Free All Dressed Up by Lilian Darcy

the
cigarette direct from her own, puffing and drawing to fire up the
tip. Sarah sat down beside her and they smoked silently in the
heavy summer air with the cars swishing past in front of them
beyond the lawn, along the road that cut between the house and the
river.
    Sarah’s mouth
and fingers were tentative about it at first, then all those cool,
casual, instinctive teen gestures came back.
    “This is bad,”
Emma said at last.
    “I’m not
starting smoking again.”
    “Neither am
I.” But Emma took out another cigarette, tore the white and gold
paper away, tipped the tangled shavings of tobacco into the cupped
palm of her hand, lifted it to her face and inhaled. She held the
nest of cupped shavings out to Sarah, who inhaled, too. The
shavings smelled delicious, a mix of raisin toast, horse feed and
brandy.
    “Maybe I am
starting again,” Emma said. In London, she had smoked to look cool.
Sarah had smoked to get thin. It was good that their motivations
had been different, that they weren’t competing in the same sphere.
Sarah took another drag, and Emma lit up again. “Oh, this is so
bad!”
    They both
laughed, which hurt, and then there was almost – almost – a moment
when they started talking about it – London, what went on, what had
happened since, why they loved but at certain times didn’t like
each other very much any more.
    Which Sarah
actually would have liked to find out.
    She knew why
she didn’t like Emma, whenever she thought about London, but where
was Emma’s reciprocal grievance?
    “I’m sorry
about Luke,” Emma said. She meant Creep.
    Sarah’s
stomach lurched. “Mom told you we saw him?”
    “She called to
check on me. I asked about the Craigmore. She wasn’t going to tell
me about the cake, but I got it out of her in the end. And so of
course she spilled about Luke, too.”
    “Of course. Do
you mind about the cake?”
    Emma shrugged.
“Yes. I mean, I shouldn’t, I guess. But let’s talk about Luke. I
don’t think I said, or did, or really – ” graceful undulation of
the cigarette hand to indicate unsayable things, “ – anywhere near
enough, anyhow. Because of the invitations and everything. The
timing.”
    Oh wow! Oh
wow! Way to go Emma!
    Which sounds
like sarcasm but I’m actually grateful and impressed that she’s
said this.
    This much.
This awkwardly.
    “Oh, I’m over
him,” Sarah lied, while her body ached and stung. Over him? Over
him? Who are you kidding?
    “Oh, I know
you are,” Emma said quickly. And cluelessly. Or maybe she’s
generously supporting my fiction. “But I felt… you know… I was
riding this whole juggernaut. All I could see was the wedding. I’d
forgotten how much it hurts, splitting up.”
    “Forgotten? So
you felt like this with – ”
    The nameless
one. The one in London.
    “Are you
kidding me? I felt it to the bone! And my bones were so young! I
was cancerously in love. And it was coming on to winter, and I was
– ” She stopped. She never said the word. In ten years and six
months she’d never come out and said it.
    And we all
support the fiction. But I could say it now.
    Sarah knew she
wouldn’t. The force field that Emma put up around the whole thing
was too strong. She’d abandoned her wedding gown in the middle of
the church aisle because of it, she was putting herself through
this agony over Charlie, but still the force field remained in
place.
    “ – stupid,”
Emma said. Stupid was not the word she never said.
    “It’s a course
pre-requisite,” Sarah told her. “You have to be completely stupid
about a guy and cancerously in love with him at least once before
you can even enrolll in Womanhood 101.”
    “Well, I got
it onto my transcript earlier than some. But I’d forgotten it feels
this bad.”
    “Some days
it’s okay. You get moments of reprieve. Moments of even this… this…
it’s almost an exhilaration.”
    “Yeah?” Emma
took a drag.
    “Moral high
ground gives it to you. Or pleasure in food. See? I