Outside. I race out of the front door, my heels clattering on the steps. The night air hits my skin. It’s raining, but only just. A few heavy, cold drops tumble uncontrollably from the sky, as though the smoky clouds are crying. Cars speed past. Black taxi cabs and white vans, a silver Mercedes slicing through the night. Illuminating the puddles with their fiery brake lights and polluting them with oil. And then splashing the tiny blood-red droplets over the velvety pavement.
Her body is in silhouette, as though a child has cut her body out of ebony black card. Her figure is too perfect, cut into relief. She’s leaning back against the pale stone wall. The exposed skin of her back must be freezing, crushing against the rough stone. I want to hold her. Her head is bowed. Her chest is heaving with repressed tears. I can tell she doesn’t want to cry. Not now anyway.
“Cheryl?” I pause a few feet away from her. I feel as though I’ve never said her name before. As though this is the first time I’ve twisted those sounds around my tongue together.
“Kim-” My name is nothing more than a gasp. She doesn’t look at me. I can feel the empty space between us burn into my skin. Distance. I hate it. I hate the distance, and she’s a hundred miles away, lost somewhere I could never find her. I hesitate.
“Are you okay?” What else can I say?
“Fuckin’ fabulous. I feel fuckin’ brilliant.” The tears in her voice choke her. She stutters. Almost breaks down. Not quite, despite everything, she’s still in control. Clinging on with the very tips of her fingers.
“Sorry. Stupid question.” I jump up onto the wall, sitting next to where she’s leaning. She tips her head backwards, and looks up at me. Her eyes well with tears, threatening to overflow. Their impossibly dark depths reflect the star-strewn sky. Glittering. Hurt, but still alive. She suddenly bites her lips and looks away, her jaw set. Her bottom lip barely quivering. Tears running silently from the corners of her eyes. “Cheryl-”
“Not here-” she’s trying so hard not to cry.
“Come on-” I murmur, jumping down from the wall. My heels hurt. My feet feel as though they’re burning. Hot. On fire. The arches of my feet ache, shots of pain rippling though my calves. But I don’t wince, I walk through the pain. It makes me feel better, it reminds me that I’m still alive. That this isn’t some weird, twisted up dream. It’s close to midnight in a city I barely know. I’ve been drinking cheap vodka and god-knows-what else from tinny plastic cups. I have no idea where we are, and I have no money to get home. So I hold my hand out to Cheryl.
“Where are we going?” She mumbles, slowly stretching out her bruised fingers towards me. The tears lace her voice, and even through the darkness, I can see her hand shaking. She’s barely keeping it together.
“Home” I tell her. She takes my hand. I can feel her shaking as she digs her nails into my flesh. It hurts, but I don’t care. She’s clinging to me. “Where’s the nearest metro?” I ask her, and she shakes her head.
“I don’t know” she breathes. I sigh.
“Okay-” I can’t do anything but hold her hand and lead her down the road. Though the golden pools of light from the streetlights and through the dark voids of shadow. Rain splashing down onto our skin, slicking through my hair and mixing with the tears on Cheryl’s cheeks. I know she’s shivering silently, tears still tracing mascara-stained tracks down her cheeks. I wish I had a jacket to wrap around her shoulders. She must be freezing. Damn, I’m freezing. I wish I could wrap my arm around her, but I’m so, so scared that she’ll wriggle away from me. I want to hold her.
And I hate myself for being too scared.
On the corner of the dark street, we pause in a dim pool of light. Her eyes are fixed down. So I glance around.
“Look, there’s the metro!” I exclaim, pointing to the unmistakable yellow sign. Cheryl doesn’t move. She doesn’t even look at me anymore. So I pull her across the deserted road, and up the ramp, with the rain water just beginning to freeze on the rusty green handrail.
“I don’t have any money-” I breathe. The air is so cold that the words condense quickly into smoke.
“Me neither. We don’t need it.”
“We don’t?”
“Jump it.” So casual. So matter-of-fact. Her voice is quick, light. She could be mistaken for being careless, if tears didn’t still threaten the back of her throat.
And so we jump the ticket barrier, slipping off our heels before jumping carefully over the barriers. The concrete is so cold that it sticks to my bare feet, leaving ghostly white footprints on the thin dusting of frost. I shiver.
