An Idiot in Love (a laugh out loud comedy) (18 page)

              She grabbed her coat from behind the chair, averting her eyes from mine as she threw it over her shoulders.

              I stood up, exposed the key in my open hand. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean--’

              ‘Too late Kieran. Too late,’ she repeated softly.

              ‘We can make this work,’ I argued.

              She shook her head. ‘Maybe,’ she said, hanging her head, almost in shame for the outburst. ‘We need some time apart. I need a break from you. Time to think.’             

              She offered me a sincere smile and then left. She didn’t see the key in my hand and I didn’t mention it. It didn’t seem relevant.

              The following week Melissa handed in her notice at work. She said she was going to concentrate on her studies and take some time off.

              I was confident I could get her back at the end of the proposed break, Matthew told me otherwise.

              ‘She just said that,’ he insisted. ‘I’m sorry to break it to ya mate, it’s over, she doesn’t want you back.’

              He wasn’t sorry; he didn’t like Melissa, mainly because she saw through his charm and knew he was a sleazy womaniser.

              ‘I told you she was evil,’ he added. ‘I told you to never trust the shy ones, they’re always fucking crazy.’

              I was depressed, but I was still confident that Matthew was wrong and Melissa would take me back.

              I wanted to stay close to her, to keep up the pretence of a struggling relationship as opposed to one that had ended. I left messages on her answer machine. I emailed her. I texted her. It wasn’t as obsessive as it had been, but I didn’t let a day slip by without asking how she was or telling her what I had been up to.

              She didn’t reply to a single message and she never picked up the phone when I rang.

              I had all but given up hope by the third week and had let a few days pass without getting in touch. Then I had let Matthew take advantage of my weakened state and had agreed to join him on a double date.

              ‘I picked up this shy girl once,’ Matthew continued as I stared absently across the dressed dining table at him. ‘Barely spoke, giggled a lot, was always smiling. I bought her a few drinks and took her back to my house; she turned into a fucking animal.’ He raised his eyebrows and took a small sip from his glass of wine. ‘Spent the next morning drying my arsehole and cleaning chocolate outta my pubes.’

              I twisted my face in disgust, the melancholia momentarily forgotten.

              Matthew shrugged, clearly amused. ‘Just saying, you gotta watch out for the shy ones.’

              ‘Melissa wasn’t like that,’ I said softly.

              ‘What about the time at the nudist beach? Not the actions of a shy girl.’

              I shrugged. ‘She could be slightly eccentric, I guess.’             

              ‘And didn’t she ask if you wanted to have a threesome with her friend and husband?’

              I nodded slowly. I still hadn’t understood her motives. I had turned her down at the time; I thought she was joking, or testing me. She wasn’t, she had been disappointed.

              ‘She’d had a lot to drink then,’ I said unsurely.

              Matthew opened his mouth to repeat something banal, and then he noticed his date and her friend enter the restaurant. ‘Finally,’ he mumbled, standing up and pasting a smile on his face. ‘Thought they’d never come.’

              I rose unsteadily to my feet. I had
hoped
they wouldn’t come.

              The date was less traumatic than I had expected and I began to unwind and forget about Melissa. By the time the two of them disappeared to the bathroom I was visibly elevated, and Matthew noticed.

              ‘Told you this was a good idea,’ he said, pointing his glass of wine at me, the red liquid sloshed drunkenly around the broad bowl.

              I nodded. It had been. I liked her; she was loud, merry, enthusiastic. She was the opposite of the introverted and withdrawn Melissa. I didn’t know if I liked her just because of her contrast to Melissa or if I actually valued those traits in a woman, but it didn’t matter.

              ‘Why are you with Melanie?’ I said, referencing Matthew’s date, the skinny, bubbly brunette who had laughed at everything and had no opinions of her own to express. ‘I thought you didn’t like them shy? She seems very shy.’

              Matthew grinned. ‘I said they were crazy, I never said I didn’t like them that way.’

