He was shoving his stuff into his rucksack. ‘Some bloke turned up pretending that he’d come to collect my car, that Dad had asked him to.’
‘But I picked you up this morning? Your car isn’t here.’
‘Yes, I know that,’ Jonny snapped.
‘All right.’ I frowned. ‘So who was he really then, this man?’
‘A journalist.’
‘Oooh.’ I brightened. ‘From where?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it. I’m going to message Mum to come and get me. See you later.’
He put his bag on his back and I think he was just going to walk away. It was super awkward for a moment, but I cooled it down.
‘Jonny, you don’t need to do that. I said I’d take you back.’
He sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, then suddenly opened them again. ‘Fine, but I want to leave now.’ He started walking out of the room before I had time to answer. I grabbed my own stuff and went after him. He didn’t say a word as we walked down to the car, even though some of the others said: ‘Bye, JDay’ and ‘See you later?’ He just nodded, not smiling, and they gave me a wtf? look. I just had to shrug, and mouth ‘Sorry’, practically having to frickin’ trot behind him to try and keep up as he marched off, getting ever further in front of me with his crazy spider legs.
‘Jonny, can you slow down?’ I called behind him. ‘My skirt is actually too tight to walk this fast?’
He stopped, and waited pointedly for me to catch up, but then instantly strode off again the second I was alongside him. I watched him bomb towards the car and began to feel pissed off. I flicked a V sign at his back and paused to decide how I was going to play this.
He was waiting on Bertie’s passenger side when I arrived, having deliberately slowed down to take my time. I was prepared to help and listen. What I was not going to do was be a mug. He could NOT walk all over me. I blipped Bertie open and watched Jonny sling his bag on the back seat, and fold himself in. He wasn’t designed for small three-door cars. I got in myself and started Bertie up, checking my phone last of all. Alice had sent me a GIF. It was hilarious, and I tried to send one back, but my stupid phone kept crashing.
‘This heap of shit!’ I pressed the screen repeatedly. ‘Time for an UPGRADE!’ I sang, finally getting it to work, as Jonny exploded next to me.
‘Will you just drive the car, please?’
I turned to him in astonishment, my phone still in hand. ‘Literally, what is wrong with you? Are you getting hypo? Do you need a snack?’
‘No, I am not “getting hypo”. What’s wrong with you? You’ve started the car. So why are you sat here on your PHONE sending some pointless message to Alice?’
‘OK, Dad,’ I said – and at that, he suddenly flung the door open and started climbing out.
‘Where are you going now?’ I sighed. He could be such a little bitch.
‘I’m going to walk home. I need some peace.’
I wrinkled my nose. ‘Walk? Are you crazy? It’ll take ages and—’ I checked my phone again, ‘it’s like four already? We’re meant to be at Alice’s around eight?’
‘Yeah, and I’m going to flake tonight, so it doesn’t matter.’ He tried to yank his bag back through the small gap between the side of the passenger seat headrest and the door, but it got stuck. ‘Fuck – this – shit!’ he exclaimed as he tussled with it, then really pulled when it still wouldn’t give.
‘Hey! Be careful!’ I exclaimed. ‘You’ll hurt Bertie!’
He turned to me and gave me one of his ice stares. ‘It’s a car.’
‘No, she’s not. Alberta is my baby.’ I stroked the steering wheel.
He let the bag go, and it thudded back onto the seat as he put his hands on his head and looked at me wide-eyed. ‘I just can’t do this any more.’
‘OK – unnecessary drama.’ I raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ll just flip the seat forward if you get out of the way?’
‘No – I mean I can’t do this any more. I want us to split up. I’m sorry, Cherry.’
I froze. ‘You’re finishing with me? For real?’
‘Yeah. I am. I should have done this ages ago.’
Tears sprung to my eyes. ‘Because of me, or because of her?’
‘Because of everything!’ he shouted, making me jump. ‘Everyone wants a piece of me, everyone is looking, everyone has something to say. Everywhere I go this whole thing is following me. I can’t escape!’
‘Don’t shout at me!’ I yelled back. ‘And I thought that’s what you wanted anyway, to get attention to all of this, and you.’
He sighed and then collapsed back down on the seat awkwardly, facing backwards this time with his legs stretching out of the open door beside him. ‘I’m not dealing with things well. You know that. Everyone knows it. I just need some space at the moment. I’m feeling very overwhelmed.’
I started to shiver; the door was open but I felt cold from inside as I tried to process what he’d just said. He was ending it. This was actually happening, and it was tragic. ‘But I want to help you and support you through this. I love you.’ Just like always, he didn’t say it back. He’d only ever said it to me once, when he’d not had anything to eat, got completely off his face at Ol’s and I was truly out of my mind with terror that he was actually going to die because none of us could find his pen.
‘I know you love me,’ he said, suddenly miserable, ‘but you shouldn’t. I’m not worth it.’
‘That’s not true. What she did to you…’ I trailed off for a moment as I tried to find the right words. It was really hard knowing what to say. Instead I reached out very slowly, took his hand and just held it. But that was kind of stressy too, not knowing if he wanted to be touched, or if I would make him feel all invaded – but like, if I didn’t touch him, would he think I didn’t want to because he was in some way dirty? Which wasn’t true at all. It was really confusing. He looked so sad though. I wished I’d let him call his mum.
I’d known for a while, obviously, that he had something to tell me. At Ol’s party, when he turned up really late – his sister was having some kind of crisis and he’d needed to be there for her – he was actually totally wired. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong with Ruby, only that it was personal to her. I didn’t say anything to him, but I saw Ruby in town the next morning coming out of Costa as I was going into Fenwick, and she didn’t exactly look like she’d been having a meltdown the night before. In fact, she was with a new bloke; holding his hand and laughing. Where ever he had been, it wasn’t with his sister. Dr Bitch said she was in her house alone all night and that Jonny drove to her house to watch her from outside like some sad perv. While that might have explained why he was ‘excited’, that’s not exactly Jonny’s style. Just look at him. He doesn’t exactly need to window lick. That’s pretty obvious.
Anyway, after I got back from holiday we had a really great three weeks; some beautiful moments. We drove Bertie to Brighton, we talked about when we were going to launch our YouTube channel – Jonny said he was investigating ways to give our profiles a real upswing, fast. Everything was really, really good. It was so hot one day, we just lay on my bed in each other’s arms next to the open window and listened to the birds singing, and when he kissed me, I was completely happy. I took a selfie – no filters – just lying there together, holding each other. It’s my favourite picture of us.