(Author's Note. This is the final part of a four-part story. So, if you are new to the tale and are expecting page after page of graphic nookie, this is probably not for you. I won't say that there isn't any sexual content, but by the same measure I won't say that there is. I'm not going to write my own spoilers!)
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I cried, and I cried. I felt like the tears could never stop.
I had never wept so bitterly before. Truth is, I've never been one for tears. I'd not been one for any explicit signs of feeling, come to think of it. I suspect as a small child I forced tears out with the same intensity, but in my adult life this was all new.
It was like all like all the emotions I'd ignored decided that this was their day. No, that's, wrong. It wasn't LIKE they decided. That is precisely what happened.
In that moment in the kitchen, I hit the wall. I didn't even fucking know that the wall was there. I guess I'd been running so hard for so long, it didn't remotely occur to me there was a wall. Hey, but there it was, and I hit it as hard as any girl has hit any wall.
I stared at the cracked screen of my phone and the tears tumbled out. Everything vanished in my fabricated life. My house of cards collapsed like, well, a house of cards. I was emptied. So, I cried, and I could not stop the tears.
If there was one human being on the planet that I was going to have that level of meltdown in front of, Alli was my girl. She held me so tightly as I cried, it just made me want to cry more. She stepped to me as I wept, and I felt her anger disappear. I wept because this was the best person I'd ever known, and I had tried so hard to lie to her about all the all the big things. I wept because of Angela. I wept because I'd messed everything up.
We stood in the kitchen for a while. I was emptying my eyes out in Alli's shoulder and she was rubbing my back. I have no idea how long that lasted for. I was so utterly lost in my own self-pity, and despair. Eventually I was just sobbing, and Alli steered me to the living room and popped me on the sofa.
I sat there as she kept her arms around me, my face entirely wet with tears and snot. Not a great look. Eventually I calmed and she stood. She took both my hands and looked in my red, wrinkled, wet face.
"One minute, hun."
She disappeared. I curled up on the sofa and held my face in my hands.
I hear the front door open and close as Alli moved Colin out of the flat. It sounded like a brutal exfiltration, poor boy, and then I heard her in the kitchen.
She came back and sat down beside me with two cups of tea. I raised myself and she grabbed my hands.
"You are going to talk to me, and we are going to fix whatever the fuck is going on, girl." I nodded and let go to pick up my tea. I held it in both hands and looked at her.
"Thanks." I said.
"It's only tea."
"You know what I mean."
I could still feel the tears welling in me. God, I felt pathetic. Why was she so fucking nice to me? All I'd done was lie to her. I was a lying, cheating, whore, bitch friend. She had her hand on my cheek, rubbing with her thumb.
"Time to talk, Sally."
I told her the whole story. I told her every bit, from Martin in the bar, to the email from Angela, to the lies I'd told the night before, and about the sex and the intense connection. I told her about the Horny Geek Club. I told her how I didn't want the most perfect man in Manchester. I told her I thought I'd fallen in love. I told her how the person I'd fallen in love with just thought I was pay-for-sex. I told her I was sorry. I cried at almost every point in my story, but I cried the most when I told her that I had lied to her so often and I hated myself for that.
In telling the truth, I felt a strange liberation. Even though I was now in fear of her reaction, I was glad that it was out there. She listened without one interruption or question and drank her tea.
"So, you are the cock hungry slut, then?" She said when I finished.
"Wha...What?"
"I believe that was your very own description of you!"
I remembered. The conversation we had had about the mythical hot blow job girl, and that was how I had described myself. I giggled through the tears. More snot. Ugh.
"Something like that..." If I were going to fall in love with a girl, why couldn't it be Alli?
After listening to everything. After hearing how I was a part time sex worker and serial liar, Alli started with what was hurting me the most.
"So, you've fallen in love with this Angela?" It was more of a statement than a question. I sat back and nodded, supping the tea, the cup as my shield. I could no longer hide anything from her; honesty was like a drug.
"Hey, I said we could be lesbians. Called it." She said and smirked at me. I smiled back.
"You aren't my type." She feigned offence and pushed me on the shoulder. She sat back and looked right at me. Right into me. I knew I was now going to get what she thought of me, the mess I'd created and what I should do. I braced myself.
"The lies hurt, Sal. They really do. What hurts the most is that you have been dancing this lie and this life and you couldn't talk to me about it." There was no defence to that.
"I worried how you would judge me. I guess in not being honest with you I was lying to myself that it was all okay."
