Over and Done

Every day I wake up, make myself some tea or coffee if I feel like it and then I stare out the window. When I’m more awake, I get out my sketchbook, the big one that doesn’t fit very well on my lap, and I draw for awhile before I do anything else. It’s nice. Relaxing.

When I’m done and go to get dressed, I walk by the calendar in my room and see what day it is, see where Tom is—where Oli is too, I guess. But I ignore the Oli portion of that thought. I do best when I keep him out of my head. ‘Over and done’; that means I shouldn’t think about the what ifs. That’s what he said. Over and done. But one time I told him to never call me Savanna. And he definitely missed that message. What if I just miss the ‘over and done’ message? What if?

After I think about Oliver for a good portion of the morning, I usually push myself to class, even if I don’t want to. Which I never do. I get bored and doodle on the inside of the textbook I’ve paid way too much for. I write letters on my knuckles with a blue felt-tipped pen. Maybe it’s some unconscious homage to another set of hands, covered in ink of a more permanent variety. I realize then that I have spaced out for twenty minutes, excuse myself to the toilets and scrub my hands clean.

Usually I make it through my classes, sometimes I ditch out early if I can but on Tuesday and Thursday I work in the library and can’t just leave. My course marks are okay, not spectacular though. I don’t put much more thought into it than is necessary. It’s not really a big deal and when I leave campus every day to go to my other job, I’m not even thinking about law anymore. Just thinking about filling drink orders at work. I usually get decent tips and my paychecks aren’t bad. I can pay my rent, eat cheap food and buy wine so I can sleep at night.

Nights are usually my only problem. I start feeling guilty and confused. Lonely.

And instead of missing Oli, like in the mornings, I miss Tom. Maybe because he’s my favorite cure for loneliness. But I also think it’s because I feel disconnected, detached from him. Because we both lied. Or withheld the truth rather. I didn’t tell him about Oli and I when it happened, a week of truth withholding. He didn’t tell me about Oli’s love, four years of truth withholding.

Here's where the trouble is.
--

After a month and a half without Tom, I was going crazy. At this time, a time in which I fell into content lunacy, I needed him. We still hadn’t discussed the details of my departure from Sheffield. Though I was pretty sure he’d, at the very least, prodded information out of his older brother. But I wasn’t sure how much Oli would say or how much it mattered to Oli. Maybe he’d spent the whole time he was in the US hustling blonde birds into bed. I didn’t know. And the worst part was that I wanted to know. I wanted to hear about tour and how he spent his time and if he thought of me. Because I couldn’t stop thinking of him.

Even at work, when the fit as fuck bartender Alex asked what I was doing after my shift ended, my mind still flipped back to Oli and then to Peter and then back again. I felt like I wasn’t even capable of mindless flirting.

It wasn’t even that I was depressed about the whole thing. It had cleaned itself up pretty well. The ends were tied up and some semblance of goodbye was sad, a la ‘it’s over and done with now’. There was little reassurance in this, little hope, little future.

Katie was convinced that I could get over this if I put my mind to it and Gracie, via many phone calls, agreed. If I really wanted it to be finished, I could just say the words and be fine. I could bat my lashes at fit as fuck Alex and have some decent for-closure-purposes-only sex. So they said.

The key, I think, was that I didn’t want it to be finished and was having a hard time expressing that. Admitting it. Accepting it. Something.

And this is why I needed Tom. Only he could truly tell me what I really wanted because he was the only one that knew, the only one that had enough experience and insight for such a decision. Maybe I was relying on him too much, maybe this would be a weighty question to throw on his shoulders, and maybe it was even a little unfair. But he was Tom and he was my other half, the important part.

The important part showed up in Birmingham the day after he returned from tour. He looked well worn, jet lagged. I could tell that he hadn’t taken time to rest before coming to see me. Though I was concerned for his well-being, I was as selfish as ever and glad to see him. “I love yeh, I love yeh, I love yeh,” I repeated over and over again as I hugged him, gripping the thick fabric of his hoodie.

He didn’t say much, just “Yeh too Annie.”

