Because of Lucy (13 page)

“No.”

Evan’s keys jangle in his hands as he hesitates, brown eyes staring into my hidden hurt. Imperceptibly, he shakes his head and crosses to the driver’s door. The silence of the drive home is filled with the drone of his engine and the air blowing from the vents. Nothing else is said.

Chapter 23

NESS

The stalemate between us continues over the next few days. Evan refuses to speak to me on the drive back and I ask him to go home when we get to mine after the restaurant. All I get is a peck on the cheek and he leaves. His words tumble around my brain, the sense of what he’s saying won’t sink through the romantic cliché strangling my emotions. Evan shows me everyday how he feels about me but now he’s admitted the refusal to tell me he loves me. After so many months, isn’t it logical for the person your with to have told you? At least once.

Then I get irritated, he’s making me feel like I’m trying to get him to marry me, the words would bind him to me forever, or something. I shudder at the idea.

Quietly gnawing at me is the need for him t
o
no
t
tell me he loves me, and the reason I haven’t told him. Because a tiny part of me wants to use those words as an excuse to change my mind about leaving.

For the first time in months, doubt about our relationship sets in.

My work shifts and his study schedule misalign over the next few days, then it’s the weekend and he disappears to Lancaster. Evan doesn’t go back as often as he did, once a month now. This time I expected him to forego his trip to sort through our huge, immobile issue. The feeling Lucy is the third person in our relationship returns, and I push away the hurt. His twin. A sister coping with a lifelong illness. Of course his pull to her is greater at times. We text, but don’t talk and the unease begins to strangle me.

Abby sits in the lounge, feet covered in huge socks and resting on the coffee table. She cradles a mug in her hands and slurps coffee as she watches TV.

“No Evan tonight?” she asks.

“No, he’s in Lancaster.”

“And there’s been no Evan here this week?” She turns her concerned face to mine. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Um. Don’t believe you. Misery face.”

Abby’s got over her hedonistic phase, now settled into the ‘I came so close to failing, I’d better study’ stage. Perhaps my battery farm existence has shown her the wa
y
no
t
to go. Whatever the reason, we get on better now. Like we did before university. She’s seeing another guy from her department, Kyle, quieter and genuinely nice. He’s miles apart from her usual guys. And nothing too serious, which is strange for her. And kind of ironic considering the anguish I’m applying to my relationship.

“It’s fine.” I set my mug down.

“He’s pissed off about you leaving?”

“He’s said he doesn’t want me to go.”

Abby nods, her whole shoulders moving, like a wise woman. “Can you blame him? You two have a good thing going.”

“I have to go. To do this. For me.” The words are more forceful than I intended.

She holds her hands up in defense. “Hey, you don’t need to argue with me too. I just don’t get the need to get going so quickly.”

I’ve considered this. Over and over. “Because if I don’t go now, I’ll never go. Something will get in the way and stop me if I wait. This is the right time. For me.” The words sound like a prepared speech, to convince someone. Myself, maybe.

Abby moves to the TV and switches it off. “Even if you lose Evan?”

We look at each other and I see the girl I went to primary school with, the friend who helped me through my first heartbreak at fourteen. The person who knows me as well as I know myself - aware of where I’ve come from, and came from there too.

“Abby…”

“You guys are close. Like, really close. I haven’t come across two people like you. And you manage to be like that without it being intense and weird.”

“If we’re close, a year apart won’t matter.” The words come out of my mouth I haven’t vocalized before. A year apart. From Evan. Am I in denial? If I want him to tell me he loves me, how can I want to leave him too? My head spins with the contradiction whenever I consider this. And I consider the situation a lot.

Abby tips her head. “That’s naive. Things will happen. You’ll come back a different person and he’ll be the same as when you left. He’s a guy, however much he says he loves you, I doubt he’ll stay celibate.”

I swallow the lump pushing against my throat. “He hasn’t.”

“Hasn’t what?”

“Told me he loves me.”

Abby’s head moves back, in the way people do when you hit them with words they don’t expect. “Seriously? Not once?”

“Not once.”

“Not even after…you know. Or when he’s drunk?”

“No. Never.”

“But he loves you.” Abby says the words with blinding certainty, as if no doubt existed in her mind, and I wish she could extend the certainty to mine.

“Maybe.”

“Come on, you love each other. Five months in and barely an argument? Jeez, I wish a guy would look at me how he looks at you.”

