Page 30 of Midnight Kisses

Miles’expression when I left his house was horrible. I felt awful to be responsible for it, and even worse because it had taken the place of the fervent excitement that he’d had as he’d made coffee. Whether his high had been on my account or the effects of a good night’s sleep, I didn’t know. But it didn’t matter which. I made my body walk out the door because my head couldn’t find a reason to stay. Meanwhile, my heart was going: eeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIII. Unhelpful.

My heart was the reason I threw myself into things—like modelling, like business—and showed up with vulnerability, which achieved very little other than reveal my soft underbelly to all and sundry, so people like Ginger could attack.

I’d told myself if I was going to get Perry Skin off the ground and be my own hype girl, I needed to let my head take charge, not my heart. But I hadn’t expected it to feel this miserable.

I don’t know who had told me that I had to be successful in my own right in order to fall in love with a man who was as successful as Miles. Maybe no one had. Maybe it was an opinion that grew without help, like ivy on an old building.Either way, the thought of sinking into an identity as Miles’ date, or his girlfriend—and always being introduced as the girl he’d met when she was working in a bathroom—and never being awesome in my own right was too powerful.Thatwas what drove me out of his house.

Well, and fear.

It was a terrifying idea to fall in love with someone who liked me purely for novelty value, because for some unknown reason he slept well while I was there. Someone who considered an attachment with me ‘not repulsive’.

Miles would get tired of me when the novelty wore off and the idea was unbearable.

When I walked down Miles’ driveway and got into the rideshare car, I could feel his eyes burning holes in the back of my head. But he didn’t try to stop me. Which was good. Definitely good, and not at all like a toddler had my heart in their plump little hands and was squeezing it between their fingers like it was made of play-dough.

Over the course of the following week, I worked myself to the bone.

When a polite and super professional email from Sadie arrived in my inbox, I wasted no time reaching out to the people she suggested, setting up meetings, and booking myself into the suggested seminars and talks. I stacked meetings back to back, outsourced someone to batch-create content, and hired a designer to start working on Perry Skin’s visual identity. I put all of this on my credit card without letting myself think about the lecture I would get from my parents if they knew.

The very hour my new brand files came in, I launched the public crowdfunding campaign.

My friends showed up for me in force and promoted Perry Skin, hyping for me like I always had for them. That took all the hurt that had sunk into my bones from a rollercoaster of a monthand soothed it. Things weren’t nearly as bleak as the most hurt little corner of my heart would have me believe. I hadn’t lost my one chance at the happily ever after I’d always dreamed of—I was just experimenting with the route.

I stretched my waking hours to the max and threw myself into every single task with fervent energy and focus. I ate a lot of toast, and other things that already existed in the kitchen and took ten minutes to make—fruit, ramen, frozen macaroni cheese. Basically, the food of my adolescence.

I didn’t have time to cook, I was too busy working my luscious ass off to make all my dreams come true. Or at least, the professional ones.

MILES

Matty had chosen a terrible time to go off grid. He did this every now and then, he got all in his head and disappeared for a while, only to reemerge like no time had passed. Usually, I understood. But it was bloody rude of him to do this whenIwas in a crisis.

My only option was to call my mother. She said soothing and encouraging things, as she always did, and all I had to do for access to this unending and unwarranted sympathy was go on a date with a woman she met at tennis. Lisa. After that, with Elizabeth, the receptionist at the spa she liked, and then she tried really hard to set me up with her neighbour’s son Kyle—Mum was working overtime to ensure I wasn’t feigning heterosexuality on her account. Kyle was great, but definitely too much man for me, and eventually Mum ceded defeat.

Deep down, I suspected she was disappointed things hadn’t worked out with Perry. My mother really liked her. Everyonewho met her liked her.Ieven liked her. Enough to be excited about the idea of recurrent, deliberate encounters. Dates, or whatnot. Being a ‘boyfriend,’ she’d called it… Butshedidn’t like me enough for that.

Which was completely fine, and not a total evisceration of my worth as a human being. There was no way I should read into the fact that the minute Perry had gotten a glimpse of the person underneath the jokes and the good times, she’d disengaged; like Sadie had told me women would. She was wrong, of course. And Perry was wrong. I wasgreat.

I could have had plenty of repeat dates over the years if I’d wanted them. This whole time it had been mychoicenot to. My free will.

This was the patter in my head as I ignored the sick feeling in my gut and called the last woman I went out with, Elizabeth, and asked her on a second date.

It sucked even more than the first one.

Perry

On Tuesday, three weeks after the masquerade, my nose started burning. A few hours later my throat began to scratch. In quick succession, swollen glands, blocked everything, and a general feeling of misery arrived.

It wasn’t Covid, I tested for this multiple times; I’d just pushed my body too far without adequate rest or nourishment. I had to postpone a meeting with an investor that Sadie had connected me to, which had me weeping into my sickbed pillow, but his office was very kind about resetting it for the following week.

The next day, I got an unexpected call.

“Hello, Perry? This is Sadie, Miles’ assistant at Elysian Wines.”

I sat up in bed and greeted her with my very best ‘I’m not sick’ voice.

“Woah, why do you sound drunk?” she asked.

“I’m not,” I protested unconvincingly.

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