Chapter Twenty-Two

Pier

Imagine a colossal gothic pendulum swinging inside a bat-filled cathedral and you might have some inkling of how my head was feeling. There were moments, often as I lay in bed with my new bestie Insomnia (she was here on permanent sleepover), where I admitted defeat.

OK I’M GAY NOW.

As I mentioned, that’d be cool. My mum would toss me out on the street, but I was tossing myself out next year anyway so that wasn’t quite as scary as it once might have been. But if only it were that easy. The pendulum kept swinging back the other way.

THE VAGINA HOLDS NO APPEAL.

Yeah, yeah, you’re reading this and screaming the word BISEXUAL, right? But a word, an eight-letter word, isn’t helping me sleep any sounder. Give me your words and I’ll swallow them like pills if they’ll help me find peace of mind. But they won’t.

There was one afternoon where we both cut school to do sex. Nico and I, I stress. He was due to go off to do some recording and gigs the week after so we wanted to make use of what limited time we had together.

After the aforementioned sex, I watched him in the shower. I sat on the toilet seat, wearing one of his slouchy vests, watching the water run off his bum. He’d lost weight. Anxiety, I reckoned. He was still so effing sexy though. I liked his boy body. I really did. But things felt different now.

Nico was gorgeous and kind and funny and I was supposed to want a boyfriend so I went for it. I’d always assumed that those fundamental things would be enough to last forever and ever amen. But when I thought about Polly touching herself in that holding cell … oh god. The FEELS. What I felt for Nico and what I felt for Polly were two distinct entities, like two vast, vivid nebulas in my universe, each entirely different from the other but equally powerful. Both burned bright. All those fairy stories that told me I’d meet a prince and live happily ever after had LIED.

I did it, I got it, I had it all.

I also had this curiosity and it wasn’t going away.

This, this was the Niggly Noo. It always was.

I suppose the question was, if I was happy with Nico, why did I feel this way about Polly? Although wishes are for children and idiots, a theoretical question kept floating through my mind, a fantasy scenario to pass the sleepless hours: if I could somehow distil Essence of Polly into Body of Nico, would I?

In a heartbeat.

Of course, in school the day after our brush with the law Hurricane Polly had acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I didn’t want to look uncool so I didn’t bring it up either. Business as usual.

I so nearly told Beasley in the library workroom. I would have, had it not been for a gay app called Grindr. ‘It’s amazing,’ he told me seconds before I confessed my own ‘gay secret’. ‘It shows you where the nearest gay guys are.’ He mouthed the offending word silently.

I instantly became a gay detective. ‘Where’s the nearest one? Are there any in school?’

‘Not right now, but there was a blank profile earlier. Someone who’s not out.’

‘OMG we should use it as a tracker and find them! My money’s on Mr Greaves!’ I laughed. No heterosexual Maths teacher would have biceps like that.

‘Shush! Keep your voice down!’

‘Sorry but it’s ridiculous. You’re not going to fall in love with someone based on geography.’ I suspected that was not the developer’s intent either.

Beasley looked a little wounded. ‘No, but I’ve been speaking to a really nice guy who lives a few miles outside town.’ He showed me a picture.

‘Oh, he is cute.’

‘Told you. And at least I know he’s gay.’

Which was more than I did.

Beasley and I were making our way out of the library when a hand grabbed my shoulder. I spun around and found myself face to face with Daisy’s little brother – a chubby Year 10 called Dylan. ‘Oh hi, how are you?’ The librarian shushed us.

‘I’m OK. We’ve, erm, started clearing out Daisy’s stuff. This is for you.’ He handed Beasley a magenta notebook.

‘What is it?’

‘Like, a comic or something. It’s got your name on it.’

‘Thanks,’ Beasley said and Dylan trotted on his way. We pulled up some seats in the main part of the library. ‘I don’t know if I can look,’ Beasley whispered. ‘This is going to ruin me.’

He slid the book over to me and I tentatively opened it to the first page. It read: The GRAND FINALE of the GEOFF SAGA. ‘OMG, it’s the last episode of Geoff. She must have drawn it in case … in case … anything happened.’

No way. She’d known. She’d known her health was failing and kept it to herself. ‘Oh wow,’ was all I could say with my mouth so dry. We read it together. In it, Evil Celine summoned a powerful kraken from Hades with which to run the world. Only Geoff could stop her.

‘So Geoff dies?’ Beasley asked, horrified.

‘Wait, look.’ I turned the page.

‘I guess he’s just a normal squirrel now.’ I saw exactly what Daisy had done … every boring old squirrel in the world was now a potential Geoff. Every time I saw a squirrel from now on it might be our cross-dressing squirrel friend in disguise. A tear pooled in the corner of my eye.

