Vietnam

Winner of The Fish Short Story Prize 2023 & shortlisted for The Bridport Prize, 2022. 

This is a short extract for copyright reasons. To read the whole story, please visit Fish Publishing.

The day we met two things happened: I started going grey and my period came back after six years. It was as if my body woke up and said a-ha, here he is but at the same time oh shit.

The body always knows.

It was a Christmas party I’d forced myself to go to. I wore a red dress and felt too tall. You stood in front of the microphone and apologised for dressing like Alan Partridge. That was probably the moment.

We went for coffee a week later. I knocked mine over. You ate a chocolate slice with a knife and fork and when I asked you why you said you didn’t know. We talked for two hours. I tried to work out if I liked the strange timbre of your voice, the high pitch of your explosive laugh. I felt you looking through me, beyond the jumper, beyond the skin.

As the cafe closed, you made a casual reference to your partner. I felt ridiculous. We parted in the snow and I shut the box of you in my mind.

You unlocked it five days later with a text. All it said was Happy Christmas. I had a visceral reaction, a tiny explosion somewhere in my gut. I waited and sent one back: Happy Boxing Day. Twenty four hours later you replied. Happy Post Boxing Day it said, and I thought I see.

We kept finding reasons to communicate. A book recommendation, a creative opportunity. The smattering of texts became flurries followed by days of silence, most of which I spent berating myself for being so affected by it. I’d just about manage to shut the box again, when you’d send a new offering - a link, a question, a video of snow falling. I would vow not to respond, then draft replies in my mind as I paced the slushy streets of Sheffield. You were a scab I couldn’t stop picking.

We met again, this time for three hours, during which a silent negotiation took place: we would not mention Her.

I became a cliche overnight. I couldn’t eat or sleep. You frogmarched me out of my fussy little life into a kind of glorious hell. The texts came daily. Each one a shot of espresso. You sent songs. I listened to them repeatedly, googled the lyrics and tried to understand you. I had too much energy. I started dancing in the flat. I lost weight. People fretted. It was like a disease.

One Sunday morning, you sent a message asking if I would help with your stand up routine.  You knew my background, had seen the films. I felt important. You arrived, drenched from football, and wrestled your enormous bike into my tiny flat. I sat with my back against the oven and watched your set. I wasn’t sure if it worked but I couldn’t believe your bravery. I would never have taken such a risk in front of a potential lover and took it as confirmation that my feelings were not reciprocated.

But we are not all the same.

And there is no one quite like you.

We got into your Fiat 500 and drove to Clowne in the pouring rain, which you said was funny in itself. You were brilliant that night and I knew I was powerless. In the bar afterwards, all I wanted to do was touch the soft skin behind your ear.

You are so beautiful.

I became your director of sorts. It was strange being back on the circuit, rediscovering the world that almost buried me. I saw it anew, and it was not so terrifying with you in it. Something inside me stirred and whispered the lights, look at the lights.

On the way to gigs, we played Snap! with our life stories. Did we match? Could our lives tesselate? There was a certain freedom about being in the car - two people side by side heading in the same direction. I felt I could ask you anything, so that’s what I did. Excluding the obvious, obviously.

The goodbyes were abrupt and clean. You never touched me. Every time I closed the door, I felt absurd. I was terrified you could sense the depth of my desperation, smell it on me like cigarettes. But I am nothing if not proud. I didn’t linger in the doorway. I took my cues.

*

It was February when you invited me to a DJ night in Crookes. I turned up in a jumpsuit and you said I looked like a communist factory worker. We danced for hours. It was my first sober night out having ditched the drink two years before. I think you were simultaneously impressed and annoyed by my abstinence. I left at 2am and you sent a message asking why, then another, then another. They said everything and nothing. We’d crossed some sort of invisible line. We both knew it, but not what to do about it.

You ignored me for a week and I thought I might die.

To read the rest of the story, please visit Fish Publishing.