Sticks and Stones (7 page)

Indifference

Lou was exhausted. Why she had been strong armed into coming to the pub was a mystery. She would have much rather let her thirtieth birthday slip by unnoticed. Which was weird for her; she had always been a birthday girl.

In fact, since leaving home, her twenty-first had been the only one she hadn’t enjoyed thoroughly. It was a huge marquee-based extravaganza at her parents’ house and she should have loved every minute. But Dylan disappearing into the hay barn with Milly Jones hadn’t been a highlight of the evening, and her mother had managed to get a few digs in (including ‘the incident’ which Lou tried not to remember). None of those occurrences were entirely foreign to her and it had almost been worth it to see all her friends having a laugh together.

So, by all accounts, Lou should have been chaffing at the bit for a big party, but when Frankie pressed her she just shrugged it off and claimed she couldn’t be bothered. Which actually wasn’t far from the truth. The extra hours she’d been putting in were wearing her down.

Having a disinterested orthopaedic surgeon on her team for six months had increased her workload but she’d managed. But over the few last months, since they had threatened to remove Dylan from the rotation, she had been covering for him in an attempt to make him look good, and now she was really struggling.

To top it all off her yearly appraisal was coming up and she didn’t feel nearly as confident as she had in the past. There were two audits she had yet to finish, and a poster presentation she had to submit before she would be even halfway ready, and somehow she didn’t think her performance evaluations would be that stellar either.

It wasn’t just all the work stuff that was exhausting though; she was tired of hating Dylan. To go from loving him so fervently to hating him with equal passion was agonizing. She had come to the decision that indifference was the key and had decided to look on the bright side; at least she’d finally been cured of her ridiculous crush.

She remembered every poisonous word he said to her in the mess with absolute clarity. Some of it she could have forgiven. He’d got the wrong end of the stick and he was angry, so some of the things he said were understandable, but not the stuff about her mother.

Not when he knew.

He knew what it was like for her.

That…that she couldn’t forgive. That was what broke her trust in him; broke her love for him. At least now she could move on. That is, if she could summon up the energy. Rich was still making it known in his subtle way that he was interested. Lou had to give it to him; he was persistent.

‘Happy birthday!’ The chorus of voices assaulted Lou as she pushed open the door to the pub and her head snapped up. The place was completely rammed. Every head was turned towards her and Frankie, who was beaming and bouncing up and down on the spot excitedly.

‘I know you said you didn’t want a fuss,’ Frankie said, ‘but I couldn’t help myself. You would have never let me get away with no party on my birthday. Lou smiled at Frankie and tried to muster as much enthusiasm as she could, giving her a big hug and spying the huge cake balanced on a table in the middle of the pub. It was a massive, exact replica of Lou’s favourite pair of shoes, complete with spiked, ridiculously high heel, red sole, and intricate design. Lou pulled back and looked at Frankie, cupping her face with her hands.

‘I don’t deserve you as my best friend you know,’ she whispered, and she knew that, despite the noise in the pub, Frankie had heard her when her eyes filled with tears and she gave Lou a shaky smile. After that it was a whirlwind of hugs, kisses, old lady jokes and the like.

‘Hey babes.’ She turned to see Dylan standing in front of her, his hands shoved into his pockets. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said, offering a small smile. For the last month since their fight in the mess there seemed to be some sort of unspoken agreement between them: no more physical contact. After years of teasing and casual affection the difference was stark, but at the end of the day Lou thought it was probably for the best. A clean break was what she needed and that was exactly what she was getting. She summoned up the strained smile that she used with increasing frequency when he was around, and pushed her hair back behind her ears.

‘Thanks Dylan,’ she mumbled, looking away quickly from his gaze, and she heard him sigh.

