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The memories of our first kiss still made my heart stutter and my body warm as they raced to the forefront of my mind. It was the most cherished memory I had of my youth, the one I could never shake and that never dulled. I remembered everything about it. The place, the smells, the soundtrack and every single one of his touches.
Shit, alcohol is bad.
The minute it mixed with my blood it was like my head decided it was time to go down memory lane. It was also why I’d spent over an hour and a bit on the phone to Dorian and Willow. Talking about their brother and listening to them tell me to stop overthinking. Although that last part had mostly been Willow.
Considering they were twins they couldn’t be any more different. Willow was always hippie dippy and believed that there was nothing a good musical couldn’t solve, and Dorian was so straight-laced that we often had to remind her that she was allowed to have fun.
She hadn’t always been like that. But life fucked her over, and she’d poured herself into her career and my nephew. She’d always been smart, but the moment we were told that Phillip was gone, it all changed.
I couldn’t help the sour giggle that hissed between my teeth. I didn’t know what was the culprit. The wine or the chocolate biscuits. All I know is that the only thing that I could think about was Jamie and the hurt on his face. Maybe I shouldn’t have left him, but I needed to clear my head. I needed to make sense of my anger, because it wasn’t for me. All the anger in me had been for him.
We’d skirted around each other for so long. We were always there, but we never quite met in the middle. Then everything with Theo happened and he was there. He’s the one that sat with me after Richard and I buried our son. It should have been my husband, but he couldn’t do it. Maybe it was morbid. Maybe it was pointless like he’d pointed out, it wouldn’t bring our son back. But whatever it was, Jamie was there with me.
He’d held me even when I didn’t think I wanted to be held. He’d wiped my tears and stroked my hair and held my hand until I’d passed out, and then he’d picked me up and taken me home. He’d helped my mother take care of me and he’d sat with me all night whilst my husband had been out somewhere getting drunk.
No one ever understood how or why I ended up with Richard. My mother always said I got my wires crossed, that I was rushing into something I didn’t need to be rushing into. It was a little over ten years since I’d married Richard at twenty-three. He was already in his first year of specialty training and I was fresh out of Uni. I’d watched Jamie marry Jenna and I thought that if I finally accepted Richard’s proposal that I would stop thinking about him. I’d stop pining for him. For some reason at that time it had made sense.
Except it didn’t. It was a silly decision made out of sadness and disappointment. Heartbreak.
I’d never looked at Richard in a romantic way or any way other than as one of my brother’s best friends. We weren’t even friends really. He was just there all the time. We never spoke or mucked around like Jamie and I did. But after Jamie left and I ended up at Oxford, Richard was there, and we started doing more together. He’d invite me out for drinks with his friends, that included a lot of girls, I should’ve known from that alone that he wasn’t the kind of guy to stick to one woman. But he was nice, and he never really pushed for anything with me. It just sort of happened.
My pining for Jamie turned into angst and anger that he’d left and one night I kissed him. I kissed Richard. I started all of it. We never went on a date or anything, we either went out with the same friends or we studied together and after weeks of kissing and touching I asked him for more…and he gave it to me. He was gentle and he was nice. He never asked or pushed for more than I wanted to give him, but we just went along with it until it became a relationship and at nineteen, my second year at university, I was settled with him. He was Twenty-Three and in his last year. I thought that we’d break-up once he was back in London, but he kept coming back to see me and then he proposed. Out of nowhere. Or I thought it was out of nowhere. He completely blindsided me.
It was my third year and I wasn’t ready because I just wanted to get through my degree. I told him so the first time, and he didn’t bat an eyelid. He waited until the following year, and again I said I wasn’t ready even though he’d written down a detailed plan of what the next ten years of our lives would look like and I had to admit that it made sense to get marriage out of the way and then just focus on our careers and establishing ourselves, putting down roots. Still, every time he asked I’d think of Jamie. I knew that he had a girlfriend. I’d met her that Christmas just gone. She was beautiful and she was funny. Very American and friendly to a fault.
A few months later Phillip told me they were engaged, and I know I should’ve been happy for him, but it stung. It shouldn’t have, after all I was with Richard and he’d wanted to marry me too. I never understood why he wasn’t the one to tell me about Jamie’s engagement. Phillip said it was because Richard was scared of my reaction and I left it at that, I didn’t want to affirm his assumption. Anyway, the following year Jamie was back, and Jenna was with him. They got married in a Castle in Dorset. It was a massive fairy tale affair and the whole time I wanted to bolt. I didn’t want to hear their promises or see their smiles. I realised that I needed to move on. To let go of our one perfect kiss and get on with my life like he had with his.
Richard proposed again a few months later and I said yes. It was my last year at Oxford and the plan that Richard had shared with me never seemed so appealing like it did then.
We had our plan and we got married on a London
rooftop just after I graduated. It wasn’t anything big or over the top. To our mothers’ dismay it was small and informal. I’d worn a vintage type tea length dress and he’d worn chinos and a vest over his shirt. I called it understated elegance and Willow had called it a mistake.
She was right. I should’ve listened to her. I should’ve listened to Dorian when she told me it wasn’t too late to just walk away. I should’ve said no when my dad asked me if I was sure I wanted to go through with it just before he walked me down the short aisle.
We had two weeks in Hawaii for our honeymoon and then we were back. He wanted to specialise in Emergency Medicine and I wanted to go down the Cardiothoracic route. We were going to work our butts off and finish our specialist training before we even tried to have a baby. But I got distracted with my career, with trying to put the time and work into our marriage and coping with Phillip’s death. I let somethings slip. One being contraception.
We were two years into our plan, I’d just started my specialty training and he was almost halfway through his. And we were pregnant. I was pregnant. But even with my six-month maternity leave, I was still on track to complete my training as expected. My mum was excited to have another grandchild and she was adamant on looking after our child, so we could keep progressing our careers. It all seemed to fit and work out. Until it didn’t.
Everything fell apart in a matter of minutes. Ironic how everything fell to shit in one of the places we worshipped.
The minute that scalpel touched my skin we were doomed.
The moment our son refused to take his first breath our marriage took its last.
There’s a reason the saying life happens exists, and from my experience it’s not because it’s kind.
Downtime without Philippa always gave me too much time to think. Time to wallow. It didn’t even matter that I had prime time Friday night television in the background. I could feel myself itch to have something more to do. An emergency page would’ve been nice right about now. Although I couldn’t actually take it, because of the wine. Even though I hadn’t had enough to compromise my rationality or abilities and even though I’d moved on to coffee after my second glass.
I wasn’t one for hangovers and I always worried what would happen if Pippa needed me and I wasn’t in the right state to see to her.
Wine was definitely bad. So bad that it was actually good, because whilst I was reminiscing, worrying and trying my hardest not to think of the one person I shouldn’t be thinking about because…it’s complicated…he was the one thing on my brain. Rather apt considering brains were his specialty.
Christ, you just know that you need to call it a night when you’re laughing at the poor jokes you’re making in your head.
I grabbed the large black coffee that was probably just about warm and the pack of menthols from the coffee table. I wrapped my cardigan around me before I slid the sash window up and sat on the ledge. I lit a cigarette and took a long drag followed by a mouthful of my coffee. The only thing that was missing was a creamy Galaxy bar. It’d become a ritual of mine, especially when I was having a crappy day or just needed a pick me up.
Most of the neighbours had already closed their curtains and their cars lined the street. I hadn’t had a car in years. I honestly preferred to use a cab.