We stood like this in the entry way of my flat until Katie came in saying “I thought you said Tom was—oh.” She paused, stopping to inspect the scene. “I expect this is Tom then.”

Still buried in his neck, I said “Yeah, ‘s Tom… That’s Katie.”

Tom made to pull away and greet her but I wouldn’t let go of him and I imagined him shooting her one of his ‘what-can-you-do’ looks. “’S nice to finally meet yeh,” he said.

“Likewise,” Katie said. “I guess I’ll just go into the living room, give you some… space.” Katie had never been exposed to the activities of Tom and Anna, only heard of them. After this, I was sure that she’d have questions.

“No, no,” I began detaching myself from Tom. “I’m done now, sorry. I jus’… needed to hug him.” I caught Tom smirking a little bit and this only made the smile on my face brighten.

“Oh good.” Katie rolled her eyes in a good natured way. “Because we do have some shit to do.”

“We do?” Tom asked.

I grinned. “Well, not exactly…”

“We’ve got weed to smoke,” Katie corrected. “I thought I’d make a good impression on you.” Luckily, Katie’s idea of making a good impression was very similar to Tom’s idea of it.

“I like yeh already,” Tom said and I was glad to see that there was already a good rapport between them. “Gotta use the toilet before yeh spark up though.”

“Do your thing,” she said and stuck her tongue out of her mouth. “Down the hall to the right.” Tom nodded and went off down the hall. Katie and I went to the living room, where she already had her bong sitting on the table next to a small pile of bud.

I was still sort of looking off in the direction Tom had just gone. It felt nice having him in my flat. It made it feel more like home to have him there. It was like his presence washed the place with warmth. It felt rather clingy to think as such and maybe unrealistic. I did, after all, have a bit of unresolved tension on my mind. But I ignored it.

Katie snapped her inky fingers in front of my face. “You solid?”

“Huh?”

“He’s just in the bathroom. You can stop staring now.” Katie was looking at me curiously, her eyebrows raised.

“Oh, uh, yeah.”

“He’s a cute one,” she said, mostly off handed. But I sensed something else there, some underlying query that she was waiting to bring up.

“Isn’t ‘e?” That was all I could say though really. I didn’t have the best perception of Tom’s cuteness. I was well-aware of the fact that people thought he was good looking. There were many fans of Bring Me the Horizon that made it their mission to seek Tom out; they obsessed over his personal life nearly as much as they obsessed over his brother’s. Much to my horror on several occasions.

“You’re really glad he’s here…” Katie continued studying me, unnerving me. She was unabashedly forward.

“Well, yeah.” I nodded. “Obviously.”

“And we’re sure it’s Oli that you got the crush on?”

I rolled my eyes and groaned. “Not yeh too. I swear someone’s always fuckin’ askin’ ef—“

“Calm down,” Katie laughed. “You really need to smoke more weed, Anna. You’re too goddamm stressed.”

---

I’d fallen asleep on the sofa, stupid stoned and tired. This happened about fifty percent of the times that I smoked. It made me contented enough to curl up and drift off, a nice feeling. When I woke up from my hazy evening nap, the living room was dark, and only light from the attached kitchen washed in. The room was filled with a vague blue glow and voices hissed in from the kitchen. They were having a hushed conversation, trying not to wake me. I intended to sit up and join them, maybe have some tea to wake up. But I caught my name in their conversation and I kept still.

“Anna’s got a lot going on in her head,” Katie said. “But she won’t say shit to me about it… I mean, she will if I ask her but she just brushes it off, you know?”

“She don’t talk about things until after they’ve blown up in her face,” Tom meant well but I was weakly offended by the statement.

“And it’s not like I’ve got her on suicide watch or anything. I’m not worried about her like that… She’s just, I don’t know, different or something.” Katie sounded confused, not condescending.

Tom laughed a little, a cynical sort of amusement. “’S funny yeh say that.”

“Why?”

“My soddin’ brother’s the same way.”

“Oli?”

“Aye. ‘S like I know ‘e wants to ask me about ‘er but ‘e won’t. Because e’s stubborn.”