“My god, if we get caught-” I murmur.
“How else are we supposed to get home?” Cheryl asks simply, pulling her damp hair away from her face as we sit together on the thin bench. Close together. So close I can feel the goosebumps on her skin. I wonder if she’s done this before, ducking low under the barriers and creeping along the platform, slipping onto the train. I’m sure she has. And although the freezing concrete burns onto my bare feet, I don’t bother to pull on my shoes once again. Neither does Cheryl, her shoes hang, dangling from one finger, the gold still glittering slightly. She rests her head on my shoulder, and I glance down at her. I can see silent tears still rolling down her cheeks.
“Don’t cry Cheryl-” I whisper, wiping something that may be a freezing tear or a fat raindrop from her cheek. I can feel it drying on my hand, the salt making my skin feel grainy. Unclean.
“How c-could he-?”
“I don’t know” I breathe. Because I don’t. And I don’t know what to say either. I’m not entirely sure if I can say anything. There’s a tight knot in my chest restricting my breathing. Somewhere not far away I can hear the thunder of heavy engines, the screech of metal grinding against metal. I open my mouth, but I have no idea what I’m going to say.
But the train saves me, pulling slowly into the station. Puffing out great gasps of hot air. Covering my freezing skin in light. The doors swing open with a blast of warm air and a horrible grating noise. The compartment is completely deserted. I hesitate.
“Come on-” This time Cheryl grabs hold of my hand, pulling me onto the train. I follow her. Three steps on the cold concrete, walking on my tip-toes. A half a foot gap between the platform and the train. And then the grainy floor of the train, rough like sandpaper. Cheryl is instantly slumped in a corner, her head on the freezing glass. I pause for an instant as the doors slide closed once again, and I don’t move until I can feel the floor under my feet beginning to shudder and the engines beginning to roar. Then I sit on the seat in front of Cheryl, twisting around so I can look at her. The garish print of the seat’s fabric is a huge contrast to the simplicity of Cheryl’s skin-tight black dress. Orange and lime green and oral blue strips. All clamouring for attention. It makes my head spin, and it’s not just because of the vodka I’ve drunk. I run my fingernails through the short, prickly fabric, and it feels too rough on my skin. Cheryl’s sitting screwed up, her knees tucked up to her chin, her head leaning back against the glass. Under the bright lights of the train, she looks more beautiful. More beautiful than I thought was ever possible. Black tear-tracks are carving their way across her face. Her lips are ivory white because she’s biting down on them so hard, helplessly trying to stem the flow of her tears. I wish I could make it better.
“We’ll be hone soon-” I murmur, just because I hate this silence. I hate the way it crushes my eardrums and leaves my head spinning. On the board above the door, I count the stops. 7 stations. 7 chances to get caught. And we could be home in twenty minutes. We could be safe, drinking tea under my duvet. We wouldn’t be talking, because we wouldn’t need to.
***
The lift doors clang open. The air is much clearer up here, and it feels as though I can suddenly breathe again after the compressed darkness of the lift. Cheryl hesitates behind me as I unlock the door to my flat. My hands shake so much I can barely insert the key into the lock, but I know Cheryl doesn’t care. She probably doesn’t even notice.
“Kim-?” She takes a step towards me. I can feel her body heat getting closer. Hotter.
“Yeah?” I give the door a shove, and it swings open slowly. The flat is cold. Dark. I’m not sure how to work the central heating, and the flat is freezing cold.
“It doesn’t matter, I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” she’s turning away, her heels swinging in her bruised hand. Her hair flies over her shoulder in the light breeze. No-one has ever looked more beautiful.
“What, wait-” I go to grab her arm, but she flinches away from me, her eyes flashing dark. Too dark. Scared. So scared. She gasps, and I can hear her breath grating painfully through her chest.
And then she blinks, her pupils rapidly shrinking. “I’m sorry Kim, see you tomorrow-” she mumbles, moving closer to me.
“You’re not going anywhere”
“What?”
“C-come in.” I stutter. I don’t look at her, instead I blink rapidly down at the wet concrete.
“What?”
