Chapter Twelve.

CHAPTER TWELVE

↠ Etienne

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close."

― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

SOME of the boys in our year had agreed to meet at Louis Pentland's home to have a few drinks before setting out to Libertine, a nightclub one of the school's societies had rented to raise money for a cause no one cared for.

The evening could only be salvaged by our consumption of liquor in substantial amounts, but that inevitably led to James puking all over the Pentlands' kitchen because he had been moronic enough to combine tequila with gin and scotch in great quantities. Peter was present and was trying to conduct himself as if the previous night had never happened. Still, I had no interest in returning to our feigned amiability and suspected he didn't either. We just passed each other by, that night and for the rest of our lives.

I had never intended to appear shamelessly miserable, but it had begun coming naturally to me, this growing anxiety about how unwell everything was. There was no order and balance in this little world I had built for myself. Timmy Higgins did two lines of cocaine on the kitchen counter of a home that was not his own. The majority of the boys laughed at Peter's jokes, which I did not care to hear but could easily assume no one in their right mind would find amusing. Louis Pentland joined me by the sofa, and just as I was about to find his company agreeable he directed my attention to his mobile phone, the way I'd noticed he'd done with the rest of the boys. On the screen, nude photographs of a girl from Ridgeway. Cathy, perhaps, Cathy something-or-another.

"Isn't that the weirdest looking fanny you've ever seen?" Oliver Hopkins asked, holding a beer bottle in one hand and a cigarette in the other, his plump cheeks rapidly becoming scarlet due to his proximity to the fireplace.

"It's a bit lopsided, innit?" One of the other boys commented, which received a wave of replies agreeing with his statement.

I wanted to scream.

I used the text message I'd just received as an excuse to step outside of the house. The initial text was followed by two more. They were all from Mary. She wanted to know if it would take long for us to get there. Everyone was waiting for us. And she missed me.

I did not respond.

The night sky covered us completely undisturbed by clouds, but the winds were unrelenting as they interfered with the night. I sat by River on the entrance stairs. He had stepped out with James about ten minutes earlier to ensure that he did not cause any more disarray. James was sprawled on the grass facing upwards. The bushes to my left smelled of vomit.

"They're draining," I told River as I lit up the loose cigarette I had stolen from Oliver.

"That they are," River sighed.

I took long, theatrical drags from the cigarette. "I just find it weird how we were all so close once."

The thought that I could've easily blended in with a crowd I now found appalling was a cause for concern. I thought back at Myrtle and Sandra and Ginny, whose appearances had been the easiest to pick on during the early stages of our teenage years, and I'd done so without an ounce of consideration of how my words could have possibly harmed them. I thought of the distasteful comments I'd made, which had relentlessly mocked anyone who was an easy target. I thought of Seamus, whom I had detested for no particular reason. In retrospect, having greasy hair and an affinity for the colour black was not a good enough reason to torment someone.

I ran my hands over my face, feeling embarrassed and frustrated and silly for considering whether an apology should be extended.

River, with his innate ability to read me, smirked amused. "Maybe we've outgrown them. And that's a good thing."

"I feel like shit," James intervened, his voice strained, still laying with his arms and legs extended dramatically.

"Serves you right."

"This is your fault. Neither of you tried to stop me."

"Do we have to go?" I asked River, my expression pleading for a no.

"We already paid for the stupid tickets," River sighed again as he rose to his feet and dusted himself off. "Let's just go for twenty minutes, get James to sober up there, and then head off somewhere else."

"Don't you dare try to fucking move me," James warned River once he saw him approaching, but River dismissed the warning and grabbed onto James' arm. James, however, was both heavy and intoxicated, which caused both boys to stumble in their attempt to stand upright.

The party was amongst the most mediocre I'd ever seen. The music sounded like the same song playing on a loop. The blue lights looked tacky. The place smelled of a mixture of cheap liquor and perfume. It was severely under-crowded, with only six or seven small groups scattered around the place, leaving distances between them that would be hard to fill.

Mary greeted me with a slow kiss on the cheek. A couple of her girlfriends giggled, and this entire interaction was closely followed by the group of nearly ten people we were with. She looked strikingly pretty, and I worried that I could end up in her bed if I didn't employ a stronger sense of will and manage my alcohol consumption better. Although surely there was more to me than that animalistic drive that leads boys into being fools. Right?

Molly studied Mary's flirty demeanour with a watchful eye and a nasty disposition. "What on earth is Mary Anne McGregor doing here?" She asked the question to no one in particular but kept her eyes on Mary as she spoke about her as if she wasn't there. "Is she not supposed to be looking after her drunk father?"

