Tea Leaves

There was, at least, plenty of alcohol, though unfortunately I couldn't have any because I knew I had to drive us home.

Chloe seemed to have no such qualms - to the contrary, she seemed almost glad to let her hair down.

I stopped counting after her fourth glass of punch.

I pursed my lips; she would be in for it in the morning. Self-inflicted and avoidable, but I smiled to myself as I remembered my own student years and the gay levity life had always carried.

I made a note to ensure I had lots of hangover treats at home for Friday night so that I could tenderly doctor her... and perhaps, I grinned to myself, lay some healing hands on her. On some very, very specific parts of her...

And the evening crawled on.

Somewhere, sometime, I began to realise that Chloe wasn't watching me as much as I felt she really should be, and while she'd give me a brittle smile whenever she looked at me, she'd always turn back to whatever she was doing whenever Julia began to talk to me again.

And that confused me.

I cast many longing looks at my lover, but never quite seemed able to disentangle myself from Julia and the small group of other men and women who clustered around her.

Maybe Chloe was just snared in the net of the lives of all her friends and acquaintances, I thought to myself. She was clearly popular...

It was understandable, they were all young, they had so much in common...

I sighed, and accepted the lesser entertainment that was offered to me elsewhere.

It wasn't particularly late when Chloe finally came to declare to me (with careful, sozzled precision) that she was tired and wanted to leave.

I was more than happy to follow her - Jules, while sweet, had thoroughly monopolised me and I'd had little chance to interact with anyone else - especially with Chloe, who was ultimately the entire reason I'd come in the first place.

I watched my partner from my holding orbit near the door as she made her rounds, saying farewells to several people, receiving hugs and smiles in return.

And Julia gave me a strangely bright smile and a dramatic wave before she turned back to her group, who closed around her in a manner that suddenly reminded me of vultures on a carcass...

I shuddered as I felt a premonition's icy touch down my back...

"Got everything? Ready to go?" Chloe said as she rejoined me.

"Yeah, I'm ready," I said, staring up at her.

"Good."

I studied her, noting the set expression and the strange curtness of her response.

And I also noted how she didn't take my hand.

I held my peace until we'd left, but the words came bubbling out once we were safely in my car.

"Are you angry with me or something?" I asked her softly. "Did I do something wrong? Did I embarrass you?"

She stared out through the passenger window, though at what I couldn't say; it was pitch-black beyond the confines of the cabin.

"No," she said, after some time. "I'm not angry with you."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Her response was clipped, neutral...

"Are you upset with me because I was speaking to that woman?"

"What woman?" she said softly.

"That woman, you know which one. Julia. Jules."

"Oh. Her," she said, dismissively, or so I thought at first. "You seemed to be having fun. She's quite friendly, isn't she? Pretty, too."

"I guess some people would think so? Did you have fun? You seemed... busy... with your friends, and she was very kind to come and talk to me. We were just chatting. It was... nice."

"It certainly looked like a nice, long chat," she said, softly. "I'm glad you had fun. She was certainly glued to you. I'm glad you found someone... nice... to spend the evening with."

She sighed.

"Of course, it would have been nice if you could have spared a little time for me too," she added bitterly.

I stared across at her.

"But... every time I looked you were busy!" I protested, bewildered by her hostility.

"I was busy because that pretentious evil fucking witch was trying to get a rise out of me by annexing you and shamelessly flirting with you, Dawn, and I didn't want to give her the satisfaction of reacting! Jesus Christ. Are you seriously this blind?"

"What do you mean? I don't understand..." I said, deeply hurt by her tone.

"You know what? Forget it," she snapped. "Forget I said anything. Let's just go, please. I want to go home now, Dawn. Now."

"Chloe... please..." I begged.

"Drop it, Dawn," she said, curtly. "It's done."

And I clenched my jaw and started the car and eased us out into the road, feeling hard done by and bitterly abused.

And vexed with myself for so quickly becoming the pathetic girl who was so quick to crave her attention and approval.

Who the hell did she think she was?

Was it wrong for me to talk to new people?

I'd just been making conversation.

It's not like I'd known that Jules was such a cow!

And it certainly wasn't like I'd been finger-banging her in amongst the party punch bowls, for fuck's sake.

She wasn't even my type. She wasn't even my drunk type!

And anyway, Chloe was the one who had fucking invited me along, against my own better judgement!