"For someone so fucking smart, you really are so fucking stupid. I love the arse off you, Sally. I am not going to judge you for shit like this." She paused. "For sure, talk you out of it, yeah I think you have made awful choices, but I understand why you did what you did."
Alli was in full flow.
"I hate your choices, for you, Sally, not for how I see you, but for you." She pointed at me as she spoke. "What hurts though is that you wouldn't or couldn't tell me. That's hard. That's hard for me to take. It makes me feel like our friendship meant more to me than it did to you. You were hurting and I knew it, but you closed me out. I cannot pretend I'm ok with that. I thought it was because you were lonely, I thought it was because you wouldn't let yourself feel. I only ever tried to help."
I started crying again. She stroked my face again but gestured that it was my turn to speak, tears or not.
"Alli, you are the nicest person I know. Probably the nicest person I will ever know. So that made it scary to think..." I tailed off.
"Go on..."
"To think that you would think of me as cheap. That's why I couldn't say. I couldn't say because you mean so much to me." Even as I said it, and it was the absolute truth, it sounded like a line from a movie. I was being a cliché again. "I love the total fucking arse off you too, Alli. That's a shit reason for lying, I know, but it's true." I paused, and then added.
"By the way, when I say love you, I don't mean in the lesbian way that I appear to have recently found." I smiled at my effort to joke it out. She ignored that.
"Oh, Sally, oh Sally, oh Sally. I thought you knew me and what I think of you. You are the smartest, hardest working, funniest, sweetest person I know. The only things I don't like about you is that you go around hurting yourself and that are so pretty, which is unfair when you already have everything else. I mean, you are not exactly pretty right now. You are a red eyed, snotty, torn faced hag, at the minute." Harsh, but true. She made her point.
"The one thing you are not and never could be, is cheap."
I started to cry, again. She started to cry. What was with all these fucking tears? What emotional car crash had I become? Fucking get shit together girl - this is ridiculous. I couldn't. Control was a thing of the past.
We hugged it out. I knew it was okay then.
More tea. Much more tea. Tea fixes everything. We talked more and we laughed at some of the mess, and I cried at some things. It was all out. I felt a sliver of relief build on top of my sadness and general shittiness.
We sat in silence at opposite ends of the sofa. I'd finally stopped snivelling. Thank fuck for that.
"What's up bitches?" Sarah bounced into the room. She'd been out grocery shopping for the flat. She sat on the armchair and opened a magazine. She looked up and stopped flicking.
"Woah, Sal, fuck sake, are you Ok?"
Alli looked at me and I nodded. Sarah had to know too. I trusted her and I wanted no more lies in the flat, my home, my sanctuary.
"Sal is in a bit of a pickle." Sarah sat forward at that, her face half concern and half curiosity.
"Yeah?"
"She has been performing oral sex acts for cash to keep afloat and she has gone and fallen in love with a new customer, a girl as it happens, who appears to think she is just gay for pay." I shrugged and nodded my approval of the summary. Sarah would get to the whole Neil complication herself.
"Fuck off...No way! Get you, girl!!" Sarah seemed bizarrely impressed by it all. She sat up and stuck her hand in her pocket. She pulled out some change and made a big show of counting it.
"What would I get for £5.73?"
"Sarah!!" I yelled and threw a cushion at her. She was deeply impressed at her joke and I laughed too. That was a perfect response. I knew that it was all good in the flat. She came over to me and gave me a hug.
"It'll be ok, you rock it bitch."
The first problem had been solved. My secret from the best girls was no longer a secret. For good or bad, they saw me. I felt so incredibly stupid because I should always have known they would be amazing. I looked at them both as they started chattering away about how much money they had to pay my way in the flat and what I should do about Angela, Neil and all my horny geeks. They wanted to just fix all my problems right there. I felt like crying again. OH, FOR FUCK SAKE. ENOUGH OF THE TEARS.
To them it was simple. I had to end the sex work. It was not a good choice for lots of reasons, not least of which was the fact that Angela may not be that keen on me if it continued. Oh, and they felt it was dangerous and massively shit. They'd mostly be able to cover me in the flat. I could go from two to three or four shifts at the bar. I would just phone Angela (although we didn't know if my phone was still working at that stage), she would love me (obvs) and we would all live happily ever fucking after.
"Stop, stop..." I said. "You are not paying my way. I'm not going back to the bar six nights a week, and I've done all the sums and £60 for 30 minutes of unpleasant work is still much better that £8.50 an hour in the bar. I'm stuck. Ergo, no one will want to be with me, and ergo It's much better to get back behind my wall, suck it up and..."
"Fuck off." They spoke in unison.
