You Mustn't Give Your Heart To A Wild Thing

The first time I’d snuck out of my parents house after curfew, was for a girl. It was the summer of two thousand and two, I was fifteen and she was eighteen. When Abigail Adams kissed me I always felt like I might explode and if you were to look close enough, I was pretty sure you’d be able to see the fireworks exploding and dancing around my pupils. I snuck out because I thought I was in love with her, and that no-one had a hope in hell of understanding what that was like.

I’d never expected to be doing the same thing seven years on.

I was in love, with Verity Ann Palmer, and still no-one had a hope in hell of understanding what that was like.

Luckily sneaking away from Tom and I’s room was a lot simpler than climbing from my window and narrowly escaping death every time I dove from the garage roof. Tom was the heaviest sleeper I knew and from many years of staying with him; both on tour and on family holidays, I learnt the exact volume and frequency his snoring would fall to when he truly became dead to the world. I knew it was safe to leave when I could count to seven between each snore, and they were just a decibel or two quieter than his speaking voice.

Los Angeles was different in the early hours of the morning. Two and three AM I avoided still, but anything past four I basked in and set about appreciating every minute of. By this time the nightclub stragglers would’ve managed to drag themselves; or be dragged, home. And though traffic still hummed on the distant freeway; and cabs still ran red lights and beeped their horns in order to get ‘important’ people wherever they needed to be, it was peaceful. The air was cool and quiet. It no longer sat heavy on my lungs or filled my ears with peoples wistful and pointless chatter.

I could breathe and live for once, even if it was living and breathing without her.

“Hey hon”

I drug my eyes up from the sticky counter and met a pair that had become ever more familiar over the past few days. They were mainly green in colour but small bursts of burnt orange seemed to radiate from the pupils, and I could tell from the etched smile lines that crept from beneath the eyelids and outwards, that although working the graveyard shift at cafe in the backstreets of Hollywood probably hadn’t been her dream, Rosa had laughed plenty along the way.

There was a full cup of coffee and a slice of pie laid out in front of me before I’d even had the thought to ask. “Key Lime” She smiled, answering my sceptically raised eyebrow. “You really don’t know anything about pie do you”

I took the fork in my right hand and dug it deep into the pale yellow surface, using the side of the fork to cut myself a small triangle before holding it up for closer inspection.

“We don’t really ‘av pie in Sheffield, this is more flan” I reasoned, “I mean, we ‘av pie but ye get like apple pie or pork pie, ‘s just baked an’...”

“What do you think I do with these Hon?” She smirked, giving me a nod in the right direction. “You’ll like it. Have I been wrong yet?”

“Ye’ve a good point” I smiled, timidly touching the pie with the very tip of my tongue.

“It’s not gonna bite ya, ya know that right?”

I rolled my eyes and shoved the piece of pie into my mouth, letting it sit for a few seconds before remembering that chewing was actually necessary.

It had a kick, but not too much of a kick and its texture reminded me of the custard my Mum used to make when we had sticky toffee pudding after roast dinner. “And I’m not wrong yet, eh kid?” She beamed, reading the satisfied expression that spread lazily across my face as I swallowed.

“I’ll catch ye out one day” I chuckled, digging in greedily and piling my fork high with pie. “One day ye’ll mix peaches with avocado or somethin’ an’ I’ll tell ye flat out ‘ow rancid it is”

“Do I look like I serve peaches and avocado pie?”

“Ye don’t look like ye got a worlds wisdom under that barnet o’ yours, but ye do”

“I have no idea what a ‘barnet’ is sweetie, but I’ll agree with ya on the wisdom” She smiled, fetching the dishcloth from where it’d been flung over her shoulder and wiping down the countertop around my plate and coffee mug. “I’ve learnt everything I need to know through living everything I need to live. There aint nothing wrong with trial and error Hon, in fact make enough of one of ‘em and ya won’t ever need the other again”

“Which ‘av ye ‘ad more of? Ye done more trials or made more errors?”

“That’s something I’m keeping to myself” She answered swiftly, “And I’d advise you to do the same if it wasn’t so blindingly obvious anyway”

I choked a little on my first sip of coffee and raised my eyebrows in her direction as I dribbled the boiling liquid back into the cup. “You talk a lot with your face dontcha”

I shrugged my shoulders and slumped down into the stool, I felt like I’d been reprimanded but I couldn’t put my finger on why.