And she had some fucking nerve, given how she'd paid so little attention to me... all fucking evening!

I glared ahead at the lane markers and ground my teeth together so hard that spots danced in my vision.

Chloe sighed.

"So do you want to talk?" I asked her reluctantly.

"No. Not right now," she answered, cold and firm.

"Fine, then!" I said. "Fine!"

The remaining mile or two unrolled in painful, hurt, awful silence.

She sighed once more as I parked outside her accommodation.

"Thanks for the lift," she said.

I took a deep slow breath, fought for some sort of precarious balance.

"Will I see you tomorrow?"

She opened the door.

"Probably not. I've got a lot of important things that I'm overdue on."

"Oh. I see. Wow. Okay," I said, cut to the very quick by her cold and callous turn of phrase.

"Sleep well," she said.

"Yeah. You too. Goodbye, then," I snarled.

She closed the car door firmly behind herself and stalked to her building's entrance.

And it scalded me more than I could have believed possible that she didn't even bother to wave goodbye.

She didn't even bother to look back once.

I slumped down in my seat and watched her close the door behind her without a backwards glance.

"Fuck," I whispered, as the enormity of our disagreement hit me.

The loneliness bird cawed, spread its jet-black wings and fluttered back to perch smugly on my heart once more.

I sobbed once, then bit my lip hard enough to fill my mouth with the coppery taste of blood.

I slammed my car into gear and drove home too fast, and drank entirely too much wine once I was there, and had an extended, frustrated, desolate cry while doing so.

And then - still snivelling like a beaten child - I retreated to the sanctuary of my laptop, and sat down on my utterly hateful chair, and began to desperately try to hide from the rending sense of disapproval and disappointment that she'd radiated as she'd walked out of my life.

I wrote to hide from the looming cliffs of loneliness.

And I wrote to hide from the searing pain in my chest.

And I wrote, ultimately, to hide from me.

Eventually I slept, and eventually I woke, miserable and shattered, with nothing to look forward to beyond a silent house and a broken heart.

My sense of abandonment grew with each passing hour that she didn't reach out.

But I was far too bitter and angry with her to make the first attempt at reconciliation.

And the long, empty hours became longer, emptier days which continued to march their weary way by, blurring one into another.

I woke when I woke, and slept when I passed out from exhaustion, and everything in between felt like greyscale snapshots of someone else's never-ending nightmare.

I didn't eat much, but I did manage to put a significant dent in my wine "cellar".

And I wrote.

Alcohol-fuelled insane nonsense spilled out of me - beginnings of short vignettes, snapshots of lovers' broken lives, ridiculous fantastical farces - anything to occupy my mind and fill the void left by her absence.

It was trite, pathetic, childish self-indulgence.

And I wallowed in it. I abased myself in it. I couldn't stop myself, and I continued even when my carpal tunnel flared and my wrists became red hot rings of pain attached to my arms by chains of fire.

I filled file after file with words that nobody would ever read.

And I continued to drink, and didn't eat much of anything...

And missed her with a empty, ravenous longing that I couldn't even begin to describe, let alone face.

.:.

It was Monday, some ten days after she'd not waved goodbye, and even if I were inclined to be charitable to myself I'd have had to admit that I was circling the drain.

I'd finally parked my nonsense, emerged from my wallowing, and returned to my manuscript.

For all the good that did me.

My stomach burned, my head throbbed with a constant dull ache, and my back was better left unacknowledged.

I'd spent the morning staring at the first word of a new paragraph - occasionally deleting it, then rewriting it in the hope it would be the trigger...

But my writer's block was as unyielding and pitiless as midnight, and my wrists were in agony.

And my eyes were blurring to the point that my glasses made things worse rather than better.

Delete delete delete.

Rewrite.

Delete delete delete.

Rewrite.

The slow metronome of despair, punctuated only when I needed a refill of my bottom shelf liquid medicine - my ongoing attempt to conjure a final, merciful draught from the river Lethe.

It was mid-morning when there was a hesitant knock at the door.

I grunted, rubbed at my eyes, sat up instinctively... then slumped back down.

It wouldn't be her.

It had been a lifetime since we'd fought, and I'd heard nothing from her since.

I was depressed, exhausted, underweight, unkempt...

Unwanted.

