Yesterday’s Boots

It’s twenty-three minutes past one in the morning. You know this, because a minute ago your abnormally sharp sit bones started screaming out with sharp pangs – you’d been sitting on them for an abusively long time. You’d normally hear that pain before now, of course. But your brain had thoughtfully muted that bull-ant-biting sensation for most of this long, arduous – but really – pointless debrief with your parents about how you’ve monumentally fucked things up. 

The pain’s too much.

So you’ve jumped up, danced your hips, and pointedly looked through to your Mum’s cat clock in the kitchen – your keys jingling in your pocket as your bum wiggles. 

You’re still stuck on the clock, hating on that cat’s monstrous smile. Twenty-three past one? There’s something oddly ominous about the simplicity of three consecutive numbers neatly ordered like that. You shudder. It’s going to be branded to your brain like a bookmark in your Mum’s Bible. 

Still, there’s more your parents need to preach. All you had to do was wait, they say. Then everything would’ve – probably – gone the way you’d all wanted. Every other woman in your statistically conventional family had done it. 

Or, really, not done it.

That’s why they don’t understand. And no, they’re not angry, just upset, they say. They loved him too.

Yes, they’re saying that a lot – even the cat clock’s plotting her escape now; absent legs, be damned. 

They just need to know – was it something you saw on tellie? In a self-help book? A friend having a feminist phase? Were you pressured to be modern? 

Modern. Well, they’re all for that normally, of course – being a bit modern from time to time. You’re well aware if it’d worked out, they’d be texting the neighbours, the neighbours’ children and their babysitters about how wonderfully ‘modern’ you are.

Was it really so bad, not wanting to wait? Or were we all meant to want the same thing, the same way? Must’ve missed that pep talk. 

No tell them again, they say; relentless as the cat clock’s glassy glare. 

But what more is there? You’ve already told them every shred of it you can bear to remember. Should you describe the humiliatingly perfect shade of peach lighting the sky behind you both? How embarrassing it was that the sun shone on you like a spotlight? How his beautiful ugly boots... 

It’s just that he’s sensitive, they sigh. Like a man should be. Opening doors for you, offering his coat – a gentleman, they say. Didn’t you notice?  

And that’s your limit. You know it, your bum knows it, and even standing is too much now. The damage is done. 

It's time for sleep, you declare. The cat clock can appreciate that one. 

The warmth of the sun’s slow rise has woken some birds outside your window, but it’s still too early for your brain to register the gradual shift in light. You’re lying, naked, in your noticeably half-warmed bed. Absence is so uncomfortable. 

The drool spotted pillow next to yours – that he insisted on leaving here as a token of taking things to the next level – is cold, lifeless, unslept on. Well you haven’t slept on yours either. Not a wink. You tilt your head for a brave peek, checking it’s still there. That avoiding it all night hadn’t somehow made it disappear, like it had never lied next to you at all. 

It looks more blue than normal. Poke. Definitely feels more blue too, somehow. It’s a loud blue, that one. It won’t stop screaming at you. 

So you rip off the pillow cover, open the window and throw it outside like that smelly, god-knows-how-many-summer-days-old banana you found under the bed. Food for the birds, you tell them. But you’ve shocked those birds with your over-dramatic symbolic point making. 

They fly away. 

Well good riddance. You shut the window, but one bird stayed behind to peck at that loud, stinky blue pillow, lying helplessly on a bush. It’s too disrespectful. You yank the window open again and ‘sqwark’ at it, fighting it for that pillowcase. It has no chance. You’ve known that case longer, more intimately, your bond runs deeper. 

Leaning out the window with your belly bending awkwardly over the freezing, sharp edge of the sill, you jab the bird away with a coat hanger and retrieve that ungrateful pillowcase, bringing it home – to you. You hug it. 

Then you realise you’re hugging a pillowcase, stark naked, and you’re better than this. Back on the pillow it goes, back next to you it goes, and back you go to turning away from it and pretending it’s not there. As you go back to reliving what your mind can’t unsee – those boots, stomping on decaying wood, making the pier they walk on tremble. You should’ve yelled to them when you could – come back, do it again! Then it might feel more real now. How he walked away.

