Chapter Ten

She trips gracelessly on the porch steps, arms flailing for purchase. Her fingertips manage to grip the edge of the door jamb miraculously, and she knows it—she glances upward and breathes an uncharacteristic prayer of gratitude.

"I saw nothing," I bite my lip to stifle a laugh when she elbows me in the ribs, none too gently. We wind up at a table by the window, the taffeta blinds drawn halfway. The silence that stretches between us is stiflingly, breathlessly uncomfortable. I reach for the menu card by her hand with trembling fingers. I give it a cursory once-over for the sake of show—I already know what I want; know everything they have; had it seared into me during the long, sleepless nights I used to spend here trying to gather my thoughts, the remnants of me, pre-Love Ball and post-Sophia.

"I honestly have no idea what to get," she admits sheepishly, craning her head to the side to read the print on the underside of the card. "I think you should order for me instead."

"The Imperial chicken-mushroom wrap's always a winner," I nod sagely and hand her the menu. "You'd like it, very up-your-street."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asks mock-suspiciously, her eyes narrowing.

"The chicken's allegedly free-range, and the bread is gluten, bromate, sugar and wheat-free," I lace my fingers underneath my chin and meet her gaze steadily, ignoring the way my heart plummets to my stomach when she stares at me so openly; so blankly.

She blinks, then, and her eyes drop back down. "You remembered," she says softly, and pushes the card away resolutely. "They had these open-faced sandwiches at Blackfriars during the fair last month. I went with mum, for fun. I was halfway through my second when mum, she turns to me and says, with a look of abject horror on her face, 'You do realize they're called California-raisin wheat-bread for a reason?' You can only imagine my revulsion." She shakes her head bemusedly when I laugh.

"Ignorance is bliss, and all that," I grin. I raise my hand and the waiter catches my eye. He drifts over to our table and turns promptly to Naomi, his gaze lingering a little longer than necessary. I clear my throat pointedly, ignoring the doleful look he sends my way. "Two orders of Imperial chicken, please—" I lean forward and squint, "—Jason. And two glasses of water."

"It's James, miss," he prompts, slightly miffed. "Is that all—?"

"Isn't that what she said?" Naomi asks, glancing up at him innocently. He frowns for a beat, mulls it over.

"I'll be right back in about, seven to ten minutes," he mumbles, disheartened, and shuffles away. Naomi throws me a look and I smile in lieu of a reply.

Some things don't change.

She enjoys the wrap, as much as I thought she would and more. I look away when she brings her fingers to her lips—trying to suppress the surge of emotion swelling up inside me at the thought of her tongue on them; the reality I'm in, and the fact that I don't have the right to look at her anymore when she does. It is too much, and too little, all at once.

I push my plate towards her when she reaches forward for a handful of my chips. "Have to hand it to you, Emily," she mumbles contentedly through a mouthful. "You really know your stuff."

"So pleased you enjoyed it," I lean back and trace patterns on the condensation of my glass. "D'you want another? Or can I interest you in their wide-array of desserts?"

"I'd rather not," she pulls a face and groans. "They'll go right down to my hips. Can't have that now, can we?" We don't say anything after that, because there's nothing to say; I don't have the right to comment on her weight, or her diet anymore, either; can't assure her she has fuck-all to worry about when it comes to her figure, because she's never had difficulty maintaining it her entire life. There is much I can't do anymore—can't reach for her fingers across the table, feel them underneath my skin: assurance of her tangibility; of this reality. My sanity.

Jason-James comes back to the table to clear away our plates and glasses. Naomi pushes her glass towards him wordlessly and he squints at her surreptitiously, awed by her silence, her indifference.

"Can I get you anything else?" he asks her hesitantly. Her gaze flickers towards him in askance. He dismisses himself quickly, wiping down the table sloppily in his haste to leave. Her shoulders sag when he walks away, and her gaze falls on the table before her. Her features tighten; her jaw pulling taut, her brow creasing. She flexes her fingers, once, twice. Sighs.

