Chapter 77
[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]
Saturday 20th May 2000
It’s me once again! (Lucy! The Orange Painter! Go Go Orange Painter in Space!) I have another crazy day to tell you about that’s way more important than anything my brother would say!
Things started off normal enough, with me getting up and eating and all that stuff. Ordinary Saturday morning deal. And then my mobile rang, which I guess isn’t that special either, but keep reading because it gets better, duh!
Rin’s name on the screen.
“Heeeey, Rinster!” I answered the call. “What’s happening? I’m just finishing the best damn bowl of Coco Pops I’ve had all week!”
“Th-That’s good!” she said and I couldn’t help but laugh at how thrown she sounded. “I already ate a bit ago and now I’m… calling you.”
“Best way to start the day!” I told her. “You must be having Lucy Withdrawal symptoms!”
“I must be…” she repeated with a voice that could only have been exhaustion from going so long without me being around.
“Can’t be helped, when you’re over there and I’m over here being a badass Painter!”
“Actually, that’s why I’m calling-”
“It’s not like we know when fights are gonna happen, so you’d have to come down and hang around us for a while if you wanna see me in action,” I informed her in my best business voice.
“Not that, not that…” And she cleared her throat a bit. “Would you like to hang out today? I-If you haven’t got anything else planned, of course…”
“I thiiink I can make time for you,” I told her with a twinkle.
“Not just me, Nathan and Clay will be with us,” Rin noted. “Possibly Kayleigh and Will, I’m still not sure…”
“Oh jeez… you can’t have a party without me!”
I got up from the breakfast table and headed for my room, leaving my bowl where it was.
“I don’t think it’s gonna be a party-”
“It’ll be a party once I’m there!” I cheered. “I’m gonna change and then I’ll catch the bus, see you soon!”
“There’s no rush-” I heard her say as I hung up on her. And like on Stars In Their Eyes, I was in a whole new outfit before the applause ended!
But then I realised… this was so short notice that my fellow Painters didn’t know yet. Well, unless Rin had told them too… which would’ve been weird… so that responsibility fell upon me!
For whatever reason, I decided to phone Kendal and tell her. After all, she was probably the only one awake at this time of day (it was, like, almost 10am?).
“Hey Lucy,” she greeted me.
“Heeey, just a quick call, I’m not gonna be hanging out with you guys today, so pass it on!”
Easy-peasy!
“Gotcha, will do…”
And that’s where the call ends, right?
“Uhm… while we’re talking…”
“Well, I was done but sure…” I noted, scratching at my head a little.
“I just… hoo man, maybe I should save this…” Kendal muttered to herself. It wasn’t like her to be all uncomfortable. It made me feel the same way.
“I don’t mind waiting,” I said less breezily than I wanted, and then I was ready to hang up on her but-
“Listen… I’ve been thinking a lot… about everything… about us…”
Wish I could’ve made an awesome quip there, but her tone of voice kept me quiet. That felt weird.
“When I asked you out, I kind of expected it to be a short thing… that sounds harsh…”
She sighed a bit.
“I figured we’d take it a day at a time… remember I said-”
“‘Let’s live for now,’ yeah,” I nodded. “I teased you for daaaaays.”
“Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with you,” she told me straight. (Ha, punny.)
“You mentioned that too…”
On Valentine’s Day, no less! That felt unfair…
“Lucy,” she said and it felt like she was glaring at me with her voice.
“Okay, okay, I’ll try and stop saying things…”
“I fell in love with you and then when you called it off… I felt like an idiot. Like… I knew it could have happened and I got away with myself, and I know you’re about to make some kind of joke about being lovable but please, just this once…”
How could I even try? Not just because she didn’t want me to, but because she was spilling her heart out all over me… All I did was give a little “mhm” so she knew I was still listening.
“Since then, I tried to bury it… I didn’t want to be heartbroken, and I didn’t want it to hurt when I saw you. And then Valentine’s Day happened and… I died. I actually died for a few minutes. That kind of changes how you see things…”
Then she chuckled a little.
“Cos I get it. Harmony said it before… it’s not normal to push myself the way I do. I was surfing all over that monster and having the time of my life… Yeah. Okay. I told you I still had feelings for you because I was still shaken. And it’s not like I don’t. But I…”
“You got bored waiting on me?” I suggested flippantly enough.
“Something like that.” I could hear her cute smile. “I’ve thought about it and… even if I’m a monster, I need to look after myself. I think you do too, actually.”
