Image: © Charles Eastwood
- Fold the paper in half vertically, unfold it, fold the paper in half horizontally, unfold again.
You were sixteen and drunk off the cheapest corner-shop vodka. You let ugly boys kiss you if they were nice enough, or if they looked your way at back garden parties. He noticed this, took your hand, and said you were too good for that. Apparently, you were nicer than any of the girls he had met; you watched films and could ‘understand’ them, you wore a ‘modest’ amount of make-up, and you didn’t really complain about anything. You didn’t go on about your problems. This meant, logically, that you would sit and comfort him while he would go on about his problems to you.
You made more friends; his friends, who would always ask about your bra size and whether you had any single friends you could set them up with. You figured the anger started building then, as there’s only so many times you can look a misogynist in the face before spitting on their shoes.
You wrote him letters, and you reassured yourself: this is how affection ages. Each glide of your pen cemented every hypnotic line: I love you, I love you, I love you.
- Fold the bottom edge up to meet the centre crease, turn the paper over.
You were drinking in the local pub with a group of his friends. It was one of those quirky alternative pubs that had mismatched chairs, old arcade machines, and tiny, narrow staircases. Adam was scrolling through his text exchanges with one of your friends and reading them out in a prideful voice to the table.
She’s definitely into me, right?
I think she’s just being polite.
No, no. She fancies me. I can tell with these things.
Henry nudged your leg with his own and told you not to burst his bubble.
Let him have this.
So you nod and agree with the boy.
Yes, maybe there’s something there.
They all decide on another round of pints, and although you couldn’t afford it, you head to the bar and order the same citrus IPA as the rest of them. You preferred regular lager, or a vodka cranberry, but Henry always said that locally sourced ale was more sophisticated, and why wouldn’t you want to support a small brewing business?
You sip at the cold amber beer and swipe at the condensation on the side of the glass. Adam suggests playing the candle game, where you hold your hand over a candle until the flame goes out. You hated his games. You either burned yourself on a candle, burned your nose with a strip of lit rolling paper, or slapped each other’s hands until they were red and stinging. You didn’t understand why everything had to revolve around pain.
They passed around the pub candle and placed their palms over the hot glass rim until the flame flickered out. Eventually, it was your turn, and you held your palm in place as you felt the fire lick at your skin. It hurt, but you concealed your wince. Finally, the candle went dim. You removed your hand as the smoke floated into the air. The boys cheered as you stroked at the bubbling blister that was forming on your palm. You drank and nodded along to the conversation; you grew louder as the ale went to your head, and found yourself saying things you never meant and wondered if you were becoming a brand-new person.
- Fold the bottom edges diagonally upward to the crease, turn the paper over.
One morning, you went back home to visit your parents and pick up some clean clothes. You had stayed at Henry’s the past three days and had run out of clean socks and underwear. You walked through the front door as your dog barked and pawed at your feet, and you knelt to stroke her. Your mother rushed towards you and pulled you into the living room, closing the door behind her. She had tears streaming down her face and was gasping for breath. You asked her what was wrong.
Your uncle David. He’s dead. Baby, he’s dead.
You hugged her as she cried into your shoulder. She bit back sobs as her body shook, and you rubbed her back. You remembered then how she hated hugs, but she didn’t pull away. She took a straggling breath as she tried to speak.
Suicide.
You stayed until she stopped crying, picked up your clean clothes and got in your car. You let yourself cry as you turned the key in the ignition. Oasis played through the radio, and you remembered how your uncle would sing, and you would play guitar as the campfire flickered in the summer. You switched the radio off and listened to the sound of the wipers clearing the rain as you drove to Henry’s flat.
When you arrived, still sniffling, he comforted you for a while. You lay in bed as he told you how crazy it all was. Although the moment was morbid, you liked how sweet he was being. That moment was about your sadness, and he didn’t tell you to stop feeling it. You wished he were always like this, affectionate and caring. You stayed under the covers as he ran his fingers up your arm, stroked your hair, and set your glasses on the nightstand.
- Fold the top edges diagonally downward to meet the vertical crease, fold the top flap down.
A few weeks had passed, and you had almost started to forget what grieving felt like. You and Henry were walking back from the bar as you discussed how nice it was to catch up with old friends. You spoke about university deadlines, and he didn’t hold your hand, so you shoved them in your coat pockets.