"I miss you," she says matter-of-factly; no heaviness, no trace of bitterness, no overly-dramatic display of waterworks. She laces her fingers underneath her chin, leans on her knuckles when she looks out the window. "Say something," she says after a while, when my silence has grown substantial in its length.

"What else is there to say?" I find myself saying. I marvel at the steadiness in my voice. "You know I did, too. You know I do." I hesitate, my fingers pulling at the fabric of the tablecloth. "Does that change anything?"

She closes her eyes, exhales through her teeth. Takes to worrying her bottom lip between them. She doesn't look at me; to be honest, I don't think I could hold her gaze any longer if she did, either. "Not right now, no," she sounds almost sad, but it's said with a resolute finality that silences whatever questions might've surfaced on my part. "But, I miss you," she says again, and it sounds like she's holding a private conversation with herself more than anything—I feel like an opportunistic, eavesdropping voyeur at the wrong place, at the wrong time. "When I was at Blackfriars with mum, we had to shack up with a friend of hers from uni. She had kids—three—and it was difficult for her, I think. She was a single parent. Her flat," her voice wavered. She cleared her throat and swallowed, not without difficulty. "Her flat, it didn't have—it wasn't that big, you know? There were only about three rooms, and a kitchen. A bathroom. That was it, really. She needed the other bedroom for her boys, so I had to share a room with her daughter."

I stiffen, not quite sure where this is going. My heart is thrumming a dull ache of a rhythm, constant and altogether reassuring in its familiarity. She glances over at me, silently pleading with me to understand. The salt-shaker is dented, its cap askew. I reach over to screw it on tighter.

"She was four, Emily," she closes her eyes and tilts her head back. Her voice cracks. She sags forward and presses the heel of her palms to her eyes. "Said I was the sister she never had; made me play with her—she had this tea set. It was porcelain, from her aunt in Islington, she said. She had this doll-house that came up to my waist. But she didn't have any proper dolls in them, says they can't afford any right now. So, she had—she had these cut-outs, like paper dolls, that she made herself out of cardboard and crayon. And I said I'd help her make more. We were there, on the floor, and I was cutting stuff up for her, and her brother comes in the room. He's older than her by a year. Calls her stupid, says they aren't real dolls at all. She starts crying, and I didn't want her to. I don't know what to do when people cry. But he's sorry when she does, cry, I mean. So, he sits by me and starts cutting stuff, too. And, Emily," she whimpers softly. "Emily she looked just like you, and her brother. Her brother was—Emily, it was so easy to pretend. To imagine. To believe. That for a while—" she breaks off, unable to continue. She sniffles; the sound is dampened by the cacophony of voices drifting from the other patrons. Jason-James glances over at our table, swivels away quickly when he sees me looking.

"—That they were ours," I finish softly; a sob escapes from her throat. I lean forward and take her in: her slumped figure; her thin, drooping shoulders. "I want you to be happy. I want that for you," I whisper, not quite knowing how to pacify her.

"I want it with you," she wipes her eyes with a sleeve, reaches over the table to hold my hand. The touch of her skin, there, grounds me. "Oh, Emily," she says, and her face contracts all over again. She shudders. I lean over and brush the back of my hand across her cheek, trace a thumb along the line of her jaw. She closes her eyes at the touch. I take her face in my hands, tilt her chin up; force her to look at me.

"I'm going away." She freezes. Frowns. Her eyes grow wild, confused. She chokes on a slew of questions; I press my thumb gently against her lips to silence her. "To New York," I continue, and I know, know, I have to make this quick. For both our sakes. "I need to," I wonder briefly why I sound so adamant, so convincing. Why I desperately want her to understand. "I found this job—it's an internship, at the Post. For photography. I need to go. At least six months—"

"Six months," she echoes softly. She leans back in her seat and turns away from me. She looks out the window, her face perfectly stoic. "Why?" she asks, simply. Quietly. I open my mouth to reiterate my feeble reasons, but I know she deserves so much more than a shadow of the truth; nothing comes out, however, and she grows irate. "Why?" she all but snarls, swivelling back to glare at me.