‘Come on honey, time to do the candles.’ Frankie was tugging on her hand and looking at Dylan warily. Lou had managed to convince her to speak to Dylan again after about a week of the silent treatment. She was pretty sure that Frankie had
never
given anyone the silent treatment, let alone for a whole week. So she was touched that Frankie would do it in her defence, but enough was enough. She didn’t want to ruin Frankie’s relationship with Dylan when it was already on shaky ground after Frankie had found out how Dylan had kept Tom and her apart at Uni.

Unfortunately Lou had had to lead by example, and that meant she’d had to pretend that her heart wasn’t broken, and force herself to be around Dylan as if nothing had happened. She lied to Frankie and the others, told them that the little scene in the mess was nothing, and that she was over it so they should be too. How she felt about Dylan had changed, but she still cared about him and she didn’t want him cut off from everyone.

‘Okay Frankster, lead the way.’ Lou turned away from Dylan but not before she saw Katie bounding up to him. This was another new development over the last month; Dylan it seemed had finally started a proper relationship. If Lou had still been in love with him she would have sunk into another pathetic Dylan-induced depression. Thankfully her emotions had settled into a comforting blanket of numbness, which she told herself was a relief. She was, however, confused by his choice.

Dylan had always seemed to go for shy, quiet types and Katie was certainly neither of those; she was a small dark-haired bundle of limitless energy, and, much to Lou’s annoyance, completely adorable. Katie was a GP in Sarah’s village and Sarah’s best friend, and as such they had all met her occasionally over the last few months since Tom and Frankie got together. But Dylan only started taking an interest in her over the last three weeks or so. Lou braced for the onslaught of cute verbal diarrhoea likely to emanate from Katie as she approached, but was shocked when another voice cut through the murmurings around her.

‘Louise, there you are.’

No.

Please no.

‘It’s such a crush in here, we thought we’d never find you.’ Lou turned and was confronted by both her parents. Her mother was brushing some, no doubt imaginary, dirt from her pristine white silk blouse, and her dad was shifting on the spot in his Armani suit, looking noticeably uncomfortable in the small pub. Great, this party just got better and better.

‘Mum? Dad? What are you doing here?’

‘Don’t looked so shocked darling,’ her mum said, frowning at her. ‘It
is
your birthday. We popped into the flat earlier to see you, and Frankie told us about the party. So we thought: why not pop along?’ Her mum gave her a tight smile then moved to air kiss both her cheeks. Lou obediently went through the hollow ritual with both her parents, wondering why they would be showing so much interest this year after so many years of indifference.

Her twenty-first party had been an excuse to show off to all their friends, but since then they had lapsed back into the rather casual attitude they’d always had towards her birthday. Some years they sent her a card or even rang her, but to actually want to see her was rare indeed.

‘But…but…’ Lou didn’t know if she could handle her parents, or more specifically her mother, on top of everything.

‘I’m really sorry Mr and Mrs Sands but we’ve go to cut the cake now,’ Frankie had subtly inserted herself between Lou and her parents and was ushering Lou away.

‘Don’t you think you should change first darling?’ Lou hated how her mum managed to make an endearment like darling seem like a sarcastic sneer. She managed to convey in just that one word how very far Lou actually was from being her darling.

‘I think I look fine mum,’ Lou replied. ‘Everyone knows I’ve come straight from work.’

Lou’s mum emitted a ladylike but derisive snort, communicating exactly what she thought of Lou’s outfit, and Lou was about to turn back when she felt a strong arm at her back.

‘See you later Mr and Mrs S,’ Dylan threw over his shoulder as he propelled Lou forward through the crowd. Lou tried to push away, but he just pulled her closer to his side.

‘Your fucking mother,’ he growled under his breath.

‘I thought you agreed with my fucking mother,’ Lou mumbled, still straining away from him.

‘I told you babes; I didn’t mean any of that bollocks I spewed.’ Lou glanced up at Dylan and saw that his jaw was tight, his eyes flashing with anger. She sighed.

‘Let’s not go over it again. What does it matter anyway?’ They had reached the cake in the centre of the pub and Lou shrugged out of Dylan’s grip.

