Don't You Forget About Me

by Mhairi McFarlane

“If I made choices that made me unhappy, I’d unmake those choices,” Lucas said. “Not take it out on anyone else.”

I agreed, and we beamed at each other in the certainty and simplicity of this conviction.

I’m glad Jo and I met Clem in our early twenties because she’d terrify me now. You get more risk averse as you age.

It’s in no way his fault that I’ve lived our whole affair in my head, in the time it takes to get my mobile out of my beaded clutch bag.

It was never right. There wasn’t a friendship there, which is what it always has to be underneath, right?”

“Hey hey hey. It’s fine, it’s all right to cry,” Lucas shushes me and rubs my back. Keith lets out a confused whimper and it makes us both laugh.

I’d be quite happy never to see the Fanta-haired old walrus as long as I live,

Nothing quite like crashing and burning in front of friends, family, and colleagues to keep a girl awake at night.

I’m about to politely decline when Lucas says: “Er, mate, she’s working here. Maybe recruit on LinkedIn, not in front of me?”

I’ll date you if you fetch my coat,’ all right, Lady Penelope,” Lucas says, with a grin.

In the middle of a mess, saying it’s not my fault, making excuses. This is me. There’s no longer any denying it.

“Oh I’m so relieved, Georgina, I can’t tell you. I thought we were straight to the emergency room . . .” “You were quick with the water. Impressive.”

“You will honestly find the dopey lols in fucking anything, won’t you?” Lucas says. Before I can respond, he traps me in a completely unexpected hug. The T-shirt falls from my hands. I surrender to it, caught tightly in the right angles of his elbows, hesitantly wrapping my own arms around his back.

I can feel his heart still pounding. Lucas mumbles into my hair: “Of all the faces to destroy.”

He takes in the embrace, and his eyes travel down to my exposed abdomen. I automatically start to pull away but Lucas’s grip tightens fractionally and I stop.

Dev was brilliant about it and after thrusting far more than he should have into my hands, he kissed my cheeks, twice, and gave me a hug that felt like it cracked my ribs. “Don’t be a stranger now, Georgina, d’you hear?

You think Warren Beatty is still bothered that Carly Simon called him vain?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re becoming slightly mental.” And there it is: “that one, she’s crazy,” the last refuge of the arsehole with any woman who calls him to account.

Grrrrrrrrr

School teachers, my parents, getting on and fitting in—my experiences had taught me nice girls say yes please and thank you, we oblige people, we meet their expectations, we don’t hurt feelings or offend.

“This was like a series of precise stab wounds to the major organs. The worst thing imaginable—everyone smelling my desperation to be liked.

But I did win. For the first time, I’m not scared of the future. I want to use its potential. Words saved me. My words.

But now I see that you please other people, you put their feelings first. That generosity of caring what someone else thinks, it’s a great quality, it’s not weakness.

Then I saw this vision, with an infectious laugh that I could hear across the common room. You were like the human antidote to my misery. A rainbow in the gray. I felt like God sent me the girl with the golden hair, to remind me there were still things worth hanging around for.”

Having got to know you as an adult, I’d say that’s still true. People flock to you, they’re drawn to you. Not because of the way you look, because you’re warm.”

I panicked that I’d make a tool of myself, and idolized-from-afar Georgina Horspool might be a letdown. Like, even your name was like reciting a magic spell to me. How could you live up to that? But not only did you live up to it, you were nicer and wittier and more interesting than I could have dreamed, and most incredibly of all, you seemed to like me. I was . . . what’s the word . . .”

Look at who he is now and look at who I am. We made sense in a very different era.

“Gina.” “No one calls me Gina!” “I know,” Lucas says. “That’s why I want to.”

“When I saw you again at the wake, you were every bit as luminous as I remembered from school. He didn’t take that away. Don’t ever let any man take that away from you.”

You don’t appreciate youth when you have it, do you. When I was age appropriate to be doing a degree, I felt gauche, conspicuous, like everyone could see through the fact I wasn’t bright enough to be there.

So I reach out into the past, take the hand of that vulnerable, hopeful girl I used to be, and pull her forward to join me.

And so handsome he could be a vampire.”

“Aren’t you living in Dublin?” “No, not if you’re here.

“I wondered, Georgina, if you could imagine being in love with me again, the way I’m in love with you. And that given you’re the best thing to ever happen to me, if you could give me the chance to try to be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

I thought the speech about how I was dementedly in love with you was enough encouragement, if that’s what you needed.” “In love with me twelve years ago.” “Why would that have changed? Nothing’s changed. Actually, that’s not true. I feel even more for you now than I did then.”