Page 93 of The Mismatch

London, 2014

At twenty-one years old Soraya experienced heartbreak for the first time. All the music she had listened to forlornly whilst getting over a crush she had never even spoken to, seemed crucially relevant now. There were many stages to her grief.

Denial came first. She went back to her flat, dry-eyed, found Oliver in the living room in his pyjamas reading a fashion magazine. It was only midnight, but it felt so much later. She asked him about his day and made them both cups of tea.

‘Magnus and I broke up, by the way,’ she said casually, between sips of overly milky Yorkshire Tea. Her hands had been curiously shaky when she poured it out. She made a mental note to buy a new kind of tea the next day, to remove any reminders of him.

Oliver had the cup raised to his lips. He held it there, squinting at her. ‘Huh?’

‘Yeah, we broke up.’ Something about saying the words out loud brought their meaning home to her, but she shrugged this off.

Oliver put his cup down. ‘You seem very casual about it all.’

His intent gaze, forcing her to meet his, produced tears. She’d always been a crier.

‘He …’ She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know how to explain all that had happened.

Oliver got up without saying anything and returned moments later with a toilet roll, which he handed to her wordlessly. She blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and looked down at the tissue to find it covered in black stains. Her mascara had run, creating theatrical lines down the sides of her face.

‘God, I look a mess. This is embarrassing,’ she said.

‘I’ve seen worse. I don’t really understand. I thought you were good now?’

She explained what had happened. Oliver gasped in all the right places, looking more offended than she was.

Coincidentally, ‘Independent Women’ came over the speakers then, which caused Soraya to sob pathetically: ‘I don’t want to be an independent woman,’ while not quite meaning it.

Oliver just looked at her for a moment. ‘You’ve always been independent, but I agree, perhaps now isn’t the time for this.’ He pressed pause on his phone. They were left in silence. She wasn’t sure which was worse.

‘He’s an absolute piece of shit,’ Oliver said, shaking his head. ‘It’s a good job you were only using him. Imagine how you’d feel if it had all been real.’

Oliver knew she had come to really like Magnus, and it was touching, really, how he was now pretending the joke had really been on Magnus. She just wished she could pretend, too.

She mumbled something like, ‘I guess.’

‘And you were the one to break up with him. You didn’t give him power in the end.’

She was too deflated to think of a good response to this. She nodded, said nothing. She didn’t want to mention the other stuff. She was scared that if she told Oliver about Magnus’s criticisms of her, he would agree with them. Or, worse, hearing them spoken aloud would make Oliver realise how annoying she really was, and then maybe he wouldn’t want to be her friend anymore – because did she truly deserve a friend like him? She doubted it.

And at this point he was all she had left.

**

Soraya didn’t eat ice cream or watch romantic comedies. She didn’t rush out and get a new haircut. She was still, solitary. Her room became a fortress of misery that she couldn’t leave. She called in sick and didn’t return to work for a week, feigning norovirus.

During her week indoors, most of which was spent entirely alone, she remained in bed. Oliver’s internship was made into a permanent role, and whilst she was pleased for him, this new development was in painful contrast to her own crumbling life.

Eating held no appeal whatsoever. It was shocking, really. She had spent most of her life attempting various diets, and now, despite having nothing else to do, food was abhorrent to her. It was as though by eating she’d be accepting the realityof the situation, resuming normal life, and she couldn’t do that. And when she tried to eat, due to her stomach growling angrily, she chewed and tasted nothing. Her jaw hurt, swallowing was painful.

Towards the end of the week it grew worse as the reality of the situation hit home. She hadn’t eaten in twenty-five hours. An accidental fast.

Every time she tried to read she would zone out, and her attempts to draw were shoddy. All the things she once loved were now tainted.

In bed, light streaming in from the sides of her curtains, the air outside her duvet ice-cold, she remembered the good times.

The way Magnus’s stubble scratched her face when he kissed her. How he always held her face, like she was dear to him. How often he said she was perfect, so much so that she had begun to believe it.

It was funny, she thought, how he’d made her feel she was enough for him, when all along it had been a lie.