Just Last Night

by Mhairi McFarlane

It’s one of those unpleasant moments in life you confront the fact your beliefs in theory and behavior in practice can be two entirely different things.

I notice, once again, that company that’s not the right fit for you is so much lonelier than being happily alone.

What can I say to Zack? “Having become two degrees soberer and twenty minutes more aware of your personality, I’m going home”? Yes, I could and should say at least some of this, but I won’t. I ponder how many mistakes in life are born of a simple fear of being rude. “Show me the way,” I say. I feel about as enthused saying that as “Let’s Get Brexit Done.”

This is so grimly tragicomic

It’s kind of inimical to enjoying yourself.

A pre-nup for pubes.

As if he could list Whiskerless Anus under “What makes you right for this role” on a CV.

a callow lad who looks damp to the touch,

The things we do to avoid difficult things are often worse than the difficult thing.

We didn’t know it yet, but in a single moment, our two double acts had merged forever.

“What do I look like?” Susie demanded, with the nerve-free confidence of the terminally photogenic.

We spent much time laughing in the following hour, our first encounter with four personalities that tessellated perfectly as an ensemble.

There’s no self-pity like a teenager’s self-pity.

Seeing someone you know well in a totally different context is always disorientating and vaguely impressive. You realize you have them on loan from the other lives they lead.

It had thrown the big light on, in a room inside me.

Our parting hurt so acutely, I realized, not because we thought the geography was insurmountable or that the Christmas break was so far away, but because we didn’t know the people we were about to change into.

Ed said, looking simultaneously hunted, bashful, and yet triumphant at his own courage.

In a split second with Ed, I understood there was an experience available that was far more instinctive, whole, and multi-sensory.

(Sorry I’m bad at this. This is how a love letter works, isn’t it? You just embarrass yourself horribly?)

If you want to be mine, well, I am already yours.

That someone as gentle, known to me, and, I thought, sincere as Ed Cooper could do this? It was unfathomable. It was savage.

She was beautiful, and she looked nothing like me. Of course. Satan wasn’t pulling a half shift.

“What?” I said. “I did write back?” We stared at each other, uncomprehending. That this had broken my heart was a given. That it could be due to an admin fuck-up, rather than pure evil, was a new room in this hell that I’d not contemplated existing.

There’ve been times it’s hurt less and times it’s hurt more, but it’s always there and it’s always hurt.

Every so often, Ed will let his guard drop and I will get a clue that some of his feelings for me are still there, somewhere. Often enough that I can never lose faith.

Sometimes my friendship with Ed feels amazing and beneficial, because it’s good to know I can feel that way with someone, and to see him glow with adoration in return. Other times it’s like endlessly overperforming in an interview for a job where the position’s already been filled.

Nevertheless, we generally get along, due to my pragmatic decision to take no offense.

I know it’s something profoundly bad and my mind has begun spinning a roulette wheel of options but not stopped on an answer yet.

Information that I, on one level, know must be true, registers as completely false.

She can’t be dead. Susie, dead? The single syllable is like a bullet, or an explosion. A profanity. The very idea is obscene, impossible, gruesomely ugly.

I feel like a bag of clothes, held up by a skeleton.

Students from the nearby college pass by, chattering and whooping with laughter, as if this isn’t an abhorrent thing to be doing.

abject terror washes over me. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt more like a child in my life, including childhood.

The word “doctor” hits me in the gut, and yet part of me is still resilient, even hopeful. Doctors make people better. Ed said dead, but he could’ve meant coma. Her bag was missing, sounds like they could’ve mixed up the files. This remains negotiable.

Every single remark, platitude, expression of reassurance or hope, or practical discussion of what’s ahead, is impossible, null. We’ve transcended conversation.

This man is the Giver of Life or the Grim Reaper, the one with the power to give her back or take her away from us, forever.

I have never dreaded anyone speaking more in my life.

and I can tell it’s helping him right now to steady himself, to act as my protector.

There’s so much to come I can’t contemplate.

He is compassionate, but rehearsed.

My shock can barely recede an inch to start letting in the ocean of grief, let alone rage.

“The body.” Susie is not Susie, she is an artifact. She has left it behind.

The ease and clarity with which I can picture her makes this seem entirely feasible. She’s at my fingertips.

But I can tell for sure Susie is dead, that this is what death looks like.

I always envied those thick handfuls of her hair, and now it’s going to waste? Parts of her are still perfect and she’s going to be . . . thrown away? How can her body not be in use, and of use?

Somewhere outside this building, I think, people are having normal Fridays. But there’s been a switch around: it’s not Susie dying that feels impossible, for as long as we’re looking at her dead body—a corpse, she is a corpse?—but that ordinary world that is the impossibility now.

Her body is a vacated premises.

I can never tell her anything again. It’s inconceivable.

I’m aware I’ve aged exponentially in the space of a morning. That my life has bifurcated into a Before and After and the innocence that I didn’t know I had has gone. I’m disorientated by it.

She is just over the brow of a hill, to be glimpsed around a corner.