Page 92 of Read My Lips

After being in Simon’s place, it bloody well would not.

“Course it will,” I lied, ignoring the shrivelling of my soul.

“Think about how practical, it is. Water resistant. Wipe clean.”

I bit my tongue instead of telling him all tables wiped clean, not just outdoor ones.

My chest constricted, clamping tight around my lungs. Was this really it? The pinnacle of my twenties. A house-share in the bit of Croydon that hadn’t up and come, and might never get there now it was all full of fucking garden furniture.

I didn’t want this. I wanted bookshelves full of photographs and plants and life. Walls wrapping me up in colour and brightness. I wanted someone to show me how to cook things that filled the air with smells like love and home and family.

Shit. I wanted Simon so badly it ached. And now he knew. So what the hell was I supposed to do?

CHAPTER

TWENTY-FIVE

WEDNESDAY

Six o’clock in the morning, my phone went off in a string of rapid-fire messages. And just like that, I was wide awake. Me and Simon were meant to be regrouping. This would be him telling me about a new urgent and genius plan I needed to not fuck up. A chance to prove to him I was a decent human being. There had to be hope – he’d said he liked the tortoises, hadn’t he?

It wasn’t Simon messaging me.

Gran

Are you bringing my shopping today?

You’ll have to come before twelve.

I’ve got plans for the afternoon.

Don’t forget the milk.

I groaned, rolling onto my back. In the early morning light the ceiling looked dull-grey instead of white. Dingey. The opposite of Simon’s place. Simon, who’d now had an entire afternoon and evening and uninterrupted night to really consider the motivations behind the pictures of us I’d been taking.

My single bedframe creaked ominously. Getting comfortable on the gravelbed of a mattress was difficult at the best of times. Matt was right. Anyone else would have replaced it when they moved in. There wasn’t even space for someone to sleep over. Simon would laugh, assuming he hadn’t automatically filed a restraining order.

Oh god. No way I was getting back to sleep now.

Gym. I needed to go to the gym.

Everything would level out again if I made my lungs scream hard enough and my muscles burn, and it wouldn’t matter that five minutes in Simon’s place felt more like coming home than anywhere I’d ever lived. It wouldn’t matter that he acted like I could be any version of myself I wanted to, like he thought I was fine just how I was. It wouldn’t even matter that I’d blown it.

On autopilot, I changed into a mothy t-shirt and shorts and my running shoes. Creeping downstairs, I let myself out the back door and through the gate at the bottom of the narrow garden, to the alley where the bins used to get picked up from. The alley joined onto another cut-through the next street along, and then another, and another, stretching away in the opposite direction to the main road, winding towards the gym on the tiny industrial estate tucked down a residential cul-de-sac.

Jogging along the already warm asphalt, I ignored the itch in my calves telling me to go faster. Part of me wanted to keep running until all this drama was a speck in the distance I never had to come back to. But I couldn’t choose never seeing Simon again. Which was what had got me into this mess in the first place.

At the gym, I did circuits until my t-shirt turned sodden and see-through and clung to my back. I ruined myself on every single machine, and hit the rack until I was in danger of breaking my own toes dropping dumbbells. And Simon still hadn’t messaged by the time I ducked under the shower.

I didn’t bother going home.

The Tesco’s near Gran was nicer than the one near mine. Right on the bus route too. I picked up everything on the list she’d drib-drabbed me over the week in one basket, and extra bread and milk to take home for the house.

“What time do you call this?” Gran’s irritation telegraphed its way through the nose-sized gap she peered through. The hinges creaked, the security chain clattering against the door as she opened up. “You’re cutting it very fine. I’ve got other things to do, you know.”

“Sorry Gran.”

She stomped back a pace to let me in. The balcony doors were open and a fan hummed back and forth circles across the space. Her knickknacks crowded onto every surface. An ugly little porcelain dog sat up begging on the window sill. I’d fantasised about hurling it onto the road in rush hour a hundred and one times.