“What?”
“I said, you tore me out of this photo. I was there too,” I unpin it and hold it out to point to the crooked edge next to Jen where my eleven year old self once stood, tanned and grinning in red swimming shorts, “There, I was there.”
She looks at it, then me, but says nothing.
“You can still see my shoulder.”
“Yeah.”
“You tore me out of it.”
Again, nothing.
I let my arm drop, limply holding the photo between two fingers, speechless I just stare at her as though she might explain herself, give me some reason that makes sense, but she doesn’t, she just stands there chewing on her lip.
I tug my shoulders sharply toward my ears, “Why did you do that? That was a nice day. We went swimming in the sea, I rescued you from a jellyfish, remember? I grabbed a piece of driftwood and flung it out of the water for you.”
“Yeah,”
“And later your mam brought us back to my house and we had a water fight on the lawn and made ice cream and coke floats,” I hold the photo out to her in a last ditch appeal, “It was a great day.”
“Yeah it was nice, we had fun.” She won’t meet my eyes and looks everywhere but at me, like acknowledgement is unbearable.
“What, Michelle? I don’t get it. What did I do that was so horrible?”
She scoffs and turns away.
“C’mon, just tell me. I’ve had enough of all this bullshit between us, I’m serious. What is it?”
“Oh come on.”
“No, what?” I toss the photo onto her desk and approach her, my hand on her arm makes her flinch as I spin her to look at me, eyes livid, as I insist upon her, “What?”
“My God, you’re awful,” she hisses, “Why do you need to hear me saying it? Is it an ego thing? Is it because you’re all single and sad again?”
“What are you on about?”
“You already know what this is all about, it just gives you a thrill to bring it up.”
“No! I don’t know!”
“Oh cop on,” She slaps my hand off her, “That stuff with Holly, you just don’t remember? That’s convenient.”
“Holly?”
“Oh my God,” she tries to twist away from me but I stop her, “What did Holly say to you?”
Michelle glares right into my face with a fury that would make a lesser man cower, but I don’t budge. “Tell me!”
“That you don’t fancy me,” she grinds out, “and that I’m not even pretty.”
I hesitate.
She tosses her hand at me and hacks out a laugh, “See, you don’t even deny it.”
“Yeah, I was thirteen and stupid, she was jealous and I suppose I was just telling her what she wanted to hear. Shell!” she backs off and I follow, trying to insert myself into her eye line, “I didn’t mean it, she just didn’t get it, the way it wasn’t like that between us, but I don’t know why she told you that.”
“It’s because she knew I fancied you, and she thought it was funny how you didn’t fancy me back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You didn’t, you fancied Holly.”
I sigh, “Holly was… everyone expected that of me.”
“What does that even mean?”
“She liked me, and she was the sort of girl that all the other boys talked about all the time, I felt like I should just go out with her because it’d be the most normal thing to do.”
“Oh my God, that’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah, I know, but I was still a kid and, I don’t know, you, Jen and I had a good thing going, I just didn’t want to risk ruining it.”
“Well obviously you did, by saying I was ugly and throwing your birthday gifts back in my face.”
“I never said you were ugly, and the birthday gifts… she told me I couldn’t have them because they were from you, but I still liked them! Those pens were better than her gift, you know, I didn’t even like the movie she took me to see,” my attempt at a laugh sounds very weird and tight, “It was actually so shit.”
Michelle is unmoved, with her arms crossed over her chest she says, “You read what I said in the card and you still threw it away like it was nothing.”
“No, I didn’t- I skimmed- I barely read it.”
She reels back like I’ve spit in her face, “Is that supposed to be better?”
I don’t answer.
