Emma – @jackheathwriter

The scars on your legs are itching. You forgot your earplugs. The others haven’t arrived. And the nightclub is packed.

The evening’s off to a bad start.

You keep moving, never making eye contact. There are four types of men in the world – tall pansies, tall jerks, short pansies and short jerks. The difference between pansy and jerk is obvious; but short men aren’t just physically different – society convinces them tall men are more attractive, so they feel they need to prove themselves.

Now put these four types in a situation where there are women. The tall pansy will just stand around, waiting for a woman to notice him. The tall jerk will do the same thing, but he’ll laugh louder. The short pansy will approach a girl, and strike up a conversation – and he always gets the girl. The short jerk will pick a fight with the tall pansy.

You’re six one. If you stand still for too long, a midget in a white singlet with a gold chain around his neck and a close trimmed beard will approach you, stand so close that you can smell the tequila shots on his breath, shove your chest and say something like ‘Were you fucking staring at me, dickhead?’

So you keep moving. You’re tall, not invulnerable – you couldn’t bring yourself to throw a punch, and you can’t quite shake the suspicion that short people carry switch-blades. You have a pocket-knife, but you’d never draw it.

You’re running out of places to go. You’ve gone to the bar, ordered a coke, drunk it. You’ve weaved through the tendrils of smoke on the stage, and squeezed through the throbbing mass of flailing limbs on the dance floor. You’ve gone outside, clicked your lighter at an imaginary cigarette, seen the bouncer glance at you with shark-like disinterest.

Why are you here? Your girlfriend isn’t coming. And the crazy school-buddies who invited you are unreliable; you knew that even before they failed to show.

And now you’re on the dance floor again, somehow. The teenage survival instinct kicks in – don’t dance, or people will stare at you. The girls will laugh and whisper and the boys will flex sweaty fists. But the logical part of your mind steps in – standing still is standing out. Everyone is moving, all half-closed eyes and waving appendages.

So you dance. The boosted kick drum blasting from the speakers does half the work for you; every beat is like a punch in the sternum, trying to knock you down. A quilt of thrashing clothes and flesh buffets your body all over, and even at six one, it feels like drowning.

There’s a girl looking at you – a single dark eye locks onto yours through a keyhole in the dancers. You look away, because she might have a five-foot boyfriend. But she’s in your peripheral vision, talking to her friends. The friends are glancing at you now. Three sexy brunette blobs, clad in outfits that are pretty on a girl’s friends, but slutty on her strangers.

Is there something wrong with your dancing? Or your shirt – does it make you look gay? What are they staring at? Just don’t make eye contact. Don’t look.

You’re back in high school, the girls are talking about you and you don’t know what they’re saying, and you want to sit in a shadowy corner of the canteen where no-one can see you. But there’s still a wall of people, swaying, bouncing skeletons with huge pupils and shiny faces. You can’t even remember which way the bar is.

The girl slips through the crowd like it isn’t there and wraps her skinny arms around your waist. Her girlfriends give her thumbs up.

‘Hi,’ you say. A lock of her dark, feathery hair gets in your mouth – but her chances of hearing you this close to the speakers are comparable to a snowball in hell.

Maybe you should have pushed her away. Pushing isn’t your thing, but you have a girlfriend, and she doesn’t know that yet. There’s a ‘girlfriend window’ – a short space of time when it’s appropriate to tell a girl you’ve recently met that you have a girlfriend. Too early and you seem rude, or presumptuous. Too late and it’s like you’ve led the girl on – either way you can ruin the potential friendship.

Trouble is, by the time the girl is running her violet fingernails down your back and rubbing her hips against your leg, chances are that you’ve missed the window. And you’ve known this girl less than a minute – a new record.
You usually wait too long – but this is the shortest that too long has ever been.

‘…’ she says.

‘What?’ you ask. The music thumps your skull; it’s like being underwater in a tsunami.

‘…-…’ she says, pointing at her breasts.

You shrug apologetically, now unnerved.

‘Emma,’ she says, right in your ear.

‘Nick,’ you say, and she smiles. She is pretty – her teeth are dazzling, even in the erratic darkness of the club.

Your chest hurts. She likes you – that’s rare. You can’t stand up to your loser friends who didn’t show up – how are you supposed to resist a pretty girl who likes you?

She draws back so the two of you are face to face. Your scars tingle, a thrilling warning.

The split second that her lips are touching yours seem to last an agonizing eternity. She’s pretty, ambitious. Braver than you. Instinct says give in – but you have a girlfriend, who you love. Your friends invited you here, you didn’t want to come. Emma grabbed you, you didn’t beckon her over. And she’s the one pressing her face against yours, big dark eyes shut.
You pull back, frightened. She tries to pull you in again, but you resist gently.

There’s someone in my life who I’m crazy about, and that feels too good to throw away. You’re the prettiest on the dance floor, I know it took guts to approach me, and I don’t want to hurt your feelings – but I can’t give you what you’re looking for.

No way she’d be able to lip-read all that. ‘Sorry,’ you say.

Emma’s expression could be fragile sadness, could be seething hate, could be sudden, disappointed nonchalance – she’s gone before you can tell, melting into the gyrating mob of hopefuls.

* * *

You don’t put the keys in the ignition. You grab tissues from the glove compartment, put them within reach as you pull down your pants and click your lighter.

The stinging of the hot pocket knife wakes you up as it carves carefully into your flesh, deep enough to hurt, but not enough to reach the femoral artery. You suck the stale air through clenched teeth as you slide the blade out of your thigh, and press tissues against the wound. They blossom red in seconds.

The scar will fade. In only weeks it will join the other six, barely visible underneath the leg hairs. No injury, attention, or cheap thrills. Only justice – a scar for every heart you’ve broken.