“How?”

Abby stands towards me. “Like the stars would go out if you weren’t there anymore.”

I don’t say anything, she’s right. I’m stupid.

“He never said it when you said it to him?” she asks.

I pick at my sleeve. “I haven’t said it either.”

Abby shakes her head. “Then you’re as bad as each other.”

Sitting back next to me, Abby puts a hand on my knee. “Ness, you’re not thirteen. It’s not a competition over who says ‘I love you’ first. And if it’s going to wreck your relationship, why hang onto this?”

After weeks of keeping this in, I have to voice the truth I won’t admit. “Because if he says he loves me, I might change my mind about leaving.”

“And if he loves you, he won’t let you.”

****

EVAN

I know I need to see Ness again, but my inability to say the right thing puts me off. In my time back in Lancaster, I retraced old steps and return to places from my childhood. The childhood I’m supposed to leave behind. Lucy comes too, and she’s my old Lucy. My funny twin with bright eyes, and a brighter personality. I’m proud of what she’s achieved, more so than Dad. She’s reconnected with friends and made new ones. Moving away from home worked for her, as leaving town did for me. She has a boyfriend too, Julius. They share a love of photography. And cats. As soon as I return to Lancaster I’m greeted with a pictorial run down of their relationship. I laugh when she tells me they were ‘meant to be’ because their cats like each other. So her life has moved beyond what she wants from me, at last. She’ll never be free of her illness but at least it’s not controlling her anymore.

“How’s things with Ness? I haven’t seen her since Christmas.” Lucy tucks her phone into her pocket, her picture album finally exhausted.

This is twin sixth sense when I was thinking about Ness already. I sit with Lucy in the small garden of our childhood home, watching the birds flit around.

“She just had a birthday.”

“Oh, I’d like to have given her a present, why didn’t you say?” Lucy pushes me.

“She doesn’t like presents.”

“I have some great pictures I took of you guys. I could frame one.”

“She doesn’t want too much stuff to move.”

“Why? where’s she going?”

I close my eyes. Now I have to open up to Lucy too. Acknowledge the reality. “She’s going backpacking. For a year.”

Lucy’s face lights up. “Cool! Are you going too?”

“Yeah right. I’m at
uni. And I have no money.” God knows how many times I’ve had the thought, attempted to hold in the frustration of the situation and not let the irritation mar an evening with Ness. Sure, I could take a year off university. If I had the money, and if Ness wanted me to go with her. I don’t have the money. And now I’m unsure Ness would want me anyway.

“Good point.” Lucy stands and walks across the garden to the late daffodils, bending and touching their delicate yellow petals. She picks one, and twirls the flower in her hands. “Do you love her?”

My twin regards me with eyes identical to my own, a perfect reflection of myself looks back at me. I can’t reply. “Tell her how you feel. I can tell you don’t want her to go.”

“I did tell her. Kind of. But I can’t ask her to stay.”

Lucy sits back next to me. “Why not?”

Of course Lucy would see the situation simplistically. Her raw emotions wouldn’t stand for something this complex. Life is black and white to her.

The realization hits me. Lucy’s the reason. She pursued me when I escaped, tried to stop me living my life. Didn’t want me to leave. I don’t want to stop Ness doing what she needs in the way Lucy stops me.

“I’m not asking anyone to change their plans for me. Ness wants to do this. I’ll wait for her to come back.”

Lucy hands me the daffodil and wanders off to pick another. “Well, she doesn’t love you then.”

Her words are spoken in such a matter of fact way, but they twist my stomach. Our shared fear of abandonment, mine hidden so deeply I’ve never acknowledged the feeling. The reason I can’t tell Ness. Because she’s rejecting me by leaving.

“I think she does, Lucy.”

“Think? She never told you?” Lucy straightens, daffodil in hand. “Then maybe she doesn’t.”

My mind runs through our times together, the natural easiness of being with her. The surging inside when I see her after even a few hours away, reflected back at me in the warmth of her eyes. The way she touches me, holds me - and understands when to let go.

“People who love you don’t leave you,” says Lucy.

The twisting in my stomach moves to my chest and in Lucy’s eyes there’s a hardness I’ve seen before. A couple of years ago, at the bottom of her blackest hole, when she cried like a child; like the five year old child who couldn’t understand why her mother left. The memory jabs at the wound in my own heart and the realization hits me, illuminating the last hidden corner of my mind. I can’t give myself to someone who’ll leave.

