Still Me

‘Do – do you guys want a drink? I mean, I can see you’ve got some but I’d be glad to line up some more.’ Josh gestured towards the bar.

‘No. Thanks, mate,’ said Sam, who had remained standing so that he was a good half-head taller than Josh. ‘I think we’re good here.’

There was an awkward silence.

‘Okay then.’ Josh looked at me, and nodded. ‘Great to meet you, Sam. You here for long?’

‘Long enough.’ Sam’s smile didn’t stretch as far as his eyes. I had never seen him quite so prickly.

‘Well, then … I’ll leave you guys to it. Louisa – I’ll see you around. Have a great evening.’ He held up his palms, a pacifying gesture. I opened my mouth but there was nothing to say that sounded right, so I waved, a weird, fluttering gesture with my fingers.

Sam sat down heavily. I glanced across the table at Nathan, whose face was a study in neutrality. The other guys didn’t appear to have noticed anything and were still talking about ticket prices at their last gig. Sam was briefly lost in thought. He finally looked up. I reached for his hand but he didn’t squeeze mine back.

The mood didn’t recover. The bar was too noisy for me to talk to him, and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say. I sipped my cocktail and ran through a hundred looping arguments in my head. Sam swigged his drink and nodded and smiled at the guys’ jokes, but I saw the tic in his jaw and knew his heart was no longer in it. At ten we peeled off and got a taxi towards home.

I let him hail it.

We went up in the service lift, as instructed, and listened before we crept into my room. Mr Gopnik appeared to be in bed. Sam didn’t speak. He went into the bathroom to change and closed the door behind him, his back rigid. I heard him brush his teeth and gargle as I crept into bed, feeling wrong-footed and angry at the same time. He seemed to be in there for ever. Finally, he opened the door and stood there in his boxers. His scars still ran livid red across his stomach. ‘I’m being a dick.’

‘Yes. Yes, you are.’

He let out a huge breath. He looked at my photograph of Will, nestled between the one of himself and the one of my sister with Thom, whose finger was up his nose. ‘Sorry. It just threw me. How much he looks like …’

‘I know. But you might as well say you spending time with my sister and her looking like me is weird.’

‘Except she doesn’t look like you.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘… what?’

‘I’m waiting for you to say I’m miles better-looking.’

‘You are miles better-looking.’

I pushed the covers back to let him in and he climbed in beside me.

‘You’re much better-looking than your sister. Heaps better. You’re basically a supermodel.’ He placed a hand on my hip. It was warm and heavy. ‘But with shorter legs. How’s that working for you?’

I tried not to smile. ‘Better. But quite rude about my short legs.’

‘They’re beautiful legs. My favourite legs. Supermodel legs are just – boring.’ He moved across so that he was over me. Every time he did that it was like bits of me sparked into involuntary life and I had to work hard not to wriggle. He rested on his elbows, pinning me in place and looking down at my face, which I was trying to make stern even though my heart was thumping.

‘I think you may have frightened the life out of that poor man,’ I said. ‘You looked like you slightly wanted to hit him.’

‘That’s because I slightly did.’

‘You are an idiot, Sam Fielding.’ I reached up and kissed him, and when he kissed me back he was smiling again. His chin was thick with stubble where he hadn’t bothered to shave.

This time he was tender. Partly because we now believed the walls were thin and he wasn’t really meant to be there. But I think we were both careful of each other after the unexpected events of the evening. Every time he touched me it was with a kind of reverence. He told me he loved me, his voice low and soft, and he looked straight into my eyes when he said it. The words reverberated through me like little earthquakes.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you too.

We had set the alarm for a quarter to five, and I woke cursing, dragged from sleep by the shrill sound. Beside me Sam groaned and pulled a pillow over his head. I had to push him awake.

I propelled him, grumbling, into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and padded to the kitchen to make us both coffee. When I came back I heard the thunk of the water being turned off. I sat on the side of the bed, sipped my coffee and wondered whose smart idea it had been to drink strong cocktails on a Sunday evening. The bathroom door opened just as I flopped back down.

‘Can I blame you for the cocktails? I need someone to blame.’ My head was thumping. I raised and lowered it gently. ‘What even was in those things?’ I placed my fingertips against my temples. ‘They must have been double measures. I don’t normally feel this grim. Oh, man. We should have just gone to 30 Rock.’

He didn’t say anything. I turned my head so that I could see him. He was standing in the doorway of the bathroom. ‘You want to talk to me about this?’

‘About what?’ I pushed myself upright. He was wearing a towel around his waist and holding a small white rectangular box. For a brief moment I thought he was trying to give me jewellery, and I almost laughed. But when he held the box towards me he wasn’t smiling.

I took it from him. And stared, disbelieving, at a pregnancy test. The box was opened, and the white plastic wand was loose inside. I checked it, some distant part of me noting that there were no blue lines, then looked up at him, temporarily lost for words.

He sat down heavily on the side of the bed. ‘We used a condom, right? The last time I was over. We used a condom.’

‘Wha– where did you find that?’

‘In your bin. I just went to put my razor in there.’

‘It’s not mine, Sam.’

‘You share this room with someone else?’

‘No.’

‘Then how can you not know whose it is?’

‘I don’t know! But – but it’s not mine! I haven’t had sex with anyone else!’ I realized as I was protesting that the mere act of insisting you hadn’t had sex with someone else made you sound like you were trying to hide the fact that you had had sex with someone else. ‘I know how it looks but I have no idea why that thing is in my bathroom!’

‘Is this why you’re always on at me about Katie? Because you’re actually feeling guilty about seeing someone else? What is it they call it? Transference? Is – is that why you were so … so different the other night?’

The air disappeared from the room. I felt as if I’d been slapped. I stared at him. ‘You really think that? After everything we’ve been through?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘You – you really think I’d cheat on you?’

He was pale, as shocked as I felt. ‘I just think if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck then, you know … it’s usually a duck.’

‘I am not a bloody duck … Sam. Sam.’

He turned his head reluctantly.

‘I wouldn’t cheat on you. It’s not mine. You have to believe me.’

His eyes scanned my face.

‘I don’t know how many times I can say it. It’s not mine.’