Love, Unscripted Read online

  “Me neither. I’m usually a lot more drunk when I come in here.”

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  “Have you made eye contact yet?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then follow my lead.”

  She started backing out of the shop slowly, her eyes on the menu all the while. I followed suit, knowing how stupid we both looked and not caring in the slightest.

  It was then that for the first time I thought: This girl likes me. I mean, she must, right? To be being this silly? And surely she was thinking the same as me about the smelly, greasy food. Surely? Maybe she thought something was going to happen. Maybe she thought it was going to happen tonight.

  I was beaming.

  But as we turned to run, something, or more specifically someone, made this little fantasy come crashing to a halt.

  * * *

  —

  I’D MET VICKY Johnson two months before I met Ellie, in a notorious meat market of a club north of the river.

  It was the kind of place I’d never choose to go in my wildest nightmares, but we were celebrating Seb’s engagement and his friends had poor taste and even poorer judgment. Although the honor for poorest judgment that night firmly belonged to me. How I wished I’d stayed in and watched a Michael Haneke marathon. The ending would have been much happier.

  Having never been a strong drinker, and being one hundred percent the victim of peer pressure, I was on my arse before eleven o’clock. I remembered very little of the night, but Seb—who should have been comatose after what his friends made him drink—reliably informed me that I had turned the charm to overload. He said he overheard me laying on the compliments to Vicky, feigning interest in topics I despised and generally agreeing with things I didn’t believe, in a way he later described as “bewitching.” His exact words were: “You were so damn captivating, I would have slept with you that night.”

  It wasn’t the first time I’d used alcohol to inebriate the awkward me, to lull him to sleep so that those feeling of nervousness and self-loathing couldn’t second-guess my each and every move. But it was the first time my Mr. Hyde had taken over to such an extent I ended up having sex with someone I’d only just met.

  And although there was nothing inherently wrong about that—I was single, she was single, we were two consenting adults—the idea that I’d become someone I wasn’t just to get laid made me feel cheap and wrong and, moments after it was over, incredibly unfulfilled. Most people could brush off the simple regret of a one-night stand, but I wore it like a noose for weeks afterward.

  As for the following morning, I had every opportunity to make an escape. An honorable one. She gave me the window.

  “If this is just a one-nighter, that’s fine,” she said as I got dressed. “But if you want to see me again, I’ll give you my number.”

  She wrote it down, then offered me the pen and a piece of paper. When I didn’t take either of them straightaway, the air in the room disappeared. The silent pause I contributed didn’t help.

  She tentatively withdrew the stationery.

  “It’s just we seemed to have a lot in common last night.”

  “We did?”

  The inclusion of the question mark was a poor choice.

  “Yeah, the fun runs, the dance festivals, the holidays in the sun.”

  I hated all those things.

  “Oh yeah,” I lied. “Totally.”

  “You weren’t just lying to get in my pants then?” She nudged me in a way that I was sure was meant to be playful but was really quite painful. I thought at the time that her strength probably came from all the running and dancing.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “So…”

  She waved the pen again. Not wanting to be impolite, and not being devious enough to do something simple like miswriting one digit, I gave her my number.

  In total, over the span of twelve days, I received eleven missed calls and twenty-one text messages. She sent the first before I’d left her stairwell.

  * * *

  —

  TO SAY THAT Vicky was not pleased to see me and Ellie, giggling like children, leaving a Chicken Cottage empty-handed at 1:30 in the morning, was an Avatar-box-office-size understatement. That she was drunk was evident immediately. Her makeup was slightly smudged and her eyes were heavy-lidded. Her two girlfriends hovering behind her were sober by comparison but reeked of Jäger and beer.

  “If it isn’t Nick the Dick,” Vicky yelled, slurring the “the.”

  Ellie blinked twice, waiting for me to explain how I knew this semi-dressed, semi-conscious whirlwind who was spitting insults at me.

  “Hellooooo,” I said, stretching the word to the breaking point to help me find the right name.

  “It’s V—”

  “Vicky,” I said, hedging my bets that there weren’t many Vivians or Veronicas under the age of thirty.

  “Oh, you remember my name then?”

  “I do.”

  Ellie had remained at my side but wisely chosen to adopt the role of casual bystander. Now Vicky turned to her, sneering.

  “And who the fuck are you? His latest fuck and chuck?”

  Casual bystander no more, Ellie opened her mouth to speak, but I wanted very much for this to be my fire to extinguish.

  “This is my friend Ellie.”

  Vicky looked us both up and down. It seemed to take hours.

  “So.”

  She burped.

  “How’s the band coming along? Haven’t seen your album hit the charts yet.”

  Ellie’s eyes grew wide. So wide that even though I wanted the ground to swallow me up, I wanted a few more seconds on earth to look at them.

  “I did a Google on you, and it turns out that half of what you told me was a massive pack of lies. Here’s a hint—make your Facebook profile secret if you want to run around tricking your way into girls’ pants.”

