Joni and Roddy

Walking the distance from work to The Radicals & Victualles was the last way she could gather her thoughts. This pub seems to be their place, but not a sentimental place that other couple’s have. It’s not the place they first kissed, or where he first asked her to be his girlfriend. It’s the pub opposite the green in Islington that collects wannabe indies and stuck-up young Londoners like dust mites. It’s the place they always ‘talk things through’ after one of their tiffs.

As Joni meets the beginning of the pubs washed-wooden front, the combination of her profusely-applied perfume and the thought of breaking up makes her nauseatingly light-headed. Yet like he knew she was feeling so, like he always knows what’s going on inside her mind, Roddy taps on the glass of the window he is sat at, dramatically waving with a cartoon smile painted across his face. “Hello stranger.” A typical response from a not-so-typical man. After one of their little games Roddy always tried to extinguish the fire of his played part, to act as if it was nothing. Joni had never felt so sick. She wanted to shrink down like Alice in Wonderland and dive head first into the glass of Sauvignon Blanc Roddy has ordered before she arrived. She would never surface again if diving into the glass of white wine was at all possible. Because this time, this game, Roddy had made her feel as though this was the last game he ever wanted to play.

That’s what she had muttered to herself all day “but that’s what makes us, us.” Joni works in a lawyer’s office. She has all of the qualifications, but in seven years has never made it past administrator for the top bloke in the firm. She loathes the misogynistic atmosphere she is consumed by each and every day, yet Joni is someone that despite the lack of praise, promotions, pay rises, or how the men in her office belittle her intelligence, she still has faith. It’s heartbreaking to watch Joni as an outsider, to observe how much faith fills her petite yet strong frame. Her mother always used to tell her to expect the worst so that she would never be disappointed. She tried it on for a while, but it didn’t fit her. It didn’t fit her like her mother’s kitten heels she would try on about the house, not like the way her father’s suits did. She soon realised that having that outlook on life was like being washed around in a tsunami. Describing it would be to paint a beautiful picture of a faraway ocean - blue seas with sparkling shimmers on top and emerald depths beneath. Only to then paint a dark charcoal cloud over it, washing an inky watercolour across what was otherwise, a nice view. From that day Joni decided she would always look for diamonds in the dirt. That’s why she couldn’t comprehend Roddy’s sudden change of tune. Whilst Joni saw the best in life, it’s as though she needed the added drama behind closed doors to make interest of the daily rainbows. Roddy was the only person she had ever been able to do that with. The moment she met him was like she had always been called ‘Joni and Roddy’, ‘Roddy and Joni’, ‘Rod and Jon.’ Mundane and monotonous people from the outside, who are nothing but narcissistic, vulgar and sickeningly in love.

“I’ve missed you.” He’ll do this, pulling her back to the consciousness of their conversation. She’s observing the two pints that he’s already sank, alongside an empty wine glass already pushed to the edge of the rickety wooden bar table that they hunch over. “Was someone here before me?” Joni nods to refer to the empty glass. “I bought it for you. But I got nervous.” Joni had always been a drinker, never too much though. Her family would enjoy a couple of bottles of wine on the weekend, like most British people do. But the only dates Roddy and Joni were going on five years ago were bar crawls around hot spots in London. Those drunken dates of stumbling across West London and into bed with one another phased out, but the drinking together never did. Sexy bars turned into “one quick one and then we’ll go home.” And when they got home, cans of beer were withdrawn from the fridge as they slumbered over one another in pyjamas, or no clothes at all. “So are we going to talk?” She had been stupidly worried about Roddy this past week, but the boyish smirk that was living in the side of his cheek since she arrived was beginning to piss her off. “Yes, silly. How have you been then?” “Fucking worried. you?” The smirk fell out of his cheeks as hard a rock falls to the ground. Whilst Joni had always been very mature - that’s why she was always attracted to older men like Roddy - she’d always been a little immature in the way she handled arguments. Sniggering comments and spitting words like “fucking worried” were there to make the other person work it out for themselves. Yet when Roddy played his last card at avoiding the confrontation by standing up to go order another round, Joni snapped. Snapped right into shape of the adult in this relationship. “You know I’m not that type of girl to tell you what to do. But you are not having another drink until you explain. You were the one who creeped out of the door, tail between your legs saying that you “needed space.”” Roddy slithered back into his seat, once again, with his tail between his legs.