“’ve made more errors than ‘ve ‘ad trials, yeah.” I spluttered, words I’d not expected tumbling from my mouth at an alarming rate. “An’ most o’ the trials ‘ve been faced with are consequences of my stupid errors. But so what? Aren’ ye supposed t’ learn from ye mistakes? Isn’t it that...”

“Is that what you’re doing every night; well I should say morning really, in here?” Her hands were planted firmly on either hip and her brightly painted false nails were tapping out some sort of menacing beat on the fabric of the lemon yellow polyester dress that seemed to be the uniform of ‘Sunnys Diner’ “From that spot right there with a cup full of black coffee and a mouth full of dessert, you’re learning from your mistakes? Is that what it takes to fix mistakes these days? Some caffeine and some caramelised sugar?”

“I take back my comment about ye ‘avin the worlds wisdom” I growled childishly.

“And I’ll take back that piece of Key Lime you know I wouldn’t have made you pay for”

I caught the side of the plate closest to me as she moved to take it away and clamped the smooth china between my fingers with a meek smile.

“I’ll pay ye for it. I need the sugar”

“You need to sort out whatever problems it is you’ve created” She corrected as a small, sympathetic smile crept from the upturned corners of her mouth. “Sure you’re young, you’ve got all the time in the world to fix the mistake. But it doesn’t lie with just you though, does it? It takes two people to do anything worth doing, and it takes one heck of a woman to bring a man to start eating pie at four thirty in the morning, five days in a row”

“’s been five days?”

“You’ve had Banoffe, Pecan, Pumpkin, Chocolate French Silk and Key Lime”

I sawed off another triangular piece of pie with my fork and popped it into my mouth “The chocolate thing were my favourite” I mumbled through the mouthful, careful to not spit any crumbs as I spoke. “But this is a mega close second”

Her heavy sigh told me I’d accomplished the change of subject I’d intended and I watched her closely as she busied herself with the dirty crockery stacked at the far end of the counter. She worked through them methodically as I polished off the slice of Key Lime, scraping any morsels of food into the rubbish bin at her feet before holding the plate or dish up into the light for closer inspection and making the final, critical decision; dishwasher or sink?

“Are you finished with that one kid?”

I gulped the last mouthful down loudly and nodded as she grabbed my empty plate up from the counter. “Thank You”

She waved her hand in my direction and shook her head. “No need to thank me”

We were silent. The only noise at all was some soft Swing music coming from the jukebox in the corner. It looked like the ones in films, all bubbling tubes of light and polished wood.

“Bet ‘s no Bring Me The ‘orizon on tha’ thing” I smiled, catching her questioning glance from the corner of my eye.

“Bring Me The who?” She asked, turning the tap off and returning to her usual place in front of me.

“Only the best band ever” I chuckled, running my fingers through my hair and letting my hand rest at the nape of my neck. It had become incredibly matted from lack of washing and one too many restless nights.

“I’ve never heard of them”

“Oh, ye will” I smirked, tapping my fingertips lightly against the counter. “Gonna be an ‘ouse’old name before long, I promise ye”

A broad smile broke out across her face and she tucked her hands into the front pocket of her apron, fishing out a small notepad and pencil. “Well, put your John Hancock on here and give me a good retirement kid. I’ll sell it on eBay when you’re rich and famous”

The amusement dancing between her eyes told me that she didn’t totally believe me, but it didn’t matter and for once, I didn’t mind. To her I was just some nocturnal, perpetually confused kid with a taste for sugar, and I liked that. I liked that to at least one person I was that simple.

“I always wondered what job you could possibly have with all those scribblings all over ya” She said as I scrawled my name messily across the paper. “My Joey’s addicted to that Prison Break show. I thought maybe you were a map of somewhere”

I laughed loudly; and for the first time in a week or so, genuinely, and slid the notepad back towards her. Her eyebrows furrowed at what I’d written and it was once again confirmed that on the whole my handwriting was illegible.

“It says ‘I owe ye five slices o’ pie, love Oliver Scott Sykes’”

“Oliver” She nodded.

“Oli, really” I smiled small, “’s only a few people tha’ call me Oliver, an’ tha’s only when they’re rate pissed at me”

“Oli” She nodded again, “Oli, I’ll tell you what. I’ll let the pie slide if you promise me one thing”

“I can’t promise what I think ye gonna say” I interrupted. “As ye said, it aint up to just me, she might not wanna...”