Oh, I had some script ideas on the bus earlier.
You were eagerly curious, as you were supposed to be when he had these revolutionary, creative breakthroughs.
Yeah, I thought it would be so interesting if I wrote about what happened to your uncle.
You paused in the middle of the pavement to look at him. He asked you if anything was wrong, you shook your head and said it was nothing. He continued.
I was just thinking, there could be some really cool character development in something like that. Especially with your mum, like, how could you even raise your kids after that?
You decided not to say anything in that moment. You wondered what he meant by that, what made him think that. That night when you cried into his arms, was he plotting a three-act structure? Did he take notes on the details of your grief for reference?
- Fold the white triangles inward.
You spoke about it later with your friends over the phone.
You didn’t say anything?
No. I guess I didn’t know what to say.
But that’s so fucked up, how could he say that to you?
You think so? I’m not overreacting or anything?
There was a collective sigh on the other end of the phone.
Do you love him?
I think so. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to feel like anymore.
Do you like him?
That question made you pause. Did you? You had been with Henry for so long, you had forgotten to consider the reality that you could leave. He had cemented himself into your life so solidly that you didn’t know what it would look like without him. He seeped into everything like mould on the ceiling.
Maybe I’ll think about it.
The phone beeped as the call ended, and for a while, you sat and stared at the crack in your ceiling as the whirring of your fan filled the silence.
- Fold all four top corners downward to meet the crease, fold the top two corners down to meet the edge.
You were drinking together, as you did all the time. Henry kept wandering between the bedroom and bathroom, swiping at the bottom of his nose to collect the remaining white powder. He talked about his script, about how well the writing was coming along, as you sat and clutched the fluffy lime-green frog that you bought from a recent caravan park holiday. He passed you a Belgian beer from his fridge before he lay next to you and gripped your waist with calloused hands.
Something unsettled you; perhaps there was a shift upstairs in the stars, perhaps you realised you deserved better. You sipped at the bottled beer and picked at the label. His chest rose and fell and hiccuped with the occasional giggle as the lives of fictional characters played out on the TV. He had a collapsed nostril, and the sound of struggling breath passing through him began to unsettle you. You decided it was finally time to speak. It sickened you now: all the belittling, the shouting, the sobbing. All of it slowly simmering over two years until you could feel it bubbling over the edges.
I think this is over.
- Turn the paper over.
He cried and clung to you like tar. Three hours had passed since you had suggested the break-up.
You can’t leave me, he said. I would die.
He wiped his nose on your bedsheets and gripped your knees as he knelt and prayed. His sadness sickened you as swarms of guilt and anger bubbled in your belly. You watched him sulk and tantrum as he moved between waves of sobbing for forgiveness and screaming his betrayal.
If you love me, you’d stay. Prove it. Prove yourself to me.
It made sense, you thought, that even whilst breaking up with him, he managed to spin it around onto you. Henry was always good at that. Somehow, he was asking you to beg for his forgiveness, to beg for his mercy, to beg for his devotion.
I won’t let you do this.
You couldn’t see a way out. You closed your eyes and drew your hands into fists. You inhaled. You exhaled. You pictured him bleeding out on the bed. The blood would gush onto the sheets and seep into the mattress. You pictured hitting him across the head with your grandmother’s lampshade. It’s two feet tall and bulbous ceramic. You pictured holding your plush pillows against his face and listening to his uneven breathing finally stop. Maybe you could make it look like an accident.
You saw him crying in the sheets and realised he was just a little boy. You decided, instead of murder, that you would simply leave the flat. You got up and walked to the door, ignoring his pleas and shouts for you to come back. For once, you didn’t listen. For once, you did something that was solely for you. For once, you didn’t care. You stepped through the front door as he scrambled across the bed, fingers gripping the sheets as his tears and snot blotted the grey fabric. You closed the door behind you, took a breath, and finally walked away. You pictured him curling up in the sheets, as you listened to his cries through the wall.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
____
Elin Thomas is a Creative Writing and Film Studies student at Liverpool John Moores University, and has a special interest in writing about relatable female experiences and human connection. She lives on a small island in Wales, and this is her first publication.