"I—"

"This isn't fair, Emily! This isn't fucking fair! Why would you—? How could you—?" she cries, pushing her chair back abruptly. She doesn't get up from her seat though, grips the edge of the table instead. "Why would you do this and not—" her voice cracks and she turns to glare at me, her eyes piercing me through and through; her temper scares me, but it isn't quite as painful as the anger in her gaze, the disgusted hatred belying the tears there. My stomach twists and plummets to match my breath, hitching in gasps.

"I need to, for me," I wring my hands together in my lap in my agitation, pick a scab on my ring finger until it bleeds. "I need—For us—"

"For us?" she laughs, a short harsh bark. She looks so lost, so helpless; so confused. Hurt. "Don't fucking lie to me. Temporary? Six months is a pack-load of bullshit and you know it," she hisses. "I guess I wasn't important enough, then, for you to remember in your little list of people-to-tell? They don't have postcards in New York, I suppose? Were you going to send a greeting card instead? 'At my flat. Fixed my couch by the electric fire today, remembered us together on one just like it back at home. Miss you, kiss.'" she bites gratingly; her jaw set, teeth clenched. "I didn't want to believe Katie—"

"Katie?" I cry in disbelief, jolting forward in my seat. "Katie told you?"

"She tried to. I didn't want to believe her; said you weren't like that," the color rises in her cheeks; in the dull light seeping through the blinds, her skin is pale underneath the flush growing on her neck. I brush away the sudden desire to lean forward, press a kiss to the warm pulse there. "You," she closes her eyes, takes a deep, shuddering breath to steady herself. "You disappointed me, Emily. I thought you were above that. You said I had to be brave, once. Why can't you take a leaf out of your fucking book, stop being a filthy hypocrite? Stop running away!" Just as quickly, a sudden flash of anger chokes me and I find myself breathless.

"What do you know about me?" I growl quietly. "You have no right to make assumptions about me, about what I am, what I'm like. You weren't there. You are but a facet of a multitude of things I had to put up with, these past few months. You don't know what it was like. You weren't there. Once upon a time, you said you would be. Always. But, everyone disappoints you in the end. Leaves you in pieces when you break. You don't know about anything that happened. I'd like to remind you, Naomi, that you ruined everything for us—so don't go around trying to project your feelings of shame and inadequacy onto me, make me out to be the villain, because I deserve to be happy!" My palm slaps the table abruptly and she flinches away from me. "Stop being such a child. Why can't I try to be happy, Naomi?" I whisper, thoroughly defeated. "Why can't you let me be happy?"

"You're being so selfish, so unfair," tears pool in her eyes, but she wipes them away quickly on the cuff of her coat. We grow quiet, then—the voices of the other dining patrons and Jason-James' bussing at a table a window away permeates the air around us. "It'll change things between us. You know it will. We can't be the same."

"Isn't that what we need, right now?" I feel thoroughly drained; I sag back into my seat, run my palms down my cheeks slowly, relishing the feel of skin dragging against skin.

"Is that what you want?" it's said so suddenly my head whips back up to look at her. She takes the lid off the Styrofoam cup carefully and blows across the liquid's surface before taking a tentative sip. Her hands are trembling so bad they upset the drink—she swears out loud when it scalds her fingers. For a beat, I waver. Katie was wrong; she needs me, too.

I reach for her, try to still her fingers wringing wildly in her pain. She yanks her hand back, settles for fixing her watery gaze on the salt-shaker she upended in her thrashing. "What do you want me to say?" I trace patterns on the salt-bed along the table.