It was likely just a delivery, and knowing the way my luck had veered it would be the elegant little silver bracelet I'd ordered in secret, the one I'd wanted to slip into her bag while she wasn't looking... a little unexpected, unanticipated treasure for her to find and smile over.

I ground my teeth.

Back it would go, back to the depot and then on to some other, luckier Chloe in some other more-deserving man or woman's narrative.

Let them leave it there, there by the front door. I'd pick it up later when I was... able.

Another knock, louder and more insistent, and the doorbell rang as well.

"Oh fuck off, will you," I whispered.

I put my face in my hands and dug my fingertips into my temples, trying to release the tension in my jaw, trying not to give in to melancholy...

And more knocking, loud and continuous this time...

"Jesus Christ!" I shouted in despair. "Okay, okay, I get it, I'm coming!"

I removed my glasses and staggered, groaning, to my feet. I made my way to the door, sighed, and opened it.

"Oh..." I said, as my legs went weak and my stomach suddenly hollow.

She stood, leaning against the wall, waiting. Her wonderful hair was loose, wafting around her like a gentle wave in the breeze. She was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt and a pair of faded and tattered grey jeans.

She looked exhausted and diminished.

But she still somehow managed a little smile for me.

I gaped dumbly at her for a heartbeat or two.

"Dawn?" she said softly. She stared at me, eyes flitting over my face and form. Her smile faded as she paled. "Dawn... oh Jesus... you look..."

"Chloe," I managed. "Hi. I'm not... well. That's... all it is."

And then we stared at one another again, and I frantically tried to think of something... of anything that I could say that would begin to bridge the canyon between us.

"I don't have much time," she suddenly said. "I have to get back to lectures. But I needed to see you. Dawn... I was such a cunt to you, and I'm so, so sorry. I was impetuous and... jealous and, frankly, juvenile. You did nothing to deserve it. And I wish I could undo it. Here... I... I brought you my articles of... unconditional surrender."

She lifted a small paper packet.

"It's Darjeeling, this time," she said, softly. "I know that's your favourite."

I gently took it and clutched it and fidgeted with it, hesitant and enormously self-conscious about how god-awful I must look...

"And here's... something else," she added. She pulled a small envelope out of her breast pocket and held it out to me.

Her hand was trembling

(Funny how we notice details like that at times of utmost stress, came the brittle, unwanted thought...)

"What is that?" I asked her hoarsely as fear rose up to choke me. "Is that a..."

"It's... something... intensely personal. Take it. Please..."

I slowly reached out, and took it from her. I stared down at it; so plain, so unadorned...

So horribly ominous.

"Shit," I whispered, terrified.

Was this it?

Was this the end of all of it?

A little letter, as if we were pre-teen girls?

"Should I... open it?" I said, not looking at her. "Or is this something I should... open when you're not here? Is it something... sad? Do I... want to open this?"

"Open it now. I'd like you to," she said softly. "I have a little time, and... it's important. Not sad. At least... I really, really hope not. And... and it's the sort of thing I'd like to... to be here for when you read it."

I stared at her, then slowly, clumsily, fumbled the envelope open.

A thin sheet of pale blue writing paper had been folded and refolded into it.

I heard her take a shaky breath as I extracted it and squinted down and tried to make sense of the awkward angular handwriting...

I chose the path down the hill,

with the wind in my hair,

green leaves dappled above me

past the place where I never knew you were.

But Fate grew tired of my blindness

and chose another path for me

and led me to you.

I could not choose how i met you

- dirty, dazed, disordered.

Nor could I choose to reject you

for how could I turn away from your touch on my skin?

I did not choose to love you -

the planet can do little but answer to the influence

of her bright and shining star.

I bit my lip hard as my eyes blurred.

"Oh..." I whispered.

I somehow took a breath... and another...

"Did you write this?" I managed at last. "For... me?"

"Yes," she answered me. She took a hesitant step forward, reached out to touch me. "Please don't laugh, it's... I know it's really not very good at all..."

I clutched it to me, stared at her through brimming eyes.

"Dawn?" she breathed. "Dawn... what is it?"

"Nobody has ever written for me. Anything. Ever. You're the first. You're the only. And to... to waste something this beautiful... on me..."

"Oh..." she whispered. "Oh, Dawn, no..."

She came to me and tenderly gathered me in against her.

I clung to her, shivering, ribs heaving as all the demons retracted their claws from my heart one by one.

