r
After a silence, he softly uttered, “Hey, Taff.” The guy wasn’t even looking at me.
It sensitized me, actually. And I really didn’t want to be sensitized. Still.
“Hey, Spike.” I said, in the same tone. We didn’t make eye contact, although in the corner of my eye I saw that he might have been glancing at the same spot on the carpet I was, trying to feign that it was interesting. But I think he was as uncomfortable as I was. Whether or not he was feeling how I think he was feeling was completely different. There was how I wanted him to feel, which was guilty. But I felt guilty for wanting that. And then I thought, maybe he wanted me to feel sorry for him. So, this thought gave me a burst of courage. I turned my head and looked him in the eye. He must of noticed this, because he looked up. I avoided his eye.
“Did you have something to say to me?” Sweet heavens. This was like those soap operas I accidently switch channels to on daytime television. Who watches those? Well, I do.
“Are you… um,” he looked at the curtains, maybe out the window. “angry.. at me? For, you know, high school. I’ve been thinking, we shou- we could get past that, you know, get over it, and… look to.. the future? Taff, are you listening?”
I didn’t realise I had gotten up off the bed in the middle of his sentence and locked the door. I unconsciously realised I didn’t want to be disturbed by my husband again.
“Please don’t call me Taff again, thank you. And what exactly,”
I took a breath. I had not been breathing. Why was I not breathing?
“Do you mean by we should get over it? We? Did you get anything out of the last, I don’t even know, decade? Have you spent the entire duration thinking we were both wronged? By who, Spike? That trash? Do you remember her at all, in fact? Or did you discard her, you know, like me?”
And then I felt super weird. Ouch, pain in my abdomen. “Eugh,” I moaned, moving to go lie on the bed. “Mmh,” he seemed to have not realised his mouth was closed when he tried to speak.
“You’re alright?” He moved to the front of the bed and looked genuinely concerned.
I was slightly amused, and I felt it come out onto my face. I glanced at him, signalling he needed to play his part in this epic conclusion of a drama in my life.
“Oh yeah. I mea– yeah. Right.” He got himself ready to talk.
This was ridiculous.
“Spike, this is ridiculous. stop trying to stay with the tension. Let’s breathe. It’s not like we’re strangers.”
He moved to rest on the bed next to me.
“You’re still calling me Spike.”
“And you’re still calling me Taff.”
Whoo. Awkward.
He started. “Well, first of all, the trash was the one who introduced me to my wife, and we’re happily married, with our kid, your babysitter.” Wait, what?
Then he looked at me. “Oh right. Sorry, I guess.”
I wasn’t fully sorry. I was not feeling myself. He was bringing out the worst in me, yet again. With that ridiculous mullet he obviously seemed to have kept, and the hideous ripped clothes that should have been yellow, but weren’t, he was one of a kind.
I continued. “But I don’t understand, Spike. What happened that night?”
He sighed. “Ok. So Lemon was really into me. And you know how I hated her – we hated her, so I kept avoiding her. But her and her stupid clones – well I married one,” he rolled his eyes, “were hounding me. They wouldn’t actually leave me alone. It continued for ages. Seriously, Taff. Ages. Long before you knew. I didn’t tell you because I thought I could handle it. I mean, I was. I was handling it. Prom came, and I was waiting for you. I waited, and I knew you were late. I got a drink, talked to our friends, talked to Nil. Remember Nil?”
“She was at the wedding. Remember, my wedding? All three of us there and we didn’t even prank anyone or egg and TP anything.” I laughed.
He grinned. He only grinned. He was taking this more seriously than I thought. But it was good we were going on like old times.
“Heavy,” he noted. “Anyways, and Lemon comes over, right? She goes, ‘Spike. Fancy meeting you here? Come here often?’ And she giggles, yeah? She thinks I’m gonna find it funny, and of course I don’t. So she got down to business, and she goes “Spike, your girlfriend isn’t here to fool you into hating us. Come on, you know you like me.’ I’m about ready to shove her away, see you in the door and run up, greet you, and have the best formal ever. I don’t – I didn’t. That didn’t happen.”
“I know.”
He gives me a look, a longing one. The past is past, but if all that didn’t happen, things would have gone all differently. Everything would have gone completely differently.
“Now, this must have been just about the time you were arriving. I go, I get some punch Nil spiked earlier. Then I sit on the couch. I remember it all clearly,” cutting the air with his hand to emphasize the point, he continues, “I am calmly sipping my punch, the party isn’t too long in. To be honest, I did forget about thinking of you and just enjoyed the atmosphere. Bubbly, fruity, sweet punch, popped balloons, the terrible synth pop that was still catchy, and the dance floor. It happened too quickly: Lemon sat down next to me with her own drink, crossed her leg on mine and kind of.. seized me.” I felt a chill in my shoulder blades.
Spike noticed. He pulled back the corners of his mouth, a frown.
“And she wouldn’t get off me. She was kind of suffoca-”
“Lemon Tart was this little girl, probably about 4 feet.”
“Lemon Tart was a grenade of destruction packed with years of dancing and exercise and she could damn well use it.”
“…”
“…”
“Finish up.”
“Uh… hmm. Whe– oh right. She suffocated me and kinda pinned me to the couch. Come on, it happens in movies all the time. You walked in, catched the whole scene, she jumped off and you said, well, everything that you said.”
Ah. I had hurt his feelings.
After that I didn’t say anything. Well, neither of us did.
Of course, I broke the silence. I had been taking control of the conversation for the past half hour or so.
“Well what do we do now?”
“Have you ever heard of forgive and forget?”
“Oh come on it’s not that easy.”
But by this point, we had both realised it was in fact, that easy.
Spike moved his head and looked up at me. “Hey.”
“Mhm,” I lazily replied.
“Let’s get back to your kids’ birthday. And I think we should keep this between you, me, and Nil, don’t you?” I had been contemplating this. Forgive and forget, sure. But I couldn’t keep this a secret from my family, that’s not right, is it?
“Spike.. I might want to tell Cinnamon about it.”
He looked at me for a bit, switching from eye to eye. “Okayy, I get it, I get it. Go tell him. Tomorrow morning, tell him. I’m not stopping you. I just want to let you know it might change his opinion of me, and if you want to consider that, do so. But it’s your choice. Okay.”
I unlocked the door. Spike followed behind me, and then walked with me down the stairs. I knew the footsteps were echoing on the wooden stairs.
When we got downstairs, Vanilla looked at me in the eye, and gave me a knowing gaze. I went to talk to her, parting from Pineapple, who disappeared from my sight.
“So. How’d it go?”
I shrugged. This left me exhausted. I looked around and most guests had left, apart from Spike, his son, and Vanilla. I suddenly realized, how did I not see the resemblance between our babysitter and Spike?
“Well, it’s pretty much settled between us, but I still intend to tell Spice about it.”
“Tomorrow, dear. Right now you need to rest. You’ve been looking pale recently.”
I smiled, “Vanilla, we’re pale people.”
I went up the stairs, took a hot shower, changed, and fell into bed.