You, Me and Us. Read online

  “Ah. Yes.”

  We stood in silence for a moment and looked each other up and down. I was pretty sure I knew what should come next. But you were still silent.

  “Erm, so yeah, I said it.” I started.

  I paused for a moment, I was unsure of how to continue, your face gave nothing away. Just as the words started to form in my mind, I was interrupted by a voice coming from behind us as the door opened from the union building once more.

  “Erin, Jimmy, hi you two.”

  I froze to the spot. You had to be fucking kidding me. I’d imagined it; I must’ve imagined it. I turned on the spot without speaking. For fuck’s sake. Daniel was stood in front of me.

  “Why?” is all I could muster up.

  “Well hello to you too mate.” He smiled and marched towards me. “Great job up there, you were… interesting.”

  He brushed passed me with a light pat on my shoulder and hugged you. He must have been squeezing you too hard because your face went red due to the pressure. After a few trips around the sun he let go of you.

  “Great to see you both.” He said.

  “Yeah you too.” I said. “Should we go in? The guys are going to have a drink they said.”

  “Yeah.” You said.

  “It’d be a pleasure!” Daniel said.

  And with that he linked your arm and marched the three of us inside.

  “So, I’d just reached the finishing line, and the guy who’d beat me by like three seconds was gloating. So, I just took my top off and pointed at my weighted vest like. You know.” Daniel paused for a moment and pointed down to his chest to emphasise the point. His hands were in the classic ‘gun’ signs.

  Ryan looked to Tom, who in turn looked at me. I looked back at Ryan who was now staring open-mouthed at Daniel.

  “Anyway, I’ll get another drink. Want one?” Daniel stood up.

  “Yeah, erm a beer please.” Said Ryan.

  “Same.” Said Tom.

  “Vodka and coke please.” You said.

  “I’m good thanks, plenty left.” I said as I tapped the pint glass in front of me. It contained only foam.

  “So that’s beer, beer, voddy coke, red wine for me, and you sure you don’t need anything Jimmy?” Daniel said.

  “Positive.”

  He nodded and walked towards the bar.

  “Who’s he?” said Ryan.

  “Erin’s…. friend.” I said.

  You looked at me and tilted your head for a second.

  “Oh.” Said Ryan.

  “You don’t like him, do you?” I tried to hide my smile.

  “No, he’s alright, bit chatty but he’s okay.” Ryan said, once again showing us all how much of a terrible liar he is.

  “I don’t care how much he talks as long as he keeps bringing us drinks.” Tom said.

  “Oh yeah Erin.” Said Ryan. “I’ve gotta say, thanks for Bang Bang. We’ll be keeping that in. As long as Jim doesn’t pour his heart out every time he sings it.”

  “Ha, ha.” I laughed and placed a poorly aimed kick under the table.

  “Ow!” you shouted. “Why would you kick me?”

  Right on cue, Daniel returned with a tray of drinks.

  “Oh, domestic.” He placed the tray on the table and began to pass drinks around. “Erin, Tom, Ryan, and Jim I forgot if you wanted one so I got you a pint anyway. I’m too generous for my own good.”

  He placed the full pint glass down in front of me. He knew I didn’t want one.

  “Thanks, but yeah I didn’t want one.”

  “Jimmy don’t be so rude.” You said.

  “Sorry.” I sighed. “Thanks Daniel.”

  I lifted the glass his way and nodded before taking a sip from the beer.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So, what brought you down here tonight?” Ryan asked.

  “Oh well, I love live music, so when Erin invited me I was always going to show up. I’m glad I did, you were very entertaining.”

  “Thanks.” Said Tom.

  “Wait, you invited him?” I said to you, caring very little that people surrounded us.

  “Yeah. Why?” you said.

  “Well you invited Charlie.”

  “I can’t invite more than one person?”

  “No course you can. Just.” I ran out of words at this point.

  “I’m going for a smoke, don’t follow me.” And with that you stood up and stormed across the room.

  Ryan and Tom looked at each other.

  “We’re going to go and pack up.” Tom said.

  “Yeah thanks for the drinks Dan.” Ryan added as they scarpered from the table.

  “It’s Daniel.” Daniel said, but they’d already left.

  I was left alone with him. I leant back in my chair.

  “So, are you not going to go after her?” he said.

  “No, she told me not to.”

  “Well if I know Erin, what she says and what she wants are two different things.”

  “Well she’s my girlfriend so I think I know what she wants.”

  “Well I was with her for six months and in that time- “

  “Honestly Daniel I couldn’t care less.” I said.

  “Do you have a problem with me?” he said.