I didn’t really know how to take that…
“And… I understand. Not the why, but I get that… you’re not in that place anymore. So I’m coming to terms with it. I’m not burying it anymore. Well, I don’t know how much is left buried now…”
“Keeendall,” I began, “are you gonna ask me not to hang around you guys anymore? Cause I’m a Painter, that’s not really gonna work…”
I realised right then that I’d been standing up the whole time… I parked my butt on the bed, and breathed out.
“No, that wouldn’t be fair. Just… know that I’m gonna be working through some stuff, yeah? We can still be friends. And I really should say…”
She took a moment.
“I’m glad you were my first girlfriend.”
I suddenly came over all Alex and went sentimental.
“Me too,” I smiled down the phone at her.
But, see, that was supposed to be just a nice phone call where we settle all the “will-we-won’t-we?” stuff and resolve to be friends, right? But it kept coming up in my mind on the bus ride to where we were all meeting up. All this time and she’d still had feelings for me… I bet Alanis Morrisette would enjoy that. Kendal loved me for so long after we split up, but I bet if we’d stayed together…
It's not like I wanted to hurt her. I just figured it’d happen one way or the other.
Still, managed to shake it off by the time I got off the bus. Time to hang out with my special buds!
(Somehow, I never thought about how Nathan was one of those buds and how I’d have all that crappy angst brought back up again as soon as I saw him… I blame Kendal!)
“Let’s get this party started!” I declared with arms spread wide as I approached Nathan, Rin, Kayleigh and Will (and made them all jump).
“Shit, that means Clay has to pay for our food…?” was Will’s immediate response.
“Good luck with that!” I chirped back at him.
“It’s Bolton rules, last one to show up has to pay,” Kayleigh explained between puffs of her cigarette.
“I still think you’re making that up,” Nathan told her, and she smirked back at him.
“What’s the plan for today?” I asked, sitting myself down next to Rin on the bench. “Shops, food, find a house party and sneak in?”
“If you brought your house party-detector with you, sure,” Kayleigh shrugged.
“Hey, I’d rather try and find one than not!”
I turned to Rin.
“I mean, I know you’d need to get shit-faced before you started having fun, but…”
“Thanks…” she whimpered.
So, we chatted a bit, and then Clay showed up all glowering and growly. Kayleigh found the guts to say he was gonna have to pay for our food.
“Keep it cheap, then,” he glared at her. (If a word begins with G, it probably fits Clay.)
“Got it…” Kayleigh nodded back. She’s cute when she’s intimidated.
“Let’s make a move, then,” Nathan suggested as he stood up and stretched. Off we went!
We had way too much fun for me to write about in detail. We went through loads of shops and bought some stuff, ate at Pizza Hutt, went to an arcade, and then we had to just hang out at the park because Clay was all “I’m not spending any more money”. So we walked around a bit in the early evening light and I got busy swatting any bugs that tried to get near me.
“Are we just doing this for the rest of the day?” Will asked us at one point. “Because it’s gonna get boring…”
“We should sniff out a party!” I said brightly, and couldn’t help but groove a bit in anticipation.
“I doubt there’ll be any happening just yet, but… we could wander around and listen out for loud music…” Nathan mused.
“Or go back to one of your houses and drive your parents out,” Kayleigh added. “Start our own house party.”
“I vote Rin’s!” I told them all.
“Do you want my parents to kill me…?” she squeaked back.
“Mine’s a no-go,” Nathan mentioned. “My family’s going nowhere.”
“Maybe we should actually plan a house party some time and save it for then?” Will proposed, scratching his furrowed brow.
“But I need to party!” I whined, and gave him my best pleading eyes.
“Don’t give me that look. It’s clearly not happening,” he grumbled.
“I’ll spend all night looking for one, so help me…!”
“And I’m taking that as my cue to leave…” Kayleigh sighed.
“Good idea,” Will added.
“Just because you’re driving her home…” I pouted at him.
The two of them gave us their goodbyes and strolled off together. He totally had his arm around her and stuff.
“And then there were four…” Rin said dramatically. I’m sure Clay almost cracked a smile at that.
“Actually…”
Nathan stepped over to me.
“Can we talk?”
“You just did and I’ve been talking all day,” I reminded him.
“No, I mean can we talk now?”
“We are, it’s literally what we’re doing. Nathan, please, focus!”