He’s here. Sitting here in front of you now. You barely believe it. His eyes; puffy with the look of a rough night to rival yours. It’s the first time you’ve been able to look at him, and squarely at that. Didn’t he say he needed to be alone? Needed to think? Yet here he is; untouched double espresso in his hand, obviously annoyed by the unstable and inadequate table between you both – rocking on the cobbled pavement whenever the waiter passes by. Neither of you have spoken since you sat down. It’s too uncomfortable, and there’s an eyelash in your eye. As if seeing him wasn’t pain enough, the mascara-laden thing’s gone rouge, burying itself deep within your surprisingly vast bottom eyelid. 

Is that really what everyone calls it? You wonder. Bot-tom eye-lid? Because it doesn’t fit how it feels to you – this slimy pit, or sack, or pocket of sinking sand. Pit’s better, you think. Eyepit.

You giggle, and he jumps; coffee dribbles down his mug. 

He has to know now – he’s implicated – what’s the in-joke between you and your head? 

You drop your smile, quick. Because you never meant to smile, hell, weren’t convinced your cheek muscles remembered how, after yesterday. You touch their dimples.

Why’d he run? You ask.

Well yeah, he says, looking into his mug. He doesn’t like how he left things either. Hence why he’s here. 

It makes his cheeks redden – you’ve seen it before. You can still feel yesterday’s stinging kneecap on the sharp, jagged wood; his boots retreating; his face colouring violent red, all busy and mottled, as if your words had slapped him. 

He shuffles in his seat. It’s just not how things normally happen. On tellie, or with his mates, or his family, he says. You threw his game plan. Blew his mind. 

Why’d you do it? He asks, his eyes squinting with suspicion. Are... you pregnant? Sick of waiting? Genuinely having him on? 

Wow. That eyelash is really digging in now, scraping your socket like it were the pointy end of a feather. You fish for it, but your finger slips. Fuck. 

No, you say, and he thinks you’re tearing up. Which you are. But you’re not crying – you think. Crying adds more feeling than you’re prepared to give. Still, he wants to know. Why? 

Because you were standing on the pier, you say. Your pier, and his. Because the sky looked hand-painted with clouds and colours like... a blur. 

A blur? He asks.

Yeah. As if everything perfect about evenings had blurred together, like a Monet. 

You rub your eyepit. 

Standing there at the end of the pier, you’d thought it couldn’t be more beautiful if you’d commissioned God to make it that way – but you don’t tell him that. He can’t remember it like that, he won’t. You see it in the way his eyes push you to question yourself, your memory, and you’re annoyed now – by the lash, by your tears, by his face, arms, legs, reactions; everything about his body, so wounded and defensive. 

And here’s the thing of all things, he was better than the clouds or sky, you’d thought. Irreplaceable. But you can’t say that either, you’re questioning that too. Even what you were thinking, then, there; when he came walking down that jetty, clunking his big stompy work boots, shaking the wood and scaring every fish in the water. Just as he had a year ago, and the year before that, on the day you met. It was odd, and you’re well aware, how normally you hated those boots; their germ-ridden look. But you suddenly couldn’t imagine life without them, gloriously stomping towards you like that. It was proof, to see those boots that way. At least, you’d thought it was.

It’s just a lot of pressure for a guy to suddenly have to answer something like that, he says. 

How is it so different when a guy asks a girl? 

He flops back into his chair. Because you’re expecting it, he says. Because girls know it can happen to them – it’s way more likely to – so they’re prepared. They usually want it to. Don’t they? He says, studying his coffee. 

Really though, he’s not ready, he says. He would’ve asked you if he were. He’s not sure when he’ll be ready. 

And you remember your need. How ineffable it was, standing there at the end of that pier in that painted moment. Then, there was an ache in your knee, and a hunger in your hand, that you knew you had to oblige. Everything in your body needed him to be yours, with you, always – until you were on bended knee, holding his hand in yours, smile-crying, asking – will he marry you? 

He would’ve asked if he were ready. It makes the most sense of all. 

He picks up a napkin, offers it, and you mop your face with it. 

Where to from here? 

There’s too many waves today, your friend thinks. Or not enough. There’s something off about the sea, and it’s not the smell of fish and chips, tossed and rotting on the shore; something’s fundamentally flawed about the way those waves are rolling in and out so methodically, so orderly; beautifully.

There’s too much sunshine too, she adds, sat on the sand beside you. For such a shit day. 

Her hand still grips yours, for the third hour in a row. 

You watch the waves, and you agree.