Lovesick

I had been drinking.  I was depressed, things weren't going so great with Lucy, we'd had one of those awkward conversations that feels like a precursor to us breaking up.  Right now, it seemed so inevitable, it almost felt like we had broken up.  All I could think about was how much I loved her, how much I didn't want things to be over.
    So, sitting here, toast growing cold on the plate in front of me, cup of tea doing little to dull the throbbing in my head, and me, swimming in shame that I went out last night, got drunk, and kissed a girl I met in a bar.
    There's a text on my phone from her, though I'd drunkenly put her name in as Aabygull, I'm assuming I meant to type Abigail, but I daren't read it, because it seems - from the few previewed words - so full of joy and happiness, and I know already that I have to tell her it was just a thing, just a drunken slip, because I'm in love with Lucy.
    I ignore the message for too long, to the point where I'm starting to think that maybe I can get away with not replying, but then another text comes through, and it shows no diminished sense of optimism, instead it looks like she's suggesting evening plans.  I'm going to have to respond.
    Sure enough, it's a buoyant, bright message asking if I want to go to the cinema.  I hate cinema dates, you have to sit there in silence with this person you barely know, concerned that the film isn't entertaining them, that you're not entertaining them, but, at the same time, you don't want to talk all the way through the film.  On the plus side, at least it gives you something to talk about afterwards, but what if they don't really like talking about films?  You assume they must if they're going to suggest a cinema date, but... Wait, it doesn't matter, I've just got to make this a clean cut thing, we can't keep seeing one another, I made a mistake.
    But I hesitate, she wants to see a screening of John Carpenter's The Thing at the Prince Charles Cinema, I'd love to see it on the big screen.  Maybe, I think, I can negotiate this into a friendship, I mean, I've kissed girls before and become friends with them, good friends.
    So I reply, say that'd be good, we arrange to grab a quick drink beforehand.
    Lucy sends me a text an hour later, apologising for the argument yesterday, though I didn't quite frame it as an argument, we were just discussing what we wanted for our respective futures and the contradictions that threw up, which had ultimately lead me to believe that things would have to come to an end to allow either of us to move on with our lives, at least as far as our non-romantic ambitions were concerned.  Yes, in the midst of that debate I was thinking about things cynically, I was taking our relationship for granted, and it was only afterwards that the full potentiality of what I stood to lose presented itself clearly in my mind, and it was then - as I drank - that my love for Lucy was ever more cemented in my head and my heart.  But, it's ok, I've got everything in order now, I know what I want, and this is a good sign if she's reaching out, offering the olive branch.
    Abigail texts back, a happy face made of letters, she says she's looking forward to seeing me and puts an upper and lowercase kiss at the end.  This is going to be difficult.
    All I can think about when Abigail and I meet up that evening is Lucy, I'm aware of myself conversing with Abigail, but it feels responsive rather than an engaged process, nevertheless she doesn't seem to be aware of my distance.  We have a couple of quick beers, head to the cinema, watch the film, half-way through I can see her hand moving gradually from her lap, onto the arm of the chair and then fingertip-toeing onto my arm, down towards my fingers, and then we're holding one another's hand.  When I return her grip she lets herself ease back into her seat a little more.  I wish Lucy was here instead.
    Lucy and I meet up the next day for lunch, and I'm overwhelmed with guilt and shame, I can't look her in the eye because I keep remembering Abigail's hands on my skin, how, when we kissed goodbye, they pulled me ever so close to her, clutching my shoulders, and I let the kiss linger, I let it mean more than it should have, but not to me, to me it was just a nice kiss without deeper meaning, but how do you explain that to someone, someone who seems so smitten.
    She can sense my awkwardness, and it affects her immediately, makes her uncomfortable and suspicious.  She keeps asking me what's on my mind, and I can't tell her.  Eventually, I'm so evasive, that Lucy suggests we take a break, and I don't think for a second it's what she wanted to say, I feel like my attitude today has coerced her into having to make this decision, and I suddenly come to life, pleading with her desperately, but it's unconvincing.  She doesn't cry, she doesn't show any emotion, she just gets up, gives me a sterile hug and a kiss on the cheek and leaves.  When she's gone tears silently fall from my eyes and refill my coffee.
    I'm so full of virulent anger, chastising myself over and over in my own mind, standing on the tube, trundling furiously home, and I can feel it infecting the other people in the carriage, I can see the little huffs and puffs of nuisance becoming magnified when someone opens their paper into another's personal space, or turns with a backpack nudging the back of someone's head, or bitchy little remarks made under the breath as someone doesn't ask to get by and has to lurch awkwardly over someone else.  I know that I am responsible for this atmosphere of contempt, that it is radiating out of me like a leak at a nuclear power plant, that I am the toxic centre of this little universe.
    By the time I've reached my stop I feel like my reserves of hatred have run dry, and they've been replaced by a longing and despair, that somehow I've been the root of all this, that over the past two days I've sabotaged my own life obliviously.  I feel, even moreso than I did previously, that Lucy is lost to me, that love is gone from there, it has moved somewhere else, it still exists but it has been passed like an infection from Lucy to another, and I realise that the love she gave me I have given to Abigail, that I was foolish, drunk and cowardly, that instead of being honest with my emotions, going to Lucy when I needed to, I spread the disease of love to Abigail and I must deal with the consequences.  I cannot get her to love another, we don't choose who we love, but we must be responsible for those who love us, and I resent Abigail, I resent her for the love she has for me, because she is not the person I want to love me, but I'm afraid of being alone and maybe, until the love is cured, I can cope with this.  I shall let the love wither us both, because that is all it is good for, like all emotions love is a wasting disease.