Chapter 24

NESS

After I speak to Abby about the situation, I try and contact Evan. He’s still talking to me, but he’s in Lancaster and I’m irritated by the power Evan’s past has over him and how he won’t admit to this. Evan has things in the ‘now’ that need his attention. He’s short with me on the phone, tells me he’ll call me when he gets back. I lie in bed, heart pumping unease through me, a physical sensation of everything shifting in my world.

We arrange to meet and the butterflies spin around inside as if we’re going on a first date. Dry mouthed, I wait for him in the park near the university buildings. His choice of neutral ground and open space, away from people, fuels my anxiety. I wait on a bench, shadowed from the spring sunshine by a large oak tree. In the shade, the breeze is cooler and I shiver, wishing I’d brought a jacket to wear over my summer dress.

On the path close by, students walk towards the university. Couples. I scroll through Facebook, focus on other people’s lives so I don’t have to think about mine.

When Evan arrives, he’s jacket-less, wearing a band T-shirt I bought him, the muscled arms I hide in for comfort are bare. My heart rate speeds up, a mixture of fear and desire for him.

Setting his bag of books on the ground, he sits then leans in and softly kisses me, warm mouth on my cool lips. I deliberately inhale his scent. Musky; Evan; comfort. Only a weekend away and his absence feels like forever. I realize the two can’t co-exist - my plans and my relationship. Travel and Evan. His palm goes to my knee and I stroke the back of his hand.

“I missed you,” I say.

“You too.” His words are instant, an automatic response.

“How was poetry class?”

“I didn’t have poetry today.”

His words constrict my heart, our usual comical exchange of greeting cut short. “Oh. Okay.”

Evan rubs his face. “Ness, I don’t know what to say to you anymore.”

This hits me in my thumping heart. “Say to me?”

“I can’t open up to you anymore than I have. Not when…” He inhales. “Not when you’re going to leave me.”

After all these weeks, he’s finally straight to the point, and as if his decision has been made. Moving his hand from my knee, he rests both on his, rubbing his legs.

“Why haven’t you spoken to me about this until now? If my leaving was stressing you so much?”

“And say what? I held the words in, and then the other day I told you I didn’t want you to leave. Knowing it was a selfish thing to say. And then you hit me back with accusations I don’t feel enough for you.”

I blink at the side of his head, he’s looking at the ground and not me. “I didn’t say that. I just wanted to know why you didn’t...say.”

“One of the reasons I didn’t say anything is because of the amount I care about you. I didn’t want to spoil the time we had.”

“By hiding from the future?”

“No, by living in the present.” Evan leans forward to study the ground. “Maybe I have held more of me back than I should, but so have you. And what’s the point anyway?”

“The point in what?”

Evan turns his head to me, his cheeks pink and the intensity of his gaze knocks me more than anything he’s said. “The point in loving you.”

My tensions dissolves into nausea, not the relief I expected. I asked him for this but he’s telling me in such a negative way.

“See, that’s why. In your face.” He looks away again.

I reach out to him, move his hair so I can see the side of his face but he won’t meet my eyes. “Evan, I care so much for you.”

He breathes in so deeply I can hear the air rush into his chest and he puts his head in his hands. “I know. And I feel so much for you it scares me. I don’t want you to hurt me.”

This is wrong. We should be saying the words as we hold each other, look at each other and see the truth in our eyes. As his eyes have held the truth so many times, when they’ve told me so much more than three stupid words.

“Evan…” I need him to look at me, to see this again.

Evan sits back hard against the bench seat, looking at the English summer sky. My heart pounds, apprehensive as to what he’ll say next. A crushing realization hits me. I don’t want to lose him.

He shifts in his seat, turning my face to him gently. “Ness, I love you and I shouldn’t need to tell you. But it’s true. And I don’t want you to go, I can’t imagine not seeing you for so long. I think you won’t come back, or will forget me.”

Tears sting my eyes as I try to blink them away, unsuccessfully as one escapes down my cheek. “I can’t stay here. In Leeds. Doing this job. I wish you could come too.”

He lets go of my face. “I can’t. It’s not possible.”

“Why? We could go together?”

“I can’t leave the country,” he whispers, “not so soon.”

The answer hits me. “Lucy?”

