‘Look, can we talk more about this later?’ I plead, feeling wretched. I thought breaking up with my first boyfriend would feel grown up but it feels awful and cruel. ‘Like, maybe I can come back to visit at the weekend? We – oh, actually I have plans this weekend, there’s a balloon party in college – but maybe the weekend after or the one after that? We can go through everything properly and I can explain? I’m so sorry, Alistair.’
Instead of answering, he hangs up and I drop my phone onto the sofa beside me, my stomach and chest empty and raw.
‘Finally!’ Across the room, my new friend laughs meanly, and I suddenly miss Louise and Shelley so intensely. They feel a long way off, just when I need them so much. Louise is back at home, having a gap year and taking a few acting classes. Apparently she wants to make a career out of it, which I’m guessing won’t last. Shelley’s gone off to study computer programming at Warwick Uni. She’s been a bit distant lately, and I’ve been worried about her replacing us. I swear now, as I watch my roommate collecting her bag and coat, that I won’t lose Shelley as well. I can’t lose her or Louise. Not now I’ve let Alistair go.
It hits me suddenly that I will probably never see or speak to my boyfriend again. Myex-boyfriend. My first love, my only love. What have I done? I run to the loo, where I throw up vile green liquid that burns my throat for days afterwards.
CHAPTER FIVE
No, fuck this. I’m not letting him do this to me. He can’t just run out of here on me. I deserve better! Or if not better, I at least deserve answers.
Casually, I grab my bag, smiling blandly – as if this is how drinks with pals always end! Y’know, my friend and I just leave a few minutes apart, doesn’t everyone? I hitch the strap up my shoulder, give a fake yawn to show how at ease I am with this situation, then turn for the door. Moving fast but also a kind of studied slow.
The cold air outside hits me and I realize that I am tipsier than I’d meant to get. Did I say something stupid and drunken that I’ve already forgotten? Why did he leave like that? I search frantically left and right, before spotting his head, far off but taller than everyone else – just like always – heading in the direction of the tube station.
‘Alistair!’ My voice is strained as I shout after him. I can’t tell if he heard, but he doesn’t turn around.
What the fuck happened? What I said about ourrelationship wasn’tthatbad, was it? I thought we were having a nice time, I was even starting to think… maybe. But I guess that could’ve been the wine. No, itwasnice, wewerehaving fun, and he doesn’t get to stomp off like that. We’re adults, not kids anymore. Temper tantrums and stropping off are sooo fifteen years ago.
I take off after him, weaving between the late commuter crowds.
‘ALISTAIR!’ I try again now I’m closer. A few people turn towards me but not the person I need. ‘ALISTAAAAAAAAAAIR!’ I take off after him again, nearly bowling over a chugger and a few confused tourists. When I catch him at last, just before he reaches the steps down into the underground, I grab his arm. He doesn’t resist.
‘Alistair!’ I yank him around to face me but he looks up at the sky. ‘Dude, what the fuck? Why did you leave? Why are you so angry? What did I do?’
He sighs now and looks down, at last, into my eyes.
‘I just—’ Someone shoulder-barges him, muttering about ‘bloody tourists’, and Alistair leads me away from the busy entrance. We stand in front of a towering glass window of a huge department store and I wait, cross now.
‘Look, Esther… I’m sorry I left like that, but I couldn’t listen to you sitting there doing the same thing you always did back then. It’s always the same with you, even after all this time.’
I’m baffled. ‘What? What did I do? What are you talking about?’
He looks up at the sky again, clearly uncomfortable.‘You… well, you always made out like our relationship was nothing. Just some silly little thing that didn’t matter. Like we were kids playing a game.’
I say nothing, taking this in. Is that true? I do remember telling myself back then not to get carried away in the relationship. It was like a mantra: this is your first love and he is too good for you, it will not last. He will leave you for someone better. I made sure to remind myself how unimportant this romance was and that it would be OK when it ended because it was just a first love.
But I don’t remember saying it to Alistair. Notthatmuch. And even if I did, he always had so much confidence, I assumed he knew he could have me for as long as he wanted me. Then I’d get dumped for some other much prettier and smarter girl, who he’d probably end up marrying and they would giggle about his trivial little school girlfriend who had the audacity to think she could keep him.
‘We were together foryears, Esther, years!’ He whispers the next part. ‘You were my first love, we lost our virginity to each other. It was important and meaningful and I adored you. But you were always pushing me away or playing down what we had. You never had any idea how much I liked you, even though I told you constantly. When you agreed to go out with me, I couldn’t even speak to you for, like, two weeks because I was so nervous. Nick had to force me into going to speak to you!’
I think back to those early days. How we barely made eye contact in the weeks after he asked me out. We would standnear each other in the playground – him kicking a ball, me drinking Apple Tango – and not exchange one word. It took us ages to start acting like a couple.
He sighs and continues. ‘We – you – made so many promises about us staying together when you went off to university. We were going to make it work, and I believed it. But then you went away and hardly called me. When you ended it, you acted like it barely mattered. Likewebarely mattered. I was fucking heartbroken.’ He sighs again, like it still hurts. ‘It took me bloody ages to get over you. And then you casually drop back into my life – or my Facebook Messenger app at least – and act like none of it was a big deal. Esther, itwasa big deal. I loved you. I thought we were going to be together forever.’ He kicks the ground with his shoe. ‘I just don’t want you telling me it didn’t matter.’
In the silence that follows, surrounded by the noise of London, I feel shame rain down on my head. Because he’s right – I did end it like that. I acted like he wouldn’t care because I really thought he wouldn’t. I had brainwashed myself into thinking it was a silly little teen romance that he didn’t really care that much about. And I cut him off so cruelly. I did it over the phone one night, in a two-minute call, goaded on by that mean girl I shared a room with, whose name I never knew. And then I got dressed up and went to a student night in a local bar where I flirted with a bunch of boys and pretended I was fine. I blocked out any sadness I felt by snogging the hordes on offer without a second thought. In hindsight, it was deeply unfair.
‘You wouldn’t speak to me after you dumped me.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘And I only had Nick to report back to me from uni.’
‘Nick Wilde from school? What did he tell you?’ I reel. Nick and I were the only ones from our sixth form to go north, up to Durham University, but we barely had anything to do with one another. We both wanted to escape our school personas, eager to start anew with different identities.
‘Not much,’ he shrugs. ‘Just that you’d moved on and you seemed happy. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted to hear.’ He laughs now, a little uneasily, and I hang my head.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I say quietly, meaning it.
‘Hey,’ he shrugs again, but this time like he’s shaking off his old pain. ‘It is what it is. And I’m sorry, too. Like you say, we were kids.’ He laughs again, this time a little more easily. ‘I overreacted before, sorry. It was stupid. It was just a bit triggering, hearing you dismissing what we had – the eighteen-year-old me clearly hasn’t quite let it go! But twenty-nine-year-old Alistair understands a little more.’
‘No, you were right.’ I shake my head and someone tuts in my direction, barging past and shoving me closer to Alistair. We are suddenly within breathing distance and he looks at me intently. For a moment I think he will kiss me, and a big part of me wants him to. There is still so much between us, and there could be even more if I just leaned in two more inches.
