Just Another Day

New Year’s Day comes bowling in with a short, well intentioned burst of enthusiasm. It promises much, but what it delivers is lacklustre, and it knows it. It tries, but it always falls flat as it realises that it’s in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is the birth day of disappointment. Yet, exactly a week before, in the year just gone, lived the king of days. Then there was feasting and jollity and merriment. A build-up of excitement that was met head on by the forces of joy. Christmas Day is never a disappointment, even if it fails to deliver as completely as it might have. Christmas Day is a rallying point for all the good things in life. Nothing can match that, let alone when in its still warm shadow.

In the ongoing duel between these two days of days, their seconds play a resounding part. Christmas Eve is the consummate wing man to the Big Day. Unobtrusive, unassuming and gentle, yet confident in its own offering. Christmas Eve is the best friend that any day would be proud to have at their side. New Year’s Eve however, is a whole other category of animal. A preening peacock with razored talons and an eye for a good time. This eve is loud and brash and arrogant. This is a day that is completely out of control and has lost sight of what it is supposed to herald, instead it looks back over the previous three hundred and sixty four days and considers only them. New Year’s Eve considers itself to be the book end for the New Year’s Day that occurred nigh on a year ago. A crescendoed highlight of the passing year, with no intention of passing the baton on. Everyone gets carried away on New Year’s Eve and they spend currency that they do not have to hand, so when they finally arrive in the New Year, that very first day is not exactly welcome. New Year’s Day is a reminder of a debt that you do not want to pay, a debt that you feel is unfair, coupled with exorbitant interest that carries with it a weight of oppression that threatens to ruin the year waiting up ahead on a dark, winding path that forgot it’s manners and dispensed with any semblance of a welcome.

And so it was that Selina emerged into the New Year, fragile on the most fragile and uncertain of days. The number one day that signalled change, when all anyone ever wanted was for things to remain the same. 

“Ow…” she whispered to herself as an army of disgruntled hangover pixies hammered upon the inside of her skull and kicked her brain for good measure.

Selina knew better. Of course she knew better. It wasn’t just that she had crossed the border of moderation and ventured into the land of merry, it was her greed for that state that had catapulted her into the mountains of the drunk and now she cascaded down those rockfaces, using her head as an ineffective brake, and it hurt. It hurt like hell.

New Year’s Day was hell.

She lay there in a broken state and tried not to move. She tried not to do much of anything. She resented her partially wakeful state, knowing only too well that a return to slumber would not be possible. This was because there had been no previous slumber, only the unconsciousness of the inebriated. It was a price she was willing to pay last night, but now she yearned for the charity of a debt written off.

Stifling a self-piteous groan, she realised she wasn’t just attempting to minimise the pain this would cause. She was increasingly aware of a presence in the room and it was this that had made her moderate her utterances.

The room.

This was not her room and this was not her bed.

Black sheets?! She had never owned black sheets and when she was able to coordinate herself sufficiently to do self-respecting, she would never, in a million years slip betwixt such a terrible statement. She shuddered as her mind slipped towards the practicalities of stainage. Black sheets would be a nauseating reminder of the parlous state of the human body. All the shedding and seepage would be highlighted to a horrific degree. Black sheets were only one small step away from those UV torches that neon lit stains that nobody ever wanted to see. Black sheets were the preserve of those with no shame. The sorts of people who would brazenly air dirty linen.

The shudder prompted by those awful sheets caused her companion to murmur. Now she was fully aware of the existence of a physical being in the bed beside her, she felt the weight of them on her arm. And only now did she feel a growing numbness in that arm. Gently, she tried to slip her arm from under the dead weight beside her. 

“Yeah…!” said a deep voice that could only be male.

Interesting, thought Selina. Interesting in the same context of the curse; may you live in interesting times. Her thoughts were disturbed by an arm that unfurled and wrapped itself around her.

“You were amazing!” said the bed man.

Her face wrinkled in consternation. Amazing? That one word gave rise to a can of wormy questions. The can was labelled We DID It Last Night. Selina wished she knew what doing it consisted of. There was a sordid smorgasbord available to her from which she could create a definition of last night, but it would all be conjecture and that conjecture was badly tainted by the only cue she currently had; the black sheets.

She’d slept with a man who had black sheets. Things could only go south from here and they already were. A terrible wave of guilt washed through her taking anything of worth with it. All she was left with was self-loathing. Hangovers were good for that sort of thing, but the New Year’s Eve hangover was the worst of all of them, even before you’d made a grave error in your life, kicking your moral compass into touch and locking your conscience in the cellar. 

Selina didn’t even have memories of an enjoyable night of passion to console herself with. Her mind had been wiped and all that left was a hydra of dark emotions. That hydra was currently telling her, in no uncertain terms, that she was a piece of shit.

Half-heartedly, she wanted to get out of there, but another aspect of hangovers was the apathy born of pain and shame. Also, she was curious. If she left now, she may never know any of it. Perhaps that was ultimately for the best, but she’d rather make a choice. Besides, running away was pathetic and she was wise enough to know that she’d only feel worse for making a quick exit. Better to stay and face the consequences. It did not escape her that there were consequences awaiting her beyond this room and her welcome curiosity allowed her to procrastinate on that monolithic front.