‘Fine,’ he snapped. ‘Right. What does it matter?’

*****

Dylan bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself saying anymore as he backed away from Lou.

She tells him and everyone else she’s forgiven him. Bullshit.

She says it doesn’t matter. Bullshit.

She claims everything is fucking fine. Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit.

Christ, she was stubborn. He had already known this about her, but a whole month of cold indifference and blank expressions was impressive, even for her.

Frustratingly he couldn’t even justify his current anger towards her. She was doing everything she could to see that he cruised by in the two half days he was forced to spend in elderly care. A list was thrust into his hand before every ward round with all the prep work done and ready for him. He was encouraged to bugger off as soon as the boss was out of sight, and in truth the whole thing was being achieved with very little effort on his part. It also wasn’t quite sitting right and he might even be starting to feel a tad guilty. After all he knew there must have been a fair amount of extra work involved, not only preparing him for all the ward rounds, but also her doing all the jobs generated from the round by herself. But his weak attempts to stay on had been met with more blank stares and dismissive gestures, so he’d decided not to push it. 

To be honest he was over the whole thing. So what if she thought she’d teach him a lesson and make him waste more time pill pushing? He didn’t care anymore. All he wanted was for her to be back to her old self. No, he thought darkly as he looked over to where she was laughing her arse off with the group that had quickly formed around her, she was her old self with everyone else, it was just him she was indifferencing to death.

He watched as Frankie pushed her way to the cake and lit the candles. The lights were dimmed and the whole packed pub sang a hearty happy birthday to her, before she smiled her dazzling smile and started to bend down. He felt himself break out into a sweat whilst watching the graceful arch of her back as she lifted her head and pursed her lips to blow out the candles. One hand holding onto the edge of the table, the other holding the heavy mass of her blond waves back from her face, as the light from the candles lit up her exquisite features.

Every movement Lou made was unconsciously sexy. She never walked anywhere; it was always a full-on strut. Her heels were never less than three inches, and whether her hair was up in a messy bun at the top of her head, showing off her slender neck and perfect jaw line, or spilling over her shoulders and down her back, she always managed to look like someone’s wet dream.

Glancing around the pub he could see that he wasn’t the only one fixated on the magnificent site of a bent-over Lou.  Of course bloody Rich’s eyes were firmly glued to her arse. Even Miles, who openly disliked Lou, didn’t seem to be able to help himself, and, Dylan noticed with irritation, that several of his orthopaedic buddies were eyeing her up, elbowing each other and giggling like schoolboys. Had Frankie actually put thirty candles on the goddamn thing? He felt his jaw relax when Lou finally straightened up, but was instantly back on alert as she was swept up in Rich’s arms and swung from side to side.

He clenched his jaw and had to fight against all his instincts, which were screaming to storm over to them and punch Rich right in his smug, earnest face. It was in that moment, watching her in another mans arms, that it finally clicked. The last month without Lou’s friendship had felt empty. He truly had never realized how much of the laughter in his daily life was down to Lou, and having her vibrancy stripped away was like going from living life in glorious technicolour to finding himself in black and white. Nobody actually quite got his humour like her.

Although she’d made it clear to everyone that the argument between them meant nothing, and that she was completely fine with him, he still hadn’t felt right hanging out at their flat to the extent he used to. And anyway Lou always found excuses to avoid him whilst he was there, or worse she would be polite. He gritted his teeth. Lou was never bloody polite, and certainly not with him; she took the piss incessantly, challenged, argued with, teased, criticized, needled, judged, provoked; all the while laughing, snorting, scowling, but never with the expressionless mask she wore whilst he was around currently.

He was stuck.

He felt compelled to be near her but being around the new Lou was actually painful. He was desperate to get her back as a friend. He knew now that he wanted more than that, but with the state of play being as it was, he would take what he could get. From the disgusted way she’d looked at him after that kiss at New Year he was under no illusion that she wanted him that way, but he decided that he was going to do everything he could to at least win back her trust.