Chicken Pie
“You have a sad energy,” the girl said, like it was a normal comment. She frowned at Dylan and he frowned back, unsure what to make of it.
“Energy?”
She nodded, her jaw chomping on a non-existent substance. “A sad one.”
“Oh,” he said, eloquently, lighting up the cigarette that was initially rolled for her.
“My friends say I have a thing for sad boys.” Her large eyes felt like search lights.
Dylan exhaled. He usually loved the smoking area, with its simultaneously inane and profound chatter. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about this, though.
The girl laughed, unprompted. “They call it an ‘I can fix him’ complex.”
Dylan nodded and offered her the cigarette after all. “That’s cool.”
She smoked greedily. “Yeah. Anyway, that’s how I know that you’re sad.”
“Because you have a thing for me?”
She laughed and hit his chest. He caught her hand and held it for a moment before extracting the cigarette. They stared at each other. Dylan was going to kiss her, if for no other reason than to get her to stop talking about his sadness, but then his friend grabbed him around the waist, yelled “Tune!”, and pulled him inside.
It wasn’t a Tune!, and the thinning crowd and ‘cheese’ playlist led him to presume it was the early hours of the morning. A visit to the loo fixed his waning enthusiasm. He dropped his house keys on the sticky floor – a distinctly sobering experience – and questioned how his life had come to this.
A friend passed him a drink he hadn’t ordered; Dylan pulled him in for a hug, planting a kiss on his cheek and yelling “Maaate!”, which he could only hope conveyed: “Thank you so much for this gift. I love you.”
There was a dull ache in the back of his skull. He had plans tomorrow, but the smoking area girl reappeared and grabbed his hands, sending his precious drink into the abyss. They danced to a song he unironically loved. It made it hard to remember any reason to leave.
As the final song came on, Dylan did the gentlemanly thing of offering up his shoulders so the girl could sing above the crowd. He gripped her thighs and weighed up the pros and cons of going home with her.
Pro: The night wouldn’t end and there’d be a possibility of sex.
Con: She might call him sad again.
Ultimately he supposed if sadness was going to be good for anything, then it might as well be good for sex.
The white lights snapped on as the music ended and they were all left to blink at each other. He lowered the girl from his shoulders and ran a hand through his hair, using the sweat to push it back from his face.
“What now?” She asked.
“After party?” Greg said. “I can host.”
Dylan didn’t particularly like Greg, but they currently had a lot in common. He held the girl’s hand on the way like it was all very romantic.
The group fell onto the sofas, desperate to pretend they were still having fun. Dylan followed Greg into the kitchen and pulled a baggie out of his jeans. Greg cut two slug-like lines on the grimy counter using his student card.
“No plate?” Dylan asked as Greg bent down. His gaze lingered on the pile of dirty dishes, crowned with a pan covered in eggy residue. Was this really better than sleeping alone?
Greg selected a half-empty vodka bottle from the array on the window sill and rejoined the party.
The clock on the wall read two AM. Doubtful.
“Dylan!” Greg yelled. “Stop nooing the billy and get in here!”
Dylan’s reflection blinked back at him in bewilderment. He pocketed the baggie and dutifully followed the sound of Greg’s voice.
“Never Have I Ever?” Greg suggested, because he always thought that talking about sex increased his chance of having it.
Dylan groaned and the girl’s hand slid into his hair as if to comfort him. Her nails scratched at his scalp.
“Dylan’s a virgin,” Greg joked to a flaccid crowd. Because he was neither fifteen nor a virgin, Dylan didn’t feel the need to object.
One girl kept listing outrageous sex acts and then drinking. It was clear that Greg had his eye on her.
I’m too cognisant, Dylan thought. And then felt like a bit of a wanker, so slunk back into the kitchen.
He stayed there once he’d finished, hunched over the surface, hands gripping the edge, eyes shut.
“Hello.”
He turned to see the girl looking at him, head cocked.