  “What do you think? Do I have a problem with my girlfriend’s ex still sniffing around all the time? Yes, yes I do.”

  “Sniffing around? Me? I don’t know if you’ve noticed but she invited me. To her party and here.”

  “Yeah just to be polite.” I said. “And I don’t know why she’s being polite, after the way you messed her around.”

  “What?” he laughed.

  “Yeah she told me all about it. You never being there for her, getting involved with other girls, and being jealous of all her friends.”

  “Me?” he spat, his red wine dribbled out onto his bottom lip. “I wasn’t messing around with other girls. She was.”

  “She was messing around with other girls?”

  “No. She was messing around with other guys.”

  “Fuck off. Not Erin, she’s not like that.”

  “That’s what I thought. I was wrong. I won’t lie and say I was never jealous, but I had good reason to be.”

  I thought for a moment. It didn’t add up. You’d never told me the story this way around; you always said it was him, that he was manipulative and a fancied himself as some sort of player. A real piece of shit. Maybe he was just trying to manipulate me now?

  “No, you’re messing with me. If she did that to you, why would you be here?”

  “Well I’m over it. Plus, I have to re-sit my final year and all my friends have moved away, so it’s nice to get out.”

  “No, I’m not having it. I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to mess with my head.”

  Daniel smiled and drank the last dregs of his red wine. He stood up and flattened his jacket down.

  “Well there’s only one way to find out, have a look at her phone.”

  “No, I couldn’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her privacy.”

  “Well, she doesn’t deserve privacy if she can’t be trusted.”

  “She can be. It’s you who can’t be. You had your chance with her and you fucked it up, now you’re trying to fuck up mine.”

  “Sure mate.” He turned to leave, but tilted his head to the left back at me as he walked away. “Just have a check. One check.”

  I looked down into my pint glass and watched the bubbles erupt to the surface.

  Eventually, we found ourselves back in bed that evening. It felt like a million years since I’d left earlier that day for the gig. We’d shared a taxi home with the guys and got straight to bed so we hadn’t had much of a chance to speak. I could feel the coldness emanating from you. You jumped into bed and pulled the cover tightly over you, ensuring you kept a solid distance between the two of us. This was becoming a regular occurrence.

  “Hi.” I said.

  “Don’
t start.”

  “Don’t start what?”

  “Trying to be funny.”

  “I’m not. I just want to talk.”

  “Well maybe I don’t want to talk to you.”

  I sighed and moved a little bit closer to you. You shuffled away.

  “You’ll end up on the floor.” I said.

  “You’re lucky that you’re not already there.”

  “I know. Look I’m sorry about earlier. It was just a shock that he was there.”

  You turned around to face me.

  “Why though? He’s just a friend now.”

  “Yeah I know. Look I had a talk with him and genuinely I feel better about it.”

  “Well good for you, because I don’t.” you turned back around.

  I looked deep into the back of your head.

  “I’m really sorry. I was being crazy jealous but I promise I won’t do anything like that again.”

  You slowly turned around to face me. Some of the coldness seemed to have dissipated.

  “Fine. But you have to stop now please.”

  “I will, I will.” I paused for a moment and wondered whether I should go for a kiss or not. I chose against it. Maybe after we had our next conversation. “Anyway. Before Daniel turned up, I was asking you about the gig, and you know about Bang Bang?”

  “Mmmm hmm.” You said.

  “And you said you liked it?”

  You nodded back at me.

  “Well, er, did you like what I said before I sang, you know the love bit?”

  You didn’t speak for a moment. You just stared back at me.

  “Well that depends.” You said at long last.

  “On?”

  “Did you mean it?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I mean I knew what I felt but I couldn’t think of the right way to say it. I really was crazy about you, and I felt like I’d given my full self to the relationship… to you. I was all in. I knew what to say. The truth, anything less than that would be unfair to you. And to me.

  “I’m so in love with you.” I said.

  Now when you tell someone you love them for the first time you expect a certain response. And the response you don’t expect is that person’s face to drop. Unfortunately, that’s what happened. It was only a split second but it was enough to give away how you felt.

  “Thank you.” You said.

  I tilted my head and stared back at you. After a long awkward silence, you eventually spoke.

  “Sorry I’m just not ready to say it back yet. But I’m so happy you could say it to me.”

  You leant over and kissed me.

  “Good.” I said. My tone gave away how I felt.

  “Please don’t be sad, I like you a lot, and I care about you so much, it’s just I’ve never said that to a boyfriend before… but I’m close. Don’t be sad.”

  You punctuated your point with another kiss.

