‘Even smart people get it wrong sometimes.’
‘You still like him,’ she says, and it makes me angry, but not for the same reason it did three years ago. I don’t like him anymore, not like that. But he doesn’t deserve this and I don’t need it. ‘He’s my best friend,’ I tell her. ‘And I have a job in the bookstore as of today, so from now on I’ll be looking out for him.’
I turn around to pick him up and take him home, but he’s gone.
I do a few loops of the club but I can’t see him. Despite my changed hair, some people from school recognise me and I’m caught talking to them. Emily, Aziza and Beth want to know what I’m studying. I don’t admit to failing because that will lead to the bigger story that I don’t want to tell. And even if I did end up telling it, I wouldn’t want to be shouting the news about Cal over music in a club. Instead, I tell them I’m taking a year off to save some money, but yes, I got into university and I’m going to major in science with a view to becoming a marine biologist. Their lives have gone as planned – Emily’s studying the stars, Aziza’s interested in environmental law and Beth is thinking about pre-med.
Before the conversation can go any further I tell them I’m looking for Henry and ask if they’ve seen him. They haven’t, so I keep moving. I walk fast, avoiding people I recognise or people who look like they recognise me.
After about half an hour I give up, thinking Henry must have stumbled home. I make a last stop in the bathroom before leaving, and I’m washing my hands when I hear drunken poetry being recited from inside the end cubicle.
I walk down, push open the door, and there he is, lying on the ground, his head between the wall and the bowl. ‘Do you mind? I’m having a private moment here, Rachel.’
I crouch on the floor beside him. ‘Here’s a tip for a private moment: don’t have it on the floor of the girls’ toilets.’
He looks mildly confused.
‘The added extras didn’t give it away?’ I ask.
He lifts his head and squints at the unit in the opposite corner. ‘Not a mailbox?’
‘Not a mailbox, Henry,’ I say, as I try, unsuccessfully, to haul him into a standing position.
‘Leave me here. I’m dead.’
‘You’re not dead, Henry.’
‘You’re right. Dead would be better than this. Amy is with Greg Smith. The love of my life is, as we speak, kissing a moron.’
‘Henry, if the love of your life is kissing a moron, it’s probably time to reassess whether or not she’s the love of your life.’
He makes a little head movement to indicate I may have a point, and then takes my hand and struggles himself into a standing position. We stay here for a while, holding each other, while he gains his balance.
‘You smell of apples,’ he says.
‘Don’t smell me, Henry.’
‘You know, Amy always smells, just faintly, of washing powder. She breathes her fringe up and it drifts back down like a tiny parachute. Years from now, washing powder and documentaries on sky divers will still give me a hard-on.’
‘Don’t feel you have to talk. I’m really very comfortable with the quiet,’ I tell him as we walk out of the toilets and towards the exit.
‘Sleep it off, Shakespeare,’ Katia calls on our way past, and Henry gives her a wave. Before we leave, I see what he hasn’t noticed: Amy on the other side of the bar, watching the two of us. I’d bet any money that Henry looks more attractive to Amy the second he’s with someone else.
‘You’re an idiot, Henry,’ I say, and he refuses to answer on the grounds that he might incriminate himself.
The night’s still warm, the heat trapped in concrete as well as sky. Henry’s leaning on my shoulder with all his weight, which would have been fine ten months ago, when I was fit enough to swim two kilometres in the ocean, but now my arms are aching.
It’s Friday night, and there’s no clear break in the traffic, so I have to walk us the long way to the bookstore, via the pedestrian lights. Henry talks to every local he sees. He’s got quite a lot to say about Amy and The Dickhead. I try pulling him away but there’s no moving Henry when he’s in the middle of a rant, so when he starts on about Amy to a couple walking their Great Dane, I sit on a bench and wait while he gets it all out. His arms spread wide to demonstrate the size of his love for Amy and narrow to demonstrate the size of Greg’s brain.
‘This,’ he says, pointing in my direction, ‘is my long-lost, best friend, Rachel Sweetie. Rachel and I haven’t spoken in a while,’ he says. ‘Because she didn’t miss me. She left town without waking me up. She left my Gaiman out in the rain.’
It’s hard to believe that even drunk, Henry’s still carrying on with the lie, I think as the couple leave, and he sways his way to me and the bench. He keeps opening and shutting his right eye like he’s trying to get a clear picture. ‘You’ve come back rude and gorgeous,’ he says, and leans his head on my shoulder.
‘Not gorgeous,’ I say, moving my hand over my hair.
‘It makes you look like Audrey Hepburn. If she’d been a surfer.’
‘I don’t surf.’
‘Neither did Audrey Hepburn,’ he says, and leaves the bench to lie on the nature strip. ‘I just need to rest a while. You can go. I’m nearly home.’
I consider leaving but the thought of going back to the warehouse isn’t all that appealing so I decide to lie next to him. His arm touches mine, and there’s that familiar warmth.
I never planned on ignoring Henry forever, just until he wrote saying he was sorry he’d ignored my letter. I just needed him to tell me he was flattered, but he didn’t feel the same way. My plan was to forgive him, as soon as he told the truth.
‘Why?’ he asks again tonight. ‘I mean we were best friends. And I know for a fact that you wrote to Lola.’ He turns his head to the side so our faces are almost touching. ‘Why?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘You didn’t miss me.’
Henry’s a terrible liar and even if he wasn’t, he’s so drunk that only truth is spilling out of him. ‘You didn’t get the letter,’ I say, wondering how that’s possible since he looks in the Prufrock almost every day, and even if he didn’t, I left a note in his book.
‘What letter?’ he asks, and I know that however it happened, that letter went missing. It’s possible Henry picked up his book and the letter dropped out. It’s possible someone took the letter from the Letter Library before he got to it.
He’s drunk and thinking slowly, so it’s not hard to stall for time. I stare at the sky, pick at the grass, all the while I’m thinking of the right thing to say. He wrote me so many letters, long and Henry-like letters, and I wanted to answer every one but I didn’t. Instead I imagined how hurt he’d feel when he found out I was writing to Lola and not him.
‘What letter?’ he asks again.
I almost tell him. I should tell him, so he knows I didn’t forget him. But I have a second chance to save face and it actually doesn’t matter anymore. We’ve moved on. ‘It was just a goodbye letter. I left it for you at the counter of the bookstore but I guess it went missing.’
‘What did it say?’
‘Goodbye, the way most goodbye letters do, Henry.’
‘But, why didn’t you reply to my letters?’
‘I got busy. I met a guy – Joel.’
‘What kind of a name is Joel?’
‘It’s a fairly common one, actually.’
‘And he became your best friend?’
‘Look,’ I say to end this whole line of conversation. ‘I got busy. I fell in love. I was preoccupied with school and new friends. But I should have written, Henry. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’
‘Did you miss me at all?’ he asks.
‘I did,’ I say, and at the same time I tell myself not to do something stupid and cry and tell him how desperate I was to see him at the funeral. I try not to think about how I could have had him there with me if I’d listened to Cal and not been so stubborn.
‘So we’re friends again?’ he asks, and I tell him we are.
‘Good friends?’