“I’m sorry,” Will says in a low voice, and it really sounds like he is, which is nice. “Are you okay about it?”
I think about this question for a few seconds. Apparently, to connect you need to be vulnerable and open, and—as I’ve mentioned—that is something I historically struggle with. I like to keep myself contained, like a suitcase: easily zipped up so it can be removed at any given moment. But that strategy hasn’t worked out so well for me thus far, so maybe something needs to change.
“Yes.” I nod. “I think...I had some important lessons to learn. Still to learn, probably. I’m not very good at...sharing. At all.”
It’s curious: I can feel my brain sifting carefully through the last four months as if I’m panning for gold, looking for nuggets of relevant information. Is this it? Is that what I did wrong? How many times did Will ask me to share with him? To be open with him? Quickly, I scan my memories and count. Nine times. The last time was about four sentences before he dumped me. Twice, on two consecutive days.
I think maybe the epic mystery of my breakup with Will has just been solved.
“Sharing?” He frowns slightly. “Like...sharing food?”
“Oh, hell no.” I inadvertently make my Vomit Face. “I never share food. Gross. So unhygienic. You want food, you order it. Don’t just go around sticking your spoon in my cream puff.”
Will laughs loudly, and this time it definitely sounds like I meant sexually.
“No spoon in your cream puff.” He nods. “Noted.”
We smile at each other, and I feel something inside me click.
“So go on, then, Cassandra.” Will leans across the table and the edges of his fingers just touch the edges of mine. I feel a tingle all the way through my body, like a shock of lightning. “Share something with me that nobody knows. Anything. Doesn’t matter how big or how small. Prove the idiot wrong.”
I think for a few seconds about what I can safely tell Will.
I’ve never been in love.
Not really. Not fully. With him is by far the closest I’ve ever been.
And I’m really scared that I’m not capable of it, not built for it, not destined for it—that I don’t know what true love means, or feels like, and I never will—which means that I am, actually, broken.
“I keep a color chart with me at all times.” I pull my hand away, reach into my handbag, pull out a piece of cardboard and put it on the table. “There’s one next to my bed, and one in my bag, and one in my drawer at work, and one in the loo, and a couple of spares in case they get damaged. I literally go nowhere without one.”
Will picks it off the table and studies it. “Like...paint chips?”
“Yes.” I nod. “I find it very hard to...understand emotions. I read them like colors. I feel them like colors. I see and feel sounds as colors and lights and sensations too, especially when it’s dark, but that’s more literal. Physical. Like fireworks and fingertips. This is a little harder to explain. It’s like my brain can’t really work out what emotion it’s sensing, so it turns it into a color instead of a word. Not just mine. Everyone’s.”
“And is it the same color every time?” Will’s eyebrows shoot upward, then wrinkle together like a bird landing. “Like, red is anger, blue is sadness, yellow is happy, that kind of thing?”
“I wish.” I shake my head. “That would make it a whole lot easier. Then I could just translate it, and eventually I guess I’d learn how to be fluent. No. Sadly, the colors are different, every time. It’s always new, so I’m constantly starting from scratch.”
“Wow,” Will says, handing my color chart back. “That’s...”
“Weird.” I breathe out. “I know. But paint colors help ground me, give me something solid to reference, and that makes me happy. It works the other way round too. All I have to do is look at a color and I feel a really powerful emotion. Like, all the way through my body, even though I can’t quite tell what it is. I get so much joy from these chips of paints. It’s like...an encyclopedia of feelings.”
I put my little battered chart back in my bag and breathe out.
I never told Will that the first time.
Actually, I’ve never told any date that before. I tend to do a quick whip-round before they come to my house: unstick the charts from the walls, tuck them inside a book, make sure they don’t spot my bath-time reading stuck to a tile. Nothing hits the spot quite like an hour in blisteringly hot water, staring at an exquisite rosemary green, but I do not feel comfortable telling another human that when they’re considering having sex with me.
“Should I be worried?” Will says after a pause, finishing his drink.
Something inside me punctures.
“About me?” I nod. “Probably. You certainly wouldn’t be the first.”
“No.” Will grins and stands up. “Should I be worried about this ass of an ex-boyfriend? Because I think you’re awesome, Cassandra. And I don’t want to spend more time thinking you’re more awesome, only to find out some dude who doesn’t appreciate you properly is lurking just around the corner.”
In Greek mythology, Iris is the goddess of rainbows: the human personification of the spectrum, who uses the symbol of the rainbow to link the gods to humanity, sky to earth. And as I sit in that grotty little pub and look up at Will’s lovely face, that’s suddenly exactly how I feel.
As if I have every single color possible inside me too.
“No,” I say quietly. “He’s in the past.”
“Good.” Will leans down to kiss me and I didn’t see it coming and it’s soft and slow and hours sooner than expected and it wraps around us both like a bright orange cat. “Same again?”
I close my eyes.
“Good.” Will leans down to kiss me and I lean into it, enjoy it, try to bookmark the memory so I can return to it whenever I want to. “Same again?”
I smile, nod. “Yes, please.”
Because Will is in the past.
He’s just in the present, and maybe the future now too.
15
What to do with all this happiness?
I am Psyche, gazing at winged Eros; I am Hero, united with Leander. I am Eurydice, watching Orpheus from an olive tree. And okay, all these romances went pretty badly wrong, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make.
I bet they still felt amazing at the beginning.
“Cassandra! This isn’t your normal day!”
Beaming at the floor, I hold out my open handbag and desperately wish I’d removed the inexplicably unwrapped tampon, now flinging itself around in there like a toddler on a dance floor.
“Are you okay?” My bag gets scanned and handed back. “We normally set our clock by you. Saturday, 11:00 a.m. That’s Cassandra Time. Every single week, without fail. Here comes Cassandra. It’s Friday today, isn’t it?”
“I reckon it must be Saturday.” The other security guard grins and quickly swipes the sensor down the green jacket I repurchased on my way here, worn on top of my white Friday jumpsuit. “I’m much more inclined to believe that Cassandra is right and the British Museum is wrong.”
“Too right,” the other one laughs. “Let them know. Cassandra is in control of time this week—Saturday it is.”
I continue to beam happily, still staring at the floor.
Little do they know that I haven’t actually been here for nearly four months. I got caught up in the exotic novelty of Having a Relationship—sex, wandering through Borough Market, eating pizza, browsing Sainsbury’s, much of which, I’m now realizing, involves food—and clearly something had to give. Apparently, waking up at the same time every weekend to go to the same place to look at the same artifacts and read the same signs and eat the same sandwich from the same café is simply not as appealing to brand-new boyfriends as it is to me.
But the internet has made it very clear—To Connect to Others, You Must First Connect to Yourself—and this is the place in London where I feel most like me. Although, honestly, I think me and myself are already pretty well connected: we spend an awful lot of quality time together.
“You should check out the new exhibition on Peru,” the security guard calls as I shoulder my handbag and charge toward the entrance. “Gold llamas and everything—it’s going to blow your mind!”
“Will do!” I lie cheerfully, because I don’t come here to have my mind blown.
I come here to fit the pieces of my mind back together again.