Page 36 of How We Began

On campus again

Totes awkward, but at least I’m not pissed.

#progress.

Ben was behind me, as always. I could feel his gaze the whole way through the morning and afternoon two-hour lectures.

After class I went to the library with Meredith—making it up the stairs without injury. Funnily enough, Ben didn’t wait around to walk me there, or to make me giggle, or to absentmindedly hold my hand, tracing patterns with his thumb.

It is over. Officially over, and I think I’m only just beginning to realise what that entails, and all the things I’ll miss about him.

23rd November

It’s my Birthday. Happy bloody Birthday.

I’m not going to do anything. Mum and Dad aren’t talking to me—and I’m not talking to anyone else.

I’ve spent the day in bed. I couldn’t face a morning of uncomfortable lectures.

Before the black underwear incident, I’d had these fantasies of Ben and me spending my twenty-sixth birthday snuggled, preferably naked, doing all those amazing things that we are so good at doing together.

Uh. Nope.

Instead, I’m having some quality time with my stand-in boyfriend, Vodka. Although today I may go for his twin, Gin, as it is a special occasion.

A card was pushed under my door earlier, handmade from Ben. On it he’s drawn a mass of forget-me-nots. Inside it says:

I miss you, please come home.

My god, I want to go home. And it’s crazy to think of that dorm as home, but I do. I can’t switch it off. But I can’t go back. How can I have a relationship with someone who, whenever he goes out to play guitar, I visualise skinny girls clad in black lacy underwear throwing themselves at him?

Tristan wants to go out for dinner but I’d rather have my fingernails pulled off.

I think I’m depressed.

More Gin.

(Later)

Okay, so now I might be a little sloshed from all the gin, but hey, at least I haven’t finished the day by drinking alone—which even as depressed as I’ve been, I can see that drinking with others is much more socially acceptable than drinking by yourself. We went for Tapas. Well, Tristan went for Tapas. I, on the other hand, went for wine and sambuca.

Tristan, who has never been able to take the hint of being ignored, eventually got me out of my smelly self-imposed birthday bunker. “Come on, it’s my birthday, too. And at the moment you are raining on my parade, not just your own,” he moaned, and moaned, unable to leave me to fester in my own misery.

The Tristan guilt trip. It’s impossible to ignore. Well, that and the fact he wrestled me into the bathroom and threw me into a full bath with all my clothes on. I might have only been wearing pyjamas, but it was the principle. I might have been festering in my dirty pyjama’s and not just my misery. So in the end, I got dressed and let him drag me down the High Street until we got to what was once one of my favourite restaurants where I dove into a bottle of Spanish white and tried very hard to ignore the fact I was spending my twenty-sixth birthday acting like a heartbroken teenager.

“You know, you’re going have to eat at some point,” Tristan told me around a mouthful of Patatas Bravas.

I pulled my most unattractive face at him. “Mmm, and you’re doing wonders to increase my appetite,” I snapped back before returning to guzzling my wine.

Tristan and I don’t often go out anywhere just by ourselves. In fact, we never do, not anymore, so after about half an hour of serious cringe, I had to comment on the glue that seemed to be holding us together of late being missing. “Where’s Meredith? I thought she would be here with us.”

“She’ll be here in a bit,” he said, and his eyes held mine like he was trying to impart some important message that the Spanish white prevented me from understanding.

Meredith turned up twenty minutes later, and as much as I was torn between a surprise visit and still wanting to punch his lights out, Ben wasn’t with her. I don’t know why I even thought he would be. I hadn’t spoken to him in days, weeks… God, I don’t know, years. What was I expecting? I’d told him I never wanted to see him again, words I now had to live by. But maybe right then I wanted him to turn up and kiss me. Maybe I would have just given in, blaming it on the drink or whatever. I would have been with him at least one more time. Instead, there was now a never-ending sea of non-Ben-ness in front of me, an endless tide that I couldn’t fight. I slunk down with a sigh, exhausted by being heartbroken.

“Hey, Lilah! Happy Birthday.” Meredith greeted me with a hug as I desperately glanced over her shoulder.

“Hey, Mer.” I sighed, knocking back my wine and instantly reloading.