Chapter Two — The Man from the Phone

If Eleanor could have prevented her clumsiness, two goals could have been easily avoided: this new weight distribution, her legs moved faster than she could think. Furthermore, playing on the left wing was not her thing. She was a defender, her body knew it, but being Eleanor required it. This slipped her mind completely, yesterday. Now it rushed to her: family, boyfriend, studies, passwords, friends?

"Never have any luck against these lot," Sophie said, tapping Eleanor's stick as she ran by. Katie never heard a word from her.

Her feet took heavy steps, dawdling, thinking of Katie. At some point, she'd need to slip back. That was her. All twenty-two years of her. But her memory was still sore. Those hips, she cried, I don't fit her anymore. There was no way she'd go back to nausea and the crippling cramps. Katie's phone was buzzing. Housemates, Olivia, her friends, all while she looked up to face the mirror, pulling faces that were not her own. These two could never be seen in the same room again. And she needed to live both of their lives.

A voice beckoned her from the pitch edge. Eleanor did not raise her head. The name was for someone else to answer. She continued her way to the changing rooms. The voice gave up and after a little trot was beside her. It was the face from her phone. It was him. The boyfriend.

"Hey, didn't you see me over there? Didn't look all game."

She blinked. How would she act? "I was distracted."

"You guys did well."

"We lost." Too blunt, she told herself. She wanted to shrug him off, get away, back to the others and her thoughts, but he kept up along itching her side. No, she couldn't think about it all right now. The family. The game. Him. The two of them walked solemnly, Eleanor turning to capture flashes of his face. Each felt wrong. She was eavesdropping into another couple's bubble. His hand grabbed her shoulder to face him.

This felt like permission enough. She stole the time to see what he meant. He wasn't a bad sort, she concluded, but not her choice. She tried to force a smile, but it came out flimsy. Eleanor's gone. And it would be cruel to keep him.

"You guys drank a lot last night?" His smile waned.

"Yes, a bit."

He looked to the evergreens lurching over the far side of the field. "Hey, does anyone sometimes not make it?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like too drunk to play. Is anyone not here, you know?"

"Well, one. I don't see why it's—"

"—Katie," he said abruptly. Eleanor frowned and thought again of the skinsuit on her door, which watched her sleep, and Olivia. How did he know me? "You know Katie?"

"No, I just heard her name."

The sentence continued. Of course it did. But Nick let it run on in his mind. Meanwhile, Eleanor's steps grew shorter. It couldn't be possible that he suspected something. A sudden impulse to get close, act the part took her. She stepped closer, grazing the back of her hand across his elbow. Take his hand? It was wrong. All of it wrong. Her hand returned, stiff and pasted to her leg.

"And you were in the living room, naked," he blurted out. They stopped by the door of the sports centre. "Olivia walked in on you."

Maybe the curtains were not closed. The skinsuit, not hidden well enough by the table. Blood, was there a stench? Does my body stink? She sniffled. No, just sweat. It couldn't be, it wasn't possible. He must think something else happened last night.

"I don't get it," she paused, but she couldn't recall his name, continuing, "and she did, but I don't get why it's news. It was just embarrassing."

"You didn't text this morning." Nick was unloading a grief after grief, multiplying in her mind. She didn't text. She wouldn't know, and she was bound to forget many things more. And my god, she thought, I would need less of this kind of thing. She needed him gone.

All she could manage was an apology. Nothing else. No explanation. Because Katie would never say anything more than she felt. Even now her morals had been corrupted. Let's not forget she now spoke with cold lips. It was the last vestige of herself. Letting that fall, who knows who she would be? The two of them could almost hear the other's mind whirring away, saying many things, though their mouths said nothing. He leaned to kiss her, and this would kill off his worries. Eleanor only gave him her cheek. She made the excuse that she had to go back to the others, and she would see him later. If there was ever a perfect situation, a leadup to a breakup, it was now. Tonight, she would have to bring an end to it.

She can't mess with his feelings.

Textbooks were strewn across the bed; nursing practices, caring for chronic diseases, and acute and critical care something something. The bulk of them weighed on the blanket, and her feet were growing hot. The words on the page grew, shouted at her, but she didn't understand them, and no definition would make sense of their fine machinery.

Eleanor would have known.

And the exams. She threw her head back onto the pillow beside Nick. "I think I might change course," she said, sweeping the textbooks onto the floor.

"Why? Don't treat them like that."

"I don't understand a word of this."

Nick turned off his phone and pressed up alongside her. "You are stressed. You'll understand it tomorrow."

She could see his face so close to hers, but she couldn't dare look at him. She knew what would happen and she feared it. She needed to get rid of him, but it was not so easy. Finding the words, making an excuse. There was nothing she knew about him to even bullshit about. And that still, the very presence of someone else in her bed was exciting her, no matter how hard she tried to silence the feelings. It wouldn't harm her, just this once (a thought called out from its prison). It's been a while, she replied. Here, another thought joined in, 'He wants it. You'll be giving him what he wants.' But the touch felt wrong, even with a few inches between them. It was like a stranger beside her in the metro. And even if she was to take this moment, she wouldn't know what to do. Maybe he did? She mulled it over, him looming over her. The weight of him. But no, this was not the plan. He had to go. She just needed time to think.

