Page 12 of Love and Other Paradoxes

Diana’s friend nudged her, a knowing look in her eyes. “Crispin’s already there.”

The name ricocheted through Joe’s drunken brain. Crispin. Diana’s future briefly-husband: the one blip in their perfect love story. Unless she knew multiple people called Crispin, which, given that she was at Trinity, wasn’t completely outwith the bounds of possibility.

The name had an effect on Diana too. She stood taller; one hand went faux-carelessly to her hair, adjusting her halo. “Fine,” she said in a clipped tone. “Let’s go.” She swept away, a queentrailed by her ladies-in-waiting. Joe watched her go with barren disbelief. They had just met. She couldn’t possibly be leaving.

“Diana,” he called after her.

She turned, staring at him with a mixture of puzzlement and annoyance. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

“Not yet.” He tried to look compelling and mysterious. He hoped he was doing it right and not just squinting. “But you will.”

Her smile made his whole body melt with relief. “All right, Train Boy. I’ll bite. Why am I going to know you?”

He walked up to her. The closer he got, the more real she became: the light pink flush under her pale cheeks, the almost-invisible freckles dusted around her eyes. He reached out, brushing his hand against her tinsel halo. “Because we’re meant to be.”

One of her friends gasped.

Diana’s hand reached up to his. Their fingers touched for the first time. Electricity wasn’t a good enough metaphor: he experienced it as alchemy, his entire substance disassembled and rearranged.

“That is”—her eyes wandered over his face in fascination—“incrediblycreepy.” With a quick, cool shove, she pushed him away. “Goodbye forever.”

She swept past him, her friends moving in protectively on either side. He watched, not quite understanding what had happened, as his future walked away.

He went to the Kambar. He didn’t know what else to do but try to exorcise the humiliation through angry dancing and cheap cider. Somewhere along the way, he accidentally flushed the toy train down the toilet. The last thing he remembered was tryingto explain to a girl dressed as Socrates that this was completely appropriate, since McGonagall’s poem clearly stated that “down went the train and passengers into the Tay,” but she didn’t seem very interested.

He woke slumped over his desk.

He sat up, snort-coughing. Something was stuck to his cheek. He pried it free. It was one of his poetry notebooks, the open page scrawled with words. Most of them were unreadable; with some effort, he decipheredscintillating,limerence, and, puzzlingly,banana. This, he had underlined three times, with a note in the margin sayingrhymes!!

Like a machete moving through honey, his brain cut through the confusion. He had been trying to write a poem about Diana.

The events of the previous night sluiced in, drowning him. He closed his eyes, reliving every awkward millisecond: the way she had looked at him after he quoted the poem, that awful mix of bafflement and pity; how she had left, and he had ceased to exist. But the image that haunted him was her face just before she had walked away: scornful, affronted, maybe even a little horrified.

When he finally opened his eyes, he saw his laptop was open. A new dread pooled in his guts. Had he tried to send her an email? He felt a flash of resentment at all these other versions of him—the future poet, the past drunk—who kept making decisions without him being present to approve them. He lunged for the laptop, pulling it towards him. There was nothing new in his sent items, but there was an unread message at the top of his inbox. It wasn’t from Diana. It was from someone called LPFT, and the subject line wasRe: submission.

Dear Joseph Greene,

We are pleased to let you know that your poem “A Taste of Stars” has been selected for inclusion in Love Poems for Tomorrow.

His heart burst. This was it: his first step, proof that all the dreaming and longing and wanting hadn’t been in vain. He experienced a moment of pure, uncomplicated happiness. Then he read the next line:

The actor you have been paired with is: Diana Dartnell.

He felt hot, then cold, then sick to his stomach. It was perfect and it was terrible, all at once. Stars floating in his vision, he read on:

You and your partner will workshop the performance of your piece to ensure it reflects your creative intent. Please attend a preliminary meeting of all writers and cast at the ADC Theatre at 5pm on Friday, 4th November.

Three days from now, he had to walk into a room with Diana Dartnell and convince her that he was not a creepy stalker with a train fetish, but was in fact the man of her dreams.

He projected the moment in his mind’s eye: Diana sitting on the stage, still in the white dress and tinsel halo, as he walked up the aisle towards her. He tried to imagine meeting her eyes, seeing her recognise the deep kinship between their souls. But her expression kept changing, morphing into the horror-tinged contempt she had worn last night.

He got up too fast, blood rushing from his pounding head. He groped under his pillow for the book of poems. He was half-afraid it would have disappeared or turned into gibberish, but when he pulled it out, it was unchanged: his name, the title, the photograph of him and Diana on the cover. He pulled out the leaflet and reread it, going over the questions and answers until he started to calm down. It was right here in black and white: the past couldn’t change. However much of a mistake it seemed, last night’s meeting with Diana had been the way it was meant to happen.

He slumped down against the side of the bed. He had wondered why the Introduction didn’t tell the story of how they met. Now he knew it was because their first interaction had been a disaster. She would forgive him—she had to, for the future to happen—but he couldn’t imagine how. The gap between who he was and who he was meant to be yawned like a chasm, and he had no idea how to cross it.

His room closed in on him: the Highland cow and the bus abandoned on the floor, the penguin staring up at him like a goofy reflection. Everything reminded him of who he was now, the mess and embarrassment of his current self. He had to get out. He slipped the book into his coat pocket and left, slamming the door behind him.

Outside, the Chapel clock told him it was already midday. As he crossed the threshold of college, squinting in the pale sunshine, Esi stepped into his path. “Give me the book back.”

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