If I Never Met You: Chapter 19

You Were Tagged in a Photo by Jamie Carter.

Through her blurred senses, Laurie squinted at her handset. They’d gone live, hence the confetti of notifications. She opened Facebook and saw Jamie had captioned it:

Great night @Laurie. Though not sure if I should be thanking you or hating you for this hangover ☺

With morning bedhead, in an old T-shirt, and with a light cranial throbbing from the martinis, Laurie appreciated the staged glamour of the picture all the more. They did look like a pair of celebrities, of their own invention. Jamie’s postproduction tinkering had given it a sheen, an Oscars after-party atmosphere. Laurie didn’t really look like that creature who was standing in for her, she wasn’t living that life. But what mattered was everyone else thought she was. One big game of bluff.

She scanned the comments, forgetting that it being Jamie’s post meant most of the people were strangers to her.

Looking good, sir Wow, great shot. Like an Armani advert. Where is this?

You look like the Stark who had his throat cut in the Red Wedding in Game of Thrones. And she looks like the Dragon woman’s handmaiden Missandei, i.e., both fit <3 She’s beautiful, who’s this, Jamie?

Well played, woof The name’s Carter, Jamie Carter Whoa! Exotic totty!

Jamie had replied to the last saying: “Laurie is from Hebden Bridge—surely even you’ve been to Yorkshire, Dave.” Since his not being sure of her name, she noticed Jamie had been very attentive to any detail she offered, and it was a neat way to point up the microaggression without going full attack dog.

There were tons of likes, eighty-five in total, Bharat among them, and Dan’s sister, Ruth, had commented:

Laurie didn’t see that coming. She hit reply and typed a thank-you. She’d always liked Ruth, but since Dan’s mum took Dan’s side, she’d assumed Ruth had done the same and their obligatory “sorry to hear” “I’m fine thanks for asking” text exchange had been friendly but fairly economical on both sides.

What did Dan think? Had he seen it?

From her busy WhatsApp to the half-dozen texts, she could see the required splash had been made. And the shamelessness of these inquiries: people she never spoke to—who hadn’t gotten in touch to say —now eagerly fishing.

Laurie only replied to two people directly: Jamie, to reassure him the wording was fine, and Bharat.

☺

Laurie couldn’t deal with the agitation caused by the constant ping-ping-ping of new comments and likes and queries. Jamie inhabited a different online world to her, a busy, interactive one—in fact the man seemed to be a social hub, and Laurie found it overwhelming.

As the thread underneath wore on, friends outright asked if he and Laurie were “an item,” and Jamie replied “early days” with a smiley emoji, and “if I’m lucky” to another. He and Laurie agreed in hasty further messages, finessing their approach, that vague, noncommittal positivity was the best bluster. Goodness, it felt odd.

He was right about the mixed messaging stimulating more fuss, as everyone tried to figure out if what seemed like an announcement actually was one.

After a twitchy morning, Laurie found herself irresistibly drawn to putting on her tracksuit trousers, finding an old Couch to 5K app on her phone, and plodding around the streets, warily at first.

She could only tolerate so much of the female voice instructing her to now walk briskly for TWO MINUTES before she switched the app off, turned her music up, and ran for herself, until the pace and the pounding of blood and the impact of her feet on the pavement was the only thing that existed.

Laurie ignored shouts from a car full of lads, dodged around strollers, and urged herself onward, and as she arrived back home, feeling exultant, thought, this is why Dan used it as springboard for leaving her. She felt ready to fight a polar bear. Unfortunately it also put Laurie in mind of what it readied Dan for. She got a flash image of grunting and pumping and wanted to die.

Was he going to ruin everything for her? It was hard to feel anywhere was her space when they were colleagues.

Laurie peeled off her clothes to shower, watching herself in the mirror, and thought of Jamie’s pushy mate calling her . What a sham, a long con job made of shapewear and filters. She didn’t feel either exotic or like totty, she felt like a woman from Yorkshire in her late thirties with soft, malleable, untended parts, some of which were silvered with stretch marks, and with unruly hair down there that definitely wasn’t sculpted into a martini glass shape.

She’d never put her naked form to any particular objective test of desirability because she was desired by Dan. She put her hands over her breasts and hoiked them up an inch: Was that where they should be? Was that where they used to be? Laurie honestly couldn’t remember. If she asked Dan this sort of thing, as erotic memory keeper, he’d make a joke and then usually lunge and grapple with her.

Laurie hadn’t considered herself as being defined by what any man thought of her and yet there was no denying that her body, unwanted now by her lifelong partner, felt like a body she had to reassess and own for herself again.

The thought of being exposed in front of someone else of the opposite sex provoked abject terror, yet it was that or lifelong celibacy.

Last time Emily had shown her Tinder it was full of men called things like Kev and Daz sitting naked in hotel bidets, swigging from bottles of Peroni, declaring their “massive love for the sesh.”

Maybe Keanu Reeves films and a vibrator would be preferable, Laurie thought, turning the water on.