“I’m not expecting miracles Oli” She reasoned, meeting my eyes with hers. “Just make this one promise, and you can have all the pie you want”

I was sceptical; incredibly sceptical. I would say that Promises weren’t my bag, but that would be a cop out. It wasn’t that promises were an impossible notion, or that they, themselves had caused any trouble. It was that I was shit at keeping them; no matter how much I had invested in them or what there was to lose.

“When I were nine I promised to pick my brother, Tommy up from infant school ‘cause Mum ‘ad a doctors appointment. Tom were still waitin’ f’ me with the ‘eadmaster when I burst into the office at like six o’clock wi’ Nicholls. Both our faces were red an’ puffy an’ shit after the run from the park.” I mumbled, “And, when I were fourteen I promised my Dad tha’ I would spend the tenner he gave me on a Mothers Day present. I got back from town three hours later, wi’ a copy of ‘Hybrid Theory’ hidden in my backpack an’ a completely unbelievable story about bein’ mugged by the school bully outside o’ Tescos”

Neither of these compared to the promise I broke when I was eighteen, but I wasn’t about to share my infidelity with a stranger, and I was sure they both counted towards the anxiety twisting my gut now.

“’m shit at keeping promises love” I concluded, “Ye need not bother”

“Don’t take forever coming up with the perfect way to make things right, because whilst you’re thinking it up, she’ll begin thinking that you don’t care”

“That’s what I ‘av to promise?” I asked, letting her words sink in. “That I tell ‘er ‘ow much I love ‘er before...forever?”

She shook her head. “No, that’s just something you should know, and know to do”

“My brother, Tom, ‘e told me that I weren’t to go in there like a bull in a china shop” I sighed, “That if I go in, all guns blazin’ an’ shit, she’ll think I’ve not changed. ‘ll be the same guy that she left, an’ I’ll be the same guy tha’ broke ‘er heart”

“Are you that same guy?”

“Not in the slightest” I enthused, “The las’ two months ‘av been brutal. My ‘ole lifes been turned inside out and flipped back t’ front”

“And you’ve changed because of that?”

“ ‘ve adapted because o’ that” I answered, “ ‘ve changed ‘cause I were a bastard”

I wasn’t sure whose gasp was bigger when the words left the tip of my tongue, but both pushed us into an uncomfortable silence once again and I found myself straining my ears to listen to the jukebox. I could hum along.

“The first step of getting over a problem is admitting it” She smiled weakly, “I know it’s a cliché, and I know you’ve probably heard it god knows how many times before, but it’s true. My Joey did it and he’s been sober eleven years now”

I was a little taken aback by her sudden admittance of something so incredibly personal as over the past five evenings she’d disclosed very little about herself, bar her name and the fact that she had two children who’d grown up long ago.

“If you’ve changed she’ll be able to see it. More than anyone else she’ll be able to see it”

I hoped with every part of my being that she was right, with every bone, with every nerve, with every vein, with every cell. I had changed for Verity just as much as I had changed for myself, everything was just as much about her, as it was about me. I’m not superstitious but I crossed my fingers in my lap. I’m not religious but I sent a silent prayer to anyone that was listening.

“The promise...” I whispered, the words barely making it past the lump rising in the back of my throat. “What d’ye want me to promise ye?”

“You give her a call later” She stated simply, “That’s not the promise, but it’s something we both know you need to do”

I opened my mouth; to agree or object I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter, she cut me short.

“You give her a call later, when the rest of the worlds awake and you tell her that fixing mistakes is hard, but you’ll do anything for her. You tell her that she needn’t worry that you don’t care, because you’re spending all your time worrying about how you can possibly show her how much you really do care. And you tell her that you love her Oli, you tell her everything that you’ve told me, but most importantly you tell her that you love her and that that’s all that matters”

My jaw was keeping the crumbs on the floor company. It was everything I hadn’t been able to say myself.

“You don’t have to promise all of that because I know you’ll do the right thing. You’re a good kid; a kid with a ridiculously sweet tooth, but a good kid all the same” She smiled small. I could tell she was biding her time with the next part, and to be honest, this wasn’t a problem for me. The next part would be the promise. The next part was what everything depended on. “You do all of that” She sighed, “And you promise me that you’ll bring her here”

“Tha’s it?” slipped from between my lips.

She laughed softly, the orange around her pupils seeming to ignite briefly and the lines around her eyes becoming more prominent and deep. I hadn’t expected laughter and I couldn’t see where it fitted in.

“The bit you have to promise me” She smiled, “is the easiest part”