  “Let’s just get some sleep.”

  Another kiss and you turned over, dragging my arm over you so I spooned you.

  I’m not sure how long I lay there staring at the back of your head and the wall. But eventually your breathing slowed down and you began to softly snore. Shit. What had just happened? I really did not expect you to say that to me. I was sad, even though you’d told me not be, and I was confused. We were living together. We were all in, right? At least I thought you were.

  It was those thoughts that occupied my mind that night as you fell into a deeper and deeper sleep. Sometime later, with my arm growing numb under you, I was still deep in thought. But then something snapped me out of it. A flash of light appeared from the bedside table. It was your phone. I craned my neck over you to look at the screen. It read:

  1 New Message- Daniel Mattock

  Chapter Eight – The Night of The Wonder-Vac

  It was like a demon inside me. A dark feeling of anxious energy constantly bubbled away below the surface. I couldn’t come to terms with the fact that I was clearly a lot more committed to us than you were. Over the next week you had a few work-related events you had to attend (who knew working for a Mexican chain-restaurant could create such an active social life?), and seeing as I couldn’t accompany you, I’d lie in bed and worry. Worry about where you were, whom you were with, and what you were doing. Everything was a concern. My mind seemed to race at a hundred miles an hour, and wouldn’t settle until I heard the click of the lock in the flat and know, at long last, you were home.

  One of the side effects of this constant feeling of dread was that I no longer felt any nerves for the band’s upcoming gig. This was our chance to make a real impression on some very well-connected people in the industry, but as much as I tried to psyche myself up for it, I just couldn’t find the right motivation. During our rehearsals Tom and Ryan would be tearing it up, producing some of the best performances I’d ever seen from the two of them, whist I’d be stood in front of them unable to find any sort of power. I was singing on the surface level only. Performing just on the face of it, nothing from the soul or the heart or even the brain. And it was really starting to tell. I missed my cues, forgot lyrics and failed to hit many notes.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Ryan said following one of my insipid renditions of Candy.

  “Nothing. I don’t feel well. I just can’t get going.” The words were simply coming out without much thought behind them.

  “Well fucking get going, we’ve got the biggest gig of our lives coming up. Come on.”

  And with that he strummed the opening chords to the next tune.

  I didn’t look at your phone that night. I really did think about it. I stared at the home screen for a long time, I even picked up your phone but I just couldn’t bring myself to open the message. I didn’t want to be that type of boyfriend, but the feelings that were tormenting me would not let up. I tried to tell myself over and over again that you clearly did like me; we were living together for God’s sake! But still that feeling inside me gnawed away. However, I kept it at bay and chose not to look. Plus I didn’t know your passcode.

  Late on a Friday evening I was stood behind the bar pouring pint after pint. Something about doing a repetitive dull job took my mind away from the concerns I was having. It was a nice distraction but like a plaster over a gunshot wound, it wasn’t really doing any good. I was half way through filling a pint glass with 4% Belgian alcohol when the loud girl I was serving suddenly realised I would be the next target for her megaphone voice.

  “Oi, I didn’t fucking want that.” She screeched.

  I looked up very slowly and made eye contact with her. Her pupils were dilated and her jaw seemed to hang at an odd angle.

  “You just said ‘a pint of wheat beer’ to me.”

  “No, I never, I said I wanted a vodka lemonade!”

  “Sorry I probably misheard you.”

  “How can you confuse those two?!”

  “I don’t know. Let me just get rid of this and I’ll get you a vodka.”

  “With lemonade.”

  I clenched my teeth together and hissed through them.

  “Yes.”

  I stopped the flow of the pump and carried the beer into the back room. I slithered past the crates of alcohol and sat down on the bench we used for unauthorized breaks. I sighed deeply and began to swig from the beer I’d poured in error. I looked at the blank brick wall in front of me and listened to the filters pump as people poured cheap imitations for coke and lemonade into customers’ glasses.

  My face felt hot and I could feel the emotion in me bubble to the surface. My main reaction to the hot, salty tears running down my face was confusion. Hundreds of customers had shouted at me in my time at Ronnie’s. But this particular one had triggered something inside me. The demon in my stomach had erupted once more and it was now in full control of my body. I drank deeply again from the glass. After I swallowed the last of the beer I breathed out for the first time in an effort to calm myself, yet all that did was produce more tears to spring from my eyes. I was
on the verge of sobbing like a baby. My breathing had become fast and I felt so hot I scanned the room for another cold drink. I dropped my glass to the floor, it clattered on the tiles, and put my hands over my face. At this point I let myself sob. Soon my hands and arms were wet.