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That was the promise you made when you fell head over heels in love, really, she thought. Not that you wouldn’t have problems, but that no problem would be the sort where you couldn’t find the solution together.
It was strange that plain old embarrassment should play a starring role in this shit show. Next to the decimation of love and hope, who cared about foolishness? And yet.
Laurie hated how powerless she was, the mask she had to wear that ate her face. Dan had done so much to her, and she could do nothing.
It had “end in tears” all over it. The thing was, it was starting in tears. Laurie was 98 percent tears. She suspected she’d always be part tears now. She had nothing to lose.
She’d never grieved for anyone close to her, but she guessed this must be similar: times when the tide went out and she felt almost normal, and times when it came rushing in and she felt like she was drowning.
She feared she might be pushing her luck, but she liked the more lighthearted, larky side of her nature he seemed to unlock. Lad Banter Laurie, as Dan used to call it, not approvingly.
If he’s new to Insta, my guess is he doesn’t realize Stories aren’t like posts on your general profile, you can see who’s looked at them. It won’t be his finest minutes on Earth when he realizes . . . x
That Laurie might not be interested in him wasn’t a factor in his accounting. If she was seeing Jamie, then she must have also been available to Michael, because Michael was the better man. Laurie was property and Michael was an honest broker, who had been sexually gazumped. It was revolting, discovering the antediluvian attitudes and values that lurked just beneath the surface.
“Imagine bullying and intimidating a woman about her choices in her private life and thinking you’re the one respecting her.
“If looks could kill, I’d be in the ICU at Manchester Royal right now,” Jamie said.
Laurie could almost see the Jamie Carter of myth and legend dissolve on contact. No one, not even Prince at the height of his fame, Laurie reckoned, could maintain their adulthood persona around their parents. Your closest family returned you to whence you’d came, when you were still a work in progress. They weren’t fooled for a second. Older you was a construct.
Her soul ached somewhat. You could miss so much and not notice or mind, until the “here’s what you could’ve won” comparison was right in front of you.
It feels like a conversation that you never want to end, I suppose. A renewable energy source. You know how with some people you can’t get chatting off the ground? They’re hard work? Falling in love is the extreme opposite. Endless fascination. It’s effortless. A spark turns into a flame turns into a fire. That doesn’t go out.
Laurie had thought Dan was the source of the unconditional love in her life, but actually it was Emily: she wasn’t going to turn around and say sorry, she’d found a new Laurie.
Whatever miscommunications, whatever differences, your mum was your mum. She was the earthing cable in your circuitry. There were still things you could say to her you couldn’t say to anyone else.
When she had Dan, she fit in, she was accepted. He left her, and she was unclean, cast out, othered. Now she sashayed back with another presentable member of the opposite sex, and her status had shot up again. None of it was to do with who Laurie was, anything she had to say for herself. If your value was dependent on these things, you had none.
What would success feel like to you? She could finally answer that: self-respect. It felt like not caring anymore.