“Partly. But also, financially. And I’m studying. This isn’t the right moment in my life to do what you’re doing.”

I hear only the part about Lucy. I fooled myself she’d retreated into the background. Now I understand. She’s the reason he’d never agree to come with me, even if he had the money and opportunity. She’s strangling the life from him.

“No
wI
don’t know what to say, Evan.”

“Maybe we crossed paths at the wrong time. Like we were meant to fall in love with each other, but not be together.” He’s not touching me anymore, staring towards the trees, thinking aloud.

“So what do we do?” I don’t want to say the words. “Do we end things now? Or keep going, until I leave? See what happens while I’m away? And how things are when I come back.” My desperate heart pumps the words from my mouth, the thoughts that circle in my head finally spoken.

“I don’t know.”

The nausea rises. The situation is pushing my emotions to the edge of self-control. He finally says he loves me but then says he doesn’t know if he wants us to be together anymore. The contradiction in his words spins me out.

“You love me but you don’t know? Then you don’t love me enough. This would never work. You wouldn’t wait for me.” I stand, aware of the shaking inside moving its way to my arms and hands.

“No, I care about you too much. When I’m with you, the only place I want to be is closer.” Evan stands and reaches out to me but I can’t let him fold me into his arms, into his world. He drew me so tightly to him, and now he’s kicked me so hard everything hurts.

“You’re not making any sense, Evan.” I step back and fold my arms.

He drops his arms and shakes his head. “I know. That’s why I’ve never spoken about this stuff before. I’m fucked up, Ness. So screwed up by the past, in ways you can’t imagine. I can’t get hurt again, not now.”

“I’m hurting you?” Where did that come from?

“Yes.”

This is the last thing I want to hear. Nobody should be in a relationship which hurts them, put themselves through pain and for what? Me to leave him anyway? His pain at the prospect of being left is so great he couldn’t tell me about it until now. This is wrong. I’ve deluded myself everything will be okay, and having a here and now relationship, with no plans for the future, was possible. I turn away, walk towards the edge of the park. When he doesn’t follow me, I have the answer I need. My heart breaks and all the butterflies inside me die.

****

NESS

I don’t see Evan again after our meeting. Everything stops. Suddenly. The afternoon in the park cycles around and around in my mind. One short conversation of contradictory statements and now this. Finished. I blame myself; can’t believe I pushed him into a corner. Evan fought his way out, saying what he expected me to say, but hurting himself in the process.

I was too caught up in my own plans, perhaps should have considered the effect my leaving would have on our relationship. On our emotions. But I didn’t. Neither of us wanted to face the future, living the days as they came, which we thought was the right thing to do. We never realized how the more time we spent together, the closer it tied us.

Now the exact reason why I didn’t factor Evan into my plans has arisen - our relationship hasn’t lasted long enough to make my leaving an issue. If I’d altered my plans for Evan, my resentment towards him would be as bad as the hurt and anger I feel now. Why did I get involved when I knew I’d leave? Because I didn’t think I’d fall in love.

Three days later, a knee-jerk reaction and a bottle of wine finds me booking my flight ticket on the internet. Round the world. Starting in Europe
.
Screw hi
m
.

The next day I post the date I’m leaving on
Facebook, proudly showing everyone what I’m going to achieve. Some of my already traveling, backpacking friends send suggestions for meet ups. Excitement replaces my moping, returning my focus to what I wanted all along, before Evan interrupted me.

Evan changes his
Facebook status. We’re no longer in a relationship.

His immaturity stings. I call him but he doesn’t answer and my texts go ignored. How is this the guy who told me he loved me a few days ago?

I wish Lucy really had been an ex or a current girlfriend; I think I’d have coped better. And never got involved.

****

EVAN

Slamming the laptop closed, I pick up my phone and call Matt. I don’t know why I expected her to tell me when she booked the flights, but the fact she didn’t seals things. This is over. I can’t let Ness hurt me anymore and I definitely can’t wait for her to come back next year. I’ve no idea why I ever thought I could.

All week, I waited and procrastinated. Not knowing what to do, or whether she wanted to fix things after our argument. Our second argument in as many weeks. I decide it’s all too hard. Then she makes the decision for me anyway. I resist the urge to drown myself in nights out but the life from before beckons me back.

I love her. I told her what she wanted me to, but this still wasn’t good enough for her. I’ll never be good enough for her, she was always going to leave me.