Rachel

I've always enjoyed driving in silence.

No, not always. When I got my first car, I drove through ear-splitting noise. I’d made my first forage into what I called ‘non-radio’ music, moving away from mainstream hits and discovering a wonderful symphony of indie and punk rock bands. That was back in the days before Spotify, where you still had to download the music you wanted to listen to, and burn CD’s on Windows Media Player. I’d borrow ten albums a week from the library, create illegal copies of the ones I liked, and return to take more the following week.

It was on the spinning racks of that musty old library that I discovered bands like My Chemical Romance, The Arctic Monkeys, Good Charlotte and All Time Low. My car became my refuge - a safe haven where I could escape to play my songs as loudly as I wanted. If I close my eyes, and drift back to that time in my life, I can still feel the adrenaline coursing through my nineteen year-old body; can still see the wild, frenzied look in my eyes as my hands bashed against the steering wheel and I half-sang, half-screamed the lyrics until my throat ached.

That was a long time ago, and although my car is still a place of refuge, now it’s a quiet one, a place where the outside world is shut out, where I can collect my thoughts and recharge. I will confess that for quite a while I was one of those young men who recklessly skimmed through messages and playlists while hurtling along country roads at sixty kilometres an hour. A teacher I once had told me that when we’re young, even if we consciously accept the possibility of death, subconsciously, we think we’re invincible. Funny how words like that stick with you through the years, waiting for you to be ready to accept them.

Tonight, I’m driving back home to my parents’ house for the Christmas holidays. I finished work earlier this evening, and a two-week holiday stretches gloriously ahead of me. It’s dark out already, and as the car speeds along the motorway, I realise I’ve got this stretch of road all to my own, no lights visible in front or behind me. I hear myself let out an audible sigh of contentment, and feel my mind begin to drift into that calm, meditative state that only comes from this type of quiet night-time driving, when all the usual stimuli of the outside world are removed.

I find myself thinking about the year gone by. I’ve tried not to do that this year – up until a few years ago, I would work myself up into something resembling an anxiety attack at the end of each December, setting intense and completely unrealistic goals for myself, coming into strict effect at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve. Go vegan. Become fluent in French. Become fluent in Spanish. Get absolutely shredded. Give up sugar. Get a book published. I’d spend the last few days of the year watching motivational videos on YouTube, getting worked up into a frenzy - berating myself for not having achieved enough that year, and promising myself that this year was my year, the year when I’d show the world what I was really capable of.

It’s kind of funny, looking back at the state I used to work myself into, but it’s funny with a tinge of sadness. That was me, that person who thought they weren’t doing enough, achieving enough, being enough. I put so much pressure on myself to achieve things that I didn’t even want, and then beat myself up when I didn’t follow through. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still an ambitious, goal-driven person. I just chase things I actually want now, and set goals that depend only on me to achieve them, and don’t require lucky breaks from the universe.

Get jacked. Why? I’ve seen what getting stage-competition ripped involves, and it’s not a lifestyle I envy. What I actually want is to be fast, athletic, powerful, agile. I want to be able to sprint faster than the guy next to me, turn my hand to any sport, smash out burpees when I’m 50. Train hard and enjoy food. Bodybuilding means long, tedious hours in the gym, lifting weights in one plane of motion, adding muscle to your frame so that you become less mobile, less able to sprint and jump and twist and turn, less athletic. Getting jacked means weighing every gram of food, obsessing over your macros, constantly worrying about food. Why the hell would I put myself through that?

Get a book published. Okay, that’s something I actually do want to achieve, but I can’t rely on fate or chance to give me a lucky break. I can’t control whether someone wants to publish something I write, even if I do sit down and write something worthwhile. JK Rowling got turned down seventeen times before Harry Potter was published. Getting a book on the shelf is an aspiration, not a goal. It’s out of your control.

1.           Write a book.

2.          Go back to piano lessons and take an exam.

3.           Exercise and eat in a way you enjoy and can do consistently.

These were my goals this year – difficult, but completely in my power. And I’ve done them all. That brings a smile to my face, as a car’s headlights appear in my rear-view mirror and draw steadily closer in the other lane. I’d forgotten what goals I set at the beginning of the year, had left them drift to the back of the mind as the second half of the year bled into the cold winter months. But I remember them clearly now, remember lying in bed one night last year, forcing myself to narrow my many ambitions to three concise, identifiable goals.