“Before now, I’d never call Anna stubborn. She always seemed so… easy going. And now I feel like half the time I don’t even know her.”

“Really?”

“Really. I mean, it’s not all bad. She draws all the time now, like all the time.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I think she’s really into this tattoo artist idea. But she won’t say anything about it.”

“That were Oli’s idea, yeh know.”

They were being so matter of fact and frank about my situation, like it was so easy, like there was something I was missing. Like I had control over it. As if it weren’t ‘over and done’. It seemed that there was a possibility that they were right, that I was acting different.

When I thought about my days as they had been in my nearly two months back in Brum, I realized that I didn’t do much with my time. Not in the way of social activities. I went to work at both of my jobs plus my gig as shop bitch, and when I felt like it, I went to class. Then I came back to the flat, drank a little bit with Katie and then went to bed. That was my routine. And maybe there was something wrong with that. I wasn’t sure.

I made a large show of getting up from the couch, making sure to cough a little bit as I stretched my arms over my head. The clock on the wall read 11:46pm and I hadn’t realized that I’d been sleeping so long. Tom and Katie got very quiet in the kitchen, pretending that they hadn’t just been talking about me. They were my best friends but they were still assholes.

--

We made an active decision that we would not go out that night. Tom was tired and Katie had to work in the morning. Tom promised that after he’d rested a bit, we would have all the time we wanted to party. Though admittedly, I was still not in that sort of mood anyway. But I would fake it for their sake. Because I did not want to catch them having any more worried conversations about my wellbeing.

Katie’d gone to sleep and I was rubbing a towel through my shower-wet hair while I walked into the living room, where Tom had taken up refuge for his stay. “Shouldn’t’ve napped,” I said, leaning against the back of the sofa. “Now I’ll never sleep.”

“’M too bloody jetlagged to sleep properly.”

I put my hands on his shoulders and leaned over, looking at his computer screen. “Anythin interesting happenin on the internet?”

“A whole lotta nothin.” He was scrolling and clicking through pages mindlessly, his eyes wide and alert.

“As always…” I ran my fingers through my hair, brushing out the tangles.

“Yeh wanna hear somethin wild?” He asked me, turning to face me slightly.

“O’ course,” I said.

“Evie asked me to move in with ‘er.”

My nose crinkled. “What? Yeh’ve only been back together a couple months...”

“I know.”

“’S a bit soon, yeah?”

“Probably.”

“What’d yeh tell ‘er?”

“That my lease weren’t up until March, so I couldn’t do it anytime soon.”

“Oh.”

“But I didn’t tell her no.”

“Right.” Something itched my spine over this and my brain cried to change the subject. “Do yeh want tea or somethin? I think I’ll make some.”

He nodded. “Sure.”

I went to the kitchen, bare feet hitting the cold tile and sending prickling shivers up the back of my legs. With October, a permanent chill had descended on the flat that the heat didn’t rid. I was used to goosebumps crossing my skin. Cold was normal now.

I puttered around the room, getting the teapot out and taking the cups from the cabinet. I was languid, taking my time throughout the process. There was something irritating my nerves and I couldn’t fake it away. The mindless busy work of making tea helped to calm me. I liked having control over things, liked having a fixed safe environment. And as I waited for the water to boil, I thought of the things I had control of in my life. Making tea, drawing and work. That was about it. My calm faltered.

“Oy, yeh okay, Annie?” Tom was leaning in the doorway when I turned.

“What?”

“Yeh kettle’s hummin.” He pointed to the stove.

I scrambled to get the pot holder and turn off the stove. “Sorted,” I said and Tom was laughing at me while I began pouring. “”M a bit scattered.”

“So I’ve heard,” he said and I got the impression he was changing the topic of conversation.

I busied myself putting mounds of sugar in his cup, the way he liked it. I chewed the corner of my mouth and looked away from him. He wouldn’t let it go, I knew.

“Really though, Annie… ‘S everything alright?”

I handed him his cup, with a small roll of my eyes. “Aye, ‘s great.”

And he didn’t believe me. Not for a moment. “Uh huh.” He sipped his drink and watched me hop onto the island at the middle of the kitchen.