  I knew I needed to stem the tide of vitriol, but I also knew I needed to be extra careful with both members of my audience.

  “I’m sorry. I should have called.”

  “Oh, here’s where you say you lost my number—”

  The immediacy and brutality of my “no” was designed to let both her and Ellie know that I didn’t have—and never had had—any intention of seeing her again. In hindsight it was pretty cold, and I felt Ellie shift awkwardly.

  “Vicky. I’m sorry. I was thoroughly drunk that night—not that that’s any excuse, but if I’d been sober I wouldn’t have—”

  “Oh, thanks!”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. You seem like a really nice—”

  “You know what? Fuck you, Nick. I thought you were a nice guy, but you’re not, you’re a fucking liar and a sleazebag. So if you don’t mind, I’m gonna eat me some fucking chicken.” And with that, she shoulder-barged me out of the way and made for the counter.

  I held the door open for Ellie, as some paltry apology for the last few minutes of her time. She accepted it and we walked past Vicky’s friends and back out into the crisp night, my cheeks now red not just from the cold air.

  “Ellie…” I started as we left the Chicken Cottage a distant, demeaning memory.

  “Nick, don’t worry about it.”

  “Really?” The rising intonation of the question hit a very unmasculine high note.

  “Yeah. Anyway, it’s you I feel sorry for.”

  “Me?” Even higher this time.

  “Yeah. I mean, about five minutes ago, all was going pretty well for you. Now, pfff, your chances of having sex tonight are sitting at around zero percent.”

  I smiled broadly, and a butterfly-inducing thought crossed my mind.

  There was a chance.

  If these walls could talk.

  They’d tell me I’m an idiot.r />
  Twenty-four months we lived in this flat. And until recently I would have described the majority of those months as phenomenal. The same could not be said for the inner workings of our accommodation.

  A bog-standard one-bedroom flat half a mile from the Tube, no one broke the mold when they built this house. But the chronic mold nearly broke us.

  It was in the bedroom, the kitchen, the living room, and the bathroom. It took just four weeks to seep through the quick paint job the landlord had carried out in order to sucker unsuspecting tenants. I was adamant we would find somewhere else to live, but Ellie, being Ellie, set about on a mold mission to rival Alexander Fleming’s.

  When our landlord said he’d never had a problem with it before, she determinedly decided she would see to it herself. She spoke to the neighbors first, to pinpoint the worst areas, then started scouring the internet for long-term solutions. She was tireless and unwavering in her action. But never obsessed. If it was me—and it wouldn’t ever have been me, because my plan was always to just move out and move on—I would have gone cuckoo ripping up walls and hammering holes where no holes needed to be hammered.

  Ellie, on the other hand, was just single-minded. Clear in her goal. Find the source. Eradicate the problem. By the end of the first summer, there wasn’t a fungus to be found.

  The rest of the place still had issues. The taps were a law unto themselves, dripping like chlamydia one day, breaking your digits with their force the next. The fuses tripped if you switched on more than two lights at a time. The windows and doors all had drafts.

  But it was our home. And we loved it.

  We loved our batshit-crazy neighbors and their batshit-crazy pets. We loved how close it was to both work and our favorite pub and the best damn Chinese takeaway a man and woman could ask for.

  We had a five-year plan for this place. Yet here I am, in year two, putting our—but mostly my—belongings in boxes, ready to say goodbye.

  * * *

  —

  THE ONLY TIME I go through these little memorabilia chests is when I move home. They live under the bed, gathering dust, opened occasionally to throw some new things on top of the old, but the things themselves are never touched.

  Except on the day before moving day, when the bed gets dismantled and the boxes reveal themselves.

  There’s one full of cinema tickets, from Back to the Future II (I was seven) to Attack of the Clones (the last film I actually paid to see). Leafing through the stubs, I find it a little depressing that I don’t have any physical evidence of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of films I’ve seen since I started working at the cinema. I know there are a few stubs in assorted other boxes, mainly from holidays and special occasions, and I’ll find them soon enough in the inevitable deep dive down memory lane.

  I put the lid on the box and open another, labeled SCHOOL DAYZ.

  This one is mostly photos, a few ties, and a shirt with various warm wishes and insults scrawled over it in Biro. The warm wishes are mainly from the girls in my year and the insults are mainly drawings of penises or variations on the word “penis” from the boys. This was standard practice and in no way reflected any draw I might have had with the girls in my school or any animosity from the boys.

  Nothing in this box really interests me, and I know I’m only looking in it to delay the inevitable. I sigh and pick up the box labeled ELLIE AND NICK.

  The lack of actual photos is even more depressing than the lack of cinema stubs.

  With Ellie being the photographer, she automatically got custody of the physical memories we made together, but there are a few special pictures taken at various points in our relationship. The ones around the flat that she left behind. Still in their frames.

  My favorite is a selfie she took of us, way before selfies were actually referred to as selfies. We’re sitting in the back of our car midway through a weekend trip to see her parents in Sheffield. We’d been together two years then and we were still as nuts about each other as we were in our first few months. I honestly thought that would never stop.

