This was only supposed to be one chapter, but I couldn't help myself. Also, happy birthday, Jade! This is for you.


You


It is your birthday. It is 41 years and nine months since Johnny Connor shagged your mother in the back of his 1975 Vauxhall Cavalier and you wake up to Nick kissing your neck, telling you he loves you and that he will only mention it's your birthday if you want him to.

He doesn't want to upset you. If only you would stop upsetting yourself.

You have sex. Awful, terrible sex. You forget how to do it. You forget how it works, how you work together. You're all fingers and thumbs and as he undresses you, you just feel sick. He stares into your eyes and he is kissing you and you are kissing him and keeping your eyes closed is an actual difficulty for if you can't see him, how can you know it is him you are feeling? How can you know it is him who is feeling you?

You can't get him out of your head. Robert. You can't forget his hands or his breath or the way he felt around you. You can't forget any of it and all you know is that it's time for you to stop lying to yourself. Because you were sober. Not completely, not like when regrets were pointless and there was only one thing wrong with Erica and you weren't her and fuck.

Fuck.

You fall apart in Nick's arms. In them; not out of them. And he holds you. He doesn't tell you I won't be a minute, doesn't disappear to the bathroom to clean himself up, leaving you cold and naked and dirty on top of crumbled bedsheets. He kisses your cheek. He whispers happy birthday, baby. He doesn't tell you how bad that was. He knows you don't need telling.

And you don't quite remember how it happens, but you suddenly move to be on top of him and you are clawing at him. You want to feel something, anything, you want your heart to race because you are alive. You want to feel alive, but you're dead inside and using his body just to make yours feel better only makes you feel worse.

You can't eat.

Roy buys you the most beautiful diary. 2016 will be your year is the promise he writes inside it and a single tear escapes you as he looks at you with expectant eyes, not knowing eyes. You text Michelle in the morning, telling her you don't want to celebrate, don't want to acknowledge your own existence. She says she understands. She asks how you are feeling.

You don't reply.

What you are feeling cannot be put into words.

You spend the day with Nick. Sweet Nick with his arms that don't leave you, with his head he keeps pressed to yours. You veg out in front of the telly where you try and fail to forget how if you'd have done this when he suggested it, none of this would be happening. None of this would be happening at all.

The later it gets, the older you begin to feel. You're 41, but you feel fifty, sixty, seventy. You don't feel your age; you feel exhausted. You feel like you've lived too long, but done too little. Too many people have entered your life and left without one of their own.

You look at Nick, chuckling softly at the shit he's watching you're not paying attention to, and it hurts. Because his life is in your hands now and you've already proved to yourself that it's too heavy a life for you to carry with one hand. You cut the other off the second you let it touch Robert.

"I love you," you tell him. You don't tell him enough.

"I love you more," he says.

And you don't deny it and it terrifies you. Because what you feel is so intense, you wonder how much more love a heart can actually hold. But he must love you more. He does love you more. More than anything. He'd never trade everything for nothing. You mean more to him than that.

The truth will kill him if the lies don't kill you first.

"You're perfect," he says.

You shake your head.

No, you think. You are.