My So-Called

‘It’s been THREE YEARS, you fuck!’

‘Fine! I just don’t fancy you anymore, okay?’ he huffed. ‘You’re obsessed with the gym and fitness and we have nothing in common anymore. I just think we should call it, and move on.’

Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind, she knew, she absolutely knew, that it couldn’t really be about her liking the gym. It couldn’t really be that, just as she’d gone from a size sixteen to a size twelve, her 38EE chest had rounded out to a 34D. She was in proportion. Her back didn’t hurt anymore … surely it couldn’t be that after twelve years, he just … didn’t fancy her? But maybe it was.

‘I’m going to lose all the deposits.’ She stared into the distance, thinking about the flowers, and the caterer and the dress in her cupboard with that silly little note attached, with the smiley face, that she replaced every day as she counted down.

‘Not really a reason to get married, though, is it?’ Darren tried to smile, like now the worst was over. She watched his face change as she bared her teeth.

‘Fine for you to say. It’s all my wages.’ She tilted her head. ‘And how are you going to do this, then? Are you moving? Am I? If you’re going to jilt me the least you can do is let me keep my flat.’

‘You can keep the flat. I’ll stay with a friend,’ Darren said quickly.

‘A friend.’

The silence hung in the air, getting thicker and more suffocating until she said in the calmest and softest voice she knew, ‘Darren, if you have been fucking around on me, I swear to God I’ll cut your dick off.’

‘I haven’t! I wouldn’t!’

‘Well, until ten minutes ago I thought you wouldn’t insult my body and break my heart, but HEY, SHIT HAPPENS!’

I sound crazy, she thought. I need to stop sounding so fucking crazy. She took a breath.

‘Okay. You go stay with your “friend”. I’m not going to be able to afford this place on my own anyway now …’ Weirdly, that was the thing that made her tearful, her chest suddenly contracting. Their flat, her home, the place they’d been for years now. Designed, and painted, and worked hard for. And now she didn’t have a home. And she’d have to live on her own; she’d never done that before. Even at uni, she’d been with Darren. She’d never been planning to ever have to do that … She took a breath, and looked up at him. She was about to break, and like fuck was he going to see it happen. She could already feel everything slipping away, visualising the kids they wouldn’t have, the home they wouldn’t live in, the Sunday morning pancakes that were the only decent thing Darren could cook, and bleaching his hair in the bathroom every few months, and the dress she wouldn’t wear …

‘You need to go now. Pack some shit up and leave. We’ll arrange a time for you to get it.’ She sounded a lot more sure than she felt.

‘Okay, Lil.’ Darren smiled at her hopefully. ‘I’m really glad you took this so well. You’re obviously on the same page I am. It must have been clear we were drifting apart to you, too, and –’

‘Darren?’ Tig took a deep breath. ‘Get your stuff, get out. And then go fuck yourself.’

Tig physically shook the memory away, standing at the doorway to Entangled. This felt wrong, it felt the most wrong thing in the world to be at her cafe dressed in real-people clothes. Tig at Entangled was a Tig who wore yoga pants and tie-dye and didn’t do much beyond wash her face and bury her head in a notebook. Somehow dressing up made her feel like an imposter, a fraud. Like she was saying she cared about Ollie’s opinion of her. She stood, hand clenched around the door handle, and growled at herself a little. ‘You’ve got this, bitch, open the freaking door,’ she told herself, and miraculously her body listened.

She marched across the wooden floor, heading for her table, not looking at anyone, purposefully not looking for Ollie.

‘Hello, lovely, we missed you today.’ Ruby smiled, rubbing her shoulder. ‘Worried the new guy ran you off.’

‘Nope,’ Tig smiled defiantly. ‘This is home. Couldn’t leave even if I wanted to.’

‘I’m glad. We miss you when you’re not here.’ Ruby pulled out Tig’s usual chair. ‘I’ll go grab your tea. Have a slice of cake, won’t you?’

Tig quickly did a calculation of how far she’d cycled, and what she’d had for breakfast, and how much of a sugar comedown she’d be on if she said yes … oh, fuck it. Time to stop being boring. ‘Have you got your Baileys and Guinness cake?’