“Were amazing?” she asked the lump under the sheet.

The man chuckled, she liked the sound of that. Despite herself and her broken state, she liked it. “You really can’t take a compliment, can you?”

“Why do you say that?” she asked the form beside her.

“You warned me about this last night,” he replied, “that you were reserved.”

“Reserved?” she said in something like repugnance at the word, “did I use that word?”

“Yeah,” he said lazily, “waxed lyrical about how you were and how it was all going to be different from today.”

Selina wanted to groan, but she didn’t want this hidden man to have the satisfaction of hearing it. Had she really been that kind of drunk? Maudlin and introspective. Spouting about her inner state and how she needed to grow and be more connected. Always hanging back. Mistrustful of the world. Knowing the questions that should be asked, but always remaining silent, even to her own detriment and those around her.

Something like indignation rose up in her. Pushing herself up in the bed, she sat up and looked down at the prone form beside her. He was a strange shadow being. The way his legs were bent made him look like a question mark. She supposed he was and perhaps always would be.

Still nothing tangible of the night before came to her, but she had a feeling and the feeling was all she needed. She knew herself well enough and had a sense for the direction she might have been headed in.

“What…” she began.

He sighed. 

The sigh could have been a blast of hot air from angry bellows, but that wasn’t right somehow. The sound of it hurt her. And all of a sudden she knew why it hurt.

She’d used this man. She’d used him and he’d known it even before they’d entered this room.

There was a sadness in that sigh. A night like that was often the beginning of something real. A night like theirs was supposed to mean something. 

It did mean something, but she’d claimed the meaning for herself even before they had begun. She’d wrestled it from him and he had come here willingly anyway.

A phrase came to her; in vino veritas.

She wanted to shout and scream, or at least spout a jet of profanities. She looked down at the question mark of a man and to her shame, she wanted to beat him with her clenched fists. Fists that she could not unclench. She wanted to hit him whilst asking him again and again, “why did you let this happen!? Why did you let me do this?”

It took her some while to calm herself and longer still to unclench her fists.

“You’re not going to come out from under there are you?” she asked him at last.

“You said not to,” he told her gently. Not miserably. He could easily have done that. He could have blamed her for what she had done. She found that she wanted that, and then she felt ashamed about that too. Even now, she wanted more from him. She wanted control. She wanted him to blame her in some way only for her to turn on him and take that from him too. 

“I told you…” she sighed. She had a good idea what she would have told him, but not how. She was unclear as to how it had got to this, but she did know why. 

“You told me not to tell you anything,” he told her, “you were very clear. Then you drank like it was going out of fashion and when I asked you why?”

Now it was her turn to chuckle, “I was drinking to forget?”

“Yeah,” and “when I asked what you were drinking to forget you laughed and told me it was working.”

She slapped her forehead and instantly regretted it. She was an idiotic walking cliché. 

“What was in it for you?” she asked the shadow.

He didn’t answer right away and the silence spoke the answer more clearly than anything he could have said, but still he managed to top it, “you.”

The way he said it dizzied her. She felt something. She felt everything. There was something coming from him that she wanted more than anything she’d ever wanted. She drew in a deep breath and closed her eyes. Fighting that feeling. Fighting the only way that she knew how.

“I’d best go,” she told him.

“You’d best had,” he agreed, “this is the longest game of hide and seek I’ve ever played and I’m not sure how much longer I can wait for the loo.”

Her eyes widened and she broke into an inexplicable grin, “sorry! I didn’t think!”

“It’s OK,” he said, “I’m glad you didn’t leave in silence, like you said you would,”

“So am I,” she told him.

Reluctantly she slipped from the bed and collected her jeans, stepping into them. Scooping up her top and pulling it over her head. The pull of the man in the bed was strong as she headed for the door and she could not resist turning back for one last look. She found herself wanting to see him emerging from that dark pool of sheets. Black sheets that worked right now in this moment. She could so easily slip under them and find him. Connect with him in those dark waters and explore a new life on this new day in a new year.

She turned to the door, reached for the handle, then paused, “the black sheets?”

“Crap aren’t they?” he said without missing a beat.

“So why do you have them?” she asked.

“I don’t,” he told her.

She smiled as she left the room. Those weren’t his sheets. That wasn’t his bedroom and this wasn’t his house. She glanced back at that house as she walked away, still hoping to see him, and knowing that once she turned the next corner there would be no him. All of it a dream. A fantasy of a new year and a different life. A resolution broken before New Year’s Day had even gotten into its stride.

But then, she had wanted a different life and that new life emerged from her as Summer had its last hurrah. Emily eventually forgave her for her wild transgression, understanding the why of it if not appreciating the how. 

“You’ll never do anything like this again, will you?” Emily said as she cradled Egon in her arms and rocked him to and fro.

Selina smiled an enigmatic smile.

Emily shook her head, but couldn’t help returning the smile. That smile was infectious, their new born baby a catalyst for their shared happiness. 

“He has your eyes,” Selina told Emily. 

Only as she said those words did a cold accusatory finger poke her, and in that instant she knew exactly what she had done, the carefully crafted attempt at secrecy and not knowing crumbled away and revealed all.