"I thought I'd lost you," I whispered when I could. "I thought I'd chased you away from me forever..."

She tightened her embrace; I squeezed my eyes closed as she pushed her face in against my cheek.

"I never told you how I felt. And I never told you who she was. Or what she was. I didn't warn you. I should have. And I was a stupid child throwing a stupid child's tantrum. I reacted exactly how she wanted me to. I did her work for her. I hurt you. That was the whole point," she sighed.

"That was what she wanted. And once I'd calmed down and sobered up... I realised that I was the one who was to blame. I should have come sooner but I was ashamed. And I kept hoping you'd... forgive me. Oh... oh God, Dawn", she gulped, "I've missed you so much."

I shuddered. "Say that again," I whimpered.

"I missed you. You came into my life like... like sunlight shining through sheets of rain. And I can't imagine not having you in my each and every day. I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep..."

"I'm sorry for being so stupid and so blind and so... stubborn..."

"So am I," she breathed.

She kissed my cheek and held me there in the sunlight until I'd caught my breath and come back to my senses.

"I have to go," she whispered at last. "I hate that I have to, but I have to go to lectures. I can't miss any more. But I'll be back soon. I promise. If... if I can work here I can come back as soon as morning classes are done..."

"Do you even need to ask?" I whispered, shuddering. "You can use my desk. I'll... fuck, I'll lie on the floor if I have to...I'll lie in the mud if I have to..."

She kissed my tears away.

"Go wash your face and dry your eyes," she softly cajoled me. "And... Dawn, please, eat something, for the love of God. You're too thin and it's scaring me. Please. For me?"

"I'll... try..." I promised, sniffing.

"I'll see you later, okay? I promise."

"Don't... be too long," I whispered. "We've got a... a lot to work through."

"I know," she sighed. "I know we do. I'll... I'll see you soon, sweetie."

I leaned against my door frame, trying not to break down in relief as I watched her walk away.

And I smiled through the threatening tears as she turned, once, to wave.

.:.

She poked at her ravioli for a few moments. Then she looked up at me, and managed a wretched grimace.

"I'm exhausted," she said softly. "I shouldn't complain, because it's my doing..."

"Our doing," I corrected her.

"You can't be responsible for not knowing what was going on there..."

"I should have sensed it. I'm usually better at... that."

"Well... anyway..." she sighed. "I still rate it as self-inflicted. But I am... very tired."

I picked up a single plain piece of penne rigate and put it in my mouth. I slowly chewed, swallowed, and then swallowed again against the hot rush of nausea. My stomach had let me know very quickly that I shouldn't expect much from it just yet, so I was pacing myself... and sailing very close to the mark, it seemed...

"Dawn?" she said softly.

"Don't... don't worry... I'll be..." I whispered. I sat very still, eyes closed, focussing on breathing, on controlling the urge to gag.

Slowly it receded.

She watched me intently, and licked her dry lips.

"I am never going to forgive myself for this," she murmured.

"I'm an adult. I... I did this to myself. Mine's also... self-inflicted..."

"I should have been an adult."

"Can we... just park this for a bit. Please. Why... are you so exhausted?"

"I've been working on things that I'd been neglecting. Burning the candle on both ends in a heroic attempt to not face up to my stupidity."

"Mm."

I pushed my plate aside, unable to bear the sight or scent of the unadorned pasta any longer.

She watched me, and sighed.

"You've been starving yourself, haven't you?" she whispered.

"Just... wasn't hungry. It will pass. Sorry. Stress and depression always make me like... this."

She made a tiny noise and squeezed her eyes tightly together as she fought for composure.

"Don't..." I whispered. "Chloe. I promise. I'll be fine. We'll be fine... won't we?"

"I... hope so," she whispered.

"Everybody fights..."

"Yes."

She watched me a moment longer, then ate a bit more. She sighed and sat up slightly straighter.

"So, anyway," she said. "I suppose I need to tell you about Julia."

"I don't want details. It's not any business of mine who you were with in... prior..."

"Relationships?" she said softly. "Prior relationships?"

"I... suppose."

"As opposed to our... relationship?"

"Is ours one?"

"I want it to be one."

"Do you?" I said. "I'm no catch, Chloe."

She sighed.

"I don't want a catch, Dawn. I want someone real. I want someone honest and beautiful. I want you," she said, soft and heartfelt. "You're far better than a catch to me."