Punk Love, page 13
It occurred to me on my way to Alex (I insisted on driving there, because that meant I wouldn’t allow myself to get trashed and make a mistake), that I was probably going to see Ainsley, and maybe even Elena, or whoever he was currently bumping uglies with. A pessimist by nature, I was certain he was already sleeping with someone else. And I hardly wanted a meet-and-greet with her.
That was the problem with doing the right thing and cutting all ties with your ex. You could always be blindsided by their brand new shiny life.
Before I got out of the car, I parked in front of Alex’s house. I thought I was going to throw up, so I called Jadie. It was pretty much a given she and Tom were going to be late, so I knew she wasn’t already inside.
“Hey!” she answered chirpily.
“I need you to tell me I’m not walking into some ghastly scene of Alex having a threesome with four porn stars and a German shepherd.”
“First of all, that’s not how threesomes work. Know your math, Lar.” Jadie let out a laugh. “And second, I promise you the coast is clear. Seeing him will be bittersweet. Bitter, more than sweet, if I have to guess. But nothing ghastly is going to happen. This is Alex we are talking about. He was so pussywhipped before you guys broke up.”
Assured, but not completely sold, I got out of my car and knocked on the door. I wore a black mini dress and a hot pink shoulder purse.
Alex swung the door open. He looked a little thinner than I remembered, a little less happy, and he’d shaved his entire head. Which looked…weird.
The new haircut—or lack of hair, more like—was like a punch to my gut. A prime example of how he moved on without me.
“You look different,” I blurted out.
“Same goes to you.” He drank me in with his eyes, then added, “Come in.”
I waved hello to his parents and grandmother and descended the stairs to his basement. There, I found Daniel, a few more guys I recognized from demonstrations and punk gigs, two guys from his high school, and a pretty girl who was sitting on one of his high school friends that he was definitely not sleeping with.
No Ainsley. No mysterious Elena. Phew.
The music (Black Flag) was loud, and the alcohol was overflowing, but there were no corny signs of a teary goodbye party.
“Tom and Jadie are on their way.” Alex handed me a beer. “Wanna smoke outside?”
“You smoke now?” I felt my eyes widening.
Seeing him was weird. Not bad weird. Not good weird, either. Just…weird.
Alex smiled, tapping an unlit cigarette over his palm. “Here and there.”
“Bad habit in general, but especially for a dentist,” I commented.
He grabbed my hand and squeezed. “Let’s just get out of here for a sec.”
A few minutes later, we were on a bench in his backyard. He lit his cigarette while I checked my messages on my phone. I was kind of eager to check my MySpace account when I got back. I had been talking to a few like-minded people and having a lot of fun talking to one, specifically. A Northern Irish guy living in England who had really good taste in music. And this time I meant it. I was done pretending. This guy and I….we were on the same wavelength about pretty much everything.
“So how’ve you been?” Alex asked.
I put my phone down, turning to him. “Good. Are you excited for Sweden?”
He shrugged. “Not really. My stupid cousin moved in with his girlfriend, so I had to find last-minute accommodations. I’m now going to be living with four randos I don’t even fucking know. Oh, and learning Swedish is going to be a bitch. Probably should’ve thought about that when I planned to move there FUCKING SIX YEARS AGO. But oh, well.”
I cackled. He was good ol’ Alex again, and I finally let myself unwind.
“You always land on your feet, Al.”
Alex jerked his chin toward me. “What about you? What are your college plans?”
I looked at my phone, which was sitting between us on the bench, and thought about Patrick, the guy I was talking to from England.
“I think I want to try to get accepted to a university in London,” I heard myself say out loud. It was only when I said it that I realized I meant it with my entire heart. I wanted to move there. I’d been to London plenty of times before and loved it dearly.
Alex whistled low. “Expensive plan. Mommy and Daddy know ’bout it?”
“They’re about to.” I laughed.