“Alright. Look, don’t expect me to have some sort of presentation prepared, or all of this worked out. Because I haven’t. And stop looking so angry, you know I find that endearing.” Setting himself up tall in his chair ready for what did look exactly like a presentation he had recited a thousand times. “You know I find it difficult, even with you. The last thing I ever want to do is hurt you.” He shuffles awkwardly at the thought. “But I know that you deserve more. Equally, that we are meant for each other. And I really have fucking missed you.” With every word he speaks, Joni’s upper lip softens and she gets metaphorically weak at the knees. “Me and you kid, we’re not meant to be conventional. Christ, we both know that.” Their eyes both dragging sulkily up from the table and meet in synchronised remembrance of all of those times he is referring to.

It’s not exactly dominance and submissive, it’s more like lion and bear hunting each other around the corners of the expensive artwork and statue-like coffee tables, in their three story flat in Highbury and Islington. When there is reason to fight there is always a glimmer in both of their eyes, the excitement that they both feel once they know what is about to happen. Instead of conversations that Joni’s friends have with their boyfriends, they tear each other’s flesh both inside and out. One withdraws love and makes the other howl like a werewolf with desperation, as neither can be apart from one another’s souls. If they fought on a Thursday, by late night on Friday they would both come home intoxicated, slur how much they were sorry for their rough-up in the jungle, and then spend all night until early hours of the following morning entangled in their own Garden of Eden. But this time is wasn’t a fight over who cooks dinner all the time, or the fact that he was hungover on her birthday, or about the girl in Roddy’s office that wants to fuck him over his filing cabinet. This time wasn’t a play fight, it was because Roddy still can’t tell Joni that he loves her.

Roddy was complicated. Not in a bad boy, Danny Zuko, leather-jacket kind of complicated, but a confusing soul. Quite frankly, a mind fuck. He seemed so non-complex to the outer world, borderline boring. But the way he had ridden into Joni’s life - like a knight on a stead through a dark forest - was far from dull. They were both too far into the woods, and Joni couldn’t see her own hand before the binding brambles anymore. To all other people he was grounded, one to stay put. But to Joni, he moved around her room, her mind, her life like a poltergeist. The drama and his haunting ways were what made her stay. She needed it to stay alive.

Joni had lifted her clamped foot from the drinks ban, and whilst they had both sipped quickly at another two drinks, Roddy continued to dance so elegantly around the topic. Adorning Joni with all the reasons she knows they work, because neither of them could work with anyone else. He would drop in lines of prosperity like always, making her feel like the rockstar she wanted to be when she was younger, that had clearly never taken off. “I can’t say it Jones, because, you know, life isn’t like that. All your mates with their boyfriends, it’s just playing happy families. Not like us, we’re real, we’re raw. How it’s fucking meant to be.” The anxious and timid boy Joni had met in the pub a couple of hours ago was no longer there. Here was her man, telling her all of the thoughts that she was too scared to admit with fear of sounding superior to her mates. She loved her Roddy more than anything in the world, she loved that she couldn’t work him out, and yet knew exactly how to crawl underneath his skin. With the haze in the air between them filled with droplets of alcohol, it was getting hotter and smaller between them. Joni’s plan to tell him she needed to be told she was loved was long gone, further down the rabbit hole than she was. This always happened, her inhibitions and the real Joni, the uptight Joni would always chill out when she was with Roddy, she felt like a rockstar with her unconventional relationship. Who needs to be told they are loved, anyway? What matters is that you feel it. Really feel it. Like someone else’s heart is beating against yours. When you look up at each other across the room because you had the same thought about one another. Like when you touch hands accidentally in the kitchen five years into your relationship and it still has the same buzz to it that it did when it happened on your first date.