“Come in. Come in for a coffee, or tea or something. Anything.” I pull the door open wider, and for the first time that evening, Cheryl’s dimples crease into her cheeks.
“Are you sure?” she murmurs.
I don’t bother replying, but she holds my hand and I pull her into the kitchen. I fumble around the wall, reaching for a light switch, but Cheryl pulls me away.
“Kim?” she begins to lead me through the dark kitchen, and I don’t protest. I don’t say anything. I just watch the way that she moves, the way her hips swing. The way the muscles in her neck writhe into her back, rippling under her olive skin. The way she’s an impossibly complex work of art. And she has no idea how beautiful she is.
“Yeah?” I whisper. The hallway is too dark. I can’t even see her body in silhouette now. The only thing that’s real right now is her hand clutched in my own. Her nails digging into the back of my hand. She glances up at me.
“I don’t want to be on my own.” She confesses quietly.
“Stay with me then. Stay with me?”
“Can I?”
“I want you to.” I pull her into the tiny bedroom that I share with my sister. This time, I flick on the light and Cheryl glances around, her tear-stained eyes flitting around the bedroom like that of a lost child or a hunted animal. Something not quite tamed. More tears fall from the corners of her eyes and she slumps down on my sister’s bed, running her hands though her hair.
“Thank you” she whispers. I pass her a vest. She silently brushes a few stray tears from her cheeks, blinking rapidly. “Come here-” she attempts to pull off her dress, and turns around to show me her back, and I brush her hair out of the way so I can unzip her dress. Her hair smells like apple shampoo and cigarette smoke. My hands don’t shake anymore. I feel oddly calm.
“M’going to the bathroom” she whispers, turning around to blink at me. I nod.
“Okay” She leaves the door ajar when she leaves, and I quickly pull off my own dress, throwing on instead a pair of sweatpants and a vest. I crawl into my own bed. The sheets are so cold they cling to my skin. I shiver, closing my eyes.
“Kim, can I turn off the lights?” Cheryl’s back, wearing my vest and a tiny pair of shorts. She’s pulled her hair away from her now makeup-free face, and she leans against the wall, her fingertips just touching the light switch. Her eyes are painfully red.
“Yeah” I whisper. I want to say something. I want to fix down some of the things in my head. I want to make them real by twisting them into words. Cheryl’s slipping into my little sister’s bed. She’s closing her eyes. And we both know she won’t sleep.
“I’m cold” she murmurs, almost to herself.
“Me too” I breathe.
I can feel things whirring around inside my head. I know tears are still silently dripping down Cheryl’s cheeks. And suddenly her hot breath is on my skin.
“Can I come in there, with you?” Her voice is light. Innocent. Soul-crushingly innocent. Too pure, tendrils of innocence wrapping her accented words up so tight. I don’t say anything, I just wriggle to one side, making space for Cheryl right beside me in my narrow single bed. She pours her body under the sheets. Her skin if dusted with goosebumps. I concentrate on breathing. She rolls over so she’s facing me. And she runs her dark eyes carefully over my face, flickering uncertainty burning away in their ebony depths. Making my stomach turn cartwheels. She raises her bruised hand to tuck a single strand of my hair away from my face. Her hand is shaking. I wipe away one of her burning hot tears. The inches of oppressive darkness under the sheets that separates our bodies isn’t cold anymore. The space screams. Screams because there are so many things that I’ll never be brave enough to do. And single tear still clings to her impossibly dark eyelashes.
I can feel her chest rise and fall as she breathes. Her ribs moving, jutting up through her bruised skin. The marks he left on her body. But there are other marks too. Some you can’t see. Scars that won’t fade.
And yet her lips aren’t even an inch away from my own. So close I can taste the bitter tears and polluted rain and the cheap, sickly sweet vodka. Raspberry flavoured. Sticking to the inside of my mouth. Making me forget my own name.
Her lips are slightly parted. Tantalising. Dangerous. Wrong. But so, so right.
A pause.
A heartbeat.
Enough time for me to know that I shouldn’t be doing this.
Enough time for me to run my fingers though her glossy curls.
Enough time for me to question every tiny thing I thought I knew.
And then her lips crash against my own.