‘Coming right up!’ Ruby squeezed her shoulders once more, and was off.

Tig took the time to look around Entangled, and all was as it always had been. Bright-coloured paintings on the walls, the box of lego pieces at the back. Whitewashed walls, and mismatched tables – the whole place was bright, and airy, and personal. Tig had wandered in years ago, when she’d seen a poster for life drawing classes, and from then on it had become a haven. The staff had seen her photographs, they’d seen her planning her wedding, they’d seen her fall apart but continue chugging along. She should almost be embarrassed, she supposed, the amount of her life that had been on show in this public place, but, to be honest, Ruby took care of her. She’d turned up a few days after the wedding was supposed to have taken place, and Ruby took one look at her, brought her tea and cake, and informed the staff that no one was to ask any goddamn questions. And slowly, things had gone back to normal.

‘Hey!’ Tig looked up and saw Tabby walking past her to her usual seat. The journalist often sat at the back of the cafe around the same time of day. ‘Guinness cake! Good choice!’

‘I’ll regret it later.’ Tig smiled at the brunette as she got out her laptop and started faffing with her notepads.

‘No,’ the woman shook her head firmly. ‘There shall be no regretting cake. I do not regret the cakes I have eaten, only the ones I have not.’

‘Good mantra,’ Tig grinned. ‘Lot of work today?’

The brunette sighed. ‘Last couple of articles for deadline. I’m travelling for a couple of months, off next week. Has to be finished.’

‘Awesome. Where are you going?’

‘I have no idea. My boyfriend decided I need more surprises in my life. Which is awful and makes me want to vomit. But if it’s one less thing to arrange, then that’s fine with me!’ The woman laughed, and Tig thought suddenly, I want to be like you. You know what you’re doing.

‘Well, I’ll let you get on. Happy working!’ Tig said.

‘You, too!’

Tig turned back around, got out her own notebook. That was what she loved about this place, the comfort of it all, the familiarity. Home.

A towering slice of moist chocolate cake and a green tea suddenly appeared on her table.

‘Well, don’t you look gorgeous.’ His voice seemed to laugh at her a little.

Tig looked up. ‘I didn’t yesterday?’

‘Oh, you’re definitely acting like a girlfriend now,’ Ollie grinned. She looked at him, blue shirt rolled up to his elbows, straining at the biceps, black beanie covering most of his blond hair. His eyes were still as dangerously green as they had been the night before.

‘Isn’t it somewhere in the rules you’re meant to make a girl wait before you phone her up and ask her out. Something about a three-day rule?’

He leaned in and she found herself taking a sharp breath at how close he was, how his cologne smelled spicy and intoxicating. ‘I don’t play games, Tigerlily. If I want something, I go for it.’

He doesn’t want you, not like that, she reminded herself.

‘Oh, shut up, this whole thing is a game,’ she said, brash and loud, trying to stop him using that soft voice that made her stomach dip.

‘It’s a lesson, very different.’

‘It’s an arrangement, and had money changed hands for services we’d both be in jail.’ She looked back at her tea, wondering why she couldn’t be cool anymore. Tigerlily was nothing if not cool under pressure. Or, at least, the old Tig was. Ollie seemed to be intent on showing her that she was a newbie at all of this, and was enjoying every minute of it.

‘That makes no sense, unless one of us has offered services I wasn’t aware of. Not that I’d complain,’ he smirked.

‘I’m going to take all of that bullshit as an ill-fated attempt to tell me you like my dress, right?’

‘You take it however you want to, gorgeous. I’m afraid I have to get back to work.’ He winked. ‘I’m done at six – dinner?’

‘If you stop being such an arsehole,’ she said pointedly, watching as he grinned again, rearranging his hat. As he lifted his arms, the shirt slipped up, showing the barest sliver of his stomach, and Tig averted her eyes, unsure why that seemed so intimate.

‘It’s called flirtation, darling, it’s all good practice.’

‘Well, when you’re done reminding me why I don’t date, feel free to come back as the Ollie you were yesterday, who was capable of having an honest conversation.’ She huffed, exasperated.