VII.

“For God’s sake, stop being such a baby.” Angie’s voice, usually so calm, so considerate, so nice, was now taut with impatience, and Sierra couldn’t help flinching as it travelled through the wire from Angie’s mouth to her sulking ear.

“What do you mean?” she asked feebly, tugging at a strand of wet hair, and was rewarded with an answering groan.

“You miss him,” she stated, not even attempting to be gentle.

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“Do not!”

“Don’t,” the older girl said warningly, and Sierra was silenced, although it was a spoilt, sulky silence, tensioned with the promise of tantrum.

“…You know,” Angie said after a moment’s contemplation, “you don’t actually need a boyfriend. I don’t mean like, you should get a girlfriend, I just mean… that you don’t actually need a boyfriend. If you know what I mean. You do know what I mean?”

“I know,” Sierra nodded, rubbing her bare ankle absentmindedly; unbidden, the memory of Steve massaging the same area rose to the forefront of her mind, and she bit back a sigh. “But I want one, you know? I… I guess I’ve gotten used to having one.”

“You mean you’ve gotten used to Steve, and don’t you dare argue with me,” Angie corrected mildly.

“No, it’s not like th—I haven’t. I mean, I have been seeing other… other… boys.” And ‘boys’ seemed to her to be a perfectly adequate description.

“How many?” Angie asked, not unkindly. “I mean, how many have you, ahem, ‘dated’?”

“And what does that mean?”

“What does what mean?”

“‘Dated.’ You say it as if it’s some sort of euphemism.”

“It’s not; I just don’t think one date constitutes as dating-dating, that’s all.”

“I’m glad.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I mean, it’s not like I had sex with any of them.”

“I never said you did.” A half-laugh came from Angie’s end of the telephone. “So? How many, hon?”

“Er, three…”

“In one week?”

“Well not all at once!” Sierra protested hotly, and proceeded to explain how the first was average in every way and therefore bored her, the second was livelier, and shared similar interests, but for whom no sense of physical attraction was felt, whilst the third, though physically on the same level as Steve (in her opinion), was immature, and only ever after one thing (and that was alcohol).

“So, er… As you can see—Well, it’s not exactly surprising, is it? I mean, I’ve never really been very… good, I suppose. With boys.”

“You were pretty good with Steve,” the reluctant yenta reminded.

“Yeah, but Steve was diff—mm!” She had to physically clap her hand over her mouth to stop herself from continuing.

“Mm-hmm,” Angie hummed in the tones of one who knew better and was therefore hard put to politely disagree.

“‘Mm-hmm’? What does that mean, ‘mm-hmm’?”

“Nothin’. Just ‘mm-hmm’.”

“It’s not a Steve thing!” Sierra snapped out five seconds before her mind relayed the message that to respond would have been highly undignified.

“Oh, please; you haven’t even broken up properly.”

“I—”

“You’re not even on a break,” Angie pushed on; “you are, technically, still together.”

“I—I—But his grammar is terrible!” Sierra exploded, and immediately clapped a hand over her mouth.

“…I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

“Nothing!” the brunette squeaked. “Nothing…”

Angie’s disbelief initially began its journey as a harmless expression on her face, but somehow ended up wreaking havoc on Sierra’s eardrums. It made the younger girl wince and recoil; she never thought she could actually hear someone frown.

“You broke up with Steve because you think he has bad grammar?”

For a moment, there was silence.

“…Angie?” a small voice whispered at last, “Angie, can I tell you something? Something personal, I mean.”

“Don’t you always?”

“Angie…”

“Sorry,” the girl apologised, though her sincerity was debatable.

“And… And will you promise not to tell Steve?”

“Um…” Angie hesitated, but eventually agreed.

“Angie… I really wish we’d never slept together.”

There was a silence so absolute that Sierra idly wondered if she’d gone deaf.

“I just… I just feel like it’s totally screwed us up, you know?” Sierra continued desperately. “Because that’s really all our relationship is now—I mean, whenever I try to think of where our relationship is going, I—well, I don’t, even though I want to. It’s all narrowed down to… sex. And it’s not even good sex,” she added bitterly, ignoring the muffled sound that came from Angie’s end.

“Oh, honey…”

“That’s just… all we have now. I don’t think it’s a proper relationship anymore. And do you know what the worst part is?”

Angie didn’t.

“The worst part is, he’s not the one obsessing about it all the time: I am. How twisted is that?” There was a trace of a sob in her voice now. “Steve isn’t the one screwing this up—he should be the one screwing it up, but he isn’t: I am.”

“Si-Si,” Angie said, with a little more affection, “Oh, Si… Would you like me to come over?”

Sierra sniffled, rubbing her eye. “Nah,” she replied. “I think I’ll just go to bed. Thanks for listening—again. ‘Night.”

“Sweet dreams, honey,” Angie murmured, reaching out to press the button as the dial tone began its droned monotony.

It should perhaps be noted that for the entirety of the conversation, the phone had never left its cradle.

Angie turned away from the speakerphone to glance at Steve, who had been quietly eavesdropping from the bed beside her.

“So,” she said pleasantly, “have you gained any deep and spiritual insights?”