He shook his head a little, and held out his hand. I took it and shook it. That was enough for him as he led me away. We walked a short distance from Rin and Clay, into a little forested patch, all nice and secret.
“If you’d said ‘let’s walk to that spot over there’, I could’ve walked here myself,” I told him as we approached. “I’m not stupid, the whole ‘dumb blonde’ thing is a horrible stereotype…”
We came to a stop, and he turned to face me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked seriously.
“Nothing…? I’m having a great time,” I assured him.
“You keep frowning.”
“That must be the lighting making me look sad.”
I gave him two thumbs-ups.
“Trust me, I’m-”
“Lucy, we lived together for months and we were dating. I know you. You’re lying to me.”
That look on his face. All I could do was wiggle my thumbs at him.
“You can tell me,” he said. “You can tell me anything-”
“I saw this huuuge dog yesterday when I was walking home from school!” I told him excitedly. He put his hands on my shoulders.
“Lucy. I want to help,” he said while looking right into my eyes.
“Is this you trying to get back together with me?” I asked him plainly.
“It’s me caring about you. Because, yeah, I love you, and that means we could be on opposite sides of the planet and I’d still be worried if you were sad.”
“And I’m flattered, but I’m fine,” I promised him, and knocked his hands away. “And you should really get over me, we were ships passing in the night and it was hot but…”
“But what?” he huffed. “Because it’s been four months and I still don’t know why you broke up with me.”
Huh. I was sure I’d told him something before.
“Cause… it’s like how they only did four episodes of Fawlty Towers or whatever! You don’t wanna overdo something!”
“That’s… that doesn’t make sense…”
“Welcome to my world,” I managed to purr at him.
He turned away, paced back and forth a little, concentration all over his face. I watched, feeling proud of myself, letting my words settle on him. That would surely be it, right?
“Can I say something?” he finally asked me. And then he proved how well he knows me by adding: “And I don’t mean am I physically able to, I’m asking for permission.”
I grimaced a little at that. Bloody pre-empting me…
“Sure, everybody’s got something to say today…”
He briefly gave me a look like “I wonder what that means?”, but instead, he said:
“This is the last thing I’m going to say about this, ever. I promise.”
“Because you’re gonna try and move on from me?”
“If I have to, yeah,” he nodded thoughtfully. “But… okay, look… I love you.”
“Yep.”
“I honestly… honestly love you. You’re so beautiful and you’re so much fun and I feel so good just being near you. And okay, I know we can be friends and I can still enjoy being near you… … look, I haven’t rehearsed this…” he confessed.
“I figured,” I told him with a raised eyebrow.
“We’re both monsters, even if I still don’t know what the hell is so wrong about me, and, well, I dunno what’s wrong about you either. I don’t know if all of this is to do with… whatever it is that makes you a monster…”
“You don’t know much, do you?”
He smiled a bit.
“I really don’t. And maybe that’s the problem. I’m a big idiot and you want better than me. I wouldn’t blame you. I just… I want a straight answer. I want to understand exactly why you don’t want to be with me. I’m sorry I keep pressing it, but… I’m fighting for us.”
I gave him an airy shrug.
“If we’re talking monsters… I guess I just…”
My eyes shot down to my feet as they shuffled in the dirt.
“I know the real me. The full me. Not just the stuff you fell in love with.”
“Okay…” he mumbled, thinking again. “Then let me see the real you.”
I just laughed at that.
“What…?” he asked, looking confused, maybe even a little hurt.
“That’s the- that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard!” I said between laughs. “You must be the naïve monster! There we go, we’ve got it figured out!”
“Why’s that such a funny thing to ask…?”
It took me a few seconds to get my laughter under control, but once I did, this is what I said:
“If I don’t like her, why would you?”
He frowned at me.
“Why don’t you like her…?”
“Ah-ah-ah, that’s a girl’s prerogative,” I told him sweetly, waving a finger at him, trying to keep my front together.
“Just because you don’t like that side of yourself, it doesn’t mean nobody else would…”
“Of course they would! I know what she’s like, that bitch-”
I shook a fist, apparently at myself.
“Hrm. Okay.”
Nathan took big, thoughtful strides over to one of the big trees that surrounded us, and leant against it.
“See, the thing is… if you never give anyone the chance to get close to you…”
“I’m a warrior queen, I don’t need a soulmate or whatever,” I lied.
“Everybody does. And y’know that whole thing about it being better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”
He waited for me to nod, the stupid gentleman.
