I even managed to keep my focus when a random dude appeared at my front door two days ago. He’d confirmed my name before handing me an envelope containing two VIP tickets for Hugo’s next show and two more tickets that were to be exchanged for backstage passes. I remember watching him walk away, seeing him climb into a shiny black Merc, but can’t actually recall if I spoke back to him. I think I just stood there for a while, at the open door, staring out onto the street. Not because I’d lost focus or my mind had been thrown into irrational turmoil, but because I’d felt suddenly too hot. Summer was coming, that’s all.
It made no sense that, according to the app on my phone, the rain outside was going to continue for another two days because I’d felt a little hot ever since. Flustered. Uncomfortable. In reality, I was only lying to myself. The conversations playing out in my head, the excuses being created, were the things I would’ve been saying to Chrissie if I’d had the balls to confide in her. But I didn’t. Eventually, several minutes after the Mercedes drove away, I remembered how to move and took the tickets into the kitchen, stuffing them to the back of the crap drawer where I planned to forget they existed.
That plan had been as successful as the one to eat a full portion of broccoli. From that moment, that kitchen drawer might as well have been sprayed in neon paint. It stood out from all the others. I felt it looking at me whenever I walked in the room. It made me nervous, as if it contained an unstable pipe bomb that might detonate if I closed the dishwasher a little too harshly. I didn’t dare go near it again, couldn’t bear to see the contents, read his name, see his face faded into the background behind the printed text.
I was focused. Completely and absolutely. On Hugo frigging Hayes…and I hated him for it. Why now? What was he doing? A nice gesture? Bit of fun? Was it even him or had his manager had some spares lying around? I felt confused and angry, desperate to see him and desperate to forget we’d ever known each other. I’d spent too long mourning him eight years ago and too long reliving it all over again when I lost my mother. I wouldn’t do it again. I couldn’t. And that’s why, tonight, those two seats would be empty.
I didn’t remember falling asleep but a knock on my door startled me so much that my body jerked awake with a throat-ripping snort. Attractive. No wonder I was single. Squinting through one eye, I made out the time in the corner of the TV. It was after midnight. Who the hell knocked on doors after midnight? Deciding it was probably a takeaway courier with the wrong address, I closed my eyes again, too comfy to get up and make my way to bed.
They knocked again.
“For God’s sake,” I said through gritted teeth. My arm dropped off the edge of the settee and my hand landed in something cold and sticky. “Ugh, what the…” Rolling over, I looked down at the remnants of my chicken dinner from earlier. It served me right, I told myself as I pulled my gravy-coated fingers away, for being a lazy cow.
Another knock.
“I’m coming!” I barked, swinging my feet onto the floor. “Jesus.” I plodded over to the door like a zombie, keeping my sticky hand in the air, fingers curled like a set of claws. With the other, I twisted the key and pried the door open, but didn’t remove the safety chain in case I ended up as the victim in a Netflix murder documentary.
With a disgruntled huff, I peered out into the open gap. “I didn’t order any-” Hugo…
I slammed the door closed. I didn’t mean to. Or maybe I did. It happened instinctively, like a reflex. For eight years I’d thought about him, held imaginary conversations with him, longed for him. I’d watched him bring joy to millions, the kind of joy he used to give only to me. I’d only been able to see his smile on a screen, hear his voice through a speaker, all the while wishing I could feel his fingers in mine just once more, inhale the scent of him so I could remember not to forget it. And now…he was here. At my door. Right there in the midnight darkness getting soaked by the spring rain.
And I couldn’t bear it.
He knocked again and I felt it against my forehead, which was now pressed against the door. We were separated only by a bit of wood and PVC. Our skin was almost touching. I could practically feel him as I imagined the door disappearing and his hand making contact with my face.