"I want you to say you'll try to be brave for me again; try to fix this, fix us without having to leave. Let me fix this. I want you to tell me you need me to ask you to stay, to beg you to—that you'll stay, if I do. Emily, I'd get on my knees; you know I would," she is desperate, unravelling before my eyes. She shifts in her seat, edges forward and a sudden stab of panic courses through me at the very thought of her prostrate on the floor. The very notion is undignified and humiliating. For her. For me. I scoot forward quickly and push her back, keep her on her seat, my hand pressing none-too-gently against the space below her ribs.

"All these months, Naomi, I've been nothing but brave—for myself, for your sake. But, I'm only human," a tear escapes, slides down my cheek. Her gaze flickers to it, watches it trace a path down my face. "You know I can't," my lip quivers and my heart sinks so low inside me I feel it stirring faintly at the bottom of my very being, past my very core—irretrievably lost.

She sits up straighter, then. Drags her breath out in a lengthy rush; the line of her jaw pulled painfully taut. Her throat bobs, once or twice, like she's chewing on her tongue. She sighs, and it sounds like Atlas' might've when Zeus first made him shoulder the world as an arbitrary burden—made to carry a weight she does not want, does not need. Then, she nods. Her eyes flicker back to me, then, she stands up. Her chair scrapes back gracelessly, the noise offends Jason-James two tables down—he glares at her reproachfully, narrows his eyes to slits in my direction. I couldn't find myself caring any lesser if I'd tried.

She slings her coat across her shoulders, clasps it at the throat. My feet have turned to lead blocks for the time being; my involuntary paralysis does not faze her, however—she makes her way over to my side of the table, stoops until her face is level with mine. She is close. Much too close; I can make out the tears framing her lashes. All too soon, she moves away, turns her head. She presses a chaste kiss to the corner of my mouth and it feels so final; a farewell. My throat closes up when she moves away, brushes her lips against my ear.

I don't look behind me to glance back at her, even when the bell above the door tinkles—I know: without needing to see, that she's gone; and that Katie, in her infinite wisdom, is irrefutably correct at all times—that her love for me surpassed mine in the end, in that she could let me go after all, when holding onto her became too painful for me.

Outside, the sky has darkened considerably; the dull-gray shimmer of lead and slate.

It starts to rain.

"You basically broke up twice," she snorts, takes a long pull on her cigarette. "I didn't even think that was possible."

"No," I press my forehead against the windowpane, turn my head so my cheek touches the cool glass. "We just—decided some things are best left as they are. You can't fix cracks, Bianca. You can try to; make them seem less noticeable, but in the end, you know that it's there. And it'll bother to you endlessly, knowing that no matter what you tried to do to make it less obvious, it still exists. You can't fix cracks."

"She broke you," Bianca says matter-of-factly, stubs her cigarette out against the sill by my elbow. "Completely get it, darling. You remember Daniel? Jesus, that boy—fulfilling, I'll give you that. But, a complete fucking wanker! I remember this one cast party we were at and—"

"You think I did the right thing?" I swivel in my seat to look at her properly and she must see something in my eyes because she stops mid-sentence to take me in. Her face softens and she drops to her knees before me gracefully, takes my hands in both of hers, sets them down on my lap, plays with my fingers.

"You deserve so much better, sweetie. You deserve a love that is as dignified as it is noble and true. A love that doesn't drain you dry; a love that gives back twice as much as it takes, and not the other way around. You don't need her, Emily. You don't need anyone. If you ever fall in love again, it'll be because you want to," she smiles reassuringly, strokes a thumb over my knuckles.

"I've had enough for a while, I think," I say softly, my hand reaching up to touch my throat. "I just need to be me for a while."

"'Want to be me', you mean," she corrects, not unkindly. "Promise me you won't think about this so much. Promise me you won't go looking for her," she says seriously, her lips set.

I blink, "Why would I go looking for her?"

She heaves a great theatrical sigh, "Because you always do. Because you can't help it. It won't do you any good, sweetie. Please, say you won't." She squeezes my fingers tightly, warns me with her eyes. I laugh at the irony of it all and nod. She's pleased by my lack of resistance, I can tell.