Mary was unable to mask the hurt in her expression, but still, she retaliated despite Molly being the most notorious and fastidious bully at Ridgeway. "I'll have you know that he's doing alright. He doesn't need anyone to look after him," she muttered through gritted teeth, her eyes stinging with angry tears. "But you'd be wise not to bring family into this, Molly, with that fucking brother of yours rolling around in that stupid wheelchair—"

And I was off.

I was impatiently waiting for James to sober up a little so that we could hit the road again and call it a night. I loosely followed the conversations I was having with people I had little interest in when Mary walked up to us, now a new rivalry in her pocket for her to carry everywhere she went. Awkward smiles were exchanged, followed by nervous giggles by her girlfriends, and then her lips on mine. It happened so quickly, this silent message she wanted to send to Molly to inform her that she was the most legitimate out of the two.

But there was no competition here. They were both the same to me. Grey and painfully uninteresting.

There was taunting and cheering from some. A tantrum from Molly and her friends. James and River had turned around and pretended not to see. I looked at her with a blank gaze for what could have possibly been minutes. I let her have her little moment of victory. She placed a hand over her mouth and laughed with a girl with a name I don't remember but it was something boring like Rachel.

Once that moment passed, I started a different one. I pulled her to the side, not wanting to create a scene and humiliate her in front of her friends. She was still laughing. "I'm really sorry. I've had too much to drink," she said, but there was a certain amusement in her eyes that told me otherwise. She was finding this incredibly entertaining.

"I'm seeing someone else," I replied bluntly. And it was glorious to watch the joy leave her eyes at once.

"Oh—that's okay. I didn't think that what we had was exclusive anyway. I just hoped it would be someday."

"It won't." It felt good to tell the truth. To not soften it. To not exhaust myself trying to lessen someone else's burden. "I'm really not feeling this and I don't want to drag it out any longer. I think we should stop seeing each other. It's for the best. I'm sorry for wasting your time."

But I was not sorry for wasting her time. I was not sorry for being unapologetic about what I wanted. I liked the taste of truth—liked how honesty did not need to be manipulated to be a one-size-fits-all ordeal. This was the most liberated I had ever felt, freed from the shackles of a mind that had too much to say and into the comfort of a tongue that spoke freely.

"You know, Cassie and I live in the same building," I said to River and James as we turned left on Millfield Road. My words sounded nonchalant yet abrupt, almost as if they'd been lingering in my throat, preparing to come out. River was sober and was driving his mother's car. James was still drunk and was slumped over in the back seat.

"Yeah, we know," River replied. "We found out back in June. We obviously knew where you live and then her overdose happened, and that's when we found that she lives here as well."

"Correction, that's when you found out," James added. I could hear him struggling to sit up, and, after a couple of seconds, felt him leaning in between the two front seats. "I already knew you two lived in the same building because I shagged her mum once. Did you two know that? That I shagged her mum?"

"What do you mean you shagged her mum?"

"I mean exactly that. River. Don't give me that look. We met outside of a pub one night, probably about a year ago, and she invited me over to her place. Cassie was not home, thank God. Could you imagine how awkward that would have been? Anyway, I walked past your place when I was making my way up to hers."

This was only mildly surprising, if only because James had failed to mention it before. But other than that, this was right on brand for Sophie Deneuve, who liked her men either younger or stupidly rich.

"You could've stopped by to say hello."

"I was about to but I really wanted to shag her mum."

We let silence sneak in if only to admire the hilarity of the situation. And then I ended it because I desperately wanted to gain back that liberating feeling that came with telling an unfiltered truth. "We're really good friends, actually, Cassie and I. Childhood friends. She's one of my closest friends, really. I just used to ignore her when we're at school."

"That's very weird of you," James slurred, and I doubted that he had really taken in the meaning of my words.

River, however, was impossibly shocked by my confession. He had parked the car right by the building's entrance and had turned the entirety of his upper body towards me. His widened brown eyes bore into me as if hoping to comprehend an enigma. "So all of this time you two have known each other but pretended not to at school?"

"Yeah."

"Any particular reason for doing that?"

"Because I'm an idiot."

"Fair enough, but still, that's a very shitty thing to do, even for you."

"I know that alright, save me the fucking lecture," I said, opening the door and admiring the lightheartedness of the situation.

River looked on ahead with a confused expression still twisting his features. "I need, like, a week to unpack that."

"Yeah, me too," James said, sprawled in the backseat again. "I'll be thinking about you all night."

"Please don't," I chuckled, stepping out of the car and closing the door behind me.