“Well, I reckon it’s worth the risk. Generally-speaking, too. I’m not just saying that to win you over.”
The warm smile on his face crumpled a little bit.
“Even if you wanted to risk it with Kendal instead of me, I’d stand by it. How’s that for big idiot?”
“Easy for you to say when it’s not your heart on the line, chump,” I pointed out, glaring back at the ground again. I added the “chump” because I kept remembering how disgustingly honest and upfront I was being with him for some reason.
“I guess that’s fair…”
Y’know what, too? I wished, right then, that Harmony would make some monsters for me to fight. Because that’s how it works, you feel all crappy and she lays a monster for you to fight. I wanted a giant sexy Kendal and Nathan to fight just to get through all of this, and for some reason, it didn’t happen. Not even a whiff of anything weird or Lokon-related. Just me and him stood in this little space, having a stupid heart-to-heart. Him and his stupid, sad, handsome face. Kendal managed to give up on me, she knew she was better off without me, so what the hell was his problem?
“Every time…”
I swallowed back my words but then they came straight back up.
“Every time I meet somebody like you or her, I get all excited and see all the possibilities of us together. All the fun and laughs and sexy stuff we’ll get to do. And I forget all about the intimacy, the soulmate stuff. I wake up one day and realise how close you are to seeing the real me and fuck her. She’s needy and jealous and- and- and you’ll just hate me and I don’t even know why I’m saying all of this…!”
I clutched my head.
And then he put his hand on my shoulder.
“This is what Melody meant about us being monsters, huh?”
… see, all this time, I thought she just meant how wild and impulsive I am. How I’m quirky and I flaunt the rules. But maybe she really meant stuff like this? All that ugly stuff I try to ignore until it bites me in my pert butt.
“Idiot…” I whispered.
“It’s not like I’m happy with myself either…” he confessed. “It takes a looooot of guts for me to handle new people, and I’m always regretting everything I say. I come away from every conversation with a checklist of stupid shit I said. But I think people always judge themselves harder than anybody else does. And by the way, I’m already regretting the way I said half the things I said in the past few minutes…”
“I’m not worth your time…” I insisted, eyes welling up now because of how horrible and real this all was.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he bounced back. “If things blow up in the end, well, you have my permission to hate me for the rest of your life. But I want to try. I’m in love with you, Lucy. And I know it’s the kind of love adults say is just soppy puppy love and it doesn’t mean anything, but I don’t care. I know how I feel. I know what I want. So, what do you want?”
The million-pound question. I literally could see them asking it on Who Wants to Be a Millionnaire? or something.
“Can I phone a friend…?” I asked him weakly.
He chuckled. Cute.
“I… want to be loved. But-”
“No buts,” he told me. “I love you.”
I still don’t know yet if it was a good idea or a bad idea – I’ll keep you posted, don’t worry – but right there and then, I grabbed his face and smooched him.
What can I say? He won me and my soppy heart over. Maybe Kendal was right… maybe I needed to look after myself.
He wrapped his arms around me, holding me close to him as we kissed in our little hidden world.
When he finally pulled away, I looked into his brown eyes and said this…
“One more chance, then. Just one more.”
“I won’t let you down, cutie,” he smiled at me.
By the time we got back to Rin and Clay, they were sat on a bench deep in conversation. I seriously don’t think I’ve ever seen the big lug that engaged before.
Aaaanyway, we spent a little while longer together and then I had to call Alex.
“Hey,” he half-yawned down the phone at me.
“Hey bro, don’t fall asleep yet, I need you to tell Mum and Dad I won’t be home until tomorrow!”
“Tell them yourself.”
“No, they’ll get angry with me! It’ll be better if you do it! Pleeeeeaaase?” I begged.
“Ugh, alright, I will… where are you, anyway…?” he asked, suspiciously.
“Behind a fence!”
A second of silence.
“Any particular fence…?”
“The one around Nathan’s back garden! He’s gonna sneak me into his room!”
“Lucy, I’m genuinely stumped here…” he told me; I laughed at him.
“Don’t worry, I’ll use my ninja Painter skills to keep from being found!” I said proudly.
“Please don’t Paint Up just to try and be discreet…”
“You can’t tell me what to do! Anyway, thanks Alex, sleep well!”
“You too…” he wished me back, and I laughed again.
“Oh, Alex, I’m not sleeping tonight!”
(I did in the end, though.)