“I don’t get her,” he said, brashly. “I’m sorry, but I really, really don’t. First it’s because we’re having bad sex, then it’s because she wants to get married, and now—”

“She’s scared; can’t you tell? She’s really, really scared.”

“She sounded spoilt and whiny to me.”

“She’s scared,” the girl insisted, “Isn’t it obvious?”

“…Nope.”

“Steve, just try to think.”

“…Sorry, I’ve got nothing,” Steve shrugged five minutes later, and promptly ducked a flying sock.

“Steve? What do you think you are to her?”

“The guy she dropped in favour of her cat?”

“Her boyfriend,” Angie said with an air of don’t-give-me-any-of-your-half-arsed-sarcasm about her. “Her first boyfriend; her very first boyfriend. I mean, you’ve been together for what, three years? It’ll be four in October, right?”

“…And this is relevant because…?”

“Steve, first loves aren’t meant to be true loves! And when September comes round she’ll be visiting universities and getting interviewed and finishing her exams and everything else, and then the year after that she’ll either take a gap year or be going up to Oxbridge, she’s smart enough for them, but the exact details don’t actually matter because basically her life is about to change and she’s already beginning to feel out of control—which is why she’s focusing on the sex and stuff, it’s probably the only aspect of her life right now that she feels she can still affect—but basically, Steve, basically, she’s—oh, wanting to get married makes it so obvious! How can you not guess?—because, Stephen, because—Sierra’s scared of losing you.”

Now finished, Angie placed her hand on her chest and inhaled deeply. Steve simply stared at her, his brown eyes carefully blank as he tried to work out exactly what she had just said.

“Oh?” he said at last, when his friend showed signs of regaining her breath. “Is that all?”

---

Although she had been lying half-awake for the better part of half an hour, it was her brother’s strangled gasp that finally pulled Sierra back to the realms of the living.

“Ugh…” she said, burying her face into her pillow and waving her arm bonelessly at the door. “Lee go ‘way…”

Aw, poor baby—bloody hell!” This was followed by a sort of stumbling sound, culminating in the crash of the door as it smashed into its frame.

“Lee-ohhh…” she whined; her post-sleep brain was a mass of swirling, undefined fog, rendering her unable (and unwilling) to identify the cause of his distress. “Go ‘way,” she repeated, rubbing her cheek further into the pillow. “Go, go, go…”

“But I thought—” her brother sputtered, “—I thought that you’d broken—What is he doing here?”

Sierra sighed, and pulled the duvet firmly over her ears. When next she spoke, Sierra had meant to say, “You don’t want to know;” what actually came out was “Oodonwannano.”

“But he has bad grammar!”

“Eurgh…”

“…And he’s a bastard!”

“Bastaheesineyovthbeholdah.” (‘Bastardy is in the eye of the beholder.’)

“But—But, Si—”

The girl released a high-pitched shriek: “Neugh! Goway! Sleepy…” And she heaved the duvet little higher still, so quickly that it took a few moments for her nerves to relay to her that her toes were now fully exposed.

“Please…” she pleaded, her words lost in the confines of her pillow, and after several minutes of incomplete sentences and stuttering and downright name-calling, Leonardo eventually admitted defeat and slunk away with his tail between his legs. Sierra waited a moment or two longer before re-establishing her grip on the pillow and snuggling further in.

The pillow hugged back; she smiled, and rubbed her nose affectionately against it. The pillow chuckled at this—she was certain he was grinning—and then she felt a pair of hands brushing gently but firmly across her back, beginning at the shoulder blades and sweeping down, as though attempting to smooth out her skin. She groaned appreciatively; “Thafeelsnoice.”

“What’s that, love?” queried the pillow.

“Nice…”

“Speak up, darling.”

Sierra sighed, and turned her face away.

“It feels nice,” she repeated, and was answered by another quiet laugh.

“Good. I’m glad.”

The palms continued their lazy massage, although once or twice a bored hand would wander up to tangle itself within her hair, a stray finger flittering across her upturned cheek. When Sierra was awake enough to raise herself onto her forearms and whisper her lips across his shoulder, the hands and stopped; there was some shuffling, and a small amount of kicking (the normal acrobatics required to ensure that the bedclothes cover all extremities) before the pillow finally joined her in the warm, filtered, sub-duvet terrain, smiling languidly.

“Sleep well?” he whispered, and Sierra nodded, giggling.

“Mm, yes; and you?”

“As well as can be, considering how I had to put up with a Sierra sleeping across my stomach.”

“Aw, you know you liked it,” she said after a reprimanding tap on his slightly-stubbled cheek. “Eugh…”

“What?”

“You need to shave.”

“So do you. Ow!” he protested as she slapped him again, a little harder than before. A struggle followed, playfully half-hearted, with the eventual result being Steve lying fitfully on his front, his face turned to one side, brown eyes watching his girlfriend kneel beside him, idly rubbing his own shoulders.

“Do you like that?”

“Hmm.”

“…I’m not hurting you, am I?”

Steve’s lips widened, his head shaking almost imperceptibly.