“It helps with the sadness,” he said.
“You can talk to me if you want,” she said, confirming that he’d missed the mark of ‘funny’. “You know, like, talk to the drunk girl you’ll never see again.”
Dylan began rolling a cigarette to give his hands something to do. He wondered about dropping the bomb that his mum died a year ago. He had a sense that it would increase his likelihood of sleeping with this girl. She’d love telling her friends that story.
He was being cynical again. Cruel, even, if only in his head. But he really didn’t want to talk.
He said as much, but he said it with far too much eye contact. It seemed to come across as a line – which was no bad thing – since she stepped forward. They kissed, and Dylan thought the laugh that tumbled from her mouth was sweet.
Just as he thought something was about to happen in Greg’s kitchen, of all places, she danced off to the sitting room. ‘Never Have I Ever’ had thankfully ended.
Eventually, just Dylan and the girl remained, so they had uninspiring sex on Greg’s black, leather sofa.
“I don’t have a condom,” Dylan admitted in her ear.
“I’m on the pill,” she said, grinding down on his lap.
Afterwards, Dylan raided Greg’s weed tin and rolled them a joint.
When he woke, the sun was unmistakable behind the curtain and the girl was gone.
He flopped his arm out for the remote and turned on the T.V. The time blinked at him mercilessly and he stared back before his brain finally processed what the numbers meant. He was going to be late.
He stumbled to the loo, pissed, and leant over the sink to splash water on his face, hoping it was the lighting that made him look so awful. He stuck his head under the cold tap as best he could, eyes jammed shut to avoid seeing Greg’s sink up close, then sanded the lank hand towel over his hair.
It dawned on Dylan quite how deplorable the situation was as he reached the door of his grandma’s house, ready to mark the first anniversary of his mum’s suicide. He was sweating alcohol and cocaine in last night’s sex-infused clothes. He closed his eyes and took a long breath through his nose, uncleaned teeth working overtime on a piece of chewing gum.
‘Come on, come on,’ he chanted in his head. ‘Get it together.’
He knocked and Elisabeth opened the door, smiling despite his lateness. She pulled him in for a hug, tight enough that he needed to focus on not throwing up. He rested his chin on her head and held her. When they finally released each other, she looked him up and down, but didn’t state the obvious.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Please.”
She busied herself with the machine. “I assume you’ve heard from your dad?”
“My phone’s dead.”
She hesitated, frowning, and Dylan thought of the girl from last night. Did Elisabeth think he looked sad? Or did he look the proportional amount of sad, given the circumstances?
“Ah. He’s really sorry,” she said, and Dylan knew the end of the sentence. “But he can’t make it.”
“I see.” He spotted a charger on the counter and plugged his phone in.
“Dylan…”
“What? I’m sure he’s very busy. Busy being important.”
Elisabeth pursed her lips, so he excused himself to the loo before she could chastise him.
It was a world away from Greg’s, but it was another bathroom nonetheless.
His dad hadn’t turned up. And? Dylan hadn’t expected him to.
“Do you think you’re depressed?” The girl had asked him while she chuffed Greg’s weed. “It’s a common problem for men.”
Dylan rested his forehead against the mirror and closed his eyes. He thought of the medical form that asked him to rate how he felt about different things on a scale of 1-10. He wasn’t depressed, apparently – clinically, at least; the type of depression that required a capital letter – he was grieving.
He pressed his fists into his eyes until he saw stars, and returned to the kitchen.
Elisabeth didn’t bring up his dad again. Instead, she put him to work helping her cook. He was happy enough to follow instructions. He couldn’t think of anything worse than eating, but he would eat because he knew Elisabeth needed him to. She’d lost her daughter and she needed him to be okay.
Lunch was chicken pie. His mum’s favourite. Dylan stared at the pale lumps as they slid from the pastry casing to his plate and clenched his teeth.
Elisabeth ate, solemnly.
