Page 29 of The Reboot
‘I suppose. But in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly living my best life, am I?’
‘What does your best life look like, then?’
‘Pretty much what it was when we met that night at Fifth & Liquor – only without the drugs, obviously. And the dickish attitude.’
‘Take away the drugs and the dickishness, and what’s left?’
He laughed. ‘Just money, fame, success. Plus I was really fit when I was in the band.’
‘No you weren’t. You were just skinny.’
‘Skinny, then. And I was with Pippa. We were all loved up. How about you? What’s your best life?’
‘Same, actually.’
‘You were in love with Pippa too?’
She laughed. ‘No, but how things were when we met that night – I was at Trinity, I was in love…’ Just talking about it, she could feel the excitement of it again, smell the earthy tang of the air, feel the warm surprise of Andrew’s lips on hers, see the fog of their breath mingling in the chill autumn air, the memories all wrapped up in the golds and rusts of fallen leaves. ‘I’d just moved in with my boyfriend.’
‘Oh yeah, I remember you telling me about him.’
‘Really?’ He’d hardly listened to her that night. She’d be surprised if he remembered a word she’d said.
‘What was his name again?’
‘Andrew.’
He nodded as if he’d heard it before, but she could tell it was new to him. ‘What was he? A philosopher or something?’
‘Yeah.’ Maybe he’d listened more than she gave him credit for. ‘He was on the same course as me, but he went on to specialise in Philosophy. He’s a lecturer now in Trinity.’
‘So you keep in touch?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I just … heard on the grapevine.’
‘Stalked him on Instagram, you mean?’
‘No! I’ll have you know I’ve done no such thing.’
Roly smiled. ‘He doesn’t do Instagram, does he?’
‘No,’ she admitted sheepishly. ‘Facebook, though … that’s a different matter.’
Roly looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You look really happy when you talk about him. Your face sort of … lights up.’
She sighed. ‘It was the happiest time of my life. But it wasn’t just about him. Everything was so new and exciting … college, discovering new ideas, making friends, falling in love. It felt like the world was opening up for me, like my life was really beginning.’ She remembered the day it started, when she’d seen Andrew on his way to the library, and he’d stopped and waited for her to catch up so he could talk to her. She could still feel the breathless sting of frosty air and the fluttering in her stomach. The whole world had seemed box fresh and hers for the taking.
‘So you split up?’
She nodded. ‘After I got sick. He tried for a while – he wasn’t an asshole. But it was too much, in the end, my illness. Everything was about me, my issues, and it wasn’t fair to him. We were young. He had a life to live and, unlike me, he could live it. So we broke up.’
‘Sounds like an asshole to me.’
‘He really wasn’t.’ Selfish, maybe, but who wasn’t? She’d worked hard at not resenting him and she didn’t want to start now. ‘What about Pippa?’
‘Yeah, Pippa was an asshole.’
Ella laughed. She’d only met Roly’s girlfriend once, but she hadn’t taken to her.
