think you’ve gotten even better looking, somehow.’
Which is absolutely true. His mouth looks even plumper, and softer – Jesus, that lower lip like something out of Hot Blowjobs Monthly. And he’s cut his copper-hinted dark hair so that it kind of swirls all over his head and swoops over his forehead and looks much lazier than he is and oh God, why is he staring at me like that? Am I staring too long at him?
It had seemed easier to do, at first, but now it’s getting harder.
‘I think the others might be here,’ he says and then I definitely know I stared too long. He’s going to think I’m hot for him or some other nonsense thing, which is completely not the case. Even if my face feels like it’s burning and there’s this funny, tingly ache between my legs as though really? I’m horny again?
Usually it’s once a month and even then I’m pushing it. So what’s going on here, exactly? Is the thought of Wade really such an aphrodisiac?
It must be, because little weird sparks prickle the length of my spine when Cameron puts a hand on my shoulder. Like he wants to steady me as we make our way back down the hallway, like maybe he knows that my heart is hammering and my legs don’t want to keep walking – even though that’s impossible.
Cameron never knew anything about me, least of all this.
He doesn’t know that I can hardly bear to look Wade in the face, not even when we come to the entranceway and Kitty’s giggling her ass off, camera in hand as usual, snapping away like there’s no tomorrow. And then there’s Wade, my Wade, just standing there with his back half turned as though this is nothing at all, really.
‘Allie!’ Kitty screams, and I see how easy this is for her too. I see her in slow motion, tiny arms out, charging toward me – oh, she was always the one who never let me forget she loved me, with postcards from far-flung places and ridiculous emails about swimsuits made of ham – but it’s Wade I can’t stop watching, Wade who turns in that said same slow motion while my heart tries to eat itself.
He looks older. And then my brain kick-starts and yells at me that of course he looks older, people with masses of handsome stubble generally look older. At which point I have to process that he has masses of handsome stubble and, dear God, I can’t let it slide. I just can’t! It’s all over-styled and too practised and he’s gonna get it, now. He has to.
‘Did something grow on your face?’ I ask, and oh I’m so grateful for the great chunk of incredulity in my words. I’m so grateful that it all floods back into me – the way we used to talk, like nothing could ever be serious. Nothing could ever hurt.
And he grins that shit-eating grin of his through the great mess of hair all over his chin, as though to tell me I’m right.
He’s still him and I’m still me. I haven’t lost him forever, my best friend in all the world.
‘There’s something on my face?’ he says, with a real and perfect slice of panic in his electric eyes, and then he just throws his arms around me. Just like that. Nothing to it. Cameron’s hand slides right off my shoulder and I’m hugging Wade as though no time has passed at all.
Makes me wonder what I was worried about, really.
It takes three boring conversations about jobs we all do now – Kitty models, of course, Wade mysteriously works in real estate and Cameron now does something to do with software I’ve never heard of – and around two bottles of the terrible wine Kitty found in the back of the fridge – Cameron drinks more than I remember, Wade drinks less – before we get around to stories.
Of course, we all know it’s coming. I can feel every tale I ever told right on the tip of my tongue, and when Wade congratulates me on staying true to my dreams I can’t stop myself. I have to start us down this path – the one none of us have actually taken.
‘It’s not real writing, what I do. I just…’ I start, but Wade cuts in. Of course he does. I can see he’s been raring to go ever since that stubble crack in the entranceway. He looks so bristling and spark-eyed, with all his hair slicked back and his new, gorgeous man’s face.
‘So it’s fake, then. You write on air with a magical unicorn hoof.’
‘I don’t –’
‘They print your articles in Non-Existent Monthly.’
Gah, him and his stupid fake magazines. I make them up myself, but it’s only because of him.
‘No, it’s not fake. It’s just…not what I always wanted to write.’
He raises his glass to me.
‘Hey, it’s still more than any of us managed, kid.’
I kind of hate him, for saying that. But then Kitty stretches out on the couch beside me, and curls an arm around my scrunched-up legs, and puts her head in my lap. She’s already half-cut, I know she is, but I also know why she then says: ‘We could all still manage, if we wanted to. People don’t ever run out of stories.’
I expect Wade to interject then – with something about rejection, probably, or losing the will to or any of the things I’ve felt myself a thousand times – but it’s Cameron who gets there first. I’d almost forgotten he was there even though he’s just to my right, in Professor Warren’s old wingback. Sitting at the head of the room like a tombstone, still and quiet and far more comfortable than he’d looked two hours ago.
I guess maybe he’s a little cut too.
‘Apart from me. I think I ran out before I ever even began.’
And then everyone laughs, of course they do. Funny, that I don’t really feel like it.
‘I always loved your spaceship story,’ I tell him, because that’s the truth. I did. It’s not a pity party I’m throwing here.
But he looks at me as though maybe I am.
‘Ohhhh no you didn’t. I stopped writing years ago anyway,’ he says, and then he runs on before I can push at him again. ‘But I did always want to hear the end of “Hamin-Ra”. Did you ever finish that one, Allie?’
I think I go a little cold then. Not because I couldn’t remember ever reading it out to them – after a moment, I vaguely recall reading the tame, vanilla beginnings of it – but because it’s so fresh in my mind. I think about the answering machine and the lurid list of bizarre scenarios, prancing through my head. I think about the window in the boat room, just waiting to open and let me through to another world of joy and pleasure and beauty.
Not like this world of leather and drinking and designer stubble.
‘Yeah,’ Kitty mumbles from my lap. ‘I want to know if the Queen ever found her heart.’
And now I feel slightly less disconcerted. It’s better when it’s not just Cameron remembering this one weird story I wrote, as though it had some special meaning or even worse…as though he somehow heard me through a fucking answering machine.
But it’s still odd. I can’t even recall writing that part of it, about the heart or whatever it is Kitty’s blathering over. The whole and original thing is in one of my bags, but I’d stuffed it in there without looking, while the majority of me pretended I wasn’t doing it at all. After all, it isn’t as though this month is really going to be about ancient writing we did three hundred years ago. We aren’t really going to share stories just like before, and God knows I’m not going to share ‘Hamin-Ra’ even if we decide to do just that.
I