He presses two fingers against each eye and attempts to account for this crippling melancholy, but is having trouble with rational thought. It feels as if someone has taken his head and shaken it. Words are turning to mush and he can see no plausible way of getting through this. Don’t fall apart, he tells himself, not here, not now. Hold it together.
David NichollsTags: one-day-david-nicholls
They spoke to each other in strange, strangulated voices, and lost the knack of making each other laugh, jeering at each other instead in a spiteful, mocking tone.
Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water.
Why not let it die instead?
It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever, she had lots of other friends: the old college crowd, her friends from school, and Ian of course.
But whom to could she confide about Ian? Not Dexter, not anymore
Tags: one-day-david-nicholls
These words on the screen represented her latest project, an attempt at a series of commercial, discreetly feminist crime novels. She had read all of Agatha Christie at eleven years old, and later lots of Chandler and James M.Cain. There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again. She found herself unable to think of a name for her detective, let alone a cohesive original plot, and even her pseudonym was poor: Emma T. Wilde? She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things. She had tried being in a band, writing plays and children's books, she had tried acting and getting a job in publishing. Perhaps crime fiction was just another failed project to place alongside trapeze, Buddhism and Spanish. She used the computer's word counter feature. Thirty-five words, including the title page and her rotten pseudonym. Emma groaned, released the hydraulic lever on the side of her office chair and sank a little closer to the carpet.
David NichollsTags: one-day-david-nicholls
This not-hotness had weighed heavily on his mind, but he tried to dismiss it as envy. Envy was just the tax you paid on success.
There had been other sacrifices on his part. Regretfully he had been obliged to shuffle off some old friends from University, because after all it wasn’t 1988 anymore. His old flatmate, Callum, the one he was meant to start a business with, continued to leave increasingly sarcastic messages, but Dexter hoped he’d get the idea soon. What were you meant to do, all live in a big house together for the rest of your lives? No, friends were like clothes: fine while they lasted but eventually they wore thin or you grew out of them.
Tags: friendship
And sometimes I get carried away, that's all. If you weren't so...judgemental all the time-"
"Am I? I don't think I am . I try not to be. I just don't..." She stopped herself speaking, shook her head. "I know you've been through a lot, in the last few years, and I've tried to understand that, really I have, with your mum and all, but..."
"Go on," he said.
"I just don't think you're the person I used to know. You're not my friend anymore. That's all."
He could think of nothing to say to this, so they stood in silence, until Emma put her hand out, took two fingers of his hand, squeezed them in her palm.
"Maybe...maybe this is it, then," she said. "Maybe it's just over."
"Over? What's over?"
"Us. You and me. Friendship. There are things I needed to talk to you about, Dex. About Ian and me. If you're my friend I should be able to talk to you but I can't, and if I can't talk to you, well, what is the point of you? Of us?"
"'What's the point?'"
"You said yourself, people change, no use getting sentimental about it. Move on, find someone else."
"Yeah, but I didn't mean us..."
"Why not?"
"Because we're....us. We're Dex and Em. Aren't we?"
Emma shrugged. "Maybe we've grown out of each other."
He said nothing for a moment, then spoke. "So, do you think I've grown out of you, or you've grown out of me?"
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "I think you think I'm....dreary. I think you think I cramp your style. I think you've lost interest in me."
"Em I do not think you're dreary."
"And neither do I! Neither do I! I think I'm fucking marvellous if you only knew it, and I think you used to think so too! But if you don't or if you're going to just take it for granted, then that's fine. I'm just not prepared to be treated like this anymore."
"Treated like what?"
She sighed, and it was a moment before she spoke.
"Like you always want to be somewhere else, with someone else."
He would have denied this, but the Cigarette Girl was waiting in the restaurant at that very moment, the number of his mobile phone tucked into her garter. Later he would wonder if there was something else he might have said to save the situation, a joke perhaps. But nothing occurred to him and Emma let go of his hand.
Tags: friendships
With failing bravado, Dexter tried to laugh. "You sound like you're dumping me!"
She smiled sadly. "I suppose I am in a way. You're not who you used to be, Dex, I really, really liked the old one. I'd like him back, but in the meantime, I'm sorry, but I don't think you should phone me anymore." She turned and, a little unsteadily, began to walk off down the side alley in the direction of Leicester Square.
For a moment, Dexter had a fleeting but perfectly clear memory of himself at his mother's funeral, curled up on the bathroom floor while Emma held onto him and stroked his hair.Yet somehow he had managed to treat this as nothing, to throw it all away for dross. He followed a little way behind her. "Come on, Em, we're still friends aren't we? I know I've been a little weird, it's just..." She stopped for a moment, but didn't turn round, and he knew that she was crying. "Emma?"
Then very quickly she turned, walked up to him and pulled his face to hers, her cheek warm and wet against his, speaking quickly and quietly in his ear, and for one bright moment he thought he was to be forgiven.
"Dexter, I love you so much. So, so much, and I probably always will." Her lips touched his cheek. "I just don't like you anymore. I'm sorry."
And then she was gone, and he found himself on the street, standing alone in this back alley trying to imagine what he would possibly do next.
Tags: friendships-ending
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