Dear Diary,
I bought a new one of you because the last one of your kind is lying at the bottom of a pool in Réunion. I’ve needed to write. To try and get all the thoughts out of my head and onto paper so I can make sense of them.
Matt and I are officially together . . . I think? Well, we are. I just didn’t think it would feel like this. We are doing the same things as before, pizza, beer, TV, chilling . . . and kissing. We kiss a lot. Last night he ran his hands over my breast and it felt really weird. Matt has been talking about the future, saying what a waste it is that we have two flats. That we should move in together. I told him I thought that was a bit fast, he laughed and said it’s been three years in the making though.
It’s been exactly five days since I’ve come home. Five days since I saw Alex, but I can’t stop thinking about him . . .
I got a message from Julian the day after I arrived home. Well, a photo. He’d taken a photo of Alex and sent it to me with the word WTFAYT? written below. In brackets (What the fuck are you thinking?) The photo showed Alex slumped over at the bar. He was drinking his little pink drink again. He looked miserable. He had facial stubble and his hair was a mess and it broke my heart.
I don’t know. I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to think or how to act or how to feel! I wanted something so badly for so long and now that I finally have it . . . IDK!
More laters . . .
Dear Diary,
It’s been two weeks since I got back from Réunion. Matt has been away on business for the last five days and I know I shouldn’t say this, but I feel relieved. Guess who I bumped into today at the mall: THE BOSS and DIVORCED! They saw me and wanted to thank me, because now they are in love. They say. (I crashed both their cars at Matt’s engagement party, you’ll remember.) Matt wanted to have sex with me the night before he went away on business. I told him I wasn’t feeling that well . . .
On a totally different note, my editor wants me to start writing a weekly column for the online magazine. Something “personal” she said. (She heard what happened to me at Matt’s engagement party, apparently we have some mutual friends. She thought it would make a great story, especially now that Matt and I are together. She says this is a total miracle. She said I must be so happy. She said this must feel like a dream come true. My perfect Hollywood ending . . .)
Guess what . . .? Alex seems to have pulled a number four on me. He’s murdered me on social media. I am blocked from all his online profiles. The last picture I saw of him was one he posted the day he arrived back in London. It showed a massive pile of unopened envelopes on his couch saying something to the effect of, “Welcome home!” I saw he’d tagged his location and I went to see it. I think I know where he lives now. I’ve found myself staring at a picture of his apartment building on Google Earth trying to guess which flat is his and hoping I could see him through the window. I know that’s lame. But I just feel like I need to see him. If only for a moment. I hated that the last time I saw him was when he’d looked at me likethat, and then run away down the beach. I hate that the last memory we have of each other is that moment.
I haven’t seen any of my friends since coming back. I guess I’m a bit worried what they’ll say to me about everything that has happened. For some reason, I feel strange trying to explain to them why I am suddenly with Matt now. By the way, have I mentioned that I feel really bad about Sam? I keep thinking about her, and not in the way that I used to think about her, in the whole “I wish she would blow up and disappear” way. I hope she’s okay . . . what am I saying, of course she’snotokay. Her fiancé left her for his best friend who ruined her engagement party . . . I’d started feeling so good about myself and everything while I was in Réunion, and now I just feel crap about everything. Including myself.
Later . . .
Dear Diary,
So two things happened to me today that have left me feeling—what is the right word—unhinged maybe? One, I bumped my knee on a chair and ripped the old scab off it. There was blood everywhere. Matt tried to help me with it, but he didn’t have any plasters and landed up wrapping my knee with toilet paper and for some reason this made me so angry with him that we had a fight about it. I apologized later, I don’t know what got into me. I’m just not feeling myself. And then, two, I got a message from Julian today. The message was another photo. It was a photo of the magazine that Alex and I had been using. He said he found it at the bar. He took a photo of one of the other articles in the magazine. The article was called, “How Do You Know If You’re In The Wrong Relationship?”
1.You think of someone else when you are with him.
2.You can’t wait for him to be gone so you can enjoy your own company.
3.When he phones to chat, you zone out and pretend you’re listening, but you aren’t.
There were more, but I think you get the picture . . .
So here’s the thing, I’m pretty sure I’ve made a terrible, terrible mistake and I don’t know what to do to fix it. I’m not even sure I can fix it. I feel like I’m drowning in my mistake and the more I drown, the more I’m starting to realize some things that I wish I’d realized a while ago. Anyway, I’m going to my friend this afternoon to chat to her. I need her advice and if there’s one person who knows how to tell it like it is, it’s her. I’m off to see her now.
More later . . .
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
I pulled up to the house that Stormy shared with her boyfriend Marcus. It was a pretty house, perhaps the prettiest on the block. Large windows, lots of plants in the front garden and a fresh paint job that made it look brand new and immaculate. I walked up to the front door and found a note attached to it. I opened it.
Key under pot plant with pink flower. Come in. I’m in the back garden.
I shook my head as I read the note which any would-be burglar would have been only too thrilled to have received. I walked inside, looked around and laughed.
The house was a strange mix of Marcus and Stormy. In between big screen TVs, immaculate leather couches and an open-plan modern kitchen, were dots of Stormy. A purple dream-catcher in the corner, a bright pink fluffy pillow on the couch, a painting of God knows what on the wall and a pair of bright yellow sandals discarded carelessly in the middle of the floor.
“Stormy?” I called out, walking through the house to the large French doors that opened out into the garden. I didn’t see her at first, but when I finally did, she seemed to magically emerge from the undergrowth; mud besmeared, branch in hand and leaves in hair and,Oh My God!
“What the hell have you done to your hair?” I gasped.
“Do you love it?” she asked, twirling around, the beads all knocking together and making that dreadful clanking noise that I was all too familiar with.
“Mmmmm,” I mumbled, “it’s great. What’s not to love about green braids with beads on the ends?”