Tom. What a strange thing. A relationship that prompted Katie to ask ‘And we’re sure it’s Oli that you got the crush on?’ It drove me crazy to hear things like this. Every doubt from someone’s mouth was a doubt in my ear, worming to my brain. I didn’t want to doubt this relationship or think that it was wrong in some way. Because it was the most honest and right thing in my life, I’d convinced myself of this long ago. Even when I was a liar, even when I made horrible mistakes, Tom loved me. And even when he kept an impossible secret from me, he was still the largest part of my life.

This was a difficult thing for me, his secret keeping. The secret of course being about Oli’s former love and it being the motivating factor in the non-break-up. I was still sore from this. I didn’t want to be and I continually tried to ignore my hidden irritation. But it was hard. I wanted to know why Tom waited so long to tell me, how he could keep me in the dark for so long when I could barely keep a secret from him for a week.

I pushed the thoughts from my mind and drank my tea. Tom was staring at me, blue eyes blazing with knowledge and curiosity. He was trying to get me to speak first. He knew all the tricks. “Stop it, yeh look creepy as fuck starin like that.”

“Yeh not okay,” he said as simple as could be.

“What? Don’t be—“

“Katie said yeh don’t go out anywhere, yeh don’t do anythin but go to classes an work.”

“Katie’s mental. She don’t know what she’s—“

“Yeh think yeh can feed me bollocks?” Tom was incredulous but correct. I couldn’t lie to his face and I don’t know why I ever tried. “Anna, I jus want to know what’s goin on in yeh life. I don’t get to see yeh enough—“ A flash of guilt beat in his eyes. “An I gotta go by what I hear, what she tells me, what YEH tell me.”

“There’s nothin to tell.”

“Liar.”

“Don’t call me names, it’s rude.” I hid behind my cup, diverting my eyes.

“I’ll call yeh whatever I like.”

“Well, yeh a wanker.”

“Yeh love me.”

“I do,” I said. “More than anythin.”

“Anythin? Anyone?” He asked.

“Well yeah.”

“More than yeh love my brother?”

My face lit up, bright red and I choked, sputtering tea from my lips.

Tom came closer to me, rubbing a hand at my back, asking “O’reight?... Relax, relax.” He was laughing at me again as I cleared my throat, able to breathe again. “Didn’t mean for yeh to flip. It were jus a question.

“A stupid question,” I said with a hoarse voice.

He scoffed. “Don’t be childish.”

I resisted the urge to cross my arms and stick my tongue out at him. “’M not.”

“Whatever.” He took his hand off of my back and began walking back into the living room.

My mouth dropped and I slid off the countertop. “Oy, where yeh goin?”

“In ‘ere,” he grunted.

“Why the hell are yeh angry with me?”

“I’m not angry with yeh,” he said, sitting on the sofa and not looking at me.

“Yeh angry.”

“Not at yeh.”

“Then who?”

“No one… I don’t know.” He seemed very tired and extremely worn. “Maybe I am angry with yeh,” he said it in a soft way. “But not jus yeh. Fuckin’ Oliver too. Yeh both morons.”

“Uh…”

“Yeh make excuses, the both o’ yeh. ‘S like yeh wanna be miserable.”

I stood staring at him and was very confused by his upset. Why was this weighing on him so heavily? “Tom…”

“I jus want yeh both to be happy. That’s not stupid, is it?” It was rhetorical and I remained quiet. “Yeh not happy. An neither is Oli.”

I sat down beside him. “I’m not happy but I’m makin it… That’s good enough for me. For now at least.”

In a desperate sort of way, he put both arms around me, leaning onto my shoulder and I gladly held onto him, petting his hair as if he were a small child. “Well ‘s not good enough for me.”

I had the writhing feeling in my throat of wanting to cry, not the least bit frustrated with him any longer. “God, I love yeh Tom Sykes… Yeh a wanker, but I love yeh.”

“I love yeh too Anna Harvey… Yeh a moron, but I love yeh.” He mimicked my sentence and then grinned at me.