She then added, "I could take up philosophy or international relations."

Nick was silent. His hand arched across her and held her softly. Eleanor froze. She didn't know what to do. She needed to stick to the plan, but her body wanted it. The words needed to come to her now if she was to stop it, but they were stuck in her throat. A bulge was digging into her side, beneath his shorts, something bulged beneath her too (it definitely wasn't Eleanor anymore), and nothing within the skin hid in the wardrobe. I wonder how she's doing in there, she thought. She's waiting for me; she knows I can't keep this up for too long. But I don't even know who I am.

"Eleanor," Nick spoke, "Can I see you?"

It was a trap, but she obliged. Soon enough his lips were pressed against her own stiff pair. Her hands raised awkwardly to feebly hold him. Her lips tried to imitate his movements. No matter how much she stumbled, he continued. It was relentless and her eyes were open, burning into his face. He could feel it. He pulled away.

"Are you okay? You seem … stiff."

Eleanor could only laugh. "I was just taken by surprise that's all." This was the last moment she could have raised her defence. But she was already compromised, for once her mind was focussed on just one thing. Nick lowered himself again and she was ready to accept him. Eleanor's blue-bathed terror flashed into her head, yet her want was stronger and swept it away with ease. She took delight in something else.

Nick pecked her for every item of clothing he lost. Eleanor glanced at him with great curiosity as his hand ran up her thigh and through the gap in her own shorts. His fingers teased between her legs, filling her with so much yearning that it tortured her guilt, and the corruption slowly spread throughout her. She couldn't wait, so she rushed to meet him, but the force of her sent him tumbling to the end of the bed. I want you, she said. She had never sounded more like Eleanor than at this moment.

Still, Nick did not yield and it was killing her. He smirked, and continued to glide his fingers anywhere but where she burned for him. Her hands fiddled with the buttons of her shirt, and once she slipped it off, she would come to notice something else which had changed. She grabbed him and tossed him on top of her. He was weightless to her. Nick was shocked, so was his hand lost in her shorts. She nudged him out and pulled her shorts over her knees. Nick was wordless, slowly pulling her closer until he filled her. Her head rested on the edge of the bed. She didn't dare look up or move herself, for she was nervous to see him.

The joy that ensued was so blissful to Eleanor that her mind went silent. She followed the electric sensations that ran down her limbs. Soon enough, she grew tired of this position and timidity, one she had to live daily as Katie, and pushed him onto his back. He clasped her sides, squeezing her and the green mass stuffed beneath his girlfriend. He guided her up and down. Eleanor began to feel her skin pulsate. Her stomach grumbled and she felt the air accumulating inside of her. To put off the pain, she pressed herself tight against him, resting her head behind his ear and covering the back of his neck in her hot breath. She listened to his agitated gasps climb, as his muscles stiffened, and then he tensed up, his heart tried to pump into her own chest as a warm pulse filled her.

At that moment, she thought of it all, peeling back her skin, Olivia nearly catching her, and now she was feeling Eleanor's boyfriend. However, the air was getting too much, and she couldn't ignore it.

"Do you want me to continue?" he asked.

She saw his eyes. She didn't like them, nor this man. This wasn't her. Everything flooded back into her mind, and she felt a band tighten around her head.

"Sorry, I really need the loo." She kissed his forehead, lifted herself out, and hobbled away to the landing and the bathroom. She locked the door, ran the shower. The pressure flowed out of her, and she felt immediately relieved. But the guilt, it was in his scent, which coated her. She pushed aside the wires of hair, stuck to the sweat on her skin, and started tugging away at her forehead. She sighed in relief and began to pull Eleanor off.

Nick, feeling anxious in the triangle of milky moonlight, heard the shower. Put on his shorts for modesty's sake and went out onto the landing. He heard something slap, some heavy footsteps. There was a shadow beneath the door. He would never know that it was the hollow suit of his girlfriend.

He knocked on the door lightly. "Hey, can I join you?"

"No." Eleanor's voice was harsh and panicked. She cleared it and said it again, more like herself, explaining that she just needed a moment. Nick pulled away from the door. He thought about her stress. It could be that. But he wasn't convinced.

Inside the bathroom, the green beast carried herself and Eleanor's skin into the bathtub, hoping it would take her weight. She had to duck her long neck from the ceiling. The shower hose only grazed the middle of her back. The guilt still clung to her even in the flow. Taking Eleanor off had not distanced her from it. She would have to live with it. This was not her boyfriend, and she had used him. She sobbed but no tears would come out.

Her claws tried to splash the water further up herself, but only a pathetic spray hit her chest and neck. She was still unclean.