              ‘And the night with the chocolate pubes and anal lube?’

              ‘Best night of my life.’

              I nodded, understandably.

              ‘You like Jessie then?’ He quizzed, picking herb infused flesh from the remaining bones of his main course.

              ‘She’s sweet,’ I said. ‘Not as shy as Melanie.’

              ‘Unlucky for you huh?’

              The night had been spent as a group, conversing as four people. But when the girls returned from the bathroom they had a different agenda and concentrated solely on their separate dates.

              The more I found out about Jessie the more I liked. She was attractive, her skin the darkened shades of middle-eastern parentage, her eyes a hypnotising shade of black; she was exciting, passionate about everything she talked about; she was witty, possessed of a boisterous laugh which she threw her head back to fully commit too.

              After dessert we stayed for a few drinks and then went back to the flat that Melanie shared with Jessie. When Melanie disappeared into one of the bedrooms with Matthew, I stayed on the sofa with Jessie.

              ‘Do you want to join me in the other room?’ Jessie asked after a patient wait, her eyes twinkling with the promise of sex.

              We had been listening to Matthew going at it for twenty minutes or more. Meanie’s bed squeaked under their movements, the headboard banged intermittently against the far wall, vibrating noise throughout the small flat.

              They had tried to drown out their intercourse by playing Rock music on a Hi-fi, but that had only encouraged Matthew to thrust in time to the songs. It was disconcerting, but Jessie didn’t seem to mind.

              ‘I can’t,’ I told her, hanging my head.

              ‘It’s okay,’ Jessie replied understandably. She pulled away put her glass on the table and then looked at me earnestly. ‘Is there a problem
downstairs
?’ she wondered.

              ‘With this racket I wouldn’t be surprised.’

              ‘No,’ she scratched her forehead. ‘I mean, you know,
downstairs,
’ she nodded towards my groin.

              ‘Oh, oh, God no. I’m fine.’ I shifted uneasily on my seat, and then opened my legs wide, as if to show that I had the correct equipment hidden underneath my jeans.

              She seemed relieved. ‘What is it then? If you don’t mind talking about it.’

              ‘I have a girlfriend.’

              ‘Oh,’ the relief vanished in an instant. She deflated like a balloon.

              ‘I think,’ I added.

              ‘You think?’

              ‘It’s complicated.’

              ‘Long distance?’

              ‘Very.’

              ‘Oh.’

              ‘Well,
not really.
’

              She looked perplexed.

              ‘Not at all,’ I clarified. ‘But it
is
complicated.’

              ‘I see.’

              ‘I like you though,’ I was quick to add.

              She smiled gratefully. ‘That’s nice.’

              She picked up her glass of wine, tucked her legs underneath her and then stared at me deeply. With her sombre expression, her slightly tired features and the halo of light emanating from the lamp behind her, she looked like an Eastern princess. Being alone with her at that moment, with the edge of her exuberance extracted by the night, and her beauty intensified by the light, would have been perfect, if not for the fact that Matthew was now humping and grunting to the tune of
We Will Rock You.

              ‘Maybe we can do it another time,’ I said.

              I was entranced by her, and knew that I needed to get a definitive answer from Melissa before I did anything with Jessie. As nasty and standoffish as she had been, she was too sweet to cheat on.

             
‘Definitely.’

              ‘And I’ll sleep with you then,’ I joked. ‘I promise.’

              Jessie laughed. ‘I’ll keep you to your word.’

              My good mood continued until the following Saturday morning. I had initially planned to mope around the house all day and maybe leave a few more messages on Melissa’s machine. Instead I woke with a start, made a hefty breakfast and then took a call from Jessie.

              ‘You sound jovial this morning,’ she noted after my energetic greeting.

              ‘Jessie, hey, how are you?’ I asked, the phone pressed between my ear and shoulder as I buttered some toast.