Four. Not three. I set four goals last year. The fourth flashes across my mind, and I close my eyes and exhale deeply, trying to expel the heavy weight that has sunk suddenly into the pit of my stomach. It isn’t a goal, not really. But it is something that I thought would have happened by now, and the sudden realisation that it hasn’t casts a shadow over the happiness I felt just a moment ago.

I glance at the radio beside the car dashboard. December 23^rd. I start counting days in my head. Eight days. Eight days to achieve that last goal, to tick it off the list and banish it from my thoughts before the new year. Will it be enough?

***

I wake early the next morning, my body unaware that I’m now on holidays, and don’t need to get out of bed at 7.30am in the freezing cold of the converted attic room of my parent’s house. I crawl reluctantly out of bed and creep down the stairs, trying not to wake the rest of the house, and flick the heating on from the switch in the coat press.

I step outside, shivering against the cold, and pull the sliding door closed behind me. The night is just beginning to fade into morning, the first few cracks of light splintering through the darkness. Melodic, throaty birdsong drifts down from the trees, the only sound audible in the stillness of the morning. Our road sits atop a hill overlooking the village, and I watch as a solitary car makes its way past the local school and heads towards the town.

I follow its journey, letting my eyes come to rest on a house just past the school, a winding driveway leading up to a long, stretched-out building with French windows and three cars parked outside. Rachel’s house. I keep my eyes fixed on the structure, trying to put a word on the feeling stirring around inside me. Sadness? Regret? Disappointment? None of them fit quite right, and I turn more words over in my mind, wondering how the sight of her house can still have such an effect on me, a year and a half after our break-up. I haven’t been inside since the day she ended things in her living room, looking anywhere but at me, as I tried desperately to hold back tears, and her parents hovered in the kitchen, fully aware of what was happening next door.

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. We’d been seeing each other for the best part of a year, but things had been going downhill for at least three at that stage. There was no big fallout, no tears or accusations or angry messages. Our relationship had just sort of petered out, had run its course and come to a conclusion, like a trail of water tapering to an end, with no energy left to propel itself forward.

Before the break-up, I thought I had wanted nothing more than to be free – I had just finished college, and was busy preparing for interviews for my first real job. Rachel, a year younger than me, was facing into her final year of law, and would be taking up a semi-permanent residence in the college library for the next year. I had considered ending things myself, loads of times, had almost said the words twice – once in her house, as we sat silently side by side watching a movie; and once after a drunken night out with her friends, where she had accused me of flirting with her best friend, and spent the rest of the night trying it on with any guy she could find.

Maybe it was the rejection that had stung me, the fact that Rachel was the one who finally plucked up the courage to put into words what both of us were thinking, and end things between us. It might have been the fact that two weeks later, there was a new boyfriend on the scene, a rugby player twice my size. Or maybe it was just because I hadn’t had a girlfriend since, and I was dwelling on Rachel because I was lonely. Whatever the reason, I had some work to do. One more goal to achieve before the year was out.

Back upstairs, the heating just starting to edge the chill from the room, I find my diary, tucked away in the suitcase still lying at the foot of the bed. I find a pen and thumb through the pages, coming to rest at the next blank page. I think for a moment, then write down the thing that’s been weighing on my mind since it entered, unbidden, into my head last night.

Eight days. One goal.

Get the hell over Rachel.

First things first. I pull out my phone and start flicking through social media apps. Unfollow. Unfriend. Remove as friend - are you sure? Yes. I don’t even allow myself to look through photos one more time. I know from past experience that that’s a road I don’t want to go down.

Rachel successfully moved from my digital life, I open up Tinder and check my profile. It doesn’t take me long to realise why my phone hasn’t been pinging matches at me since I joined up a few months back. The one photo I’ve uploaded is blurry, and shows me standing outside a McDonald’s, pulling a stupid face and sticking two thumbs up at the camera. Hardly enough to grab the attention of a passing female. My bio is empty - not a single quote or sentence, not even a stupid pick-up line. I prop myself up against the pillows on my bed, and start making my digital self a little more attractive. Then I realise that the matches I’ll be shown here, in my parent’s house, will be locals - girls I went to school with, girls who are friends with Rachel – possibly even Rachel herself. I groan inwardly and close the app, deciding Tinder can wait for another few days.

How do you get over someone you broke up with a year ago? I can’t think of anything, so in typical millennial fashion, I pull out my phone and Google it. The suggestions aren’t particularly helpful. Journal about it. Talk to someone you can trust. See a therapist.  I groan and toss the phone aside, feeling suddenly pathetic.