I closed many doors that night, and I was proud of myself for it. I was dying to tell Cassie all about the truths I had discovered and had so shamelessly voiced. I wanted to tell her that I'd just had the realisation that all of my friends were miserable and we were doing ourselves a disservice by not acknowledging it more freely. That James was tired of the pressure of having to deliver in a sport he had started to abhor and was becoming increasingly insecure about the fact his romantic advances were continuously turned down despite being sincere and genuine. That River was miserable because his life was being restricted by a disease that I always abstained from naming because I felt like it carried more weight than people felt comfortable carrying, and although he was handling it like a champion, it still subjected him to gruelling moments of self-loathing.

"Mary kissed me tonight but I told her that I wasn't interested in her anymore," were the first words I voiced shortly after making my entrance into her apartment. She was sitting on her living room floor, staring at the TV screen with a handful of crisps in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.

"You said no? Wow. That's a first."

"Oh, and that's not even the beginning," I continued taking her glass from her and downing its content. She frowned at this. "I told the boys about us, well, minus the new stuff. Because we're all just so fucking tired of living such meaningless lives and pretending to be something that we're not?"

She nodded her head, giving me dramatic reassurance. "Great moment of revelation, I'm sure."

I looked at her then, and from that previous excitement came a sudden desire to be closer to her, as close as physically possible. "Is it bad that I really want to kiss you right now?"

Her initial reaction was that of mock confusion. "Why would it be a bad thing? Look at me. Do I not look seductive?"

"Like a lingerie model," I responded as I crouched down to her level. She was wearing only an oversized t-shirt.

My lips found their way to hers ever so effortlessly. Her mouth was warm and fairly inexperienced, but just like everything about her, it made me feel right at home. In the best way possible, that is. Not the type of home that I knew, but the type of home that I dreamed of. This was only our second kiss and she had already mastered the ability to make me lose my sense of self. I did not have a single intelligible thought when our mouths came together, and I had never experienced something so freeing. I let my body move on its own accord. Let the feeling in the middle of my chest tell me what to do. Our tongues tasted of wine, but they were shy in their encounter, tentative, like a first step in the right direction.

Somehow we ended up in her bed, and it angered me to have no recollection of how we got there because I wanted to savour every little moment. I wanted this to be a memory I could revisit over and over. The kiss had deepened. Our mouths were on an exploratory journey. I could've kissed and licked every inch of her body because it felt like the natural thing to do. It was an unspoken law of nature that my mouth belonged in her skin. My lips travelled down her neck where I could feel her pulse giving me the pleasant news that she was more alive than ever.

"If we're going to have sex tonight I just want you to know that I'm a virgin and I'm probably going to be really bad at it."

I found her honesty so staggering despite it being the habitual way in which she expressed herself. I believe I became more flustered by hearing her admission than she did confessing to it.

I rested my chin on her stomach and looked up at her with a sheepish grin curving my lips. For once in my life, I experienced that promised joy, that giddiness that comes before sex. I was excited. I was looking forward to whatever it was that we were getting ourselves into. This wasn't a choreography. I didn't feel like I needed to rub my skin with soap to rid myself of that sickly feeling I'd experienced far too many times. "I can do all of the work if you want."

Her wide smile felt sincere as she looked up at the ceiling and fidgeted a little. "Just don't laugh at me."

"Why would I laugh?" I asked, but she was so tense and I already wanted to giggle. We were friends after all. And friends find humour in each other's discomfort. I worked my hands up her sides first and then lifted myself so that we could be face-to-face. My nose brushed against hers and I don't think I'd ever enjoyed feeling a human being underneath me this much. "Are you nervous?"

There was no point in even asking. She could not stop fidgeting and giggling to herself. It was nice to see her swim and not drown in these moments that can sometimes be agonising to live through. God knows I do not have a pleasant recollection of what it was like to lose my virginity. "I don't want you to see me without my shirt on. That's so embarrassing. Don't stare. At anything."

The only lighting we were working with was coming from the living room. We had left her bedroom door open and the light poured in, enough to give our eyes a sense of direction but leaving sufficient shadows to conceal certain things. I was far more nervous than I was leading on. I did not want to disappoint her, but this was as much uncharted territory for me as it was for her.

But being inside of her for the very first time made me feel as if the universe had been conspiring all of my life to bring me to this moment. I had never known how to be gentle. Only impulsive, reflective, impersonal. I had never cared to caress anyone the way I did her, with my fingertips revelling in all they came across. I didn't know who I was until my name escaped from her lips in the form of a moan. She breathed life into it, and finally, I became Etienne. I never liked myself as much as I did when I was inside of her.