Trust No Bitch: Part 2

Clara Wright: Friday, 13th June, 2015

Vodka slithering down her throat, muted lights overhead and the stench of shit.

It was all Clara had in the way of companionship as she waited in Ellisbury Clifftop's Little Chef toilets for Cleo to arrive. After sending Cleo an untold amount of furious, and slightly peculiar texts, she'd finally agreed to meet Clara and there was a lot to ventilate. Starting with their one night stand a month or two previously and ending, Clara hoped, with Cleo confessing her enduring adoration for Clara. Only, she knew that wasn't the way it would work out because it never did. There was never any kissing in the rain, only crying freely in it with the knowledge nobody would be able to discern one's tears from the water that drizzled from the clouds above. Nor was there ever any correlative feelings or love that converged, only two people's emotions running in parallel with increasing intensity, destined never to meet. It was shitty and Clara was well aware of it. Maybe it was part of the reason she'd fucked Cleo's stepdad. When she put it that way, rather than admitting it was out of pure spite, it sounded mildly less reprehensible. That's why you did it, Clara, she told herself as she finished the last of the vodka in her hip flask, eyes drawn to her own reflection in the grimy mirror, like paper clips to a magnet. Cleo has to be coming soon, she thought as she pulled Lilly's pink blazer from her shoulders and chucked it onto the top of the toilet. She ran her fingers through her crimson curls, after tugging it out of the ponytail she had fashioned at the beach, pulling at the section which she had clipped back at the crown of her head. Scrunching it up at her roots, her lips fell into a momentary pout as she moved on to the plunging neckline of her black dress, tugging it even further down and concurrently examining the kohl smeared around her eyes. It was only the distant opening and closing of the restaurant's front door which distracted her from her appearance, something she was ordinarily unfazed by. It had to be Cleo.

Deep breath in, deep breath out. Then another. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Like the motion could expel all those cold, jagged sentiments. Like they would tear up Clara's throat as she did and like she could spit them all out, blood admixed with something that looked like liquid mercury, into the sink and be done. She wasn't done. She walked out of that toilet with all her disheartenment and her vitriol still flowing nervously through her veins, wondering if that was what it felt like being Cleo, holding it all in all the time. Then wondering how Cleo had anything else left inside of her, how it hadn't melted away her heart. Some would probably say it had. Cleo herself was sat at a table by the window, staring at her hands which were resting in front of her, clasped together. She didn't notice Clara until she'd stood right at the edge of the table and was sitting down opposite.

"Clara..." She said softly as Clara leant back in her chair and watched Cleo with raised eyebrows.

"So you finally decided to reply to me then?"

"Can't ignore you forever."

"Would you? If you could."

"Clara..." Cleo repeated, sounding exhausted.

"You know how I feel, Cleo. And I've done what you wanted, I've pretended that this is nothing for the others for long enough. You weren't that drunk that night and I'm not going to let you dismiss what happened between us with some bullshit excuse. So please, do something for me and tell me how you feel. How you feel about me." Cleo glanced out the window as Clara finished speaking, her head snapping abruptly back to Clara as if she was afraid of her own reflection, her own white face emerging from the darkness beyond the glass.

"You know Clara, when you love someone, you really love them." She eventually said, after a mournful silence. "You are unflinchingly loyal. Selfless, even. You will do whatever it takes for them even if it ends up fucking you over." Clara shook her head before fixing Cleo with a look of irritated confusion.

"What do you mean by that? What does that have to do with me and you?"

"I know you would put me before you. I can't deal with that kind of pressure, Clara. I cannot deal with the thought of all the energy you put in to me just to get absolutely fuck all in return. I've told you, I will disappoint you. I've tried being a good person before and its thankless, and it's tiring, and I'm just too weak. It only takes five minutes for me to forget how to even do the right thing, and then why I even started trying in the first place. I used to make too many promises to too many people because I thought it would make them love me, and now I've realised I can't keep doing that. It never worked for me and it's never going to. It doesn't work for anyone."

"You're not a shit person if that's what it is you're trying to say."

"I'm not a shit person?" Cleo spluttered. "I could provide a whole army of people that would disagree with you on that one and you know what? I earned them."

"I mean, if you're trying to tell me I'm too good for you, I'm not. I've messed up as well." Said Clara, Cleo turning away.

"Not as much as I have."

"No, Cleo, you don't know what I'm talking about." Clara wasn't sure whether it was the vodka, the heat of the restaurant, or the fact that she had buried the truth so far inside of her that it sent a ripple throughout her body as she attempted to upheave it, but she felt like she was about to be sick.

"Don't be stupid. Whatever it is you've done, it's nothing that we can't-"

"No." Clara said loudly, an ebullition of frustration accompanying her anxiety. A solitary elderly man, probably a lorry driver on his night shift, on the opposite side of the room looked up from his newspaper, seemingly startled by her outburst. But she needed to get it out. The longer she kept the truth from Cleo, the more it would grow like some kind of mythical, ancient beast. The more havoc it would perpetrate once she finally liberated it. The more powerful she allowed the dragon to become, the harder it would be to slay. She had to be honest and so, she was. "I slept with Austin, Cleo." She said. "Your stepdad, Austin King."

"No." Cleo replied, looking at Clara blankly. Like she was staring at a board full of equations she could not comprehend. She burst into gales of laughter. "That's a joke, right?" She continued to cackle, the same old man who'd been peering at Clara scowling and tittering to himself. Clara's eyes widened and she hugged herself, feeling like a foolish child. Whilst she wasn't sure what kind of a reaction she was hoping for, it certainly wasn't the one she'd received.

"Cleo!" She said emphatically enough to regain Cleo's attention, at which point her laughter subsided and was superseded with fallacious concern. The furrowing of her brow and the hand she was stretching across the table to hold onto Clara's was no better than her hysterical laughter; if there was one thing that Clara knew she did not deserve it was sympathy.

"He forced himself on you, didn't he?" Cleo said, her voice little more than a whisper as she got out of her chair and moved round to sit next to Clara, putting a spindly arm around her shoulder. "That absolute creep." And in what she would later call her biggest mistake of the night, Clara did not protest. Cleo hadn't been so close to her in days, weeks even, the gust of air that whooshed from her mouth as she spoke rushing across the width of Clara's shoulders. "To think, my mum let him in her bed, let him drink all of her fucking Tia Maria, let him near my little sister after everything she's been through. That dumb bitch. God, why are some women so bloody stupid when it comes to men?" Cleo sneered, Clara just nodding dazedly, newfound guilt hatching beside the lust that lay in the recesses of her heart. "Are you okay, babe? I won't let him get away with this, I swear to God. I swear it." And after that, they sat quietly for a while, until Cleo told Clara she had to go. It was the best thing. It had been so bloody good.

But for what price?

Clara had continued to ask herself that question for the many months that came after that moment.