She (Second Year Short Story Coursework)

(I haven't really posted on here for a while, but this was something I wrote pretty recently as a piece of coursework based upon an idea I had well over a year ago. I'm actually quite proud of how it turned out in the end; if I was ever to find myself in a situation like this, I think I'd be pretty happy. Enjoy.)

When I next saw her, she said it again: she was bored, she needed out. She knew that I could take her mind off things. I was her escape.

I didn’t like the thought of being used. I wanted to feel that she liked me for who I was, and not just because I made her forget herself.

“I do like you for who you are, you know,” she said, almost reading my mind.

“Huh, could’ve fooled me,” I replied, not wanting to sound as if it bothered me too much. Nonchalant. Noncommittal. In the silence that followed, the final track on the album came to an end and the needle slipped, drenching us in the beautiful scratching that signified the end of the B-side of the record.

We sat facing each other on the floor, legs crossed. She hugged one of the cushions from my parents’ wicker sofa to her chest.

“Well that’s the newest one. It’d just come out when I bought it. Three pounds ninety eight. What do you think?”

“I like it. Not as much as the first one though. The Pink Floyd one. I liked that. Put it on again?”

I stood up and lifted the needle from the delicate flimsy disk of vinyl, expertly flipping it off the turntable. This always impressed her, the way I could switch between two different vinyl records in a matter of seconds. Dark Side Of The Moon landed and I flicked the needle back down to set the revolutions going again. I re-joined her on the floor. In the absent-mindedness of wanting to impress her, I realised that I’d mixed the two sides up, and instead of the opening movie sound effects of ‘Speak To Me’ we were stuck with the cash register chime that signalled the start of ‘Money.’ I stood up again with a sigh to change it. A hand on my arm stopped me. I followed her delicate fair skin up from fingertips to facial features with my eyes. Questioning.

“We don’t have to listen to it in order. In fact, I’d prefer it now if we didn’t.”

“You don’t do anything normally, do you?” I looked for the answer in her face. She smiled and said nothing. Porcelain skin still rested on my arm.

“Have you honestly never considered buying one of these yourself then?” I said to her, bridging the silence that always verged on awkwardness but never felt uncomfortable. At least, not to me.

“I like yours.”

“But wouldn’t you rather have one of your own?” I wondered aloud.

“I like being able to come here though.”

I didn’t reply.

When the vinyl reached its end, I decided to change the tune a bit. I knew for a fact that this record was one of her favourites. Her entire face lit up as soon as the first strains of Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run crackled through the speakers. Of my entire vinyl collection, this record was my most frequently played. It reminded me of her when she wasn’t there.

“You know me too well,” she smiled. I smiled back, and made use of the empty house – turning the volume of the crackling speakers up even further.

“Oh, do I?”

“Better than anyone.”

“I’ll bet there’s things I don’t know though.”

“Go on then, twenty questions.”

I smiled at her suggestion. Most of the things I’d be asking her, I probably already knew.

“Okay… Favourite colour?”

“Sky blue.”

“Favourite flavour ice cream?”
“Mint chocolate chip.”

“Favourite place?” I mentally crossed my fingers, praying that whatever answer she gave would be in my favour.

“The beach in Penzance. Where Harry used to always take me on his weekends off.”

Silence. She’d mentioned his name again.

“It’s getting late. You should probably be going soon,” I said after an age, regretting the words as soon as they’d left my mouth. My attempt to fill the silent void between us that had been created by the mention of his name was a pathetic one.

Neither of us moved. Maybe neither of us wanted to. Maybe she’d realised her mistake: surely she should have guessed by now that even the sound of his name made me silently fume inside. To think that somebody could treat someone so delicate and beautiful the way he’d treated her. Maybe she wanted to say something, but didn’t have the confidence to. The air was thick and heavy with the uncertainty of maybes.

“I know,” she finally murmured.

And then out of nowhere she started talking about her ‘type’ again. Tall, strong, muscular, with that just-perfect cropped haircut. I thought about my own messy long hair. Would it be too noticeable if I had it cut and started doing weights, I wondered. Each and every trait that belonged to her so-called ‘perfect man’ bored another nail deep into my skull.

Everything was laced with negativity all of a sudden. How she’d been scared into never fully trusting anyone again.  How every guy she’d ever been attracted to had screwed her over in some way or another. The name from earlier that she didn’t repeat, yet was visibly thinking of cropped up over and over again: her ex-boyfriend that had given up a diamond for a dull everyday pebble.

            “I’ve never been able to trust anyone properly since him, you know?”

“So I’m not good enough for you, am I?” I joked, trying to lighten the mood. 

“You know what I mean, silly. You help me so much because you know not to shout at me when I start going off on one.”

I couldn’t quite decide how to take this. On one hand, it was one of the deepest soul-crushing blows that she could ever execute – pushing me further and further away from her and into the dreaded zone of being that signalled we were ‘just-friends’. The other hand caressed the compliment like it was the only thing that mattered in the world.

And so it went on like that. I wasn’t hers, and I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t ever be. But there was some kind of comfort in knowing that she could confide in me, and I wanted to be the one the she turned to when it all went to shit. Broken she’d called herself once. From the very bottom of her tiny feet, to the ends of her thick milky-coffee coloured hair, I wanted to fix her.

“Guess I’ll have to be going then.”

Our eyes met for a moment. I tried to telepathically send her everything I felt towards her in those few seconds. The way I wanted to lie down on my living room floor with her and listen to records all day: our fingertips barely touching, our lips finding one another on their own accord. The way her eyelashes fluttered before she broke our mutual gaze mirrored the fluttering I felt in my heart every time I so much as thought about her.

A brief goodbye, barely even a whispered pleasantry followed. Nothing more than a simple “I’ll see you later”. Of course I would see her later, there was no doubt about that. As the old cliché goes, her face haunted my dreams every night without fail. Of course, I would see her in person again: no doubt that boredom would overcome her once more and she’d turn up on my doorstep in her battered yellow Beetle seeking refuge from the world.

She climbed gracefully into her car as I wished that our goodbye could prolong itself somehow, that something would happen. It didn’t and she gave me a final smile, a shrug of the shoulders and a wave as she turned the key in the ignition. I smiled back and then turned: watching her drive off was something I never fully liked to witness. Instead, I turned back into my empty house, the last strains of Springsteen floating through the open living room door into the hallway. With almost perfect timing, the track came to an end and silence ensued.

I closed the door on the Beetle, and looked back again through the frosted glass as she rolled off down the street. My infatuation always got the better of me. When she’d gone, I lingered just for a moment in the hope that she’d return: that maybe the realisation of the way she really felt towards me had finally hit her. But the car was gone and didn’t come back.

Finally, I retreated back into my living room.

I hadn’t noticed the note that she’d left for me beneath the needle, tucked delicately away at some point over the last few minutes that I must have missed. Placed carefully enough so that the record could still play without the paper getting caught. I plucked it out as gently as I could and unfolded the tiny scrap of paper in my palm: a butterfly resting for a moment atop a cold and weathered rock. 

“Thanks for today. I really enjoyed it.”

It meant nothing to me, and everything at the same time.