Miss Tara

Chapter five

2007

June

Life at twenty-five is exhausting.

Success is non-existing, and she thought she would have made it by now. Her future was supposed to be bright and promising – even her teachers promised her that – her teachers. But they have proven to be yet another group of adults who are just as ignorant as children. Nobody has got the foggiest. 

“Chill out, Tara,” he will grin and take another drag of his cigarette. “We all feel lost at twenty-five.” 

The years are on her side still, yet she feels just as feeble, incompetent and unsure as she felt at seventeen. She's rounding the corner, she feels. The corner between failure and success. People at her age have accomplished something by now; all those great personas people talk about are at her age now. Age is something she has somehow thought would not happen to her, yet it is. She has passed it off as insignificant, yet there is nothing more pressing than time. She is getting older, bit by bit. And she has no patience for aging.

Is this life for her, she will ask, unable to grasp it all. All those possibilities that once painted the horizon a flurry of colours, all overlapping each other, have now morphed into one single shade of grey. Gone are the rainbows, gone is the air burned with dreams. All that is left are burnt bridges. There is nothing beyond this. 

He is all smiles and fags, nipping about and fiddling with Football at times. She finds comfort in the nonchalance of his life. She will keep falling; keep tumbling on her way through life, but he is an anchor. He is her anchor.

Right now, he is stretched out on her couch, his shirt riding up as he puffs out smoke. She remembers her dead mother, remembers her lonely dad, allows the thoughts to enter her mind for a limited amount of time. Five seconds. Count to five and think of the small county house, how there was no body to bury, how all the mirrors had been shattered in the house. Recall the words of love. 

And then move on.

“It’s not like we’re going to fail,” Fabian says from the couch, and his voice is certain but his eyes are not. “You can’t fail at life –“ 

She wonders if her father ever gets lonely without her. 

2009

June

The difference between twenty-six and twenty-seven is a briefcase.  

When they meet it is pure coincidence, a fleeting glance through the crowd as their eyes meet inside the Hospital. The difference between her Fabian and this Fabian is startling as he walks across the glossy floor with his hair sleeked back, clean-shaven. She stares, because it is all she can do, as he nears her. The baggy t-shirts and the five-pound Super Man watch have been abandoned and he’s all attitude and jutting bones now. At some point he sees her too. She sees the panic before he masks it behind a large smile.

They have become strangers, but even as he walks towards her, she can still recognize the slagging of his jaw and the small smile curving across his face.

He stops a few feet away from her. The air is static as he looks at her with those olive eyes.

“Tara.”

“Fabian,” she sort of laughs, because, okay, the last time she saw him he had his pants down around his ankles with his breath in her ears, as these quiet little hiccups of broken sound left her throat, which she can still recall vividly. They may have been (very) drunk, and there may have been some crying involved and some broken confessions. Fathers, Mothers, I’ve always fancied you, yeah?

But the status remains. They haven’t spoken for a year. 

“So.”

“So.” 

“Funny thing, huh?”

“Indeed.”

“Been a while –“ 

“Um, yeah.”

“Well. How are things?” 

“Oh? They are. Um – great –“ 

“Oh.”

“Well. I’m a salesman, see?”  

“Fancy that.”

“Yeah, who would have thought? Better dressed anyways -”  

Fabian scratches the back of his neck, laughing nervously. He takes a step closer and they are at eye-level, eyes meeting hesitantly. She will remember him then. Store a picture in her mind. That memory is nagging in the back of her head. His eyes crinkling at the edges and his breathing hard in her ears just as he holds onto her as if she will disappear on him. As if he depended on her – as if his life was her. This stranger seems nothing like that wee lad she used to know, so she is relieved when she recognizes his warm eyes.

“Be my friend again,” she says in that way of hers that is half-demand, half-question. Fabian looks at her for a while, then, his mouth wrinkles, 

“And what makes you think I’d want to be your friend, Tara?” 

“I’m the only one who can stand your obnoxious tone –“

“That it?” 

“No –“ she offers reluctantly.

“You miss me,” he states kindly. His eyes are gentle, but his voice teasing. 

“And you don’t?” 

“Nah,” he lies, smiling, because yes, he does, but he thinks he loves her and he cannot quite form the words, so he offers her his hand instead.

She stares at it for a moment before looking up at him. It is a face she has adored since she was seventeen, which is strange to think about, as parts of her life are already beginning to pass. She can feel the culmination of it all, the memory of his heated voice, his moans. Tara, Tara, Tara. 

“Oh, it’s like that?” she’s dry.

He is quiet, and pulls at her hand, flexing his fingers over her wrist. The tone goes from their usual banter to seriousness and it sneaks up on her, just like discovering she loves him. She lets him intertwine their fingers, watching as his smile broadens.  

And then it feels oddly like joy.