It’s never been easy with you has it? Like the time I invited you to dinner with my friends.
You arrive an hour and a half late, out of breath and the colour high on your cheeks, looking like you’ve run half way across town. I watch you leaning in towards the maitre d to share some confidence with her as she takes your coat and directs you to our table. You both laugh.
And what do you look like, dressing like that? The rest of us, straight out of work and still in our sweaty grey suits and you, from another world, an explosion of glamour and colour. Is that a bohemian thing or do you just not care? Like you’re still refusing to fit in, still a child.
You collapse down at the table. Your meeting went on forever, the client wouldn’t stop talking, the traffic was terrible and the parking was worse and…you shake your head contritely and wave your hand, dismissing any further required explanation because, well, everyone knows what it’s like, don’t they?
You flirt with the waiter; forcing the him to describe everything on the menu, throwing that huge mane of hair back theatrically in hysterical laughter when he innocently tries to explain. We all sit, food in front of us untouched, and listen, powerless to stop you; we hear about the time you got so drunk that you passed out in the arms of some z-list celebrity, the time you were chased out of a party by security after telling a minor royal to ‘fuck off’, the time your bullying dance teacher reduced you to tears of humiliation but wasn’t able to stop you making it to the end of the lesson, sending him flying as you barged past him on your way out. Every story punctuated and made interminable by your laughter or tears. As I listen, my mind struggles to break free from its orbit around a world of school runs, broken washing machines, cranky aging parents and all the rest of it. My soup goes cold.
You’d called me at midnight the previous weekend to tell me you had finished with the latest millionaire boyfriend. I sat in the dark, phone to my ear, the sound of your crying in my head.
Finally, someone says, ‘You love all the drama though, don’t you ?’
Pausing, you look at me across the table without blinking and say, so quietly that I can hardly hear you,
‘Of course I do’
And I pick up my wine glass and raise it to my mouth so that no-one can see me smile back.
