Page 15 of Forever Not Yours

“Can I stay?” he mumbled, barely audible over the dog. Still yapping. Driving me mad.

“Of course you can stay." Good old reliable Jakey to the rescue. “Why did you bring the dog?”

“I’m not okay.”

That admission seemed to make him completely deflate, like he’d been held up by an invisible rod that had now simply collapsed. The remaining bag, a rucksack on his back, landed with an alarming thud. The sound of plastic against the hard floor made me grimace.

I had nothing to say, no words of comfort up my sleeve, because I was not okay either. I felt broken, in every way imaginable.

“I just need to lie down and sleep this off,” he said, stepping out of his shoes and stumbling towards the sofa, on the verge of collapse, whilst I stood there dumbfounded, watching him. “Juliet said I had to take the dog. Couldn’t leave her there.” He stuck a cushion under his head and pulled the blanket I kept neatly folded on the back rest down over himself, like this was okay. Like everything was fine.

Nothing was fine. My stomach was churning, and I wondered if there was anything left of this morning’s hotel breakfast to throw up.

But at least he was here.

The last place I needed him to be, admittedly.

He fell asleep because that is what Bastien did. Snored away on my sofa while I sat in the armchair, my feet on the coffee table. Perhaps I dozed off for a while, because the sun was slowly setting in the distance, the warm summer air having heated the flat up like an oven. I got up and opened the balcony door only to have a massive panic as the dog darted outside and did its business all over my pristine concrete balcony floor, yellow liquid dripping off the edge down towards the neighbour’s balcony. Not good.

Fuck him and his bloody dog. At least the dog was sensible and tottered back inside, where I found my humanity and poured water into a cereal bowl and placed it on the floor. Yeah. I’d heard the story. He’d bought Juliet a dog for her birthday in February, and Juliet had thrown a hissy fit. Bastien loved that dog. Ugly-as-shit little thing that now stood next to my feet and panted. Did it expect food?

Well, I had no shame so started going through the pile of bags by the door. Plastic supermarket carriers full of clothes. I spotted a dog lead, and…aha! A bowl and a half-full bag of meaty kibble. There. Dog fed. Job done.

That didn’t make me any less antsy, though, and I went back and snuck a peek in the rucksack. Phone. Laptop. Leads. A massive amount of medication in the main compartment. Plastic sheets of pills with ridiculous names. I knew them all. Of course I did. But I was a decent human being, so I left them where I found them.

Okay, I wasn’t decent, and I still felt too weirded out to unpack that can of worms myself, but I put his phone and laptop on charge and left the rest for him to deal with later.

He slept for hours, only waking up to drain the glass of water I’d left next to him. He didn’t touch the packet of crisps or the cereal bar, and perhaps I should’ve woken him again, stroked the hair out of his face…

I wanted so desperately to talk to him, get all the answers to the questions in my head, but the words were stuck in my throat, and nothing came out whenever I leant forward in the hope that he would wake up and speak to me, give me some kind of reassurance that everything would be okay.

When dusk fell, I stuck the lead on the dog and walked it. Her. Flossie. It was written on her collar, but I’d remembered that much. Just her and me in the dusky evening light. She did her business, and that filled me with some weird pride. I nodded to a fellow dogwalker, his beast looking like something that would chew up Flossie and spit her back out in mere seconds. Still, the walk was just what I needed. It was good to clear my head.

When we got back to the flat, Bastien had just woken up—probably the dog barking excitedly—and was slowly trying to sit himself up, only to lose his balance and crash awkwardly into the coffee table. Very him, but he managed to steady himself back up in the nick of time, as Flossie leapt into his arms, and he cradled her, staring out the window like I didn’t exist.

“Can we talk?” I tried softly, noticing he’d eaten my snacks. My pathetic peace offering.

“No,” he replied quietly. “Nothing to say.”

“We need to talk,” I insisted. “How the hell are we going to do this if we don’t talk?”

“Just let me…rest.”

That was it, apparently. He fell back against the armrest, the dog yapping helplessly as it got stuck in the crook of his arm. He let her go. She yelped and scurried off somewhere.

Bloody dog.

He sometimes got depressed, and his anxiety could be paralysing. That was just who he was, but I’d never seen him like this before. This apathy to everything around him. I wondered if I was to blame or if he really had lost it this time.

“You can stay as long as you want. As long as you’re okay. I’m right here if you need me.”

That was me trying. He said nothing back.

Islept, something my body always craved. My whole life, sleep had been my saviour, rescuing me from everything from random childhood fevers to thoughts I didn’t want tothink. I had no idea why I was like this. I had no terrible trauma to overcome. No horrible parents instilling their warped beliefs in me. Love and understanding, endless hugs and hot meals had shaped me into the person I was. The person who was curled up on a sofa somewhere in Hampstead.

Fucking Hampsted. How we’d ended up here, Jakey and me, was beyond belief. Two fuck-ups from the suburbs who had done good at uni. Got all the degrees, good jobs, money pouring into the bank.

He’d got himself a mortgage. I’d bought a fancy car. A fancy car that I had parked somewhere downstairs and probably needed to move before I got myself saddled with another hefty parking fine. This was London, after all.

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