I’ve written about him before, and some of those times I’ve changed details about him so that he might not know it’s him. We’ve known each other a long time. I remember him in the corridors of school, dropping to his knees and screaming in pain when some Year 7s pushed past rushing to class, and how they ran away because they really believed his prank. I remember when he used to call cigarettes “cancer sticks,” and when he used to smoke. I remember him at university in a bunny onesie outside a club, remember his dorm with the acidic white light of a kebab shop. I remember him picking me up during the holidays and driving me to The Beach, this small patch of sand near the river that we never should have swum in because apparently it’s full of sewage. I’d tell him about things I’d learned in my philosophy course that I definitely didn’t understand, like Plato’s “The Cave,” and we’d stay chatting until it was so dark you needed your phone flashlight to retrace the path.
We were meant to go on a walk together over Christmas, to Brimham Rocks or maybe Ilkley Moor, where there are rocks in the shape of a cow and a calf, and all this heather crawling over the hillside that someone always sets fire to in summer with a disposable BBQ. We were meant to talk about things we used to talk about, me trying to remember something clever about The End of History and why no one makes anything new anymore, something that he might not know, grasping for the details of it, the whole of the valley stretching out underneath us, kicking stones, cold water sinking into the broken rubber of our shoes.
When I saw the word “Annie” pop up on my phone screen, I knew he was bailing. He had a fair excuse, so it shouldn’t have bothered me. But it did because I’m not just me when I talk to him, I’m also the me from when I was young too, so I got upset in ways I wouldn’t normally. Nowadays, if men cancel, I don’t care; I think about the laundry I need to do and the drawers I have to organize. I think about how tomorrow I’ll get more work done because I won’t be hungover, the friends I could see instead. But when he bails, it makes me want to punch my mattress or go for a long walk with my hood up, one where I fantasize about something narcissistic and stupid like how upset everyone would be if I went missing. He brings me right back to who I was when I knew him, a teenager with split ends and battered Doc Martens who wore denim shorts cut to the size of knickers.
I always find funny stuff when I’m at home over Christmas. A photo of me in a red sequin dress screaming over the Beanie Baby I just got as a present. My old cuddly toy dog Bones that I used to take with me everywhere. This time I found a diary from when I was about 16. It’s full of Lord of the Rings quotes, like “Not all those who wander are lost,” and Carol Ann Duffy poems that I thought were really deep. I’ve scribbled love hearts all over it and taped cut outs of flowers from magazines into it. Around the margins are all these slightly deranged notes which say things like “He doesn’t care about you, stop caring about him. STOP!” and “I’m being a depressed bitch about wanting male attention.”
He makes me feel like this girl again, someone who thinks her thighs are ginormous and believes that’s a bad thing, who says “like” too much because she doesn’t know what she wants to say, and when people point out how much she says it, finds it harder and harder to speak. Someone who goes red when teachers ask what she thinks in class, who doesn’t have opinions, or does, but is scared of them being wrong so copies other people’s. Someone who loves mosh pits and runs right into the sweaty backs of all the men in them and likes it when she falls over in there and all these arms yank her back up with so much force that for a moment she feels as though she’s flying. Someone who can’t handle her temper around her mum, who goes to malls with her best friend Vicky and plays truth or dare—dare you to trip her up, dare you to run your hand over that man’s hand as he comes down the escalator. And then later, someone who went to university and learned that being clever was cool and so became obsessed with trying to prove she was, always pressing every conversation into a debate about something she didn’t care about.
When I’m with him, that version of me falls out again, all soft and unsure, yearning for something she doesn’t know the name of yet. He unlocks something in me, and some of it is good, the sense of adventure, wanting more, asking questions, trying to learn, finding things out. I was always asking questions. It’s why I felt like texting him after watching Past Lives, it’s why I like seeing him, but it’s also why I shouldn’t, because I’m not her anymore. I get bored of reading hard books, my shoulders are hunched over, I don’t like debates; I like lightness and laughter, gossip and small observations, like how men with nice eyes are always annoying.
We texted a bit after he said he couldn’t come for the walk. I told him about a meal out I’d had with my family where the food was horrible and took ages to come out and mum was reading out bad TripAdvisor reviews on the car ride home. He said he was falling asleep and I was annoyed because I was about to say that first. And then he said “night night” and I said “night xx” and then that was it, until we’re back next year for Christmas, or we decide this is a year we go to each other’s birthday, or one of us texts the other saying, “It’s been a while.” And when we see each other, it will feel like time-traveling back to that old us, one that doesn’t exist anymore.