“And what about Brent?” Alex asked brashly, the sharp edge in his voice telling me he had planned to ask me this question before I set foot in his house. “Still in the picture?”
“We’re just friends,” I cemented.
I refrained from asking if he was seeing someone. I couldn’t handle the pain. Maybe I was a coward, but I just couldn’t.
But, of course, Alex went ahead and updated me, anyway.
“I haven’t been seeing anyone. I don’t know if Jadie mentioned that, but anyway.” He took a drag of his cigarette, shrugging.
“Oh.” I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding until right that moment. “Yeah. Me neither.”
“I was a little—okay, a whole fucking lot—shell-shocked when we broke up,” Alex admitted. “Everything just became very real, very suddenly, and I didn’t want to not-follow up on my Sweden plans, so I needed a clean cut. But then I had time to digest everything, and, well, it kind of freaking sucks. We’ve lost four months together.”
“We did.” I took his hand, stroking it gently. It felt good to hear that, even if I knew we were not getting back together under any circumstances. Maybe we didn’t come full circle, but our bruised souls did, and that was enough. To know how deeply we cared for one another after all.
“I’m not going to get over you anytime soon, Honeypie. In Sweden, or anywhere else in the world.” He smiled a sad smile that broke my heart to pieces.
“Yeah, me either.”
He leaned down and kissed me. I ran my hand through the buzz cut on his head. It felt like kissing someone completely different. Someone who smelled of cigarettes and didn’t have long-ish hair and wasn’t my loving, devoted boyfriend anymore.
It gave me a thrill.
When we pulled away, he brushed his thumb over my cheek.
“Maybe in another life, Honeypie?”
“Definitely, Al.”
Alex flew to Sweden, and, true to his promise from two and half years ago, he didn’t cave, and didn’t open a MySpace account. Which, in my opinion, was a crying shame, because MySpace was the shit.
I talked to Patrick almost every night, about anything from music to books and pop culture, and we had a lot of fun.
That following June, I graduated from high school, and got a phone call from Alex, telling me Stockholm was really beautiful and really expensive and that Swedish wasn’t totally impossible to learn. He congratulated me. I told him I missed him. He didn’t say it back.
The week after, I booked a ticket for a week in London. A childhood friend who’d moved to Scotland a few years earlier with her family was coming down from Glasgow to meet me. I was going to celebrate my eighteenth birthday in style, getting drunk and having fun. I still didn’t commit to a college, but I promised my parents that I would as soon as I came back from the English capital.
Post-Alex Lara was born in tears, and sweat, but without fear.
I was my true, authentic self, and it felt great, even if it did not feel perfect.
I was into grunge, alternative, and indie music. Amy Winehouse-type beehive updo, smoking, and starving myself.
Yes, I was starving myself to reach an impossible Kate Moss thigh gap.
There were a few issues with my thigh gap plan (I mean, other than the fact that I was gleefully developing an eating disorder in the name of aesthetics and fashion). The pressing issue was the fact that genetically, my body rejected the idea of a thigh gap. My thighs very much enjoyed high-fiving each other every time I walked. Even at my skinniest, I always had what you’d call a full trunk.
But London Me was definitely the thinnest I’d ever been. At 113 pounds, I was flirting with medically malnourished. My ribs poked out of my cropped shirts, and my army boots were so heavy, every time I walked in them for a long period of time, it felt like I’d just gotten back from a leg workout.
But when I ate (rarely), you bet your ass I had grilled cheese.
London Me also completely excluded the whole punk rock scene from my life. I was still friends with Jadie (who broke up with Tom, again, just because she wanted to play the field), but I really didn’t want to hear about how bad I was for eating eggs and taking my coffee with milk. I also owned up to my shopping habit and got rid of my Summer Roberts wardrobe (RIP, the me who wanted to be wholesome and cute. That was a short phase).
One thing was for sure—I was starting to resemble the person I’d imagined when I was a kid and thought of my grown-up self.