"Fantastic," she breathes ecstatically. "One less thing you'll pack for the trip, and all." She skips away brightly, arms swinging haphazardly, every which way. She flounces over to my shelf and starts peering at the photographs, the tarnished frames. "You bringing any of these, sweetheart? An album? Your baby photos?"

I shrug indifferently, "I suppose. It's not like I can just leave them here, anyway. That would be the weird. For the tenant, I mean." I watch curiously as she plucks a photo from an album, and another, and another, until she holds them out to me all spread-out, like a fan.

"What about these?" she smiles a little sadly, flutters them in front of my face. I can barely make-out an arm about my shoulders; an off-shot head thrown back in violent fits of laughter; my lips against a neck. Something stirs inside me, below me, beneath me—within and without of me. I push it away just as quickly, press its ugly head down before it has a chance to crane and rear.

"I don't know," I say honestly. I glance away when she holds them out to me—I really do not want to have to deal with this so soon. She's holding a photo frame with the other hand, though, and she drops it when I don't take the photos back. It slips from her fingers and we both watch in horror as the edge of the wooden frame shatters against the carpeted floor, the glass flying away from the rib. The photo it housed is pinned underneath its shattered casing; remnants and fragments and shards—of glass. Of memory.

Bianca cries out in alarm, screams out a long-winded curse. "Fuck! Jesus, Emily! I am so sorry!" She looks so upset, it disheartens me even further. "I'm so sorry! Where'd it come from?" She stoops to finger a long shrapnel, turns it over in her fist to examine the flowers painted in fading-pink paint.

"There were these kids I volunteered to look after, at the social-action quarter. Naomi," I clear my throat, cough once. "She came with me. The kids made it for us, somewhere to put the photo of all of us in." She claps a hand over her mouth in horror; a dark-red flush creeping up her throat, to her ears.

"Oh, my God, I didn't know! Oh, Emily, please—I'm so sorry! I'll fix it! I'll get it fixed! The glass is cracked, but I think it'll be fine after—I don't know—epoxy, or something?" She wrings her hands together agitatedly and starts picking bits and pieces off the floor. I sigh, know her cause is lost, even if the intentions were well.

"It's okay, Bia," I sigh. "Really."

"No, it's not!" she cries a little too passionately, a little too forcefully. "This obviously meant a lot to you! I'll get I fixed!"

"You can't fix it," I say with finality, thoroughly exasperated at her momentary lapses of logical coherence. Bit annoyed, really, at her childish persistence.

"We can get a new one, then," she says resolutely. She stands up from the floor and tips her cupped hands over and onto the counter-top. She sifts through the fragments with a finger and frowns, "Let me get my coat." She brushes past me and bounds up the staircase. I stoop down and pick the photo up gingerly with a thumb and forefinger. She smiles up at me through her fringe, half her shoulder off-shot, two kids hanging off her shoulders, another dangling at her arm. Her chin's tucked against the crook of my neck. There are arms around my waist, but they are altogether too small and too scrawny to be mistaken for hers. Sure enough, there is a bob of blonde hiding behind me. I smile, then. The memories are fond, and they come easily like this. It is easy to remember her like this.

Bianca. She may be onto something, that one.

Some things can't be mended. But, some thing's—new? Better? Different? Entirely alike, and yet altogether different in essence?

We could start with that, maybe. Something else, for a change.

For all our sakes.

That. That was lengthy, that was. Jesus, achievement unlocked.

I refuse to acknowledge the existence of Skins Fire; Freud's defense mechanisms are doing wonders for me, at the moment. He called it Repression and Denial; I like to think of it as Arbitrary Ignorance and Bliss.

Quick poll: in the event, that say, someone had to get harmed and or killed off, who would you be least likely be sorry to see, well, go? That is to say, if I were to, oh, I don't know, decide to take someone out of the picture, or something, who would it be? Naomi or Emily?

Leave your answers in a comment, let's take them into consideration — very, very soon.

*insert sporadic burst of maniacal laughter here*

- Guppy x