James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

The boy smiled. ‘So you’d lay a hand on me? That will be tough to explain to the police. They’d love another child abuse case.’

‘Honey,’ she said in her irritatingly effective ‘let’s-­be-­sensible-­now-­voice’. ‘Don’t do that. If you hit him, he’s won.’

‘What?’

‘Can’t you see what he’s up to?’ she said. ‘He’s trying to play us against each other, and he was about to succeed just now.’

He stared back at the boy in disbelief. ‘Is that true? Is that really what you’re after?’

The boy scratched at his nose. ‘She said it, I didn’t. I just want to be sure that you’re making the right decision.’

‘But why us? And why today?’

‘Why not?’ said the boy.

It was the almost indifferent way the boy said it that caused the reaction. He could feel his legs quivering, and it was only force of will that prevented him from collapsing. Instead he clung to the tabletop. He was at his wits’ end and looked confusedly at her for help.

She sat with her arms crossed and looked at the boy. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘We’ll do it.’

We will? He didn’t trust his own voice just then and kept quiet.

The boy clapped his hands excitedly. ‘Fantastic! This will be fun.’

‘Darling?’ he tried.

She looked at him with a determined glance. There was still a tinge of red in her eyes.

‘We can do this,’ she said decidedly.

He nodded and could tell that now it was he who was on the verge of crying. Instead, he moved his chair so that he was sitting beside her. They grasped each other’s hands. He took a deep breath.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘We’re ready.’

‘Tell me how you met. Was it love at first sight?’

They looked at each other.

‘Not exactly,’ he said.

‘It’s a little complicated,’ she said.

‘We were friends, before we were lovers,’ he said.

‘He was going out with one of my friends,’ she said.

The boy tilted his head at an angle. ‘You don’t say.’

She waved this off. ‘I didn’t know her that well. We were in the same study group, but I was closer to some of the others.’

‘I had broken up with her when we met,’ he added.

The boy frowned. ‘Wait a minute, there’s something I don’t understand. You said you were friends before you were lovers, but how could you be friends if you didn’t know each other better?’

‘Okay, “friends” was maybe the wrong word to use. It would probably be more accurate to say we were close acquaintances,’ he said.

‘We would meet at the same parties, and we used to have nice conversations. We had good chemistry, but it wasn’t any more than that because we were going out with other people,’ she said.

‘So how did you get together, if I may ask?’ said the boy.

He laughed, a little too loudly. ‘Ha! That’s actually a really funny story.’

‘It happened online,’ she said.

‘We hadn’t seen each other for a while but were still friends on Facebook, and then she commented on one of my posts and I replied and it just went on from there,’ he said.

‘How very modern,’ the boy said. ‘What did you post?’

‘Just some lame joke that only we understood. We still have the whole thread on our profiles,’ he said.

‘Yes, let’s print it out and have someone turn it into a wedding song,’ she said with a smile.

They laughed quietly together. The boy watched them with an unfathomable look. ‘That actually wasn’t a particularly funny story.’

He snorted. ‘Sorry, kid. But sometimes people just love each other, without having to go all Hollywood about it.’

‘Okay,’ the boy said. ‘But when did you realize you loved each other?’

‘That’s hard to say,’ he said. ‘In my case, it was something that happened gradually.’ He turned towards her. ‘I just know that suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about you, and I was all happy inside every time I saw you.’

She smiled. ‘That says it all, doesn’t it?’

‘Very touching,’ said the boy. ‘But what about you? When was the flash of lightning? Or did it just sneak up on you too?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I know precisely when it happened.’

‘Really?’ he said. ‘You’ve never said anything about that. When was it then?’

She cleared her throat and looked over at the boy. ‘Isn’t there something else you’d rather ask us about? I have a hard time seeing what this will prove.’

‘On the contrary,’ said the boy. ‘Your unwillingness to answer a simple question is just making this more interesting. I think your fiancé feels the same way?’

‘Honey?’ he said.

She sighed. ‘It was that evening when we’d been to the movies to see Sex and the City 2 , even though the World Cup was on, and I got sick after eating a shawarma and threw up on the train. You held my hair and on the way back you took my bag, which was full of vomit, and carried it the whole way home. It was then that I realized I loved you.’

‘But . . .’ he said. ‘That wasn’t even two years ago.’

‘And how long is it that you’ve been a couple?’ asked the boy.

‘F-­four years,’ he said.

‘So if I’ve calculated right, that means that . . .’

‘SHUT UP!!!’ He rose from his seat so the chair toppled over with a bang, and bent down over the boy. ‘One more word, you little shit, and I swear . . .’

She reached out towards him. ‘Darling, please . . .’

He pulled away from her touch. ‘And you,’ he said and pointed at her. ‘Don’t you get started either. What the hell was that shit just now? And to say it to him .’

All the color had vanished from his face, and he took a deep breath and tried not to start crying.

‘Darling, let me explain,’ she said.

‘Fuck you,’ he said and left the room.

She expected to hear the front door slam, but instead it was the door to the bathroom that was opened and closed. She sank back down in the chair and took her head in her hands.

‘Shit,’ she said.

‘You were just being honest,’ the boy said.

She shot daggers at him. ‘I’m going to him now, no matter what you say, and I don’t give a shit if it goes against your rules.’

The boy shrugged. ‘It’s a free country, and there are no rules. You can do what you want, as long as you manage to convince me that you two should be together. Right now I have my doubts.’

She got up from the chair.

‘This isn’t over yet,’ she said.

‘Honey?’ she knocked carefully on the door.

No answer. But she could hear him inside. It sounded as if he were hyperventilating, but she knew that it was his struggling to hold back tears. She tried the door handle. It was locked.

‘Honey, won’t you open up?’

Still no answer.

‘Talk to me, baby,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about what I said in there, but we have to talk about it if we’re going to have a chance.’

She could hear him mumble something half-­stifled.

‘What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.’

‘Leave me alone,’ he said.

‘Honey,’ her voice cracked, and she could feel the tears welling up. She leaned against the door. ‘Forgive me. You know how much I love you. I have the whole time, but that evening was the first time I was 100% sure.’

The door opened and she nearly fell in.

He looked at her with an empty expression in his eyes, which scared her more than anything else. ‘Two years,’ he said tonelessly. ‘We were together for two years without your really knowing whether you loved me.’

‘Listen to me, baby,’ she said. ‘Of course I did, otherwise we wouldn’t have stayed together. But it wasn’t until that night when I realized how much you can love another person. Suddenly I could see the rest of my life crystal clear before me, and you were with me the whole way.’