              ‘I’m good, a little hung over, but good. Nothing a fry-up can’t fix.’

              ‘Is Matthew still there?’ I wondered.

              ‘No, he left in rush this morning.’

              Matthew always left in a rush after sex. Melanie was lucky he had stayed until morning, usually he was out the door before the sheet stains had time to dry.

              ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I was wondering if you’d be up for a little fun tonight.’

              ‘Fun?’

              ‘A little party,’ she hesitated; she seemed ill at ease. ‘Melanie and I are throwing one of
our parties
,’ she said this like I knew what one of their parties entailed, I didn’t, but a party was a party.

              I switched the phone from my right ear to my left. ‘Sounds great.’

              She seemed relieved; I could hear a sigh crackle down the line. ‘I was going to ask Matthew, but I didn’t catch him. Maybe you can invite him?’

              I agreed to ask Matthew along and hung up after getting instructions on the address and time.

              After a short afternoon nap I dressed and prepared for the party. I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Matthew and didn’t mind, I had a feeling the night was going to be about me and Jessie anyway.

              I left a message on Melissa’s phone, asking her to ring me. I said it was urgent. I intended to tell her it was over and therefore get permission to sleep with Jessie, but she didn’t phone back. I left the house less happy state than when I had woken that morning, but I was content I was going to see Jessie again, even if I wasn’t going to sleep with her.

              The address I had been given led me to a semi-detached farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. The building sat on its own at the end of a long country road, which cut a winding path through fields blistered with hay bales and the quickly greying forms of sheep and cattle.

              A log stretch of road in front of the house served as the driveway, numerous cars were strewn on its bobbled surface; a vast mechanical cornucopia as far as the darkness allowed me to see. All the cars were in better condition than mine, which could barely be classed as a car.

              I parked up behind the house, nestled between a thick hedge and the side of a damp sodden barn, so no one would know I was the guy who arrived in the painted wheelbarrow.             

              I didn’t know if I was headed to a formal party, a dinner party or a drunken rave, so I had dressed to prepare for all occasions. I wore jeans so dark and well ironed they could pass for formal trousers if no one paid too much attention, a plain black shirt buttoned over to conceal a casual T-shirt, and a black denim jacket.

              The house on the left side had been lit up from all angles. Three windows at the top and two on the bottom blazed with red, blue and yellow lights. The stone bricks breathed music.

              I heard sounds of exertion as I stepped to the front door. I thought I heard someone scream, nothing blood curdling; something pleasurable. The overexcited calls of a woman enjoying herself perhaps.

              I began to remove my jacket, deciding that I certainly wasn’t heading into a dinner party, when the front door flew open and a short man with flabby man-boobs and a frighteningly large penis, burst out into the night.

              He brushed past me as if he hadn’t seen me. I moved aside, wondering if it was his knee or his dick that had whacked against my thigh.

              ‘I want to dance!’ he yelled, throwing his arms into the air. He hopped onto the gravel driveway and sidestepped around a convertible. His bare feet crunched against the coarse stones, he didn’t seem to mind. ‘I want to dance and sing with the fairies!’ he continued, disappearing into the blackness.

              I removed my jacket, contemplated running back to my car, and then stepped into a halo of fluorescent light that engulfed the hallway ahead of me.

              I waited by the door for a moment, my hand on the handle, my eyes on the fields where the fairy-dancer had disappeared. I didn’t know whether I should leave it open for him to return or not, I certainly didn’t want him to--

              ‘Hello Kieran.’

              The voice came from behind me; someone had joined me in the hallway. I recognised the voice instantly; it was the voice I had spent all night listening to, the voice I had driven for an hour to hear.

              I turned around with a broad and expectant smile on my face, that smile faded into something obscure when I saw that Jessie was completely naked.

              ‘Am I early?’ I said.

              I knew I was late, but I didn’t know any other reason for her to be naked. Not that she would walk around the house naked before a party anyway, it wasn’t even
her
bloody house.