Stronger Than Lions - 29. Rach-fuckin'-maninov

I sat through Mass, unable to pay attention.

I didn’t attend Communion, and slipped out during the recessional hymn.

The rain had stopped. The lanes of Newlands were quiet as I walked home. Water dripped from bare branches. The mountain was completely covered in fog.

As I turned into my street I saw The Thing parked outside my house.

Just as I tried to inch behind a tree, the headlights flashed. I heard him start the engine. The Jeep drove slowly towards me and stopped where I stood rooted next to a broken fire hydrant. He rolled down the window and leaned out.

‘Hey,’ he said, eyebrows arched.

I dug my hands into my pockets and walked slowly towards him. ’Hi.'

'At least the rain's finally stopped,' he ventured.

I nodded. 'How long have you been waiting outside my house?’

‘I dunno. Half an hour?’

‘I thought we said we'd chat in the afternoon.’

He squeezed his eyes tight for a moment, looking like a slapped puppy. ‘I’m sorry bru. I swear, I was driving to go to the sauna at gym but I just found myself taking the turn off to your house and like have been sitting here, psyching myself up to message you when you just, like appeared.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Where’ve you just come from?’

‘I went to con— I went to Mass.’

He paused. ‘I thought you didn’t go any more.’

‘Ja, I haven’t been for a while.’

‘Do you want to get in? Perhaps we could go somewhere and… talk.’

I bit my lip. ‘Okay,’ I said, and walked over to the other side and got in. ‘Let’s go to the park around the corner.’

'Sure, bru.' He started driving.

If we were going to break up, I might as well hear the news somewhere quiet that felt safe. I’d spent many hours as a child running around the little park which abutted the bottommost reaches of the Newlands Forest. A small stream separated it from the woods. I used to imagine that there were sprites that lived in its waters.

He parked The Thing and we got out. We walked in silence to one of the benches underneath a silver oak and sat down on the driest one, startling a hadeda that flew off squawking loudly in disdain.

We stared ahead towards the stream, neither one of us making eye contact.

He spoke first. ‘I don’t know what to say, Cal, except that I'm sorry. I'm sure you hate me.’

‘No,’ I managed. ‘I don’t.’

‘You sure?' He tapped a foot against the ground, worrying free clods of dirt and stones and dead leaves. 'I know this sounds so lame, but we had all had so much beer, and it just like happened, and I know what it must have looked like to you, and I swear I wasn’t going to do anything more than…’

‘I slept with Veronica,’ I snapped.

‘Bru.’ He looked at me, eyes narrowed, head tilted. ‘What?’

I raised my voice. ‘I slept with Veronica, okay? I bumped into her last night and I overreacted and fucked up. I’m a worthless piece of shit. You should leave now before I hurt you more.’

His eyes were huge as blood pulsed in my ears.

‘Jesus.’ He stood up and picked up one of the loose stones and flung it at full force across the grass and into the stream.

‘It just happened,’ I sniffed, shivering. ‘I’m... really sorry. Not that it changes anything.’

He sat down again and put his hands over his face, shaking his head from side to side.

‘Chris,’ I said desperately. ‘Say something. Punch me. Anything. I deserve it.’

‘Fucking hell, Cal,’ he yelled, ‘fucking hell!’

I closed my eyes, hearing him take deep, terrifyingly slow breaths.

I waited for something to happen.

Nothing did.

‘Please…’ I said, opening my eyes again. ‘Please, Chris… I thought you’d left me and…’

He shot out a palm at me. 'Oh, God,' he said and looked down.

‘I think I should leave now,’ I muttered.

‘No.’ His voice was dead even. ‘You can shut the fuck up right now. But you’re not leaving.’

The silence was nauseating. Then I heard his voice go high.

At first I thought he was sobbing, but when I turned to look at him he was giggling.

‘Veronica!’ he said with a snort. ‘Veronica? This is… this is...fuckin' hilarious.’

He made a fist and raised it. I winced, thinking I was going to get decked. But it travelled slowly, well away from my face, and came to rest bumping me playfully on my shoulder.

He was flat-out laughing now.

‘What the fuck?’ I said, frozen.

‘Seven of Mine, you fuckin’ biscuit,’ he said between guffaws.

‘Why are you laughing?’

‘You got shit-faced and hopped into the sack with the hottest girl in school for a rebound fuck because you thought your idiot goon of a boyfriend was cheating on you.’