While they’d been cooking, a text had flashed up from Greg asking if Dylan had taken his weed. Dylan suggested that Greg had smoked it himself at some point and had simply forgotten.
There’d been the half-baked apology his dad had sent that morning too. He hadn’t felt the need to reply.
Dylan speared a leek. “Did you get one of dad’s trademark texts too?”
She sighed. “You know–”
“He’s busy,” Dylan laughed. “It’s everyone’s childhood dream, isn’t it? When I grow up and people ask what I do, I want to be able to say, ‘I’m busy.’.”
“He doesn’t know how to talk about it.”
Dylan exhaled. “Yeah… I know.” He shifted his attention to the garden and took a deep breath; he noticed the tension diffuse from his grandma’s shoulders out of the corner of his eye.
“Have you read anything good lately?” Elisabeth asked.
He pushed a piece of chicken back into the crust. “Not really. It’s just been…” He trailed off, not wanting to say ‘busy’.
She raised her eyebrows and suppressed a wicked smile.
Dylan tried to look serious. “Hectic..?”
“Uh huh,” she nodded, and their smiles cracked into laughs.
“But I did buy The Chimp Paradox,” he said once they’d settled.
“Oh!” Elisabeth’s face lit up. “You’ll have to let me know what you think.”
“I will.” Perhaps he could start reading it that night.
Her gaze focused on him. “I know I’ve said this a thousand times, but I really did find it so helpful.”
He tried not to buckle under the weight of her words. “You’ve never steered me wrong.”
As Dylan finished washing the last pan, Elisabeth rested her hands on his shoulders. “Now, look, you’ve fought admirably, but you really must go and lie down, okay?”
He sagged. “Sorry, grandma.” It would have been easier if she was angry. “Wake me up in thirty minutes?”
When he was a child and couldn’t sleep, his mum would sit with him and stroke his head until he fell asleep. Elisabeth said she’d rest her own eyes too. He curled up on her sofa, relieved to be on a fabric not made of sticky, faux leather. He thought he’d lie there restlessly, but he passed out immediately.
The room was dark when he woke up. It had been more than thirty minutes. He wanted to jump off the sofa and run to his grandma, but his head was throbbing. Why had she not woken him up? Greg had replied ‘PROBABLY!!’ to Dylan’s previous message and then asked if Dylan was out tonight. He hauled himself up.
Elisabeth was at the table with a book and a glass of wine. They hadn’t drank at lunch.
He hovered in the doorway.
“Hiya,” Elisabeth said, folding the page of her book and setting it down. “How you feeling?”
“Better. Thank you.” He smiled.
“Good. Do you have any plans for the evening? Fancy a bit of Pottery Throwdown?”
“Always love a Throwdown, obviously, but… A friend’s asked if I can come over actually…”
“Mm-hm?”
Dylan scratched the back of his head and stared at the ceiling. When he glanced back at Elisabeth, she was still waiting for him to go on.
“Yeah… I mean, it’s his birthday, and he wasn’t gonna do anything, but now he’s decided he wants to, so… if it’s okay with you?”
She nodded. “Of course. I know we hadn’t set anything in stone for this evening.”
“Yeah..?” He stuck his hands in his pockets to stop them twitching at his sides. “But how about Sunday? Roast and Throwdown? I mean, if you haven’t already watched it by then, of course.”
“I can wait. Sounds lovely.”
He smiled, hoping it didn’t look as heavy as it felt.
He’d grab some drinks on his way to Greg’s, but he didn’t need to text Richard.
They hugged at the door. Dylan burrowed his face in his grandma’s hair, breathing her in.
“Sunday, then,” she said. And, silhouetted in the light of the hallway, his grandma looked small. It felt obvious, but it occurred to Dylan that he could lose her soon as well.
“Sunday.” He kissed her cheek and stepped out onto the pavement.
“Take care, love.”
He turned to look back at her, smiled, and left.
Flight of the dragonfly 