Trying to Throw my Arms Around the World

Friends

Friends

The next morning I was reluctant to go downstairs. I had heard Eleanor arrive home not long after Lucy and I had gone up, and I didn’t share Lucy’s twisted enthusiasm to share the news. Lucy was blinded and love-struck. Eleanor was a wise woman who saw through me well before I recognised my own mistakes. Above all, she wanted Lucy to be happy. She may not have liked Joan very much, but at least Joan loved Lucy. All I ever did was break her heart.

“Come on, Lee. I’ll ask her to make pancakes. It’s Sunday after all.”

Was it Sunday already? And could this have been the most dramatic weekend of my life? The forty-eight hours in which I had made the most questionable decisions? I still had a few more hours to go — a few more records stood to be broken.

“You go ahead.” I chickened out, not ready for bravery, and craving a few minutes of solitude. “I’ll come right down.”

Lucy kissed me on both cheeks, her eyes brimming with, in all honesty, a quite scary intensity. “Take your time, darling.” She practically skipped out of the room and whistled when she darted down the stairs. Had she just called me darling?

I sank back into the pillows and let my eyes wander to a picture of Lou pinned to the cork-board above my desk. It was an almost full-length outside shot of her. She leaned against a wall and one side of her smile curled up ironically, her hair drifting backwards in the wind. What hit me most were her eyes, her glance so full of promise, sincerity, determination. 

“Fuck you, Lou Gallagher,” I whispered. But I was much more sad than I was angry. Despite everything, I was still so desperately in love with her then. I felt it in my gut and at the bottom of my throat as the tears swelled. I was about to get up and rip the picture off the wall when I heard a knock on the door. 

“Lee,” Eleanor’s voice said. “Are you decent?”

I figured she hadn’t climbed all the way up to the second floor to serve me breakfast in bed. I put on a robe and opened the door. Her face told me all I needed to know.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, not hiding the fury in her voice. “She just came prancing down like a smitten teen.”

My motives were far from pure and I wasn’t proud of splitting Lucy and Joan up, but Eleanor’s tone was too much for me. All I had to do was flash one look in Lucy’s direction and she was there, willing and eager. I had given her what she had wanted for a long time. Me. And what about my desires? Was it so wrong to choose to be with someone who loved me like that?

“Please, Eleanor. Save me the speech. I won’t pretend I have a clue what I’m doing, but this is how it is now.”

She walked over the a chair in the corner and sat down. “You’d better start from the beginning.”

“Sounds as if quite a few people got hurt,” Eleanor said, after I had told her everything. “You most of all.”

“I won’t hurt Lucy. I promise you.” Then I wondered how I would ever manage that. Maybe I could find a way, maybe her love would be enough for the both of us. “Where is she, anyway?”

“Making pancakes with my friend Pat.”

“Your friend?” It felt so good to smile, to just be silly for a second.

“Come on, I’ll introduce you.”

To be continued…