  In the photo, she’s laughing and biting my ear and taking the photo, all in one.

  It could have easily ended up a blurry picture of the ceiling of a VW Polo and the tops of our heads. But it didn’t. It’s perfect. It’s happiness captured.

  Of course, I could pack these boxes away and go on Facebook and pore through folder after folder labeled TRIP TO SCOTLAND and BEER FESTIVAL ’09, but that’s not the point. That, to me, feels weird and stalkerish and I’ve already done it for the last two weeks. I pick up the next item, underneath the framed photos of happier times.

  It’s a diary I started after being brought to a wobbly mess of tears by The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—a film about a guy with “locked-in syndrome,” which leaves him able to communicate only by blinking one eye.

  He wrote a book about living with the condition, which I own but haven’t read.

  The film, however, made me feel like the biggest shit in the world for having the tools to write but choosing not to. I thought: If he can write a paragraph in a day, I can devote ten minutes of the day to document what I do.

  I bought the diary in January 2010.

  I stopped writing in it in March 2010.

  I go through phases like this now and again. They never last long. Much to Ellie’s chagrin. She always wanted me to find a goal outside of “being a projectionist forever.”

  * * *

  —

  A COUPLE OF months before we broke up, we were having a lazy Sunday afternoon drink in Borough Market. It was a cold day for April and the wind was whipping up the Thames.

  “Don’t you want to do something else?” she asked.

  “Like what? Like the manager position?”

  “Well, it would be a step up.”

  “Seb’s already said he’s going for the role and he can have it. I don’t want the stress.”

  “Because your life is so stressful,” she said, the words dripping with sarcasm.

  “It would be,” I retorted, “if I took the manager job.”

  She sipped on her pint. There was something far away about her that day; she had that faintly despondent look as we walked over London Bridge. I recognized it as the look in which you’re so deep in thought, landmarks you’ve seen a million times before are presented in a completely different light.

  “I dunno. Don’t you have stories to tell?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about writing movies?”

  “I have more chance of making it in the NFL than as a screenwriter,” I said, confidently regurgitating a line I’d read in the Guardian that week.

  “What’s the NFL?”

  “American football.”

  “Oh.” She paused. “Why not say you have more chance of making it in English football?”

  She had a point.

  “I don’t know, it’s just a thing I read. You want me to play American football? ’Cos I will.” I sang to lift her mood. “For yooooouuuu.”

  “Why would I want you to play American football?”

  “It was a joke.”

  The act of explaining that my jokes are jokes always riles me, and we sat in the same uncomfortable silence that had become uncomfortably common of late.

  “Okay, so you don’t want to be a famous Oscar-winning screenwriter?”

  “Well, I do, but the odds—”

  “What about making a short film?”

  “About what?”

  “About anything!” She was getting more and more frustrated, so I tried turning it around on her.

  “What about you? Don’t you want to do something with your life?”

  “Yes. That’s the point.”

  “So what are you doing about it?”

  Another gust blew in from the river and ad
ded an extra level of frostiness to the chat.

  “I’ve started looking for a new job, actually. Something life-changing.”

  I remember worrying.

  “Does your life need changing?”

  She put her hand on mine to comfort me and I pulled it away like a stroppy, petulant fool, seeking the comfort of my pint glass instead.

  “Evolving,” she offered as a compromise. “My life needs evolving. You forget I’m older than you. I have less time before I meet my maker.”

  “If your maker ever tries to take you away from me, I’ll kill him. Or her.”

  I offered her my hand to take again and she did.

  “It’d just be nice if you evolved with me.”

  “Then I will Darwin the shit out of my life. I’ll compile a list of attainable and satisfactory jobs and do whatever it takes to get one of them. After all, when you grow tired of looking for jobs in London, you grow tired of life.”

  She moved around the table and sat next to me, nuzzling up to me in the haze of a weekend wasted. Confident again that her decision all those years ago was the right one. That human heat made the day suddenly feel warmer.

  “What do you want to do tonight?” she asked.

  I shrugged. “Watch a movie?”

  She offered the smallest of nods, and I completely missed that her assurance had vanished again.

  “Okay, Nick. Sounds good.”

  * * *

  —

  LOOKING BACK ON it now, awash with melancholia and looking for an answer, I decide to add this to the Why Ellie Left list. She saw me as stuck in a rut and lacking motivation, just a brick that if she clung to she’d drown.

  Who wants to be a brick?

  I take out the notepad, already looking a little battered, and write the second reason, I’M A BRICK, directly underneath WE PEAKED TOO EARLY. It’s a tale as old as time. Boy meets girl. Girl wants to do something with her life. Boy doesn’t. Girl leaves boy.

  I’m getting closer to knowing why she went. Or at least I think I am. The clarity of 20/20. I put down the diary and pick up a Christmas card from December 2008. Our first Christmas together.