The only way I’m going to get over Rachel is if I stop trying. It’s like falling asleep – it’s not going to happen if I’m lying there thinking, ‘I want to go asleep. I’m trying to fall asleep. I need to occupy my mind with something else.

My head is starting to hurt, so I decide to get some fresh air and take a walk around the village. I throw on an old coat, and head down the driveway and towards the village. Skirting around my old primary school, I find myself thinking back to being ten years old again, cycling down the hill to school every morning, running to the shop after school to stuff my face with sweets. I smile inwardly at the nostalgia, and remind myself that twenty-six is a bit young for a mid-life crisis.

I take the long way around to the main road, passing around the back of the sports pitches that are joined on to the school. I’m looking out at the dew-laden grass, remembering the feeling of underage games - the adrenaline rush before the match, the exhilaration of fighting for every ball, the elation or crushing disappointment after the game. I’m so busy reminiscing on times past that I almost walk into a girl coming the other direction, who has her head buried in her phone and hasn’t noticed me either.

‘Sorry!’ Our elbows bump against each other, and both of us jump in surprise. I raise my eyes to see who I’ve walked into, and feel my heart tip sideways in my chest.

Rachel.

She’s just as surprised as I am, and for a moment we just stand there, gaping at each other. I have to fight back the sudden urge to giggle.

‘James. Hi. How are you?’ Rachel manages at last, recovering first. She’s wrapped up against the cold weather, bundled into a huge red coat, a hat pulled down over her eyes, hands stuffed into woollen gloves, a scarf pulled up over her mouth. Her eyes are about the only part of her that’s visible – bright-green, kind, inviting. Just how I remembered them. Memories wash over me like waves crashing down onto the shore.

‘I’m good. Just home for the holidays. How are you?’

‘Good, good. You got a job teaching then?’

‘Yeah, I got pretty lucky. It’s my second year there but I already have a permanent job. ‘Are you still doing law?’ I realise that for all the time I’ve spent thinking about her these past few months, I know nothing about what she’s been up to.

Rachel gives a small smile, familiar creases appearing around her eyes. ‘Sort of.’

I frown. ‘What do you mean?’

She hesitates, just for a moment, then gestures to her oversized jacket.

‘I finished my degree. But I won’t be looking for a job for another while. I’m pregnant.’

I can’t help it – my mouth literally drops open in surprise. ‘Pregnant? Wow. I…’ My brain is spinning so fast I think I’m going to have to sit down. ‘Congratulations,’ I finish, weakly, wondering if this can really be happening.

‘Thanks.’ Rachel is watching my face carefully, observing my reaction. There’s a look in her eyes I haven’t quite seen before, and my mind begins turning words over once more, trying to place it. It settles on one. Nostalgia. Rachel’s looking at me the same way I was looking at our old school just a few minutes ago. I understand why – being pregnant must have dragged her into the real, adult world far sooner than she expected. Seeing me is like looking through a window into simpler, more innocent times. I must seem like nothing more than a distant memory to her now, a childhood crush.

We stand there awkwardly for another few minutes, making simple chit-chat, asking about parents and friends. Eventually, Rachel says she better get back or her parents will be worrying about her, patting her stomach with another small smile. On closer inspection, I see that she is showing a little, even under the big jacket. Not that I ever would have guessed if she hadn’t told me.

Back in my room, I sink into the chair beside my desk and exhale deeply. Of all the possibilities I had anticipated, I have to admit that this was not one of them. I wonder for a moment who the father is (for one heart-stopping moment, I think if it could be me, then do some simple math and realise that’s impossible), then I realise that I don’t really care.

Seeing Rachel has made her somehow real again. In my mind, I had created a sort of perfect avatar, remembering only the best parts, exaggerated and reimagined into a girl that had never existed. Meeting the real Rachel again made me realise that I don’t miss her, not in the way I thought I did. I missed the idea of her.

I hope Rachel’s happy – I know I’d be freaking out if I was in her situation, but she seemed pretty composed talking to me. I know she always wanted kids – though assumedly not this young, just as her career and adult life were taking off. I hope whoever the father is going to stick around to help, but – dare I say it? As selfish as it might sound, I’m glad it’s not me.

I fish the diary out from under my bed, and turn to the note I scribbled just last night, in blue pen across the top of the page.

Get the hell over Rachel.

I draw the pen through the five words, marvelling at how easy that was in the end.

Check.