The Arch of Love ~ Paul McCartney

37. Arcade

I turned off the shower and was wrapping a towel around my body when I could finally make out who was shouting and more importantly, what was being called out. It was Paul yelling and it was, unmistakably the name of his girlfriend he was shouting. 'Jane!'

Before I even had the chance to make up a plan to escape or hide, the bathroom door was pulled open and there she was, so angry that her face was as red as her hair. Jane.

'Get dressed!' she sneered at me, her voice dripping with venom, after which she shut the door with such forcefulness that the mirror rattled.

Shit, this wasn't good. Jane wasn't supposed to be back for another week; that was the entire reason I was here. What was she doing back so early?

There was no time to worry about that now. I dressed in the clothes I had taken with me; a sundress not at all appropriate for the weather outside, but I hadn't planned on going anywhere today. I didn't want to leave the relative safety of the bathroom, but I knew I had to face what was awaiting me outside, sooner rather than later.

'Who the fuck are you?' cried the girl when I finally gathered enough courage to open the bathroom door. She was standing in front of the hallway door, the only way out of the bedroom, the only door to safety, away from the situation.

Paul was trapped too. He had followed Jane upstairs, trying to keep her from going to the bathroom, but had failed. And when she had given me the chance to get dressed in privacy, she had kept him from leaving the room, their bedroom.

'Archie,' I said, not sure if she actually wanted me to respond or not. For some reason, I felt like I wasn't supposed to be part of the conversation she would no doubt want to have right now.

She huffed loudly. 'For crying out loud, of fucking course. This is the famous Archie, Paul? The one that got away?' she called, her voice betraying a hint of hysteria. She clearly didn't know what to do with this information.

Neither did I, for that matter. The one that got away? That was a title no one had ever given me, let alone Paul. This past month I had realised that that was how he had viewed me for so long, but he had never actually called me that.

'Jane, I'm sorry,' he started, but his girlfriend didn't listen. She didn't want to listen, was done with his excuses.

'Save it!' she interrupted him angrily. 'I don't want to hear it. And to think I was fucking competing with someone in your past.' She shook her head.

'It's not what you think,' Paul tried again, but to no avail.

'It's not what I think? Then what is it? Because it looks like you've been playing house with this tramp, while I was at work? If not that, then what's going on here? Why is she showering in our home?' she asked, pointing furiously in my direction.

'Hey, don't call me that!' I protested, but the look she gave me, made me shut up instantly. This was clearly not something I was part of. It was Jane and Paul's conversation and I was just here to be insulted. Noted. Good to know.

'How long has this been going on?' she wanted to know, directing her glare at her boyfriend again. 'Was she ever in your past? Or have you been lying to me all these years and just decided that you could have another girl on the side?'

'It's not like that!' he answered, taking a step in her direction, but Jane dodged him by stepping closer to the door. When he wasn't able to get closer to her, he answered her question with more truth than I had expected him to. 'Since February, but then we stopped in May.'

'And after that? Am I supposed to believe it just started up again last night? This has obviously been happening longer than that,' she noted. She was a clever girl, I realised. Smarter than I had given her credit for.