Page 12 of Unless It's You
Let’s grab a drink next week?
Me
Sure. How about after the boys’ rugby practice next Friday? You still coming to help?
Ben
Right, of course, mate. Looking forward to showing the lads how to toss a rugby ball correctly since they have a rubbish coach
The last text makes me chuckle, and I jog down the footpath toward the bus stop, past a splintered wooden bench. I hop on a bus and put distance between me and the flat.
“Ethan, come in.”Suzanne waves me into her small, terraced house, and a mixture of emotions swirls inside me at the sight of Mum’s best friend.
Both my mum and Helen’s mum were troubled when we were young, but Suzanne pulled it together when we were around ten, and the two women had different paths fromthat point on. Suzanne: steady job, neat house, involved in her daughter’s and grandchild’s lives. My mum: an addict, mostly unemployed, broke, and then gone.
“Hello.” I let her wave of maternal warmth course through my body.
“It’s so nice to see you again, love.” She leans back and keeps her hands on my biceps for a beat longer, examining my face. “You okay?”
I nod and walk in when she steps back, wondering why I came, why I didn’t go to the train station and straight back to London, head bowed between my legs.
But once the swirl of emotions settles, I decide seeing Helen’s mum is nice. Comforting in some way. Ben’s family was home to me growing up, but we were both friends with Helen, too, and her mum cared about all of us, despite her own troubles.
A screech echoes from further back in the house and a nappy-clad toddler waddles into the front room, a giant smile on his face, wispy blond curls sticking out from his head, and something resembling chocolate smeared all around his mouth.
Suzanne swoops him up and kisses him on the forehead. “Helen,” she yells toward where the child came from. “Ethan’s here!”
“What?” Helen rounds the corner, her long, dark hair in waves over her shoulders, a giant smile on her face before she even sees me. “Ethan! You’re here again!” The small boy wiggles in his nan’s arms and reaches for Helen, who grabs him and settles the child on her hip. “Come in, come sit.”
Seeing Helen is weird, but good. I always had a huge thing for her. Which is why I was so fucking thrilled when we connected again five years ago, after I’d stopped playing rugby and gotten a brand management job in London. It finally happened. She was still up here in Borinwick, outside of Newcastle where we all grew up, and I was in London, but she’d been down visiting friends and met up with us at a pub one night. She came back to Ben and myplace, and we hooked up. After that, she started coming to London once a month or so and stayed with me. And Ben. She and I were never anything defined, but I wanted to give us a chance.
Helen wraps an arm around my waist, and I pull her toward me in a half hug. She smiles up at me, as does her son, who I lean slightly away from as he leans toward me with his—admittedly cute—chocolate-covered face.
“Oh, sorry about that, Ethan. Henry, let’s get you cleaned up and in a fresh nappy. And maybe to bed. Can you hang out? I’ll be back in ten.”
I nod, and Helen gives me a sweet smile and disappears down the hall with her son.
But back then, it wasn’t long before it all fell apart. Helen confessed she was actually in love with Ben, not me. I was just some broken toy she was messing around with. She didn’t say that, of course, and I pretended I didn’t care. I told Ben to go for it. They hooked up a few times, then he lost interest. That was a bollocks time. I’d never told him how I was feeling about Helen—which I’m not even clear on—and my friendship with him was so much more important.
Helen and I got back in touch shortly after she had her son.
Suzanne waves me toward the couch, where I sink in.
“Everything settled with your mum?” Her brow furrows as she looks at me intently again, hands folded on her belly as she sits down on the other end of the couch.
“There’s nothing to settle. There was no money, no anything, really.”Just a flat I can’t enter.But I don’t say it. I can’t even admit it to Suzanne or Helen.
“Mmm.” A silence descends between us. “She loved you, you know. Even if you couldn’t tell.” A shimmer of tears fills her eyes.
I swallow. Have I even cried over Mum? I loved her. She was my mother. But do I miss her? No, not really. I miss the idea of her. But she didn’t give a shite about me.Suzannemisses her, eventhough Mum was a disaster in the last years of her life. At least they had a friendship of sorts.
“It didn’t feel like it.”
“Mary—your mum—she had problems. I did, too.”
“Yes, but you pulled it together. And kept it together.” There’s an edge to my voice and Suzanne leans back, as if I’d said something horrible. “You raised Helen. You provided for her. You’re here now, helping with Henry, giving them a place to live.” I make an effort to wipe any hostility off my face. It’s not Suzanne’s fault.
She sighs. “I know. I’m sorry. None of us had any money back then, and we both drank too much, partied too much, when we should have been raising our kids. I wish she could’ve figured things out. But she never did. She got so lost.”