“Dear girl,” was all he said, his fingers reaching out to awkwardly brush against her nearest wrist; he would have pulled it away again, but her hand quickly darted towards it, her fingers curling around his.

“No, don’t,” she protested, only slightly desperate. “Please don’t, not yet; just… hold me… a little bit.”

Steve said nothing, but his eyes slipped closed as his fingers curled around hers.

It’s absolutely amazing, he thought himself with a hint of a mental smirk, what not talking can do. The night before, a Friday night, he had turned up on her doorstep just as she was leaving for her dance class (“I’ll hang round here and we’ll talk when you get back, ‘kay?”), and then when she’d returned there had been some awkward shuffling followed by a light, late, and embarrassingly silent dinner, and then as they were clearing up Sierra’s nerves forced her to ask him about his grasp on grammar (or supposed lack thereof), which led to a longer-than-average and grammatically-correct letter of apology, more embarrassment, and a late-night movie…

—To cut a long and no doubt boring story short, somewhere along the way, they’d ended up shagging; and to Steve, that was really all that mattered.

Sierra, currently trying her hand at amateur masseusery, was also lost in reminiscences of the night before, although with a slightly different motive from her male counterpart: because, now that she was awake enough to think clearly, Sierra realised that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

But, damn it all, she couldn’t place her finger on it.

Let’s look at this chronologically, she thought to herself: Steve had shown up, with characteristically good timing, just as she was leaving for her jazz class, which meant that he was able to barge into her house and remain there until she’d returned. This of course meant that her concentration on the exercises was practically nonexistent, the routines scattered, and as if that wasn’t enough, she’d also tripped and not-quite-twisted her ankle.

She’d hated Steve then.

But then she’d got home, and Steve was cooking, and he wasn’t smug, or arrogant, or overbearing. He wasn’t even a little bit confident; no, Steve had been… shy.

That had thrown her off completely.

At first, they hadn’t talked, but then they had, and even though it wasn’t about much, and even though they didn’t even do much last night, she’d felt, somehow… that everything was going to be alright.

And then they’d slept together, which, at this stage of their relationship, was practically inevitable. Nothing strange or embarrassing or untoward had occurred—they remembered to take off their socks, none of their clothes got caught or attacked them, no policemen showed up to arrest them on the grounds of public indecency—in short, last night, everything had gone right; and that was how Sierra knew that something was very wrong.

But what? That was the question.

The girl closed her eyes and sighed, worrying her lower lip. When she’d opened them again, she glanced down at her fiancé, who was grinning like the cat who’d got the cream.

Sierra stiffened, her ears pricked; her massaging hands slowed; she turned her head towards the door, still, silent. Waiting.

Oh God… Oh God… Ohgodohgodohgod—

“STEPHEN! What the hell have you done to my cat?!”

---

In a small, minimalist flat in Stepney, Isaac sat cowering in a barricaded bedroom, a wok clenched in his terrified fists. Last night, his neighbour had dumped one of those carrying cases you used to take your pet to the vet in, you know, the ones that look like miniature travelling jails. When asked, Steve has said that it contained “a mythical monster in the shape of a cat”, and had warned Isaac not, in any circumstances, to let it out. Isaac had ignored this advice, thinking that his friend was simply being paranoid and melodramatic.

He was wrong; if anything, Steve had been guilty of being nothing more than extremely sensible.

A low, rumbling “MEERROWLL!” came from the other side of the door; Isaac, clutching his cooking utensil tighter still, whimpered, his toes curling against the carpet.

Further still, beyond the furry orange monster, came the ring of the doorbell, a ding-dong of salvation.

“Isaac? Are you in there?”

“HEEEEEEELP!!” squeaked the social worker, knowing as he did that Steve had a spare key. Ten minutes later, and he was sitting on the couch, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, shivering.

“I-I let it o-o-out,” he gibbered, staring at the blank television with unseeing eyes. “A-And he-he—g-g-g-grew… He had c-c-c-claws and t-t-t-teeth, and he grew…”

“Oh, really,” said Sierra from the carpet, where she tossed to George a ball of fairy-blue wool that only eleven hours ago had been Isaac’s girlfriend’s favourite sweater. “No offence, but you guys are really pathetic; he’s just a giant kitten really. Aren’t you?” she added as George, lying on his back, balanced the ball between two paws, allowing his human to scratch his belly. “Who’s Mummy’s favourite little kitty-cat, hmm?”

“Mew,” said George obediently, shooting the two men smug stares when Sierra wasn’t looking. “Mew mew mew, mew.”

“Oh, yes you are, you are, you really, really are!”

Steve caught Isaac’s gaze, and raised his eyebrow.

“How ‘bout a drink?”

Isaac was a hardcore Buddhist, and as such, did not condone the consumption of alcoholic spirits, believing them to pollute his body and clog up his chakras; he nodded furiously, still unable to speak. Steve patted his knee, and picked his way across the cat-related wreckage, promising that so long as Sierra was around to impress, George wouldn’t dare do a thing.

“Miaow,” purred the cat, curling up in his human’s lap. He caught Isaac’s brown eyes, and slowly, lazily, languidly… smirked.

It was a smirk that spoke of pure, uncontaminated evil.

Fin.