Page 123 of Don't You Forget About Me
My eyes are smarting now. ‘I was never the best at resisting the crowd. I know you didn’t like that about me. Playing to the gallery. Wanting to be popular.’
‘Getting to know you at this age, I could reassess all that. Yeah, seeing you again, I came in with that prejudice – that you were somehow shallow and meaningless, didn’t have any real principles. What do they say, “a feather for any wind”? But now I see that you please other people, you put their feelings first. That generosity of caring what someone else thinks, it’s a great quality, it’s not weakness. It’s not your fault if others have exploited it. Sorry, I’m mansplaining you to yourself.’
I laugh.
‘And George, at school, I was just insecure. Frightened those people would be more appealing to you, than me. You did what you had to, to get by. We all did. I had no right to judge you. And if I couldn’t manage that at eighteen, I fucking well should’ve been man enough by thirty.’
Lucas draws breath.
‘I shouldn’t have needed to hear what you said last night. I wanted to be everything to you, and instead I was another one of the men who was angry with you for not being able to have you, the way I wanted.’
I expected Lucas, if he found out, to feel bad. I hadn’t expected this level of self-reflection, or self-excoriation. For all my yearning to hear his side of it, I actually hadn’t dwelt on what his reaction to the truth might be, until now.
I, in turn, underestimated him.
Why didn’t I message Lucas, in the weeks after, and say: Hey, just so you know, that wasn’t what it looked like? Because he was either that easily unfaithful or he’d gone with another girl to rub my face in it, so there was nothing left to fight for.
Because I didn’t think he’d believe me. And I thought, in the brutal laws of teenaged courtship, with the naiveté of inexperience, that I had done what they were saying.
But most of all, it was because in my gut I knew that if Lucas had said:Now I know you’re a victim, you can have my heart again, it wouldn’t have been worth anything.
Love isn’t meant to work like that.
43
There is a pause while we recalibrate with the new information we both have. It’s not uncomfortable, just reflective.
Lucas looks up, smiles a bashful half smile at me.
‘I have other thoughts, but apology now made, do you want me to go on, or do you want me to sod off out of your kitchen?’ he says.
‘I want you to go on. Tell me whatever you want. If I disagree, I have a voice I can use here too.’ I smile.
Lucas nods, and swallows.
‘I think you might know, maybe you didn’t, but I had a weapons-grade crush on you, before we were put together on that English homework.’ He smiles at me, this adult version of Lucas, and I can’t believe I was ever so lucky. ‘I worshipped you.’
Oh. Wow. I definitely didn’t fall in love by myself. I can have those memories back, restored, like old prints colourised.
‘I knew you’d not be able to pick me out of a line-up, in return. It was a grind of a couple of years, to be honest, coming to Yorkshire, leaving my mates behind in Ireland, being teased for my accent and trying to play it down. Then I saw this vision, with an infectious laugh that I could hear across the common room. You were like the human antidote to my misery. A rainbow in the grey. I felt like God sent me the girl with the golden hair, to remind me there were still things worth hanging around for.’
I don’t know what to say, other than grin like an idiot.
Lucas shuffles his feet and breaks eye contact.
‘You didn’t know how well liked you were, how popular you were. Not only with the dickheads, with everyone, because you were kind. You had a lot more status than you thought. You talked on stage about having to work for approval, being some sort of an also-ran, but that’s not how it appeared to everyone else. Having got to know you as an adult, I’d say that’s still true. People flock to you, they’re drawn to you. Not because of the way you look, because you’re warm.’
Lucas feels this way about me? I will cherish these words ’til I die.
‘Anyway, then we were put together on that project, and I panicked that I’d make a tool of myself, and idolised-from-afar Georgina Horspool might be a let-down. Like, even your name was like reciting a magic spell to me. How could you live up to that? But not only did you live up to it, you were nicer and wittier and more interesting than I could have dreamed, and most incredibly of all, you seemed to like me. I was … what’s the word …’
It’s a bittersweet pleasure, hearing you made someone feel like this, but in the past tense, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘… I thought you were too good to be true, I couldn’t believe it. That idea ended up being a problem. Paranoia crept in, that I was right, that it couldn’t be true. Do you remember the evening we had to walk home on opposite sides of the street because you thought you’d seen your mate?’
‘No …?’ I say, squinting. I had genuinely lost this to mists. Concentrating, I vaguely remember something involving hiding from Jo’s brother. I’d thought it was larks.
‘I started to worry after that: I was a guilty secret. That you’d never want to be public. That I couldn’t ever be your boyfriend. You were using me for practice before university. I mean, even being used by you was not something I could turn down but I’d fallen so hard in love, it was no longer enough.’