When Joni arrived at The Radicals & Victualles three hours ago, her navy blazer was pulled taut around her small shoulders, her head was held demandingly high, and her lips were closed in silent protest. Now that she is back with Roddy her blazer is slung across one side of her chair which has been scooted round next to his, her head lies and occasionally nuzzles the side of his neck, and her lips are wide open as his ale-tasting tongue traces the inners of them. Their demonic smiles move in and out of each other.

Joni and Roddy leave together, it’s hard to work out who is holding up who. Roddy breaks the moment of laughter and nostalgia for their first dates and presses Joni against a wall in the high street, a spot where a street light doesn’t happen to be shining down on them. Pressing her into the wall he kisses her like never before. Tender touch with occasional pause to glare down into her puppy dog, hazel eyes.

What happened that night in Joni and Roddy’s flat was something that happens both on a weekly basis, and almost never. The drunken make-up was inevitable, Joni convinces herself he loves her and would therefore never walk away from something she knows is there. Roddy has no idea, but he knows that a life without Joni...well, he knows he wouldn’t want to live at all. Yet the way that this specific night happened, something changed in both of them forever. The way that his mouth felt unbearable on her thighs. How she fit over him, straddling like the perfect jigsaw piece, finally connected. When he ran his hands from the core of her mind, the nape of neck, and the size of his hand cupped the entirety of her lower back. The way that they kissed harder the more sober that they got into the early hours. Roddy never wanted to kiss her once he was sober. At 3am in the last of the Sauvignon Blanc haze, Joni agreed with herself that she didn’t need three words, he had told her all she desired in the last four hours in their own version of Love and Other Drugs. They had stopped preying upon one another. Joni pulled Roddy’s arm over her and turned to face the wall of their bedroom, the sun rising. This was the first time in forever that Joni had slept with both eyes shut and with total vulnerability.

At 9am Roddy and Joni both opened their eyes, both noting the considerable amount they had moved away from one another in the night. Roddy says he will go fetch them both breakfast. “Your usual?” Joni nodded, yes, she would have her usual Saturday hangover bacon bagel. Pulling on his jeans he moved around the bed, sat next to her like a parent does when tucking their little one in at night. He places his lips on her forehead and before she knows it, his weight is no longer pressing on her. As he leaves the door Joni feels the words “I love you” try to walk along her tongue to dance with glee in the air, like she always does when Roddy walks away. She doesn’t say them.

Alone in their space, Joni pushes herself up and sits in the middle of the bed, the tall headboard looming over her, with the beige linen sheet just covering her naked chest. Her hair long with soft waves throughout, she felt tame. The sun shone through the parting of the tall peach-coloured curtains in their bedroom. She looked down at her hair, in awe of how it beamed an auburn bright and glistened gold throughout, just like lionesses’ fur do when the seasons turn from one to another. Black to bold.

Roddy walked through the door and looked at his goddess through the bedroom door, he smiled like he always did on Saturday mornings, with more possibility than anyone thought could be smiled. Pulling on Roddy’s T-shirt, Joni started the new day and walked into the living room. Sitting down to eat on different sofa’s, Joni looked at the man she loved like she did every Saturday morning, with a total acceptance of reality that a hangover brought her.

“He doesn’t love me” she thought as she watched him move through the living room. That thought might scare some, but not Joni, she had known this since the moment they got together. She took a long inhale and told herself that she didn’t care about it either. Most of the time, Joni was numb. Who needs to be loved, anyway? What matters is that you have someone. Anyone.

A romantic short story written for Reedsy.

Reedsy inspired this story with the prompt

Go and check them out https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts