7pm, Friday night. Couch, lights off, dishwasher churning away in the kitchen, cleaning off the grease from our usual Chinese takeaway, curtains drawn, your choice of movie on the screen. As always.
And you and me, of course.
We’re sitting on the couch in our usual spaces; you on the left, your legs spread wide as you take up one and half of the three seats, me on the right, legs curled in neatly under my body, grasping a pillow on my bent knees. We’re both sitting here together, but we’re apart. I pull my foot away when your hand reaches out to brush against my wooly sock covered toes. You didn’t even glance at me when your hand retreated back into the comfort of the crisp bowl. Cheese and onion. Your favourite.
The smell makes me feel sick.
The colours of the screen flit across your face, casting dark red shadows across your skin. I honestly can’t remember for the life of me what it was we were watching again. Some macho action movie? A horror or some thriller? I’ve not really been paying attention, to be honest. I didn’t even pay attention when you were telling me about it earlier, how it was a movie that sounded alright and you fancied seeing it.
You always do whatever you fancy, don’t you?
I look away from your face when I see your head turn towards me slightly, knowing that you’re being watched as your crunch through your crisps. You furrow your brows while you gaze at me and then, after a moment, you take a breath, as though you’re just about to ask me what it is wrong. But the question never comes. You shift in your seat, cough to clear your throat and shake your head, eyes back on the screen.
I turn back to see you again, waiting for it to happen.
We’ve not always had a Friday Night movie. Back then – God, it must’ve been years ago now – we’d go out and do something. You’d walk around to my office and wait outside for the masses to be released at 5pm. Come rain or shine, I’d know you’d be there, in that old brown leather coat, the one that you got from your dad on your 17^th^ Birthday. You wore that thing everywhere – I think you even wore it to a BBQ we had down the beach with a few mates from work. I think you still have it now, but it’s tucked away now. All of a sudden, you just didn’t have it on one day. When I asked, you just told me that you ‘fancied a change’ and it wasn’t spoken about again. You wore it less and less and then at some point, I only ever saw it on your side of the wardrobe, hidden between your wedding suit and your funeral suit.
Yeah, back in the days we used to do things. I remember the time you arranged for us to go to some restaurant, some Turkish place. You were adament we had to go there on a Friday night and it was better that we went there for half eight-ish. I remember I was bloody starving. In between me moaning about how hungry I was and glasses of wine in a pub around the corner from the restaurant, I ate two whole packets of salt and vinegar crisps – and I even snaffed a few of your cheese and onion ones. That’s how hungry I was. I remember you gasping in mock shock and pulling the packet closer to you, only to split the foil a little more so it was easier for me to reach in and get some.
You were thoughtful like that, sometimes.
I remember we tumbled out of the pub and into the restaurant, tipsy and giggly already. We’d already checked out the menu on my phone and over the hours, the list of our order only got longer and longer. When the waiter gave us the menus and turned on their heel to give us time, you gently tapped on their elbow, explained that we already made up our mind, asked if you could make sure there were no almonds in any of our dishes and then rattled off our order. The woman quirked a brow as she noted it all down, pausing at one point to ask if we were expecting more people to join us and asked if we were sure if we wanted all of this when we told her it was just me and you.
We sat there, me sipping on my wine and you drinking your beer, dipping big tears of flat breads in thick, creamy babaganoush and munching through koftes, chatting away when the lights dimmed and took on a red hue and the quiet music suddenly became louder, filled with lutes and shimmering tambourines. The grin on your face spread, as the rumbling on some hand drums became louder and stopped as a scantilly clad belly dancer stepped out from a beaded curtain somewhere. Hollers and hoots filled the room and folk started clapping.
I turned to you incredulously, “Did you know about this?”
Your shoulders shrugged, but the smirk on your face said it all, “I heard something like this happens-”
The claps and hooting got louder as the belly dancer made her way throughout the room, getting people up from their seats and wrapping the belt around their waist. She’d show them a few wiggles of her hips, encouraging them to join in, before she wandered off to the next table, ready to get her next victims on board.
“Oh shit. She’s going round the room.”
“I know! Ain’t it great?!”
“She’s doing the outer tables first. It’s gonna be us soon.”
“And you’ll show them all how to do it right-”
“I’m not doing it, Ken.”
“What?! Oh come on! I’ve seen those hips at work before. They can do all sorts-”
I laughed in spite of myself, shaking my head, “You’re such an arsehole-”
“-and you can’t bloody well leave me up there alone,” He added, leaning in closer to whisper, “Once I do my belly rolls, the auld lassies at the table behind us might eat me alive.”
It didn’t take me much more convincing. Once the woman got us up and tied the coin fringed belt around our hips, the alcohol took over. We were swinging and swaying around the room for a good wee while until the music was turned off so the belly dancer could start her own part of the performance, now that we were all lubed up for the night ahead.
It was a brilliant night.
We’d been there a few times after, with friends in tow, hiding the big event of the night away from them until the music started. It was a great wee set up, us two in it together, thick as theives as we threw off their attempts at trying to work out why we dragged them all the way over to the other side of town for a ‘fancy kebab’. It was gleeful to see the surprise on their faces, to watch them shimmy around the room. Our pals! Professors, solicitors, a funeral director - the most serious folk in the world. We couldn’t stop laughing when Jimmy pulled up his crisp white and light blue pine-stripped shirt, opened up a few of the bottom buttons and twisted the material into a crop top, all the better to display his pasty white, hair flecked beer belly that he was desperately trying to ripple. It was a moment we’d bring up again and again on nights out, dinner parties and then actual parties for them and their kids.
Then we found out the place closed down about a year ago. We’d stopped heading out on Fridays that much before then, mind. You’d told me that you tried to book a table one night a few months ago when you were trying to make up with me after that big fight, only to find out it didn’t exist any more. You decided to order in instead. Worked out cheaper anyway, didn’t it?
We started the movies a while before that, though. It slowly crept in on us, like when you stopped wearing your jacket. Every once in a while, we’d decide it was nicer to cuddle up on the couch, order in some noodles and watch a movie. Wasn’t it more cosy? Us in our Pjs, a wee bottle of something nice, our limbs entangled together as we laughed, or cried or screamed at some movie together? It was better this way, we agreed. Especially when you’d take off one of my fluffy socks, your eyes still on the screen as you massaged my feet, almost like you were on auto-pilot, doing this for me without any thought. You’d sit for the the rest of the movie, your thumbs pushing into the balls of my toes, murmuring some prediction about what would happen next.
I could swear back then that our little front room was heaven.
I guess I never really noticed when it suddenly became all that we did. We didn’t bother going out as much anymore, not when heaven was in the front room. Invitations for dinners and parties were hardly rolling in anyways, and when they were they always seemed to have kids attached to them. We never really fancied it all that much – who’d want to spend their spare time washing off mucky, sticky finger prints from our clothes and staring at pictures of kids with runny noses? Not us. Kill us, first, please. Of course, we’d go to the obligatory first birthdays, show our faces and leave a gift before disappearing an hour or so later.
Then we’d end up back here, watching a movie. At some point, we weren’t even watching the movie together any more, both of us head down in our phones, me flicking through Instagram and facebook and you – well... whatever it was you were telling me you were doing.
I wonder if she was the first one?
Probably not, though. I reckon you’d have gotten bored often enough to work your way through a few of them. I did think you were being off with me for a while, being quite angry and snippy for some time. You being jovial just...stopped for a while. A long while. And then, all of a sudden, it just returned. Hugs and kisses and little treats brought in on your way home from work. Is that when it started? Should I have taken that as a sign of your guilty concious?
Your cough burst through my thoughts as I tried to work out how many more you might’ve had, more than ‘Mike Office’. That’s what her name was under on your phone. It didn’t seem like ‘Mike Office’ would have had such a round pair of tits anyway, or ‘want to feel your big aubergine in me again’. I don’t think she wanted any babaganoush. I could feel you tense in your seat beside me as you tested your throat, trying to swallow, trying to remain calm.
No, I don’t think she wouldn’ve been the first. Not when I followed the money after that, checking your account to see where you might’ve ended up. A few restaurants, a hotel here and there – all tied up to business trips, mind. And then a refund from OKCupid.
I suppose you always where thrifty. Wanted to save that money so you had more to shag wee Molly, didn’t you?
When your panick finally set in, your turned to face me, wheezing, “M-ma- my epi-”
“Shh. I’m trying to listen to the movie-”
The bowl slid from your knees as you gasped, your hands clutching at your reddening throat, as though you were trying to rip it open, trying to claw some way to let the air back in.
My eyes turned from the screen to watch you spasm and gasp, to watch you watch me as your realised what was going on. To watch you as you took your last, wheezy, raspy breath and sigh it back into the world.
Molly’ll be disappointed tonight. But then again, so am I. You smashed the almond flour dusted crisps into the new rug we got a few months back. That’ll be a pain to try and fish out.
With a huff, I leaned across your still body to reach for the remote that you planted on your arm of the chair. I think I saw something about Gone Girl being shown on film4. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that. Quite fancy watching it, actually.
I suppose I get to pick the Friday Night Movie from now on.