Only much, much hungrier.
I landed at Heathrow on a bright, summer day. And by “bright, summer day” I mean, it was raining like hell in the middle of July. I was supposed to meet my Scottish friend, Dory, at the airport, since she was getting in from a Glasgow flight.
I burned the time by getting myself a latte at Costa and calling it my lunch. If nothing else, starving yourself in the hopes of one day waking up looking like Kate Moss was fiscally smart. I knew I would spend barely anything on food.
I should probably point out that my reason for coming to London—the official one, anyway—was so I could check out schools. So, let me get this out of the way right now: I did not, in fact, check out any schools.
Dory arrived from her flight, looking like a million bucks. She had the best smile (side note: we are still super close. She lives in London now, and has two beautiful children and a banker husband. But back then, we were both hellions and broke).
“Hey, asshole!” I hugged her tight.
“Hey, slut!” she greeted cheerfully.
We strode together to a bus. She did the talking throughout our journey to Piccadilly Backpackers hostel. Mainly because I was too tongue-tied to do more than drink in the view and fantasize about my new, exciting life in London without worrying about the technicalities, like the fact I couldn’t afford it.
Dory and I got a room with two bunk beds the size of my parents’ half bathroom. The restrooms and showers were communal, and we shared them with more backpackers from all over Europe.
I didn’t even have time to unpack when Dory slapped my bony back.
“Hey, let’s go eat in Chinatown.”
“Dory.” I gasped. “I don’t eat after six. Certainly not carbs. Can’t we just drink some gin and chew on ice cubes like civilized people?”
Dory looked horrified.
“Lara, carbs are good for you. They make you happy. And strong. They are energy. Not to mention, they are fucking tasty. You are not going to be on a diet when we’re in London. Come, now!”
And so, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown. Trouble was, I’d never been to a real Vietnamese restaurant before. Only the industrialized, fast food chains that served Western food with a side of fortune cookies. So I had no idea how to eat Mi Xao Gion. Basically, I ate the crunchy noodles without adding the main dish to them like an idiot.
“A little stale, isn’t it?” I commented to Dory, who poured her elaborate, juicy dish into her noodles.
“Yeah, if you are a world-class idiot.” She laughed and showed me how to do it.
Once I let myself eat the noodles, I decided to go balls out and also bought a dodgy hot dog from a street vendor. I say it was dodgy not because of the hot dog, God forbid, which did nothing to me (other than remind me that my vegetarianism was nonexistent at this point. This would be the third time since I went vegetarian years ago that I ate any type of meat). I call it dodgy because the vendor wasn’t licensed, and midway into making my hot dog, he spotted a police car, grabbed his cart, and bailed.
But I’d already paid him for the hot dog. So what did I do?—Damn right I began chasing after him like a rabid animal, demanding he give me my hot dog.
In hindsight, I definitely agree it was not my most demure moment, when I ran after the poor man, shouting “give me that hot dog. I want that hot dog”. However, it was a moment of pure, unabashed freedom, and I will always cherish it.
After stuffing my face with noodles and a hot dog, I wobbled back to Piccadilly Backpackers with Dory. There, we bought the internet package, which cost me approximately an arm and a leg, and I powered up my laptop and got onto MySpace, where I had one message waiting.
Patrick: You here yet?
Me: Yes! Just landed. Phew, pretty rainy here, huh?
Me: Where can I see you?
Patrick: Dublin Castle. The day after the next. Camden Town.
It was a date.
I knew I’d fallen out of love with Alex the moment I met Patrick.
It actually broke my heart a little. Looking at Patrick—six one, blue-eyed, and full of charm—and feeling my stomach sinking, because I knew he was the one, and that I was wrong in what I’d told Alex. It wasn’t going to take a lifetime and a half for me to get over him after all.
Patrick was charming, fun, and devilishly smart. He’d just graduated from university and started a job at a non-profit organization. He had ideals and ideas about the world, but they were pragmatic and adaptable. We could co-exist, even if we grew out of some of our views.
