It was getting dark out. I felt dizzy and restless. I thought about going for a walk but it was raining and I’d had too much coffee. My heart was beating too quickly for my body. I hit reply.
Do you often kiss girls at parties?
He responded within about twenty minutes.
since i got married, never. although i think that might make it worse.
My phone rang and I picked up, still looking at the email.
Do you want to hang out and watch Brazil? Bobbi said.
What?
Do you want to watch Brazil together? Hello? The dystopian film with the Monty Python guy. You said you wanted to see it.
What? I said. Yeah, okay. Tonight?
Are you sleeping or something? You sound weird.
I’m not sleeping. Sorry. I was looking at the internet. Sure, let’s hang out.
It took her about half an hour to get to my apartment. When she did, she asked if she could stay over. I said yes. We sat on my bed smoking and talking about the party the night before. I felt my heart beating hard in the knowledge that I was being deceitful, but outwardly I was a capable liar, even a competitive one.
Your hair is getting really long, Bobbi said.
Do you think we should cut it?
We decided to cut it. I sat on a chair in front of the living-room mirror, surrounded by old pages of newspaper. Bobbi used the same scissors I used to cut open kitchen items, but she washed them with boiled water and Fairy liquid first.
Do you still think Melissa likes you? I said.
Bobbi gave me a little indulgent smile, as if she had never actually ventured that theory.
Everyone likes me, she said.
But I mean, do you think she feels a particular connection with you, in comparison to other people. You know what I mean.
I don’t know, she’s difficult to get a read on.
I find that too, I said. Sometimes I feel like she loathes me.
No, she definitely likes you as a person. I think you remind her of her.
I felt even more dishonest then, and a sensation of heat crawled up into my ears. Maybe knowing that I’d betrayed Melissa’s trust made me feel like a liar, or maybe this imaginative connection between us suggested something else. I knew I was the one who had kissed Nick and not the other way around, but I also believed that he’d wanted me to. If I reminded Melissa of herself, was it possible I reminded Nick of Melissa also?
We could give you a fringe, said Bobbi.
No, people mix us up too much already.
It’s offensive to me how offensive that is to you.
After she cut my hair we made a pot of coffee and sat on the couch talking about the college feminist society. Bobbi had left the society the previous year, after they invited a British guest speaker who had supported the invasion of Iraq. The society president had described Bobbi’s objection to the invitation as ‘aggressive’ and ‘sectarian’ on the group’s Facebook page, which privately we all agreed was total bullshit, but because the speaker had never actually accepted the invite, Philip and I had not gone so far as to formally renounce our membership. Bobbi’s attitude toward this decision varied greatly, and tended to be an indicator of how well she and I were getting along at a given time. When things were good, she considered it a sign of my tolerance and even self-sacrifice to the cause of gender revolution. When we were having a minor dispute over something, she sometimes referred to it as an example of my disloyalty and ideological spinelessness.
Do they have a stance on sexism these days? she said. Or are there two sides to that as well?
They definitely want more women CEOs.
You know, there’s a distinct lack of female arms dealers, I’ve always thought.
We put on the film eventually, but Bobbi fell asleep while we were watching it. I wondered if she preferred sleeping in my apartment because being near to her parents caused her anxiety. She hadn’t mentioned it, and she was usually pretty free with the details of her emotional life, but family things were different. I didn’t feel like watching the film on my own so I switched it off and just read the internet instead. Eventually Bobbi woke up and then went to bed properly, on the mattress in my room. I liked having her sleeping there while I was awake, it felt reassuring.
That night while she was in bed I opened up my laptop and replied to Nick’s last email.
*
After that I went back and forth on the question of whether to tell Bobbi that I had kissed Nick. I had, regardless of my ultimate decision, meticulously rehearsed the way I would tell her about it, which details I would emphasise and which I would leave out.
It just kind of happened, I would say.
That’s crazy, Bobbi would reply. But I’ve always kind of thought he liked you.
I don’t know. He was really high, it was stupid.
But in the email he definitely implied it was his fault, didn’t he?
I could tell that I was using the Bobbi character mainly to reassure myself that Nick was interested in me, and I knew in real life Bobbi wouldn’t react that way at all, so I stopped. I did feel an urge to tell someone who would understand the situation, but I also didn’t want to risk Bobbi telling Melissa, which I thought she might do, not as a conscious betrayal but in an effort to weave herself further into Melissa’s life.
I decided not to tell her, which meant I couldn’t tell anyone, or no one who would understand. I mentioned to Philip that I had kissed someone I shouldn’t have kissed, but he didn’t know what I was talking about.
Is it Bobbi? he said.
No, it’s not Bobbi.
Worse or better than if you had kissed Bobbi?
Worse, I said. A lot worse. Just forget about it.
Jesus, I didn’t think anything could be worse than that.
There wasn’t any point in trying to tell him anyway.
I once kissed an ex at a party, he said. Weeks of drama. Ruined my focus.
Is that so.
She had a boyfriend, though, which complicated things.
I bet, I said.
*
The next day there was a book launch in Hodges Figgis and Bobbi wanted to go and get a copy of the book signed. It was a very warm afternoon in July and I sat inside for the hour before the launch pulling knots out of my hair with my fingers, pulling them so hard that little broken strands of hair tangled and snapped out. I thought: probably they won’t even be there, and I’ll have to come home and sweep up all these strands of hair and feel terrible. Probably nothing of import will happen in my life again and I’ll just have to sweep things up until I die.