Everyone hisses at him to shut up. The fact is, I’m not completely certain whether that’s Rodney – I’m not sure I could identify him by voice alone, which is a little damning. Did any of us listen to Rodney at all during the last eighteen hours?
‘Hi, guys? It’s Rodney?’
‘At least that clears that up,’ says Deb, getting up to let him in.
We all sit up a bit straighter as Rodney enters – we’re trying to look ‘normal’， I suppose, though judging by Rodney’s puzzled expression we’re not doing an especially good job of it.
‘Everything all right?’ he asks. He has a sleeping bag under his arm and the car keys in his other hand.
‘Absolutely fine,’ Addie says, rallying. ‘Chuck me the car keys, would you, Rodney?’
Rodney obliges. It is such a poor throw Addie has to lunge across the bed to catch it with her good hand, and she grimaces in pain as the movement jolts her bad wrist. Marcus snorts with laughter at Rodney’s shoddy throw, then seems to remember that Rodney is a potentially dangerous individual, and much more interesting than he’d first assumed, and stops snorting.
‘So,’ Rodney says, rubbing his hands together, ‘Addie and Deb in the double, Marcus and Dylan on the singles, me on the floor?’
‘That’s right,’ I say. ‘We’ll set you up at the bottom of our beds, Rodney.’
‘There’s more space here,’ he says, pointing to the floor at the end of the double bed.
Addie shoots me a pleading look. There’s something so beautiful about the silent conversation that follows – not for its subject, of course, but for its familiarity, the easy way we can slip back into each other’s language. Get him as far away from me as possible, she’s saying. Already on it, I reply.
‘Let’s give the ladies their privacy,’ I say. ‘If it’s too much of a squeeze for you, I’ll take the sleeping bag, and you can have the bed.’
Marcus looks at me as if he thinks I may have gone temporarily insane, but I’m relying on Rodney’s gallantry here.
‘Oh, of course, the ladies should have their space!’ he says, horrified. ‘Gosh, yes! And don’t you be giving up the bed, Dylan.’
Marcus gives me an impressed nod, but it’s Addie’s tiny smile that makes my heart beat with something embarrassingly close to pride.
Deb yawns. ‘Well, it’s after ten, which is two hours later than my preferred bedtime these days, and I’m due a Skype with my baby early tomorrow, which is literally all I can think about right now . . . so you all need to get out of my bed.’
‘We’re going to bed at ten?’ Marcus says, regarding me with bewilderment; I wonder when he last went to sleep before midnight.
I contemplate humouring him and going back to the bar, but frankly I don’t want to.
‘Yeah, we are,’ I say, picking up my bag and heading down towards the other end of the room, where the single beds are set out with the cot. ‘If you want to stay up, take a key.’ And then, on reflection: ‘And don’t do anything stupid.’
There is a wounded silence.
‘Mate. You’ve changed,’ Marcus says.
I should bloody well hope so.
I lie on my side, the polyester duvet pulled up to my chin. I can just make out Marcus in the darkness; for all his protestations about our early night, he falls asleep with enviable ease. He is now breathing heavily a couple of feet away from me, grainy and grey in the dim light creeping between curtains that don’t quite meet in the middle. Rodney is snoring in the way that my uncle Terry snores: very loudly, pig-like, almost grunting. It’s quite reassuring. At least if he’s snoring then I know he’s asleep, instead of standing over me with a knife.
I can’t believe the man who wrote Cherry all those terrible poems was Rodney. I hope my poems are better than his; I hope Addie didn’t read them all and secretly think I was a total Rodney.
I turn over; I can’t sleep. This is not an uncommon problem. I start to spiral, that’s the issue. I have one thought – for instance, I wonder what Addie thought when she read my poems – and then I’m away, following the natural steps down that path, coming to the conclusion that oh, God, I still love her, I know I do. I feel like I never won’t. Everyone says there’s no such thing as The One and there’s plenty of fish in the sea but every time I meet one of those fish, I just miss Addie more. I’ve given up on winning her back, and still that doesn’t seem to be enough to forget her – you’d think the agony of unrequited love would be sufficient to put your brain off the whole affair, but it seems not.