‘He looks happy,’ Beasley agreed.

‘He looks free, doesn’t he?’ I said, my eyes glistening.

‘Yeah.’

I knew what I had to do and it was awful. The most awful thing I’d ever done.

Facebook kept me up to date with Nico while he was in London. There were pictures from the studio, from meetings, from gigs. Action Station had ‘buzz’ apparently. Nico tried his best. He texted before bedtime and tried to call when the band took breaks but our lives weren’t overlapping like they used to. He talked band and I talked school. Our common ground, quite literally, was being demolished.

It happened on First Hot Day. First Hot Day is the BEST. First Hot Day that year fell at the end of May, right after Nico had completed his last exam. My end-of-year tests were still ahead but my future wasn’t hanging on them.

With it being First Hot Day, and with us being English, we’d all thrown all our clothes off, prematurely opting for shorts and vests and flip-flops. After school we all went down to the beach and celebrated the arrival of summer. We drank warm fizzy wine because it was two-for-one at the garage, and played Frisbee.

I couldn’t focus on it for a second though. Too much going on in my head.

Maybe Nico sensed something was wrong or maybe he just wanted chips, but we broke away from the pack and went to the kiosk on the pier.

‘Christ, do you want some chips with your salt?’ I asked, judging him as he liberally showered his chips.

‘You can talk, vinegar-woman!’

We sat on one of the benches overlooking the sea. I was wearing some cheap Lolita heart sunglasses I’d picked up at the pound shop – they were too small and squished my head a bit.

‘Toria,’ Nico started and confirmed what I had already suspected. So we both knew. I’d put off any form of serious conversation while he’d been doing his exams. It seemed he had too. ‘What do you think about me living in London next year?’

I wasn’t a bit surprised. I couldn’t even pretend to be.

‘I thought you might have to, to be honest.’

‘I don’t want to, but I think I need to be up there. This train shit is killing me, man. We’ll be OK though. You can come up on weekends and stuff.’

Here goes: ‘Are you sure you want me to?’

He replied without skipping a beat. ‘Yeah. Of course I do. Don’t you?’

I didn’t believe him. I was a little annoyed that I was going to have to be the villain.

‘I don’t know.’

He said nothing for a second and seagulls squawked overhead, fighting over the leftovers that spilled out of a bin.

‘I know I’ve been a shit boyfriend, Tor.’

I went right off my chips and dropped them into the bin. ‘You haven’t. It’s just … not the same as it was.’ He said nothing. I pointed off the pier to where yellow claws ripped up the golf course like giant zombie hands bursting from the grave. ‘That, my love, is a metaphor.’

He managed a feeble laugh. ‘I’ll say. I know this sounds awful, but this band could actually make it …’

‘I know!’ I agreed wholeheartedly. ‘And this is your shot. You are bloody well gonna take it. I mean, hello! You’re gonna be a freaking rock star! I don’t wanna get in your way.’

‘You’re not.’

‘It feels a little like I have been. You keep trotting back here while the others stay in London. The band isn’t the complication, I am.’ He looked so sad. No, that wasn’t the right word. Resigned was more appropriate. I imagine I looked the same. It wasn’t working. However much we both wanted it to, it wasn’t. ‘Last year was so brilliant, Nico. It was so, so good. Maybe I’ll come to London after my exams, who knows. Maybe it’ll be good again.’

He fingered his tattoo. ‘Rise and fall.’

I stroked it too. ‘Rise and fall. We don’t know what’s gonna happen, but right now I think you should be with the band.’

‘I know. But I don’t want you to think the band is more important than you, because it’s not.’

I laughed. ‘Maybe it is! And that’s OK. Right now, this year, I’m nothing. If the tables were turned and I had an opportunity to do this amazing life-changing thing, what would you tell me to do?’

‘I’d let you go in a second.’

‘Well, there you go then.’

‘But we’ve been brilliant, Tor.’ He cupped my head and pulled me into a kiss.

‘We still are. Look at us talking like grown-ups!’ This was not going to descend into squabbles and arguments, I was determined. I wanted Nico in my life forever. I wasn’t sure what that was going to look like, but I’d make it work.

‘Man, I don’t wanna lose you.’ The unspoken secret behind every break-up ever: what if I never meet anyone else who accepts me like you did? I just prayed that Nico wasn’t my one shot at love. That’d suck.

‘You’re not losing me. I’ll be here. But I don’t want to be a piece of elastic pinging you back every other week.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, his lips still brushing against mine. His cheeks were wet. So were mine. ‘For understanding.’

The weird part is, I wasn’t even sad. I don’t know about Nico Mancini, but I felt freer than I had in months. My first act as a freed woman was to cling to him. People stared at us as they walked down the pier but I couldn’t have cared less.