Maddie
Hi Emma,
We’d be happy to! X
* * *
Cam and I spend the whole of Saturday together, driving around town in her car, picking up balloons, snacks, barbecue food, cups, and decorations from various shops. We stopped for lunch and both ordered soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. I give her a very brief synopsis about my return to work, Love Stories, and Ben, but not Alex. I tell her I’ll be moving out soon to live with Nia. She tells me all about teaching summer school classes and her students, who are hilarious but aren’t learning as quickly as they should （she blames the rise of social media） and how she’s been thinking a lot about renting out her room and going traveling.
On Sunday, my job is to set up with Cam whilst Emma is out with Jo. We move the big fold-out table into the garden and put on some music as her friends trickle in. We set up snacks and drinks in the kitchen and Olivia, the first of Jo’s friends to arrive, gets started with the barbecue. Cam and I play host until we hear Jo scream at the door. She must have seen the numbers 2 and 8 balloons we tied to the front door’s knocker. When she comes in, we yell “Surprise!” let off party poppers, and someone pops open champagne, which spills on the carpet. We all choose to ignore the growing dark stain.
More of Jo’s friends arrive and an hour later, I’m sat in the corner of the garden with Emma, who’s finishing her master’s, Olivia who works at a literary agency, Kenny who’s a junior casting agent, Tinka a dancer, Cam, Jo and … Sam.
“Look, I know you loved it, but it’s overrated,” Kenny says. “Yes, it is!”
I’m quickly learning that Kenny is very opinionated. He’s Black, wearing a fedora hat and a brightly patterned shirt. How he pulls them both off is a mystery that I highly suspect has something to do with his attention-drawing personality.
“That doesn’t mean it was bad,” he says, “but people have shone this ridiculous light on it to blind others into thinking it’s groundbreaking stuff when really? It was just okay. There, I said it.”
“You’re absolute garbage, Ken,” Emma says.
“Something I have in common with that book.”
We laugh and Jo throws crisps at him.
“It wasn’t garbage,” he says. “I retract that declaration. Look, I enjoyed it, it was good, but I didn’t love it and I have difficulty believing those of a high literary standard did.”
“But didn’t you love how it was written?” I ask, gesturing enthusiastically toward him. A pickle falls out of my burger in the process. “It was so different from all the other bestsellers we’ve been reading recently. It was beautiful and raw and written so…”
Kenny smiles. “Sparsely.”
“It’s called economical language.”
“Aha! And who coined that phrase, dear Madeleine?” Kenny asks. “A group of actual readers or her publicity team who couldn’t think of another way to say: my writer lacks a little imagination.”
Jo boos.
“She detailed everything without saying much,” Olivia says. “That’s natural talent.”
“Says who?” Kenny asks. “All I’m really asking is that we examine these ‘rules’ of good writing.”
“The love story was beautiful,” Tinka says. “You have to admit that.”
“Fair, that aspect I enjoyed,” Kenny says.
“Wait, what?” Olivia says, roughly pushing brown ringlets from her face. She’s Emma’s cousin, but the two couldn’t be further apart. Emma is blond, has an angular face and wears a tight lavender dress and knee-high boots, whereas Olivia showed up with her hair in a topknot, overalls, muddy trainers, and not a scrap of makeup. “That’s what you enjoyed? That was my one problem with it! No teenager feels love that strongly, I’m sorry. All adults agree, teenagers are shit. We didn’t know who to vote for, let alone what real love is.”
“Speak for yourself!” Emma says. “I knew to vote Conservative.”
“You did what?”
Emma holds her palm out to Tinka. “That’s a discussion for another day. Liv, you’re just bitter you’ve never felt it: a love so poignant and true and—”
“Excessive?” Olivia offers. “Facetious? The author’s a sensationalist, no question.”
“That’s why it’s so popular,” Sam says and I turn to him, having mistaken his silence for disinterest. “Because it described the love we all want but likely won’t have. Love that’s raw and wonderfully painful and all-consuming; intrinsically becoming a part of another person; the subtlety and quietness of their codependence. We won’t admit it, but maybe that’s what a lot of us want. Liv is right—the author plays into that, but it doesn’t diminish the writing. Love is so watered down now, tied to peer pressure and proximity and self-esteem, I think readers enjoyed having it concentrated. It’s a thrill imagining yourself with that capability, with the capacity to hold that almost unbearable weight of love for someone else, and the possibility of someone out there feeling exactly the same for you. It’s a heady, envy-inducing thought.”
We all stare at him, until—
“Will you marry me, Sam?”
Everyone laughs at Jo—including Sam—except me. Instead I stare at him because what he said is exactly how I felt when I read the book, so much so that I’ve yet to read the last page. The story and my bookmark are stuck on page 285.
Sam. I don’t know his middle name. His surname is usually Comma Jo’s ex.
I look at Jo who’s considering Sam with a soft fold in her forehead. I still don’t know where the two of them stand; they must be back together if he’s here and Jo can publicly joke about marrying him. He instead looks behind Jo, to the tree and its canopy of branches with fairy lights tangled between them.
When he catches my eye, I look down at my half-finished burger and drink the rest of my prosecco.
* * *
As the evening goes on, our group shifts and changes; we talk about politics, about careers, friends, family, food, and nights out.
“I’m going to stretch my legs,” I suddenly say and leave the garden by way of the gate. A lot of us are lingering outside the house and I walk farther down to the stone steps leading to the main road and sit alone.
It’s been a good night. Jo gave me a quick hug when she saw everything and spoke to me more in the first hour than she has this entire week, but it didn’t fill me up as much as I thought it would. Then she barely acknowledged me for the rest of the evening.
As for Jo’s friends, they seem to like me, but I know I might never speak to any of them again. At least today they know me for the better side of me—the funny, conversational, intelligent side of me. I had an opinion on every topic presented and my opinions were that of the majority, so I firmly belonged, but I’m tired now. There’s an hour left of the day and I feel drained and in need of a forty-eight-hour break. I’m staring into empty space when Sam appears.
“What are you doing out here?” he asks. His voice—calm and measured—makes me think of Nia.
“Recharging.”