‘I don’t... I don't understand,’ I stammered, ‘I just slept with someone else and you’re not mad?’

‘Of course I’m mad, bru. I’m fuckin’ furious. But I definitely don’t hate you.’

I must have been doing the slapped puppy look at this point. ‘You don’t?’

He shook his head. ’I fuckin’ love you. And I’m...I'm sorry I behaved like such a dickhead to make you react like that. Come here, please, come here.’

He pulled me towards him and I didn’t resist.

When he rested his head on top of mine I lost it and burst into tears.

‘Oh babe,’ he said, tightening his grip. ‘We’ve both been fuckin’ idiots. You thought I’d left you?’

I nodded, pulling away and trying to compose myself and failing. ‘I didn’t plan it… we met by total accident and… and we went to her house and there was wine and it just… it just happened and…’

He took my hand. ‘If I hadn’t said yes to that lap dance with, ugh, Tricia…God, I’m such a tool.’

‘But—but I went...further. How come you’re still here? Being nice?’

He was quiet for a few seconds. ‘I fucked up first. Also, you’ve never been with a girl before. I have. It’s not how I'd have planned things but… I’m kind of glad it happened.'

'Why?'

'It’s happened and we are still here.’

It felt like each word was dripping slowly into my brain. ‘Can you…' I said, 'can we forgive each other?’

He gave a little smile. ‘I think we have to? We were both drunk as fuck.’ He squeezed my hand a little tighter. ’You know, I really wanted to leave straight after the game.’

I blinked. ‘And then you went… straight… after the game.’

'Ow.' He knit his brow and then grasped his chest in mock pain. ‘Ooh. What a burn.’

I tried to deadpan but was now laughing myself.

‘I deserved that,’ he said. ‘And I can see this scares you. Me, and girls. You’ve mentioned it before.’

I tried not to flinch. ’I think you understand that fear now, because, um, hello, Veronica…’

He nodded a few times. ‘Fuck. I do. All too well, man. We just have to...'

'Can we talk about it, later, maybe? Right now I just want to congratulate my boyfriend on scoring the winning try.'

'Aw, man.' He looked at me, blushing. 'Just, believe me when I say I didn’t want to be anywhere else but with you when we won. Felt fuckin’ amazing getting that try and knowing you watched me… I wanted to kiss you in front of the whole school and for there to be a fuckin’ soundtrack and credits rolling and shit. Epic, stuff bru. Epic.’

I beamed. ’Hans Zimmer or John Williams for the soundtrack?’

He cocked his head to the side. ‘For you? Hmmm. It'd have to be next level. Someone you play, someone...oh shit, yeah, baby.'

'Chris?'

'Rach-fuckin’-maninov, bru. I'd need a time machine, but, I'd ask that guy to write you your own personalised… symphony. Did I choose right? Did he write those things?’

‘He wrote three,’ I said, grinning. ‘Or five, if you’re being technical. And stop sweeping me off my feet already, the end of his Second Symphony is like one of my favourite things ever, like Williams and Zimmer combined and squared.’

He let out a sigh. ‘Oh thank fuck. I was totally guessing, but, shit, now I have to hear this.’

‘You could, and… I…’ I stoped, sniffed and shook my head. ‘Sorry, it’s all…so much.’

‘Bru…’

‘I miss my mom.’

He pressed his forehead against mine. ‘Oh babe. Tell me what you need.’

‘I need for us to stop talking. Take me home and maybe we can sit and listen to the Second Symphony. We have it.’

‘Can I hold you while we do so?’

‘I won’t say no, Number One.’

‘I will comply, Seven of Mine.’

We listened to the whole hour of it. Not to a CD, but to my father’s LP of a 1973 recording with André Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, as we lay on the lounge floor under a frayed woollen blanket.

Chris was fidgety in the first movement, grabbing and letting go of my hand haphazardly. He started tapping his feet in the second. When the clarinet solo started in the third movement, he froze, and when the great climax of the Adagio hit he looked for all the world as if he had been injected with morphine. The final movement whirled around us in glorious, ecstatic ribbons of noise. I thought of hadedas and water sprites and as the great beast broadened and tumbled towards its cosmic closing bars we finally kissed, messily, hungrily, smeared with each other’s tears and sweat.

The speakers hissed with white noise as our embrace slackened, the kiss dying along with the ocean of sound that had retreated as suddenly as it had arrived.