Patrick knew Dory was going to come with, so he brought a friend, too. Steven.
Steven and Dory had NOTHING in common.
It was pretty funny to see them trying to be cultured with each other while Patrick and I were busy falling in love on the bench of the gig room at Dublin Castle, Camden Town.
Patrick and I spent the entire night ignoring our friends—and the world.
By the time I packed my bags to leave for home, I knew nothing about the universities and programs London had to offer me, but I knew one thing—I was going to marry Patrick and move to the English capital, even if it was the last thing I did.
Here was why Patrick and I needed to marry each other in order for this to work:
I looked into studying in London, and concluded that unless my parents won the lottery, or some long-distant billionaire relative of mine dropped dead and decided to put my name in his inheritance, I couldn’t afford to study in London (except if it was in the Open University).
In order to study in the Open University I needed to physically move to London.
Which I had no way to do unless I married a local.
Patrick was a local.
Patrick and I were madly, crazily in love with each other, and nothing about it was hesitant and clumsy like my love with Alex. It was real. And it was happening.
Patrick and I got married on Friday the 13th by the MAYOR OF LARNACA in Cyprus. Yup, folks, I guess the writing was on the wall with that one.
I wore a black dress I bought while waiting for my pedicure appointment that cost me eleven bucks. Patrick was sunburnt and already thinking about the seafood and Guinness he was going to destroy once we finished with the ceremony. Really, it was very romantic.
There were four more couples in the room getting married at the same time, and Patrick and I looked like their newborns, we were so young. Still, no part of me doubted the decision to marry him. It was real love, and we both knew it.
Due to bureaucracy and general life crap, I had to go back home for a few weeks to get my passport and visa before I moved to London. Actually, we were going to live with his mom in St. Alban’s until we found an apartment in London, which suited me fine, since she lived in a wonderful house and was super nice.
It was still weird. Walking around with a ring on my finger. But I loved feeling like I belonged to Patrick and found nothing sexier than watching a good man with a ring on his wedding finger.
My ring was simple. A golden hoop on my wedding finger. But it was so obviously a wedding ring, people had to do a double and triple take when they saw me walking around, barely legal, waving my ring hand as I talked to people.
I had never been happier in my life.
Had never been this excited.
Had never been this whole.
Seven months after Alex moved to Sweden, I was driving my mom’s car on my way to a really good Italian restaurant to pick up some takeout. It was on the highway when I spotted Alex’s Volvo. He was driving in the other lane.
I almost drove straight into a barrier when I noticed him.
He, too, did a double take, his eyes widening.
Alex motioned for me with his head to stop on the shoulder of the road. I did. He parked right behind me. It was surreal, seeing him back home. Especially as I was days from moving away and starting my own European adventure.
Alex got out of his car, and I did the same. He walked toward me. He’d gained weight. Enough to look like a man now, not a teenage boy anymore. And his hair grew. He looked good. Happy.
“Holy shit.” He laughed. “Honeypie.”
“Alex!” I threw my arms around him, hugging him. We hugged for maybe a full minute before I disconnected from him. Seeing him didn’t feel bittersweet anymore. Just sweet, with a dash of nostalgia. And it was weird, because it had only been a little over a year since we’d broken up.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, at the same time he said, “Holy shit, you lost weight. Eat something, Little Friend.”
We both laughed.
“I’m just visiting my parents for the week,” he said. “How about you? Where’d you end up going for college? Ever since Tom and Jadie broke up, I no longer get the tea about you.”
“Yeah, actually, I decided to study in London.”
Alex tapped his lower lip, considering this. “Expensive.”
I wasn’t going to tell him I got married. Not voluntarily, anyway. It just seemed like rubbing it in.
“Yeah.” I chuckled, tucking a flyaway behind my ear. “Well, you were the one who taught me to follow my dreams.”
