Page 56 of Statistically Speaking
Not because I won’t like them—I have already met Asha, and I am sure the others are wonderful too. But because it is a big step, isn’t it? Meeting the parents. I mean, they’ve even made films about it.
I am happy with Karim. I enjoy his company, and I have made space for him in my world as well as I can while still being me. I also fancy him rotten, and am relishing our love life. I do not want this to end, this precious thing we have—but I also do not feel ready for this. For this entirely next-level shit.
I realize that I have not answered him. That I have sat here quietly, hands folded on my knees, probably looking calm while my mind raced through all of the various scenarios and failed to find one I feel comfortable with. He is looking increasingly less calm himself, and I know I need to open my mouth. I know I need to say some reassuring words, explain myself, get us over this awkward moment. I need to communicate.
“Do you want a glass of milk?” I say.
The look on his face is priceless. Under other circumstances I might have laughed.
“No, Gemma, I don’t want a glass of milk, thank you. Maybe I should just go?”
Don’t go, I think.Please don’t go. Hold me in your arms and take me to bed and tell me everything will be all right. Shout at me, scream at me, call me names. But please, don’t go.
“Okay, if that’s what you want,” I reply.
He stares at me and shakes his head sadly. I am frozen, immobile, incapable of speech. I am not good with needing people, and this has made me realize how much I need him. I stay silent as he stands up, grabs his jacket, and leaves.
I hear the door slam shut behind him, and Bill lets out a howl downstairs. I feel like howling myself.
I stay where I am, jacket and bag on my lap, and feel a rising tide of panic. I know I have broken something, and I am not sure how to fix it.
I automatically start to take some deep breaths, counting them in, counting them out. I think of this day in history. Christopher Columbus first sights Cuba and claims it for the Spanish, 1492.Gulliver’s Travelsis published in London, 1726. The Volstead Act is passed in the US, bringing in Prohibition, 1919.Donnie Darkocomes out, and I go to see it at the cinemawith my friend Cally, passing as fifteen with a full face of slap and a pushup bra. None of it is helping. None of it is soothing me. I am sad, and I don’t want to be sad. More frustratingly, I think perhaps I don’t even need to be sad. It has all been a horrible mistake, and it came out of nowhere. I was ambushed, and so was he. He only meant well, and I reacted badly—my stupid, stupid mind told me I was in danger, when in reality I wasn’t. In reality I am lucky to have a man who cares about me, who is proud of me, who wants me to be in his family’s life as well as his.
I have never had any family to introduce a boyfriend to, and I never went home with any of my previous partners—though I now see thatpartnerisn’t even close to the right word. I avoided it, always had things to do, was always too busy. I made excuses until they gave up asking. This stuff—family that matters, family that cares—is all new to me, like something I’ve seen from the outside but never really experienced.
He didn’t know how much it would throw me off course. He miscalculated, which I can forgive—not everybody counts as precisely as I do. He miscalculated, but he did it for the best of reasons.
I pick up my phone, start typing a message. I am going too fast, and I keep making spelling mistakes or triggering weird words on autofill. My fingers are flying, but not fast enough. I need to tell him that I didn’t mean to hurt him. That I am just made weird, that I am not built like other humans. That I am an idiot. That he needs to be patient with me. Above all, that I am sorry.
I am interrupted in my frenzied mistexting by a quiet knock at the door. I jump up, run down the hallway, and open it.
He is standing there, looking half angry and half amused. His hair is in tufts where he has been shoving his hands through it. I have driven him to dishevelment with my magic touch.
“I’m not happy with the way we left that,” he says simply. “Plus, I want a glass of milk.”
I stand back, and he comes inside. Before he can take another step, I throw my arms around him and kiss him as thoroughly as a man can be kissed. When we finally pull apart, we are both less interested in talking, and more interested in doing.
I lead him to the bedroom, and we show each other in the simplest way possible that we are sorry.
Chapter 24
Four Wedgwood Plates and One Demented Parakeet
In the end, we drive in a two-car convoy as far as a service station that lies just before the exit for Stoke-on-Trent.
I park slightly later than him, and he has already bought me a coffee. I accept it gratefully, and we go and sit outside in what could very loosely be described as a garden. There are some planter boxes full of half-dead flowers, and three scrawny pigeons fighting over the remains of a sausage roll. It is very picturesque here, among the car fumes and the sounds of traffic.
“So,” he says as we finish up, “I hope it goes well. Give me a bell afterward if you feel up to it. You know I’ll be thinking of you.”
“No, you won’t. You’ll be in a sugar coma and all your sisters will be fussing over you.” He smiles and replies fondly, “Well, they do get excited when the little prince comes home... and I’m told there will be a popcorn machine.”
“Lucky swine. I love popcorn.”
He nods, acknowledging his luck, and says: “But I mean it. Let me know. And I’ll text you our address, in case you change your mind. In case you need some company afterward.”
I nod and wrap my hand around his and thank him. We get up to leave, and I head for my car and Karim heads for the shop, where he tells me he is going to buy a bagful of giant Toblerones for his niece and nephews. I can tell that he is both concerned about me and happy at the thought of seeing his family. He has known loss, he has suffered, but he has always had that security, that safety—the certain knowledge that he is loved and wanted. That he could always come home, to a place where he was valued, welcomed, and safe. I fight a pang of unattractive envy as he walks away, and head toward my car.
The rest of the drive is straightforward, down the motorway and toward a hilly city that the map tells me is split into separate towns. Some of it is perched within waving distance of the Peak District National Park, some of it edging toward nearby counties. It is dominated by its industrial heritage, and I see hints of former grandeur in the civic buildings, and signs of both decline and renewal fighting for prominence.
