I Think I Might've Loved You

My hands are tied. I don’t mean that in a metaphorical, existential crisis kind of way, no. I mean that my hands are behind my head, knotted too many times to count, tied in the type of way boy scouts are taught to tie things on American television shows. They’re called impossible knots. I once knew a girl who lived on that side of the world. She knew what this feels like. 

She told me she quite liked America. The part of it that you don’t see on TV; New York City at least, was impeccable. Eloise had a friend who lived on Bank Street in the West Village where the buildings were both old and new at the same time. She had this house with a big bay window and they would sit there, talking about the things girls in primary school talk about; that bitch Becky with the perfect little pigtails before they even knew how to curse, and the fact that the librarian secretly sold chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin cookies to the few kids that knew about her secret little business venture. But nobody ever bought the oatmeal cookies because unless you wanted to be labeled ‘old’, you’ll stuff your face with anything but wrinkly raisins. 

All the other girls lived on the Upper East Side. They had penthouses and skylights and pretty pink rooms with canopy beds where they made makeshift habitats for their countless number of stuffed animals and toys and dolls. They had butlers and helpers and drivers and people who waited on them, tending to their every little want and need. 

The ropes grow tighter around my wrists. My eyes dart around the room to see people dressed in costume, as though it’s Halloween and I’m the last of the candy. There’s a woman that belongs in a magazine playing the part of black crow and another dressed in white. The man behind me, the one with the ropes, he’s a make-believe chauffeur. Eloise once told me of a time after school, when she sat at the back of an elaborate limousine with a group of girls who always managed to look like miniature barbie dolls. Even at nine, their plaid skirts were always too shorts and their nails were always French manicured but they never got into any trouble for it. They are doughnuts and she did take one because she hadn’t had that list of foods she apparently completely despises yet. Her tooth, the one that she had mentioned had been shaking and wobbling for weeks, came off. And she thought it was a piece of very adamant chocolate because even though she kept trying to bite down on it, it simply would not break. The girls laughed at her. And she became one of them. 

She stopped calling me to instead go ice skating on 5th Avenue because that’s where all the cool kids go during Christmas time and watched the ball drop in Times Square on New Years’ Eve every night for the next few years from the window of a much too fancy hotel. 

Eloise wore long sleeves. And so do I. All the time. Even in the sweltering heat of the summertime. The girl that lived on Bank Street knew why but Eloise had stopped sitting by her bay window because she wasn’t 'one of the girls.' She didn’t know the lavishness of Café d’Alsace and feeding the ducks at Central Park all whilst sporting Lululemon leggings, Armani jackets and Cartier watches. 

I wonder if Eloise ever thought about her and whether or not she knew how to undo a nearly impossible knot. Now though, it wouldn’t matter much. Eloise never really did speak much and as I stand here, naked and a play-thing, I think I know why. 

I feel unloved and broken and my head really does hurt. I can’t feel my heart but I hear it. In my throat. 

And I miss home. She probably did too. 

I don’t mean the feeling of being hugged by buildings in Manhattan. I mean jumping into a public lake with my best friend. 

Before I turned eighteen, we did that. I made this mad, mental bucket list of the things we without a doubt had to do before I was legally allowed to make stupid choices. Because when you hold an English passport, you’re free to eat all the oatmeal raisin cookies you want once you turn eighteen; you’re ancient, an artefact that could very well be placed on the top of a dusty old shelf and forgotten. 

So we went on an adventure. It was epic. 

When Eloise was six, my family and hers were all the best of friends. It was set in stone. She was mine. Our parents loved it. “They’ll have the most beautiful babies,” my mum would croon. 

Hers would agree, saying something along the lines of, “Imagine her hair and his eyes.” 

And they’d gush. 

We took a vacation that lasted longer than expected. Lake District was much too picturesque a place to leave and so we stayed. For six months, we lived in a cottage with a big fireplace with a collection of films comprised of nothing but romantic comedies and daytime soaps from ages ago; Guiding Light and Dynasty and the like. 

We went back there and found everything to be the same, as though it was a place frozen in time. Everything was just as we left it. 

There was a loft bedroom which wasn’t much of a bedroom really, but something close enough. I’ve always been tall and remember having to watch my head up there because the rafters hung low. We slept up there, on the mattress that mimicked a bed. 

Eloise got stupid drunk for the first time. But I didn’t touch her. She took all her clothes off because when you’ve had enough to drink, the world around you starts to burn up. But I didn’t touch her. She kissed me and I kissed her back, stealing her breath and giving it back to her. But I didn’t touch her. 

I wanted to be good. 

We couldn’t cross everything off of that list. She never did eat five thousand calories in a day and break the grotesque cycle of seeing a multitude of numbers when she looked at a plate of food. There are other things I haven’t done that we were supposed to do together, but I’ll keep those to myself. They’ll be our little secrets. 

And that, is the home I think she missed. The cobbled streets of the little English town where we used to run freely to our friends’ houses, where we would watch the same films over and over again, seeing Lily Collins and Sam Claflin make all wrong decisions before finally realising that “sometimes you don’t see that the best thing that ever happened to you is sitting there, right under your nose,” again and again.

That girl loved that film almost as much as she loved me. 

I can hear her now. Somehow. And I breathe, “Eloise.” 

I hate that I told her, “A little more. A little more and you’re done.” 

I’m a liar. 

Because there were giants on her. One in every hole. And there was another man; the catalyst for everything bad in her world, sitting on a chair watching her try to scream. And he was touching himself, smiling cheekily because he made her. He got to do this to her. 

“Eloise.” 

I had left her. 

“Eloise.” 

There were hands on her. 

“Eloise.” 

There was so much pain around her. In her. 

“Eloise.” 

And now, my breath hitches in my chest. I think I’m empty. 

I can taste saltwater but I tell these people; this driver, these women, to stay in character, and they do for the fat wad of cash in my pocket. I don’t want them to stop. With Eloise, they didn’t stop. I shut my eyes to see that with every thrust from either side, the floor beneath her turned a darker shade of crimson. Now the man in her corner sits in mine, chuckling. His laughter turns manic. 

“Eloise.” 

And she was gone.