“‘Dear Jude,’” She recites, “‘Happy thirteenth birthday! I hope you have an amazing day! I just want to say that being your friend is the best! You’re so nice and funny and talented, I’m glad all of the time that you started going to our school because you make our friend group so much better. I hope you like the gel pens, I know you hate drawing with yellow colours because they don’t show up on the page, but I couldn’t exactly take it out of the packet or it would look pretty strange! Maybe you can use them to draw more comics. I look at the one you drew for me with the cowboy cats every day and it still makes me laugh. Is that weird? I hope not. Anyway, I hope you have an amazing birthday because you’re an amazing friend! xxx Michelle.’” She glares at me. The way she positively spat that message at me threw me off a bit, but the essence of it still comes across and makes my stomach sink with shame all of the same. It really was a nice card, and I wish for the millionth time in my seventeen-and-a-half years that I wasn’t such a fucking idiot.
“I remember the cowboy cat comic,” I mutter, “Do you still have it?”
It seems as though my stupidity is confounding her, “No, I fucked it into the bin. Obviously. I was heartbroken.”
“Heartbroken?” A bit dramatic, surely.
“Yeah. Holly and her friends bullied me for years, and you just went and abandoned me for them.”
“That’s not fair, I didn’t. You pushed me away, remember? You accused me of choosing them, I never chose them. You chose not to be my friend.”
“Yeah, I wonder why.”
“Why are you being like this?”
“Like what?”
“So stubborn. You can't let this go.”
“Uh! Yeah! Because it’s humiliating.”
“What is? That you fancied me?”
She brings her hands to her cheeks, burning not with rage, but embarrassment. She takes a shaky breath, “did you know?”
“About you-”
“Yes.”
I chew on my lip. Of course I did. It was written all over her, the way she was so eager to sit next to me in class or in the car, squeezing into the middle seat just so that her leg could rest against mine. How she jumped at the chance to help me out with something before anybody else could, her laugh, a little bit harder and longer than everyone else's when I told a joke, but not addressing it was always easier. Maybe I liked the attention a little bit, enjoyed being admired by a cute girl, or maybe it was easier, less disruptive than admitting my own uncomfortable, friendship-group-ruining feelings.
“No, I had no idea,” I say.
Her eyes are fixed upon the carpet between our feet as though by looking so intently at the looped fibres she can transport herself anywhere other than here with me and my interrogations.
“Hey, look at me.”
“No.”
I sigh, “Look, Michelle, I did think you were pretty. That’s why Holly was so jealous. Our friendship made her insecure, and she hated how much I liked hanging out with you. She could sense that I liked you.”
“Oh, come on, that’s the kind of thing you say to those stupid girls at school so that they’ll let you borrow their homework or something.”
“I really did!”
“You used to throw potato wedges at me outside the deli!”
“Yeah! That’s how you show a girl you fancy her when you’re twelve!”
Her laugh is humourless, “Please.”
“I’m telling you I did,” I take her wrist, with her pulse jumping under my fingers and hold her like that, for reasons I’m not sure of, perhaps just for connection. Close like this I can feel the heat of her body. I am desperate to show her how serious I am. “And if I wasn’t so stupid I might have done something about it.”
“Too late.”
“It’s not.”
I bend and kiss her before she can argue any more. Once, just once, but insistently, and I pull back hard with a smack expecting outrage on her face but I find only surprise, desire, and eyes that flick from my eyes to my mouth and back. I kiss her again, slow this time, deep, sure, as my hands hold her hips close to mine, willing for this kiss to wipe it all away, all of the years of hurt and anguish between us, and she lets me kiss her, and she kisses me back with hands that thread through my hair and lips that part so I can slide my tongue inside her mouth.
My knees knock against hers in our clumsy waltz towards her bed and we come down on it together, my body pressing against hers and my fingers finding the warm skin beneath her t-shirt. I draw back to look at her again, dark eyes and full lips and skin, as is mine, blushed amber with the first rays of dawn that stream through the window.
“Do you want to stop?” I say, and she shakes her head.
“No.”
And outside, as the sun creeps up over Clontarf, the branches of the cherry blossom trees hold their leafy arms up in surrender.
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