The Art of Forgiving - A Uni File Short (The Uni Files) (3 page)

When we get to the lounge Tristan and Meredith have stolen the big sofa
I was attempting to make my moves on.
Bloody
bastards.
Tristan smirks at me as he catches me glance around the room
trying to work out what to do next.

There are only armchairs left, and although she succumbed to a foot rub,
I don’t think she will be up for sitting on my lap quite yet. The thought is a
little appealing.

Lilah puts some music on her iPod and starts blasting it about the
lounge and walks back over to the middle of the room where I am standing and
just kind of throws herself on the floor.

“Why are you hanging around like a spare prick at a wedding?” She lights
a cigarette and throws me up the packet which I grab out of the air before they
take out my eye.

She has such a way with
words.

I
fold
myself down onto the floor next to her
and pick up the lighter. “Shall we play a game?”

“For Christ’s sake, what time is bloody dinner?” Tristan breaks his lips
away from Meredith’s to ask.

There is way too much snogging in this room and I am not participating
in any of it. I glance at Lilah and notice that she is staring at my lips
slightly. “12.15.” I tell Tristan without taking my eyes off Lilah who is still
focused on my mouth.

“You’re kidding. Can’t you just turn it up?”

“Nope.”

“Yes,” says Lilah.

“No.” says Meredith.

Lilah and I are locked in a stare-off turkey stalemate. I don’t know
what started the staring, well I was thinking about snogging but now we seem to
be embroiled in a turkey discussion. I give a sigh and tear my gaze away from
Lilah and towards her infinitely less attractive brother. “If we turn the oven
up, the bird will dry out and it will be shit. Be patient.”

“You are such a gay.” Tristan throws his comment across the room and
Lilah starts to laugh which makes me flush. It’s not my fault my mum taught me
how to cook a turkey.

“Who fancies scrabble?” Meredith suggests.

Lilah gives a groan. “I am only playing if Tristan promises not to be an
arsehole about it.”

Meredith laughs. “He won’t, I am here to keep him distracted.” She
demonstrates just how she plans to keep him distracted by climbing onto his lap
embarking on another rally of tonsil tennis.

Great.

Lilah gives an awkward laugh which I duplicate and we both send each
other lingering looks for another suspended moment before she breaks the magic
by saying. “Guess I should go and get the scrabble then.”

I think she is going to get up and walk to one of the sideboard doors
but instead she just crawls herself out of the room and down the hallway on her
hands and knees. She is laughing and so am I, but then I realise she must have
gone to her bedroom . . . the room I have never been allowed in. What I really
want to do is follow her down there, lock her in and not let her out again
until we have all this sorted. Not until she has agreed to be my damn
girlfriend properly, and she has also agreed to move to the states for the
summer and be my proper girlfriend on a permanent basis and most definitely
not
until we have had sex. A lot.

I don’t follow her, I just sit there like a dick waiting for her to walk
back through with the scrabble box. This time she is on her feet but still
grinning in a lightly inebriated way. Oh okay a very inebriated way.

“Look, love birds, you can only play if you promise to stop snogging,”
she says. Lilah bangs the box down on the floor which makes the lid bounce off
and letter squares fly everywhere.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” they both say at once.

They don’t though.
 
One hour later
and their game plan basically seems to be ‘Lose by Snogging.’ It’s not a bad
plan and one which I would like to adopt, but sadly, instead of snogging we are
trumping them by a hundred clear points.

It’s ridiculous, I’m sitting here with Lilah, the love of my life, and
we are making small talk over a game of scrabble like two people who do not
know each other at all. Two months ago I thought we would be a thing, forever.

I have no idea what to say to her. We are lying on the floor, shoulders
touching, legs pressed together, staring at our letter squares like two
teenagers at a school disco trying to ignore the people snogging around us.

I turn to her, about to say something, anything, when she shifts herself
up onto all four’s. “I’m going to change the tunes,” she says. Getting up from
the floor with a noticeable wobble she sways her way over towards the iPod. Two
seconds later I am scrambling after her, my hand over hers to stop her
scrolling through her endless supply of teenage music.

“Can I play for you,” I ask.

She stops with a start and looks up at me. We are so close together,
there is just mere millimetres separating our bodies and the space between us
zings with electricity.

“Uh, yes.”

I could move myself forward just one more inch and place my lips against
hers. I so want to. The need to feel her mouth against mine knows no bounds. I
don’t though. “Good, I’ve been practising.”

I pull myself away and turn quickly into the hallway leaving whatever
moment that could have been hanging there.

I walk back in, settling on the floor and start to unclip my guitar
case. As each clasp pops open I am acutely aware of her sitting crossed legged
in front of me. Our knees practically touching as she watches me with a sharp
interest.

“Did you write this?” she asks.

As I start to tune my old guitar all I can think is, ‘What the fuck am I
going to sing. I did not think this through at all.’

I pause for a moment and decide to speak the truth. “No.” I give a shrug
with my words. She is watching me closely reading whatever words she can see
written on my face. “I have shamelessly stolen it. Seems that when it comes to
you I find it hard to say the words.”

This is true. There are no words for Lilah at the moment, well not Lilah
with me, and that is the only thing I like to write about. Instead I have been
playing the same song since the 9th November when our story took a tragic turn.

I pick out the opening notes to Three Doors Down’s “Here
Without
You,” concentrating on the strings for a few
moments. Not like I need to, but I am scared to watch her face, worried about
what I might see there. I don’t even know if she will recognise the song, and
if she does whether she will understand what it means to me – that I will never
be able to live without her. That’s just not an option that is viable to me.

I feel open and exposed, but my need for reassurance outweighs my
concern that she will read me too easily. Before I’ve even played out a few
bars I lift my eyes to hers. I find her with tears sliding down her cheeks. I
am so shocked I even miss a couple of notes, which has never happened to me
before. I’m tempted to stop, but then I remember the message I am making with
my song choice and start to sing instead.

The whole time I sing I try and put my feelings into the words, which is
nowhere near as easy as you would think. By the time I’m on the last verse I’m
struggling to get the words out. Watching her cry right in front of me is a
killer. Lilah
McCannon
never cries, she drinks vodka
instead, and now she is sitting in front of me with tears spilling down her
face all because I did some dumb fuck thing when I wasn’t thinking. There is
something beautifully tragic about her tears and like a clanger the enormity of
what I’ve done hits me.

The girl who was meant to save me is broken because of me.

And I have been sitting in
Dorset sulking? Seriously Ben. Man the fuck up.

“Why on earth are you crying? Was it that bad?” I ask when the song has
finished. My throat is so tight, it’s a miracle I am able to breathe let alone
sing.

“It was beautiful thank you.” She jumps up from the floor and heads into
the kitchen where I hear her banging around the pots and pans.

I start to get up but Meredith puts her hand on my shoulder, “I’ll go,
Ben. I reckon you have done enough.”
 
What the hell does that mean? Have I done
enough in a good way or a bad way?

Later. So much later, the turkey is finally
frickin
’
cooked. Lilah and I have been right next to each other since my impromptu song.
Her body constantly touching mine in casual passing, but I have no idea what it
means.

Tristan is half cut and trying to carve the bird. This basically
translates to the fact he has hacked the hell out of it.

Lilah’s roast potatoes are just about edible and we drink four bottles
of wine as we shove our overdue dinner in our mouths. Yes that’s right. A
bottle each on top of our whiskey and sherry cocktails.

Meredith has her head on the table and Tristan is trying to get one of
those ‘Emotion Reader’ fish out of a Christmas cracker to lie flat on his hand.

Lilah pushes back from the table and gives a reverberating groan. “I
don’t want to be gross but I feel really sick and need to undo my jeans.”

She swiftly unbuttons her low jeans, I laugh and push back from the
table, undoing my own. I can feel her eyes on me. Well that’s one step closer
to getting our clothes off together.
What
the fuck is wrong with me?

“Thanks for saving Christmas dinner, Ben.” Lilah swirls last dregs of
wine around her glass and drains it down.

“You’re very welcome.”

She bites her lower lip a little and then pushes back from the table,
rising unsteadily to her feet. “Uh, my god I need to go to bed.” She makes some
awful groaning noise and reaches one hand for the table to steady herself.

Her eyes catch mine and I shift uncomfortably.
Come on Ben. . . This is what you have been waiting for. . . You
complete arse.

“Can I grab the couch?” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop
them. Smooth Dick of the Year Award goes to me.

“Nah, it’s cool you can share with me,” she says. I stare open mouthed
but she avoids all eye contact and
zig
zags
to her bedroom.

“Night guys.” I say to the others and then chase after her.

“Keep it down hey?” Tristan calls after me.

I wave my hand at him, and as I shut Lilah’s door behind me I can hear
them both shouting “
Aaaah
.” Luckily she does not
hear. She is just standing in the middle of the room. It’s the first time I
have ever been in here and I take a moment to pivot on my heel and look about,
whistling as I do. It’s massive with just a bed. Nothing else. Just a giant
bed.

My brain is instantly bombarded by about a million dirty thoughts all at
once. “Minimalist huh?” I manage to say around a smile which I hope does not
look leery.

“Yeah, I am a no fuss kind of girl,” she says turning to face me.

She so is. I take my eyes off the room and focus on her. It might be the
unnecessary bottle of wine but the air seems so heavy it feels like I can’t
fill my lungs with it. “I know,” I say eventually.

The next moment happens in slow motion because I swear I am not
expecting it at all, but Lilah just hikes her T-shirt up over her head and
slides her jeans down her legs revealing a mind-blowing hot pink underwear set.

What the fuck? Did I miss
something?

She dives under the duvet and for a moment I stand there wondering what
it is she wants me to do. She says nothing, so in lieu of instructions I strip
off my own jeans and unbutton my shirt, leaving on just my boxers and T-shirt.
Then with the stealthy motions of a jungle cat I slide myself onto the bed
before she can change her mind and tell me to sod off.

She doesn’t. “You can come under if you want.”

Two seconds later I’m under the duvet and I physically can’t stop myself
from sliding my body alongside hers. The warmth of her skin seeps into mine and
I wonder just how long it has been since I last felt warm. She stretches
herself a little and we fit into all the little grooves that are unique just to
us. I take a deep breath and the smell of her skin fills my head, it is far
more intoxicating than the wine. “You know that song,” I whisper into the
darkness.

“Yes.”

My fingers sting with the need to reach out and touch her, but for once I
try and use words to talk to her, not actions. “It’s all I can think about, it
is all I can play. I just don’t know how to move on from this.” The whole truth
would be that I don’t want to move on from this and I definitely don’t want to
make a move that does not involve her, but I keep that to myself.

Instead I kiss my favourite spot on the back of her neck.

Her body freezes after my kiss, but before I can apologise she relaxes
back against me and says. “Neither do
I
.”

I close my eyes and wait for her to add something else. Shame I can’t
close my ears along with my eyes.

“I don’t know how to be with you now,” she says. I hold my breath for
her to finish whatever it is she is battling to say. “But I also don’t know how
to not be with you.”